Friday, April 30, 2021

Viewer Log: My Hero Academia ep 73

League of Villains arrives to tango.

Last time on My Hero Academia, we got a brief history of Eijiro Kirishima. He and his hero mentor Fat Gum battled the fighting nut Rappa and his annoyed minder Tengai. Rappa proves to be more than a match for Kirishima and Fat Gum, almost knocking Kirishima out with one heavy punch and keeping Fat Gum pinned with rapid blows. While frozen, Kirishima has a flashback to back when he kinda sucked and froze up when a monster threatened some of his classmates. Ashido slid in to save the day, and after that, and watching a video from his idol Crimson Riot, he trained hard and became the Kirishima that he is today. He was able to stop another, harder blow from Rappa and distracted him long enough for Fat Gum to take the two villains out. Enough recap, let’s get to it.

 

I mean, he's not even carrying his kid. Way to
be the winner of the sucky dad contest, Overhaul.

We open with Overhaul and Kurono as they’re continuing to run from the oncoming heroes and police. Kurono points out that this might be the end of the Shie Hassaikai. Overhaul isn’t worried, as he sees it, as long as their boss and he are alive, the group will continue to exist. Besides, most of the goons that are being taken out are loyal to the “old man” not him, so it’s more like clearing the dead wood. Besides, with the drug they’ll be able to rebuild, and the attack on their base will probably help them with sales. Makes sense, if you’ve got something that makes the heroes so nervous that they raid your base, then that’s something super criminal me would want. He tells the “temps” that it’s time for them to pull their weight. The temps being Toga (drinks blood to shapeshift) and Twice (can make clones of things he touches). Well, crap.

 

Yeah, these two are pretty much dead. Way to 
go Fat Gum and Kirishima.

We cut back to Fat Gum and Kirishima. Our red hero is pretty wiped out but he’s alive, so that’s good. Fat Gum has a quick flashback to when he first met Kirishima. He forced Amajiki to bring him to Fat Gum. In the interview, Kirishima mentions that he’s got an energetic personality that most people seem to like, but that’s all that he really has going for him. He wants to be more, to be more like Crimson Riot. Rappa gets back up, which kinda kills the mood. Fat Gum is defensive at firsts but then Rappa tells them there’s a room next door where they can get patched up. When Fat Gum is still defensive, Rappa makes the excellent point, “Do I look a guy that sets traps?” Touché, Rappa, touché. Tengai wakes up and tells Rappa that they have a job to do, but Rappa knocks him over with a kick. Tengai can’t make barriers, and both of Rappa’s arms are broken, so there’s real no point in continuing to fight. He explains that he used to be an MMA fighter before joining the Hassaikai, and that he beat most of his opponents with a single punch, so he was never fully satisfied. Getting a deathmatch like he got with Kirishima and Fat Gum made him feel alive, so he’s willing to deal with them. He wants them to heal up so they can have a rematch. Fat Gum realizes that Rappa is too stupid to be a threat now that his arms are down. As he follows after Rappa, carrying Kirishima, he realizes that despite his outward appearance, Kirishima was actually pretty down on himself, and that Amajiki must have seen that in him and wanted to help him.

 

Meanwhile, Mimic is watching the heroes and cops still making progress through the halls. He knows that his boost is going to wear off soon, so he needs to get into high gear. He starts thrashing the walls and floor about, knocking them everyone about. He’s planning to crush everyone.

 

Fat Gum is able to patch Kirishima and himself up. Sure, Kirishima could probably pass for a mummy with the number of bandages around his chest and arms, but he’s still all together so he can’t complain. They also tied up Tengai, so he’s not a risk to anyone. Fat Gum asks Rappa why he’s working for the Yakuza. Rappa admits that he’s only here because Overhaul is the only one to have defeated him. He killed Rappa for a second with one punch before restoring him. Rappa has challenged him four other times and lost each one. They want to know more about Overhaul’s plan. Tengai tries to pull the “we’ll never talk!” thing, but Rappa answers them with no hesitation. He doesn’t know the details, but does know that Overhaul is obsessed with this new plan of his to make the Yakuza strong again. They need money to get the ball rolling but once he does, they’ll be back on top.

 

So, Shoot-Style is proving to be an amazing idea.

Back with Izuku and crew, they’re getting tossed around by Mimic’s wall churning. Rock Lock (I refuse to call him Lock Lock) uses his power to lock the walls in place. Making things freeze in place isn’t the most impressive super power, but it has it’s uses. They start running. Mimic tries to crush them by throwing walls down the frozen in place corridors, but Izuku’s shoot style makes quick work of them. Mimic notes that his boost is going to run out soon, so he throws walls more rapidly. Izuku starts hitting his metaphorical wall, but then remembers all the people are fighting to get to Eri, so he gets his second wind. Realizing that this strategy isn’t working, Mimic opens the area up, before slamming walls down, separating them into groups. Izuku and Aizawa are together, Nighteye is with the cops, and Rock Lock is on his own. Once he’s by himself, Rock Lock gets jumped by Toga. He gets a knife through his hand, but he freezes her in place before taking a swing at her. This Toga breaks to sludge, as it was just a Twice clone. The real Toga jumps onto Rock Lock’s back and stabs him in the kidney.

 

Use a clone to distract so Toga can swing around and
grab him from behind, I can see why Overhaul wanted
them.

Izuku shatters the wall separating them, to find Rock Lock on the ground, with Rock Lock kneeling over him. Up Rock lock tries to claim that down Rock Lock is a copy that he took care of. It’s obviously Toga in disguise, but they don’t know she’s there so I guess I can’t fault them for not getting it right away. And in all fairness, Aizawa figures it out after about fifteen seconds. Toga drops her disguise when she realizes the jig is up, because she wants to talk to Izuku again. She’s still fangirling out over Izuku. Aizawa grabs her with his scarf and pulls her back. She flips around, gets on his back and stabs him before leaping back and disappearing behind a new wall. Aizawa tells Izuku to help Rock Lock and to make sure to grab the knife. They figured out that Toga’s power involves blood, so best take away her ammo.

 

We get a quick flashback to when Shigaraki had his meeting with Overhaul. They played Shogi, sort of. Overhaul was just using it as a metaphor to explain that Shigaraki needs to let him have access to some of his people for them to work together. He wants access to Toga, Twice and Kurogiri. They haggle a bit, but obviously Shigaraki goes along with it.

 

Twice attacks Nighteye’s group with a copy of Rappa. Shockingly, Nighteye trips the Rappa copy, and then knocks him back by hitting him with several seal stamps. They’re small but are made of a material that weighs 5 kilos (11ish pounds), so lobbing them at something huts. Nighteye is able to hit Twice with a seal, tearing his mask on one side. Twice runs and a wall drops down to help him escape. Once he’s alone, he starts having a panic attack as he can’t function with his face exposed. He blacks out for a second, but then Toga joins him and covers part of his face with a handkerchief.

 

Somehow this face is scarier than the black shadow
face he made last time...

There’s another flashback to when Shigaraki told his people about the minion exchange. He reveals that he was able to talk Overhaul down to just Toga and Twice. Both of them are completely against it, in part because of their murdered friend Magne, and in part of just not wanting to associate with Yakuza. Toga quite pointedly asks Shigaraki why they should go along with this plan. To get his point across, Shigaraki takes off his hand-mask and talks to them directly. He tells his people that he knows that the Yakuza are going to try to get them to join on a more permanent basis. He wants them to work as moles in the Shia Hassaikai. As part of their plan to manipulate the Yakuza in the present, Toga and Twice mock Mimic and the Yakuza until he has a freak out of his own. He causes a big quake, dropping Twice, Toga, Izuku and Aizawa into a lower area, vowing to crush and kill them all.

 

So, this was a bit of a slower episode. It was mostly about explaining why the League of Villains were here, and to give Kirishima a chance to catch his breath. I liked seeing Rappa now that the fighting is over. He’s shockingly helpful for a guy that wanted to fight a deathmatch a few seconds ago. His backstory was pretty box standard for a strongman type villain. Yes, strongman loses to weaker looking guy with a better power and thus works for him forever is a bit of a trope. Obviously, anyone who knows Shigaraki knows that he’s not going to work with anyone willingly, so it was kind of interesting to see him sell the backstab on his people. The fact he took his hand mask off to sell them on the idea was a nice touch. I think this is the second time in the series that he willingly took that thing off, the other to walk around like a normal person and threaten Izuku. I personally question the wisdom of pissing off a guy that controls the very halls you’re walking through seems like a poor idea, but what do I know. Oh, and seeing Rock Lock use his powers was kind of interesting. On paper, freezing things in place feels like a limited skill, but seeing him both freeze the walls and that time he froze a board mid air so he could walk across was pretty neat. So yeah, this was a slower episode, but it’s building to something amazing, so there’s that. Have a good night, everybody. 


Patreon:  https://www.patreon.com/posts/50697371
Twitter: @BasicsSuperhero

No comments:

Post a Comment