It's Party Time. P. A. R. T. Why? because I Gotta!
Last time on My Hero Academia Izuku
faced off against Gentle Criminal. He was able to apprehend them for a moment,
but then La Brava used her Quirk, Love, to boost her Gentle into a powerhouse. Despite
the power boost, Izuku was still too powerful for Gentle to overcome. We learn
of La Brava’s history of becoming a NEET after a failed confession of love and
only bringing herself out of her depression when she discovered Gentle’s videos
years later. And Gentle’s past as being a failed hero student that accidentally
caused someone to be killed (I don’t care what the dub says) in an accident and
his own depression spiral. He created Gentle Criminal after an old classmate
didn’t recognize him years later. Izuku finally defeated Gentle, but the
villain threw him off in a bid to try to save La Brava from reprisals for their
crimes. Enough recap, let’s get to it, shall we?
Dude is way calmer in the hands of what is
essentially a werewolf than he has any right to.
Opens with Gentle turning himself
in to Hound Dog and a group of Ectoplasms. Hound Dog has no idea who he is, but
Ectoplasm recognizes him as that YouTuber that posts his crime videos. Hound
Dog, seeing the destruction in the area and clearly smelling someone else, asks
who Gentle fought. He insists that he tripped and fell. Hound Dog knows a
student was here, and we’re shown Izuku landing a few yards away.
Izuku runs back to them after the
opening credits. In time to hear Gentle Criminal say that he’s done a lot of
evil things, but the worst was kidnapping and brainwashing one Manami Aiba.
Mentally, he realizes that he’s lost everything save his heart that beats for
another person. His goal now is only to
try to save his most devoted fan. He also mentally thanks Izuku for being his
final opponent. La Brava start sobbing, as she’s fighting two impulses, one, to
go along with what Gentle says, and, two, to do anything she could to be near
him. Hound Dog asks Izuku if he fought with this man. Izuku does admit they
did, but seems to try to downplay it, claiming they had just sparred, but everything
is fine now. Snipe calls Ectoplasm, asking what happened. Hound Dog and Ecto
tell him not to worry, a criminal just turned himself in, there is no emergency.
Hound Dog and most of the Ectoplasms start hauling him off. Gentle stops them
and tells Izuku that he once trained as a hero and that the guise of Gentle Criminal
was the result of his failures. He hopes Izuku that he hopes that he can reach
those he is hoping to reach and wishes him a bright future. One Ectoplasm stays
back, telling Izuku he’s got about a half hour before the performance and
offers to show him the fastest way back. Izuku, remembering the stuff he left behind
to fight Gentle, says they have to run back to get them.
I feel like they should have been this concerned like
a half hour ago.
As Izuku runs to get his stuff, his
classmates are finally starting to get nervous for him. Nervous and angry, in
some cases, as they just think he got lost or something going to buy rope. As
Izuku runs, he finds and retrieves La Brava’s camera. He muses that Gentle was
so difficult for him to face is because he could see himself in the villain.
And I roll my eyes.
He and Ectoplasm run into UA’s
campus, meeting Aoyama. They arrive right at 9:50. Izuku hurries to get into
the gear Aoyama brought, but Ectoplasm tells him to take the time to get healed
up. As the audience will probably focus more on his bleeding face than the performance.
All Might tells Aizawa that Izuku had been found. Eri, whom is with them, asks
Togata if he thinks Izuku will make it, which he says will happen.
Jiro and the Edgelords.
It hits ten and the performance
begins. In the crowd, Eri is up on Togata’s shoulder and Present Mic and Aizawa
are watching from the back of the room. And the two General Studies students that
Bakugo saw bad mouthing them are in the crowd to. Aizawa explaining the obvious,
that folks like those two are just there to see class 1A fail. Jiro remembers her
Dad telling her she can do whatever she wants. Bakugo shouts “Let’s start, damn
it!” and the performance starts with a literal explosion. Jiro starts singing,
with the 1A Dance team, Izuku included doing a choreographed dance number. They
strike poses, Iida does the robot, and Izuku and Aoyama do this sort of mid-air
grab, throw into the air and Aoyama raining lasers sparks down on people. Izuku
runs off stage to start the next part. The two GS students are clearly acting
like they’re more unimpressed than they truly are.
1A uses Kota’s birds to manipulate the
lights. They also use Sero’s tape and Todoroki’s ice to make paths for them to
walk around. Yaoyorozu fires off fireworks as Izuku carries Aoyama around and Kirishima
runs across from them scattering ice. While this happens, Jiro has a moment
where she remembers telling her parents she wants to be a hero instead of a
musician and they’re super chill about it. Tsu throws Uraraka around with her
tongue, who touches folks in the crowd so they can float about the stardust
Aoyama and Kirishima make.
And with that, she's finally free of that shadow
strangling her.
We get this really cool looking
visual of Eri, enclosed in a dark bird shaped shroud, the vestiges of Overhaul’s
abuse, as she throws it off and starts cheering with everyone. Togata smile
with tears in his eyes, asking in his head if Izuku and Sir Nighteye are seeing
this. Even Bakugo looks less angry after the show closes. I’d definitely look
up the sequence if nothing else, it’s a really pretty number.
After, we’re shown a few seconds of
Romeo and Juliet and the Prisoner of Azkaban: Return of the King, which also
rips off Star Wars. It’s a fine mashup story from the bit we’re shown. After,
All Might chastises Izuku for not checking his phone. It looks like All Might
had been calling him once a minute for his entire fight with Gentle Criminal. Hound
Dog jumps in as well, telling Izuku made a bad call and he should have gotten
one of the teachers to handle Gentle. They care about the school too. They send
Izuku off to enjoy the rest of the day, and Hound Dog grabs All Might and
starts shaking him angrily while growling incoherently. According to Ectoplasm,
who’d been watching this whole thing, Hound Dog only forgets how to talk when
he’s real mad.
Izuku returns to the gym, finding Togata
and Eri. Eri rather excitedly describes the whole show, in that cute way kids
do. Izuku is obviously overjoyed to see the reserved little girl gush like
this. That is until Mineta runs by and yells at him to help clean up the ice. As
they clean, a bunch of students come up to different 1A kids and thank them for
the performance, including the two GS kids. Bakugo is quite smug as he
announces that they won. I 100% believe he put in all of the effort he did just
as a screw you to those two. And while Iida and some others wonder if
everything will be okay, given that not everyone saw their show, the kids that
did assure them they’ll spread around to everyone that didn’t see it the effort
that they put in. Hopefully that’ll help restore 1A’s rep around campus. Bakugo
wants to fight the doubters, but no one is paying attention to him. Mineta runs
by and is super insistent that everyone focus on cleaning. Why? Because he’s
not missing the beauty pageant, damn it! Show of hands, who is not shocked by
this information? No one? Good.
 |
| A true queen. |
And good luck getting her to eat real apples again.
We get a montage of the students
doing various activities. They eat at different booths, go through a haunted
house and obstacle course, see Hatsume show off her non-exploding Crimson Dynamo
power armor, Izuku and Sato spend some time cooking something, and, ultimately,
we learn that Hado won the pageant. Good for her.
That night, Izuku says bye to Eri.
But he has one last treat for her. Tada, a candied apple. Togata is shocked
because he couldn’t find anyone selling them. Izuku reveals that he’d seen that
no one was planning on selling candied apples this year, so he endeavored to
make them himself. Those were the things he bought on his convenience store
stop and what he and sweet baking expert Sato had made at one point today. Eri
bites the candied apple and smiles brightly, Izuku promising to make her
another when they see each other again.
Hope for the hopeless.
In an after-credit scene, we’re shown
La Brava and Gentle Criminal… okay, probably more accurate to say Manami and
Danjuro being interviewed by the police. The cops are really shocked to find
out that Manami’s computer skills were all self-taught. She claims her job is
La Brava and that the only thing she wants in the world is to help her Gentle. Danjuro,
meanwhile, is told by a Gorilla looking cop that they know Manami wasn’t
brainwashed and he should drop the act. Danjuro keeps defending her though,
claiming that he never let her be more than an observer to his crimes, so she
can’t be charged equally to him. Gorilla, I feel like I should call him Darius
for some reason, tells him that yeah, Danjuro failed a lot, but maybe getting
caught was a good thing. He explains his personal philosophy is that the folks
that say there are no do-overs in life are people that are either too lazy or
just too unwilling to change. If Danjuro wants it, he could do it. The words
bring Danjuro to tears, as I literally think those are the first non-Manami based
words of encouragement he’s heard in over a decade. When the cop offers tea,
Danjuro asks for Earl Grey and he loudly announces he’ll get what he gets and
like it.
I really enjoyed this dance number.
Seeing kids performing after several episodes of buildup was satisfying. They
did the whole hero one knee land pose a couple times, Aoyama’s laser beams were
really cool, and Izuku was very useful as a makeshift winch. It might be
slightly unrealistic that this one performance that only a percentage of the
school saw could completely wipe away the bad feelings most of UA has for class
1A, but I’ll give it to them. Way more unlikely stuff has happened in anime,
let’s be real. I especially liked Eri’s… I guess release is the best term, release
from Overhaul’s hold. The visual representation of it being a black cloak with
his somewhat iconic bird-like plague doctor mask was great visual story
telling. That could have been the only goal that succeeded for the UA kids and
I’d have been satisfied. And seeing the little montages of them doing just
normal festival activities was nice. A good little palate cleanse after Izuku’s
fight with Gentle. I’ll say again, not a fan of this idea that Izuku could have
been Gentle. Like, come on, if Izuku actually went full evil because he never
got powers, he’d actually be effective at the villain thing. All I’m saying.
But, I will admit that seeing Danjuro and Manami’s story end with a… ray of
hope was kind of nice. They easily could have just had them go in chains and
leave it at that, villains getting their comeuppance. Instead, they seemed to
imply that there won’t be all that much jail time for them. While he didn’t
finish the thought, it sounded like Gentle Criminal and La Brava’s crimes were relatively
minor. Who know, maybe he’ll get off with community service. What really mattered
was the cop basically telling him that he can do better. It seemed like that
was all Gentle really wanted to hear, from the councilor, from his mother, from
anyone, that he has a chance to do something despite his mistakes. It’s a fitting
ending for someone that just wanted to feel like he mattered, and the person that
did everything she could to make that happen. So, we’re all done with the school
festival arc. Just two more episodes and that’s it for season four. And boy,
are they a douse of a pair of episodes. But more on that later, good night
everybody!
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Twitter: @BasicsSuperhero
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