Last time on My Hero Academia,
Izuku started running. He quickly tracked down Aizawa, who survived Dabi’s
attack but lost him, and later Mandalay and let the pro heroes know that the
League of Villains Vanguard Action Squadron (VAS) are her to get Bakugo. Bakugo,
meanwhile, is dealing with an escaped serial killer with teeth that can extend
into blades called Moonfish along with Todoroki. Class 1B students Tetsutetsu
and Kendo defeated Mustard, the VAS member that was creating the poison fog.
Izuku finally linked up with Shoji, the six-armed hero-in-training. Well, thanks
to Moonfish, he’s only got five arms, and Tokoyami’s Dark Shadow is currently
rampaging. Not a great situation for our gravely injured hero to stumble in on.
Let’s see how he handles thing, shall we?
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| I think Tokoyami was underselling just how strong Dark Shadow is at night. And how little control he really has. |
We open with the last few seconds
of the previous episode, Shoji saving Izuku from Dark Shadow’s claws, and
explaining why their friend’s power is trying to kill them. Basically, Shoji got
hurt, plus the dark of night caused Dark Shadow to switch to instant kill mode.
He also explains to Izuku that his injuries aren’t as bad as they look, as it
was one of his extra arms which regenerate rapidly. Dark Shadow is currently
trying to rip to pieces anything they see or hear. Shoji believes that if they
could lead Dark Shadow to some light, Tokoyami could hopefully reassert control
over his power. Shoji also knows that Izuku is focusing on saving Bakugo, and
offers to distract Dark Shadow is he needs to keep going. Given the choice
between saving two people that he considerers friends, no I don’t know why
Bakugo is still considered one, Izuku comes up with an alternative solution.
We cut over to Bakugo and Todoroki
vs. Moonfish. Todoroki is mostly using his ice waves to keep the mad serial
killer at bay, actively stopping Bakugo from setting off explosions, as the
bright lights they generate would ruin their nightvision and make them both
less effective against him. Moonfish is incredibly agile on his teeth blades
and keeps almost slicing hunks of flesh from the boys. Their salvation comes in
the form of a furiously screaming shadow. Okay, now I’ll explain Izuku’s plan.
Knowing that Bakugo and Todoroki were partnered together and just behind Shoji,
Izuku had Shoji just look for a huge glacier. Then, they used Shoji’s dupli-arms
to make a bunch of noise to draw Dark Shadow after them. Dark Shadow charged
after them, beat the piss out of Moonfish, and then slams the villain to the
ground again when he tries to get back up again. It’s only after that that
Bakugo called the go ahead for him and Todoroki to unleash the light to repress
Dark Shadow. After getting his head back on straight, Tokoyami apologized
profusely for losing control. Shoji gives him some words of encouragement, and
Izuku insists that they fall back to the camp, cutting through the forest to
save time. Bakugo tries to scream that he’ll be fine on his own, but they ignore
him and force him to follow.
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| In most cases, knife beats person. Just not when said person is Ochako Uraraka. |
We then jump back a few minutes to
catch up with how Uraraka and Tsu are handling this cluster jam of a night.
They crossed paths with Himiko Toga, the VAS sole female member. The crazed
school girl knows their names and general abilities, and is super creepy. She’s
out to steal their blood, using some kind of electric syringe device to drain
their blood. Which is super ghoulish, not going to lie. Tsu throws Uraraka out
of the way of Toga’s thrown syringe, tries to dodge herself but gets her pinned
to a tree by her hair. Toga hears Uraraka call her Tsu, and squeals about how
cute that name is and how she’ll start calling Tsu it. You know, because their
friends. In her mind, anyway. Yeah, she’s really unstable. Uraraka charges her,
keeping Toga from harvesting Tsu’s blood. She’s able to use so knife fighting
moves she picked up from her internship with the hero Gunhead to disarm Toga
and pin her to the ground. Despite being pinned, Toga seems pretty chill about
the whole thing, and is still SUPER creepy. She calls Uraraka a delightful girl,
and claims their the same because she can smell that Uraraka has a crush. …
Now, it’s been a while since I’ve been a teenager or had a crush on someone… so
is that a crazy girl being crazy thing or did I not notice something growing up?
Does love smell like flowers? Tasty food? Fear sweat? Probably that last one
for Izuku and Uraraka… Whatever. Toga starts making a really disturbing speech about
how her twisted mind processes feelings of affection, how she started off with
a desire to emulate the boy she has her eye on and become them. That’s not too weird
but the bloody image of Stain she thinks about while talking makes it clear
this girl is off her rocker. I’m not sure if there is a medical term for Toga associating
affection with causing physical pain, but there probably should be one. She’s
disturbing. Although, unintentionally pushing Uraraka’s Deku button might have
just been a ploy to distract Uraraka long enough to stab her with a syringe. She drains a bit of blood from Uraraka before
Izuku and co charge in. Realizing seven and a half (sorry Izuku, you’re not
doing much as is) on one aren’t great odds, Toga makes a break for it. As she
runs off, she locks eyes on Izuku’s bloody, bruise and beaten face, turns
bright red and runs faster. That’s… probably… not good.
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| If I had said at the start of this arc that a masked magician would appear and spirit off with two students, you'd have called me nuts, wouldn't you have? |
Only after the psychotic school girl
has left their midst does the group notice Bakugo seems to have vanished. That’s
when one of the last VAS members makes his appearance. A stage magician in a top
hat and porcelain mask, Mr. Compress takes center stage. He claims that the League
of Villains will give Bakugo a grander stage to show off his talents. He
reveals a pair of greenish spheres in his hands, and reveals he nabbed Tokoyami
too, deciding after seeing his initial rampage that he’s also League material. Todoroki
tries to hit him with an Ice Wave, but he dodges, claiming escapology and sleight
of hand tactics are his forte, and he’s not one to fight head on. He radios
into the rest of the group as he runs from the students, telling them he has
Bakugo and that they should meet at the rendezvous point.
Dabi and Twice begin falling back,
the field commander Dabi noting the gas is gone, meaning Mustard was taken out.
We’re shown naval laser shooting Aoyama is hiding with an unconscious Jiro and
Hagakure just out of their sight. He hears some of their conversation as they
walk off, but is almost caught when Dabi looks back. He’s saved accidently by
Twice, who reminds Dabi that he should probably call off the Noumu they brought
with them, the VAS’s tenth and final member on this mission. Said Noumu was
programmed to follow Dabi’s commands and to not stop unless ordered.
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| The fact that this monstrocity was on Harass Student Duty I think says a lot about this group's strenght. |
We’re shown the Noumu, dubbed
Chainsaw, chasing after Yaoyorozu and a class 1B student, Yosetsu Awase. This Noumu
is also shown to have Ragdoll’s bloody headgear in its hands, indicating it was
the one that took her out. It almost catches them before getting the signal to
retreat. Yaoyorozu, thinking fast, produces a small tracker and tells Awase to use
his power to stick it on Chainsaw. He rather bravely walks up to the beast and
uses his Quirk, Weld, to basically fuse the damn thing into Chainsaw’s flesh.
Meanwhile, Tiger got Magne wrapped
up in a twisty rubber arm grapple, and Mandalay has Spinner pinned and is
working on cuffing him. Their unfortunately thwarted by Kurogiri portalling in
and sucking them through his warp gate. Yeah, he’s the villain’s ride home.
The kids are chasing after Mr.
Compress, who is leaping through the trees like he’s a Naruto style ninja. Izuku
comes up with a plan. Namely, they’ll use Uraraka to make the group of them
lighter, and then have Tsu throw them all with her impossibly long tongue to go
after and hopefully catch Mr. Compress. I don’t really understand why Uraraka
doesn’t come along, but whatever. Izuku is shown to be super high on endorphins
at this point, both because he’s still ignoring his various injuries, and
because he doesn’t note or react to Uraraka taking off her clothes. Ha, sorry,
I made that sound way more suggestive than it was. She just took off her outer
most shirt, had a tank underneath, to rip up and make a pair of makeshift
bandages for his arms. The boys are launched into the air a few seconds later.
With the villains, Toga meets up
with Dabi and Twice. The field commander is disappointed that Toga only got a
single person’s blood, she was tasked with getting at least three peoples, but
the school girl doesn’t seem to care. She’s way too high on happiness about
meeting a boy she thinks she fancies. Considering she last locked eyes on a
very injured Izuku, I reiterate my “Not good” comment. Mr. Compress then
crashes to the ground with Izuku and his team atop him. This is probably going
to get messy… next time.
Oo, this was a tense episode. I’ll
start by saying that Izuku’s plan to use Tokoyami’s rampaging Dark Shadow to
take out Moonfish was brilliant. It’s killing two birds with one stone,
stopping the rampage and taking out a villain that was giving two of UA’s
heaviest hitters a run for their money. The fight with Toga is interesting. On
the one hand, I am sick to death of female characters whose motivation and
interests seem to begin and end with their potential love interest. It’s a boring
cliché, and I hope to live to see the day were the majority of women in fiction
have their love lives reduced to 3rd or 4th on their priority
list. That all said, given that Toga expresses her feelings of affection with
causing people to bleed and die is kind of interesting. I’m sure that there is
a specific psychological term for it, but in Japanese I believe she’d be known
as a Yangire. Japan has developed a number of different terms for different
personality types common in fiction, usually they are portmanteau using Japanese
words. In this case, a yangire is a combination of yanderu, meaning to be sick,
and gire, meaning to cut, slice or snap. Basically, it’s an otherwise normal
seeming person that has some kind of psychological break that turns them into a
violent psychopath. Spoiler alert, that’s Toga. Though, I can’t imagine it’s
too much of a spoiler, somethings would have to have messed you up to think
friendship involves stabbing. She’s a fairly sad character once we dive more
into her, but I’ll get into that later on. I love Mr. Compress. Love his
design, love his stage magician antics, and I love how he utilizes his power. As
his name suggests, his ability is to shrink things down (compress) into
green-white spheres that he can easily pocket. The fact that he was fast enough
and stealthy enough to sneak up on Bakugo and Tokoyami is a testament to his
skills, even if he’s not combat-compatible. We’ve just about reached the end of
the summer camp arc, let’s see if Izuku can somehow save his classmates before
the villains amscray. Have a good night everybody.
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Twitter: @BasicsSuperhero
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