Viewer Log: My Hero Academia ep 121

 How to stop a rampaging titan? Pit trap!

Last time on My Hero Academia, the Heroes face off against Shigaraki. While Aizawa keeps him from using the bulk of his new powers, he’s nearly as powerful as All Might all on his own. He knocks the Heroes around quite a bit and goes to kill Aizawa. Izuku rockets in and stops him, begging his mentors to let him help fight his nemesis. Izuku and Bakugo join the fray and the battle is on. Back at the villa, Gigantomachia has gathered the old League of Villains members and Skeptic of the Meta Liberation Army and is racing to reach his master. Mt. Lady is doing her best to slow him down but is having real trouble. The rest of the Hero Course students are tasked with stopping him. They’re all terrified but are going to try to knock him out. Enough recap. Let’s get to it.

 

We open with Gigantomachia sprinting for all he’s worth with Mt. Lady angrily clinging to his back to slow him down. Yaoyorozu explains the situation to the Work Study students, Gigantomachia is about 25 meters tall, that he’s got the League of Villain’s members on his back, and that the plan is to knock him out with tranquilizers. The tranquilizer she made is usually injected but that’s just not an option with how big he is and how fast he’s moving. The plan is to use their combined powers to set a trap for Gigantomachia, to slow him down long enough to get as much of the stuff into his mouth as they can. They begin with Honenuki using his softening ability to turn a stretch of ground into a bog to snare him. They also added a bunch of Sero’s tape, Mineta’s sticky balls, and a bunch of dynamite that Yaoyorozu added at the last minute, for flare.

 

Gigantomachia approaches their trap. It’s revealed that part of the reason that Mt. Lady has clung on so long as she has is for Kamui Wood’s sake. He’d wrapped his root like tendrils around Gigantomachia’s legs to cling on, but was knocked out by that big blast earlier. She’s obviously not going to willingly leave a colleague and teammate in that situation. On Gigantomachia, Spinner suggests they do something about Mt. Lady, but Compress says that’s not in their skill set.

 

Yeah, topple that Titan.

Gigantomachia steps in the bog and trips, knocking Kamui and Mt. Lady from his back and he begins to sink. The kids wrap him in ropes, vines and tape and use their Strongmen type students to try to drag him back to the ground. The bindings they made snapped off almost immediately, but they tried. The ropes they prepared that were tied off with Mineta’s sticky balls remain stuck to his chin, though. Shoji, Aoyama and Ojiro run up to try to fight some of the villains. Jiro tries to hit them with one of her sonic weapons attached to her earphone jacks but gets burned in the attempt by Dabi. Using Reiko Yanagi of class 1B’s poltergeist quirk, they fling Kaminari’s electric targes all over Gigantomachia’s back near the League and then she lifts Kaminari himself to aim. He prepares to fight an electric blast but is hit by debris from Mr. Compress. It’s at this point that we learn that his prosthetic left arm has been upgraded to include essentially gun barrels in each of his fingers, allowing him to shoot his compressed balls as shrapnel. Kaminari is hit and knocked to the ground.

 

Keep pepper away from this guy.

The kids on the ground get Gigantomachia’s mouth open and hurl their tranquilizers at him, but he exhales with enough force to knock the canisters and the kids back, and then Dabi unleashes a fireblast to destroy the canisters. He mentions that Gigantomachia’s been outfitted with several Quirks that make strong, give him nearly unlimited endurance and the inability to feel pain. So the kids are basically throwing themselves up against a moving brick wall. The fire that Dabi created severely limit what the kids can do, and Gigantomachia is able to crawl out of the bog they tried to sink him in. As he steps a little deeper, Yaoyorozu starts setting off her bombs to try to sink him deeper into the bog.  Spinner points out that Gigantomachia is an expert tunneller so this won’t stop him. Only for Mr. Compress too point out that him digging with them on his back will probably kill them. Heroes arrive on the scene to back up the students. Mt. Lady leaps onto his back and does her bests to force Gigantomachia’s mouth open again to give the kids an opening. Ashido comes flying out of the fire, covered in slime and with a whole bunch of canisters.

 

The Midoriya in this pair finally gets to save
their Bakugo. And yes it's weird Ashido
is the Bakugo of these two.

We switch over to the kids on the ground outside the fire. They’ve got Kaminari who is hurt but not unconscious. The fire is keeping them in place, and they look on in apprehension. We learn that Ashido’s move here is called “Acidman” and that the liquid of her acid is keeping the fire from affecting her. She swears to do everything she can to save people, even if you’re frozen with fear. She prepares to throw. Gigantomachia seems to come out of a trance, it seems, lamenting how all these people have been slowing him down too much to get to his master and him saying that he won’t allow them to hold him up anymore. It’s at this moment that Ashido remembers meeting Gigantomachia two years ago, back when Kirishima was in his mopey phase, where the creature was asking directions to some place. I wonder why the giant monster didn’t ring any bells before but given her reaction here maybe she blocked the encounter out. She remembers being absolutely terrified by the creature after meeting him and breaking down crying. This seems to throw her off and her throw is too high.  Gigantomachia reacts, throwing Mt. Lady off and going to crush Ashido. At the last second, Kirishima in his unbreakable form knocks her aside and takes the hit. Tetsutetsu runs up and grabs her, saying she needs to regroup with everyone else. They’re planning to have Honenuki sink the fire into the ground. She’s not having it, though, as she knows Kirishima needs help. He laments the fact Kirishima ran ahead.

 

Gigantomachia grabs his companions, saying the insects have been handled. He prepares to run, only to notice Kirishima crawling up his leg with rock talons. He lobs a canister at Gigantomachia, but Toga throws needles to block it. He then reveals he grabbed Ashido’s dose when he shoved her aside and thinks to himself he’ll channel her chivalrous spirit and use her dose to finish this off. The jar breaks in Gigantomachia’s mouth and he swallows some. Tokage of 1B grabs him and pulls him out of the way as the other students use artillery guns Yaoyorozu whipped up to bomb Gigantomachia. Girl, LEAD with those! Honenuki uses his powers to sink the burning trees into the dirt. The rest of the heroes arrive, as well as Amajiki and Hado of the big three, and things start looking up. Yaoyorozu tells everyone that the sedative will work faster if they keep him moving, so they plan to do that. Then it hits the fan. Gigantomachia activates some Quirk of his that increases and shifts his armor around and the dude starts burrowing underground. Well… crap.

 

Dude looks absolutely miserable as he's winning.

Meanwhile, Izuku and co are still dealing with Shigaraki. They have him down at the moment. Endeavor tells him that it’s over. Shigaraki, freaking out, says that in an effort to protect strangers, heroes hurt the people that love them. This obvious sticks Endeavor in the gut. Shigaraki gets up, saying he has a goal to reach. Aizawa is hitting his limit, though, and he’s mentally begging Endeavor to finish Shigaraki off. Shigaraki keeps chastising the heroes, saying the world is so rotten it’s infested with maggots. It’s the usual “you think you’re the good guys but you suck” type monologue. Endeavor, sick of this, tries to incinerate him. Shigaraki survives the blaze, leaping around and tries to get Endeavor. Gran Torino leaps around and kicks him in the head. Unfortunately, Shigaraki flips around and grabs his leg, crushing it and drawing blood.

 

Eraserhead, what are you gonna do with that knife?

Gran Torino flashes back to Shimura giving up her son. He sobbed horribly as she left him with the family that would raise him. We learn that she did this specifically so All For One wouldn’t find him and target her through her son. … Feels a bit like this was a self-fulfilling prophecy just a little bit, not going to lie. Gran Torino asks Shimura’s memory if they did the right thing, just before Shigaraki drove his hand into Gran Torino’s stomach. Izuku, enraged, rushes him. Shigaraki dodges around him and goes for Aizawa again. Ryukyu gets in the way, but he drives his whole fist through her Dragon hand. Izuku leaps onto his back and starts trying to strangle him, saying that Shigaraki is the only person he can’t forgive. Izuku uses Blackwhip to bind him. Trying to keep him bond long enough to incinerate him. Shigaraki pulls out and reveals he’s holding a Quirk deleting bullet. Izuku, not wanting risk him using that on any of the heroes here, tries to use a 100% Wyoming Smash. But Shigaraki catches his arm in his teeth. He launches the bullet, and it hits Aizawa in the leg as Izuku screams his teacher’s code name.

 

Okay, that was a great episode. Seeing the other students formulate and execute their plan to stop Gigantomachia was amazing. They created a plan with multiple steps in order to at minimum delay the beast for a few minutes in the worst cases, or stop him completely in the best. Using the muddy, softened ground not only as a pitfall of sorts but also to hide the bomb backup plan was great strategy on their part. It showcased a lot of their unique skills, and even though the plan seems to have failed at keeping Gigantomachia pinned indefinitely, they at least kept him from turning Izuku’s situation into something beyond hopeless. Also, loved that Kirishima got to, in his eyes, make up for not helping his middle school classmates when they met Gigantomachia by being the one to get the tranquilizer into him. He and Ashido seem to have a similar, but significantly more friendly, rivalry between the two of them as Izuku and Bakugo. With Ashido being the one with talented hard worker (Bakugo) and Kirishima being the one talented at working hard (Izuku). Also, if they don’t hook up by the end of the series I’ll be shocked. What? They also have a similar vibe to them as Kaminari and Jiro and I’ve already predicted those two being a thing, too. As to the Izuku fight… damn, that’s all heartbreaking. Seeing Gran Torino take what is more than likely a mortal blow and then witnessing Shigaraki go in to kill or maim Aizawa is just hard to watch. I feel Izuku’s rage as he tries to strange the monster and then cave his head in when that doesn’t work. The fact Shigaraki caught Izuku’s arm in his mouth is insane but I kind of love it, too.  The idea that Aizawa might lose his powers here is scary as hell, as Shigaraki off the chain will kill just so many people it’s going to be insane. The fight is going to go crazy here and I am here for it. Have a good night, everyone.

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