Viewer Log: My Hero Academia ep 119

 He has become death, destroyer of worlds. 

Last time on My Hero Academia, Tokoyami saved Hawks. The Pro Hero and Tokoyami’s mentor was being burned to death by Dabi before Tokoyami swooped in and flew off with him. That’s the last bit of good news for the day, though, as Shigaraki awakens. Having been enhanced by Dr. Garaki’s experiments over the last four months, Shigaraki is now extremely powerful, having gained full access to All For One and heightened use of his own natural Quirk Decay. He single handedly destroys a third of Jaku City with one touch. He kills several heroes with this first attack, specifically Crust, the 6^th ranked hero, whom used his last few moments to save Aizawa from touching the ground and dissolving too. The episode ends with Shigaraki gathering the Quirk destroying bullets that Garaki had made and radioing Gigantomachia to get to work. Enough Recap. Let’s get to it.

 

The episode begins with headquarters in disarray as they’ve lost contact with Endeavor and literally every other field Hero on the Raid. The dust cloud that Shigaraki kicked up with his big attack is blocking all other visuals. Damn. Shigaraki himself grabs a radio, tells Gigantomachia to grab the others and meet him at his location. Shigaraki vows that from now on he’ll destroy whatever he wants.

 

Avoid the death touch. 

We jump over to Fat Gum who is sprinting after Tokoyami. The crow headed Hero-in-Training had flown off to try to save Hawks when he realized his mentor was in the epicenter of Dabi’s big firebomb. Props to Fat Gum, he runs significantly faster than you’d think a man with Fat in his name could go. He arrives just as Geten, the Ice user of the Paranormal Liberation Front, uses a big ice attack and is almost crushed by Mt. Lady’s super-sized ass, but he dodges at the last moment. He sees Tokoyami fly in with an injured Hawks and directs him toward the medical tent. Cementoss is also nearby and is being knocked around by Geten’s attack. Geten tries to attack Cementoss, vowing to defeat the “government stooges” but is blocked by Mt. Lady getting up and throwing rocks at him. She’s hyper pissed at being knocked aside before and looking to get payback. Cementoss makes her a giant club and let her have at it. Giant lady, giant club, this’ll probably work itself out quick.  A group of Heroes rushes in, only for one of them to be revealed to be a Toga in disguise. She grabs a knife and slashes throats.

 

He is risen.

Dabi meets up with Mr. Compress and gets the lowdown. He tells Dabi that Twice is dead and that this seemed to cause Toga to snap. She’s running through the crowds, killing, and maiming indiscriminately. Toga, meanwhile, remembers her time with Twice as her disguise melts, saying that living is hard and that she just wants to make the world easier, to fill it with the things she likes. She wants to make that world a reality and says that the heroes are in the way of that. A chilling moment kind of ruined by the weirdness that Toga’s power necessitates her being nude to make her victims clothes. Oy, Japan, ya’ll are too horny sometimes. Gigantomachia breaks through the ground at that moment, Dabi smiling and saying this means the boss is awake.

 

Face you make when you realize your nemesis
can now track you.

Shigaraki, standing by himself, is suddenly hit with a mental attack. It turns out to be All For One reaching out to him somehow. It tells him “One For All” and shows him a vision of Izuku’s silhouette. Endeavor flies at him and unleashes a massive flame attack “Hell’s Curtain.” He knows he must take out Shigaraki hard and fast before he can touch anything, necessitating a kill on sight mentality. Shigaraki leaps at him, Endeavor just barely dodging. He thinks for a second that Shigaraki might have heat resistance now but sees that, no, he just regenerates quickly. He flips around and fire punches Shigaraki into the ground. He radios into Burnin’ his situation and tells her to get any hero that can move without touching the ground to form a perimeter around the ruins of the hospital. Shigaraki makes another grab for him, Endeavor dodges, grabs his forearm and shouts “Hands to yourself!” before trying to incinerate him again. Endeavor is blasted back. Shigaraki muses that it feels like he’s had All For One’s stockpiled quirks his whole life, that the power feels good but… unsatisfying. He remembers talking to Dr. Garaki and Garaki explaining AFO’s obsession with getting One For All. He hears that name again in another psychic attack. He thinks something deep inside is urging him to act. He blocks another attack with an energy shield, and asks Endeavor where OFA is. Burnin’ repeats the question, which Izuku hears and is utterly shocked.

 

We jump to the Wild, Wild Pussycat’s base. Ragdoll is inside and musing on her frustration at losing her Quirk. She’d been kidnapped by the League of Villains back during the summer training arc along with Bakugo and had her Quirk, Search, stolen. Narrator Present Mic tells us that Search allows its user to discern the location and weaknesses of someone you’ve seen. We see Shigaraki using it to pinpoint Izuku’s location.

 

These two have come a long way.

Burnin’ and the other heroes head out to give Endeavor backup, telling the kids to keep their distance. Shigaraki blasts Endeavor back before leaping forward towards Izuku. Endeavor follows, telling everyone to run. Izuku, knowing that Shigaraki is targeting him, starts running. Bakugo follows him and tells him not to tell anyone his secret, as there’s not enough time to explain the situation. The Two frenemies ran off into the ruins, hoping to lead Shigaraki away from the evacuees. Izuku, using Blackwhip like Spider-Man’s webs, and Bakugo fly through the ruins hoping to draw Shigaraki to them. He radios into Endeavor and tells him that Shigaraki is going to be after him and his hope of leading Shigaraki away. He tells Endeavor to keep the channel open.

 

Endeavor demands Izuku elaborate, but Izuku obviously can’t, what with the deranged sociopath rushing to kill him. Shigaraki realizes that he can access the information that Ragdoll had gathered before losing her Quirk and thinks himself lucky. He dives for the ground, Endeavor using the moment to fireblast him and telling Izuku he’s shifting course. Izuku tells Endeavor to fall back and evacuate the civilians. Endeavor refuses to leave his students alone with the, again, deranged sociopath going to kill them. Bakugo warns Izuku that Shigaraki has leveled up to final boss status and that he needs to be prepared. He quickly says that he’s not going with Izuku for him, but as payback for the whole “kidnapping him and causing All Might to lose his power,” thing.

 

Bakugo assesses the situation. He notes that Izuku can use his powers at about 30% maximum continuously and can push it up to 45% for big attacks. He notes that there’s might be a power gap forming between them, but he refuses to lose to that damn nerd. He flashes back to when they used to go on “adventures” as kids, him leading Izuku, and reaffirms his refusal to give up while he’s still behind. He pushes himself into the lead.

 

Shigaraki, not wanting Endeavor to interfere with things but not having time to kill him, leaps higher into the air and fires off an EMP type blast that fries all the electronics. In the bowels of the hospital, a bunch of tubes start going online. Bakugo asks Deku if he feels “it,” to which Izuku confirms, a feeling of absolute terror, an omen of death, that he felt when they saw All For One in Kamino Ward. Shigaraki suddenly rockets ahead of them, demanding Izuku hand over OFA to him. Izuku and Bakugo have a vision of themselves being disintegrated, but Gran Torino flies in and pulls them out of the way. He explains that the moment things started going bad he flew off at top speed to help. He scolds the kids for trying to fight Shigaraki on their own, and that the pros aren’t out of this yet. Ryukyu, in her dragon form, rushes him and slams into Shigaraki. To his shock, touching him doesn’t destroy her. We see that he’s in Aizawa’s line of sight. Aizawa laments the death of Crust, but thanks him for saving Aizawa, and vows that so long as he lives, Shigaraki won’t touch his students. Shigaraki doesn’t seem all that put out by all this. He grabs his radio and tells his reinforcements to kill everyone they see on the surface. Endeavor flies in and uses a sidekick, Kedo, quirk to change his trajectory and shoot him into the sky at higher speed. Aizawa complained that they couldn’t find a hiding spot, but there wasn’t anything they could do. Iida’s mentor, Manual, is with him and is using his water quirk to keep Aizawa’s eyes moist so he doesn’t blink.

 

Endeavor vows that this is the end for Shigaraki and unleashes a blazing attack, but Shigaraki dodges. They’re horrified to realizes that Shigaraki was still under Aizawa’s erasure… so he’s physically so strong that he can move himself from the air pressure of moving his arms. Damn. Garaki tells Present Mic, who are watching from a distance, that despite his efforts, Shigaraki isn’t quite All Might strong. He’d focused on altering Shigaraki’s brain chemistry over muscles. And Present Mic, in horror, demands to know what sort of monster he made. Aizawa notes that he’s essentially the perfect Nomu now.

 

Izuku and Bakugo clearly learned the "Oh Shit!" 
face from All Might who learned it from Gran Torino

Izuku, Bakugo, and Gran Torino land. He explains the situation, that they can’t go any farther, as Shigaraki is faster than they could have imagined, and while Torino could still stay out of his reach, much farther away they’d lose their backup. He compliments the boys on drawing Shigaraki away but wants them to hide while he goes to help keep Aizawa on the move and thus keep Shigaraki from unleashing his full power. Gran Torino tells them his fear that Shigaraki will steal All For One from Izuku. At that moment, the other heroes are arriving, but a mass of Nomu have risen from beneath the hospital. Well, this got more complicated.

 

This was a great episode to follow up last time. We get to see Shigaraki exercise his multiple powers and how they’ve enhanced him to an almost unstoppable degree. I’d say it’s almost more dangerous that he has an instinctual control over his multiple powers than just him having the multiple powers. If he could just do a whole lot of stuff but still not know how to trigger certain powers or combine multiple quirks for certain effects, he’d be a push over, but it seems like it’s all muscle memory to him now. I am extremely glad that Izuku immediately picked up on what was happening and chose to run in order to draw Shigaraki away, and that Bakugo went with him. These two have come along way from the first season where Bakugo would rather die than go with Izuku as his backup. The bit where Shigaraki finally catches them and they have like a vision of what was about to happen to them was rather chilling, but it really heightens the joy of Gran Torino swooping in to save them. Aizawa has a great line here with his vow to keep his kids safe until they graduate and can truly put someone like Shigaraki through his paces, as well as the heroes coordinating to keep Aizawa using his power constantly so Endeavor and Ryukyu can fight Shigaraki without dying just by touching his skin. The All the players are gathering, Nomu are here to keep the other heroes busy, and All For One and One For All’s successors are a hairs breadth from facing off. It’s exciting to see. See you next time. 

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