Let’s be honest.  One of the challenging things about training arcs for a blogger is they don’t offer much to write about sometimes.  HeroAca has plenty of exceptions to that, but there are definitely episodes that are perfectly entertaining but don’t lend themselves to this.  What they really require is play-by-play (and Present Mic provides that on occasion), not after the fact analysis.  You saw what happened, you don’t someone to sit around describing it afterwards.

That leaves me to think of stuff to talk about.  And of course, one of the eternal pastimes of a series like Boku no Hero Academia – especially Boku no Hero Academia – is the “who’s strongest?” debate.  We’re talking about made-up superpowers here so in the end, this is no more exact a science than arguing who’d win between the 90’s Bulls and the 10’s Warriors (the 90’s Bulls, for the record).  But it’s fun just the same.  And I’ve felt since this point in the manga than Shinso Hitoshi was a credible late contender in that argument.

There are as many opinions on this topic as there are BnHA fans, of course.  My personal pick will be in focus next week, but while I don’t think Shinso is at the very top, I think he’s in the top tier for multiple reasons.  In the first place, he’s got a quirk that to the best of our knowledge is fairly close to unique.  Add to that the fact that he’s done so much to augment it through going the Batman route – tech and savvy as opposed to superpowers.  Mirio is an example of a guy who takes what in my view is a relatively middling quirk and becomes one of the most powerful quirk users by getting the absolute max out of it.  If Shinso – with a much stronger quirk – could do that, he’d be a real contender.  And he’s made a fine start.

In truth, though, I think it’s Tsuyu who stands out as the MVP of Class A’s win here.  Denki shows some surprising strategic acumen, and with proper guidance Shinso is the key in many ways, but Tsuyu is the one who proves the most versatile.  She pretty much acts as the captain, too.  Her mucus comes in extremely handy in confusing the Beast Titan’s sense of smell, but in the end I don’t think the plan works at all without Shinso’s voice modulator.  So maybe it’s really Mei who was the MVP, because that doohickey multiplies the offensive potential of Brainwashing by a factor of 10.

It also strikes me in watching this ep that Mukai Masahiro’s comic book style is ideally suited for a training battle arc like “Joint Training”.  Frankly it needs that little extra bit of visual flourish (“THUMP”) that Mukai favors more than Nagasaki Kenji does.  Mind you, the arc that’s coming in the second cour strikes me as more suited to Nagasaki’s style – and it’s not like they’re going to tag out in the middle of the season, so I guess in the end it all evens out…