Character of the Month: Shōto Todoroki

Greetings, ladies and gentlemen!  Welcome back for another post from yours truly!  Because I’ll be in New Orleans at MechaCon next Sunday, I’ll be unveiling July’s Character of the Month today.  At first, it was a little difficult to decide who this month’s character would be.  But the more I thought about it, my heart had been set on this character for after watching My Hero Academia.  At first, I initially hesitated giving this awesome character the title because he became my favorite character out of the entire series.  But like I said, he’s an awesome character, so why not?  Anyways, let’s stop rambling and talk about July’s Character of the Month, Shōto Todoroki from My Hero Academia.

We know very little about Todoroki in season one except for his fire and ice quirk.  It’s not until season two that we really get in-depth with this hero in the making.  Todoroki is the son of the second greatest hero Endeavor, a hero with the ability to control fire.  Having ambition to usurp All Might,  Endeavor raises his own son as a means to take him down, resulting in a traumatic and tragic childhood for Todoroki.  Endeavor’s abuse stemmed even further to his own wife; she suffers from a mental breakdown from Endeavor’s abuse and burns half of Todoroki’s face as a result.  Due to this troubling past, Todoroki refuses to use the fire quirk that he inherited from his father…until the tournament arc.  After being convinced by Izuku that his quirk is his own and that he is the only one who can decide what kind of hero he will be, Todoroki starts to use his fire quirk.  It’s after this arc that Todoroki becomes a staple character in the series.

Where do I begin with this guy?  Well, for one, Todoroki is probably one of the most sympathetic characters in the series next to Izuku, but most of that comes from the fact that we get an in-depth backstory from him.  In fact, he had one of the best told backstories in the series.  Plus this and later moments in the series offer some great take-aways for the audience.  If you learned anything from Todoroki’s back story, there’s a great lesson on forgiveness and letting the past go.  It’s during his battle with Izuku that Todoroki learns that he can’t let the past or his feelings about his father hold him back from being who he is and what he wants to be.  You could say that his battle with Izuku served as a form of healing.  And for me personally, I found this to be very refreshing and almost comforting to see because I myself have been going through the same process of healing and forgiving.  My belief is that a great movie, book, or what have you offers a lesson or moral that you can take away and apply to our own life.  My Hero Academia already does this through Izuku in that we should never give up on our dreams.  With Todoroki, as I said earlier, the lesson we take away is that letting your past haunt you holds you back.  And finally, I actually enjoyed the dubbed version more than the original Japanese; David Matranga does a fabulous job of portraying Todoroki and it’s probably the version that will forever stick with me.  So, yeah, last week I tore season two’ a new one, but there’s no denying that one great thing about it was Todoroki.  So flame on and keep inspiring us to heal and let the past go, Shōto Todoroki, cause you’re Hanime on Anime’s Character of the Month of July!

Just as a reminder, because I’ll be at MechaCon in New Orleans next weekend, there will be no post next Sunday.  However, I do plan to do a Talkative Thursday post before I leave, so expect that this Thursday.  But until then, stay tuned till August for another review!

-Hanime on Anime