Viewer Log: My Hero Academia ep 97

 Bakugo is on a whole new kind of warpath. 

Last time on My Hero Academia , round 3 ended. Despite the best efforts of Iida, Todoroki, Shoji and Ojiro, things didn’t go swimmingly. They were able to capture one of their opponents, Kaibara, due to Iida’s improved speed, but lost Ojiro later. The combined efforts of Todoroki and Iida stopped Tetsutetsu and Honenuki respectively but were taken out in return by their last combined attack, dropping a building on a retreating Iida. In the end, the match was a draw, as 1B’s final member, Pony, kept her and her unconscious teammates out of Shoji, the last man standing on 1A, long enough for the clock to run out. Todoroki and Iida, despite being depressed at the draw, resolve to do better, and Honenuki compliments them at being such tough opponents. That dick Monoma sung the praises of Setsuna Tokage, one of their “got in on recommendation” student just as match 4 starts. Let’s get to it.

 

It's a pretty solid team.

This match consists of Katsuki Bakugo (explosive punches), Kyoka Jiro (extendable earlobe jacks), Sero (fires tape from his elbows) and Sato (super strength based on sugar intake) vs. Setsuna Tokage (can break her body into multiple, manipulatable pieces), Kojiro Bando (releases glue from his face), Togaru Kamakiri (can grow blades out of his body), and Yosetsu Awase (can weld things together with a touch).

 

We open with Jiro trying pinpoint their opponents using her earphone jacks and Sero setting up tape traps all over the field. Bando, the dude with the weird head, notes that that combination could be particularly problematic for them. They’re also worried about Bakugo and Sato’s attack strength, but Tokage seems confident in their plan for an all out assault.

 

Vlad keeps up with the biased commentary, and while the students are super pissed, Aizawa tells his kids to stop whining and start strategizing. That dick Monoma is mean again, but Kendo is finally back, so she knocks him out and drags him away. All Might compliments how 1B has improved but is very eager to see how 1A handles things, particularly Bakugo.

 

On the field, Bakugo is doing his semi-rocket flying thing while Sato runs behind him.  He’s pissed, shockingly, that the rest of his team are having trouble keeping up. What do you know, a pseudo-Spider-Man and two runners have trouble keeping up with someone who can for all intents and purposes fly, who’d a thought it? Jiro is also trying to keep up on recon duty which is hard to do on the move.

 

This is horrifying.

We flashback to the planning, where Bakugo told his underlings (his words) to just follow his lead. He’ll lead the charge into the fight, and they will follow. Pretty simple orders, I guess. Also, we confirm once again that Bakugo still doesn’t know anyone’s name, referring to Jiro as Ears. Sero suggests that maybe they should hold back and play defensively, but Bakugo calls him an idiot as that’s what the other team expects them to do. He give them all grenades, and they move out. There’s “one more thing” but we cut out before we hear what it is.

 

They spot movement, and Bakugo orders “Ears” to start listening for movement. She picks up noise of movement, but it’s way too much for four people. We’re shown dozens of shapeless blobs hitting things, generating a lot of noise. Jiro gets that it’s a trap just as it’s sprung. Tokage opens the attack. As I stated earlier, her ability is to break herself down into individual pieces that she can manipulate remotely. So, dozens of pieces of flying Tokage fly toward Bakugo to attack him. She’s broken herself down into 50 fragments that circle around Bakugo. Sero, Sato and Jiro fall back and set up a tape perimeter. Tokage announces that that’s checkmate, and Bando unleashes a bunch of glue at them. The glue coats most of Sero’s tape, trapping them all in the center of what’s essentially a big spider web. Kamakiri slices a bunch of the landscape, dropping metal and shrapnel down on the trio.

 

Tokage reforms and pats herself on the back for her plan. She personally stopped Jiro’s tracking to let her people sound them, and now with glue covered debris falling on their heads, one touch and their caught. Sato prepares to sacrifice himself to save the others, but Bakugo leaps in to knock the rubble away. When Kamakiri leaps in to attack Jiro, Bakugo whips back around and intercepts the attack. He fires an explosion Kamakiri’s face, definitely would have killed him, but instead just knocks him back. The rest of the team remembers Bakugo’s “one more thing” which was a promise from him that he’ll protect his team if they’re in danger. He chases down Kamakiri and blows him back farther. Jiro thanks him, but he tells her to shut it and search. He claims that he made a decision that their victory would be flawless, so that’s what it’ll be. Got to give Katsuki credit for confidence if nothing else. Jiro starts searching as Bakugo claims that people with real power can have a perfect match, four captures, no injuries.

 

Monoma has a bit of freak out at seeing Bakugo going whole hog on protecting his team.

 

1B fall back and begin to recalibrate their strategy now they know that Bakugo is actively trying to protect his team. Tokage says they’ll do hit-and-run ambushes repeatedly until they get a capture. She keeps on hitting things with her fragments to distract Jiro’s tracking. Tokage reveals that the new plan is to try to overwhelm Bakugo until he makes a mistake. Bakugo sees Bando and goes after him.  He’s lead into an ambush by Awase. Remember him? He’s the dude that stuck the tracker to the Nomu during the summer training camp. He throws up a bunch of bits of metal and uses his power to quickly weld Bakugo into place. Awase runs off. Bakugo screams in what seems like impotent rage, but then Sato runs up, breaking Bakugo’s bonds and some of his gear to get him free. He angrily chases after Awase. He throws up a shield to protect himself from a Bakugo blast. Sero and Jiro follow him, and when the smoke clears, Jiro moves her speakers into place and uses her signature attack, broadcasting her heartbeat through the speakers, to bombard Awase with soundwaves. We get a little more to Bakugo’s “one more thing,” where in exchange for him protecting his team when they’re in danger, they damn well better protect him too. The noise shatters Awase’s gear and leaves him stunned.

 

Tokage sees Bakugo fly off and tries to catch him, but he’s too fast. He catches Bando and bombards him with explosions. He claims that it too him a bit to adjust to fighting in colder temperatures, but he’s finally warmed up. Bando is grabbed by Sero, and Awase is grabbed by Jiro and Sero. Monoma and Tokage are both shocked by the shift in strategy with Bakugo. While he still does his own thing most of the time, he now works with his teammates incredibly well. They support his rogue nature. It’s the “Wolverine is in charge” strategy and it works pretty well for them. Tokage had hoped they could find a small opening in their strategy and pick at it until they overwhelm 1A, but Bakugo and the others have way more synergy than they expected. Case in point, Bakugo and Sero working together to overwhelm and capture Kamakiri, throwing him into a wall. Sero follows after Kamakiri and tapes him up.

 

Sugar-Man grapple!

Sero is the one that informs us about the basic mechanics of Tokage’s body quirk. She breaks herself down into smaller pieces that move independently from her. After a few minutes, the pieces lose whatever momentum drives them, drop, disintegrate and then Tokage’s main mass regenerates the piece. He assumes that there’s a limit to how much she can regenerate, so he’s been leaping around, taping piece down to try to force her to regenerate more, thus exhausting herself and forcing Tokage to call back pieces of herself early to try to mitigate some of that exhaustion. She pulls a piece back to her, which Sero had planted a grenade on. It goes off as it reaches her. She dodges that blast, but flies right into Bakugo. She asks how Bakugo could change this much as he hits her pointblank. He says he hasn’t changed, he’s still the kid focusing on surpassing All Might. The implication here being that he now knows what it means to surpass the symbol of piece. The match ended in less than five minutes and was indeed a flawless victory.

 

After the match, Aizawa compliments his team. He was impressed by their synergy like everyone else was. Vlad tells his students to buck up, as their strategy was the right one given their previous experience with Bakugo, but there problem was ultimately that they didn’t try to deviate from the plan when it was obviously going wrong. As Bakugo and his team return to the others, Kaminari runs up and congradulates “Kacchan” for finally learning to play nice. Bakugo reaches All Might, who tells him that he gave the old hero chills, but Bakugo blows the compliment off as he often does. Izuku goes to talk to him, to which Bakugo immediately yells “Out of my way,” to which Izuku counters “I’m not even in front of you, so what does that mean?” Bakugo claims he’s pushing ahead and tries to egg Izuku on to follow him. They have officially shifted more to the friend end of frenemy, me thinks.

 

That dick Monoma is clearly freaked out by the situation that his team needs to win for his class to get a draw. He tries to put a brave face on the situation, but no one is buying it. His team is planning to use strategy and sneak attacks to capitalize on their more technical quirks. One of the more background students, Yanagi, says that Izuku is spooky. This confuses Shinzo, but one of the other students, Shoda, explains that she likes spooky things, so I guess that means she’s into Izuku. Huh. The students analyze Izuku’s growth and say that he’s like Bakugo, if not slightly more versatile than him. They plan to focus on and try to overwhelm him. Seems pretty smart, as he’s the heaviest combatant on his team. Shinzo thinks they might be able to take him out using a combination of his brainwashing and Monoma’s copy power, but Monoma does point out that he might be a “blank.” This means that, for whatever reason, he might not be able to copy Izuku’s quirk at all. Interesting.

 

The teachers discuss the final match. Aizawa points out that this’ll be Shinzo’s last chance to show off his skills and prove if he’s capable of transferring into the hero course. While his first showing was impressive, this next one is kind of more important in a way, as now his powers are a known quantity and no one will be underestimating them.

Final match start!

 

1A head to their match. Mineta thinks they should focus on Shinzo, but Uraraka warns against being hung up on one member. They have a moment where they realized that they might be at a disadvantage here, as 1B’s team has a lot of ranged attackers, while their team can float, melt, or stick stuff together mostly. Izuku leaps in and offers to act s the bait. Ashido asks if that’s a good idea when Izuku mentioned his Quirk acting weird before, but he thinks it’s fine now. He’s pretty sure 1B will be more careful around them than they would have been after that last match, as they won’t want to repeat the same mistakes as the previous match did with Bakugo. Izuku tells his team they can definitely win. Izuku resolves to not embarrass himself after talking with Bakugo. The episode ends as the match begins.

 

The next match is Izuku Midoriya (One-For-All based super strength), Ochako Uraraka (make things float with a five-finger touch), Mina Ashido (shoots acid), and Minoru Mineta (rapidly grows super sticky balls from his head) vs. Neito Monoma (copy’s quirks with a touch for a limited time), Nirengeki Shoda (if he can strike a target he can make the point of contact experience a second, stronger impact), Reiko Yanagi (essentially telekinesis), and Yui Kodai (alter the size of non-living objects) with Hitoshi Shinzo (Brainwash people if they answer him). Should be a neat match.

 

This episode reiterates a fairly common theme around Katsuki Bakugo. Namely, he comes across as a brawler meat head, but the dude is tactically brilliant, versatile, and an incredibly fast learner. Class 1B got points for coming up with a strategy that would have worked super well before his kidnapping, but they really didn’t have much of a chance. Special shoutout to Tokage for having such a unique and useful power. Breaking yourself down into pieces seems like it’d work really well for swarming an enemy. The 1A team worked especially well together, considering that Bakugo didn’t have his usual help from Kirishima running interference for him when he comes across as a massive tool. Or Kaminari to be his punching bag.  Jiro is probably my third favorite of the 1A girls after Uraraka and Tsu, so I love when she gets a chance to show off a little. Her getting one of the captures just felt right, and that her powers were overwhelmed but not beaten was a cool touch too. Overall, it was a very good match. Up next, we’ll see how Izuku’s crew does. Should be fun!

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