Revel in the Dark.
Last time on My Hero Academia
Izuku got some unexpected backup. Kurogiri used his warp gates to spread Twice
clones along every battlefield and get Dabi to the fight with his father. Chaos
ensues. Hawks does his best to slow down AFO from reaching Tomura, and Endeavor
resolves to stop Dabi. Tomura’s mutation culminated in a huge energy burst as
he sheds his skin, damaging the anti-gravity units on the Flying Coffin. And at
the same time, Skeptic hacks into the system and prepares to get control of UA’s
refugee area. But he’s ultimately stopped by La Brava. Gentle Criminal’s number
1 fan agreed to help the heroes combat the villains for her beloved. She’d
hacked Skeptic’s system before, so wresting control from him again wasn’t hard.
She works frantically to get the system up and running again while Gentle buys
her time. Gentle Criminal, we learned, was the sole reason why his prison was
the only one to have not one Jailbreaker after AFO started demolishing the
super max prisons. As a reward for that bit of heroism, he asked for two
things. To see his La Brava again, and to do whatever he could to help Izuku
Midoriya. La Brava gave him a Plus Ultra version of her Love power up, making
his elastic Quirk strong enough to slow the fall of UA. Shigaraki, temporarily
stunned from his evolution, starts to move and almost touches the ground with
his hand… but then it’s shot off. We pull back to see a bandaged Lady Nagant on
the roof of the hospital reloading her gun arm. Enough recapping. Let’s get to
it, shall we?
We find ourselves at Central
Hospital just after Kurogiri was reactivated and escaped. It looks like the
hospital staff are doing their damnedest to find room for anyone that was hurt
in the riot. One doctor insists that his patient get back in bed immediately,
as she’s liable to reopen her wounds. The woman is Lady Nagant. She’s looking
much better than a woman that was basically set on fire last week should. Sure,
she’s covered in bandages still, but the only noticeable scarring is the lines on
her face that cut through her eyebrows. She says she doesn’t care and wants to
be pointed at the enemy. The doctor says that he can’t help a Jailbreaker. She
keeps struggling forward and the doctor tries to help her, but Rock Lock shows
up and says that he’ll take responsibility for her and anything she does. He
gives her his special hero phone that has been sending him updates about the
battle. He warns her that it’s bleak out there. He says that they’ve put all
their faith in Izuku Midoriya as he’s the only one that can possibly win. And
it’s because of that and Nagant’s dedication to follow through on something Izuku
told her that Rock Lock is willing to trust her. Nagant makes it to the roof
and uses her quirk to target Tomura. She makes the shot and takes off Tomura’s
hand. The shot visibly damages her, causing blood to shoot out along her scars.
Despite the pain, she insists she’s got one more shot in her. She tells us that
Izuku and Hawks helped remind her of what’s important in life and reminded her
of the drive that made her want to be a hero in the first place. She takes the
second shot and removes Tomura’s other hand as he tries to touch the ground.
Izuku reacts with lightning speed, springing
at Shigaraki and grappling with him. He uses Black Whip to grab Tomura around
the wrists. He runs them both off the side of the Coffin. Togeta asks where he’s
going, and Izuku tells us that if Shigaraki can use his powers, its pointless
to keep him on the coffin, he’s too dangerous for the injured so he’s putting
some distance between them.
We peek into the mindscape again
and AFO isn’t having a fun time. He’s falling apart within Tomura’s mind,
throwing up purple bile and fingers. He rages against Nagant and her stupid
betrayal of him. Tomura cuts in and tells his master that betrayal doesn’t feel
good now does it? Tomura’s apparently done some thinking, and he realized that
AFO had tried to use the same tactics on Lady Nagant that he did on Tomura. He
tried to use her resentment and hatred towards specific people to fuel her
rage, but it backfired with her. He recognizes now that AFO used his
connections to Nana Shimura and All Might to push him, to shape him into the
vessel that he wanted. AFO needed Tomura to be his weapon against All Might as
he was the only real shot AFO had at getting OFA. Eventually, they began the procedure
to merge their consciousnesses and Tomura didn’t really care about that
experience. He claims that he was able to take the core part of himself, the
part of him that is still Tenko Shimura in some way, and hid it away and protected
it until it was needed. The visualization is he used a bunch of hands to
surround himself in a complex cage. He claims to not need AFO anymore and that
he’ll use his powers like he wants to now. AFO is starting to panic at this
point and calls out to Kurogiri and demands he warp Shigaraki back to AFO’s
main body so they can regroup. Kurogiri tries to respond… but we see Oboro
Shirakumo manifest within the black swirl of Kurogiri’s body. The Kurogiri part
wants to obey his orders, but the Shirakumo part has such an overwhelming
desire to protect his friends that he’s got Kurogiri trapped in a loop. Tomura
fully breaks free of AFO’s binding in his mind. He says that he won’t be
controlled or have his heart changed like the weak-willed fools like Gentle
Criminal and Nagant. He states that everything wrong in his life started in his
wretched excuse for his childhood home.
In meat space, he tells Izuku that
he wants to destroy EVERYTHING connected to that old house. That’s the only
thing that will save him. They land and Izuku and him separate, though Izuku
keeps the Black Whip bindings on him. Izuku says he can’t let that happen, but
he can’t pretend that he didn’t see a child crying out for help within Shigaraki
in the last few minutes.
Gentle faulter, his air trampoline
starting to rip from the strain. He says that the love powerup he got isn’t to
blame, he simply stretched himself too thin trying to hold up everything. La
Brava tells him to just hang on a little longer as she’s almost got her new
flight plan programmed in. Alone with his thoughts for a moment, Gentle wonders
if Izuku left the Flying Coffin because he trusted Gentle to save it. He shakes
his head after a moment, believing that Izuku probably doesn’t even realize he’s
there. He realizes that there are no cameras or an audience to this and that he’s
made peace with the fact he’s at best going to be an unsung hero when this is
all over… until he realizes that two of the business course students are filming
him from out a window. He tries to be chivalrous, telling the dumb boys to get
inside as he could drop them at any moment. They tell him to shut up and let them
film. When he starts to protest again, they tell HIM that this is their part in
the fighting. The business course students are filming to make a real record of
what’s happening. He says that part of the civil unrest that is happening is because
they didn’t have good enough records to refute some of the things that Dabi
said about Endeavor. They’re making sure that doesn’t happen again and this is
how business course students act like heroes. La Brava compliments the camera
work as she gets the engines back online. Tsukauchi tells her to stop fooling
around, and La Brava says it’s fine, she’s working on her next project. She’s
hacked the business course students’ phones and is uploading their footage to
the internet. She says Gentle might not care how he’s viewed anymore, but she’ll
be certain the whole world knows what a hero her beloved is. The engines kick
on and Gentle’s load gets lighter.
On the upper part of the Flying Coffin,
Kurogiri is still perplexed about what he should be doing. Aizawa and Monoma get
overwhelmed by Twice clones, Toga saying that she’ll make them all pay. Present
Mic and Aizawa are thrown off the side. Kaminari sees them fall and his rage is
great enough that he kicks up an electric attack that melts a bunch of Twice
clones. Before they hit the water, though, Kurogiri opens up a warp gate
catching them both. Kaminari asks if Kurogiri just saved them. Mandalay says
maybe, but it’s just as likely that Kurogiri was trying to get rid of erasure,
as that would help Shigaraki. She tells them that they can only hope they’ll be
okay for now. They need to trust in Midoriya. We see Tomura snap the Black Whip
bonds as Izuku rushes him.
Back at Gunga Villa, AFO is trying
to escape and muses about the situation. He says that Tomura was meant to
become him in a very literal sense. He didn’t want to have his and Tomura’s
personalities mixing to form a new being that was a bit of him and a bit of
Tomura, like what seemed to happen. He obviously banked on his mind being
stronger than Tomura’s and being able to repress the other man. He
underestimated Tomura’s rage. He plans on meeting up with Tomura and forcing another
Quirk factor on him, one that AFO doesn’t need anymore but will increase his Vestige’s
strength enough to let it dominate the body again. AFO says that will be how
his story ends. He just needs to get away from a little gnat. That gnat being Hawks.
Hawks says that this is all of their story and he refuses to let it end the way
he wants. AFO turns his attention on Hawks and tells the other man that he
doesn’t realize how much the wind is blowing in his favor. AFO blasts Hawks and
disintegrates most of his body as a terrified Tokoyami watches… that is until
Hawks reforms looking like a Shoujo protagonist (the girl targeted equivalent
of the Shonen manga, focuses heavily on romance titles) and saying that he can’t
possibly die yet. We then learn that Shiketsu High has arrived. The students
were just meant to help their UA counterparts evacuate, but given the
Duplication of Twices, they decided to step in. Camie used her powers to make a
Hawks double to distract AFO while Shishikura uses his weird meatball powers to
push Hawks out of the way. Inasa Yoarashi is also there and is making a tornado
storm to throw off the Twices. Yoarashi announces that he’s the one that
dictates how the wind blows. Shishikura reveals that he’s here specifically to
avenge his father, who was a guard at one of the super max prisons. The other Shiketsu
academy students amplify the hero forces. One of them knocks a Twice Clone at
AFO, who obliterates it.
AFO reveals that he needs to touch a
person’s real body to steal their quirk, and he thought that’s why they tried
to keep the forces fighting him to a minimum and used range specialists like
Hawks and Endeavor. But they’re desperate now so he can’t blame them for
throwing caution to the wind. He mutates his back, causing spines to grow and
starts raining hellfire down on the heroes from the spines. He scoffs at the
heroes, asking if they REALLY think they can stand against him. AFO points out that
the only one who managed to hurt him was Endeavor and he’s not even there. We get
a quick glimpse of the Todoroki patriarch leading his prodigal son away from
the others. He says that the world today has forgotten what life was like
during his prime, that none of them remember what it was like before All Might
became the symbol of peace. He claims it was a world of darkness, a golden age
of suspicion and resentment. Yoarashi tells him ‘whatever’ and that they’re
only taught the important stuff in contemporary history. All he knows is that Shoto
is his buddy, and he’s been watching the house of Todoroki, he’s cheering them
on to the end. Their hot blood passion burned away his fear of AFO. AFO decides
that he’s going to kill Yoarashi first to stop the wind and then start taking
quirks. He tries to attack Yoarashi, but the wind throws off his attacks.
Yoarashi is encouraged to not let up and suck up the Duplication. He says he
will, as the shitty weather that was already here makes his wind power all the
stronger. He says that AFO’s the past and that tomorrow they’ll make a better world
without him in it. Hawks charges, he thinks about how OFA is a crystallization of
power and how it connects people. He thinks that Endeavor has been doing his
best to connect people too, as he forms a feather sword and prepares to strike.
AFO is surprised to see hope in Hawks’ eyes… but then realizes that hope is
wavering with all the stuff he’s thrown at them. The Shiketsu kids arriving to
bolster their forces just poured gasoline on the fire of his hope to try to
keep it going. Before he can attack Hawks, he senses something behind him. He
turns and sees Dark Shadow the size of a kaiju. Tokoyami is in an expositional
mood and tells AFO some important things he’s missed. 1. The storm clouds that
the fires created have made the area dark and overcast. 2. Dark Shadow gets
stronger the more darkness is around it. And 3. They know that he can’t steal power
through touching the power itself. IE, Endeavor was wrapped in his own flames,
effectively making him immune to having his Quirk stolen. He says this strategy
was the whole reason he was chosen to back up this group, Dark Shadow is his
power and it’s raring to go. He fully releases Dark Shadow and uses “Black
Abyss. Light of Baldur!” on him. Ya know AFO is legit afraid as he throws up a
barrier to try to block the attack rather than try to tank the blow like he has
with every other one. The fist passes through it and slams it into the ground.
We get a post credit scene, damn it
Studio Bones. We flash back a few minutes to when things started turning for
the worst. Hawks and AFO faced off, and Present Mic’s narration explains that
they both realized that this situation wasn’t as good or as bad as it could be.
We’re shown clones of Tomura, Dabi, and AFO mixed in with all the Twices, but
they’re destroyed extremely easily and without a fuss. Uraraka, Tsu, and Jiro
are running towards the fight and Tsu explains what she thinks is happening.
While Twice could use his quirk to make a copy of someone and have the copy use
the original’s power, Toga can’t. Tsu thinks it’s a side effect of Toga’s
mimicry being based on how much she likes the person she’s taken the form of.
Her clones just can’t make other clones with powers other than copy. She thinks
that maybe if they can cause some turmoil in Toga’s mind, maybe they can
disable the clones. Uraraka starts searching through the Duplication of Twices
for Toga. We’re shown Toga lost in the sea of Twices. She’s extremely confused
as she can’t make clones that can access their powers. She is confident she
loves Tomura, Dabi, and the others just as much as she loved Twice, but she can’t
make it work. Her panicked thoughts are played against her angry thoughts of
killing all the heroes. We’re shown one Twice that is standing perfectly still,
looking at their hands as she wonders aloud “Why can’t I become Jin?” That’s Twice’s
real name if you forgot it.
Once again, a rollercoaster of emotions.
I will definitely give Horikoshi props for this, the man knows how to add drama
and tension to a long fight without dragging it down. Obviously Izuku vs. Tomura
is the main fight, but while that’s only progressed forward minutes at this
point, I don’t feel like its dragging quite like the infamous destruction of
Namek plot line of Dragonball Z. If you’re too young to remember that,
there was a point in Z’s story where the villainous alien emperor Freeza
dropped a death ball to destroy the planet Namek rather than lose to series
protagonist Son Goku. He bragged that the planet would be destroyed in 5
minutes. The planet then continued to exist for six more episodes, or 120
minutes. Sort of kills the momentum when you’re on the third episode after a
declaration like that and the planet still hasn’t blown up. MHA has done a
better job flushing out the other big plot of this final arc, the battle with AFO,
that I’m fine hitting the pause button on Izuku’s fight repeatedly to catch up
what’s happening elsewhere. I like that while things are bleak for the heroes
at Gunga villa, they keep finding ways to keep going for just a few more
minutes. Back up arrives, heroes bust out bigger attacks, Hawks rallies yet
again to try to cut AFO down, and so on. I’m glad that this fight has so many
long distance fighters or else it’d be way more one sided now that AFO is able
to move so freely. Really would have taken the luster off any win Izuku gets if
a bunch of heroes and his close friends ended up losing their powers in the fight.
The Shiketsu kids getting a chance to shine is neat, particularly Yoarashi who
is still just so intense. The only downside of their arrival is Camie. Not for
anything she does… it’s just that I am never more aware that this supposedly 16-year-old
girl is actually voiced by a 39-year-old-woman than when she tries to use Gen Z
slang. Her English voice actor, Brittney Karbowski, is a millennial like me,
and you can just tell that she has no idea what the hell she’s saying when she’s
playing Camie. But that’s my big nitpick. And finally, while I’m annoyed by yet
another post credit scene, setting up Uraraka and cos plot line of tracking
down Toga to hopefully stop the Duplication of Twices is something I like. I’d prefer
it if it had been part of the main plot of the episode, but I’d rather it get
started now rather than try to stuff it into the next episode. Hopefully,
Uraraka will track her down before Toga’s Twice clones cause any more damage.
Also, I hope Present Mic and Aizawa are okay. Hopefully the two of them getting
nabbed by Kurogiri was more Shirakumo than Kurogiri. But we’ll have to wait and
see. See you later. Have a good night and stay safe.
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Bluesky: @basicssuperhero.bsky.social
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