Viewer Log: My Hero Academia ep 156

 All For One gets a triple smackdown. 

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Viewer Log: My Hero Academia ep 155

Revel in the Dark. 

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Viewer Log: My Hero Academia ep 154

 Some old faces return.

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Viewer Log: My Hero Academia ep 153

Some people will do anything to help their friends. 

Last time on My Hero Academia we got some backstory on the stoic Mezo Shoji. Shoji grew up in a rural area where things were… tense with Heteromorphic quirk havers. While by the river one day, he saw a little girl getting swept away and dived in to save her. This was his one good memory of his hometown, and unfortunately was the root of his main bad one. See, rather than focusing on him saving a life, the other villagers were infuriated that the freaky armed Shoji kid touched one of their ‘normal’ children. He was severely beaten for this, which gave him scars on his face, which lead to him wearing a mask. He and Koda volunteered to go with Present Mic to try to protect Central Hospital and the captured Kurogiri from being released. He’d learned from Ippon, the large fox woman, that Heteromorphs are gathering to raid the place. They faced off against Spinner, who was given a gigantification quirk to make himself more physically intimidating, at the cost of his brain, and an armored quirk to make it harder to stop him. Shoji fights hard against Spinner while trying to convince the civilian Heteromorphs that lashing out against everyone is the wrong thing to do. He very nearly convinces a few, but Spinner strings together enough words to convince his followers that hurting those that hurt you is always justified and h charges into the hospital. Oh, and Koda captures this spider-face dude who was acting as Spinner’s interpreter via an Alfred Hitchcock reference. Which was neat. Enough recapping. Let’s get to it, shall we?

 

The episode begins right where the last one left off, with Spinner in his new armored form breaking into Central Hospital. We learn that before the mission began, AFO gave Spinner a recording device, saying that when he finds Kurogiri to use it to play either his or Tomua’s voice in order to rouse the perfect Nomu. He says that in this Spinner has to become Tomura’s hero and free Kurogiri. Several Heteromorphs follow him in, but they’re met with the medical staff. The doctors and nurses stand as a wall trying to keep the invaders from the patients. They don’t say a word, just staring defiantly at them. The rioters remember Shoji telling them that they better have a plan for when they go into the hospital. This seems to break something in some of the rioters, who drop their weapons. Spinner rushes ahead, not noticing. We enter his mind space, where Spinner still sees himself as a normal lizard man. He admits that he never thought that he’d amount to much, but he decided that if he followed ‘him,’ maybe he’d do something important. He asks Tomura Shigaraki if he can see him, and if he can see all the people following him. In meat space he breaks through a wall, looks back and is only then made aware that he’s all alone. Or so it looks for just a moment. Present Mic walks up, saying that Shoji broke through to his followers. He knows what the plot was here and he refuses to allow Kurogiri to be used again. He unleashes a sonic boom that obliterates Spinner’s plates, knocking him to the ground and frying his recorder. I guess the damage he’s taken today has finally caught up with him as well, as he deflates as he passes out.

 

We jump back a few minutes to when Present Mic first chased after Spinner. He left Shoji and Koda outside and tells them to do their best to handle the mob. Shoji stands his ground while Koda wrestles Spiderface to the ground. A goon rushes Shoji and tries to smack him in the head with an axe. He’s saved at the last second by the pig-man that had been part of the group that followed Spinner inside. Hank, as I shall hereby call him, says that he thinks they’re channeling their anger the wrong way. Spiderface tries to keep the hate high, but Hank and the others are very conflicted at this point. Hank says that when he first heard the call to action, he felt better standing up and doing something. After seeing Shoji stand up to them, Spinner’s melted brain indifference, and the medical staff standing up to protect the innocent, he’s not sure that he CAN blame everyone anymore. Spiderface starts to panic, as he and the other PLF members were counting on using the civilian rioters as their meat shields in this fight. He tries to get everyone angry again, but he’s just so less intimidating with Koda grappling him. Hank asks Shoji if he was wrong to ask, if he should have just sat quietly and hoped for the best. Shoji tells him that his feelings are valid, that they need to bring their oppressors into the light. He may have acted rashly coming here, but when push came to shove, Hank and the others didn’t lose their heads. Shoji says that they’re all the light that will help bring change to this world. The fight goes out of the mob, which allows Rock Lock and the other heroes to run into the hospital and back up Present Mic.

 

Present Mic notices that Kurogiri’s shadowy form is still completely inert. He notes that Kurogiri hasn’t moved since the day when Shirakumo broke through for just a moment and tipped them off about the League’s plans. He wonders if that act of defiance broke him beyond repair. Spinner is conscious but paralyzed. Spinner calls himself a failure. He remembers a conversation with Dabi a while back where the prodigal son of the Todoroki house called him an empty cosplayer. He remembers how he got started as Spinner with the League, and then Shoji asked him to think about how he’s using his anger. Spinner, sorrowfully, says that he DID and that he’d chosen to follow Tomura Shigaraki. He wanted to lift up his friend. Present Mic reports Spinner is down and prepares to do the hard thing. He knows that Kurogiri is a major lynchpin of the League’s plans, and that even if he stopped Spinner here, someone else will come for him. He hates himself for having to do this, but in his mind, Shirakumo is dead and his other best friend, Aizawa, has already given a leg and an eye for this fight. He inhales and prepares to execute Kurogiri, begging Shirakumo for forgiveness. This rouses Spinner, who grabs Tomura’s hand mask that he brought along with him. He gets the hand on Kurogiri and tells him to save Tomura. This rouses Kurogiri just as Present Mic unleashes a sonic scream. Spinner gets knocked out, but Kurogiri is unaffected. He breaks free, a bit of his shadows peeled back so Present Mic could see Shigarkumo’s face in the black. He says that he’ll protect Tomura Shigaraki and envelop everyone in darkness.

 

We cut to National Weather Service report in the US. The weather girl informs the viewers that the US is experiencing a weird amount of cloud cover due to the heat and smoke that the battle between the house of Todoroki has created. The weather girl turns the report into a speech, saying that our leaders are selling us all out to All For One and that people need to rise up to stop it. Her producer cuts her off and says that the network will have their heads for this.

 

Back at Kamino, Dabi is powering up. Iida keeps Shoto from launching himself at his brother, saying that Dabi’s heat is too intense for him and that he’s already exhausted himself using his Phosphor. Shoto still struggles to get into the fight, knowing that he’s the only one that can really stand up to Dabi. He’s frustrated that Dabi is rallying so much faster and stronger than he is. Dabi is also frustrated, as he realizes that he’s too far away from Gunga villa to reach his dad. He also knows that if he stick around trying to kill Shoto, his body will definitely give out. He starts to fly away, planning to try to reach Endeavor anyway. Shoto tries to bait him into fighting more, but Dabi isn’t listening. Burnin’ is shocked that Dabi is still standing, as she was assured that his body is compatible with his quirk, so he should be down by now. Skeptic radios in and says that someone is covering Dabi’s travel cost. A moment later, Kurogiri’s portal opens.

 

We return to the Coffin in the Sky. Rain is pelting them and the fortress is floating slightly to the side. Manual tells Aizawa and Monoma that with the storm getting worse he might have trouble controlling the water. Monoma is more interested in making sure that the history books make it clear that he’s the one that won the battle for them. He knows that the others are working hard to battle Tomura, and all he has to do is not blink, there’s no way that he can complain. Then the Kurogiri portal opens and Present Mic is thrown through along with the hand-mask.

 

We return to Gunga Villa where the restored AFO explains his brilliant plan. He says in his experience, he’s learned to bet on people’s emotions. He knew that Spinner, lonely, forsaken Spinner, who valued his friendship with Tomura so much, would put his entire being into getting to Kurogiri. The hand mask was implanted with something that got Kurogiri up to speed on what has been happening. He has Kurogiri bring Dabi to face off against Endeavor, and for Hawks, he has his own karmic punishment. That being Toga in the form of Twice. Remember, if Toga has a strong affinity for the person who’s blood she drinks, she can copy their powers as well. AFO tells Hawks that, if he hadn’t prioritized killing the ‘poor broken soul’ that was Twice, this is how that last battle would have ended. Hawks screams at Endeavor to destroy the clones, NOW.

 

We jump back a few minutes to the island. The League are holding out against the heroes, Toga is doing her best to hide her movements by causing swells in the water before she attacks. She nearly stabs Tsu, but Uraraka intercepts. She, Tsu and two pros with sensor powers prepare to capture Toga. Gang Orca and his squad take down the Nomu that was breaking its body to pieces to cause the waves that hid Toga. He announces that this Nomu doesn’t have super regeneration either, and that they’ve nearly gotten the villains captured. They just have to keep at it and the battle is theirs. Toga starts to panic, as fewer allies means its harder for her to use her hit and run tactics. She considers using Twice’s blood to take on his form and use his clones to escape, but she’s only got enough blood for forty minutes at the most. With her stuck on the island, Twice’s Sad Man’s Parade would be wasted. She wonders if they realized she had Twice’s blood and that’s why they brought her here. She decides to put her faith in Spinner getting teleportation back on the table and goes for the vial. Narrator Present Mic interrupts for a moment to say that before today, Toga was a being of instinct. She really didn’t strategize or think things out, she reacted. But the death of Twice and seeing her house burn has caused her to shift into full villainy. She tries to drink the vial, but Tsu sees and fires her tongue at it, shattering the vial. Only for Toga to admit that that vial was a decoy. It was filled with a chemical that draws the Nomu’s attention. The spike Nomu fires a volley at Tsu, disabling her and giving Toga the opportunity to take Tsu shape and dive at her. Using Tsu as a shield, she drinks Twice’s blood. As she made Twice clones, Kurogiri manifests and asks what her desire is. She wants to kill Hawks and then every other hero. She tells him to scatter her around the battlefield. Uraraka tries to stop Toga, launching wires at her, but she cuts them off. Uraraka then tries her last gambit, saying that they hadn’t had their talk, about boys and romance. Toga, regretfully says that she knows and wishes that they could have before slipping through the portal.

 

In the present, Twice clones start raining down. Hawks is terrified of this, he was sure that he’d destroyed all of the samples the League had of Twice’s blood when he was undercover, but they must have had some left. He wonders if Dabi somehow planned this. Toga tells Hawks he’s a dead bird as she unleashes “Infinite Doubles: Sad Man’s Death Parade.” A wave of Twice clones spray down on them. Dabi’s speech at Toga’s house is echoed, saying that he’s going to make sure that they keep laughing, forever as the episode ends.

 

One thing that I like about All for One is that he understands empathy. Don’t get me wrong, he’s an amoral sociopath that will use anyone and everyone for his goals, but he understands people with more complex emotions form connections to others and how to use them. He knows how to weaponize them. It’s why making Spinner, a man that still bears scars from when he was a NEET (an anti-social shut-in) without a friend, fetch Shigaraki was so brilliant. Spinner is desperate to be useful to Tomura Shigaraki, his first genuine friend that he shared a lot in common with. He’d fight tooth and claw, sacrificing anything and everything to help him. Which is why he was willing to leap in the way of Present Mic’s finisher in order to potentially free Kurogiri. And that just makes it sadder when I realized that, if you took supervillainy out of the equation, Spinner and Tomura would have been bros and probably been each other’s support system that they needed so badly! Same with Uraraka and Toga, they seem to have a sort of spiritual connection that really would have helped the more destructive Toga get through the rough patch that has been her whole life had they met under other circumstances. The fact that Toga would rather get her revenge on Hawks than to live out her friendship fantasy with Uraraka says a lot. So… Kurogiri is back on the board, the villains have ferried their most powerful fighters back into position, and now all that’s stopping All For One from joining Tomura and finally claiming One For All is his level of interest in this upcoming fight. Thank god that the man loves the drama that’s about to unfold or he’d be at UA already. Have a good night, and stay safe. 

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Viewer Log: My Hero Academia ep 152

Shoji takes center stage.  

Last time on My Hero Academia Izuku and Tomura had their rematch. He made it to the fight thanks to Ethan, the fighter pilot and Star and Stripe’s squad. Seeing Bakugo dead and most of his allies badly beaten and not moving, he briefly freaks out, but Mirio gets him to focus by saying everyone (besides Bakugo, but they’re working on him) is alive. Izuku focuses on the fight and Mirio lets Izuku know that AFO and Tomura seem to be not as unified as they might think. This point is proven as Shigaraki’s body continues to Mutate and one of the hands he grows seems to have the face of his family members appear on them. Izuku uses all of his powers together to hit Tomura as hard as possible. He’s able to knock him to the ground, but AFO begins to rally within Tomura’s body. And we zoom out and learn that the other villains are rallying as well, Dabi’s fire is engulfing Kamino Ward, a huge storm is forming over the island Toga is on, Gunga villa starts to smoke, and we end on the hulked-out Spinner standing over some carnage. Damn. Enough recapping. Let’s get to it, shall we?

 

We open on a rainy day. This is a flashback, we’re seeing a day when a mob appeared outside of someone’s home and forced him to leave the village, saying that he’s a monster and that he should never come back. We then return to the present… or well, a few minutes before Izuku joined the fight at the UA fly coffin. Spinner led an assault on Central Hospital trying to free Kurogiri, the Nomu that future narrator Izuku dubs the masterpiece of that awful project. His army had about 1500 members and was composed of heteromorph members of the former Paranormal Liberation Front and ordinary folks that joined up to follow Spinner. The heroes are doing their best to hold them off, Rock Lock freezes several in place, and Present Mic unleashes a huge sonic attack to try to force people back, asking himself when his old friend Shirikumo (the man that was modified into Kurogiri) when he got so popular. He gets knocked aside by an attack and almost skewered, but he’s saved by Koda summoning a flock of crows to grab him. Present Mic asks what happened to Shoji and Koda says they got separated. The rioters break through, saying that no one that ‘looks human’ can understand what they’re going through.

 

One of the league members preaches the lies of modern society, saying that while cities might be ‘more accepting’ but going out into the countryside and Heteromorphs are treated as monsters. He unmasks himself, revealing a spidery face, and says that they’ll unmask society as well. He flashes back to talking with Skeptic, who says that it doesn’t matter if the League of Villains are real allies of their liberation or not, they’ll mold them into the figure heads they need. We see this in action with Spinner, who is dubbed the group’s leader, but is currently a drooling idiot, barely able to understand what is going on around him. He prepares to execute an officer with his huge sword, but is stopped by Shoji attacking, attacking with hundreds of fists. He gets mobbed and pulled down by the crowd. They call him a traitor to his ‘kind.’ Shoji counters by asking what any of their cries for equality have to do with attacking a hospital. He reminds them that the heroes prioritizes getting the Jaku hospital patients before the raid really started. We learn that it was Shoji’s memory we saw at the start of the episode, not Spinner, and obviously being forced from his home messed with him a lot. He throws off the mob with his tentacles, asking if they have a plan to do something similar, and if they don’t, he’ll never forgive them. This is the first time we see Shoji without his mask, and we see that he’s got a sort of horse-like face. And he’s got several prominent scars around his mouth.  

 

Shoji’s words confused Spinner, his brain is basically mush at this point. And Spinner’s confusion is increased as his ‘followers’ ask him to give them orders. Spinner probably was at least a decent mouthpiece before his transformation, but whatever Quirk he was given to hulk out his body definitely fried his brain. The shouting drives him to shout that he don’t care. Spider-face tries to translate what Spinner said to something more inspiring and orders everyone forward. They move, but the group has clearly lost some momentum already. Shoji asks Spinner why he’s doing this and accuses him of setting back heteromorph rights back 30 years with his actions. Spinner tells him to shut up. We get a flashback to when re was given the muscle quirk ‘Bulk up,’ and learn that AFO gave him a third quirk on top of that called ‘Scale Mail.’ Scale Mail caused dozens of blood red plates to erupt painfully from Spinner’s body, covering him in blood red armor. He also briefly remembers bonding with Tomura over the fact they’re both gamers before he charges Shoji. He slashes and takes off one of Shoji’s hands. I’m pretty sure that’s a dupli-arm hand, so he should be fine, but still, graphic.

 

Koda is stressed out at seeing Shoji hurt, as I guess the two of them are good friends. We flashback to a night with class 1A where Shoji showed his face to his friends and said that he got the scars due to a ‘blood purification’ ritual. See, his parents didn’t have his additional limbs, so they could pass as more human than Shoji could. When the rest of the villagers found out about him, there was a riot where they tried to kill him but Shoji escaped. He says that while the city Heteromorphs like Koda, Tokoyami and Tsu might think of these as ancient history, they’re still very real. Ashido says that the world shouldn’t have people like that, but Shoji shrugs and says that’s a nice thought. Mineta realizes that when he first met Shoji, he said something about how he had crazy octopus’ arms, and just now realizes that might have been offensive to him. He profusely apologizes. Shoji laughs this off and says that is no big deal. He says that they need to be able to talk about stuff like this. He also adds that he’s seen popularity lists of heroes that folks assume will turn bad and the ones that top those tend to be scarred heteromorphs. He wears a mask to try to not give folks the wrong first impression. He says that his life has been hard, but there’s been good stuff too. We flashback farther to when he was at the river near his hometown and saw another kid drowning in the water. He leapt in and save them, the little girl sobbed in his arms, and he says that he’s instead going to focus on the one good memory he has. The others all give him a big group hug and tell him that he can’t think of it like that, promising to help him make good memories that outnumber the bad. Shoji is touched by their words, but knows it’s a lot harder than that. Heteromorph prejudice has been an issue for a century and no one generation can fix it. He swears to make the world he leaves behind better than the way he found it. In the present, Koda grows a crest on his head… which I guess was always a part of his body, but he somehow repressed it to seem more human? Maybe? Who knows?

 

Shoji battles with Spinner, screaming that nothing that has happened to them can be justified, but fighting like this will just make it worse. As they fight, his words seem to get mob to calm down a little and question what is happening. Spider-face says that Shoji’s words are the naïve words of a child. He’d probably had said worse, but then a crown of crows start to encircle him, a crying Koda telling him to NEVER laugh at Shoji. Shoji wraps his extra arms around the main one, bulking it up to and power up his punches. Spinner says that power is gross, but Shoji screams that’s just who he is. Present Mic flashes back to before the fight where he saw Shoji and Koda asking to be put on the team protecting Central hospital. All Might and Aizawa were shocked that he knows about that, as he hadn’t mentioned it to the students yet. Shoji says that he spoke with the fox lady, Ippon, and she let him know that things weren’t great for Heteromorphs out in the city and that they’re all being headhunted to join a group that will attack the hospital. He and Koda what to face this head on. After that, Aizawa asked Mic to look after his students. Present Mic does just that, sprinting to try to back Shoji up and mentioning that these kids are way stronger than he and Aizawa were as students.

 

Koda has a flashback to when his mother told him about his powers. She told him that he might grow horns like hers as he grew up. She says that that’ll let him communicate with animals from much farther away. She adds that she used to be bullied because of her horns, but Koda’s father (who was a non-heteromorph) stood up for her. She tells Koda to follow his dad’s example and stand up for people in need. He uses his big attack “Hitchcock BIRDS!” to knock Spider-face from the building in a flurry of black wings. Present Mic does a sonic blast to shatter Spinner’s blade, letting Shoji get a powerful blow that knocks Spinner to the ground. He screams at everyone to not let these villains use their scars against them, and that if they keep fighting like this, next time it could be their children that get used. He flashes back to just after when he was attacked, the little girl he saved crying and saying she was sorry. That maybe if he hadn’t saved her, he wouldn’t have been attacked for being different. Spinner rights himself and catches himself on a building. He screams that his hatred won’t go away. He roars at his followers that if someone hurts them, they have the RIGHT to hurt them back. He roars that they should follow him to the future before leaping away. That rallies the Heteromorphs and they start fighting again. Shoji is at a loss that Spinner is still up after that attack. The gorilla head cop we’ve seen a few times draws his dun and says that they can’t keep this up. The episode ends as Spinner breaks into the hospital as gunshots ring out.

 

I’ll be honest, it sucks that we’re one hundred and fifty-two episodes and four movies into this series and we’re just now getting this background stuff on Shoji. Shoji has been a background character for all this time, but he’s one of the most visually distinct characters of class 1A. He’s like six feet tall with six arms and a mask over his face, he naturally draws the eye. But I don’t think he’s ever had more than a dozen lines in a season, he spoke so rarely that I am just now learning he’s voiced by Ian Sinclair, the voice actor for Brooke from One Piece. We’re just now learning that he’s been the target of heteromorph racism and been severely beaten because of it. I get it, manga writers are on extremely tight timetables and just about all of them have to be plodders, not plotters (ie, they aren’t given the luxury of being able to write their stories much in advance), so there probably wasn’t time for Horikoshi to set this up. I wish he’d had the time, as Shoji backstory is compelling as hell and I wish it was backfilled like this. That’s enough complaining. I do like this fight overall, with Shoji doing his best to try to turn these justifiably angry people away from causing more damage and unfortunately perpetuating the prejudice cycle. People think of them as inhuman monsters and treat them like dirt, so they retaliate and unfortunately prove to anyone watching that they are inhuman monsters. I like that Shoji’s backstory has the bittersweet memory with this kid. Like, he got to feel like a hero at a young age by saving this child from drowning, but it was that very heroic action that led to him getting maimed so badly that he chose to wear a mask to not put people off. That’s just such a real background. I like that Shoji is also socially aware enough to know that he had to be at the fighting with the Heteromorphs to be a voice of reason in a chaotic situation. It shows that he’s a very intelligent young man and that he can think strategically. Plus getting to see him rock his full strength was cool. I liked that they also gave Koda a bit to do, showing off his own strengthened power and that he’s not one to take kindly to someone being mean to a friend of his. Spinner is just straight up tragic at this point. He was a social outcast that found meaning in a crazed man’s speech about heroic purity and justice through violence, finding camaraderie and real friendship with this group of other social outcasts, to being made the face of a political revolution, which unfortunately led to his brain being fried because he could be made into a better tool if given more power. It’s not great for Spinner. Especially if a theory I had about multiple quirks pans out and it’s revealed that the more you have the faster your body breaks down. Three seems like it’ll do more damage to him than two is all I’m saying. So, Spinner is breaking out Kurogiri out unless someone gets in his way. Guess you’ll have to wait and see who steps up. Or watch ahead of me. Either way. Have a good night, and stay safe. 

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