It’s shown that Inko and Mitsuki are good friends and have no bad blood. Inko also knew very well that her son was being treated differently for not having, and I doubt Mitsuki would be proud to hear that her son is a bully.
Did they not know, or just not care?
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I don't think they knew?
I'm gonna get downvoted to hell for this, but I think Inko was extremely emotionally neglectful to Izuku.
Hear me out, one of the first things we see her do is apologize to Izuku for birthing him "wrong". Which is extremely messed up to tell a 4 year old, especially when she could've just said a white lie to him (which parents do all the time anyway)
Then we see that, while Katsuki never brutally physically assaults him like many fanfics state, he does rough up his clothing every now and then and I'm sure that at least SOME signs were clear, which means that Inko likely just didn't do anything despite knowing.
Either Inko is very physically neglectful because she just didn't notice any of the signs of severe social alientation and bullying in her son or she's emotionally neglectful because she didn't do shit about it.
And I assume that Mitsuki and Masaru just didn't know about it, Katsuki is shown to be meticulous with his reputation outside of school and no one in the school is snitching.
You also have to take into account the fact that Izuku was blinded by Bakugo. If Bakugo ever went too far and hurt him, Izuku would very likely lie to Inko and say they were just playing. It would be easy to cover up, given that Katsuki is seen as a rough kid.
But still, you’re right. Inko was quite negligent with Izuku when it came to some emotional matters. Possibly both of them were so caught up in their own worlds, Inko thinking “I ruined my son’s life” and Izuku thinking “Will I be able to be a hero?”. That they failed to pay attention to what the other was going through.
It kinda pisses me off when people call Inko a "Top 5 anime mom" or something, she's mid. She isn't horrifically abusive, she isn't a horrid person, she isn't gods gift to humanity either. She's just mid, emotionally neglectful at times (most times, really) but mostly just someone who exists because Horikoshi didn't wanna make Izuku an orphan.
Totally agree!!
I’ve read a lot of people say she’s one of the best moms, but when I try to remember something about her… nothing really comes to mind.
I think there are only two moments of hers that I really like: when she cries and tells Izuku that she can’t take it anymore, and when she doesn’t want Izuku to go back to school. Other than that, she’s just another figure that doesn’t really stand out much.
I'd also state that signs of bullying are often indistinguishable from normal play. Roughed up clothes, dirty spots, even bruises and scabs.
When I was a kid, if I came home covered in mud and dirt and had scabs on my knees and elbows, my mom wouldn't assume I got my ass kicked, she'd think I was rolling in the mud and got scuffed up.
A black eye or split lip is one thing, but a few bruises on the legs or arms can just be a tumble from a bike.
And Deku (or most kids who get abused by their "friends" )is not exactly the kind of kid (then at least) to go, "mom, my best friend just kicked the shit out of me." He was way more likely to wonder what he did to get beat or wonder what made his friend so angry.
Abuse is a real bitch and isn't obvious. Even people trained to look for it and are mandatory reports like teachers and doctors and nurses don't see or report as much as they should.
What about his teachers? They saw Bakugo giving him shit in class. The nurses had to put bandaids and stuff on his scrapes and bruises from time to time. His doctor didn't do shit either, despite no doubt seeing bruises during physicals.
No one reported the bully.
None of his other "friends" or classmates, no teacher, nurse, doctor, bus driver, comic shop owner, lunch lady, neighbor, kids at the park, parents at the park, no one who could have seen Bakugo pushing Deku around (or worse) and verbally ripping into did anything to stop it or report it.
But that's life. That's what happens to abused and bullied kids, unless someone takes notice and acts. It's what happened to me when I was a kid.
If anything the story is 100% spot on. No one noticed, or if they did excused it as kids playing and roughhousing. It wasn't unusual because they refused to see the tears and real pain.
And, well, not to repeat myself, but that's life.
Spot on about how abuse is often written off as nothing more than "boys being boys" and actively covered up by authority figures in school. I've personally experienced this and I can say that it's damn hard for someone on the outside to figure this out.
But Imo, the parents have a duty to their kids to figure that out. Inko isn't the hyper stressed mom working several jobs trying to support her kid alone, she's a housewife who has her husband paying for everything from his spot in the US. Not saying that housewives aren't working or are lazy, they definitely work incredibly hard, but my point is that she's clearly around her kid alot. It's not hard to notice the cripplingly low self confidence, see the condition his clothes might've been in (assuming that the rough ups are regular, which it's safe to assume that they were) and the fact that he's very evidently unmotivated in following his dreams and realize that maybe there's something wrong at school.
Even if she doesn't figure out the bullying, she could've done a lot to support her kid, maybe take him to therapy, or try to give him some push towards his goals, or even the bare minimum of encouraging your kid and showing him that you'll actually be a safety net for him.
I'm mostly basing my assumption of Inko not being there for him on the fact that Izuku basically instantly latched onto the first bit of hope he got in his life since he was 4 and was catching up to people with literal decades of experience on him in months. The guy is clearly a prodigy, he just needed someone to actually believe in him in some way or the other.
I mean, what signs does Deku have? Boy's not crying all the time, he loves watching All Might Videos, and he plays outside with the rest of the kids. She's not watching him 24/7.
If he gets pushed around by his friends she doesn't see it. And Deku doesn't bring it up to her.
Should she be more aware? Maybe. But it's unfair to label her as neglectful. Today's helicopter parents that observe every aspect of their children's lives are very dangerous to the independence of their kids.
I work in a field where I interact with people reporting changes to their accounts all the time. The number of people in their twenties and thirties that have their sixty year old parents still doing things like updating their addresses and making doctor's appointments for them is insane. To the point where we have established guidelines on how to handle class with the parent and without the parent.
For fucking adults.
Inko presumably has a life outside Deku and if he's not telling her he's getting bullied and no one else is either, how is she supposed to tell if his scrapes and bruises are bullying or just playing outside? Kids fall off swings, fall of bikes, and trip on the regular and that's not counting more adventurous kids who jump bikes or skateboard, do stunts on playground equipment, or go out n the woods. God forbid they run around and chase each other.
Kids come home with minor injuries like that all the time. And they should. It means they aren't staring at a phone all the time. They're getting exercise, exploring boundaries, exploring their world, and seeing how to do stuff like climb a tree or whatever.
Again, if Bakugo was kicking the shit out of him and leaving him with black eyes, missing teeth, or bloody clothes that'd be different. If Deku came home weeping every day or the teacher's kept showing her pictures Deku draws of getting bullied, Inko might be a bad mom for ignoring it. But no one is.
Deku comes home, maybe a bit dirty, but happy and smiling and talks about going on a adventure with Bakugo. Then he watches All Might for four hours, takes a bath and goes to sleep. Sounds like a normal kid to me.
The fact that he leaves out, "oh yeah, Bakugo and his friends make me walk behind them, call me names, shoved me in the water, and then made me eat some dirt all while asking me to go kill myself because I am worthless and then I cried for an hour before coming home, what's for dinner?" Isn't Inko's fault.
Bakugo and his friends do beat up Midoriya when they were little and picking on someone else. But that’s the only time.
I'm not saying there weren't some physical scuffles, but nothing that's straight up a beat down.
But that was a beat down? And it's explicit that it didnt happened just once....
Kids play. There's the very plot centric clip of them both ending up in the river. Lots of kids "play hero" etc. just dirty messed up clothes isn't enough to set off alarms of "my kids is relentlessly bullied"
Don't fully disagree. Just that bit
In fact, we have confirmation in chapter 243 of the manga that Inko was aware Izuku was being beaten up for being Quirkless/wanting to be a hero, at least to some degree. But my favorite part of "Inko is a bad mom" is that after the Mall Incident, the first thing she says to Izuku isn't "Are you okay?" or "How are you feeling?" but "Enough already, I can't take it."
Agreed Inkos narrative is a big part of what had Izuku messed up emotionally. She shouldn’t have been framing his quirklessness as being born wrong. And literally got so worked up about it she ate herself into obesity. She felt a lot of shame and projected it onto Izuku. This is demonstrated in the manga and the anime, people just brush past it. A big part of the story is how hero based society negatively impacted people, Izuku being one of those people. It’s why Izuku ending up quirkless at the end makes perfect sense for the story.
I thought it was incredibly manipulative to try to get Deku to leave UA because SHE couldn’t handle it. Plus her telling her young son what she did when he was struggling with the news he had no quirk was so wrong. As a mom I can’t believe she would choose to behave the way she does. Like there’s plenty of jobs even within the hero field that don’t require a heroic quirk. There are multiple ways to be a hero in this world and she could have supported him to choose one of those paths so he was still hero adjacent.
In Inko’s defense, a student did canonically DIE while attending the hero course at UA roughly around the same time frame Izuku was born and Izuku was never going to settle for something hero-adjacent. She didn’t handle it the best but her fears are entirely understandable.
Well, if that's the case, Mitsuki and Masaru really don't know the son they have.
It's REALLY easy to hide stuff like that from your parents lmao, other than this anger issues, Katsuki was a model student, top of his class, excellent quirk, excellent BIQ, pretty levelheaded in fights. There was no reason to assume that someone like him would be such a terrible bully to someone.
And keep in mind that he was very careful not to ruin his rep outside of school, so I'm sure that he wasn't just advertizing this behavior.
I would like to add on and point out that Katsuki is just an intense person in general and his mother is the EXACT same way lol. Katsuki doesn’t really change his attitude/behavior THAT much depending on who he is talking to.
The worst of his behavior IS called out by his classmates (albeit not seen by adults), happened when he was alone with Midoriya, or was misconstrued as him being competitive (by All Might). It’s very likely all that helped conceal the bullying as well. I hate using “that’s just his personality” as an excuse…but I can absolutely see the adults in his life doing that.
Japan also has a historically horrible view on bullying, so it's no surprise that it went under the radar for so long. Hell, most people still don't know about their past in universe 😭😭
one of the things I do have to give Horikoshi credit for is having Katsuki not only admit to it but also apologize and bow in front of his entire class is not only a big deal for Bakugo as a character but also kinda huge (at least in my understanding) deal in Japanese society. As far as I know, it’s kinda expected for those sort of things just to be swept under the rug over in Japan (?) — I could be completely wrong though!
I know Bakugo isn’t everyone’s favorite but I was pleasantly surprised there was actual acknowledgment that it was bullying from the character himself. I wasn’t really expecting it.
I don't think they knew the full extent of things. I think they knew Bakugo had his head up his ass and Izuku was picked on, but I don't think they ever saw enough to figure out how far it went.
Like, look at the times when Bakugo actually picks on Izuku: it's either at school or out in the neighborhood, and it's when Izuku tries to be heroic. That's when Bakugo cracks down on him.
Combine that with Izuku's self-worth complex and wanting to rival Bakugo, and I genuinely think Izuku never told anyone. He wanted to beat Bakugo in his own way, instead of relying on teachers or parents.
Exactly this is what I've been thinking...
I like how Bakugo bullied Deku all the way up to the point of telling him to kill himself and Deku seriously thinking about it and blamed himself/thought he would be troubling Bakugo.
Then you have posters go "Bakugo only did it in Middle School." Which in the story was literally a few months/year ago. And even then Bakugo was still riding Deku down for half of that time.
Bakugo also later went on to assault Deku at night physically with his Quirk.
From an outsider perspective none of that is good or healthy and everyone going "Bakugo is Deku friend UwU." Are messed up.
Most likely didn't know. I doubt Katsuki will tell his mom he beats up kids at school knowing how hard Mitsuki would punish him and seeing how Izuku never told anyone at UA he was bullied for many years by Katsuki I doubt he would tell Inko who it was either.
She would beat him up in turn.
Simple answer? Horikoshi just didn't write that far.
Complex answer? The physical bullying happened so few and far in between. People would swear to you that Bakugou physically bullied Izuku everyday consecutively for 10 years. But that's not the case. Bakugou didn't like Deku, and actively tried to push him away. Cause being around Deku made his own weakness clear.
Now we don't get many flashbacks of Izuku and Bakugou growing up. Most of their flashbacks are either of them in middle school (14) and when they're 4 years old. The only time we see Bakugou use his quirk on Deku's body is the opening scene in ep 1. With the middle school scenes, Bakugou's blasts are targeted to Izuku's items (notebooks etc) or he subtly threatens to use it by laying his hands on his shoulder, by his head etc.
Notebooks are easy to hide, burn marks on clothes are not. Izuku wouldn't be able to explain why he had burn marks on his clothes to his mother. But he could keep his notebook in his bag and go on about his day with Inko non the wiser. And Bakugou obviously wouldn't tell his mother.
So complex answer summarised: Izuku kept quiet about verbal attacks, and physical attacks were on objects easy to hide leaving Inko oblivious.
We do get confirmation in chapter 243 of the manga that "when he was little, he would try to be the hero and would come home covered in bruises." That sounds more common than a single instance. Horikoshi wrote Izuku's past in a very strange way, leaving room for the worst possibilities.
Izuku is the Kind of Person to not Tell into so she doesn't get Worried
It's probably safe to assume they didn't know.
We never actually see their parents around when they are playing together, we can assume that they just know where they are and that they're playing. Might be a Japanese thing, but kids seem to be left alone a lot in anime
Midoriya probably never told Inko because he still considered Bakugo a friend in spite of how Bakugo began treating him.
they arent friends in canon and they didnt know... also bakugo didnt bully him that badly anyway unlike what fanfic presents.
Izuku very intentionally hid it from both of them as well as he possibly could.
Its never shown that Inko and Mitsuki are good friends, we see them interact literally once iirc, when moving into UA for the final war.
Them being friends and Deku/Bakguo knowing each other since they were babies is pure headcanon thats just become so popular that people believe its true.
Deku believed in bakugo becoming a hero and he always looked up to him, so it’s unlikely that he would’ve ever said anything to jeopardize bakugo’s future as a hero.
Bakugo cared about his school record, so he would not have done something to Deku whenever teachers were present and able to put it in his record and I’d assume he would probably not do anything in front of his parents either in case they punish him by just not allowing him to apply to UA.
Parents very rarely take bullying seriously let alone stop it
To be clear, what do you mean when you say "the bullying"?
If you mean something like, "Why did neither Bakugo or Deku’s parents do/say anything about Bakugou regularly hunting Deku down and beating him up?" they probably didn't do anything about that because it... characters in the canon story aren't going to do anything about stuff that only happens in fanfics.
If you're talking about things like that one incident in the opening scene, or how Bakugou tried to use violence to try to get Deku to leave him alone when Deku wanted to follow him and the other kids, those things seemed to stop after a while, so either the parents did intervene (and that's why it stopped) or the kids stopped it on their own before the parents needed to. Certainly it seemed like Deku wanted to hang out with Kacchan more than he wanted to not get beaten up, so that probably went a long way to discouraging the parents from getting involved.
If you mean that incident after class in their middle school classroom, how would the parents even know about that? It was after class, so the teacher wasn't there.
If you mean other kids beating up Bakugou... who am I kidding, you obviously don't mean that. 😅 (That'd be a better question though. It only shows one example, but it's implied that Deku learned how to fight by watching Bakugou defend himself, so it doesn't seem to be a one-time thing. And it looked like he was hurt pretty bad in that one example, even though he won the fight.)
They most likely didn’t know? Bakugo’s an asshole and a borderline sociopath in the early story, but he’s not stupid. I think even he knew batter than to try anything in front of their parents, Izuku isn’t the type to say anything, and considering their middle school teacher’s reaction to Bakugo blowing up Izuku’s desk and threatening him is telling him to sit down, it’s pretty obvious Aldera didn’t do shit.
Do parents do anything about bullying in school irl?
I doubt either really knew. Deku is a bitch who downplayed the bullying, and it supposedly happened in controlled environments with either no witnesses, or ones who wouldnt tell. Also his mum seems neglectful of deku at times, i assume by accident, so deku wouldn't really tell her.
It is weird though, I will give you that, because it happened long enough that questions should have been asked.
Edit: Like deku's desire to be heroic, and kind to those around him, led to him not standing up for himself, and bakugo was a bully, so of course he wouldnt admit to doing it
"Just kids being kids", Both parents when Bakugo throws a Hiroshima level explosion at Deku
I have better question. Is any in real life parents do/say anything about the bullying? I'm waiting for your answer