The truth of Tomura Shigaraki's existence is just sad.
Last time on My Hero Academia,
Izuku weaponized One For All. Izuku and the Vestiges plan to force the Vestiges
into Tomura’s body, forcing a connection between the young men and hopefully
allowing Izuku to break through his defenses and help him. This is rather
difficult considering Tomura’s immense and varied powers. We flash across the
battle fields and to the civilians, and see everyone is anxious for Izuku to
win this fight. Some, like little Eri, get a confidence boost when Kota takes
her hand and says he’ll win, others are less confident for various reasons,
like Kaminari. Lady Nagant tells Rock Lock that she’s confident that Izuku will
succeed as she’s been on the receiving end of his earnest desire to save
others, and if he could break her defenses, he’ll get through Tomura’s. Izuku’s
a clever little SOB, though, and is able to hit Tomura with 6 of the Vestiges,
starting with Kudo and then following up with Yoichi, Bruce, Banjo, En, and
Toshinori. The only one that’s forced back, somehow, is Nana. This forms an
intense psychic link to form, and it pulls Izuku and Nana into Tomura’s mind.
Once inside, they see his childhood home. Some old villains like Stain,
Re-Destro, and Overhaul form as mental defenses, but Izuku pushes past them and
opens the door to the house. Inside, they see the initially sweet moment of
Tomura’s sister Hana showing him the photo of their grandma Nana and their dad,
Kotaro, but then see the horrible moment when Kotaro finds out and slaps young
Tenko. Enough recapping. Let’s get to it, shall we?
We open with Kotaro slapping his
son, the photo negative version of Tenko Shimura, and Izuku and Nana reacting
to it. Izuku immediately sprints forward to try to reach Shigaraki but finds
there’s a barrier that’s separating him from the scene. He tries to force his
way through as Kotaro tells Tenko that that ‘woman’ isn’t his grandmother. She
abandoned her family, according to him, and he goes on to say a hero is nothing
more than someone who leaves to protect strangers. This of course breaks Nana’s
heart, as she realizes Kotaro kept the photo simply because he couldn’t bring
himself to do it, not because he still loved his mom. Nana realizes that that
Kotaro’s hatred infected Tenko and curses the fact that she wasn’t able to beat
AFO and break the cycle. She apologizes to him for being so weak. Izuku keeps
trying to force his way through and begs Nana to do it now! She transfers her
power into Shigaraki like the others. She shoots through the barrier, grabbing
Kotaro and stopping him from hitting Tenko again. She apologizes to Tenko for
being weak as she and the Vestige of Kotaro break into pieces and Tenko fully
forms.
There’s a flash and Izuku jumps
ahead a few days to when Tenko’s decay quirk first activated. As young Tenko
accidentally disintegrates his dog, Izuku senses the same danger coming from
Tenko as he did outside of Jaku. Hana comes to apologize to Tenko for letting him
take the brunt of their father’s anger, sees the dog ooze beside him and runs
back inside. Tenko instinctively reaches out to her to try to stop her, but
instead of grabbing her and accidentally kill her like in reality, Izuku,
reduced to child form, leaps in and grabs Tenko’s hands. He swears they’ll
finish this here. While in this mindscape, Izuku is able to break the rules of
reality and do things like, say, keep his body from decaying when they touch
Tenko’s hands. He just has to keep focusing on the reality of his own body. He
says that he’s force Tenko to take OFA, and now he’ll give Tenko some of Izuku
as well. Tenko asks why Izuku is doing this. Izuku says that he has to because
he’s crying. Behind the boys, black-purple energy is surging. Tenko refuses to
believe that he’s crying. He tries to own what he did, saying that he wanted
to do this, he wanted to murder his whole family and flatten that house. He
begs Izuku to tell him, if he’s not born to destroy things with these hands,
why was he born at all? As the mental storm builds in power, Izuku realizes
that Tomura is trying to weigh the hatred and catharsis of his evil actions
against sadness and confusion. He’s still wavering, though, so Izuku refuses to
let go. Tomura Shigaraki remembers what it was like right after the murders,
when adults looked away from him and tried to ignore him. He realizes that if
someone had just taken his hand back then… maybe things would have been
different. Izuku tells Tenko that when he was lost as Dark Deku, someone (Iida)
took him by the hand and it gave him peace. It’s because he knows how much
comfort one can get if someone else gives a damn, that’s why he’s here. Tenko’s
power is too much for Izuku’s body and he disintegrates Izuku’s hands. Despite
this, he tells Tenko that everything will be okay, and it’ll all work out.
Tomura realizes that Izuku’s feelings are flowing into him. Both boys fall face
first onto the ground, with an exasperated, angry Tomura asking if this was
really all it would take to break his hate.
Tomura flashes back to an afternoon
playing with his friends. They were playing heroes and Tenko got a chance to
play All Might, which excited him. The scene fast forwards to nightfall as
Tenko insists he’s a bad guy. He does evil things, he hurts people because
that’s his nature. The boys get up and are surrounded by mental images of
Twice, Dabi, Spinner, Twice and Toga. Tenko insists that even if Izuku takes
away his pain, it won’t work, because he has to be the hero to the villains that
believe in him. Which is a weird stance to take, not going to lie. We get a
brief few of a few depressed and/or misanthropic people that are cheering
Tomura on in his effort to destroy society. The huge tower of hands that Tomura
manifested before they entered the mindscape begins to crumble and Detective
Tsukauchi begs Izuku to finish this.
In Tomura’s mind, he sees a very
strange memory. Through the eyes of AFO, we see him approach Kotaro. AFO was
playing the part of a businessman working at a place called Koga. Its clear
from a few scenes that AFO had fostered a friendship between himself and
Kotaro, as they’d walk together after work and got dinner together at least
once. AFO is, to my meta perspective, already weirdly interested in Kotaro’s
son. For some reason, neither Izuku nor Tomura recognize AFO’s voice when he
speaks. Weird. Before they can puzzle it out, AFO’s Vestige manifests again,
taking the mindscape and forming it into a giant body. It gobbles up Tomura,
asking his vessel how could he break so easily. He claims that no choice Tomura
has made has been his own, and curses Izuku and the other OFA wielders for
ruining his brother and OFA.
As he’s being infinitely swallowed
by the giant AFO, Tomura asks what the heck is going on. AFO manifests before
him and says that Tomura was his puppet that he allowed to believe had free
will. When Tomura still doesn’t get it, he explains. He learned after fighting
and killing Banjo and later En, that he needed a stronger will than OFA in
order to reclaim it. And when All Might arose and made him retreat into the shadows,
he got to work. He admitted to spending years manipulating Kotaro. He didn’t
start until after Hana was born, so he used his rhetorical skill and connection
to Kotaro to convince him to have a second child, he stole Tomura’s original
quirk when he was still an infant, and then to push him to get stricter and
stricter with his kids. He even supposedly encourages Tenko’s friends into
playing with him. After all of that, he disguised himself and approached a
young Tenko and infected him with Decay. He even reveals that Decay is an
inferior version of a Quirk that he acquired from the Doctor. He took a sample
from a young boy in an orphanage, whom we’re all but told was Kai Chisaki aka
Overhaul. AFO loudly and proudly proclaims that everything that Tomura has
experienced, the hate, loneliness, anger, joy, and all the other things he’s
felt, it was all AFO’s doing. He tells Tomura to get out of HIS body and disintegrates
Tomura’s Vestige. We see the mindscape is being completely reworked into AFO’s
body, he claims he wasn’t planning on doing this full redesign until AFTER
getting OFA, but he’s got little choice now. He expels Izuku from the
mindscape.
In meatspace, the hand cocoon
bursts. AFO manifests, having morphed Tomura’s body to more resemble his own.
He claims that he’s destroyed Tomura’s mind entirely, the only thing of him
remaining being a crying he’s hearing at the back of his mind which he ‘banishes.’
For some reason, he also creates a hand mask to cover his mouth. Weird. He tells
us that this drastic measure seems to have destroyed Decay as well. AFO laments
losing that as well as his chance to absorb his brother, as Yoichi was used up
breaking into Tomura’s mind. No matter, though, he’s focused on the future. He
decides that he’ll have to focus on the hallow end goal, destroying the fetid
world. Izuku tries to get back on his feet, a task made more difficult since
his hands were in fact actually destroyed in that altercation. He’s just got
pair of bloody stumps, he tries to get up but slips on his own blood. AFO walks
over to him, saying that he’s going to lean into the narrative that they’ve
created here. Loss makes one stronger, so he’s stronger now than he was before.
Izuku didn’t have anything to lose, in his eyes, so this ending for him was
inevitable. AFO holds up a hand and charges a plasma blast. But before he can
fire, he’s tangled up in… TAPE! Sero leaps in to help Izuku. AFO is
unimpressed, saying that Sero is a nuisance, a presence so unremarkable that
Izuku’s presence drowned it out. Sero screams that they’re here to help.
AFO turns and slices thought the
tape, only to get rushed by Sato and Ojiro. They take advantage of AFO not
having Decay anymore and slam him back with a double hit. Izuku is stunned to
see his friends there, but even more so when a Warp Gate opens behind him. He
turns in time to see Aizawa step through, who apologizes for being late.
We flashback ten minutes. Aizawa
and Present Mic are lost at sea with an unconscious Kurogiri, their comms down
and no one knowing where they are. Present Mic is venting his feelings by
punching Kurogiri repeatedly and telling the stupid carcass to wake up and tell
them where they are. Aizawa grabs his arm and says that Kurogiri is crying.
Present Mic refuses to believe that, saying it’s just the rain, Kurogiri
doesn’t even have tear ducts anymore. It took them out of play because Aizawa
was a danger to Tomura, end of story. Present Mic is angry and says that
they’ll just wake it up to get them home and then put it down for good. They
shouldn’t think about the minor miracle that brought Shirakumo back for a few
seconds. He tells Aizawa that they’re 31, they can’t keep being students
anymore. Aizawa points out that when he died, Shirakumo was still a UA student.
He points out that Kurogiri could have easily killed them in transit, either by
dropping them in the ocean, smashing them on the rocks, or ripping them to
shreds between his gates. He grabs Kurogiri’s head as he said that they were
able to draw out the light in Kurogiri once. Aizawa uses his Quirk on Kurogiri,
saying to Present Mic that they’re UA teachers now, and as Teachers, they need
to see students graduate. Even if it’s a bit delayed. He’s able to break
through Kurogiri to Shirakumo, allowing their friend’s face to peek out of the darkness
again. Present Mic tearfully says that these memories aren’t going away anytime
soon, are they. Aizawa contacts Tsukauchi and gets a list of heroes that are
still active, and their coordinates.
Aizawa runs into Shiketsu and tells
Ectoplasm to gather every hero on guard duty that they can and to meet him out
front. They need to hurry because they don’t know how long they’ve got control
of Kurogiri and Warp Gate. Death Arms offers to help immediately, as does a no
name hero, and the civilians offer up supplies to help the injured heroes. One
guy gives Aizawa an All Might shirt off his back, which was sweet and weird at
the same time. They then warp to the stadium where there’s still one villain left
standing. They quickly take him out. A whole bunch of portals open and Aizawa
announces that phase 3 is about to start.
AFO, still high on his own power,
says that they’re all come here to have their Quirks stolen. Izuku is confused
as to how AFO can be here, as he thought breaking through to Tenko would
destroy him. Aizawa rushes over and asks how long ago Izuku lost his arms. He
isn’t sure due to the weirdness of being in the mindscape.
We get another flashback to when
Aizawa was leaving Shiketsu. Eri runs up to him and says that she knows that
there’s zero chance that he’d let her come with even if she wants to help. But
she figured out a way to help anyway, and offers her horn, telling him to give
it to Mr. Deku. She asked Ectoplasm to help her break it off. She knows its
just her horn, but she also knows that this will work. Aizawa starts to scold
her for risking damaging her Quirk by doing this, but Eri cuts him off. She
says that she wasn’t able to help Mr. All Might or Mr. Kacchan this way, but
she wants to save Deku. She says that her dream is to be a singer, and that she
plans to sing for Izuku and the others when this is over. Aizawa uses the horn
on Izuku, which regenerates his arms. An Ectoplasm voice over says that it’ll
only rewind two or three minutes, to let us know Izuku isn’t getting the rest
of his powers back with this one. Aizawa tells Izuku he needs to hear
Eri sing, so he’s not allowed to die. Mineta, Shoji, Koda, Yaoyorozu, Kaminari,
Jiro, Ashido, Aoyama, Hagakure, Kirishima, and Tsu come through the portals.
Mineta loudly announcing that if Class 1A hears Izuku is still up and kicking
ass, regardless of how hurt and broken down they are, they’ll pick themselves
up to join him. Izuku starts tearing up and prepares for one last smack down.
I’ve got to give Horikoshi praise
for how he handled that reveal. He gave us all the information to figure this
out, but I was still surprised. It’s been repeatedly shown that if a person is
given a Quirk that isn’t compatible with their body, they can have
physiological side effects. In Aoyama, it was his stomach pains if he overused
his quirk, in Tomura, it was his chronic itching. Quirks are largely genetic,
and while we only know Nana’s Quirk in regard to his family, somehow flight
mutating into decay seemed… unlikely. He did give us the red herring
explanation that quirks can mutate randomly like with Eri… but how odd it is
that the grandson of Nana Shimura would be one to have this apparently super
rare phenomenon happen to them. And AFO is absolutely the obsessive type of
psycho that he’d stalk a family in order to orchestrate his grand master plan.
Hell, even his relationship with Kotaro makes sense. Kotaro grew up without his
parents, and while whomever fostered him did their best, I’m sure, the idea
that he might still be looking for a paternal figure to fill the hole his
father’s death and his mother’s abandonment left tracks. It is extremely
screwed up to think that Tomura literally only exists because AFO manipulated
Kotaro into deciding he wanted a second child. Dude is a freak. If anyone is
curious, I looked into it, and according to Horikoshi, Tenko’s original quirk
was that ring flight quirk that both AFO and Tomura have used in their battles.
Neither know it, though, as Tenko had it stolen when he was weeks if not days
old, and AFO steals a LOT of powers. Metaphorically stealing a child’s wings so
he can be the perfect devil, that’s symbolism right there. It’s sad to see
Tomura having his emotional breakthrough was the catalyst to allow AFO to
reassert control. Dude was like two more minutes away from agreeing that he
should stop fighting. Izuku losing his hands was graphic as hell. Aizawa breaking
through to Shirakumo one last time so he could rally the troops felt really
nice. I especially liked his scene with Eri, where this stubborn little girl
takes after her various guardians and risks her own health and safety just on
the off chance that she could help. Izuku saved her life once, so obviously she
needs to save his hands. And Izuku having his exhausted friends at his back for
this last battle makes me confident it’ll be a fight for the ages. But I’ll
need to wait and see. Have a good night and stay safe.
Bluesky: @basicssuperhero.bsky.social
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/u2761062/posts/viewer-log-my-ep-164851870
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