Eri comes to visit, Izuku trains his new skill, and a posh git plans to wreck everyone's fun.
Last time on My Hero Academia,
Izuku’s class ironed out their concert plans. They break their class down into
three teams, the Band, the Effects and Dance Teams. Izuku ends up in the last group.
Izuku also meets up with All Might and reveals his power increase and revealed
his frustration at how it really didn’t help against Overhaul. All Might helped
Izuku work out that he needs to develop his own long ranged attack. Combining
some of his previous lessons, he begins trying to master using a focused 20% of
OFA into a wind pressure flick. Finally, criminal YouTuber with delusions of
Robin Hood status Gentle Criminal and his assistant/#1 fan/girlfriend La Brava
begins to work on a scheme to sneak onto UA High’s grounds during the school
festival. The fiend! That’s enough recap, let’s get to it, shall we?
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| Why you gotta ruin Eri's entrance with your butt, Togata? |
We open on the first Saturday that
class 1A began working on their performance. The Band team are “encouraged” by
Bakugo to “murder them with music!” Dude is so high strung, seriously. The Effects
Team are working on ideas to make the concert as visually pleasing as auditorily.
The Dance Team are practicing their routine. Izuku specifically is called out
for being a stiff dancer. The kid has no rhythm, what are you going to do?
Togata comes on them practicing, and plans to surprise everyone with a prank. An
idea immediately ruined by Izuku noticing him. He tries to do a joke about
showing his ass to them while introducing Eri, saying he brought a real peach
to see them. I don’t get it, even slightly. Whatever, Aizawa joins them and
reveals he got permission from Nezu to bring her. In a flashback, we learn the
principle is for the idea but also wanted them to bring Eri through early to
familiarize her with the school and to hopefully decrease the odds of something
horrible happening. Hence why she’s here a month early. Some of the kids come
up to Eri to say hi, but she’s real shy… for fairly understandable reasons. She
does the cute “shy child hides behind an older family member’s leg” thing with
Togata’s leg. Togata asks if Izuku would want to join them showing Eri around
the school. He does and the rest of his class decide to take a break.
They show Eri around the campus. On
the way, they run into some of Togata’s classmates that ask if his time off was
to be with his secret kid. How fast do these teenagers think kids grow? Whatever.
Their class is putting on a lecture and give both students a flyer. As they
walk, they run into a few members of 1B carrying a dragon skull puppet. Eri is
a little surprised but says she thought it was Ryukyu, the dragon hero she’d met
earlier. Monoma comes up and does his usual prick routine. He tells Izuku that
his class’s concert won’t match 1B’s play. It’s the “completely original” story,
Romeo and Juliet and the Prisoner of Azkaban: Return of the King. Huh, they
really just threw names into a hat to come up with that title, didn’t they? He keeps
being a prick, right up until his classmate Awase (he’s the kid that welded the
tracker to the Noumu during the League of Villain’s attack on their camp) knocks
him out with a stick. They apologize, pointing out he’s a lot worse without
Kendo to discipline him. Awase reveals she’s not around because she’s prepping
to be part of the beauty pageant.
We then learn that Hado is also
going to be in the beauty pageant and go to catch up with her, and Amajiki who
seems to be part of her prep team. She’s super psyched to be part of the pageant
again and wants to win this year, unlike the last two. Turns out she loses
every year to a Support Course student named Bibimi Kenranzaki. Amajiki starts getting
queasy at the thought of performing on stage like Hado will. Hado is super
jazzed about it, though, which is nice.
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| It's always delightful when this mad (crazy) scientist shows up. |
We then cut over to the Support
course’s workshop. Turns out all three years are working together on a big
group project. Hatsume suddenly appears behind Izuku and explains that this is
the highlight of the year for the support course. Some of them, specifically
her, got to show off their gear a little during the Sports festival, but the
School festival is their time to shine. She shows off baby #202, a big Crimson
Dynamo armor. … It’s an Iron Man reference, its an alias several large Russians
used for their much larger powered armor. Read a comic! Hatsume then asks Izuku
how his soles are working out and offers to make him more stuff when he needs
when she has the time. He thanks her and agrees, just as 202 starts on fire.
Apparently, this is pretty normal for her tech, as only one student freaks out
and another calmly asks where they put the fire extinguisher. Eri looks pensive
as they flee the workshop, which is weird to say about a six-year-old.
They take Eri to lunch. When asked,
she says that she’s not sure about the school, but seeing everyone working so
hard on their projects makes her want to see the finished product. A sentiment
that Midnight and Principle Nezu wholeheartedly agree with. After downing his
immense wedge of cheese lunch, Nezu says aloud that he knew bringing Eri in
would be a good call. He agrees with her that he loves seeing the students working
hard and seeing the finished projects. Midnight muses that she wishes that they
could get the police to understand. Nezu hushes her up, and gets up to leave.
He as a flashback to the chief of police telling him to cancel the festival.
They think that the villains growing bolder and the strikes to the heroes
confidence makes UA a big target and if anything happens to the school it could
break the heroes. Nezu thinks that its that very feeling of doom and gloom that
makes it 100% necessary to do the festival. Give the kids a glimmer of hope and
all that. He obviously won out, but it’s implied to be a close thing.
Once he’s gone, Midnight goes into
a few more details, saying the school is going to be on an incredibly tight
leash. If an alarm goes off, even a false one, they’ll have to shut the whole
thing down. But she says the students shouldn’t worry too much, as the defenses
have been beefed up substantially, and they even left Hound Dog off his leash
to patrol the grounds. No, I don’t know if the leash is metaphorical or
literal. She tells Izuku that his class’s concert idea is the talk of the
teachers lounge and encourages him to make it, “pleasurable.” Midnight, you are
a teacher and there is a child right there! Jeeze, this woman. Eri asks about the
concert, and Izuku explains the idea, saying he’ll be dancing with his class in
order to make her and everyone who sees it happy. Speaking of, he has to head
back. Togata gives him some encouraging words and he heads out.
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| Ashido... why were the sunglasses necessary? |
Then, the following week, Izuku is
fired. I don’t know why Ashido decided to wear a suit and shades to tell him
that. She’s an odd girl. Ashido decides that was too harsh and explains. It’s
more like he’s being forced to transfer. The Effects Team thought up a plan to
make Aoyama fly around the gym, lighting up the area and spread out the wow
factor of his living disco ball act. The issue is the gym isn’t set up with
pulleys or anything to make that work, so they’re basically begging
superhumanly strong Izuku to carry Aoyama around manually to make this work. While
a little disappointed that he won’t be dancing with the main crew for Eri, he
decides that so long as he’s dancing while helping Aoyama, he didn’t lie to Eri,
so agrees.
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| Been a while since Izuku hurt his fingers like this. Glad they're not actually broken. |
Izuku mentions that practice for
the concert eats up much of his time moving forward, but he still makes time to
practice his new move with All Might. He’s getting better at his air pressure
flicks, but it’s not steady progress just yet. He’s having trouble firing while
moving or consecutively. But progress is progress. He asks All Might if there’s
a trick to it, but All Might doesn’t know. They’re once again having issues as
All Might had more or less perfect control of OFA right away. It’s hard to
explain how to handle problems one never had, ya feel me? He just reminds Izuku
of their visualization exercise of the egg in the microwave.
Their practice is interrupted by
All Might catching a flying drone of some kind. Hatsume runs up, explaining her
flying eye baby went rogue. Izuku is initially worried about Hatsume seeing him
with All Might, but like most things, Hatsume doesn’t seem to pay enough
attention to everything around her to get that that IS weird. She does focus on
Izuku and tells him that she’s working on his commission idea. Izuku is surprised
by this as she said she wouldn’t be able to finish it until after the festival,
but she had a spare baby that was on the track of his idea. Having something to
work off of speeds up her process significantly, it seems. Hatsume runs off
after her baby flies away again. Once alone, Izuku explains that he commissioned
an item for Hatsume to help him with his flicks. All Might says that that’s a
good idea, as items can be useful. Even the one he used to use. Izuku fanboys out
a little when he hears All Might had a support item at one point, then gets a
little depressed he didn’t know about it before. Apparently, his item was a
battle suit that would have helped him were he a distance guy. But since he
fights up close, he kept breaking it. All Might warns Izuku that, while an item
can be helpful, he shouldn’t grow dependent on them. Lots of good heroes get
screwed when the item they depend on is ruined.
That night, Yaoyorozu compliments Jiro’s
ability to teach music. She’s apparently gotten Kaminari to an acceptable play
level in just a few days. She seems to be proud of the compliment but downplays
it. She turns her attention to Yaoyorozu’s tea. Apparently, Mama Yaoyorozu sent
her a special rare tea called Gold Tips Imperial. She eagerly wants to share it
with everyone.
Uraraka goes to see if Izuku wants
any tea, but he’s distracted by shaming himself about not knowing about All
Might using an item. Thank God this kid has hero work to distract him from his
obsessive hobby, all I’m saying. He’s scrolling through YouTube to see if he
can find a video of All Might’s item in use. He accidentally hits one of Gentle
Criminal’s videos and he and Uraraka watch. It’s a short video showing Gentle’s
completely tea-soaked cup. He talks about the tea he’s drinking, Royal Flush
and how fancy it is. He closes by saying his next video will be an alarm. Which
is cryptic and weird. Izuku mentions that he has heard of Gentle, a minor criminal
that posts videos online, and that it’s weird that he’s been operating for so
long but has yet to be caught. He wonders what he’s planning.
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| Wow, the ink well and quill make him seem even more pretentious. |
We cut to Gentle and La Brava at
their apartment. Gentle is writing out his plan at his desk with a feather
quill of all things. La Brava makes him some tea while he muses about the state
of the world. Namely that heroes are losing face in the public eye and that the
seem unable to handle complications to their day-to-day work. If they knew they
knew they were in a crisis, they’d never dare to put on this festival. La Brava
admits she’s not super okay with putting kids at risk. Gentle laughs it off,
believing that him breaking into the school will be a wake-up call to the hero
society and will ultimately make the students stronger. God, he’s an egocentric
idiot.
He suggests they go over the plan.
After a minor tech glitch, he explains. They’ll spend the better part of an
hour walking backstreets and alleys and through a park to get as close to UA as
they can. La Brava asks why they don’t fly in with his quirk, but he dismisses
that idea as heroes patrol the skies. They’ll stop after about an hour at a
local small café beside a hardware store for Gentle Criminal’s customary pre-mission
tea break. He believes that the owners advanced age and small pool of customers
will mitigate any risk of him indulging his habit before the mission. I’d point
out that it’s that small customer base that would note an unknown weirdo and
his tiny girlfriend at the store as unusual, but what do I know? He really
wants to stop and take a 90-minute break at the shop because it serves Gold
Tips Imperial, which he thinks is a sign of good fortune. La Brava points out
this is way more research than he normally does before he continues. They’ll
pass through a construction site and then climb through the forested mountain
on the backside of UA to the main buildings. They’ll have to rub dirt and
leaves on their bodies to avoid Hound Dog’s nose, but he doesn’t seem too
concerned about that. Then, La Brava will use her hacking skills to break
through the UA Barriers and they’ll be in. Gentle thanks La Brava for all her
hard work.
 |
| This is kinda sweet and kinda sad too. |
We get some of their backstory.
Namely, before meeting her, he’d really just barely figured out how to post his
videos online and was getting less than 60 views in a month. She appeared on
his doorstep, with a massive backpack of her things. She was his original, only
fan and had hacked hi IP address to find him. Since then, her efforts have caused
his viewership to spike and now he’s on the path upward. He says he’ll be
betting his soul and prize-winning mustache on this scheme, as well as her devoted
love. La Brava hug tackles him to the ground, and he swears that no matter
what, they will succeed. Kind of a sweet but sinister image to end on.
Okay, this is the last bit of set
up before we begin the showdown between Izuku and Gentle. I liked seeing Izuku
and Togata showing Eri around the school. It’s kind of a bonding moment that they
can have with her, and Eri is just so damn cute with her shy attitude but
curious nature. I get why he and Togata are trying so hard to help her smile
again. I thought that the way Izuku got the info about the school’s dilemma was
a bit clunky. Yeah, he needs to know about the heightened security and not-even-a-false-alarm
is allowed policy, but having Midnight just spell it out to two students was a
bit odd. I loved seeing more Hatsume. She’s got great energy about her, and
when you do see her, you just know someone is getting an upgrade. Izuku’s new
gloves are going to be lit. Now, to Gentle and La Brava. They’re still not my
favorite villains of the series, but I do like hearing about their backstory a
little. I stand by that they’re a slightly less dysfunctional Joker and Harley,
with Gentle being very depended on La Brava’s work to function day to day, and
La Brava being so in love with him that she’ll do anything he asks with few
questions. They don’t ever explicitly say that they’re a thing, but, like, they’re
a thing. I know where the story is going, and know there’s more to Gentle than
his ego and glory seeking would have you believe, but I wish Horikoshi had telegraphed
it a bit more smoothly. We just know that he’s been doing the criminal rogue
thing for a while, he likes tea, and he’s tech inept. I’d have just liked a
hint about his rather heavy backstory that’ll be coming up in a few episodes.
All I’m saying. Now, we’ve had a fair amount of build up to this one, who is
ready to see Izuku Midoriya face off against Gentle Criminal? I am, as it’s
fairly interesting fight. I’ll see you then. Have a good night!
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Twitter: @BasicsSuperhero
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