It’s been about four years since my
last exam, and yet, I still periodically get that “big test I didn’t study
for,” dream. Which is irritating as heck. I’m a twenty-six year old man, I
should be passed exam nightmares. That being said, if I lived in the world of My Hero Academia, these dreams might be
much more understandable. The entrance exams for Hero programs look so intense
that I wouldn't be surprised if former applicants suffered from a form of PTSD.
Let’s take a look at Izuku’s big test, shall we?
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| Izuku don't get no respect, no respect at all. |
Once again, we start right where we
left off. Izuku is prepping for the battle simulation part of his entrance
exam. He’s (understandably) nervous about the test, since he has yet to even
try out his new “One For All” powers. Not the best situation to try something
new, a life altering test. He is able to forget about his troubles for a half
second when he noticed the girl from the entrance, the one that saved him from
faceplanting when he tripped. Her name is Ochako Uraraka, you don’t hear it in
this episode, but she comes up a lot from this point on and I don’t want to
write pseudonyms a dozen times. He wanted to thank her for her kindness, and
hopefully get to know her a little better, but he’s blocked by the serious dude
from the orientation. He chastises Izuku for even daring to think about talking
to Uraraka, since it would mess up her concentration and potentially affect her
testing ability. Guy needs to take a chill pill. He’s Tenya Iida, saying it now
for the same reason as Uraraka. After that little encounter, Izuku gets the
sense that everybody else has already written him off as someone who’s going to
fail the exam. Dicks. Present Mic announces that they should start. He doesn’t
believe in countdowns, apparently. Everyone runs for the entrance, but as
usual, Izuku is the slowest on the uptake and is the last one to enter the test
site. Not an auspicious start.
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| Want to know a secret? The weasel is the principle. |
Izuku has a quick flashback to when
he got his powers from All Might. The mighty hero advises him to use the new
power sparingly, as they aren’t 100% sure what will happen when he uses OFA.
All Might also tells Izuku to physically prep for OFA by clenching his butt and
shouting SMASH! Back in the present, things aren’t going super well for Izuku.
The other students are schooling him in the robot smashing category. The only
non-broken robot he runs into almost mows him down, but he’s saved at the last
second by another student that has a belly laser. I sincerely hope we don’t see
him again. We’re shown Bakugo rampaging in his exam site, and Uraraka and Iida
smashing bots too. Izuku, on the other hand, has no points at all.
We’re shown the examiners briefly,
who comment on the student’s strategies. They note that some students, like
Bakugo, smash everything to get the highest score possible, others like Iida
use speed to get things finished quick and efficiently, and while others focus
more on strategy and information gathering. They then flip a switch marked as
“Yaruki.” I looked it up, it literally means “motivation to do” something. Said
switch activates the zero-point robot. The one that the students were told was
an obstacle to avoid. What they weren’t told is that this particular robot is
roughly the same size as Godzilla. Kind of hard to avoid a Godzilla sized…
anything. That’s some pretty good motivation, now isn’t it? All of the other students
start running to avoid Yaruki, and Izuku turns tail too, but stops when he
notices that Uraraka is caught under some wreckage. His protective instincts
kick in, and Izuku activates OFA. He launches himself upward, winds up, and
smacks the robot’s head with a full power SMASH. The impact pancakes Yaruki’s
face, it tumbles backward, defeated. Hooray. But, then Izuku realizes that his
legs and right arm were completely wrecked by the kickback of his power. And
he’s falling, fast. He tries to think of a way out of the situation. The only
thing he can think of is to use his left arm for another OFA punch and hope
that it can slow his descent. If it works he’ll be saved, and if it doesn’t,
it’ll lead to intense pain and then death. Before he can punch, though, Uraraka
floats up beside him and smacks him across the face. Why? Well, like we saw
last episode, Uraraka’s Quirk allows her to cancel gravity’s hold on something.
But, she can only do this if she can get all five fingers of one hand onto her
target. Considering that time was kind of a factor, with Izuku falling and all,
slapping him was the fastest way to do that. Once he gently floats most of the
way down, she releases her power. He lands softly, she hits the ground a little
harder, and then barfs her guts out. It’s a side effect of over using her power,
extreme nausea and vomiting.
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| Yeah, Yaruki a heck of a motivator. |
Izuku, with three broken limbs and
a billion scrapes, still tries to drag himself forward. He wants to destroy at
least one robot and get one lousy point. Unfortunately, the test ends mere moments later. Most of the other test takers write him off, but Iida realizes
that there was something more to the 0-Pointer Yaruki robot, and that Izuku’s
decision to fight it might have been the right choice. Wonder how he’d feel
knowing that Izuku didn’t really choose to fight the robot, as he once again
acted without thinking. Somehow, I think this is going to be a trend with him. The
school nurse, Recovery Girl, is brought in. The sweet old girl uses her healing
kiss powers to fix up Izuku’s useless legs and arm. High fives all around. FYI
she is 100% the reason that UA can perform such a…risky entrance exam, school
nurse with healing powers.
One week later, and Izuku’s in a
pretty serious funk. He’s reasonably sure he did well enough on the written
portion of the test, but he knows getting a zero on the combat portion totally
screwed him. This realization has left him in a daze. And, to make matters
worse, All Might seems to have vanished. So didn’t get into his dream school
and his mentor dropped him like a bad habit. Not a good time to be in the
Midoriya house. His mother is able to finally break him out of it when the
results letter came in. Izuku goes to his room to read it, probably to hide his
tears. To his shock, instead of a rejection letter he gets a little holographic
video, from All Might of all people. The Superman-analogue has some information
for Izuku. 1. That he, All Might, is actually taking a teaching position at UA.
2. Izuku passed the written portion, but got a zero on the combat portion. 3.
Uraraka came to see Present Mic after the exam, and she offered to give some of
her points to Izuku, since she thinks it’s her fault he didn’t get the points.
4. He didn’t need combat points to pass. Why? There was a secret third
category, Rescue Points. A panel of judges rated them on how they did when Yaruki
was released. Izuku got the full 60 points, getting him seventh highest score
of all examinees that year. All Might proudly states, “Welcome Izuku, you’ve
made it. You’re now part of the Hero Academia.” Roll credits. Which they do!
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| IZUKU SMASH!! |
This is something I’ve said before
about other series, but, HOW do they AFFORD these THINGS! Not one, but five
colossal training areas, each filled to the brim with robotic drones and at
least one Colossal Titan at each area. We’re talking billions of dollars here,
probably for just one of the sites. Taxes in Tokyo and or tuition at UA must be
exorbitant. Am I thinking about this to hard? You bet your bottom I am. Seeing
Izuku run around in this insane training situation was a lot of fun. Reminds me
of Saitama running around trying to find a crime to stop to meet his quota back
in One Punch Man. It’s sad but also
funny. Seeing this exam, yeah, I can pretty safely say that Izuku would not
have lasted at all without powers. Kind of hard for a normal kid without so
much as a bat to last in a flipping warzone. This was also a heck of a crash
course in using One For All. If the backlash of his new power is so strong that
it destroys whatever part he channels it through, he’s not going to be able to
get a lot of mileage out this for a while. We do learn later on that the
problem is that, Izuku can only use the extremes when it comes to OFA. He can
either use 0% or 100%. The full power is too much for him, now, and probably
will be for some time. He does get the hang of it, but it’s going to be a
while. Also, All Might on the hologram video is hilarious. He and the unseen
camera man have a few pretty good lines. “I have to do how many of these
things?” is one of my personal favorites. First test passed, and Izuku has made
his first big step into being a full-blown hero. What comes next? An insane
first day. What else do you expect? Have a good night, everybody.
Link: https://www.patreon.com/posts/8863976
Twitter: @BasicsSuperhero
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