Viewer Log: My Hero Academia ep 35

What do Ice, Fire and Russian Nesting Dolls have in common? They're all in this episode.

Last time on My Hero Academia the students prepped for their end of semester exams. Lots of cramming was done for the three-day written portion of the exam. The students were hopeful for an easy practical, as they’d received information that it was going more or less be a repeat of their entrance exam where they fought all of the Robots. I bet Izuku was really looking forward to earning some combat points this time. But alas, this proved not to be the case. Worried that villain activity will only increase after the Stain fiasco, the teachers decided to up the difficulty of the exam. This time, the students will fight in pairs against a teacher. Yes, Izuku is paired with Bakugo and is going up against All Might. Because being the protagonist sucks sometimes. The first round was a lost for Kirishima and a more minor character named Sato. Next it’s Tsu and Tokoyami vs. Ectoplasm. Let’s get to it.

Definitely one of the more unique
methods of cloning I've seen.

The frog and bird themed heroes-in-training are pretty much immediately surrounded by Ectoplasms. He has the power to create clones of himself, around 30 to 36, provided karaoke is involved. What? That’s the explanation Present Mic gave. Tokoyami uses his Dark Shadow to toss Tsu in the air, who then grabs him with her tongue and lifts him out of the encircled Ectoplasms. They try to make a break for it, but end up having to fight more of the clones.

In the observation room, Recovery Girl comes back to fill Izuku and Uraraka in on some exposition. See, the tests were designed to target the student’s weaknesses or flaws and attempt to force them to sure them up. Recovery Girl explains that Tsu lacks a glaring weakness of her own, but is in this test to give Tokoyami support. The crow headed young man has trouble with close combat, as he relies pretty heavily on Dark Shadow to fight for him. And when you’ve got thirty guys rushing you, there’s no way that Dark Shadow is fast enough to cover them all.

Anyone else think that Ectoplasm could have lead with this?

The twosome is able to fight their way through most of the Ectoplasms and make it back to the room with the escape gate. Ectoplasm elects to use quality over quantity and barfs up one supersized clone. The titan Ectoplasm captures both Tsu and Tokoyami in its body. Tokoyami tries to send Dark Shadow through the Escape Gate, as that would still be a win for them, but the real Ectoplasm blocks it. Tsu then tells Tokoyami to pull Dark Shadow back to them for just a second, and to avert his eyes as she needs to do something gross. He does so, and they hand Dark Shadow something. The being of darkness rushes Ectoplasm again, whom kicks at it, but gets the handcuffs stuck to his peg leg. Turns out Tsu had swallowed and stored the cuffs in her stomach in case of emergency… I wonder if Frogs can actually do something like that, but am too grossed out to check. Regardless, they get a win and a congrats from Ectoplasm. Hooray!

What blows my mind is that this isn't the last time Iida's
piggyback rides lead to victory.

We then jump over to Iida and Ojiro’s test, already in progress. They are up against Power Loader, who can burrow like one of the giant worm creatures from Tremors and has laid a bunch of traps throughout the area to trip the boys up. They perform a Fusion, Iida carries Ojiro on his back, and make a break for the exit. Iida uses his recipro-burst to high speed dash for it. Power Loader explodes up for the ground, shattering the area around Iida. Iida has Ojiro wrap his massive tail around Iida’s leg, performs another recipro burst and launches Ojiro at the gate. He uses his prehensile tail to smack Power Loader aside and fly through the exit. They pass too, although someone has to unbury Iida afterwards.

The final test of the episode is Todoroki and Yaoyorozu vs. Aizawa. Todoroki comes up with a pretty simple plan to have Yaoyorozu use her power to constantly make small objects. If she stops making them, then they’re obviously in Aizawa’s sights. She elects to make a never-ending stream of Russian Nesting dolls. I can’t remember if this is from an extra info page or revealed in a later chapter, but the dolls were among the first things she’d learned to create and thus can make them without focusing at all. Yaoyorozu almost says something when Todoroki gave her his plan, but backed off. Yaoyorozu compliments him on his fast thinking. Todoroki tries to brush it off, but Yaoyorozu reveals that she actually feels somewhat envious of him. See, they were both admitted to the school by recommendation, Todoroki by his dad and I believe Yaoyorozu by her mother, and she seems to think of herself as the lesser of that category in their class. Before they can talk it out more, Todoroki notices the dolls had stopped falling and Aizawa attacks.

The pro-hero quickly captures Todoroki in his scarf. It’s a specially designed capture weapon, being incredibly strong and flexible. Todoroki tells Yaoyorozu to run while he’s getting tangled. Aizawa ties Todoroki in it, lifts him off the ground and throws a bunch of caltrops beneath the boy, to make him really question if he wants to burn himself free when Aizawa left. Yaoyorozu has a bit of a freak out, questioning just about every choice she’d made since coming to the damn school in her anxiety. Aizawa tries to nab her and gets one of her arms. She notices that she can still use her powers for some reason, and is able to slip away by tangling a creation in the scarf instead. She runs off.

In an internal monologue, Aizawa explained Yaoyorozu’s issue. He and the other teachers had noticed she was going through some confidence issues after the sports festival. They rightly assume being so quickly beaten by Tokoyami during the final tournament coupled with the rapid growth of some of our more main characters have left her feeling inadequate at best. He admits to himself he wants to help, but a test really isn’t the place for that.

Yaoyorozu makes it back to Todoroki. She freezes up for a minute when she notices Aizawa following. Todoroki tells her to do whatever she’d planned to do at the start of the test. She still hesitates, until he reveals he was the other person to vote for her in that class rep election earlier in the year. Finding out that a McBadass like Todoroki believes in her, Yaoyorozu shows off her skills. She throws nesting dolls at Aizawa, and reveals they all have flash grenades inside them. While Aizawa is blinded, they run.

At about the same time, we learn from both Aizawa and Yaoyorozu that Aizawa’s powers had weakened since his near deadly encounter with the Nomu. He can’t cancel out powers for as long and needs more time to recover between uses. Which turns out to be their big chance. They time it so that the next time Aizawa blinked, Todoroki instantly threw up one of his massive ice walls to defend themselves. With the breathing room that created, Yaoyorozu made several feet of her own spin on Aizawa’s scarf. How interesting.

Aizawa, hoisted by his own petard.

Aizawa had decided not to move from where he’d landed after dodging the ice wave. He figured it was safer to camp near the exit than risk them slipping by while he searched. Which proved to be the right call as he spots two cloaked figures running through one of the alleys. He nabs one, which was revealed to be a decoy that Yaoyorozu was holding while tugging a catapult with the scarf piled on it. Her hand slips on the trigger, but she sets it off before Aizawa can do more than dodge. He’s surrounded by the material, and then attacked by Todoroki’s flame. He’d been hiding behind the other cloak, which Aizawa had also dismissed as a decoy when the catapult was revealed. He heats up the air, just as Yaoyorozu explains her scarf is made with a special metal alloy. A kind that reverts back to it’s original shape when Heated. Aizawa gets tangled in the scarf, and they earn a win. While they help untangle Aizawa, Yaoyorozu wonders why Aizawa hesitated and jumped back when her hand initially slipped. He plays it off as being due to not known where Todoroki was or if he’d attack with ice or fire. But it seemed implied he let them win so she could get a confidence boost. Oh, Aizawa, you are a big softy.

In a post credit scene, no I don’t know why they keep doing those, we see a bit of Uraraka and Aoyama’s test already in progress. They’re both just barely holding onto a railing while 13 uses his black hole power to keep sucking them up. Aoyama tries to use his costume to redirect his naval laser through his knees, but the energy gets sucked up to. Uraraka tries to think of a way out of this, to what Deku would do. At which point Aoyama asks if she’s thinking about Izuku and if it’s because she likes him. First off, duh. Second off, WHO ASKS THAT DURING A TEST! Sorry, sorry, that was a bit much.

Okay, so far, I like how the tests are being held. Everyone is getting a moment to shine, while the obviously less character improving tests get a bit of a rush job. I like Iida, but we got several episodes about his character growth not that long ago, and after his resolve to not get his hand completely fixed until he feels like he’s a good hero, seeing him struggle through this test would have been a bit repetitive. That and I kind of loved the ingenuity it took to decide the best strategy was to kick your team mate like a ball through the goal. I also liked the nod that Tsuyu Asui is overall a well-rounded combatant without any really glaring weaknesses. From what we’ve seen of her, both in the canon material and filler, she’s a pretty intuitive fighter, being able to move incredibly fast and hit hard at both short range with her kicks and mid-range with her tongue. Side note, I hope she’s not constantly tasting concrete, wood and people with that thing. They continue to hint at Tokoyami’s weaknesses on relying too much on Dark Shadow without going too into it. That seems to be a series long struggle for him, though so I don’t mind them teasing it out a bit. I also really enjoyed seeing Todoroki and Yaoyorozu in this one, even if their names are somewhat tedious to type out over and over again. The confidence issues that Yaoyorozu had been having were hinted at almost immediately after her loss in the sports festival tournament and have been hinted at a few other times after, though only in segments too small for me to have drawn attention to. It was also fun to find out who voted for her in that class rep election. It wasn’t a huge thing, but when you consider that like four students didn’t vote for themselves, you start to wonder who else felt that they weren’t up for a leadership position. Which is somewhat fitting for Todoroki, he always struck me as someone that didn’t go naturally to teamwork. And that’s all I have to say about that. Have a good night everybody. 

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