Last time on My Hero Academia,
Uraraka came down with a terrible case of explosions. Despite her best efforts
she was unable to defeat Bakugo. Her best efforts involved dodging around like
a boss and dropping a meteors shower worth of debris down onto the enraged
young man’s head. So, she gets an A for effort. Despite the loss, though, she
seemed to earn Bakugo’s begrudging respect. Well, she’s the first person whose
name he was able to remember. Kirishima hasn’t even done that and he’s been
trying since season one to be Bakugo’s best friend. For some reason. Oh, and
Kirishima beat Tetsutetsu in an arm-wrestling contest. Next up, we have Izuku
v. Todoroki.
 |
| That's his fighting face... He's working on it. |
We open to a depressing flashback
of a young Todoroki sobbing into his mother’s chest. She does her best to
comfort him after a probably hellish training session with his father. Endeavor
has some high expectations for his (FIVE-YEAR-OLD) son. In the present the
match gets underway. Shoto opens up with a massive wave of ice. The wave is stopped
by Izuku, who uses an OFA powered flick. The shockwave he unleashed is powerful
enough to shatter the ice and push Shoto back several feet. One finger down.
Shoto tries again, but same result. Izuku is panicking just a little, as he’s
trying to strategies with almost no data. Sure, he knows Shoto favors massive
ice blasts, but he doesn’t know the side effects of them, how Shoto handles
close combat, or really anything else as the Elementalist ends his fights far
too quickly for him to draw any conclusions. It also doesn’t help that this is
one of the worst match ups for Izuku, regardless of universe close up fighters
just don’t do well against long ranged fighters. Another Icewave, another
finger lost.
In the stands, Kirishima joins the
other students. He and some of the others mention that they’re kind of jealous
of Bakugo and Shoto since both are able to use such big and flashy moves
without much effort. Bakugo tells them that it’s not that easy, and, like any
of their powers, there are limits to what they can do. Quirks are like muscles,
sure they may operate in wildly different ways, but at the end of the day if
you over use a muscle you’re more than likely going to hurt yourself. Important
thing to remember, Bakugo might seem like a meat head, but that dude has a mind
on par with his boundless rage.
Shoto tries another Icewave,
costing Izuku the first finger on his left hand. He rushes Izuku on an ice
bridge, trying to get his hands on him. Izuku dodges, and elects to sacrifice
his whole left arm to try and knock Shoto away. It works, a bit, but Shoto
throws up an ice barrier at the last moment. So Izuku is out of fingers on his
right hand, and his left arm is shot. Does he stop? Come on, haven’t you been
paying attention?
Izuku, and Bakugo in the stands,
notices that Shoto is getting ice build up on his hands and face, and he’s
starting to shiver. Weird to see an Ice Elementalist reacting to cold. Shoto
makes a crack about how Izuku should surrender, and how the fight was worth it
just to see how angry his dad got when he didn’t use the fire power. Izuku
doesn’t surrender, so Shoto tries another Icewave. I think I’m sensing a
pattern here… Rather then be knocked away by Ice, Izuku further breaks his
right index finger for another OFA smash. If you listen carefully you can hear
Mrs. Midoriya shrieking in terror with Izuku’s breaking bones. The force nearly
knocks Shoto out of the ring but he saves himself.
 |
| Why do I suddenly feel like quoting Robert Frost? I'm thinking Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. |
Izuku points out the obvious, that
Shoto is slowing down, that he’s getting too cold to fight well, and that it’s
because he refuses to use his flames to counteract the effects of continually
using his Ice attack. He lectures Shoto about not giving it his all in this
fight, and that he demands to see Shoto’s full strength. Izuku couldn’t be in
more danger if he held up a “I love Endeavor” sign right there and then. Shoto
is furious, believing Endeavor paid Izuku to say that, and charges at him.
Izuku, and once again Bakugo in the stands, notes that Shoto and his ice are
moving slower. Izuku, concentrating hard on the image of an egg in a microwave,
performs an OFA punch to Shoto’s stomach. Shoto freezes Izuku’s left arm in the
exchange, but is knocked back clear across the field. And Izuku didn’t break
his right arm, hooray for little victories. More Icewaves, more flicking of
Izuku’s fingers to block. His right hand is pretty much a mangled mess at this
point. I hope he didn’t plan to learn to play the piano, because I doubt his
fingers are going to bend the right way after today. Ref. Cementoss asks if
they should call the fight, but no one is willing to stop it yet. Izuku resorts
to breaking his thumb by flicking it against his cheek to stop another Icewave.
He lunges forward and headbutts Shoto, once again demanding that Shoto fight
him for real. He hits Shoto with another OFA punch, knocking him on his butt.
Shoto flashes back to his
childhood, watching his older brothers and sister playing while he was forced to
ignore them and train. I think I need to reiterate this, pre-K Shoto was force
to ignore his siblings because he needed to learn to fight better. You got to be
a sick man to force your youngest to sequester himself away from your older
children. He then remembers a much darker moment. Rei Todoroki, pushed to the
edge by an abusive husband, seeing bits of Eiji Todoroki in her three older
children, and seeing that same… darkness in her baby Shoto’s eyes, finally
snapped. She douses the left side of his face in boiling water while calling
his left side unbearable. Rei was put away in a mental hospital. Despite her
being the one to burn his face, Shoto understood that the blame for his scarring
and his mother’s mental breakdown rest solely at his father’s feet. Smart kid.
He still decided to pursuit being a hero, but Shoto swore to never use fire in
a fight again, as a ‘screw you, dad.’ Well, that’s depressing.
 |
| That's HIS fighting face. Yes, it is much more impressive then Izuku's. |
Izuku, still fighting, screams at
Shoto that his Quirk is his, not
Endeavors. This causes Shoto to remember watching an All Might interview with
his mother. The very relevant interview was of All Might saying, yeah, quirks
are genetic but the powers are the persons, not their parents. Or something.
That’s what made him really want to be a hero, that superman with a disturbing
smile on his face. He wanted to be like All Might. This causes Shoto to let
loose his flames, thawing himself. Endeavor, who’d been silently watching from
the crowd, roars with delight. He screams at Shoto to use his full power, and
that they will work together from this point onwards to reach new heights.
Shoto… doesn’t even look at him.
Shoto and Izuku charge at each
other, drawing on their full powers. Sensing the very real chance these two
might kill each other, Cementoss and Midnight try to stop them, Cementoss
forming concrete barriers between them and Midnight releasing her pheromones to
try and knock them out. It doesn’t help much. Those boys are too high on
adrenaline to be calmed easily, so the pheromones aren’t useful. The combined
force of Izuku’s One For All Punch and Shoto’s Fireblast obliterate the walls.
Izuku was knocked out of the ring, while Shoto caught himself on some more ice.
Shoto is declared the winner.
For those who don’t follow that
sort of thing, the fight in this episode made it onto a lot of top 10 lists for
anime fight scenes back in 2017. I know that my transcription here might come
across as a little bland, but seeing the fight in motion is a feast for the
eyes. Seeing both young men go all out as they battle for supremacy was really
well done. The animation makes you feel every blast of ice, every broken bone
that occurs in this battle. I highly recommend this episode for anyone that enjoys
a good fight scene. I liked that Izuku spent nearly the entire fight getting
Shoto to fully embrace his powers. While not guaranteed, he might have had a
chance to win if he’d let Shoto keep focusing on his ice powers, as the young
hero-in-training might have ended up freezing himself. But, as a shock to no
one, Izuku wouldn’t have been happy with a win unless Shoto came at him full
force. Speaking of Shoto, his home life is pretty damn awful. I mean, not only
is his famous and powerful father abusive as hell, but his mother’s
psychological break caused him to be permanently scarred. Oh, and the fact that
even after his mother was gone, he was so cut off from his siblings that in a
later chapter his elder brother admitted to not even knowing Shoto’s favorite
food. That’s how little time the ‘failures’ of Eiji Todoroki got to spend with
his ‘masterpiece.’ It’s a special kind of hell that he grew up in. Considering
all of that, it’s kind of amazing that he turned into a cold but functional
hero-in-training instead of a sociopath. Lucky that. Shoto being able to
embrace his flame powers and use them without restraint is an important step
forward for him. And it’s just that, a step forward. Shoto hasn’t suddenly been
fixed. He is still trying to find a way to use the fire side of his
Elementalist powers without reservations, and learning how to feel about his
abusive father in the manga. Keep in mind that the manga is about two years of
content ahead of the anime. Life’s a journey. Next time, we’ll see what the
ramifications of repeatedly and savagely damaging one’s hands can be even with
a Healer on staff.
Twitter: @BasicsSuperhero
No comments:
Post a Comment