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A lot of “you’s” and a lot of “he’s” in here. A lot of shifting the blame onto his child with the language he uses, both in the most recent flashbacks and in previous ones.
Obviously, there’s a reason Endeavor does this, whether consciously or not – he’s distancing the blame from himself by placing that burden on Touya.
If only Touya didn’t have a defective quirk, Touya could’ve “smashed the ugliness in [his] heart” and made his father’s dream come true. If only Touya wasn’t born with his mother’s constitution, Endeavor wouldn’t have had to create more kids to find a new successor. If only Touya understood that he had to stop using his quirk, even though he was created solely to become a hero, but since that can’t happen now he has to look elsewhere for meaning in his existence?
As reprehensible as it is, it makes sense that Endeavor does this to justify his own actions. My main issue is that with the framing and prioritizing of his viewpoint, it runs the risk of readers inferring that Touya is to blame.
To be fair, everything in the chapter aside from Endeavor’s words show that he’s wrong and at fault, so it only takes a minimum level of critical thinking skills to see this. A doctors advises him to stop recklessly engineering his children, since it’s taboo and potentially dangerous to the child, but he has Natsuo and Shouto in spite of this. Rei expresses her reservations, since Touya has already caught on to what he’s doing and it doesn’t seem like she’s enthused to have more children, either. He disregards her concern and pressures her into it, anyway.
And it doesn’t matter what he said to Touya or how caring it sounded when all of his actions directly contradict this. If he cared for Touya, why not spend his free time with him, even if they can’t train anymore? Because he spent time with Touya not to bond with him as a son, but to train him as his legacy. If he was concerned for Touya’s safety, why did he have 2 more children, knowing they could be born with the same detrimental quirks? Because it was never to protect Touya, it was to replace the child who was supposed to be his successor.
Everything Endeavor did as a father taught Touya that he was not good enough and thus he was not worthy of his father’s attention. His language places the burden of that on his son and that’s how he internalized it a as a child. Telling Touya to stop without providing the unconditional love he’s vying for is useless and shows a blatant lack of awareness for his child’s needs. Endeavor created an environment where he pays attention to his kids based on their ability to be a hero that could surpass All Might – no amount of talk was going to convince Touya to cease his self-harming behavior unless Endeavor changed his behavior as a parent first.
Now compare the more recent flashbacks to the last one listed above, which is from Shouto’s perspective. There’s no denying the way Endeavor treats his children as objects for his own gain is wrong when he makes this remark about Touya while he’s literally beating down his five-year-old. And he does this for the same reason he abandoned his firstborn. The point of this scene is to show that Endeavor holds his ambition above all else — even his family.
And there’s no issue per se with giving nuance to his character. He should have regrets and he should be remorseful for what he’s done, but that doesn’t automatically mean he’s deserving of forgiveness or sympathy.
The problem is when this “nuance” is prioritized above the not-so-subtle and far more important suffering that his victims endured, and are still enduring, particularly in the case of Dabi. And it shouldn’t be obscuring the unequivocal truth here, which is this: Touya’s self-harming tendencies and inability to regulate his emotions as a child doesn’t negate the fact that he was neglected to the point of self-harm and his father is as culpable in that as he would be if he had burned his son with his own flames.