I see what you mean. My wording could use some improvement. The distinction I would like the show to make is how the randos the cast have gone up against so far measure up against the heroes, like the top ten they bothered to rate at the end of last season. I understand that doing so arbitrarily would be wonky at best, and is one of the silliest tropes of shounen story telling ("X is roughly equivalent to Y", said a bystander). Also, because of how abilities are unquantifiable, direct comparisons are nearly impossible anyway. It is my unreasonable desire as a lover of such things from series past, nothing more. It wouldn't even fit the storytelling here; nothing is that tidy, and that is a good thing that I'm not fully used to.Originally Posted by KrayZ33
Bounties and power levels and so on are more, to me, tools to set general competency expectations. If someone has a ridiculous bounty, that suggests that they are capable of and have indeed committed assorted criminal activity to justify it and that government agents to a certain degree (the bounty) have failed to subdue them. There is always wiggle room in those measurements (like your Naruto example), but they are still a comfort to me.
To get into a more detailed example, Overhaul had a pretty decent arc last season. He was a Yakuza boss with a pretty neat power. How does his individual 'strength' compare to high school heroes and pro heroes from the onset? No idea. No fight record and no jobbing. Leading up to the confrontation with him, I had no clue how to gauge his ability until the actual fight, other than what I could glean from him being 'the boss'. Due diligence was done in the meeting with Sigaraki, and he was menacing, but when it came time for the big fight, I had no idea what tactics or strategies were being used. I didn't know the limits or ranges of his reconstitution ability, and if I had, it would have probably slowed the fight to a crawl with exposition. Rule of Cool was how that played out. Which is fine- a jolly good fight, but not one that I remember much detail about other than the OST and sakuga. This concept is, as I'm sure you have noticed by now, hard for me to put into words.
It is personal preference, but I want a ballpark estimate of who should be at an advantage in a fight going into it. That's my minor hangup. Boku does actually provide it somewhat with the rest of its world building. Shame on me making it sound like a big deal when it really isn't, and thanks for calling me out on it.
Just this episode, Hawks has been seen cavorting with Dabi, so something is clearly going on there, as far as hero second guessing.
Sorry for the roundabout prose. My intent is to say that I think the potential for limitless threats is an unfortunate feature of Boku's setting. In other shounen series, fighters are typically a subset of the population separated by some training or innate ability- a limited talent pool to draw from. When 80% of the population could conceivably have nuke grade powers with little 'counter play', I wonder how the world hasn't collapsed on itself, which is a mild distraction, but that was addressed in episode one, season one- heroes keep that from happening, and that is perfectly fine for this story.
I figure that if a low budget youtuber like Gentleman can somewhat push Midoria in a fight, or social media creepers like Toko can become acolytes of Shigaraki and take down pro heroes (lock hero), the capability of randos is already plenty dangerous. That's not counting whatever new 'threats' will pop up at the grocery store, or wherever. Its a feature, not a bug; I'm just treating it like one
I always thought Stain was a twisted version of a teenage mutant ninja batman, though of course not for these reasons. I wouldn't be surprised if there was somebody keeping an eye on heroes...
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