It occurs to me that the School Festival arc in Boku no Hero Academia is kind of an unusual one in the annals of battle shounen.  Generally speaking we see either “serious” arcs – with genuine threat to the protagonist or close associates – or abjectly comedic ones.  This is somewhere in-between – we do have an antagonist and the arc follows a somewhat traditional structure.  But that antagonist is openly disinterested in hurting anybody, and without question one of HeroAca’s more comedic characters.

It makes for an interesting story when the worst that can be said about its villain is that he’s insensitive.  Sure, what Gentle is trying to do is going to spoil the fun for the Yuuei students – but he didn’t even know that the festival was going to be cancelled at the first sign of trouble.  He’s just trying to prove a point in his own goofy way, and not only is he not looking to do any damage, he’s not even really intent on spoiling the party.  He just wants to up his view count.  How can you muster much antipathy for someone like that?

Still, it’s bad luck that it’s Deku who Gentle and La Brava run into on the morning of the festival.  That’s because Deku has run off to the home center to buy rope for the Aoyama disco demolition (did the original rope walk into a bar?  I’m a frayed knot).  La Brava recognizes him and warns Gentle that he’s a “crazy boy”, and who am I to disagree?  Armed with an unlimited store of idealism and Mei’s custom-built gloves, Izuku quickly makes Gentle Criminal wish he hadn’t been drawn into a chat about Gold Tips Imperial.

Gentle’s quirk is an interesting one – elasticity.  The fact that he can even use it on air makes elasticity a deceptively versatile quirk – with it Gentle can basically fly, for example.  It just wouldn’t feel right for his quirk to be anything really nasty (we still don’t know what La Brava’s quirk is, though she says she intends to break it out at the end of the episode), but it’s a pretty powerful tool.  Certainly enough to keep Izuku off-balance and stalemated, even with the new weapon of an “air cannon” at his disposal.

While the whole Eri subplot doesn’t move me, I guess my sympathies lie with Deku here – I’ve been a kid who put a lot of work in on a performance but never a villain who makes videos of himself engaging in mischief for the greater good.  But I must say even in the manga, where they didn’t have the benefit of Yamadera and Horie voicing them so engagingly, I was kind of rooting for Gentle and La Brava here.  And it makes an interesting change of pace to see a hero and villain facing off in an actual battle – not an exhibition or competition – where both are actively trying not to hurt the other.  Again, it’s a weird dynamic that we don’t see in shounen very often – but kind of a fascinating one.