Decent chapter. Feels like a huge swerve for the series so far in what Hori is willing to say about hero society.
We've gone from hero society is flawed because it elevates people who often aren't truly heroic to hero society is flawed because it is built on state sanctioned murder.
Like that's a huge swerve in tone to have in what might be the final arc of this series.
The sentiment was brought up in a lot of places I saw that discussed the early leaks and to some extent I do sympathize; the knowledge of the hero commission having a whole lot of dirt on them feels like it's come out very late. There were some who speculated about it as early as Hawks (back when people thought either he - or Dabi lol - had this kind of backstory behind them), but the fact that it's coming out now of all times feels like a case of the series introducing something of an overarching-yet-separate dilemma to make the disdain against heroes feel somewhat sympathetic. I've complained a lot about this before that the motives behind the central villains have always felt kinda sorta like lip service in the grand scheme of things; like an attempt to "deconstruct" heroes as an institution despite the root of the problem being somewhat extricated from the motives (perhaps the lack of an honest admitting that even heroes can't save 'everyone'). This is the first sign that this is
not the case, and it would go further ways to make the pushback towards a hero saturated society somewhat understandable, though some problems do arise by its introduction now;
1) Stain, his followers, and most of the villains in this series so far have predominantly argued from the perspective that the people who go out to pursue the hero occupation are dishonest frauds who don't "deserve" the distinction based on arbitrary definitions of the concept, with Stain in particular believing that only All Might (and Deku) are worthy of being called heroes - all of these being motives that sort of run in opposition to one another.
2) This entire pretext raises a deeper issue in that even All Might, the "greatest hero", was essentially a front for something sinister that had been brewing, and which most of the villains probably didn't even consider themselves.
3) The hero commission is in shambles with a good chunk of them dead, meaning that authority is hamstrung and we don't really have a heroic face anymore to place as an antagonist, and their presence most likely ends up serving as a bit of a formality. Most of the people who likely perpetuated this to continue are gone, or not in a presence of control anymore.
4) As mentioned above, if the government had no compunction of due process when it came to people that hadn't even committed crimes, it feels at odds with the decision not to sentence AFO the instant he went into the cage.
A lot of this has the telltale signs of it probably being something that Hori only decided to explore fairly late in his writing of the story, and to give the protagonists something of an "ethical" dilemma that would inspire a restructure of how the hero system is managed, even if it comes at the cost of not necessarily being central to what's been the core of the story so far - again, something that contributes to my overall negative impression of how the villains have been handled up until this point. It's part of why I consider this chapter only "pretty good" rather than "really good", because Nagant and her background feels like it exists in its own bubble compared to every other villain so far, even if it's a bubble that feels way more effective at making a point.
Still, I do think something like this is something of a necessary development if only to more believably give Deku a cause to sympathize with someone who's been branded a villain and maybe work toward a heel face turn that can contribute to a societal restoration, but better in at least one capacity. I think the challenge with a story like MHA is if you want to develop the story in a way that wants you to continue thinking heroes are cool and something to aspire to in that world, it's going to be hard to fully acknowledge certain aspects that, when analogous to reality, pose more questions and implications.
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