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.
This chapter feels like it might be the conclusion of the Gentle Criminal arc! There will probably be one more chapter of winding down, plus we still haven’t seen the actual cultural festival performance, but it seems like Gentle and Midoriya’s fight has ended for the time being! I’m honestly very fine with that. As I said last week, this arc was starting to feel like major filler material and that feeling didn’t really go away with this chapter, either.
La Brava continues to cry through the chapter and do little else. It seemed like she was going to see some action by hacking into the U.A. security system, but she was immediately stopped by Hound Dog and Ectoplasm’s security patrol. As a result, her role continues to seem uninteresting and unimportant. As she has said for the past several chapters now:
I do love this panel of Hound Dog and Ectoplasm’s clones, though:
I’ll never forget the moment in an earlier chapter where it was mentioned that Gang Orca is the No. 3 hero that looks like a villain. I think about that ranking all the time when heroes like Ectoplasm and Hound Dog show up, because their security patrol looks like a villain lurking around with his goons in matching, ghoulish outfits.
Returning to Midoriya and Gentle, I like this observation from Midoriya a lot:
Even though I won’t stop calling this a filler arc, I appreciate that the stakes are really high for Midoriya, and I get why. At first, I immediately compared this fight to his battle with Overhaul and didn’t believe Horikoshi at all when he had Midoriya say this fight was the toughest. However, since Midoriya is fighting to defend U.A. itself–his home, his friends, and where all his dreams can come true–and he’s fighting against someone who he doesn’t actually think is a villain, it makes sense that this fight would be harder than the one with Overhaul. Against Overhaul, there was no question about whether or not his opponent needed to be stopped; Overhaul’s motives and goals were so opposite from Midoriya’s that there was no gray area to be worried about. Gentle, on the other hand, is a really nice guy, and even if that makes me feel like he’s a filler character, I understand why Midoriya would find this fight harder than one against a straight-up villain.
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!
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