It’s a big week for Boku no Hero Academia here in Japan.  The “Heroes: Rising” film opened yesterday – the very one which pulled director Nagasaki Kenji and much of the animation staff away from this season of the TV series.  I’ve already discussed how this may have been a blessing in disguise for the TV side, but the movie itself is important to the franchise – the last one did extremely well internationally and raised the series’ profile a lot, and there are supposedly elements from the eventual manga ending incorporated into the movie.  I’m traveling for a bit starting tomorrow, but I’ll certainly be seeing it when I get back.

As for the anime, we’re solidly entrenched in “Shie Hassaikai” and, like many of Horikoshi’s story arcs, it features villains quite prominently in more than traditional villain roles.  It’s worth noting that this is in fact the longest arc in the entire series so far, and as such it strikes me that “non-essential” elements take a little longer to play out than usual.  Things like battles featuring supporting characters, and and that extends to the villains too.  Rappa and Tengai are certainly not top bosses by any means, but Horikoshi uses them to shed quite a bit of light on the uneasy dynamics which run through the antagonists’ side.

Rappa is an interesting case.  While we’ve already seen that the long-standing Shie Hassaikai members don’t seem to have any special loyalty to Chisaki (who at least claims to himself to “understand better than anyone else” their old boss), but Rappa doesn’t even have any loyalty to Shie Hassaikai.  He’s there because Chisaki recruited him and beat him in a fight (repeatedly).  And now that he’s lost to Kirishima and Fitgum, Rappa unilaterally declares a truce and offers them a place to stitch themselves up in the hopes that they might one day fight another battle.  To Tengai’s horror he even shares what he knows about Chisaki’s plans – because at this point, he considers their relationship to be terminated.

As Mimic (drug-enhanced) and Rock Lock play cat-and-mouse with the walls of the underground, Overhaul’s “temps” – Toga and Twice – come into play.  The product of a negotiation over a one-player shogi match, their loan is essential to Overhaul’s plans – though Shigaraki makes it clear he’s not abandoning either of them.  It’s striking how much stronger the sense of loyalty within the League of Villains is than Shie Hassaikai, though it must be said that even if it’s a very small group, those that are loyal to Overhaul are fiendishly so.  The problem is you have distrust between the yakuza and villain wing of Shie Hassaikai itself, and even more so between the group and the League.

Toga is always entertaining, but I have a special affection for Twice, in part because Endou Daichi is doing such a great job with the character.  His split personality seems to be a good metaphor for the villain side in the war as a whole.  Twice and Toga certainly do their part – she takes down Rock Lock and manages to wing Eraser too because she and Twice are forced to retreat.  They seem to be most concerned with pissing off Mimic to the point where he totally loses it ans blows his cover.  Another crack in the united front…

Through all the drama of the past few episodes, the main characters of the arc – who I would assert are Deku and Mirio – have been largely sidelined from the narrative.  Again, this is a function of the arc’s style and it’s – certainly not uniquely in HeroAca – a rather Togashi-like approach to things.  This is part of Chisaki’s design, too – he just wants to get Eri out of enemy reach and isn’t particularly concerned with engaging anyone himself rather than using disposable parts to slow them down.  But Mirio and Deku have the same goal here, and it’s in direct conflict with Chisaki’s – and the status quo can only persist for so long.