Star and Stripe bursts onto the stage.
Last time on My Hero Academia,
Izuku got some rest and All Might prepared for the end. Izuku gets washed and
fed by his classmates and is able to unwind for a night despite knowing that
final battle is approaching. All Might, meanwhile, runs into Stain at the All
Might Statue. After getting a lesson on perseverance from Stain, using the
woman that comes by everyday to clean the statue because she was the last
person All Might saved before he retired, Stain gave All Might a flash drive he
stole from Tartarus during the prison break. The data has information about the
attack and helps them speculate on how Shigaraki was able to coordinate with his
Vestige within Tomura. They come to the disturbing realization that they only
have three days before All For One fully integrates with Tomura Shigaraki. Which,
ya know, is terrible. But there’s a silver lining, as the US’s top hero decided
its better to ask for forgiveness than permission and headed out with her stealth
bomber battalion to aid her master, All Might. Star and Stripe is on her way.
Enough recapping. Let’s get to it, shall we?
The episode begins with Izuku going
back to his room after getting a load of laundry done. We see all his All Might
paraphernalia as he walks in, puts his stuff down, and then goes out on his
balcony to think about things. He flashes back to when Uraraka gave her big
speech to let him stay at UA. That coupled with memories of Gran Torino
advising him that sometimes the only way to save someone is to end them has him
feeling off. He places his cape on the line to dry as he realizes that the
final battle is drawing near, but he’s confident. He’s got his friends, and together
they’ll bring back smiles and forge a new future. Or so he hopes.
We cut to an air force base where a
bunch of stealth bombers are taking off and landing. A few airmen are watching
a news story about the events of last season, ie, the Shigarakis have raised
absolute havoc in Japan, releasing criminals from maximum security, turning the
whole island nation into a war zone and Japan is asking aid from international
heroes to help. To highlight this point, the reporter covering the story is
attacked by a pair of thugs mid broadcast. One of the airmen asks their
commander, Nathan, if they’re shipping out yet, and Nathan says no. He thinks
that the higher ups are worried that if they send a bunch of the US’s top
heroes to Japan, local criminals might start something. One of the airmen says
that’s stupid as they could get their heroes back in two hours if things started
going sideways. A burly woman agrees and asks her bros to give her a lift to
Japan. This is Cathleen Bate aka Star and Stripe, the US version of All Might. The
bombers take off, Star riding on the roof of one and reiterating that if All
Might wants help, she’s giving it.
Returning to Japan, where AFO is
hiding out in a cave somewhere off mainland Japan. He explains that while the
Jailbreakers are causing havoc, that gives the League plenty of time to plot. He
adds that while Japan is a small set of islands, they’re big enough for the League
to win a game of hide and seek. Spinner asks if maybe they should get out of
the country for a bit. AFO says that might be better, but that would complicate
his plans. He reveals that he needs to accomplish his midgame objective of
taking OFA from Izuku. Spinner is surprised that that is only a midgame objective,
and Shigaraki admits that he’s got intricate plans for what comes next and OFA
is just a small part of it. He thinks that the biggest hurdle that they might
face, and his biggest opportunity is on the way. He reveals that he has friends
and allies around the world, ones that will act if he gives the word, but he’s holding
off on that for the moment in the hopes of facing Star. He says that if she
gets the upper hand, they’re finished… but if he can steal her Quirk, that’s
basically the end of this little game right there and then. AFO tells Spinner
that while he’s been acting as AFO’s bodyguard, it’s time for him to go out and
focus on helping Tomura’s final gambit. He’s planning on using Spinner’s status
as a Heteromorph (aka a person with a Quirk that gives them an inhuman
appearance) to rally other Heteromorphs around him.
We shift focus to a trio of Heteromorphs,
former members of the Metahuman Liberation Front who’d been assigned to Spinner’s
squad. They’re still lamenting the loss of Re-Destro, but feel that they can
rally behind Spinner. He plays a message from Skeptic, their one free leader
from the old days, encouraging them to keep fighting. He isn’t happy with the
League, but knows that they’re the biggest game in town right now, so it’s in
their best interest to work together. We get flashes of Toga, Dabi, and Spinner.
Skeptic’s plan is to basically force the League into the positions that they
want and to use them, like Stain, to tear down hero society. That’s a cheery
thought.
We catch up with Endeavor, Jeanist,
and Hawks head out to meet up with Star. Hawks admits that he feels better
knowing that she’ll be arriving soon to help them, and Jeanist is excited to chat
with her about the denim used during the gold rush… one track mind. They get an
emergency call from Tsukauchi who tells them to hurry. Tomura Shigaraki is
there to meet her. Tomura is astride a flying Nomu. Star asks if he’s All For
One, and Tomura says that’s a very good question, but for the moment he supposes
that he is. Star gets the intel of Tomura’s powers, and her bomber squad prep
shields to protect them from his powers. They prepare for an attack run, Star
saying that she wants them to fight with all their might and that she’ll see
their remains reach their families if they fall.
Shigaraki takes a moment to ponder
what he is. He still thinks of himself as Tomura Shigaraki but can’t deny that
he’s also Shigaraki the Elder. It’s a confusing situation to be in. He decides not
to worry about it for now and unleashes a combo attack of heavy payload, radio waves
and air cannon. The super shockwave would probably do damage to the bombers,
but Star has them evade before starting their attack run. Shigaraki says that he
knows what her power is, and that this fight will end with whoever touches the
other first. Star says that he might know what she’s backing, but she’s the
best there is, so she’s taking him down. Star uses her quirk, New Order. New
Order lets her control reality itself, she just has to say the name of the
thing and touch it. This allows her to do things like, say, remove all air from
the space 100 feet in front of her. And in All Might Showmanship fashion, the
area she made air free takes the shape of a giant Star. Shigaraki and his Nomu
drop, but he’s unconcerned. He says that ‘s a hell of a power, and he WANTS it.
Star’s squadron takes the opportunity to encircle him and fire energy canons on
him. They all hit, but Shigaraki uses another combo, Reflect and Scatter, to fling
the energy back at them. Star catches the laser using her quirk. Doing so
causes her to release the vacuum bubble around Shigaraki allowing him to
recover and charge her.
Star in voiceover tells us the limit
of her power. She’s only able to keep two Orders active at a time. And she keeps
one active basically at all times, and that one is to enhance her strength to being
in the ballpark of All Might’s. Tomura lunges at her, she shouts his name and
knocks him back, two of her bombers acting as a landing pad, adding that she
hoped that he’d try to use his super strength to overpower her. She gives us
her backstory of how when she was a kid, her and her family were saved from a
villain attack by a foreign exchange student that turned out to be All Might. If
you recall the Movie, Two Heroes, where in a flashback All Might fought
against a pair of bank robbers, one basically being a giant meatball of flesh.
All Might leapt in and took out the monster with a single punch, saving a young
Cathleen in the process. She says that seeing those two tuffs of blonde hair
changed her life and, in that moment, he became her master. She modeled herself
after him, down to his hair color. Shigaraki scoffs, saying that wherever he
goes, it’s always All Might that meets him. She says that’s WHY he’s the symbol
of peace. And lets him know she used her Quirk on him in that exchange and
makes the new Order that if Tomura Shigaraki moves a muscle, his heart stops.
Shigaraki the Elder says that he
knew something was different from the moment that he’d woken up. We go into the
mindscape and see how the Shigarakis appear in the mental plane. Shigaraki the Elder
has mostly merged with Tomura, growing out of him like a cancerous growth, digging
his fingers into his protegees flesh as well. He admits that he and the doctor
thought that it would take three months for the two Shigarakis to integrate into
one being, but Tomura’s hate and anger have greatly accelerated the project. He
thinks they’re up to 97-98% of the way to completion. He claims that when its
finished, they’ll be an entirely different person. Shigaraki refuses to accept
that future, though, and struggles against it. He screams out his resentment in
the real world, and shocks Star when she realizes that he’s moving without
having a heart attack. We see Tomura shift between himself and AFOs form. His hair
grows out as he struggles for some reason. He remembers his home, and how all
his resentment and hate started from little things at his house that piled atop
each other. Star leaps off Shigaraki and he says that he’s starting to
understand New Order better.
Shigaraki says that the US has kept
her powers as tightly guarded a secret as they could, but he’s beginning to
understand it. He knows that she can only increase her strength so much, or
else she’d have taken his head off with that opening punch. And that she has limits
to how powerful her rules can be. She can’t just say that anyone who enters
this space dies or anything to that effect. He is impressed by the scope of
that power. He realizes that the thing that saved him from her quirk was his
inability to decide if he’s Tomura Shigaraki or not. He does the Izuku thing of
taking a moment to overanalyze the situation and wonder how her powers would
work on an animal or object. He admits that he’s weirded out by this desire to
just figure out the perimeters of her Quirk.
Star tries to figure out a new strategy.
She tells Nathan to get her in contact with Commander Ackbar on the line. This
plan is apparently crazy, as Nathan tells her that this’ll get her in even more
trouble than rushing to Japan on her own. She says that what’s the point of special
authority if she doesn’t use it, and that Shigaraki is absolutely a global
threat that warrants it. She needs time to prepare, and she tells them to fly steadily
until it’s ready. The other pilots knock Shigaraki off of them, and he returns
to his Nomu. Star uses New Order on the air again, making a giant air puppet of
herself and smacks him aside. Shigaraki admits that he can’t see the attack,
but he can feel it. Star crushes him between her giant air hands and then has
her men fire their lasers at her. She drops her order to allow her to reshape
the lasers into a focused beam attack and slams Shigaraki to the ocean below.
The beam is hot enough that it makes a diameter of dry land around Shigaraki.
Her men think she killed him, but Star says that its just keeping him in place
and stopping him from regenerating. If this level of heat was enough to stop
him, Endeavor would have burnt him to cinders. She gets a call from Commander
Ackbar, who yes vaguely resembles Admiral Ackbar from Star Wars. He says
that this stunt will cost her hero license and then some, but Star says “worth
it.” We see a photo of a young Star on his console with All Might and David Shield
as he says that the only reason they’ll be able to do this is because All Might
himself couldn’t stop Shigaraki. The attack turns out to be a giant barrage of
intercontinental cruise missiles dubbed Tiamat. He tells her to make sure every
last one hits their target. Damn, hell of an ending to an episode.
Wow, it’s weird to get two seasons
in a row that don’t start with a recap episode to get people up to speed. But I
suppose as this is the second to last season, they expect you to know who Izuku,
his classmates, and enemies are as well as their powers. Star and Stripe is a
great character with a really fun Quirk. The ability to alter reality itself
with a touch and a name is a broken as hell power, but the limit of only
keeping two up at a time keeps it practical. I like that Star’s backstory also
officially canonizes that movie Two Heroes, as they literally use frames
from the movie to show us how Cathleen Bate met the number one Japanese hero to
be. I’ve heard that there are a few moments like this, with cameos and
callbacks that make it clear that while the movies didn’t happen in the manga,
they are canon to the whole story of My Hero Academia. The first one was
actually Izuku’s bracers, which he was using during his Dark Deku phase, which
were literally just the red bracers that Melissa Shield made for him in that
movie. Having grown up in the era where Anime movies were not-canon side
stories, see all the Dragonball Z movies up until the latest Broly one,
it’s nice seeing that those other stories do factor into the main one. Shigaraki’s
instability is an interesting part of the story. Merging with his master is clearly
not something that Tomura wants, but it is the thing that kept him in the fight
with Star when she used her Quirk on him. The visual of AFO growing from and
into Tomura’s body was gnarly. He’s very much a fungal growth on his former
protegee at this point. Getting pinned by a pillar of laser fire and about to be
hit by a bunch of missiles feels like it’ll take out Shigaraki, so it’ll be
interesting to see how he weasels out of this one. But we’ll have to wait and
see on that. Have a good night everyone, and stay safe.
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/viewer-log-my-ep-153969178
Bluesky: @basicssuperhero.bsky.social
No comments:
Post a Comment