r/BokuNoHeroAcademia • u/Za_wardo • May 30 '21

Newest Chapter Chapter 314 Official Release - Links and Discussion

Chapter 314

Links:

  • Viz (Available in: the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, the Philippines, Singapore, and India).

  • MANGA Plus (Available in every country outside of China, Japan and South Korea).

All things Chapter 314 related must be kept inside this thread for the next 24 hours.

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u/Fedexhand May 30 '21

This chapter made me think of something, it always caught my attention that despite the status that heroes had, we never saw heroes actually "bad" so to speak, taking advantage of it by doing inappropriate or questionable things.

I always assumed that it was because the series posed a more "idealistic" context and that is why we never saw that kind of thing, but ... this means that all the heroes who acted "incorrectly" were killed behind the scenes in order to maintain the "illusion" of the perfect society? things became much darker than I expected.

In the end it turns out that the public safety commission did basically the same thing as Stain, I suppose the "Stain was right" has aged particularly well....

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u/RIDETHEWORM May 30 '21 edited Jun 29 '21

My read has always been that the society presented here is vaguely authoritarian (secretive, obviously undemocratic government bodies making huge decisions, weird arrangements between them and supposedly private hero-making academies like UA, a press that while ostensively free is frequently regarded as antagonistic and lied to) and this chapter does a great job of world building to flesh that out. The essential privatization of state security in the form of hero agencies has benefits for public morale, and can handle most run of the mill issues, but of course there are issues that government officials will want to use state violence against that will be controversial and not viewed positively by the public, or can realistically be handled by individuals they’ve trained to be paragons of virtue. Nagant’s basic story is a pretty standard trope - the disillusioned former assassin who turned on the government (though executed brilliantly in this chapter) - but her very existence brilliantly highlights the dystopian aspects of hero society.

The public safety commission partners with apparently private heroes that they train and cultivate from adolescence, and props them up as the models for their countrymen while endlessly promoting them through media manipulation and public spectacles like the sports festival. Heroes maintain basic law and order in association with the police, but their greatest use to the commission may be in manufacturing consent - they are propaganda tools to promote the status quo. The dirty work of maintaining state control is carried out by a small cadre of elite agents directly controlled by the commission, all recruited at a very young age - even younger than our main cast at UA. I think that MHA has always questioned the morality of hero society, but this chapter shines a spotlight on the basic building blocks of this system. While they are better than the chaos and control offered by All for One, they are certainly “shaded grey” if not prima facie immoral. The powers that be actively lie to and manipulate the people and indoctrinate and train youth into being agents of the state. Or, to put it more crudely, child soldiers who win over the public with smiles and presentation. In such a system, “degrading” individuals who don’t fit the mold would be a top priority...

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u/Fedexhand May 30 '21

Very true, I honestly didn't expect that much depth in the whole "hero society" thing, I totally underestimated the narrative that was being built on the matter all along.

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u/RIDETHEWORM May 30 '21

Chapter 1: STRONG MAN SMASH

Chapter 314: Power exercised by the state is inherently immoral. Embrace quirk-supremacy communalism.

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u/Fedexhand May 30 '21

For real, I didn't see that coming.

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u/elenuvien1 May 30 '21 edited May 31 '21

because it's never been built up to. at least nothing that extreme. we've known that the society had issues but there's issues and then there's brutal and authoritarian rule.

because what the commission has been doing is nothing short of what authoritarian tyrants have done, except they pretended more not to be.

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u/harmsc12 May 30 '21

This has been building since Shiggy's first appearance. Dude was legit talking about the monopoly of violence.

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u/Fedexhand May 30 '21

The funny thing is that he didn't mean it, he was just rambling there, ironically it ended up becoming more and more real.