All For One gets a triple smackdown.
Last time on My Hero Academia
Izuku got backup. Lady Nagant used her power, despite her injury, to dis-hand
Tomura Shigaraki, leaving him temporarily vulnerable to Izuku. Our hero knocked
the two of them from the Flying Coffin to make it easier to save the Coffin.
Tomura seems to have wrestled total control of his body back from AFO and has
vowed to destroy everything because he wants to, not for his master. La Brava
and Gentle Criminal are able to get the Flying Coffin up and running again, and
thanks to the Business Course’s attempts at documentation, La Brava released
the footage of her beloved being a hero to the world. Aizawa and Present Mic
are knocked from the Coffin but are nabbed by Kurogiri. He teleports them away,
so its anyone’s guess at the moment if they were saved or kidnapped. Back at
Gunga Villa, Hawks tries to stand up to AFO, but he’s a dude with feathers
against a demi-god, it doesn’t go well. It looks like Hawks is obliterated in
front of Tokoyami, but he was saved by the arrival of Shiketsu High students
Camie’s illusion, and Shishikura used his weird meatball ability to knock him
aside. Yoarashi of Shiketsu also pulls up and used his wind powers to start
sucking up Twice clones and disrupt AFO’s attacks. AFO plan to kill him first
and then start harvesting powers. He unleashes a barrage on the heroes, but
they’re able to tank the hits. Tokoyami then reveals why he is here. They know
that AFO can’t steal powers by touching a manifestation of that power, ie
Endeavor coats himself in his own flames therefore AFO can’t touch him and
steal the power, and logically that’s true for anyone. So, they used the dark,
overcast day to powerup Dark Shadow to its maximum and Tokoyami slams it into
AFO. And in an after-credit scene, we see Uraraka, Tsu, and Jiro begin their
search for Toga, believing that they can stop the clones if they can find the
real her. We also learn that for some reason Toga can’t make copies of anyone
else that can use the originals powers. She can make clones of Tomura, Dabi,
AFO and the rest but all they can do is make clones. Lost among the Duplication
of Twices, Toga is flummoxed by her inability to fully become Twice. Enough
recapping. Let’s get to it, shall we?
We open with a recap of the after-credits
scene. Tsu explains the limitation of Toga’s quirk, and we find the original
Toga furious that she can’t copy her other friend’s powers. She can copy
Twice’s cloning or Uraraka’s anti-gravity, but no one else’s, despite her
saying that she loves Dabi and Shigaraki as much as Twice. Narrator Present Mic
comes in and lets us know that because Uraraka’s one sincerest wish is to make
others happy, she noticed Toga’s tears on a Twice face despite the rain.
We jump over to Dark Shadow just
wailing on AFO with his enormous claws. Hawks, who is using his powers to keep
Tokoyami aloft since he can’t ride Dark Shadow right now, tells him to not let
up. He doesn’t think this’ll stop AFO as he is right now, but he knows that if
they can’t just hold him off for long enough they’ll burn through his time and
he’ll de-age to nothing. Jiro shouts at the others to make the area as dark as
possible to boost Dark Shadow, the other heroes all agree to give him cover. As
Dark Shadow’s fists pull back, we see AFO no worse for wear. Actually, he’s
looking even better than he did before Dark Shadow started to attack him, as
he’s de-aged back to what looks like his late teens to early 20s. He flies off,
as he realizes that his time is running out. The heroes try to give chase, but
then the latest snag arrives… Gigantomachia. Present Mic comes in to narrate,
saying that both Hawks and AFO think this’ll benefit their side. AFO orders
Machia to attack his pursuiters, but to his surprise, Gigantomachia throws a
chunk of Earth at HIM. We pull in as AFO calls them clever bastards. We see
none other than Kirishima riding on Machia’s head along with Shinso! That’s
right, they’re using his vocal mimicry power to make Machia fight with them.
Kirishima loudly announces that they’ll never let him get close to Midoriya.
We flashback 15 minutes (in
universe) to the facility where they were holding Gigantomachia right after
Dabi was supposedly defeated. The squad over there had handled a lot of the
ground troops sent against them, but the masked leader of this group had a
flying-type quirk that allowed him to escape their softened earth ambush. He
uses a high frequency sonic device to try to wake up Machia. The device fires
off waves so intense it actually breaks up buildings, so I’m shocked anyone is
still standing. Mt. Lady rushes him and tries to smack him with a gigantic
wrench, but she’s too late and Machia breaks free. He headbutts her from
behind. Ashido watches the attack and thinks that Machia is a walking symbol of
Trauma. Kirishima races over to get Shinso. He reveals to us that they hid
Shinso after their first big attack to keep him safe as they might need him as
a trump card for this fight. He shouts at Shinso to get in Machia’s head… but
its revealed that he’s been grabbed by Sludge-man. Remember him? The Slime monster
that All Might was chasing in the first episode and almost killed Bakugo? Ya,
he’s back. He says that he was laying low until the fighting died down, and
that hiding in Shinso was even easier than hiding in that angry middle
schooler. Hearing him disparage Bakugo while grabbing Shinso pisses off
Kirishima to no end and he switches to his maximum hardness. The villain
leading the charge mocks the heroes and gloats about how the strong will rule
the world. His gloating is ruined by Ashido whipping just a huge amount of her
acid at Gigantomachia, in a concentration that actually burns his rocky skin,
Acid Man Alma. She reveals to us that after the last fight with Machia, she got
intensive training tips from Bakugo and Shoto because she never wanted to feel
as powerless fighting someone like him again. She then rushes over and punches
into Sludge-man, giving him a dose of her acid too. She uses enough of it so
that the bright pinkness of her skin fades in places to a more natural tone.
Sludge-man tries to run, but Shinso calls out to him in Sludge-man’s voice,
tricking him to answering and putting him in a trance. Shinso thanks her for
saving him. She says she’s channeling Shoji and choosing not to fight for
revenge. She gives us a speech about how she understands fear as she doesn’t
have a particularly strong power. She forms bonds with people easily, though,
and she wants to protect those important to her. She tries to convince the
villains to back off, but her words don’t move them. Shinso calls out Machia
using AFO’s voice. He has Machia attack the goons, knocking them out. He
reveals that he’d been studying voice recordings of AFO from his time in
Tartarus to perfect his mimicry. Bet he’s going to feel really stupid for how
much he gloated in prison in a little bit.
Ashido is exhausted after all that
and drops, but Kirishima catches her. He tells her to be careful and apologizes
for not being much use in that fight. She remembers how he knocked her aside
and tanked Machia’s attack the last time they fought it and says she’s just
happy she got to pay him back. He’s stunned by that, and says that she doesn’t
owe him anything, as she’s always been his hero. That’s really sweet. Mt. Lady
reports in, gets the bad news about AFO’s rampage and gets her orders from
Tsukauchi. We return to the present to see Mind Controlled Machia, Mt. Lady
with her wrench, and Dark Shadow all take a swing at AFO, who blocks it with a
shockwave.
They keep attacking AFO, but he’s a
speedy little bastard. Tokoyami and Hawks are stunned to see Machia here, but
Hawks admits that this is a gamble they have to take. AFO understands now how
the Aoyamas were able to lie to him and says that his tactics are rubbing off
on the heroes. He fires an energy bust at Gigantomachia. Hawks is terrified
that the hit will hurt Shinso and break his control of Machia, but there’s not
anything he can do. Machia is hit… but weirdly, rather than attack he asks his
master why he was left behind. Machia flashes back to when AFO told him years
ago that he’s going to go away for a while and Machia will just have to wait
for his successor to find him. Machia says that he met the successor, who
smells like him and even sounded like him when he spoke. So, he wants to know why
the successor abandoned him. He starts crying as he begs AFO to explain. We
zoom into his hair line where we see that Kirishima blocked the hit for Shinso.
Shinso reveals that he is still controlling Machia, but the behemoth is
fighting his control. Machia is the first person to do that since Izuku. He
adds that even while under control, Machia was muttering about how his master
betrayed him. He thinks that Machia’s rage is their greatest weapon right now,
and that he’s really only here as a safety measure in case Machia turns on them
again. Shinso says that for years he’s been told he’s got a villains power, but
his quirk has limitations, he can’t change someone’s heart. Hawks gloats to
AFO, saying that even his loyalist henchman doesn’t want to see him right now,
as the three titans continue to pummel him. He eggs everyone on, saying they
need to wear AFO down until he disappears.
We jump back to the Flying Coffin
where an insane news crew is flying in via their helicopter. The reporter is
the same woman we’ve seen a handful of times in various scenes where reporters
swarmed. She doesn’t have an official name so I’m going to call her Yu Shimamura
after her Japanese voice actor. Yu convinced a pilot to take them up because
she wants to cover this story super bad. She realized that she’d interviewed
Izuku almost a year ago and was shocked to see that scared kid as the masked
vigilante and now the one dueling Shigaraki. Her camerawoman notices another
helicopter and Yu laughs at some idiot flying in the hurricane. We shift to
that copter and see it’s the woman that was at the press conference after the
last big battle with AFO. She’s the one that yelled at Endeavor for failing as
a hero as her own mother was injured in the fighting. She tells her Birdman
camera man that she wasn’t acting like a journalist then and that she’d been
quick to judge. Not just Endeavor, but all the heroes and the others fighting,
on her phone she’s watching Gentle save the Coffin. We flash to various
characters watching the Gentle Criminal video, we see the US president, Admiral
Ackbar, Melissa Shield (first movie), Maharo and Katsuma Shimano (second
movie), Rody Soul and his siblings (third movie) and Guilio and Anna (fourth
movie) as the views rack up. She says that she’ll see to it that the world
knows the story isn’t over.
Mt. Lady keeps breaking her weapons
and getting them replaced by new gigantic weapons. They’re pummeling the hell
out of AFO. That is until he sends out a tendril that bites a chunk out of Mt.
Lady’s side and then fires a plasma beam that cuts Gigantomachia across the
chest. We’re shown that he was taking a lot of damage from their attacks, but
he’s already regenerating, bones and muscle knit together as he says that he
was just putting down a dog that bit him. He wonders if somehow the other him,
the bit with Tomura is influencing him. He feels a rage rolling at his core. He
says that as he gets younger, it gets harder to hold it in. He fires a plasma
burst that obliterates Dark Shadow and sends Hawks and Tokoyami plummeting. He
says that he’s drawing out more power from his quirks as he fights, “Such
vitality! It’s good to be young.” Kirishima shouts for someone to catch them,
but Yoarashi can’t let up on his wind attacks. There’s a huge explosion. When
we cut back in, the whole area is wrecked and everyone is down. AFO says that
that Shadow bird was formidable, so much so that he’s going to take it. After
he’s done with Hawks. We see that Hawks was able to stab him when AFO picked
him up by the throat, but that was it. He drains Fierce Wings from Hawks. He
commends Hawks for lasting so long with a garbage power. Hawks notes that his
Quirks aren’t being affected by the de-aging and calls him a bastard. AFO
notices that the more damage that Rewind erases from his body, the faster its
de-aging works. A visual side effect of that we’re shown is that even once his
body is fully recovered, we see gold patches of light leaking from his skin,
implying that Rewind is still working.
A purple ball rolls over to him and
sticks on his cloak. Mineta of all people is standing, he says that taking Dark
Shadow will just make AFO an emo edgelord. If he wants a REAL power, he should
take Mineta’s Pop Off. He says that AFO will get a cool hairstyle as a bonus
and begs AFO to not take Dark Shadow from Tokoyami. AFO remembers Jiro yelling
at him and mutters how the weak howl. AFO sees the choppers incoming and says
that’ll show humanity that they’ve failed. He flies off. Depowered, pulls
himself up from the ground. He remembers the Shiketsu students saying that the
refugees they’d been sent to pick up never arrived, and then adds that AFO is
wrong, they still have hope.
I’ll admit, Mineta earned a huge
amount of respect from me with that last stand. Mineta has been a creep and
gross, but when push came to shove, he offered up his own power in order to
protect Tokoyami. He recognizes that Dark Shadow isn’t just Tokoyami’s power,
it’s his best friend, his other half. Mineta, gross little pervert Mineta,
understood that he could potentially survive being Quirkless whereas Tokoyami
absolutely couldn’t. That’s a bit of emotional development that I didn’t think
the little creep was capable of even after his part in getting Izuku back.
Shifting focus, I loved this little plotline with Gigantomachia. Seeing the
heroes spring their trap in order to turn the giant to their side… only to
learn that he wants to fight AFO on his own because his beloved Master
abandoned him was so freaking cool! It’s like the first time Darth Maul came
back and vowed vengeance against the Emperor in Star Wars. I especially
like that Horikoshi decided to give Machia that bit of agency. Up to this point
he seemed like a mindless drone, stupid and only capable of following orders.
But now we see that while he was modified and given a lot of abilities to make
him extremely efficient at following orders, he’s still enough of his own
person to feel betrayal. It was a nice twist and kind of helped to remove the
ethical quandary of Shinso taking his agency like that. Also loved giving
Ashido a big moment where she singlehandedly stopped Machia and freed Shinso.
She might not have the strongest power, but she used it expertly to get the job
done. And it was sweet that Kirishima admitted that she’s always been his hero.
I ship them, so I’m biased, but it was just incredibly sweet for Kirishima to
give her such high praise. They’re clearly good friends and hearing something
like that is a real confidence boost when you need it. I met a friend of my nephew
when I visited him at college and said friend says he talks about me all the
time, and I was grinning the rest of the day. I feel like that’s how Ashido is
going to be when the fighting is over. The triple giant beatdown was just so
much fun. It highlighted AFO’s incredible power when he was able to recover
from those hits. And yet, also really stresses that he isn’t invincible, not
when he has to recover from so much damage, and he admits that that recovery is
eating up his limited time. I like that Horikoshi made a scenario where the
other heroes obviously couldn’t stop AFO, but they still did major damage to
him in slowing him down for so long. We’re hitting the endgame here in a
minute. I know what’s coming. You know what’s coming unless you’ve been living
under a rock. We’re about to see a legend get one last ride. I’m so excited for
it. See you then, have a good night and stay safe.
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Bluesky: @basicssuperhero.bsky.social
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