We've had a few Unstoppable Forces meet Immovable Objects before, but this is one of the flashier ones.
Last time on My Hero Academia,
Star and Stripe entered the field. The US’s top hero flew into Japan with a
small fleet of stealth bombers to lend aide to the embattled nation, as Star
views All Might as her mentor. The fledgling Symbol of Peace had saved her
family from some rampaging villains, as shown in the flashback of My Hero
Academia: Two Heroes, and afterwards she modeled her whole career after
his. She was met immediately by Tomura Shigaraki, as AFO piloting his body is
almost literally salivating at getting Star’s quirk. Her Quirk, New Order, lets
her manipulate reality itself. She just needs to touch something or someone,
say its name, and then she can imbue it with whatever quality she wants. Like
removing the air from the space in front of her or making it so she can handle
lasers. She hits Shigaraki hard and attempts to use her quirk to make it so
that his heart will stop if he moves. Unfortunately, Shigaraki is going through
a bit of an identity crisis as he can’t decide if he is Tomura Shigaraki, AFO
Shigaraki or some new entity all together. This lets him fight her Order.
Getting desperate and wanting to finish the fight quickly, Star creates a giant
air golem of herself and slams Shigaraki to the ocean with a beam of laser
energy. She makes a call to Commander Ackbar of the US and gets permission to
use a bunch of Tiamat missiles to try to kill Shigaraki all in one blow. Enough
Recapping. Let’s get to it, shall we?
We start with a flashback to when
Star was first training with her squad. She looks beaten up, and it’s implied
she just finished a training exercise with her team. In voice over she explains
that her Quirk sounds awesome but has a power cap to it. No matter how she
words her Order, she can’t make certain things happen. The implication being
that she tried to New Order herself to be as strong as All Might, but it didn’t
work. She says that no one knows why this is, but the theories range from
‘that’s just how your power works’ to ‘because you’re a girl.’ Nathan and her
squad tell her that its no big deal if she can’t get to All Might’s level,
she’s probably number 2 beneath him in power, and she has the rest of them to
pick up the slack for her.
In the present, Star is keeping Shigaraki
pinned beneath her sword of laser energy as the Tiamat missiles get closer. Her
squad ask her what they need to do. She says she’ll need to use the missiles to
finish him off, but to do that, she’ll have to drop her laser manipulating
order. She orders her men to keep him pinned down under heavy fire to give her
time to manipulate the missiles into her big attack. Shigaraki meanwhile is
trapped in the beam of light but isn’t seriously harmed. He has reasoned out
that this is a stalling tactic from Star and Stripe and that she’ll be trying
to unleash one big Deathblow to finish him off once and for all. He realizes
that this is a do or die moment for both of them. Star gives her guys a three
count before she releases the beam and switches her order to allow her to
redirect the Tiamat missiles.
The airmen blast Shigaraki with
their lasers when he tries to reach star, pinning him in place to allow Star to
try to hit him with her ballistic missile punch. She believes if even one hits
it’ll be enough. She swings and seems to hit him, unleashing a massive cloud of
destructive force. The blast is big enough that Endeavor and the others can see
it from the highway. There’s a moment where they think it’s over… but obviously
no ones beating Shigaraki besides Izuku. Shigaraki darts forward, looking
incredibly burnt and broken, but alive. He reveals that using his mastered
Decay Quirk, he buried himself deep under the sea floor to protect himself from
the blast. The thing that darted up to try to attack Star was in actuality the
Nomu he’d been riding on. He’d realized that Star could only use her Quirk on
two things at once, so had to wait for just the right moment when she switched
between Orders to bury himself. Shigaraki says that that tactic would have
worked on anyone else, but he’s too powerful now.
The airmen try to shoot him down,
but he’s too fast. He dodges between their blasts and then detonates his Nomu
to give himself further cover. In the seconds he’d been freed, he’d already
regrown most of his skin and hair, showing off how potent his regeneration is.
He lands on Nathan’s ship and prepared to strike. Nathan has enough time to
tell Star to just do it, crush his ship and kill Tomura in the explosion. But
Star realizes that that won’t work as Tomura regenerates too fast. She gives a
resigned smile as Tomura darts forward and grabs her by the face.
We pause for a moment for AFO to
explain a few things. He admits to actually being afraid of what would have
happened if Star and Stripe had met with Deku and the two of them had attacked
him together. He feared it so much that he had his contacts in other countries
begin widespread attacks on their own nations in the hope it’d keep Star from arriving
too soon. His plan was to wait until his new body was complete, face Izuku and
steal OFA from him. With the power enhancement of OFA in his hand, he would then
face off against Star, steal New Order, and then used the compounded Quirks to
become so uber powerful that he’d all other resistance would be like ants going
up against an elephant. He tells Star that her arrival was the biggest
potential problem with his plan, so he had to risk fighting her in his
incomplete state. He gloats about how that risky gamble paid off. We watch as
he drains New Order from her, in the form of red energy seeping from her face
as Decay begins to destroy her body.
She tries to stop it by using New
Order to make herself immune to Decay, but Shigaraki’s enhanced Quirk is too
much for her. Shigaraki draws all of New Order out of Star. He gloats that
because he used Decay at the same instant that he began to steal her Quirk, he
forced her to choose between saving her body or her power, and because she
chose her own body, she lost everything. He takes a moment to gloat to the
memory of his brother, who is revealed to be named Yoichi. He reminds us that
the brothers used to read a series of manga together about a hero and the demon
lord. He says that Yoichi stopped reading because he didn’t know that there was
a final volume that showed the hero winning in the end, but he says he always
knew, he just didn’t want to waste time when he knew how it ended. He tries out
New Order… but is shocked when Star appears in his mindscape. We see Shigaraki
has mostly merged with Tomura into a blob… right before in the real world Shigaraki’s
body starts exploding. He’s confused by this, saying that it feels like his
Quirks are exploding.
We then learn that the moment Star
realized destroying the jet wouldn’t work, she shifted her strategy. She used
New Order to change it so that her Quirk would destroy any other Quirk it came
into contact with. Her attempt at saving her body was the second, last ditch
effort to save herself. She realized that Shigaraki getting her Quirk without
repercussions would be the worst outcome, so she made it hurt. Within the
mindscape we see the Vestige of Star hulk out and start ripping up the Vestiges
of other Quirk users in Shigaraki’s mindscape, the representations of the
Quirks he’s stole within that space. Star says that she’d have liked to
survive, but if this was the price to pay for peace, she paid it gladly. Star
disintegrates and her last thoughts were to thank her team and Commander
Ackbar. Shigaraki starts to panic as the damage builds. All For One lets him
take or give Quirks, but it doesn’t let him just destroy them outright. He
needs to get rid of New Order before it damages him too badly. He decides he’ll
pass it to a pilot, but they don’t give him the chance, they catch him in their
laser canon fire. Star’s vestige destroys Reflect within Shigaraki, weakening
him further.
Star, who is still dying, thinks
about All Might. He says that he saved her when she was a child and he changed
her life. She flashes back to when they met when she was a kid and how proud
she was to meet him. Her last act in life is to Salute All Might and announce
that she’d finally returned the favor. Shigaraki uses the wing quirk he stole
from his Nomu to fly out of the beams and to try to escape. He has to hurry to
find someone to give New Order to or Star’s Vestige will destroy all his
powers. He is furious at being attacked yet again by someone inspired by All
Might. He blames the big blonde hero for everything and hates that another of
his disciples has wounded him this badly. He fires off a shockwave that freezes
up the planes long enough for him to fly away. Nathan watches as Star’s ashes
fall to the ocean and thinks that she surpassed All Might in that moment, and
that to him, she was always the greatest hero.
We cut to a port city where a pair
of escapees from one of the lesser prisons are hiding out. The woman of the
pair complains that nothing is on TV, and the man says that it’s the fault of
the rampaging escapees. He compliments his own brilliance at choosing to lay
low… right as Shigaraki bursts into their house. He’s looking terrible at this
point, his hair is long and matted and his body is in tatters. He lunges the
man and attempts to steal his Quirk and shift it with New Order. In the
Mindscape, Star calls him an idiot. She reveals that while New Order did a lot
of damage to Shigaraki, she knew that the Quirk wouldn’t be enough to destroy
all of his Quirks before it hit its own limit. She regrets that she couldn’t
kill him herself but takes solace in knowing that she scared the shit out of
him and showed that regardless of how powerful he is, there will always be
someone ready to stand up and embody what it means to be a hero to try to stop
him. AFO tells her that in the end, the winner is the last man standing and for
her to be gone. New Order breaks down to dust. We see Shigaraki’s mental
avatar. The outer later, made up of Tomura and AFO is blobby at this point,
clearly damaged but surviving. We see a huge hole in the mass and deep within
it, we see the child Tomura used to be, Tenko Shimura, within. He looks like
he’s absolutely covered in hands, which is… disturbing to say the least. Tenko
thinks about Star’s last words and immediately thinks of that ‘hero’ that will
face him, Izuku Midoriya.
Future Narrator Izuku takes over,
saying that the heroes and police swooped in immediately to try to catch any
trace of Shigaraki. But he hightailed it out of there. We see the two criminals
he attacked, their bodies withered and decayed. FN Izuku tells us that Star’s
death shook the world, and lead to the other nations of the world putting a
tighter rein on their heroes, basically killing any hope of getting
international help. We’re shown Salaam, the flat Hieroglyph hero from Egypt
rage against this, but his superiors tell him that they’re just trying to
protect their own. We join All Might as he and his allies learn from Star’s
team what happened. Nathan tells him that Star didn’t just leave a heroic
legacy. He reveals their stealth bombers, X-Double-6’s, have recording
equipment and they gathered as much data on Tomura Shigaraki during the fight
as they could.
All Might goes to Class 1A the
following day and tells his kids that Star bought them an extension. He tells
them that they learned that Shigaraki’s body was supposed to be complete by
tomorrow, but Star royally screwed him up. The damage New Order was able to do
while within him should delay his maturation by about a week. Izuku realizes
that she bought them some time to plan. All Might tells them that they think a
bunch of his Quirks was destroyed in that attack. The kids point out that now
is the best time to attack. All Might agrees and reveals that basically every
hero not working rescue duty right now is on high alert trying to find him. But
he warns his students that they have no idea how Shigaraki will react to this setback.
He lists their adversaries, Shigaraki, AFO, Dabi, Toga, the remnants of their
short-lived Paranormal Liberation Front, and the remaining Escapees from the
prisons. Shoji adds there could also be other foes they don’t know about. All
Might says that while Star just died, that he wants his students to spend the
next week training as hard as they can to make sure that they’re ready for the
war. Bakugo yells “WHAT DO YOU THINK WE’VE BEEN DOING!!?” The students reveal
that they’ve been training the best they could since the raid on the PLF bases,
and that they’ll keep training in order to be ready to fight alongside Izuku.
Izuku says that Bakugo and the others agreed to spar with him after this is
over. Bakugo yells that that’s not what he agreed to, and the other students
broke into talking about their training. All Might smiles, thinking about their
first training session. He determines that his students hatched into proper
heroes a long time ago, and that AFO made a big mistake when he picked a fight
with these kids. He calls his students one tough class as the episode ends.
The story of Star and Stripe was
quick, but effective. She came in fast, broke a bunch of shit, and left the
heroes better off than they’d been before. Part of me feels like she was a bit
rushed, as she only appeared in three episodes. But when I think about what she
was made to do, I can admit she did it well. She was introduced in order to
show off how powerful Shigaraki has become but also to buy the author Horikoshi
just a little more breathing room to tie off some loose ends before starting
the big final arc. He probably could have just written that it would take
Shigaraki a week to be complete to do that, but by making this time the hard
one prize for another hero’s heroic sacrifice it adds a bit more gusto to the
kids training. I liked Star and Stripe a lot, her design was what I’d imagine
Superman and Wonder Woman’s daughter might have worn if the New 52 versions of
the character had reproduced. An American Flag themed Superman costume, it’s as
visually bold and loud as you’re thinking. Her brief time in the spotlight also
highlighted that she’s smart as well as brave. She figured out the best way to
end this no-win scenario. Losing her and her Quirk is an obvious blow to the
already damaged world of heroes, but she’d single handedly did more damage to
Tomura Shigaraki and to AFO’s overall plans than anyone else had done thus far.
She stole power from a man that had been hording Quirks for over a century and
stolen his ultimate victory from him right as he was gloating to himself that
he’d gotten everything that he wanted. That’s writing at its finest. So, a
salute to you, Star and Stripe, a fictional Super Woman worthy to be compared
to the OG Superman. The kids have a bit of time to train, to reinforce their
bonds… and maybe find out who that mole is that’s been with them since the USJ
attack. Oh, I wonder who it could be. … Yes, I know already, I’m being
dramatic. Have a good night and stay safe.
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Bluesky: @basicssuperhero.bsky.social
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