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One of the absolute worst takes we've ever seen. He's not. He's just not. And we're convinced that anyone who says this isn't even consuming the same series as we are. There's just no possible way that anyone could misinterpret Denki so badly otherwise.
Denki may be a bit of a flirt and has gotten involved with a couple of Mineta's schemes (with one not even being canon), but he's never, ever gotten close to acting anything like Mineta.
Being a pervert is Mineta's entire character trait. It's the sole reason he exists (which is concerning on its own). Hardly a scene goes by involving him that doesn't result in him either thinking about women in an overly creepy manner, or him actually acting on said desires. Or both.
He's just awful. And no matter how many times he's reprimanded and punished for his behavior, he never learns from it.
With Denki, his desires aren't anywhere near as graphic and gross as Mineta's, and nor do they take up even a fraction of his personality.
While he does occasionally flirt, it's displayed in an innocent manner and he's never shown harassing or pestering anyone about it. When whoever he's flirting with doesn't reciprocate his advances, he doesn't persist. He respects and leaves them alone (like with Uraraka in season one or Shiozaki in season two).
Unlike Mineta, Denki can actually function without constantly thinking and talking about girls. In fact, barely any of his scenes involve that. The majority of his screen time is just him being the sweet and energetic guy that he is.
Though we already knew they were nothing alike, the light novels just put things into further perspective.
Legitimately almost all of Mineta's scenes are of him being a creep. An entire chapter is dedicated to him attempting to peek on girls, he decides to act "nice" and "gentlemanly" on Valentine's Day just to attract women, and then immediately jumps to sex when he finds a poor girl who falls for his act, he tells an inappropriate story to the rest of his class on the way to the training camp, and that's not even scratching the surface.
In the novels, Denki is hardly even shown flirting with girls. We can only remember three occurrences where he does over the span of all six novels, and two of those also involve Mineta. The grand majority of Denki's scenes are him just wanting to have fun with his friends.
In the first light novel, Denki and Mineta go to an amusement park along with Iida and Tokoyami, and during that time, the former two try to hit up on girls. But even then, Denki feels like Mineta goes too far and essentially tells him to chill out. And there's another scene where he straight-up scolds Mineta.
The worst thing that Denki has done in the entire series is go along with Mineta's plan to trick the girls into wearing cheerleader outfits during the sports festival. And we're not going to defend him on that, as that was admittedly pretty wrong of him. But he hasn't done anything like that since, while Mineta has continued to do far worse things.
People like to comment that since Denki is friends with Mineta despite all the awful things he's done, that automatically means that he supports Mineta's actions, which is just. Not true.
All of class 1-A are (somehow) friends with Mineta. But in regards to Denki often being shown hanging out with him, we think that's an example of his kindness. We theorize that even though Denki doesn't agree with Mineta's actions, he spends time with him since, understandably, no one else seems to want to be around him for extended periods.
Denki has been shown to be really considerate of others and wants everyone to feel included in the friend group, and that extends to Mineta.
This is also supported by some of the things he says to Mineta, such as calling him a "weirdo little creep." He's fully aware of how he is.
Though this hasn't been canonically stated to be the reason, we personally feel that this makes sense considering what we know about Denki.
We just really don't think it's fair to compare the two. Denki has never groped anyone without their consent. He's never tried to peek into the girls' changing room. He's never dressed up as a dog in a desperate attempt to be adopted by a woman (yes, that is something that Mineta actually does in one of the mangas). He has never flirted with a child. And nor would he ever.
Denki is nothing like Mineta. And claiming that he is is a huge disservice to him as a character and as a person.
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