Viewer Log: My Hero Academia ep 143

 Izuku and friends find their resolve before the big showdown. 

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Review: My Hero Academia: You're Next

The only thing worse than a toxic fan is a toxic fan with superpowers.

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Viewer Log: My Hero Academia ep 142

 They've got 12% of a plan. So... ya, that's really more of a concept. 

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Viewer Log: My Hero Academia ep 141

 The students prepare and the mole is finally revealed. 

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Viewer Log: My Hero Academia ep 140

 We've had a few Unstoppable Forces meet Immovable Objects before, but this is one of the flashier ones. 

Last time on My Hero Academia, Star and Stripe entered the field. The US’s top hero flew into Japan with a small fleet of stealth bombers to lend aide to the embattled nation, as Star views All Might as her mentor. The fledgling Symbol of Peace had saved her family from some rampaging villains, as shown in the flashback of My Hero Academia: Two Heroes, and afterwards she modeled her whole career after his. She was met immediately by Tomura Shigaraki, as AFO piloting his body is almost literally salivating at getting Star’s quirk. Her Quirk, New Order, lets her manipulate reality itself. She just needs to touch something or someone, say its name, and then she can imbue it with whatever quality she wants. Like removing the air from the space in front of her or making it so she can handle lasers. She hits Shigaraki hard and attempts to use her quirk to make it so that his heart will stop if he moves. Unfortunately, Shigaraki is going through a bit of an identity crisis as he can’t decide if he is Tomura Shigaraki, AFO Shigaraki or some new entity all together. This lets him fight her Order. Getting desperate and wanting to finish the fight quickly, Star creates a giant air golem of herself and slams Shigaraki to the ocean with a beam of laser energy. She makes a call to Commander Ackbar of the US and gets permission to use a bunch of Tiamat missiles to try to kill Shigaraki all in one blow. Enough Recapping. Let’s get to it, shall we?

 

We start with a flashback to when Star was first training with her squad. She looks beaten up, and it’s implied she just finished a training exercise with her team. In voice over she explains that her Quirk sounds awesome but has a power cap to it. No matter how she words her Order, she can’t make certain things happen. The implication being that she tried to New Order herself to be as strong as All Might, but it didn’t work. She says that no one knows why this is, but the theories range from ‘that’s just how your power works’ to ‘because you’re a girl.’ Nathan and her squad tell her that its no big deal if she can’t get to All Might’s level, she’s probably number 2 beneath him in power, and she has the rest of them to pick up the slack for her.

 

In the present, Star is keeping Shigaraki pinned beneath her sword of laser energy as the Tiamat missiles get closer. Her squad ask her what they need to do. She says she’ll need to use the missiles to finish him off, but to do that, she’ll have to drop her laser manipulating order. She orders her men to keep him pinned down under heavy fire to give her time to manipulate the missiles into her big attack. Shigaraki meanwhile is trapped in the beam of light but isn’t seriously harmed. He has reasoned out that this is a stalling tactic from Star and Stripe and that she’ll be trying to unleash one big Deathblow to finish him off once and for all. He realizes that this is a do or die moment for both of them. Star gives her guys a three count before she releases the beam and switches her order to allow her to redirect the Tiamat missiles.

 

The airmen blast Shigaraki with their lasers when he tries to reach star, pinning him in place to allow Star to try to hit him with her ballistic missile punch. She believes if even one hits it’ll be enough. She swings and seems to hit him, unleashing a massive cloud of destructive force. The blast is big enough that Endeavor and the others can see it from the highway. There’s a moment where they think it’s over… but obviously no ones beating Shigaraki besides Izuku. Shigaraki darts forward, looking incredibly burnt and broken, but alive. He reveals that using his mastered Decay Quirk, he buried himself deep under the sea floor to protect himself from the blast. The thing that darted up to try to attack Star was in actuality the Nomu he’d been riding on. He’d realized that Star could only use her Quirk on two things at once, so had to wait for just the right moment when she switched between Orders to bury himself. Shigaraki says that that tactic would have worked on anyone else, but he’s too powerful now.

 

The airmen try to shoot him down, but he’s too fast. He dodges between their blasts and then detonates his Nomu to give himself further cover. In the seconds he’d been freed, he’d already regrown most of his skin and hair, showing off how potent his regeneration is. He lands on Nathan’s ship and prepared to strike. Nathan has enough time to tell Star to just do it, crush his ship and kill Tomura in the explosion. But Star realizes that that won’t work as Tomura regenerates too fast. She gives a resigned smile as Tomura darts forward and grabs her by the face.

 

We pause for a moment for AFO to explain a few things. He admits to actually being afraid of what would have happened if Star and Stripe had met with Deku and the two of them had attacked him together. He feared it so much that he had his contacts in other countries begin widespread attacks on their own nations in the hope it’d keep Star from arriving too soon. His plan was to wait until his new body was complete, face Izuku and steal OFA from him. With the power enhancement of OFA in his hand, he would then face off against Star, steal New Order, and then used the compounded Quirks to become so uber powerful that he’d all other resistance would be like ants going up against an elephant. He tells Star that her arrival was the biggest potential problem with his plan, so he had to risk fighting her in his incomplete state. He gloats about how that risky gamble paid off. We watch as he drains New Order from her, in the form of red energy seeping from her face as Decay begins to destroy her body.

 

She tries to stop it by using New Order to make herself immune to Decay, but Shigaraki’s enhanced Quirk is too much for her. Shigaraki draws all of New Order out of Star. He gloats that because he used Decay at the same instant that he began to steal her Quirk, he forced her to choose between saving her body or her power, and because she chose her own body, she lost everything. He takes a moment to gloat to the memory of his brother, who is revealed to be named Yoichi. He reminds us that the brothers used to read a series of manga together about a hero and the demon lord. He says that Yoichi stopped reading because he didn’t know that there was a final volume that showed the hero winning in the end, but he says he always knew, he just didn’t want to waste time when he knew how it ended. He tries out New Order… but is shocked when Star appears in his mindscape. We see Shigaraki has mostly merged with Tomura into a blob… right before in the real world Shigaraki’s body starts exploding. He’s confused by this, saying that it feels like his Quirks are exploding.

 

We then learn that the moment Star realized destroying the jet wouldn’t work, she shifted her strategy. She used New Order to change it so that her Quirk would destroy any other Quirk it came into contact with. Her attempt at saving her body was the second, last ditch effort to save herself. She realized that Shigaraki getting her Quirk without repercussions would be the worst outcome, so she made it hurt. Within the mindscape we see the Vestige of Star hulk out and start ripping up the Vestiges of other Quirk users in Shigaraki’s mindscape, the representations of the Quirks he’s stole within that space. Star says that she’d have liked to survive, but if this was the price to pay for peace, she paid it gladly. Star disintegrates and her last thoughts were to thank her team and Commander Ackbar. Shigaraki starts to panic as the damage builds. All For One lets him take or give Quirks, but it doesn’t let him just destroy them outright. He needs to get rid of New Order before it damages him too badly. He decides he’ll pass it to a pilot, but they don’t give him the chance, they catch him in their laser canon fire. Star’s vestige destroys Reflect within Shigaraki, weakening him further.

 

Star, who is still dying, thinks about All Might. He says that he saved her when she was a child and he changed her life. She flashes back to when they met when she was a kid and how proud she was to meet him. Her last act in life is to Salute All Might and announce that she’d finally returned the favor. Shigaraki uses the wing quirk he stole from his Nomu to fly out of the beams and to try to escape. He has to hurry to find someone to give New Order to or Star’s Vestige will destroy all his powers. He is furious at being attacked yet again by someone inspired by All Might. He blames the big blonde hero for everything and hates that another of his disciples has wounded him this badly. He fires off a shockwave that freezes up the planes long enough for him to fly away. Nathan watches as Star’s ashes fall to the ocean and thinks that she surpassed All Might in that moment, and that to him, she was always the greatest hero.

 

We cut to a port city where a pair of escapees from one of the lesser prisons are hiding out. The woman of the pair complains that nothing is on TV, and the man says that it’s the fault of the rampaging escapees. He compliments his own brilliance at choosing to lay low… right as Shigaraki bursts into their house. He’s looking terrible at this point, his hair is long and matted and his body is in tatters. He lunges the man and attempts to steal his Quirk and shift it with New Order. In the Mindscape, Star calls him an idiot. She reveals that while New Order did a lot of damage to Shigaraki, she knew that the Quirk wouldn’t be enough to destroy all of his Quirks before it hit its own limit. She regrets that she couldn’t kill him herself but takes solace in knowing that she scared the shit out of him and showed that regardless of how powerful he is, there will always be someone ready to stand up and embody what it means to be a hero to try to stop him. AFO tells her that in the end, the winner is the last man standing and for her to be gone. New Order breaks down to dust. We see Shigaraki’s mental avatar. The outer later, made up of Tomura and AFO is blobby at this point, clearly damaged but surviving. We see a huge hole in the mass and deep within it, we see the child Tomura used to be, Tenko Shimura, within. He looks like he’s absolutely covered in hands, which is… disturbing to say the least. Tenko thinks about Star’s last words and immediately thinks of that ‘hero’ that will face him, Izuku Midoriya.

 

Future Narrator Izuku takes over, saying that the heroes and police swooped in immediately to try to catch any trace of Shigaraki. But he hightailed it out of there. We see the two criminals he attacked, their bodies withered and decayed. FN Izuku tells us that Star’s death shook the world, and lead to the other nations of the world putting a tighter rein on their heroes, basically killing any hope of getting international help. We’re shown Salaam, the flat Hieroglyph hero from Egypt rage against this, but his superiors tell him that they’re just trying to protect their own. We join All Might as he and his allies learn from Star’s team what happened. Nathan tells him that Star didn’t just leave a heroic legacy. He reveals their stealth bombers, X-Double-6’s, have recording equipment and they gathered as much data on Tomura Shigaraki during the fight as they could.

 

All Might goes to Class 1A the following day and tells his kids that Star bought them an extension. He tells them that they learned that Shigaraki’s body was supposed to be complete by tomorrow, but Star royally screwed him up. The damage New Order was able to do while within him should delay his maturation by about a week. Izuku realizes that she bought them some time to plan. All Might tells them that they think a bunch of his Quirks was destroyed in that attack. The kids point out that now is the best time to attack. All Might agrees and reveals that basically every hero not working rescue duty right now is on high alert trying to find him. But he warns his students that they have no idea how Shigaraki will react to this setback. He lists their adversaries, Shigaraki, AFO, Dabi, Toga, the remnants of their short-lived Paranormal Liberation Front, and the remaining Escapees from the prisons. Shoji adds there could also be other foes they don’t know about. All Might says that while Star just died, that he wants his students to spend the next week training as hard as they can to make sure that they’re ready for the war. Bakugo yells “WHAT DO YOU THINK WE’VE BEEN DOING!!?” The students reveal that they’ve been training the best they could since the raid on the PLF bases, and that they’ll keep training in order to be ready to fight alongside Izuku. Izuku says that Bakugo and the others agreed to spar with him after this is over. Bakugo yells that that’s not what he agreed to, and the other students broke into talking about their training. All Might smiles, thinking about their first training session. He determines that his students hatched into proper heroes a long time ago, and that AFO made a big mistake when he picked a fight with these kids. He calls his students one tough class as the episode ends.

 

The story of Star and Stripe was quick, but effective. She came in fast, broke a bunch of shit, and left the heroes better off than they’d been before. Part of me feels like she was a bit rushed, as she only appeared in three episodes. But when I think about what she was made to do, I can admit she did it well. She was introduced in order to show off how powerful Shigaraki has become but also to buy the author Horikoshi just a little more breathing room to tie off some loose ends before starting the big final arc. He probably could have just written that it would take Shigaraki a week to be complete to do that, but by making this time the hard one prize for another hero’s heroic sacrifice it adds a bit more gusto to the kids training. I liked Star and Stripe a lot, her design was what I’d imagine Superman and Wonder Woman’s daughter might have worn if the New 52 versions of the character had reproduced. An American Flag themed Superman costume, it’s as visually bold and loud as you’re thinking. Her brief time in the spotlight also highlighted that she’s smart as well as brave. She figured out the best way to end this no-win scenario. Losing her and her Quirk is an obvious blow to the already damaged world of heroes, but she’d single handedly did more damage to Tomura Shigaraki and to AFO’s overall plans than anyone else had done thus far. She stole power from a man that had been hording Quirks for over a century and stolen his ultimate victory from him right as he was gloating to himself that he’d gotten everything that he wanted. That’s writing at its finest. So, a salute to you, Star and Stripe, a fictional Super Woman worthy to be compared to the OG Superman. The kids have a bit of time to train, to reinforce their bonds… and maybe find out who that mole is that’s been with them since the USJ attack. Oh, I wonder who it could be. … Yes, I know already, I’m being dramatic. Have a good night and stay safe.

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Viewer Log: My Hero Academia ep 139

 Star and Stripe bursts onto the stage. 

Last time on My Hero Academia, Izuku got some rest and All Might prepared for the end. Izuku gets washed and fed by his classmates and is able to unwind for a night despite knowing that final battle is approaching. All Might, meanwhile, runs into Stain at the All Might Statue. After getting a lesson on perseverance from Stain, using the woman that comes by everyday to clean the statue because she was the last person All Might saved before he retired, Stain gave All Might a flash drive he stole from Tartarus during the prison break. The data has information about the attack and helps them speculate on how Shigaraki was able to coordinate with his Vestige within Tomura. They come to the disturbing realization that they only have three days before All For One fully integrates with Tomura Shigaraki. Which, ya know, is terrible. But there’s a silver lining, as the US’s top hero decided its better to ask for forgiveness than permission and headed out with her stealth bomber battalion to aid her master, All Might. Star and Stripe is on her way. Enough recapping. Let’s get to it, shall we?

 

The episode begins with Izuku going back to his room after getting a load of laundry done. We see all his All Might paraphernalia as he walks in, puts his stuff down, and then goes out on his balcony to think about things. He flashes back to when Uraraka gave her big speech to let him stay at UA. That coupled with memories of Gran Torino advising him that sometimes the only way to save someone is to end them has him feeling off. He places his cape on the line to dry as he realizes that the final battle is drawing near, but he’s confident. He’s got his friends, and together they’ll bring back smiles and forge a new future. Or so he hopes.

 

We cut to an air force base where a bunch of stealth bombers are taking off and landing. A few airmen are watching a news story about the events of last season, ie, the Shigarakis have raised absolute havoc in Japan, releasing criminals from maximum security, turning the whole island nation into a war zone and Japan is asking aid from international heroes to help. To highlight this point, the reporter covering the story is attacked by a pair of thugs mid broadcast. One of the airmen asks their commander, Nathan, if they’re shipping out yet, and Nathan says no. He thinks that the higher ups are worried that if they send a bunch of the US’s top heroes to Japan, local criminals might start something. One of the airmen says that’s stupid as they could get their heroes back in two hours if things started going sideways. A burly woman agrees and asks her bros to give her a lift to Japan. This is Cathleen Bate aka Star and Stripe, the US version of All Might. The bombers take off, Star riding on the roof of one and reiterating that if All Might wants help, she’s giving it.

 

Returning to Japan, where AFO is hiding out in a cave somewhere off mainland Japan. He explains that while the Jailbreakers are causing havoc, that gives the League plenty of time to plot. He adds that while Japan is a small set of islands, they’re big enough for the League to win a game of hide and seek. Spinner asks if maybe they should get out of the country for a bit. AFO says that might be better, but that would complicate his plans. He reveals that he needs to accomplish his midgame objective of taking OFA from Izuku. Spinner is surprised that that is only a midgame objective, and Shigaraki admits that he’s got intricate plans for what comes next and OFA is just a small part of it. He thinks that the biggest hurdle that they might face, and his biggest opportunity is on the way. He reveals that he has friends and allies around the world, ones that will act if he gives the word, but he’s holding off on that for the moment in the hopes of facing Star. He says that if she gets the upper hand, they’re finished… but if he can steal her Quirk, that’s basically the end of this little game right there and then. AFO tells Spinner that while he’s been acting as AFO’s bodyguard, it’s time for him to go out and focus on helping Tomura’s final gambit. He’s planning on using Spinner’s status as a Heteromorph (aka a person with a Quirk that gives them an inhuman appearance) to rally other Heteromorphs around him.

 

We shift focus to a trio of Heteromorphs, former members of the Metahuman Liberation Front who’d been assigned to Spinner’s squad. They’re still lamenting the loss of Re-Destro, but feel that they can rally behind Spinner. He plays a message from Skeptic, their one free leader from the old days, encouraging them to keep fighting. He isn’t happy with the League, but knows that they’re the biggest game in town right now, so it’s in their best interest to work together. We get flashes of Toga, Dabi, and Spinner. Skeptic’s plan is to basically force the League into the positions that they want and to use them, like Stain, to tear down hero society. That’s a cheery thought.

 

We catch up with Endeavor, Jeanist, and Hawks head out to meet up with Star. Hawks admits that he feels better knowing that she’ll be arriving soon to help them, and Jeanist is excited to chat with her about the denim used during the gold rush… one track mind. They get an emergency call from Tsukauchi who tells them to hurry. Tomura Shigaraki is there to meet her. Tomura is astride a flying Nomu. Star asks if he’s All For One, and Tomura says that’s a very good question, but for the moment he supposes that he is. Star gets the intel of Tomura’s powers, and her bomber squad prep shields to protect them from his powers. They prepare for an attack run, Star saying that she wants them to fight with all their might and that she’ll see their remains reach their families if they fall.

 

Shigaraki takes a moment to ponder what he is. He still thinks of himself as Tomura Shigaraki but can’t deny that he’s also Shigaraki the Elder. It’s a confusing situation to be in. He decides not to worry about it for now and unleashes a combo attack of heavy payload, radio waves and air cannon. The super shockwave would probably do damage to the bombers, but Star has them evade before starting their attack run. Shigaraki says that he knows what her power is, and that this fight will end with whoever touches the other first. Star says that he might know what she’s backing, but she’s the best there is, so she’s taking him down. Star uses her quirk, New Order. New Order lets her control reality itself, she just has to say the name of the thing and touch it. This allows her to do things like, say, remove all air from the space 100 feet in front of her. And in All Might Showmanship fashion, the area she made air free takes the shape of a giant Star. Shigaraki and his Nomu drop, but he’s unconcerned. He says that ‘s a hell of a power, and he WANTS it. Star’s squadron takes the opportunity to encircle him and fire energy canons on him. They all hit, but Shigaraki uses another combo, Reflect and Scatter, to fling the energy back at them. Star catches the laser using her quirk. Doing so causes her to release the vacuum bubble around Shigaraki allowing him to recover and charge her.

 

Star in voiceover tells us the limit of her power. She’s only able to keep two Orders active at a time. And she keeps one active basically at all times, and that one is to enhance her strength to being in the ballpark of All Might’s. Tomura lunges at her, she shouts his name and knocks him back, two of her bombers acting as a landing pad, adding that she hoped that he’d try to use his super strength to overpower her. She gives us her backstory of how when she was a kid, her and her family were saved from a villain attack by a foreign exchange student that turned out to be All Might. If you recall the Movie, Two Heroes, where in a flashback All Might fought against a pair of bank robbers, one basically being a giant meatball of flesh. All Might leapt in and took out the monster with a single punch, saving a young Cathleen in the process. She says that seeing those two tuffs of blonde hair changed her life and, in that moment, he became her master. She modeled herself after him, down to his hair color. Shigaraki scoffs, saying that wherever he goes, it’s always All Might that meets him. She says that’s WHY he’s the symbol of peace. And lets him know she used her Quirk on him in that exchange and makes the new Order that if Tomura Shigaraki moves a muscle, his heart stops.

 

Shigaraki the Elder says that he knew something was different from the moment that he’d woken up. We go into the mindscape and see how the Shigarakis appear in the mental plane. Shigaraki the Elder has mostly merged with Tomura, growing out of him like a cancerous growth, digging his fingers into his protegees flesh as well. He admits that he and the doctor thought that it would take three months for the two Shigarakis to integrate into one being, but Tomura’s hate and anger have greatly accelerated the project. He thinks they’re up to 97-98% of the way to completion. He claims that when its finished, they’ll be an entirely different person. Shigaraki refuses to accept that future, though, and struggles against it. He screams out his resentment in the real world, and shocks Star when she realizes that he’s moving without having a heart attack. We see Tomura shift between himself and AFOs form. His hair grows out as he struggles for some reason. He remembers his home, and how all his resentment and hate started from little things at his house that piled atop each other. Star leaps off Shigaraki and he says that he’s starting to understand New Order better.

 

Shigaraki says that the US has kept her powers as tightly guarded a secret as they could, but he’s beginning to understand it. He knows that she can only increase her strength so much, or else she’d have taken his head off with that opening punch. And that she has limits to how powerful her rules can be. She can’t just say that anyone who enters this space dies or anything to that effect. He is impressed by the scope of that power. He realizes that the thing that saved him from her quirk was his inability to decide if he’s Tomura Shigaraki or not. He does the Izuku thing of taking a moment to overanalyze the situation and wonder how her powers would work on an animal or object. He admits that he’s weirded out by this desire to just figure out the perimeters of her Quirk.

 

Star tries to figure out a new strategy. She tells Nathan to get her in contact with Commander Ackbar on the line. This plan is apparently crazy, as Nathan tells her that this’ll get her in even more trouble than rushing to Japan on her own. She says that what’s the point of special authority if she doesn’t use it, and that Shigaraki is absolutely a global threat that warrants it. She needs time to prepare, and she tells them to fly steadily until it’s ready. The other pilots knock Shigaraki off of them, and he returns to his Nomu. Star uses New Order on the air again, making a giant air puppet of herself and smacks him aside. Shigaraki admits that he can’t see the attack, but he can feel it. Star crushes him between her giant air hands and then has her men fire their lasers at her. She drops her order to allow her to reshape the lasers into a focused beam attack and slams Shigaraki to the ocean below. The beam is hot enough that it makes a diameter of dry land around Shigaraki. Her men think she killed him, but Star says that its just keeping him in place and stopping him from regenerating. If this level of heat was enough to stop him, Endeavor would have burnt him to cinders. She gets a call from Commander Ackbar, who yes vaguely resembles Admiral Ackbar from Star Wars. He says that this stunt will cost her hero license and then some, but Star says “worth it.” We see a photo of a young Star on his console with All Might and David Shield as he says that the only reason they’ll be able to do this is because All Might himself couldn’t stop Shigaraki. The attack turns out to be a giant barrage of intercontinental cruise missiles dubbed Tiamat. He tells her to make sure every last one hits their target. Damn, hell of an ending to an episode.

 

Wow, it’s weird to get two seasons in a row that don’t start with a recap episode to get people up to speed. But I suppose as this is the second to last season, they expect you to know who Izuku, his classmates, and enemies are as well as their powers. Star and Stripe is a great character with a really fun Quirk. The ability to alter reality itself with a touch and a name is a broken as hell power, but the limit of only keeping two up at a time keeps it practical. I like that Star’s backstory also officially canonizes that movie Two Heroes, as they literally use frames from the movie to show us how Cathleen Bate met the number one Japanese hero to be. I’ve heard that there are a few moments like this, with cameos and callbacks that make it clear that while the movies didn’t happen in the manga, they are canon to the whole story of My Hero Academia. The first one was actually Izuku’s bracers, which he was using during his Dark Deku phase, which were literally just the red bracers that Melissa Shield made for him in that movie. Having grown up in the era where Anime movies were not-canon side stories, see all the Dragonball Z movies up until the latest Broly one, it’s nice seeing that those other stories do factor into the main one. Shigaraki’s instability is an interesting part of the story. Merging with his master is clearly not something that Tomura wants, but it is the thing that kept him in the fight with Star when she used her Quirk on him. The visual of AFO growing from and into Tomura’s body was gnarly. He’s very much a fungal growth on his former protegee at this point. Getting pinned by a pillar of laser fire and about to be hit by a bunch of missiles feels like it’ll take out Shigaraki, so it’ll be interesting to see how he weasels out of this one. But we’ll have to wait and see on that. Have a good night everyone, and stay safe.  

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Viewer Log: My Hero Academia ep 138

One night to relax before it hits the fan. 

Last time on My Hero Academia, Uraraka stepped up. The civilians gathered within UA were terrified at the thought of bringing Izuku into the shelter, for fear that he was a Nomu or that he’d draw the League of Villains to him. These fears are largely unwarranted, as in a flashback Nezu revealed to the 1A students that UA’s campus is nigh impregnable at this point and is capable of rapidly removing the civilians if necessary to other shelters via secret, heavily defended high speed rail. Present Mic and some of the teachers tried to calm them down, but they weren’t having it. Uraraka nabs Mic’s Megaphone and uses her power to jump atop the UA building and does her best to get the crowd to realize that helping Izuku is helping themselves, and that he’s a kid at the end of his rope. Uraraka has been pondering for a while who helps heroes when they need it and decided that they need to all help each other. Her words, coupled with Kota and Ippen Josei running to Izuku’s aid when he breaks down crying at Uraraka’s words convince everyone to let him be. He swears to one of the crowd that asks about AFO that he will get things back to normal. There’s a big cheer at that and everyone relaxes. With that crisis handled, All Might heads out in his car, wanting to check on the anti-hero groups that have been refusing to work with them. Unbeknownst to him, Stain, the Hero killer, is stalking him. Enough recapping. Let’s get to it, shall we?

 

We open with All Might arriving at the scene of the Deku snatch and grab, finding Izuku’s fallen mask near some ice blocks and his statue with the sign on it. He beats himself up for not being able to help Izuku in his time of need. He has a flashback to when Aizawa told him to just be near the kids, as All Might has a habit of inspiring others to greatness, but he’s not sure he believes that anymore. He starts to walk away, but a rusty, chipped katana gets put in his face by Stain. He heard All Might disparage himself, and Stain says that he’ll cut up the heretic. Stain refuses to believe that All Might is who he says he is, even when All Might beefs himself up for a few seconds to convince him. Stain demands to know who this man is to try to besmirch All Might. All Might says that he’s always been one to run into danger to try to help people, showing us a flashback of teen All Might doing just that, but since he’s retired things have just gotten worse and worse. He says that he can’t even help his students. Stain grabs him around the neck and holds his sword against it. All Might, still with a hero’s wit, says that “I’m usually a hugger, but we just met.” Stain shushes him as they hide behind some rubble. We see a woman arrive who is annoyed to see someone put the “I AM NOT HERE,” sign back up. She uses her bubble summoning power to reach up, snap the sign off and begins to clean the statue. Stain says that she has come by every day to clean the statue. He speculates that she’s staying at a nearby shelter and that the people there probably don’t want her doing this. All Might asks why she’s doing this. Stain reveals that she was the last person that All Might saved. All Might flashes back to his battle with All For One, and yes, this woman was trapped under rubble near that fight and AFO had tried to use her as a target. Ya know, she was the opposite of a human shield, meant to bait the valiant All Might into jumping in the way of AFO’s attack. Stain insists that it wasn’t All Might’s power that made him great, but his insistence of fighting crime with a smile and reassuring word to others. Stain forces him to look at the woman cleaning the statue and says that that is the moldering embers that All Might left behind. He insists that this blaze will reignite if they just tend it. All Might starts to tear up watching the woman cleaning and at Stain’s words. He starts to walk off, All Might calls out to him to try to stop him, but Stain instead throws a pile of papers skewered on a blade at him. He says he stole those from Tartarus and asks him to use that info to stop All For One. And encourages All Might to come stop the Hero Killer Stain, if he still has a hero’s heart. The rain starts to clear, which is heavy handed symbolism, but I’ll allow it.

 

Back at school, Izuku’s classmates are going overboard trying to look after him. The boys strip him down and literally throw him into the bath to get him clean. Bakugo is annoyed that they did that, saying that they’re dirtying up the bathwater. According to him, Izuku needs to be scrubbed down with steel wool and bleach before being put into the tub. Dude is hardcore in all things. Bakugo joins them in the water, reminding them all that they’re all his rivals, that he’s going to be the number one hero, and that he’s mostly talking to Izuku when he said that. And props to him using Izuku’s real name for the first time in like 13 years.

 

After the bath, Izuku asks where Uraraka went, and Jiro tells him she basically passed out after the adrenaline rush ended. Turns out worrying for your friend/love interest is exhausting work. Jiro says that a few others are out like that too. Izuku sits down in the living room with about half of his classmates, and apologizes once again for running off like that. Ashido says that she’s impressed he kept his power under wraps for so long, but after reading his confession about All For One and One For All, nothing is going to surprise her anymore. Tokoyami says that Izuku could have told Hawks to return his calls. His classmates ask about his power and what it was like going from Quirkless to having one of the strongest quirks. Shoto comes in and tells them to leave Izuku alone for a bit so he can sleep. Izuku says that he can’t sleep, he’s too wired, and he needs to apologize to All Might. He mentions that All Might isn’t picking up his phone… and is shocked when Shoto just points outside and we see All Might at the window looking like a wraith.

 

All Might comes in, bows, and begs forgiveness for being a poor teacher to Izuku. Izuku says that All Might helped him a lot, and Ashido butts in, saying that if he has to apologize to anyone it’s to the rest of 1A for taking their friend away. All Might doesn’t apologize, but tells them all that the final battle is approaching. He has a flashback to when he picked up Stain’s intel and he swore that even if he has to crawl to get there, he will be there to watch his students take up the mantel of hero at the very least. He says that they’ll need everyone’s help in that battle, and that even in his weakened body, he’ll give his support. Izuku thanks him for the food, and everyone resolves to be ready for the fight. All Might heads out, saying that he needs to check in with the others and prepare. Tokoyami tells him to tell Hawks to call him. As they head back in, Ashido teases Tokoyami for being an angry bird. Tokoyami says that he’s not angry, just concerned. Sato asks why the heroes don’t just set up shop in UA, and Shoto says Endeavor wouldn’t do that without a damn good reason. Because he knows that if people see him, they’ll start thinking about Dabi and that’ll spread panic. Izuku finally passes out. Kirishima points out that that sucks for Shoto since he really didn’t do anything wrong, it’s just about who he’s related to. Shoto says that he did let his family tree blind him for a while but he’s resolved to do better with his friends and regain the public’s trust. Kirishima is moved by his chivalry and starts crying manly tears. Jiro says that if they have civilians that aren’t fans of theirs, they can just fix it. She pulls in Kaminari, Yaoyorozu and Tokoyami with her earphone jacks. Shoto asks what she means. Jiro compares to what they’re dealing with now is similar (if on a much grander scale) to when other students were giving them the side eye during the cultural festival. She grabs Bakugo as well and suggests that they can just do what they did then to make everyone relax. In case you forgot, their class band consisted of Jiro, Kaminari, Yaoyorozu, Tokoyami and Bakugo. She says that they won’t go back to normal, but make something even better.

 

We cut to the heroes, Endeavor is flying while Hawks and Jeanist are using Jeanist’s car. Hawks explains that they got some info about Shigaraki’s upgrades. They cross referenced info they got out of Garaki during a polygraph test and the notes they took from his lab about Nomu creation. Hawks says that while its not a perfect comparison, a modified living person is worlds different from a modified corpse, they have learned some things. They assumed that they had two months before Tomura Shigaraki’s body is complete. With comments they’ve gotten from Nagant and Dictator, they assumed they had another 30 days to handle the situation. But… then they got the info from Stain. He stole data from Tartarus and included it along with a… passionate letter to All Might.

 

We flashback a month. During the escape, Stain got his hands on a knife and used it to execute an escapee that was shouting about doing something terrible to girls. Stain enters the surveillance room. He sees that all the guards are dead save one. The others died with their weapons in their hand, but the survivor was clutching a box to his chest like his life depended on it. Stain takes it, the guard offers weak resistance but he’s 3/4^ths dead already. Stain opens the container to find data storage devices inside. The guard grabs a gun and says that he can’t take those as its supposed to go to someone just. Stain says that he will pass on the guard’s conviction. The guard asks if Stain is a man or monster, and Stain says that he’s a monster, but one that wants to make a better world. Stain watches as AFO leads the riot, not sure why the data cubes mattered so much, but resolving to bring it to the only person that he trusts. He leaps into the water outside Tartarus and swims to shore. Over the next month, he gathers gear, and makes his way to All Might’s statue.

 

We return to the night when All Might left Izuku with his classmates. He met up with Detective Tsukauchi and passed the Stain info along to him. He says that he’s happy All Might and Izuku made up, as he’ll take any good news right now. Especially since they’re relying on news from a murderer like Stain. All Might explains to us that Tartarus has a security system that was off grid, totally inaccessible outside the base. Without Stain, they’d have never gotten this info, which would have been bad as it includes how the Shigaraki’s knocked out Tartarus’ security. He used high powered radio waves throughout the prison to knock out security, both from Tomura Shigaraki attacking from above and AFO Shigaraki attacking from below. Tsukauchi’s partner, the cat cop Sansa, asks if they could communicate telepathically via their shared Quirk. All Might tells him “kinda.” While that telepathy can happen, that sort of communication doesn’t go both ways. He uses himself as an example. He has a Vestige within OFA. That Vestige knows everything that All Might knows… but All Might can’t get any info from his Vestige. He only recently got information from his Vestige when he touched Izuku while he’d been in a coma. All Might can’t make sense of how AFO was able to do this. But the cops had been able to analyze that radio waves that Shigaraki’s had been using to communicate, and, scarily, one of the messages they received was that Tomura Shigaraki would be complete in 38 days. All Might is now sure that AFO planted that information to give everyone a false sense of security. So… they have 3 days before AFO is complete. Well, crap.

 

We cut to the UN. The security council are arguing about what to do. All Might has asked for aid from them, and for them to send their heroes TOMORROW. This is impossible, as there’s just so much paperwork to do, and moving heroes around like that is an international nightmare. Removing heroes from their home turf causes an uprising in villain activity, and they have reason to believe that Shigaraki has international allies ready to act the moment they hear of such movements. Egypt mentions that their biggest hero, Salaam who featured in the World Heroes Mission, is chomping at the bit to go to Japan. He’s convinced that he’ll be the one to stop AFO. The USA admits that their number one… has already left. The Top US Hero, Stars and Stripes, is rushing to Japan on a fleet of stealth bombers. One of the pilots’ radios to her that she’ll be in big trouble when this is over. Stars isn’t worried, as she’s got a mission to do. She couldn’t ignore a request for help from her old master All Might even if she wanted to.

 

Izuku has a nightmare of AFO saying “Now, it’s your turn!” before being attacked by a spectral version of Tomura. He wakes up with a start and almost hits Uraraka with Black Whip. She wishes him good morning. The others tell him to relax, and Mineta tells him to retract Black Whip as it looks gross. They all assure Izuku that he can relax because they’re with him. Izuku resolves to stop AFO and save the world along with his friends. The credits roll and that’s season 6.

 

That’s a hell of a way to do a season finale. Obviously, the highest stakes action part of the story ended two episodes ago with Class 1A bringing Izuku home, and the emotional stakes were mostly resolved with Uraraka’s speech to the civilians… so the only thing left to do was build up the final battle. Which is kind of terrifying when there are 2 seasons, 32 episodes and one more movie to go. I know that the last two seasons are a rollercoaster ride of action and pain, but still. I like that we got to see All Might meet Stain. The hero killer was obsessed with the former number 1, but like All Might himself said, once Stain was imprisoned and All Might lost his powers, I kind of assumed that there’d be no need for them to meet. So it was extremely weird to see Stain be the one to get All Might to believe in himself again, seemingly just so All Might would be able to take him down eventually. Dude has a one-track mind. I like that the heroes got the heads up about AFO’s timetable and that it’s definitely one of those ‘it might already be too late,’ kind of things. Like… they can only do so much prep in 3 days. I’m sure that while AFO has planned on a lot, I don’t think he’s ready for the likes of Stars and Stripes to arrive. She strikes me as what All Might was like during the height of his power. I think she’ll be a big asset. I also liked seeing Izuku settle back in with his class. Things aren’t exactly going to be fun for him going forward, so it was nice to see him relax in a bath, get to talk with his classmates, and see the beginnings of a potential jam session with Jiro and her band again. Such calm moments are fleeting, so one should savor them while they can. So… they’re prepping for one last brawl. It’d be cruel of me to not continue with this series next month, ya? Well… I guess you’ll have to wait to see how cruel I am, now don’t you? Have a good night and stay safe.  

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Bluesky: @basicssuperhero.bsky.social