Mirio, Nejire, and Amajiki to the rescue.
Last time on My Hero Academia
All For One was shown the tenacity of side characters. Hawks, Jiro and Tokoyami
were able to overwhelm the super-duper villain and break his helmet. Sure, the
Vestiges of the Quirks he’d stolen over the years rebelling against him helped,
but they did break it. Infuriated, AFO retaliated and attempted to skewer them,
but Endeavor leapt back up and took the hit, saving them. The number 1 hero had
to do some soul searching to reach this point, remembering how his father died
trying to save someone, and all of his mistakes as a man. He once again
resolved to do better and try to make a better future, which I hope was worth
it as it cost him his right arm. The now southpaw Endeavor tackled AFO, beating
him into the dirt before flying up and unleashing a Prominence Burn at point
blank range. He incinerated the Demon Lord, burning him to a blackened crisp. Unfortunately,
this wasn’t the end, as AFO claimed he’d been planning on ditching this body
anyway and unveiled his emergency plan. He injected himself with the Quirk
destroying bullet, but for some reason this caused him to start regenerating,
regrowing his eyes and ears. At the same time, Bakugo’s team were struggling
but surviving against Tomura Shigaraki. The weight of the tentacles of fingers
that Tomura grew proved to be more mass than they accounted for and it starts
to cause the floating UA campus fall apart. Bakugo digs deep and tries to
unleash a full power blast using a new support item, sweat powered cannons,
point blank at Tomura. Unfortunately, while the explosion destroyed the
tentacle, Tomura himself was fine. He breaks Bakugo’s arm. Jeanist and Mirko try
to help but are knocked back by Tomura’s strength and new tentacle. He tells Bakugo
that he doesn’t give a damn about his heartfelt speech and that the only thing
he finds interesting about Bakugo is his connection Izuku Midoriya. He knows
Bakugo is his oldest friend and that he will come to save Bakugo. Enough
recapping. Let’s get to it, shall we?
Watching his students and colleagues
getting their asses beaten by a weapon of mass destruction in the form of white
haired incel has Aizawa panicking just a little bit. He shouts at Mandalay if
Izuku’s inbound. She says she doesn’t know, the electromagnetic barrier around
UA is screwing with her telepathy and the radio is all static. Aizawa begs
Jeanist and Mirko to save Bakugo, telling them that he has dreams he needs to
fulfill of being the next number 1 hero. Inside, Amajiki and Nejire are on
their feet but are battered. Because he’s a Negative Nelly, Amajiki
pessimistically says that he was really looking forward to graduation. Mirio
phases up from the lower level and says that he is too, and when they’re done here,
they should talk Nezu into throwing a huge graduation celebration. Amajiki asks
if he really should be up here, and Mirio shrugs and says he’s following
procedures. He thinks the three of them together at the very least can hold Tomura
off long enough for Izuku to arrive. They both agree and the Big Three of UA enter
the battle.
Tomura knocks Bakugo to the ground
and stomps on his head. He figured out that Izuku was supposed to be warped
here. He muses that its actually a good thing his Quirks are being nullified,
as this means he can leave a body for Izuku to find instead of a pile of ash.
He remembers that Izuku got super pissed when he skewered Bakugo last time with
his blades, so the actual dead body of his frenemy will hopefully get a bigger reaction.
Bakugo tries to shoot him, but Tomura doesn’t react at all. He remembers that
Bakugo was an All Might super fan, like Izuku, and tells him to take this as a
lesson that he’ll always be garbage compared to the power of One For All. He
attempts to finish off Bakugo, but that’s when Nejire comes in and blasts him
with her spiral energy. Unfortunately, she’s a bit too slow and Tomura is able
to turn and use Bakugo as a shield. Nejire is able to angle her attack to miss.
Thankfully, while his back is turned, Amajiki is able to get him. He used his
power to take on the abilities of the things he eats to give him the camouflage
abilities and tentacles of an octopus. He then pumps him full of scorpion
toxin. This stuns him for a moment, but then Tomura grows a mouth on his side
that throws up the poison. He starts laughing at their pathetic attempts to
stop him. He says that his body is constantly evolving and these attacks they’re
throwing at him aren’t enough to overcome that. He asks if this is the best
they’ve got, which is the best cue for Mirio they’ve had since. He phases
through the tentacles to grab Bakugo and throw him out of harms way and to Jeanist.
Tomura recognizes Mirio and calls
him another All Might Zealot. Mirio introduces himself with his hero name, Lemillion,
and that his job for the day is as a guard and messenger. He’s supposed to keep
any other villains from breaking into the cage to give Tomura backup. But he decided
helping everyone keep Tomura from killing the heroes is more important. He asks
Tomura why he is so destructive. Tomura says its because society has failed
everyone, and Mirio accuses him of just being upset that he doesn’t have any
friends. This seems to legitimately stun Tomura, giving Mirio a chance to use
Nejire’s power to boost his punch. He slams his fist into the man’s gut and
says if he cared about people he’d know there are loads of things worth not destroying.
Mirio is scared, but hopeful that they can keep Tomura down for a bit longer.
Jeanist helps Bakugo up and offers
to stitch up his arm. Bakugo doesn’t say anything but starts to cry. This
clearly shakes Jeanist to his core. He says that he’ll stitch Bakugo up, but he
should stay back for the rest of the fight. Tomura is operating at a level way
beyond what they feared. They brought Bakugo along because he had experience
fighting Tomura, but with his power boost, that experience isn’t enough to help
anymore. He tells Bakugo to rest. But to his shock, Bakugo starts muttering
ideas for a counter attack.
Mirio punches Tomura again,
physically and then again, emotionally, saying that if he had friends he wouldn’t
throw himself into destruction like this. He’d want to protect those friends.
This pierces the walls of hate and hands in Tomura’s mind, reaching all the way
to the Tenko Shimura at his core. Tenko has a flashback to when he told his mom
about friends. In the present, Tomura freaks out, mentioning his childhood friends
and how his dog always wanted to go on walks with him. So shut up. He throws
his tentacle at Mirio… which we know doesn’t affect him even a little bit. He
realize he touched a sore spot with Shigaraki, which surprised him. He notes
that the tentacle is easy to damage, but Tomura’s main body is much sturdier.
He tanked a hit from Nejire’s energy and isn’t even scratched. AFO makes his presence
known, saying to himself that this is weird. He’s supposed to have fully
integrated with Tomura, so why is a schism forming now? He realizes that the
Tenko bit of Tomura is resisting the integration. He decides that he can’t let
this go on and turns to go. Mirio chases after him, knowing that they can’t let
him get away. We get a flashback to what he’d planned with his classmates. They’d
decided that Amajiki and Nejire would open with big attacks, allowing him to
slip in and save Bakugo. He’d then distract Tomura for as long as possible, but
because he can just punch like a buff but otherwise average 18 year old, what
he’s really doing is buying time for Amajiki’s play.
Shigaraki approaches Jeanist.
Jeanist makes his cape try to choke him, but Shigaraki barely notices. Nejire flies
over and launches more bolts at Shigaraki, but again, barely notices. He
remembers Jeanist’s comment that they’d made UA into his coffin in the sky, saying
that what they really did was make their own grave. He causes his finger
tentacle to go wild and it starts slicing up Nejire. She flashes back to middle
school. She was one of those kids that was always asking questions of other people
and barely sitting still. She was just generally interested in people, but the
other students took her comments as her making fun or looking down on them with
her questions. She became quitter and colder after that, until she joined UA.
One day Amajiki came up to her and asks her about her hair and what sort of
products she uses, egged on by some of their classmates. This breaks the dam in
her and she goes back to being the gal always asking questions. She says that
first question was what led to all of this, to her friendship with Amajiki and
Mirio, and to getting so much stronger. In the present, she unleashes a bigger
blast to try to slow Shigaraki down. She thinks to herself that she knows what
Amajiki’s Vast Hybrid attack can do. It’s slow, but it’s a devastating attack.
We see some of her spiral energy is being funneled into Amajiki. He’s mixed
just a shit ton of stuff, (animals and fruits mostly) to turn his arm into a
cannon shaped mouth, which is currently gobbling up the energy. Mirio runs up
on Shigaraki, thinking to himself that he believes in Amajiki. He flashes back
to a time when he told, for probably the thousandth time, to be confident in himself.
Amajiki knows that if this fails, they’re all dead. He’s scared, but he remembers
how Fat Gum, Kirishima, Tetsutetsu and Mirio used to encourage him. He says
that the weight of those words used to feel crushing but now they’re lifting
him up. He unleashes Vast Hybrid: Plasma cannon. The high energy beam shreds Shigaraki’s
tentacle and fries the man himself. He tries to attack through it, but Mirio close
lines him. The beam cuts through the barrier and into the distance. Manual
watches it go by and looks shocked.
After the attack, Amajiki is exhausted,
his cannon arm destroyed. Mirio is also on his last legs, and Nejire got her
stomach sliced up badly. Unfortunately, the attack didn’t stop Shigaraki. He almost
crushes them all, but Jeanist pulls them all away with his cables. He asks if
they really though an attack like that could hurt someone who is the
equivalent to pique All Might. Bakugo gets up and starts walking toward Shigaraki.
He mutters to Jeanist to use his first aid on the others. Jeanist tries to grab
him and stop him, but Bakugo zooms away and right up into Shigaraki’s face. He
unleashes a blast point blank. Shigaraki takes the hit and tries to counter,
but Bakugo dodges and blasts him again. Present Mic’s narration comes in to
tell us that Bakugo’s training with his abilities basically upgraded his power.
Instead of just releasing explosive sweat from his palms, he now does it across
his body. It hurts like hell but allows him to move at absurd speeds. He dodges
another attack and blast Tomura again. As he rockets around he realizes that he’s
copying Izuku. Izuku made an art of dodging attacks and countering. He asks if
he can ever really catch up to Izuku. Shigaraki is infuriated by Bakugo and he
doesn’t know why. The part of him that is AFO says that he’s just like ‘that
insect,’ thinking of Kudo, whom from the flashback we see he strangled with his
bare hands. Kudo and Bakugo are both ‘extras’ in his mind, so he wants to know
why he’s feeling panic rising in him. He goes for a big hit, swearing to obliterate
him as Bakugo unleashes another explosion. Bakugo enters the Mindscape and sees
All Might’s Vestige within him. He apologizes to All Might’s Vestige, saying
that when he met him he was kind of a punk. Mental Bakugo pulls out his trading
card and says that he can’t tell All Might how badly he wanted an autograph.
In the present, we see one second
before everything happened. Bakugo is about to blast, Shigaraki is about to
slam, and Mirko, Jeanist, Nejire and Mirio all try to in some way block the
attack or get Bakugo out of the way. It doesn’t work. Everyone is knocked back,
Bakugo’s heart appears to stop, and he hits the ground. We see the All Might
trading card fall out of his pocket, burnt. We cut to Mitsuki and Masura Bakugo
watching a weather report. Basically, Dabi’s fires caused temperature spikes
that are creating a massive thunderstorm. Mitsuki mentions that that isn’t
good, as her son really hates the rain. Lady, he’s got bigger issues right now.
Back at UA, Shigaraki mocks the heroes for trying to catch him off guard by copying
the previous fights. He says their part is done now, and from now on this is Shigaraki’s
story. Jeanist isn’t listening, he’s looking over Bakugo and panicking, saying
that this might hurt… before he and everyone watching realize that Katsuki Bakugo
has died. Hell of a place to stop.
Obviously, you, me, and anyone with
even a passing knowledge of this series knows that Bakugo did not in fact die,
but that was a hell of a death fake out. Well… I suppose it’s not a fake out
since his heart has definitely stopped. Death that is reversed? Maybe that’s
better… whatever, that was a dramatic as hell final attack from Bakugo. I
always love a good bit of clarity when a character does a big all or nothing
attack and this was a great one. Having Bakugo get his bell rung this hard,
only for him to get back up and rush Shigaraki again with an attack that seemed
to legitimately scare him was perfect. I love that Bakugo reflected on his relationship
with Izuku and realized that Izuku is the perfect person to battle Shigaraki. He’s
a master of evades and counters by this point. And I loved that emotional
vulnerability he showed when he told All Might’s Vestige that he wanted an autograph.
If you’re wondering how that got there, remember at the end of MHA: Heroes
Rising where Izuku somehow gave Bakugo a temporary hit of OFA so they could
defeat Nine? From that. Yes, the movies are canon even if they weren’t part of
the manga run. It’s legit sad to see that burnt card, I hope All Might gets him
another. Knowing Bakugo he’d keep both. It was also nice to see the Big Three
get a chance to shine as a group. While they’d been hyped up a lot up to this
point, they hadn’t really gotten to work as a team like this before. They were
split up for most of the raid on the Shia Hassaikai base, and after that Mirio
was Quirkless for a while, and after that they’ve been split up. I do see the
hype for these three, as they work well together. Mirio as team leader and main
decoy, Nejire on ranged DPS and Amajiki as the mid-range fighter with the potential
to unleash a huge blast, they’re combination is phenomenal. Mirio finding the
nerve to poke at within Shigaraki to widen the crack that remains between
Tomura and AFO was also nice. The dude can be a bit of a ditz, but he cut right
to the heart of Tomura, who is Tenko, and poke the ‘you don’t have any friends!’
nerve. Shame he couldn’t poke it harder and maybe Bakugo wouldn’t have to make
his second trip to the pearly gates. One more and he gets a free sundae. That’s
a Team Four Star DBZ Abridged joke for ya. Next episode is looking like an Empire
Strikes Back moment for the League of Villains, so be prepared for that.
See you later. Good night and stay safe.
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/viewer-log-my-ep-156822873
Bluesky: @basicssuperhero.bsky.social
No comments:
Post a Comment