Feature

My Recap Academia – Chapter 181

After a week off, My Hero Academia is back!

May 7, 2018

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Missed the latest chapter of My Hero Academia? Need someone to geek out with about it? It’s fine now. Why? Because I am here!

Welcome to the next installment of AiPT’s My Hero Academia recap column! As each new chapter is released, I’ll be sharing my reactions, so be warned that there will be SPOILERS for the newest chapters of My Hero Academia as well as the series thus far.

It’s back, I’m back, welcome back! Last week was Golden Week in Japan so we didn’t have a new chapter of MHA to react to, but the break is over. A new chapter is here and it was worth the wait. This chapter makes for a great starting point to a new arc, and totally shifts the series back into gear!

Oh wait, no, it doesn’t do any of that. This is hopefully the actual last chapter of the Gentle Criminal arc, so all we get this week is wrap-up. I honestly don’t have a lot to say about this chapter and I’m so bored of being negative about a series I’m used to gushing about, so I’ll just do a quick recap and focus on some good things.

Gentle Criminal manages to minimize his threat to U.A., playing off his plan of sabotage as a prank to make an online video, and Midoriya plays along. Hound Dog, though suspicious, reports back to Snipe that there is no threat to U.A. and the Cultural Festival can continue without issue. La Brava continues to cry and Midoriya thinks about how fighting Gentle was really hard, giving this reason:

My Recap Academia - Chapter 181

I don’t fully buy much similarity between Midoriya and Gentle. I get what Horikoshi is going for with them both being motivated by the happiness of a young girl, but other than that I don’t think we’ve been given any evidence that shows how Midoriya could possibly end up like Gentle. It feels like an attempt to justify why this arc is important with regards to Midoriya’s development, but it doesn’t do enough for me to change my mind about the arc’s overall feeling of being filler material.

Okay! The bad is out of the way, so on to the good! The art in this chapter is nice because we get lots of good panels featuring Ectoplasm and Hound Dog, two heroes we haven’t seen a ton of thus far. Here are a couple standout panels I really enjoy:

My Recap Academia - Chapter 181

Also, here’s Bakugo kicking off the class performance in typical Bakugo style, which I always enjoy:

My Recap Academia - Chapter 181

Is this all of the performance we’re likely to see since the goal of making Eri smile is achieved by Deku waving from the stage? Probably. It’s lame, but honestly if it means getting to the next arc then I don’t mind missing the show too much.

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I’ll wrap this up with a few things I’d like to see from the next arc. A new villain would be great, but I’d also love to see what the League of Villains have been up to in the past few weeks since the Overhaul conflict. I also want to see a new member of the League since they lost Magne, and another female villain would be ideal since they only have Toga for now. I’d also really like an arc that lets Midoriya, Iida, and Uraraka work together somehow. Though they’re the most central trio in the series, we haven’t seen all three of them do much together lately, especially since Uraraka has barely been in the last two arcs.

That’s all for this chapter! Want to read more of our thoughts on My Hero Academia? Check out our latest review of the collected volumes and last week’s recap column. ‘Til next time, keep it Plus Ultra!