Toga's got an image problem that Curious wants to exploit.
Last time on My Hero Academia,
Tomura Shigaraki’s training arc began. He and his crew met with Dr. Kyudai
Garaki, the scientist helping All For One. He was ordered to help Shigaraki,
but Shigaraki needs to prove himself. How? By defeating Gigantomachia, AFO’s
extremely loyal monster bodyguard. Gigantomachia is extremely large and
powerful, and Shigaraki spends the next two months ramming his head into the
wall that is fighting Gigantomachia. Their fighting is interrupted by a call
from their Black-Market contact Giran. Giran, as it turns out, had been
kidnapped by Re-Destro. Re-Destro is the heir of the OG Destro and leader of
the Meta Liberation Army. They want to destroy the hero status quo and rule the
new world order. To do this, they’ve been prepping for a massive revolution and
have the forces and resources to do it. Re-Destro gives Shigaraki one hour to reach
his city and either fall in to the Meta Liberation Army or die. Shigaraki
figures he can kill two birds with one stone by luring Gigantomachia to the
city and have him wreck the place, hopefully weaking him enough for Shigaraki
to beat. Enough recapping. Let’s get to it.
The battle is about to begin.
This episode opens with Izuku
narrating the origin of the Meta Liberation Movement. Basically, when Quirks started
to become widespread, the official stances most all governments went with is to
restrict power usage. In essence, they forced the general populace to limit how
and when they use their powers. Remember in the first episode how Kamui Woods
charged the giant dude with “illegal use of powers?” This was the start of
that. Almost immediately there was push back by those who felt they should be
able to use their powers how and when they want, regardless of consequences and
the biggest proponent of this was Chikara Yotsubashi aka Destro, the man who
would destroy the present. He formed the original Meta Liberation Army and
tried to overthrow the government, but was defeated and arrested. He wrote a book
about his theories and call for revolution before committing suicide in prison.
Izuku ends his narration by saying that Destro had no idea that he had an illegitimate
son that would attempt to fulfill his ambition, which lead down the line to
Re-Destro. We then see Re-Destro joining his crew and being informed they found
Giran, the League of Villains contact. He orders Giran captured and tells them
his plan to end the League.
We join the League of Villains as
they arrive in Daike City. Spinner says that the place is completely
unremarkable. Mr. Compress makes note of the time and says they have a little
under 2 hours before Gigantomachia wakes up and will chase Shigaraki down to wreck
shop. He hopes they can last that long. Pro Hero, and Meta Liberation Army
member, Slidin’ Go arrives and tells the group he’s to be their guide. They enter
the city and find that it’s basically deserted except for the heroes that work
for the Liberation Army. We meet Koku Hanabata aka Trumpet and Chitose Kizuki
aka Curious, two members of the Meta Liberation Army’s leading cabal. Koku gives
a signal and the League of Villains is charged by dozens of Meta Liberation
Army minions. They’re told that Giran is being kept by their Grand Master in
the tower. Toga is attacked by Curious, who is a reporter and says she wants to
hear all about Toga’s story about how she went from school girl to coldblooded
killer.
In the tower, Giran tries to
convince Re-Destro to let him go by pointing out the flaws in his plan. 1.
Using an old man as a Damsel in Distress is dumb, and 2. It’s all over if
Shigaraki brings in Nomu. Re-Destro counters by saying that there are 3 reasons
that won’t happen. 1. No Nomu have been seen since Kamino Ward, 2. Hood released
a lot of Gray Nomu that didn’t seem to have a lot of power, which leads into 3.
That Dabi specifically said he came to get Hood’s body, confirming that the
Black Nomu are special and hard to replace. They have to ration the monsters,
as he puts it.
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Symbolism
In the fight, Spinner notes that even
the civilian members of the Meta Liberation Army seem strong and that’s no
fair. Curious explains that their grunts train everyday to be the best and that’s
part of why the League of Villains piss them off. They have no great cause they
follow, came later and yet they’re the ones who are famous. She tries to bait
to Toga to giving her an interview, but Toga isn’t interested. She throws her
knife at one of Curious’ goons and tries to stab her, but is thrown off by
Curious’ guards. Toga gets thrown into a nearby building, touches the ground and
sets off an explosion. We learn Curious’ quirk is Landmine, that she can turn
objects she touches into bombs. They’re non-lethal but she can make a lot of
them. More Meta Liberation Army try to charge her, but she puts on her mask and
throws her syringes around to strike them. Her plan is obvious, steal a lot of
blood, disappear in the chaos and turn into one of the people she drained to
get away. Unfortunately, Curious saw this outcome and charged up her goons to
explode, saying their army has plenty of people that will die for the cause. Toga
gets blasted out the back door and makes a run for it. We get the details about
Toga’s pass, oldest daughter of the Toga family, disappeared after her middle
school graduation and all of her friends and family seemed shocked that she
went full psycho. There’s this weird flash of Toga with a mask on her face with
a smile drawn it that cracks when we get a shot off what looks like Izuku fighting
something. We get a flashback to Re-Destro advising Curious to go for the
emotional side of things, not just dry facts. Toga gets up, despite a lot of
bleeding wounds to her face and body. She says that the Meta Liberation Army is
trying to make a new world and for that she loves them, but she thinks her life
as it is right now is normal. Remember, Toga stabs the things she loves.
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Creepy as hell.
We get a flashback to News reports
from when Toga apparently snapped, attacking a classmate and draining his
blood. Everyone thought it was crazy and that the look of bliss on her face
when draining blood from the classmate was disturbing. We also learn that she’d
drained a bird as a child, so attacking the classmate wasn’t a ‘new’ thing.
Curious empathizes with her and says that society forced her to repress herself
to fit into the world. Toga goes to stab her, but Curious has a support item
that lets her block the attack and blast her face. She promises that Toga will
be written in their new “holy” book and that she wants Toga’s last words. Toga
make a run for it, and takes out an emergency vile of blood. She drinks it and
turns into Ochako Uraraka. She’d been saving the last bit of blood she stole
during the Provisional License exam because Izuku trusts her and Toga thought
she could use that. Curious notes that she knows that Toga can only copy the
appearance of the people who’s blood she drinks and assumes Toga wanted to look
cute before she died. She goes for the finishing blow and Toga throws up her
arm to stop it. She admits she wanted to be trusted like Izuku trusts Uraraka,
to be like Uraraka and somehow she activates Uraraka’s anti-gravity quirk. She uses
it on Curious and her goons, causing them all to fly into the air. Curious is
shocked to realize that Toga’s power grew stronger in the face of death. Toga
says she wants to live her life as she chooses and to be more like the people
she loves, and with half of her face still looking like Uraraka’s, she releases
anti-gravity, killing everyone by dropping them from several feet up. Damn girl.
She passes out a minute later. Toga drags herself into a garden shed and passes
out inside it.
Shigaraki admits he’s tired and that
it’s causing him to see things that aren’t there. He sees an office with a
picture of a small child and Nana Shigure (All Might’s master) smiling. He sees
bits of people, moments like a girl saying she’s rooting for him. Shigaraki
leaps at them, disintegrating the lot of them. He throws up after. Spinner,
having seen the whole thing, notes that Shigaraki seems to have killed several
people without touching them. Dabi, using Shigaraki’s attack as permission,
says he’s going to start letting loose. He’s immediately attacked by an Ice
hero. This guy, Geten, eggs Dabi into attacking him. Dabi incinerates Geten’s
ice. Geten then reveals that he can control all ice and summons a bunch from a
nearby convenience store. He claims to have been training for years to get his abilities
to this level and that Dabi’s fire won’t stop him. Mr. Compress is freaking out
a little, and trying to figure out where everyone is. He’s with Dabi, Toga ran
off on her own, Shigaraki and Spinner are on their own, but he'd lost track of
Twice.
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Yeah, this would cause a panic attack in me too.
Twice, meanwhile, had followed Toga’s
blood trail to where she’d passed out. He argues with himself as he tries to
treat her wounds. He vows to kill them all. He’s being watched by Tomoyasu
Chikazoku aka Skeptic via cameras. He brings up Twice’s past, the whole bit
about him ‘liberating’ his powers to live his best life but how he was nearly killed
by his clones and that caused him to have a psychological break. To prey on
this, he used his Quirk, Anthropomorph, to turn inanimate objects into clones
of Twice and sent them to attack him. He wants to make Twice join the
Liberation Army as a means of protecting Re-Destro. He vows to make him join as
the credits roll.
This episode was an interesting look
into the backstory of Himiko Toga. What did we know about her up until now?
Only woman member of the League of Villains, she dresses like a school girl
despite not being in school, is a serial killer that drains the blood of her
victims, and can shapeshift into them. This is the first look into her life
pre-League of Villains and… yeah, Curious has a point. While thee news report
we’re shown suggests that this was an “out of nowhere” thing where Toga
attacked a classmate and drank his blood, we’re shown that she’d had
urges to drink the blood of things she likes since she was a child. She’d been
forced to repress that part of her and seem normal her whole life until she
finally broke. So, in a weird way, the Meta Liberation Army is at least a
little right that Toga is a victim of the current system. She was forced to
conform and suffered for it. It was quite shocking to see her pull out a vial
of Uraraka’s blood and then end up using her powers! It’s eventually revealed that
Toga needs to have a strong desire be like or have a strong empathetic
connection to her victims to use their power, but any kind of ability theft or
copying is scary. The bit where half her face gets exposed so we see half Toga’s
face smiling with a sociopathic grin and half Uraraka’s was just
unsettling. The set up for what Twice is
going to have to deal with next time is also extremely unsettling. For those
who don’t remember, he had the classic cloning issue of all of his clones
claiming to be the original, they all get into a huge fight and, while he’s the
only one left in the end, he can’t make himself believe he’s the original
anymore. He only feels stable when he’s wearing his mask and has since never
cloned himself again. So seeing a bunch of dudes with his face and having them
tear his mask off is like the most screwed up thing you could do to him. It’ll
be interesting to see where it goes. But we’ll talk about that tomorrow. Have a
good night!
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Twitter: @BasicsSuperhero
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