There’s no question that massive, climactic fights like this one are a challenge for big battle shounen. Broadly speaking you can take two narrative approaches, both with drawbacks. You can focus entirely on one front for entire episodes/chapters or multiples, which allows them the chance to shine. But it tries the patience of fans who might prefer another segment of the story, and offers timeline challenges when things are happening all at once. Or you can jump all over the map, like the old NFL highlights reel Howard Cosell used to narrate at halftime of Monday Night Football. But that can be frenetic, and leave all fronts feeling shortchanged.

Horikoshi Kouhei uses both approaches in Boku no Hero Academia. I would say he tends to favor the first, but this sequence is very much an example of the second. We got a segment with almost every major conflict here (though Endeavor and Dabi were mostly absent). It”s even more interesting with HeroAca because it’s really hard to say who “the” big bad is. Both All For One and Shigaraki are, in their own way – though one could argue that thematically it’s the latter, since he’s the one invariably paired off with Izuku (the undisputed “big good”).

Shigaraki Tomura doesn’t consider AFO his ally and certainly not his friend, that’s not in doubt. His appetite for destruction is far greater (All For One wants to control, not annihilate for its own sake). But he resents being a tool on AFO’s arsenal. This “core” of himself he’s hidden inside seems to be what’s prevented All For One’s Plan A – simply subsuming Shigaraki and taking his body – from coming to pass. That makes life more complicated for him, but All For One revels in this sort of back and forth. It’s the struggle for command that gets him high more than the acquisition of it.

Deku being who he is, he can’t abandon even this uniquely destructive soul after he’s seen his raw despair. But now that “Decay” is back online, the Coffin in the Sky has served its purpose in terms of Shigaraki control. Saving it is a matter of saving those inside (and below) it, no more and no less. Gentle Criminal is giving it everything he has to hold out until La Brava can successfully restart the levitation engines, and a brief glimpse of Deku is certainly motivation. But it’s the realization that he’s being filmed after all (by the business school kids) that gives him the second wind he needs to hold out. And it seems pretty clear than Eraser and Present Mic were saved by Kuroigiri in the end – proof that something of old friend Shirakumo still lives inside him.

Back on the AFO front, things are looking pretty grim for Hawks and the Demon Lord is racing towards Shigaraki. But the arrival of the Shiketsu cavalry is just in the nick of time. This is definitely an “all hands on deck” sort  of situation, and they were a group not heard from yet. Their interference (it had to annoy AFO hearing that they learned about him in history class) gives Hawks a reprieve, and Tokoyami a chance to enter the fray and unleash his ultimate move – “Light of Baldur”.

We don’t know what that is yet, but anyone who pays attention knows this – “Dark Shadow” is one of the stealth kaijuu of BnHA. It’s always felt like we – and Fumikage – have only skimmed the surface of what it’s capable of. And that it may be capable of feats to rival any in the cast (and terrifying ones at that). It’s a power that’s shrouded in darkness, and the symbolism of that surely can’t be accidental on Horikoshi’s part. There can be no question that the pupil is more powerful than the master in this case – but Hawks’ formidability was never really based on his quirk anyway.

Finally, there’s Himiko Toga. As Froppy points out, if she’d just cloned All For One or Touya instead of Jin thing would probably be all but over. But she didn’t, maybe because she can’t. There seems to be a limitation on Toga that she can only utilize the quirk of someone she’s cloned if  she likes that person. If her clones’ clones face the same limitation, it explains why she did what she did and not what she didn’t. That gives the girl power trio a narrow opening to fight back, though the odds still seem heavily stacked against them.