One could certainly be forgiven for assuming that this season was building towards a climax with  next week’s final exam challenge matchup – and obviously with Boku no Hero Academia’s three most existentially central characters all in the ring together, it’ a monstrously important one.  But no, any time the future number one hero enters the fray and unleashes his full power, that’s the real headline.  Next week’s battle is just a light dessert compared to that…

I’m kidding, of course.  Well, mostly.  But while there was a definitely sense of preamble lasting a bit too long to the last couple of episodes, what I really liked about this one especially is that in these undercard matches, it wasn’t necessarily the student you’d expect to shine that won the day.  Take Uraraka’s battle with Thirteen, for example.  Here you have debatably the series’ main heroine partnered with Aoyama, un-debatably Class 1-A’s main butt-monkey.  Yet its Aoyama-kun who wins the day with his clever ruse to get Ochaco to let go and allow Space Hero to suck her in.  There’s considerable plot weight above and beyond the exam to their conversation of course, but it’s not the way you’d expect their battle to end.

Also of note, we get to see Principal Nezu in battle (mock, anyway) for the first time.  Kaminari and Ashido are the unlucky pair who draw this assignment, and frankly this never really does rise to the level of “battle”.  Nezu is a bit unlike the other heroes we’ve seen – his quirk is pretty much straight-up intelligence, and he seems to be several moves ahead of his opponents here.  He’s also apparently an actual animal (so it’s hinted, anyway) and his rodent-like nature asserts itself in a good bit of sadism when he’s finally given license to torment humans.  Principal-san is a scary guy, but it’s not too often we get to see his scary side.

The two other prelims are pretty straightforward, though Present Mic facing Jirou and Bondo is the more interesting because we finally get to hear Koji speak (and he’s a rather timid fellow, too – the voice befits a boy terrified of bugs).  They win, and so do Shouji and Hagakure in their battle against snipe – rather routinely, in fact.  There’s a definite sense that the decks are being cleared for the main event here, or at least the main event among the preliminaries.

Mineta has always been a bit of an odd man out amongst class 1-A – as Recovery Girl says, his motivation isn’t always obvious beyond “get a little action”.  But the desire to be a hero is not a valid reason to become a hero, nor is the desire to look cool to score the chicks.  The thing about Mineta is, he’s smart (if you pay attention to his grades, you know this) and when he applies his intelligence to battle and advancement, he can go far.  So when Mineta-kun shows that he’s learning a significant lesson such as “Guys like Deku aren’t cool because they’re heroes, they’re heroes because they’re cool”, that’s important because this is a kid who has potential.  Make no mistake, Mineta’s jealousy (and tears of blood) over Sero getting brought to heel by Midnight are real – but he does what he has to do and has the brains (and the quirk, like Mineta himself easy to underestimate) to finish the job successfully.

Now, though, the field is finally clear for the showdown that will put a capstone on this season of BnHA.  One hardly needs to list all the subtext and potential repercussions in Deku and Kacchan teaming up to battle All Might, and you could argue that it’s taken a bit too long to get to this battle (indeed, considerably longer than it took in the manga).  But get to it we have, and now it’s time for both Izuku and Katsuki to look in the mirror and find out how much they’ve grown, and how much they still need to grow in order the keep chasing their dream.  And as benchmarks go, they don’t get much more demanding than All Might.