Viewer Log: My Hero Academia ep 115

 Mirko's on a rabbit rampage. It's much scarier than it sounds. lol

Last time on My Hero Academia, the raid on the Paranormal Liberation Front began. Izuku and the majority of his classmates are staying back for the time being to help with evacuating civilians. Meanwhile, Endeavor leads a group of heroes to raid Dr. Garaki’s hospital where he makes the Nomu. They initially believe they captured him, but it turned out to be a Twice Clone. Garaki unleashed Nomu in the dozens to try to stop the heroes from interfering with his great work. He attempted to escape via Johnny, his teleporting Nomu, but it was killed when the rabbit hero Mirko slammed a door through the room and asked him the obviously best line for a rabbit to ask “What’s up, doc?” The raid has begun. Let’s see how it shapes up, shall we?

 

We open with Mirko breaking into Garaki’s lab and Garaki screaming in horror as she shattered a Nomu’s tank. This dude has issues. Outside, Mandalay of the Wild, Wild Pussycats is coordinating the evacuation effort when all the windows in the hospital blow out. Mirko radios that she found Garaki and she intends to figure out if he’s the “real” one by kicking him. Endeavor says they’ll arrive to back her up, eventually, but they’ve got Nomu to handle. Endeavor and Aizawa team up and destroy the tunneling Nomu and the heroes destroy several more. Rocklock notes that they’re able to handle most of these weaker Nomu, but there’s just so many of them that they’re slowing the heroes down. Mandalay lets them know all the patients have been evacuated. Rocklock opens a secret passage to the morgue and leads a group to help Mirko. Aizawa and Endeavor stay behind to handle the Nomu. Endeavor jokes about there still being time for Aizawa to sign up as one of his sidekicks, but Aizawa scoffs at this, asking who’d train his useless children if he did.

 

Meanwhile, two of those useless children, Izuku and Uraraka, are informed by Burnin about the hospital situation. They’re told to start clearing their assigned areas. Izuku and Uraraka start working with the rest of their team, consisting of Todoroki, Bakugo, and Iida (hey, all the most major characters) and begin moving from house to house making sure civilians have evacuated. Bakugo is clearly pissed by this assignment and yells at every house he is forced to check. Izuku and Iida split off to check the nearby apartments while the other three check the houses.

 

Crust, the number six hero, the first to enter the hidden passage notes that the underground area had basically living areas for the Nomu. The ones they’d faced we’re coming directly from the morgue but from this storage area. Some lesser Nomu come at him and he uses his Quirk to make a shield. He notes that the Nomu are victims but he will defeat them to avenge them.

 

One more Nomu and this might be a fair fight.

Mirko goes to “check” Garaki is the real one, Garaki shrieking that he is the real one and there’s no need for violence, and kicks at him. Garaki flashes back to conversation he had with Shigaraki. He notes that it’s unfortunate that Dabi didn’t recover Hood, as he was the furthest along High End they had. The others he’d been designing are barely in the testing phase. Without All For One, making Nomu takes significantly longer and Hood himself needed 10 hours to stabilize after waking it up. In the present, Garaki goes from some kind of remote in his shirt. Mirko tries to kick it out of his hand, but she’s stopped by another of Garaki’s smaller Nomu assistants, this one dubbed Mocha and has Twice’s doubling Quirk. Garaki hits the remote, praising Mocha for acting on it’s own to protect him, unleashing 5 High Ends and orders them to kill everyone. Crust arrives and one of the High Ends attacks him. This one has extra mouths all over his body. Garaki runs to his chair and escapes. Mirko pulls herself from the rubble she’d been thrown into, says she won’t let him escape and that this’ll be fun. This woman is terrifying, in the best meaning of the word.

 

Yeah, Crust, knock him back!

Crust gets pushed back by the High End, it saying it needs more room to kill him properly and runs into some of his backup. He tries to push the Nomu back and lets the others know about the situation.

 

Garaki, having reached a deeper part of his lab, explains how he makes the Nomu. He bioengineers human corpses and infuse the reanimated tissues with Quirks. They have no will of their own and can only work as they’d been programmed. He separates them into tiers, based on the amount of Quirks they have, color and overall power. Lower tier have only a few powers and are white, middle are grayer and have more power, and upper are black with the more Quirks still and increased physical size and strength. They’re roughly ten times as strong as the average person. And the High Ends are even stronger. They’re more powerful across the board but are also more intelligent and capable of working independently. High Ends are made exclusively from Villains with strong desires to kill. He notes that it’s significantly harder to make them, with his surgical process taking three months for the Quirks to adhere. Obviously AFO could do the transfers significantly faster. He says that there are Five High Ends going right now but they’re just barely ready. Garaki laments losing his little sidekicks, as now he’s lost access to his Warping Quirk as well as Double. Garaki questions if he should activate Shigaraki early. He’s only at 71% complete, but he’s hoping it’ll be enough.

 

Mirko pulls herself from the rubble. She can hear Garaki working deeper in the lab thanks to her rabbit ears and she has a straight up serial killer look on her face at the thought of catching him. The High Ends are legit confused that she’s still up and alive. Mirko reveals she landed on her legs and they absorbed the impact. She rockets past them and tries to make a run at Garaki, the Nomu cut her off, though. She faces off against the Nomu, using her Lunar Ring kick to several injure two of them. If you’re wondering about the moon thing on her costume and attacks, Japan has a myth about a rabbit making mochi (some kind of desert) on the moon, so Rabbits and Moons are used together a lot. She leaps through a Nomu’s attack, just for another to use his body twisting Quirk to break one of her arms. She leaps over the spiked Nomu she knocks into the ground and catches the body twister. She notes that his type attack from a distance and are usually weak up close. He tries to hit her with an optic blast, but she twists, catching his head between her legs and rips it clean off. DAMN girl. She ties off her damaged arm and prepares to keep fighting. She warns the Nomu that she lives her life like every day might be her last, so she’ll fight them to the bitter end if she has to.

 

This is why you bring the cement man. 

Meanwhile, Edgeshot and his team are approaching the villa. The rest of 1A are waiting for their signal to help. They’re encouraged by their guardian, some sort of tiger man who I can’t find a name for, who also tells him to be prepared. Jiro, whom is using her earphone jacks to monitor the situation, says that she knows Tokoyami will be fine, but is worried about Kaminari. Hm… how very interesting. Yaoyorozu tells her that he’ll be fine and she gets back into monitoring. Meanwhile, Kaminari is running with the main hero group and is freaking out just a little. Tokoyami encourages him by saying that he’s an incredible person, but he doesn’t believe him.

 

Yeah, give Kaminari that moment. He deserves it.

Cementoss begins with a cement wave at the villa building. Inside, Skeptic is freaking out about the attacks, and he blames Twice for it completely. We learn he’d monitored the conversation Twice had with Hawks where he revealed what was happening with Shigaraki and says that after that he monitored Hawks even more closely but couldn’t see anything suspicious. He screams the heroes are coming as Cementoss concrete wave hits. Skeptic orders his people to battle formations. One of his minions, a man with a lightning bolt on his face offers to “light ‘em up.” The heroes charge. Kaminari is still clearly nervous as the battle is about to start, and Midnight tells him to not think about protecting the world but think about just protecting what is most dear to him. He stops and looks back toward his class and thinks of Jiro. Jiro says some words of encouragement at that moment, whether this is Kaminari imagining her saying this or she’s saying something that he doesn’t hear but feels is anyone’s guess. Oh, that’s sweet. He clenches his hands into fists. The Paranormal Liberation Front lightning guy prepares to do his big electric attack. Kaminari, sensing this, rushes forward. Tokoyami remembers practicing guitar with Kaminari and calls him kind and that he’d do anything for his friends. Kaminari rushes in and uses his power to draw in all the electricity. He gets complimented by Cementoss and admits he’s just glad he could help. I’m glad they gave him a moment.

 

Ya know, it is really nice after over a hundred episodes and nearly three times as many chapters in the manga, it’s really interesting to finally get some more info on the Nomu and how they’re created. The fact that every one of them is a modified corpse with additional powers fused into them is just terrifying. Obviously they’re exposed brains and warped bodies made it clear these things aren’t natural, but to know that they’re essentially enhanced super powered zombies is terrifying. Thank God that All For One was captured when he was or there could be dozens of the High End models active right now. Then it might be a fair fight against Mirko. Ha! Mirko is rapidly becoming one of my favorite side characters, with her (frankly) terrifying disposition, battle prowess and the fact that she seems to be having fun at least up until her arm is crushed makes her just so delightful. Like, ya know she’s strong as she’s in the top five, but this lady severely injured three Nomu and killed a fourth, that’s an incredibly demonstration of why she’s so high up. She’s down an arm but I still think she’s got an edge on the Nomu. But we’ll see. And I liked that Kaminari was given a moment to shine here. Over the course of the series, he’s more often than not been the butt of jokes and been left to do zany, mildly sexual harassment pranks with Mineta. Hell, he’s done the whole “act as a lightning rod” thing before in and the focus is usually on him overloading and acting goofy after the fact than giving him a hero moment. But we took a moment to not only confirm that he and Jiro have something of a “thing,” but also give him a moment of heroism that didn’t immediately jump to “Kaminari fried his brains and is now being a goober” moment. You did good Chargebolt. This is probably the most development we’ll see for their “thing” until the final chapter, but I’m calling it now that they’ll be shown as part of the same hero team and a couple, if not parents of at least one kind with electric earphone jacks. Anime’s follow certain trends, you’ll be amazed when I’m right. So the raid has begun and the first major hiccups (Nomu unleashed) and miracles (Kaminari disabling the PLF’s electrical user) have occurred, let’s see what comes next. See you then. 

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