Stain and All Might try to finish this fight with AFO once and for all.
Last time on My Hero Academia
All Might tried his Hail Mary. Using his Hercules battle system and a suit of
power armor that could mimic his students Quirks, All Might led AFO on a merry
chase through the ruins of Kamino Ward. He took a serious hit from AFO, but
that was a calculated risk to force AFO into position. He trapped the
self-proclaimed demon lord in mechanical tentacles and with ice so that he
could be blasted by his Hercules cannon that floated above them. The laser was
named after Aoyama’s hero name, Can’t Stop Twinkling, for dramatic purposes. The
sustained burst from the cannon and a sonic attack based on Earphone Jack kept
AFO pinned for a while, but eventually the cannon overloaded and AFO freed
himself. The attack forced AFO to heal more using Rewind which, unbeknownst to
him, has de-aged him to a young teen. Pissed off and just so done with All
Might, AFO prepared to finish him off, but suddenly frozen in place. Why?
Because Stain decided to intervene. The former hero killer licked up some of
the blood AFO spilled and used his Quirk to paralyze the Demon Lord. He leaps
in to help All Might attempt to finish AFO off once and for all. At the same
time, Aoyama and Hagakure combine their powers to stop Kunieda, a Jailbreaker
serial killer. Aoyama unleashed his naval laser without his control belt and
Hagakure refracted the laser to increase its power. Aoyama’s power seemingly increased, as a
weird side effect of refracting his attack caused Hagakure to become
semi-visible. He doesn’t care much about that, though, as he wants to save the
heroes still caught in Kunieda’s killer plants as his last act as a UA student.
Enough recapping. Let’s get to it, shall we?
We open with a flashback to a very
young Toshinori Yagi singing a Japanese song while reading a book with his
mother. Mrs. Yagi is a bright, smiling woman that cuddles her young son and
encourages him to keep singing. It’s a genuinely sweet moment. Adult All Might
is surprised to think that this memory is a part of him. He thinks about the
choices that led him to this moment, fighting AFO, and how his life turned out
this way. He walks a metaphorical path in his mind and picks up one of a dozen
lights that formed behind him and wonders what comes next.
After that we return to the fight
as it ended last time. All Might injured and running low on resources, gets
attacked by an extremely young AFO who mocks him as best he can. He is saved at
the last moment by Stain, who encourages All Might to destroy him.
We jump back a few minutes to Stain
watching Shoto and Iida just before their mad dash to stop Toya and save the
rest of the House of Todoroki. All Might radios them and tells them to make
that mad dash. They prepare to make their run, and Stain dubs them ‘selfless
and bold.’ Stain in his narrator voice tells us that he figured out what was
happening via the context clues he got from eavesdropping on that conversation.
He followed All Might and AFO across the ruins from a distance, their trail of
destruction being incredibly easy to follow. He found blood smears as he went
and tried to figure out if they were All Might’s or AFO’s. He claims to have a supernatural
sense of smell even with his nose basically being sliced off. That’s some
Tanjiro level of sniffing if he was able to figure out the owner by smell… but
that’s far from the craziest thing I’ve written about this show over the years
so let’s just roll with it.
He found a chunk of rock with AFO’s
blood on it, licked it, and gloats that his power works on anyone so long as he
tastes their blood. They rush AFO together; All Might prepares to strike AFO
with his fist and Stain with his sword. He encourages All Might to endure, so
they can defeat AFO together and so that All Might can ultimately find and end
him, putting an end to Stain once and for all. Just before they hit, AFO
activates a Quirk that lets him expel blood. The two combatants are soaked in red
fluid as AFO starts to gloat. He knew that Stain would eventually try to
interfere with this fight, so he had a contingency plan put in place. He saw
Stain escape Tartarus that night and because Stain was the only Tartarus inmate
to not join him, he knew he had to prepare. Stain tries to cut him anyway,
saying that it’s still the same blood, but AFO catches him in a giant set of
monster jaws he grew from his back. He has a quirk that let him change the
antigens in his blood, making him effectively immune to Stain’s paralysis. He
says that a trick to ruling from the shadows is to leave as few traces as
possible. All Might tries to help Stain, but AFO whips Stain around to knock
him back. He throws Stain across the city and into a building.
AFO and All Might chase him. AFO
takes a moment to thank Stain, as his initial message about purging hero
society was extremely useful in forging the League of Villains and Tomura
Shigaraki into an effective force for him. But, alas, his usefulness has ended.
Other than maybe his Quirk, which AFO thinks will be a very nice addition to
his collection. An incredibly badly injured Stain says that his role isn’t done
yet. All Might races to them, but he’s too slow. Stain raises his hands
overhead, thinking that All Might was his mentor even if he’d not been a proper
student. He wills All Might to fight on. And AFO pops him like a balloon. He
then whips around and fires a plasma blast at All Might. The attack is too
quick for All Might to react to, but Hercule’s rushes over and uses the last
built of metal from the cannon to take the hit. The explosion still knocks All
Might back.
He wakes up to a woman calling out
to him by his real name, Toshinori. He wakes up to see Nana standing over him.
His master tells him that she has to keep fighting, the story isn’t over just
yet. She fades out and Nighteye fades in. He doesn’t say anything but stares at
All Might. He says that he’s out of it, he can’t use his support items or his
legs anymore. He remembers both Inko and Izuku Midoriya encouraging him to keep
fighting because Izuku needs him as a mentor. He flips over and drags himself
forward, saying that he’s not done yet and tells AFO to come get him. We see
the swirling storm of energy surrounding Izuku’s fight with Tomura. AFO smiles
as his body’s glow starts to dim.
At the Flying Coffin, we see that
the Duplication of Twices breaking down into dust. Hatsume says that the weight
of the Flying Coffin is dropping drastically and that they should be able to
right themselves. We see a Yaoyorozu for just a moment, and she looks like she
got her ass kicked keeping the Twices off them. At HQ, they’ve determined that
AFO has reached the maximum distance for Sludge Warp to work and he can
teleport to Izuku at any time. Tsukauchi is starting to panic now. He says that
Izuku has been able to keep up with Tomura Shigaraki this whole time and that
he’d been able to lure Shigaraki away from UA to reduce the risk to the others,
but AFO can now teleport them whenever he wants. The balance of Power Izuku has
maintained is about to break.
Shigaraki looks to the storm and
lets us know his plan. Since activating Rewind, his main goal has been to get
to this point. He’s going to reach Tomura and transfer his copy of AFO the
Quirk to him. When the duplicated Quirk is absorbed, it’ll allow him to take
control of Shigaraki again and make him even more powerful. All Might drags
himself forward and tries to call AFO to pay attention to him again. AFO
ignores him. He tries to Sludge Warp Tomura to him, as he needs to get Tomura
away from Izuku for a few minutes to ensure the transfer goes smoothly. Tomura,
grappling with Izuku, starts to barf up the sludge that will force him to his
master’s side, but he bites down, breaking the sludge and thinks at AFO to not
interfere. AFO says that it’s what he suspected that Tomura has absorbed AFO’s
consciousness into him. It doesn’t matter, though, according to AFO, he’ll just
go to them. He flies down to All Might, intent on finishing him off.
The business course students are
still filming everything. They look up in time to see AFO dragging All Might’s
limp body through the sky. He mocks All Might, asking if his countenance is so
tragic because he led these children to their deaths.
Tomura mocks Izuku, saying that he
really should rush over to save All Might. He promises to keep himself busy by
murdering all the heroes that fought him earlier, and that they’ll all be dead
by the time Izuku gets back. Izuku looks over and sees the limp All Might
hanging from AFO’s grip. He remembers their promise to work together to fight
fate. Narrator Present Mic lets us know that Izuku wants to be a good
apprentice and that he’s ‘mastered’ his tears, but he’s once again holding them
back as he dithers on what to do. Worst, inside Izuku’s mind palace, he feels
All Might’s Vestige starting to fade. Which doesn’t make complete sense as he’s
the only vestige of a living person. Surely the Vestige should get stronger as
the real All Might dies, right?
Anyway, All Might remembers Izuku’s
question about being a hero without a Quirk. He finally answers “yes,” and
remembers all of the times that Izuku proved himself a hero since the start of
the series, punching the robot in the entrance exam, battling his friends and
the League of Villains and so on. He says that Izuku can’t give up on his
dreams and neither can he. He wraps his arm around AFO’s neck. For some reason,
this triggers a memory in AFO. We see the final moments of the battle between
Nana Shimura and AFO. Nana sacrificed herself to hold AFO back, giving Gran
Torino enough time to escape with young Toshinori. She asks her friend to see
Toshinori’s training through and to help him become the symbol of piece. AFO
says that she stuck to her convictions but lacked the power to see them
through. He held Nana by the neck as the Seventh Wielder told him that Toshinori
will beat him, as Toshinori is even crazier than AFO. In the present, the arm
band around All Might’s forearm starts to glow. He says that he hopes that this
explosion will be intense enough to revert AFO back to a toddler. AFO realizes
in a panic that All Might intends to kill them both. All Might realized looking
back on his life something important… but we don’t get to hear what that is.
Why? AFO grew spines that pierced the arm band, breaking it before it could go
off. He then licks All Might’s blood up and uses Blood Curdle to freeze him. He
knows how dangerous a wounded hero can be, so he’s not taking any risk that All
Might will find another way to foil him. He refuses to let All Might go out in
a blaze of glory. He gives a full mouth ripping Joker grin when he sees All
Might’s face and realizes that it is the look of ultimate despair he was hoping
for.
At HQ, La Brava encourages Gentle
to intervene. Gentle prepares to leap over since UA has stabilized, but then
AFO unleashes a plasma blast and destroys UA’s engines again. Gentle scrambles
to keep the Coffin afloat. AFO says that he got distracted and missed Gentle,
but it doesn’t matter as his aspirations will crush him anyway. The Star
brigade fly in and start firing on AFO. He barely cares, flicking a wrist and
cutting their ships down.
The world watches as All Might is
raised over AFO’s head. Everyone is panicking as they realize that they’re
going to witness the death of All Might. We see Melissa Shield start to cry, as
well as random citizens across Japan and the world process what they’re about
to see. Someone says that the death of All Might, regardless of how it happens,
will be the end of an era. AFO starts to pull, intending on ripping All Might’s
legs from his body. Izuku reaches out to his mentor, and Tomura starts to
struggle free of Izuku’s bonds. Tsukauchi begs someone, anyone to save All
Might. There’s a MASSIVE explosion on the Flying Coffin, and who should
struggle to his feet but Katsuki Bakugo.
All Might on his mental road sees
child sized Izuku and Bakugo running and giggling while holding the balls of
light he visualized earlier. The balls of light morph into All Might trading
cards. One light ball flashes and travels to the ‘real’ world and into Bakugo’s
hand, taking on the form of his burnt and broken All Might card. The episode
ends with the words “The End of an Era, and the Beginning.”
Well, I wasn’t expecting Stain to
go out like that. I’m not sure he deserved to go out like that, dying in the
line of duty, trying to protect All Might. The man was a deeply disturbed
person, responsible for the deaths of 40 heroes and the crippling of more,
including Idia’s brother. He was a zealot for the ideal of All Might that didn’t
understand All Might, beyond the basic notion that heroes need to be selfless.
He hurt people that absolutely didn’t deserve it because they, in his eyes,
didn’t meet All Might’s impossible standards. That is the sort of person that
shouldn’t get what he wanted. But… I suppose since he wanted All Might to be
the one to kill him, I guess he was still denied. I give him props for hurling
himself at AFO, though. The man could have just stood back and just let his
Blood Curdle and All Might do the work, but no, he leaps in there and tries to
get a swing in. Shame AFO just threw up all his blood on them. I’d say that
felt like an ex machina… but, I suppose AFO has been shown to be enough of a
planner that the idea that he got a Quirk specifically to counter Blood Curdle
isn’t farfetched. Given the fight that they’re in, the fact that he can now
freeze people by licking their blood is probably horrible. That final shot, of
AFO preparing to rip All Might in half while the whole world watches impotently
was really well done. I knew Bakugo was going to survive, I knew that he would
probably factor into the final battle more than he’d already had… but it was
still hyped to see him get up and be ready to throw down with the Demon King. Bakugo
is perhaps the best student left standing other than Izuku to face off against
AFO. He’s incredibly fast, he is a ranged specialist that can fly (more or
less), and he’s a lunatic that just came back from the dead. AFO is going to
regret not blowing up the top half of the Flying Coffin is all I’m saying.
We’ll see how well he does… next time. See you then. Have a good night! And
stay safe.
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/u2761062/posts/viewer-log-my-ep-162195869
Bluesky: @basicssuperhero.bsky.social
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