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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Bluesky: @basicssuperhero.bsky.social
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