Families are... complicated.
Last time on My Hero Academia,
we had a prison break. Shigaraki, acting both through Tomura’s body and his
original body in the prison, orchestrated a mass breakout of Tartarus, the maximum-security
prison for the most dangerous Quirks. The chaos saw the escape of a few old
villain faces, including Stain, Muscular, Moonfish, and Overhaul. There was
also a new face in a woman we’ll come to know as Lady Nagant. After the big
breakout, Shigaraki caused breakouts in several smaller prisons to sew chaos.
After, Spinner demands to know what their goal is and why he should give his
loyalty to this new guy possessing his boss’s body. Shigaraki told him not to
worry as the end game is to make him the Demon king of the world. We move to Central
Hospital where class 1A is being treated. The students made it out with
injuries of varying severity. Bakugo is mostly recovered, Shoto is largely fine
but was badly burned by his brother and is having trouble talking, and Izuku
has been in a coma since being brought in. Shoto’s family are gathering at the hospital
as his father, Endeavor is in surgery at the hospital. The episode ends with
Bakugo swearing to kill Izuku if he dies. Enough recapping. Let’s get to it,
shall we?
The story picks up with Bakugo
fighting Sato and Mineta as he fights his way to Izuku, to I guess try to
threaten him into waking up.
After that we cut to a young Hawks
watching All Might’s debut video like Izuku used to. He then saw Endeavor using
his power to defeat an Elephant Quirk user. He tells us that while he grew up
watching heroes like everyone else did, they never felt ‘real’ to him, more
like beings from another world, or from dreams. We follow Hawks to his home, a
rundown shack at the edge of town where he and his mother are violently abused
by his alcoholic father. His father yells at his boy, Kego, for going into town
and threatening the boy’s life if he, at the time just Keigo Takami, ratted the
elder Takami out. Turns out he’s on the run for some crimes. Keigo says that
his wings felt tingly, so he went into the city but came right back after it
stopped. Future Hawks explains that his father was on the run for murdering
someone over a very small amount of money, his mother let him hide at her place
and he was born a short time after. We see that the elder Takami has the same
feathers as his boy but they grow from his arms and not from wings on his back.
Takami is the sort of person that blames all his misfortune on other people, so
he whines out loud that he’d be free as a bird if he didn’t have to look after
Keigo. While not looking away from their busted TV with her natural eyes, Tomei
Takami looks at her husband with her free-floating eyes and begs him not to
leave. Hawks calls his parents “broke souls” and that from a young age he knew
to keep his head down and try not to end up like them. There’s a really sad
image of this five- or six-year-old Keigo sitting quietly away from his parents
in their house full of trash while clutching his Endeavor doll.
Sometime later Keigo comes home to
his mother telling him his father was arrested. She looks at him with all four
of her eyes and says that Takami stole a car to try to get away from the hero,
but he was caught by Endeavor. This elevated Endeavor to a real, physical hero
in Keigo’s eyes. Tomei took Keigo away from their home for fear of getting
arrested for harboring a fugitive. While removing his abusive father from his
life was a net gain for Keigo Takami, he unfortunately still had his mother.
Tomei seems to suffer from a crippling level of anxiety and paranoia, leaving
her unable to do things like, say, hold down a job, or raise a child. Keigo
tried to get her to go to the police or someone that could help them, but Tomei
was sure everyone was out to get them. She tells him to do what he had to help
them survive and asks why he was even born if he can’t help them. Keigo knew
that with his feathers he could steal wallets with relative ease, but he still
wanted to be a good person. Eventually some government types tracked them down
and gave Tomei a sweet deal, turn over her son to them, they’ll train him to be
a hero and see that she’s financially compensated for the rest of her life.
After, the government types tell
him that he’ll be giving up his name of Keigo from that day onward. He’ll be
put through an elite training program to make him into a real hero. While
looking at his Endeavor doll, he asks if he’ll get to be a real hero, like him,
this man that saved his life.
Hawks wakes up from his
recollection as someone says his name. He’s covered in bandages and has some
sort of mask on to help him breathe. The other man, Best Jeanist, is relieved
he woke up. Using an app on his phone to do text-to-speak, Hawks apologizes for
getting to sleep while Jeanist is forced to do all the driving. Jeanist tells
him not to worry about it. He compliments the doctors that stitched Hawks up,
and saying that without them they wouldn’t have been able to pull off their
gambit to use Jeanist’s murder to get Hawks in with the League of Villains.
We’re told that the doctors basically put Jeanist into a very nearly death like
coma, which was what they needed to fool Dabi and Dr. Garaki. He’d spent most
of the last few weeks or months in a Nomu tank, preserving his body for if and
when Garaki decided to start modifying him into a Nomu. Hawks snuck in and
revived him in time for him to save the day. Jeanist suddenly makes a sharp
U-turn and says he spotted some loose ends that need tending. They run into a
villain known as Glutton God and his gang attacking a shopping district, saying
that this whole area is his territory now. Jeanist takes them out with his car’s
grappling hooks. After, he asks if the police are on the way, but the locals
say that they aren’t. The cops have their hands full capturing the escaped
convicts and unfortunately their heroes all turned tail and ran after starting
to get scrutinized by the public. Jeanist hears someone in the crowd saying
“they’re cowards, who needs them.” Jeanist spies a lot of angry people in the
crowd when he offers to send some of his own sidekicks to the area to help.
They get back in the car and
Jeanist takes Hawks to his mom’s house. The place is lavish but empty. Jeanist
asks if she skipped town. Hawks finds a note from his mother, who apologizes,
saying that some scary men came in and demanded information on Hawks and his
father. She says that she’s so incredibly sorry for doing that, which is why
she left, but tells her son that she’s very proud of him. Hawks isn’t too
visibly broken up by this, saying that he cut ties with his mother when he gave
up his name. But he does feel bad that he didn’t help her like he should have.
Hawks says with the PSC out of commission for now, he’s got no one tying him
down. He takes off his mask and speaks that last line with a raspy voice.
Hawks has a flashback to when his
mother took him shopping one day to get him to stop crying. She tells him to
not tell his father. They grabbed the Endeavor doll, his mother saying that
“he’s alright, right? All Might is too expensive.” In the present, Hawks tells
Jeanist that you see a person’s real self when they’re backed into a corner.
It’s why he thinks Twice was a good man at heart. He backed the wrong horse in
the race, but in the end all he really wanted to do was help people. As Hawks
says this, we see what he did to get the PSC’s attention all those years ago…
he used his feathers to help people out of a massive car accident. Hawks tells
Jeanist that even if Dabi was totally honest about the Todoroki family, things
are different now. Hawks’ vows to help Endeavor however he can.
Hawks and Jeanist drive around
looking for metaphorical fires to put out. Hawks tells us that urban areas were
hit hardest, and that it was the combination of freed criminals and Nomu that
make everyone so scared. He says that ever since the original Nomu made an
appearance at UA, rumors about those things had circulated. He thinks that that
should have been the first sign that things were going to get bad. People
fixated on these abominations running around and with heroes constantly
failing, things just got worse. A villain with some kind of waterpower, the
Cider House Gang, attacked a store, but the owners all jump them with Support
gear, saying that they don’t need heroes anymore. The Laundry Hero: Wash rushes
to help but is too slow and sees explosions rock the area. He makes it to the
scene and sees everyone was killed in the fighting. Hawks says that this was
clearly part of Re-Destro’s plan, people lost faith in Heroes, so they buy up a
bunch of support equipment that they don’t know how to use and fights just get
bloodier. Wash gets attacked by angry civilians, demanding what took him so
long to get there. Wash takes the criticism, though, and uses his powers to
disinfect wounds and carry people to the hospital.
Making matters worse are the heroes
quitting. Hawks says that a lot of the
quitters were the moderately successful types, guys who did good work but
couldn’t handle the pressure, or old timers that had been coasting on their
reputation for far too long. Guys like the number 9 hero, Yoroi Musha,
announced his retirement after the raid. Many followed his example. Hawks says
that they took peace for granted, and they have to ask themselves what it means
to be a hero. We see Stain breaking into a building and getting his equipment
back.
Hawks says that the outrage of
these events, all the anger, frustration and pain was focused ended up focused
on a single, broken man. We cut to Endeavor who is told by his doctor that the
students are recovering, and that the doctor personally is rooting for him.
Endeavor thinks that he can breathe, but his head is foggy from the anesthesia.
Endeavor leans back in his hospital bed, saying that he knew this was Toya’s plan.
That his oldest planned on him surviving and suffering from his indecision and
inability to react to him. Endeavor realizes that this was just like when
Natsuo nearly died in front of him, and he froze. Jeanist stepped up and
debunked some of what Dabi said in his video, but Endeavor does own that he was
a monster to his son and thus made him a monster as well. Endeavor remembers his
son screaming at him while tearing at his white hair. Endeavor says that
whatever he used to be, Endeavor is dead, and that he can’t fight his own son.
He looks over to see his other three children watching him cry. Endeavor
apologizes to his children, saying that he’s held down by his regret and guilt,
and that there’s nothing that he can do. Endeavor is shocked to hear his wife say
that they all know regret and guilt. He asks what she’s doing here, and she
says they need to talk about their family, and about Toya.
I think it’s funny that this
episode is titled “The Hellish Todoroki Family,” when its much more about the
hellish Takami family. The fact this young man ended up becoming a hero is
probably a minor miracle in and of itself with the parents he was dealing with.
An all-around abusive father and a mentally unwell mother is like 35% of all
villain origin stories. It really speaks to how terrible Hawks’ home life was
that he considered his father’s arrest to be Endeavor ‘saving’ him. Imagine
being that young and knowing that your dad is probably the biggest threat to
your existence. Traumatic as hell. The show didn’t make it seem like he had the
best time while training to be a hero, but it was a step up from having to take
care of his mother, I’m sure. I like that they include his mother’s goodbye
note, as it’d be easy to just have her go into the wind, but the fact she
stopped for a minute to say goodbye at least suggests she was being honest
about being proud of him. I liked seeing how the hero system is starting to
crack under the strain. The escalation is very believable. People lose faith in
heroes as it becomes clear that they’re not equipped to handle this crisis,
they do their best to arm and defend themselves and end up causing more damage
because they don’t know what they’re doing, which leads to more lost faith in
heroes that aren’t able to handle the increasing crises. This part is clearly
from the Re-Destro part of the Paranormal Liberation Front, as buying their
products to inflate their stock feels like an evil corporate thing to do.
Hopefully they’ll be able to start righting this ship once a certain green-haired
hero wakes up. I’m looking forward to them digging into the Todoroki family next
time. Their situation is… complicated, but it’ll be nice to get everything
about the Toya situation out in the open. But more on that next time. See you
then.
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/viewer-log-my-ep-146968397
Bluesky: @basicssuperhero.bsky.social
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