EJ NICKELDANE

The Real-Life Endeavor: Why Elon Musk is the Ultimate Anime Bad Dad

Elon Musk Is the Endeavor of Our World Elon Musk, as a father, resembles the lowest of the low, the worst of the worst. He belongs among the fathers found in fiction, ranking right alongside Lex Luthor, Vinsmoke Judge, and even Fire Lord Ozai. He is the Enji to his Todoroki. As a father, he ranks among the worst. But in real life, in the end, in all honesty, in the long script of fathers and parents, he is not at the very bottom of the list—the one Santa has coming up and the one kids write for popularity. From musicians to pop stars to actors, he was the first choice for many as a father and someone to look up to as a role model if you were in STEM or an otaku. He is also a real-life Iron Man, at least before he became interested in elections and government, which later helped his business. As a parent, any young child—years ago and even now—views him through the light of innocence. He had money, he was cool, and you can imagine bragging about him to friends at school. You were also a part of the 1% and had an inheritance—how about that? A life like Richie Rich, adored on the Internet and the world, whispered about in the same likes as Barron Trump and Xi Mingze. The Child’s Perspective But from the truly right perspective—that of a child toward a parent—no amount of money, wealth, or business prospects qualifies him. He is a designer seeking designer babies, like Peter Thiel. He is the Enji who engaged in a modern-day “Quirk Marriage,” treating women not as partners to love, but as necessary variables to solve his obsession with population decline. Just as Endeavor viewed his children as tools to surpass All Might, Musk views his offspring as statistics to combat a birth rate graph. It is eugenics disguised as philanthropy. He is the Republican mom who feels her daughter’s sexuality is a lifestyle she disagrees with, blaming it on trauma and “cultural Marxism.” The same logic: reduce a child to a problem to be solved instead of a person to be loved. Legacy Over Love He is the celebrity man who would name his child an obscure cultural nickname nobody knows, such as “X Æ A-Xii” or “Exa Dark Sideræl.” He is the controversial Kanye West, who benefits from being white and is not viewed as insane like Kanye. He is the Enji who only wants his perfect creation. He is a man who can be a tech billionaire, a genius, a mastermind—but who can never shoulder the burden of being a father who helps his kid with homework, or of being part of a family that truly likes him for who he is. Fourteen kids with four women would surely love him? Am I right? From his actions to how he interacted with his family and how he seems to groom them for succession, it would seem as if he was simply a man passing his job to the people he viewed as his family line. Throughout human history, that was the majority thinking and the right way, so he is okay as a parent, right? No. Throughout human history, the main course is oppression—whether it was slavery, genocide, or extinctions—not the arc of moral justice. But does it make it right? The Endeavor Parallel All this new-age humanist “halo” talk—whether it is going to space, saving mankind, creating companies, or becoming the richest man—pales next to the reality of the fictional Endeavor. Endeavor, the symbol of abusive parenting, eventually looked at his burnt son Touya and realized his ambition had created a monster. He sought atonement. Musk, however, stares at the estrangement of his own child and refuses to look in the mirror. He claims his child “died” to the “woke mind virus,” mirroring exactly how Enji wrote off Touya as a failure. But Touya didn’t die because he was weak; he broke because he was unloved. Endeavor eventually learned that lesson in his redemption arc. Elon is still refusing to take the class. He wishes to achieve his goals of reaching Mars but never changes. Fatherhood Is Not a Formula I would not want him as a father, a person like him as a husband to any daughter I have, or to meet him in real life. As a billionaire and businessman, he is certainly very worthy and scheming. But all of his actions grade very low on the Evil Overlord List. In the end, none of what he does helps as a father, but only in his work, and not life. Life is not just a math equation or a personal computer named Lisa by Steve Jobs. It is beautiful, it is inspiring, and it is something you can never let go and always cherish. As a father, he does not have kids because of love but only to enforce his worries about the so-called “population crisis.” He was doomed from the start, from the beginning to the end. If he was not willing to sacrifice all he had as soon as he saw and held his kids, he became a sperm donor, not a dad or a father. In the long run, Elon Musk is the Endeavor of our world: someone great, someone intelligent, and someone well-driven, but unwilling to atone like Endeavor did and realize his mistakes.