Long day, long weekend of anime and other stuff (including work), not much time.  You hate to short-shrift an episode as epic as this week’s Boku no Hero Academia, but concessions must be made to reality sometimes.  One thing can be said for sure about Horikoshi-sensei – he’s discovered a formula that works and he’s sticking with it.  He doesn’t start out arcs at a run – he takes his time setting the table before serving up the main course that the fans know is coming.  And in doing so, he makes the taste that much more memorable.

If anything, one could say that the transition was faster than usual this time – we went from relative calm to out and out frenzy in less than half an episode.  The advance guard from the League of Villains hit the camp like a swarm of locusts, not bothering to waste much time in pleasantries before settling into mayhem.  The one known as Spinner (Iwasaki Ryou) makes a big initial impact, proclaiming himself as the spiritual heir to Stain’s cause without the slightest bit of irony.  The Yuuei staff and students are caught with their pants down yet again (maybe this will finally convince them they have a mole on the inside), and a desperate rush to protect the students and defend themselves begins.

Deku has, of course, immediately thought of Kota.  And he begs off the retreat that his classmates have been ordered to execute to go and save the boy.  But that situation is even more urgent than Izuku realizes, as Kota has just been confronted by Muscular (Takaguchi Kousuke).  Chalk this one up to the small world department, as Muscular had no idea he’d find anyone on that overlook – and it turns out that the one he finds is the child whose hero parents he killed.

The notion of fate is definitely in the air here.  Deku seems very much the hero destined to save Kota, and Kota the victim Deku was fated to save.  But Muscular has his own piece to say about all that, and despite the straightforward nature of his quirk (muscles so big his skin can’t hold them) he’s an extremely formidable foe.  This is, rather out of nowhere, one of the all-time GAR fights in Boku no Hero Academia – it’s crazy, brutal.  Not even a full 100% Detroit Smash is enough to put down Muscular – it’s just enough of a love tap to convince him to get serious.

Watching this fight is not the first time it’s occurred to me that the whole idea of being a hero is kind of nuts, and that I’m not so sure Hirokoshi doesn’t feel the same way.  Seeing Izuku destroy his body over and over makes it hard to accept that the path he’s chosen is the correct one.  He’s places himself in harm’s way just by being at Yuuei, and his own quirk does terrible damage to him every time he needs to get serious about it.  Looking at Kota (and looking at Deku in this context, one can’t help see his mother, who he apologizes to as he believes he’s about to die – and All Might, for that matter) how can one reconcile the damage this hero chase has done and continues to do to those who engage in it?

I think the most cutting line in the episode is from Muscular, who muses that both he and Kota’s parents were just “doing what they wanted to do”.  Whatever his own feelings on this disconnect, one can be sure that Horikoshi-sensei is well aware of it.  It’s the elephant in the room in Boku no Hero Academia.  And it’s not the sort of thing that a million-percent Detroit Delaware Smash can vanquish.  That smash is still cool, though, and Izuku’s purity of purpose remains both admirable and narratively compelling.  That’s what makes BnHA such a subtle and nuanced take on superhero mythology.