Last time on My Hero Academia,
Izuku was nearly defeated by a question. He’s able to soundly defeat his opponent
Shinso, but earns some respect for the purple haired mindcontroller. Afterward,
Shoto Todoroki obliterated Hanta Sero and moved onto the second round, where he’ll
battle Izuku. That’ll be the fight for the ages. But, before that, we’ve got
some filler.
For those who are unaware, Filler
in Anime refers to any scene, episode, arc or season that did not occur in the
source material. These segments are added, either to fill out the overall
runtime of an episode or season. This is done mainly to allow the Manga enough
time to get ahead of the Anime, as most Anime based on Manga are released while
the Manga is still running. This can range from scenes in an episode, like we’re
about to see, to multiple seasons. I’m looking at you, Naruto and Bleach. Thankfully,
the filler for My Hero Academia flows more or less naturally with the rest of
the story. And, better yet, the filler I’ve seen is almost 100% stuff that
could be happening. Seriously, in the Anime Bleach, you could skip from episode
167 to 190 and not miss anything because the intervening episodes are a separate
self-contained story that has literally nothing to do with anything. I’m
getting off task. So yeah, there’s filler in this episode. But, thankfully,
this filler is just expanding on fights that were just summed up in the Manga.
I’ll see if I can explain it better in a sec.
We open with the match of Denki
Kaminari vs Ibara Shiozaki. Kaminari discharges
electricity, and Ibara has tentacle-like vines for hair. There’s some quick
banter, Ibara disliking being referred to as an ‘Assassin’ by Present Mic during
his intro of her, and Kaminari attempting to flirt with her before the match begins.
Kaminari tries to blast her, but Ibara protects herself with a vine-shield
composed of her hair and then tangles Kaminari in more vines after his attack
stops. With his brain shorted-out and him being effectively caught, Ibara is
declared the winner. See, in the manga, we start with Kaminari already captured,
and the fight summed up in about two pages. So the banter, the flirting, and
the actual fight itself was all stuff that the manga didn’t show, which is by
definition filler. Get it? Got it? Good. Kaminari is out and Ibara moves on.
 |
| A face that says, "Oh God, the guy I have a crush on is a little insane. |
In the stands, Izuku is already
analyzing the fight and coming up with counterstrategies for fighting Ibara. His
notetaking and muttering once again making everyone uncomfortable, and Uraraka
tries to get him to chill. He snaps out of it, and reveals that he’s taken
notes on everybody, their fighting styles, their strengths and weaknesses. He
also kind of freaks her out by mentioning he’s documented her as well. Dude, I
can think of nothing that freaks a gal out more then admitting you’re literally
examining her.
The next round is speedster Tenya
Iida vs. gearhead Mae Hatsume. Her power is telescope vision, allowing her to
see up to 5km away with just her naked eye. Iida, oddly, is bedecked in equipment
that he’s never been seen using before. He gets scolded by Midnight for not
supplying the paperwork for that gear, but is allowed to use it after he makes
an impassioned speech. Apparently, the tech is all Hatsume’s work and she
wanted him to use it, for sportsmanship… or something. Yeah, I don’t think anyone
who’s spoken with that wacko Hatsume would believe that, but Iida’s a trusting
sort.
The fight begins, but not a single punch
is thrown. Why? Because Mae isn’t interested in fighting. Using her tech, and a
smuggled in mic, she spends ten minutes showing off her gear and using it to
dodge Iida’s attacks. She uses the mic to highlight the interesting features of
her babies, in the hopes of wooing a future tech company employer’s. Gal has got
her priorities. She walks out of the ring after showing off her gadgets, much
to Iida’s chagrin. Izuku is so absorbed in taking notes about all of that wackiness
that he doesn’t notice when Uraraka gets up and walks away.
 |
| Seriously, one of you couldn't at least lift your right arm instead? |
The next couple matches finish in
rapid succession. Round 1 Match 5 is Mina Ashido vs. Yuga Aoyama. Mina easily skates
around Aoyama during the fight, using a non-acid version of the slime she can
fire, until Aoyama overuses his naval laser. He doubles over with a stomach
ache, allowing her to acid blast his belt and knock him out with… WA Punch! Sorry, flashed back to One Punch
Man for a second. Round 1 Match 6 is Tokoyami Fumikage vs. Momo Yaoyorozu.
Tokoyami attacks hard, forcing Yaoyorozu to use her powers to create shields to
defend herself. She’s forced back until he get’s a ring out. The match lasted
only a few seconds, much to Yaoyorozu’s shame. It’s only after this match that
Izuku realized that Uraraka left.
Round 1 Match 7 is Tetsutetsu
Tetsutetsu vs. Eijiro Kirishima. Both can make harden their bodies, Tetsutetsu
into steel, Kirishima into stone. To play up the joke about how similar they
are, they’re shown in the same fight pose before the match and are given the exact
same intro. They have a heavy-duty slug fest, hitting each other in perfect symmetry.
They knock each other out, and it’s decided they’ll have a tiebreaker to see
which one advances.
 |
| Uraraka, I'm sensing some stress for you. |
While that is going on, Izuku and
Iida both meet up with Uraraka. She’s doing her best to control her nerves,
which is impressive since she’s going up against Bakugo. Iida tries to make her
feel better, I think, by saying there’s no way that Bakugo would use his full
power against a girl. Izuku is certain that that won’t be the case. Bakugo doesn’t
understand the meaning of the word ‘restraint.’ Izuku, trying to be a good
friend, offers her his notes on Bakugo and a strategy that he came up with
(with her powers in mind) to beat him. She turns the notes down, though. She wants
to fight for herself, and tells Izuku that she’ll see him in the finals. We end
on Uraraka entering the area to face Bakugo.
While the majority of this episode was
either A. filler, and/or B. build up for next time, I enjoyed this episode.
This was do in part to the fact that My Hero Academia has stuck to ‘stuff that
was happening’ type filler. Some shows, as stated above, go on some bizarre and
wacky tangents when they’re stalling for time; the entire fifth, seventh, and
ninth seasons of Naruto Shippuden for example. I’m just glad that they have had
such restraint thus far. It also helps that, as I’ve stated before, one of the
things I like about My Hero Academia is that it has a very large cast and that
Kohei Horikoshi does his best to show off everybody to one extent or another. I
suppose it also helps that the characters whose matches were expended upon were
Kaminari, who has my favorite superpower, and Tokoyami who is one of my
favorite characters. I might have been complaining if Mineta was the one
getting increased screen time, but thankfully that’s not the case. While the fight
between Tetsutetsu and Kirishima was largely played for laughs, I do love a
good bareknuckle Strongman fist fight. The fact it ended with a double knockout,
further highlighting the physical seminaries between these two did make me
smile. The fight between Iida and Hatsume was also fun, and also served to
highlight their strongest character traits, an almost idiotic level of trust
for Iida, and a borderline psychotic desire to show off her designs for Hatsume.
This matters a bit more for Iida, as he’s a main character instead of a support
like Hatsume, but it’s good to see that even minor characters aren’t generic in
this series. The final point I’ll touch on is the build up to the Bakugo fight.
I like that by in large Uraraka’s nerves on this one was largely internal. She
wasn’t sobbing, or doing anything really to draw attention to herself, despite
the fact anyone with two braincells could tell she was nervous. What? She’s
going up against the #1 ranked (both academically and in combat) student of the
Hero Course, who has been known to lose control in a fight. If you AREN’T
nervous at the prospect of fighting him, your name better be Shoto Todoroki, as
he’s the only student I can think of still in the tournament who has that cool
of a head. Izuku offering up a strategy to her and her subsequent turning it
down is also a good character moment. Let’s be real, Izuku has analyzed no one
aside from All Might more then Bakugo. If there was a surefire way to develop a
strategy to fight him, he’d be the one to do it. Not saying it would work for
sure, but his strategy would be a damn good one. So, Uraraka turning it down does
suggest that she’s serious about fighting this battle on her own and winning on
her own. It seems like relying on Izuku as much as she has so far has wounded
her pride slightly, and now she wants to see how far she can go on her own. A
good mentality to have. Next time, we’ll see if Uraraka can put her money where
her mouth is.
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Twitter: @BasicsSuperhero
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