All Might's got a Hail Mary attack that might just work.
Last time on My Hero Academia
All Might busted out his new toy. His de facto niece and confidant Melissa
Shield build him a battle suit and the Hercules System to allow All Might the
chance to slug it out with AFO one last time. The suit has weapons and powerups
all based on the Quirks of Class 1A and coupled with his years long obsession
with AFO and how he fights, the retired hero was able to last more than thirty
seconds against All For One. Which is something basically no one thought a
Quirkless person could do. He’s doing his best to slowdown AFO in the hopes
that Izuku can beat Tomura before AFO could reach him. It’s a stall, everyone
knows it, and it’s only working because the connection AFO created between
himself and Tomura is basically causing Tomura’s irrationally intense hatred of
All Might to funnel back into AFO and make him sloppy. All Might notices that
AFO is getting even younger as they fight and realizes that the more AFO uses
Rewind to heal, the younger he gets. Which gives him a win condition when his
previous one was just ‘survive as long as you can.’ Izuku senses All Might’s
fight through the Toshinori Vestige in his mind and they agree to finish this
once and for all. Oh, and Uraraka was bleeding out from the stomach wound that
Toga gave her, but Toga drank her blood, sealed the wound and then gave her a
blood transfusion in Uraraka’s form to save her life at the cost of Toga’s own.
Enough recapping. Let’s get to it, shall we?
Most of this episode is in fact a
recap of the previous episode. I think really the only thing they cut was the
opening with Uraraka and Toga and some of the cutaways to the police station.
We begin with a recap of the fight
thus far. We hit the big moments, All Might’s opening charge, the Red Riot
shield, followed by the Black Whip/Chargebolt combo to keep AFO from
regenerating. He vows to use everything that he was ever given to take AFO one
and for all. Sugar Man enhanced Shoot-style kick, Tsukuyomi shield, followed by
Pinky acid stab. Flashback to his vow to be the Symbol of Peace to Nana
Shimura, and then to Izuku asking if he could be a hero without a Quirk,
followed by Stain saying that All Might was a hero even without his power. All
Might realizing that Rewind is de-aging AFO at a faster rate and that he now
has a real win condition. He activates his Uravity and Ingenium thrusters, and
begs his students to keep giving him their strength.
Now onto the new stuff.
He uses mechanical Tentacole
tentacles that have Froppy’s suction to pick up speed and maneuver between
buildings. He plans to keep running, but in a way that’ll keep AFO from getting
bored and realizing he needs to rush to get Izuku. He activates Shoto and
Tailman protocols and prepares his trap. He knows that he’s got the perfect
artificial quirk to use against AFO in order to force him to rewind himself
even further, but he needs time to build up energy and get into position. He
sends off his Anima, a pair of robotic drones in shaped like birds. He gets cut
off by AFO. AFO points out how odd it is that All Might laughed like a lunatic
before trying to run. He claims to know what All Might is trying to do, and
that’s he’s prepared for it. He claims it’ll be easy to kill All Might even in
“Power Save” mode and that he’ll enjoy All Might’s screams. He touches the
walls and creates a network of spikes to launch from the walls in a net. All
Might rockets upward and tries to fly away. He’s cut off by a pair of tentacles
with huge chomping mouths waiting above him. All Might flies off and dodges the
chomping mouths. AFO mocks All Might, saying that he’s using technology to copy
the quirks of much younger heroes. He mocks All Might’s attempts to try to stay
relevant when everyone knows he’s just an old man with half his guts missing.
He calls All Might pathetic and that he’s going to kill All Might on national
television, indicating the camera recording all this.
AFO leaps through a wall, cutting
All Might off and slamming him into the ground. He screams that the Light of
Justice will be snuffed out. All Might flashes back to that mental image of him
trying to keep the metaphorical embers of OFA burning despite bitter, freezing
cold. He says that AFO still doesn’t understand him. He wraps AFO in a
tentacle, rams another into his mouth and fires off a freezing ray that starts
to freeze him solid. All Might says that the thing about light is, even if his
flickers and dies, it’ll ignite other lights that will stand against him.
We cut to a Tartarus Jailbreaker,
Kunieda. Kunieda creates huge purple flowers that parasitically drain the life
out of his victims. Narrator Present Mic tells us that this is taking place
about 300 meters from the All Might fight. Kunieda faced off against the heroes
that stayed behind to fight the members of AFO’s army that weren’t dangerous
enough to be included in the scattering plan. Kunieda unfortunately has
overwhelmed the heroes, trapping them all in his purple plants. The only one
still up is Aoyama, though he’s wrapped up too. The roots are rapidly digesting
people through their roots. The roots digest all of Fat Gum’s fat, and the
plant morphs into a something that looks like a cousin of Audrey 2 from Little
Shop of Horrors. Fat Guy eggs Aoyama on and says he needs to take this guy
out. Kunieda starts to gloat, saying that Aoyama can’t beat him, as Kunieda’s
plants broke and stole Aoyama’s belt. Without it, he can’t aim properly and his
power leaks out everywhere. We see that that is in fact the case, as Aoyama’s
naval laser is bleeding out all over the place. Kunieda mocks Aoyama for having
a Quirk so ill-suited for his body.
Aoyama flashes back to when his
parents got him his original belt that helped him regulate his naval laser and
how happy the Aoyama family was. Aoyama thanks Kunieda for reminding him what’s
important, and how he needs to work harder than his peers in order to shine as
bright as them. He starts firing of laser bursts, damaging the plants that
entangle him. Kunieda mocks Aoyama for trying to grasp an impossible dream… but
then you notice that it seems like the laser pulses are looping around Kunieda.
Why? Well… there was one other hero that was still active, just waiting for an
opportunity to use a combo attack with Aoyama. Hagakure reveals herself, using
her ability to refract and intensify light to super charge naval laser and burn
through the plants. She tells Aoyama that it took him long enough and calls him
a hero. We see her face briefly as she uses her attack, and she’s got extremely
wild hair. I somehow always assumed she kept it short.
Back at the AFO fight, All Might
uses that as an example of someone picking up the torch of his light and
continuing onward. We see the Anima birds fly towards a target. They lock into
a huge cannon that had been floating just above the fight. It turns and locks
on target, unleashing a huge blast of energy. All Might says that this attack
has a name that will surely burn AFO and announces, “Can’t Stop TWINKLING!” as
the plasma blast bombards AFO. The attack drives AFO into the ground and keeps
on slamming into him. Hercules warns All Might that it can’t keep up this
attack for long and that it already has suffered damage. All Might tells it to
keep going for as long as possible. He shouts at AFO that he got this idea from
Star’s fight with Tomura. He doesn’t have the power to create a sustained
energy blast, so he had to improvise. He adds to the laser fire with soundwave
vibration via his Earphone Jack attack. He vows to himself to keep this up
until AFO is dead.
All Might spells out everything
that just happened so we know every moment of this was a trap. When the laser
had charged up, he released his Tentacole arms so he could fly away. His suit
is treated with an Invisible Girl resin that gave him some protection from the
laser blast so he could get close enough to use Earphone Jack. He knew
that AFO would want to see him in pain, so he allowed himself to take a body
blow to ensnare AFO. It cost him the use of his legs, but he thinks this might
do it. Then AFO reveals he’s not out yet and fires his bladed tentacle out at
All Might. He has to fall back and uses Creatie to reshape bits of his armor
into bombs and tosses them at AFO. He begs his suit to finish off AFO now,
while his joy still overshadows his pain.
We cut to a family in a foreign
country watching the fight on TV. A boy asks his grandma who the skeletal man
is. Grandma shrugs and says she doesn’t keep up with heroes. She says not to
worry so much, as things happening in other countries won’t affect them. The
boy agrees halfheartedly and turns back to the TV. The way he starts clenching
his hands together makes it clear that he’s rooting for All Might.
Back at the fight, the Hercules
cannon hits its limit and explodes. AFO drags himself out of the hole and tells
All Might that he can’t go beyond using toys. He’s de-aged to a very young
teenager, probably no older than Izuku and his friends. All Might tries to deck
him, but he’s smacked aside by AFO and he hits the ground hard. AFO starts to
gloat, saying that he’ll relish the pain in All Might’s eyes and when he’s done
having fun, he’ll mess up All Might’s face just like All Might did to him all
those years ago. His body is glowing as he makes a tentacle to attack All
Might, but he freezes as some kind of pulse ripples through his body. He tries
to take a step but realizes that he can’t move. From behind a ragged voice
screams “Everyone bleeds the same color!” Stain has revealed himself, standing
atop a jet board of some kind. He launches himself at AFO, licking up more
blood to increase the paralysis and shouts at All Might to take AFO out. That’s
a hell of a spot to finish.
Post credits, damn it Studio Bones,
we go back to the Kunieda fight. Hagakure pins Kunieda and radios in that the
villain is in custody. Aoyama frees himself and limps towards her. We see that
her invisibility isn’t working right, it’s glitching out and we can vaguely see
her still. Considering that she still goes around naked in fights, this is
something of a problem for her modesty. She covers herself and tries to figure
out what happened. She remembers that she became visible for a bit after
refracting Aoyama’s attack when she caught him getting his orders from his
parents and says that his Quirk might be evolving. Aoyama doesn’t care about
that right now, as they need to kill the rest of the plants and free the
others. They weren’t destroyed just because Kunieda is down and they’ll keep
draining their allies. Aoyama says that they’ll need to do another refraction
attack. Hagakure asks if his stomach can handle that and Aoyama tells her that
he’ll be fine. He says that because this is his last day as a UA student, no
one is going to stop him.
When we get down to it, after
rehashing the start of the fight, this episode is mostly just covering All
Might’s big final gambit to stop AFO and Aoyama’s big moment with Hagakure. And
I’m 100% okay with that. Getting to see the level of tactical brilliance that
All Might displayed here was great. His power set and general attitude make it
seem like he just charges and uses his strength to carry him through whatever
fight that he’s in. And while I think that is very much one of his main
tactics, we have seen that All Might fights strategically when the need calls
for it, and this was just another and the best example of that. He planned this
final strike out extremely well, and it probably would have worked if AFO
didn’t have Rewind active or some other regeneration Quirk keeping him going. And
the fact that the center point of the attack was using Aoyama’s laser against
him, (Chef’s kiss) perfect. Unfortunately, AFO’s power is just too great for
him to overcome on his own, and I thought that this might be the end for him
before Stain showed up. The hero killer was definitely a wild card to throw
into this game, but I do completely believe that he’d leap in to help All
Might, regardless of anything else going on. His paralysis quirk probably won’t
tip the scales in their favor, but every minute that they buy for Izuku is a
minute close to AFO de-aging to nothing, so it helps. Aoyama getting one final
moment to shine along with Hagakure was sweet. As I said earlier, those two and
Mina seemed to be extremely close, so getting off one last combo together was
just a sweet way to cap off his story arc. I feel like making Hagakure visible
while naked ruins it just a little bit, but Japan has got to Japan. After
briefly seeing her earlier and now, fan art of Hagakure and her rainbow hair
started popping up a lot on fandom spaces and I get why. If Horikoshi came up
with this design early on, he’s an ass for keeping it to himself just to have
an invisible girl running around naked joke. Like, come on, she’s got enough
hair, she could have made a hair-based suit like Togeta uses so we could have
seen her pretty face this whole time. It’s lame. But that’s my one nitpick.
Hopefully Aoyama and Hagakure’s part in the story is done, so they can just
free everyone else. Just because they’re clearly both exhausted like anyone
else, and their offensive options are extremely limited right now. Next
time, the Symbol of Peace and the Hero Killer team up to stop the Demon Lord.
See you there.
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Bluesky: @basicssuperhero.bsky.social
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