Shigaraki vs Redestro

Every time Shigarak goes through an arc in which he is not the main villain, but rather fighting another villain, starting with Stain, then Chisaki, and most recently Re-Destro it not only becomes a battle between them but also a comparison of them as people. Shigaraki is not just fighting his own villains, he is up against his own shadows, people who are like him but not. A battle against them is a battle against himself in a way. Every single one of the antagonists Shigaraki faces is actually a foil with several things in common with him, I already wrote a similiar post on Chisaki here.

Below the cut, the several things that Shigaraki and Redestro have in common, and the difference that will allow Shigaraki to grow in a way that Redestro hasn’t, making Redestro his stepping stone.

1. Upbringings

We do not get to see Re-destro’s backstory nearly to the extent that we see Shigaraki’s but, there is still enough there to give us a lot to infer. First, Destro similiar to All for One is someone who at one time held a lot of power in quirk society, Destro in his army fighting for quirk liberation and All for One being the king of the underworld. They are also both people who have fallen considerably out of power, Destro was defeated and his army had to go into hiding, and All for One was wounded near-fatally by All Might and was put on life support. Which makes both Shigaraki and Re-Destro the successors to a considerable legacy behind them, they’re kings who basically inherited a crumbling empire.

Not only that but both of them inherit it from what is primarily their father figure. Destro is Rikiya’s biological father, whereas Shigaraki took the name “Shigaraki” from All for One who renamed him from Tenko Shimura after the death of his family and raised and groomed him into being his successor.

Also, important to both characters is that while they were raised as a successor and modeled off their father figure, in both cases neither All for One nor Destro was ever a true father to them. Destro apparently did not even know that Rikiya ever existed, which makes Rikiya a bastard who got saddled with the legacy of a man he never even met. Whereas All for One never intended to act like a father, just use Shigaraki Tomura as an extension of himself.

All for One never saw Tenko Shimura as an individual person or a child to raise, he is a tool to further his legacy and that’s it. He is an object that All for One left behind as his lingering regret and revenge against All Might. What happens to Shigaraki the person he could care less, as long as Shigaraki fulfills his obligations and designs in his place as All for One’s life force fades away.

Which is why the two of them both have this similarity, their fathers have defined their entire lives. Re-destro does everything for the sake of a father that he never met. Not only did Shigaraki live in a household where his father, the patriarchal authority of the house decided who Shigaraki got to be and restricted him from becoming a hero like he desired, but afterwards he fell into the clutches of All for One who then further shaped him to be hateful, and despise the world to better fulfill All for One’s desires.

Their entire lives have felt the weight of this burden, just because of who they happened to be born under. Remember, Tenko is the child of the son Nana abandoned. He literally has no idea that Shimura Nana was a possessor of All for One, and yet he had to suffer the lingering effects of Shimura Nana’s decision to abandon her child. All for One targeted him because of his bloodline that he had no control over. Not only that but Rikiya is once again a child his father never even knew about. He was just once a fatherless child who got dragged into all of this and burdened with his father’s legacy.

Considering the fanatacism of using an entire city to attack six people, and their devotion to Rikiya it’s extremely likely that Rikiya was raised in a cult-like environment where the followers of Destro in hiding controlled basically his entire world, and cut him off from the outside world. The same way Tenko Shimura was raised in a small room by All for One with only limited contact with the outside world that All for One allowed, and only negative violent contact because he knew it would foster even more hatred in Tenko’s heart for the world. Which means at one point both of them were just indoctrinated children. Imagine forcing a grudge of several generations all on the shoulders of a child, it’s no wonder both of them carry so much stress in them.

2. Emotion Based Quirks

Both Shigaraki and Re-Destro have quirks that increase in power and potency depending on their emotions, and they also both have personalities where they accumulate stress and then at the last moment lash out and destroy everything around them.

They were both raised to think that way as well, that their quirk defines entirely who they are as a person. It’s quite obvious in the way Apocrypha was raised, and what he spouts as the Liberation Army’s Doctrine. People are only worth the strength of their quirks. Their quirks began to define who they were. However it’s important to remember just because they were born with those quirks, does not mean they were born that way as people. Rather, they were both raised to believe that they were always born to be this way.

So then, let’s look how each of them see both themselves and their quirks. Rikiya has the narrative that he is Re-Destro’s son, therefore him and all of his strength exists to carry everything Destro left behind. He believes because Destro’s blood runs through his veins, that he was born to carry the burden of history that Destro left behind for him (even though Destro never even realized he had a son in the first place).

Therefore narratively, both his tremendous stress and his tremendous strength makes a lot of sense. He is an atlas, believing that he carries the whole world on his shoulders because his father put it there for him. He needs that massive amount of strength to remake the world as Destro sees fit, but not only that Re-Destro has been impossibly burdened since he was a child. That is a lot of stress all to throw onto one child who did not even know he was Destro’s son to begin with.

Re-Destro seems like a fanatical who is completely happy to carry on his father’s legacy, but remember at one point he was just a child who got taken in by a cult and indoctrinated. He probably forces himself to believe in all of it because the other possibility, that his father did not even know about him, and did not leave him anything behind, and that the burden that has been stressing him out his entire life is just imaginary something somebody else forced on him instead of something he was born to do is too much for him to face. The truth is it Re-Destro isn’t defined by who his father was, and he doesn’t have to do anything based on whose blood runs in his vein, but he imagines that he is compelled to take on Destro’s legacy because he is his descendant. He believes that there is meaning in that, because it gives meaning to his suffering.

Re-Destro calls his acts for the purpose of liberation, but really he’s more restrained than anybody else. He’s tied to a destiny of a stranger, and who he has no true idea what his wishes were, but fanatically convinces himself he has no other choice but to follow in his footsteps. It’s a massive burden to put on a child. Re-destro doesn’t have a family, he has a man who he has modeled his entire life after despite never meeting him. Part of him secretly desires to be free from all of that, which is why he envies and wants to destroy Shigaraki who he sees as being an upstart brat who was never forced to carry the tremendous burden every day that he was, and simply gets to do whatever he wants.

He can’t see Shigaraki as a victim of the legacies that they both carry, because that would be admitting to his own victimhood as well. Therefore, Re-Destro’s quirk is a metaphor for how much the burden he is carrying on his shoulders, makes him want to lash out and destroy everything around him to feel some semblance of freedom not from the suppression of quirk society, but rather his cult-like environment which raised him to feel like his only choice in life was to inherit Destro’s will. His environment is one of constant stress and burden which he can only accumulate further and further until he lashes out. The person who wants liberation is more restrained by his own ideals then anyone else.

Re-Destro feels a constant throbbing in his chest due to his resentment for his lot in life that he’s suppressing. Shigaraki feels a constant itching which is also due to the stress he feels towards his own environment.

It’s not confirmed yet, but Shigaraki’s allergies and his scratching are at least suggested to be stress related. He always does them compulsively, and shows signs of the mental illness exociration when he scratches at his own neck.

One of my theories which I will go more into depth later is that the itching feeling, is his quirk activating on his own body since it’s not totally compatible with it the same way that Dabi’s is not compatible with his body. However, due to Tenko holding it back subconsciously almost all the time his face only gets mildly irritated.

The itch is also most likely a psychological feeling in reaction to the stress of his environment. Tenko is raised in an abusive household where he is not allowed to be himself, he feels a constant itch and unease. Abusive households are stressful because children feel constantly in danger in them, children can even develop post traumatic stress disorder from having to adjust to living in a constantly unsafe environment. Tenko even says if someone had rescued him from that environment, he thought the itch might have gone away.

However, instead he moves from one unstable environment to another. Tenko is taught that hurting other people and lashing out will make the itch go away temporarily. Abuse victims often lash out in ugly ways, and hurt the people around them to temporarily vent the feelings they are carrying with them, but once again this never works to make the feelings permanently go away.

All for One even says this directly, that Shigaraki’s quirk is related to his emotions hence why we see much more destruction during his initial use of the quirk against his family as a child then much later when he is fighting Aizawa for example. Which is why All for One not only encourages to keep his resentment in his heart, but also to chain himself to the memory of his family, because it’s a way to guarantee his quirk will only be used for destruction while at the same time also keeping Shigaraki under control and chained to him.

Shigaraki is freer than anyone else because he believes he simply does whatever he wants to do being a villain who lives in the underbelly of society, and yet at the same time Shigaraki is chained to All for One’s legacy, and the man who has had a hand in manipulating a significant portion of his life. That way he is both free and burdened like Re-Destro, and that is why his stress only continues to accumulate. Shigaraki’s quirk, much like Eri’s probably does not only have to have negative uses but All for One shaped him in a way that he would only lash out, only use his quirk in the most destructive way possible, only allowed to act on his worst impulses. Shigaraki believes he was born this way not moulded.

Shigaraki’s true desire deep in his heart has been to be free to be his own person, not a hero necessarily, not a villain either, but to be able to be the person he wants to be. He believes that by following All for One, because he can do whatever he wants without attachment or the oppression of his previous household he is allowed to do that but once again he’s deluding himself.

If Shigaraki’s true goal was to be free to do whatever it is he wanted, then he would just massacre all of his allies like he did really on in his character arc. However, we see that what Shigaraki really wants isn’t freedom from all of his attachment, because he genuinely values his attachment to those people. What he needs to realize is that there are healthy and unhealthy attachments, and while he claims to have rejected everything from his past he is still acting in the narrative All for One gave him, in the way All for One wants him to. True freedom is something he has to define for himself. It’s a meaning he has to create after he’s tossed away all other meanings. Re-Destro secretly wants to throw away all his burdens and attachment to the meta liberation army, whereas Shigaraki is someone who in a much healthier environment is accepted for who he is already by his comrades and just needs to learn to be that person.

Once again, in both cases lashing out does not solve either of their problems. It only makes them believe that the feeling has gone away temporarily. Rikiya believes Shigaraki is free, because destroying his family legacy is what Rikiya has always secretly wanted to do to taste that freedom for a moment. Yet, as long as he still is trying to prove himself to be worthy of being All for One’s successor Shigaraki cannot truly be free, especially since he defines freedom the way All for One wanted to rather than his own way. If he exists as a Symbol of Fear, than he has yet to become a person, he’s restrained to being a symbol for others the same way All Might was restrained as being the Symbol of Peace.

Shigaraki’s gotten the power up that he needed, but the problem that accumulates the stress in the first place has not been solved by this. In fact, the doctor intentionally put him in a stressful environment and risked his life and harmed him intentionally just so Shigaraki would get stronger to further his own purposes.

Therefore, neither of them Shigaraki or Re-Destro can reach the full potential of their quirks just yet, because neither of them can self-actualize. However, between the two of them Shigaraki is much closer. As he at least is conscious of his desire to be free of things, even if he is still following the narrative All for One gave him.

Ultimately that’s the irony of the two successors, Shigaraki believes himself destroying everything for no purpose and with no meaning and yet he’s still defining things in a narrative sense. A symbol of fear is still a symbol, it still has meaning, it’s still a role to play which All for One gave him. Whereas, Re-Destro sees meaning where there is none because he did not have to magically become his father’s successor because of shared blood. Re-Destro was allowed to become whoever he wanted to be and yet he only ever became what others told him to be. Both of them see each other as fools, because Shigaraki sees Re-Destro as restricted by the legacy of his bloodline (in the way Shigaraki is) and Re-Destro sees all of Shigaraki’s actions as meaningless and not attempting to build anything, and him being a nobody just a child dragged into this conflcit (in the way Rikiya is).

3. The Power of the League of Friendship

In both cases, the league of villains and the meta liberation army are all fanatically devoted to their leader. Unlike Chisaki, Re-Destro does seem to actually care about his followers. He personally interacts with almost all of them and moulds them, which is the reason they are so devoted in the first place.

However, the way they treat individual lives in their organization differs greatly. Re-Destro demonstrates this in his introduction, he seems to genuinely know his subordinate as a person, and values him quite a bit he even extolls the reason why however the second that subordinate expresses an opinion of his own that disagrees with him Re-Destro snaps his neck.

He also cries over it. I genuinely believe those tears, and his expression of remorse is not fake at all. Remember, Re-Destro is burdened to do things he does not want to do, and was indoctrinated that way since childhood. That is why so much of his stress accumulates. He probably believes genuinely that he wants to value his subordinates lives more than anything else, but has been taught the opposite that they have to be willing to give their life for the sake of the cause. Hence another reason why Re-Destro secretly hates the cause he has been burdened with his entire life so much.

Compare this to Shigaraki’s introduction in this arc, a subordinate grabs him and screams his opionions in Shigaraki’s face, and yet Shigaraki just calmly accepts it all and tries to explain himself.

In the league of villains they are allowed to express themselves as individuals, and they are equally valued and accepted for who they are. Even the less sentimental members like Dabi, are still trusted by Shigaraki to go off and do their own thing.

The league of villains are all still outcasts and degenerates, but as a whole they are much more sane, much more their own fully realized individual people. They question Shigaraki, they joke at him, they even complain to him constantly. They are treating him like a person even if they are loyal to him. Whereas, All for One’s subordinates are all completely devoted sycophants who seem to lack any thought in their heads besides what they can do for All for One’s sake.

Compare the way Shigaraki treats his members to the way Rikiya leverages them. Shigaraki risks the entire league just to save one member, but not only did several members of the league ask him to do this, but they also consent to following along with his plan because it means saving one of their own.

Not only that, but in the past against Chisaki, when Shigaraki risks the league again to get revenge against Chisaki for Magne’s sake after losing her, he once again asks for Twice and Toga’s cooperation and tells them his true feelings on the matter that he wants them to do this for all of their sake even if he’s asking them to put up with something hard.

While Rikiya may genuinely value the lives of his subordinates and feel pain when they die in a way Chisaki never did, that does not change the fact that he basically wasted thousands of them and risked all of their lives to settle a personal grudge against seven homeless hoodlums. The ideals of his organization are far more important than individual lives, and everyone in the meta liberation army is raised to value their life second.

Which is where the inherent hyporisy in Rikiya’s ideals comes from. He believes people should be free to use their quirk without suppression, and should be defined by their quirks. He believes that the current society that represses individuality because some quirks are more dangerous than others should be destroyed. And yet, he indoctrinates people to believe their entire worth is based on their quirk, he wants to make a society where people are entirely defined by how strong their quirks are. His liberation is just another form of individual suppression under the banner of liberation.

Apocrypha apologizes for having to make Re-Destro show him the most basic level of concern. Really it is a cultlike atmosphere where even though it seems on the surface to be all-welcoming, ideals are valued far more than individual people, and that sense of acceptance is only used to prey on others and indoctrinate them further into their radical ideals.

Which is why the concern the league shows for Shigaraki’s life comes off as much more genuine from them. Every single person in the league is valued as a person, and while they are sometimes asked to do things for the sake of the league and cooperate they never disappear as individuals.

Even when people like Giran fail the league, they get rescued, and they aren’t punished for failure because they as a person are more important than just what their powers and abilities can bring to the league.

Which is why Shigaraki will triumph over Re-Destro, to Shigaraki people are far more important than ideals. Shigaraki is able to become a person in a way Re-Destro will never be or realize, because he was too busy trying to become an ideal, a legacy left behind, a symbol rather than Shigaraki who is making steps towards becoming his own person no matter how thorny, or long that path may be.