This is a monumental week not just for Boku no Hero Academia, but manga as a whole. The fourth film was released this week (with the strongest opening three days of any so far). But the real story is that the manga is ending after a glorious decade-long run – officially on Sunday August 4th, though of course the final chapter is already on the net. I’ll have much more to say on that subject soon, because HeroAca is one of the most important manga of the past 20 years or more. And its legacy is one that richly deserves to be discussed. But this is not the space to do that extensively – we’re here to talk about the anime (which should end after roughly this season and one more cour, unless Shueisha once more goes the pure greed route and does so with theatrical films).
We’re mostly focused on the three main battles here. Shigaraki wreaks devastation inside the Yuuei dome, Touya once more acts out his daddy issues against his brother, and All For One draws close to the conclusion of his showdown against Team Endeavor. But also of note is that Skeptic is trying to hack into the Yuuei control systems (which are keeping the Coffin in the Sky true to its name, among other things). He does so not out of loyalty to AFO or even Shigaraki – he’s acting out what he feels would be the wishes of Re-Destro, and thus the late Meta Liberation Army.
As always the subtext is what fuels the drama with HeroAca. As AFO and Shigaraki go through their paces, it becomes increasingly clear just how different they are. All For One seeks to rule, Shigaraki to destroy. That their aims are mutually exclusive matters little to AFO, as he’s planning on subsuming Shigaraki in the end anyway. But he has more urgent concerns at the moment. Endeavor’s most recent attack has forced him to play a trump card sooner than he wanted.
Thanks to Doc Garak, All For One has a means of using Eri’s “Rewind” in macro form. It will heal him and make him younger. But the hitch is, once is starts he can’t stop – he’ll keep getting younger every time he’s wounded. This isn’t a problem as long as his grand plan works out, but it does start the timer on how long he has to make that happen. Hawks realizes this and tries to stall for time, and AFO is so fond of the sound of his own voice that he can’t resist playing along just a little. He mentions his love of comics – quite explicitly “komikku” and not “manga”. This is something we see often with Boku no Hero Academia characters, and I think it reflects Horikoshi-sensei’s own greatest influences. Which is one of the things that make this series so unique.
Meanwhile, in Washington, the President is arguing with Timothy Agpar (this is one of those times Horikoshi doesn’t even try and hide the Star Wars thing) about whether to pursue an appeasement policy with Shigaraki. In Kamino Dabi is giving as good as he got with Shouta’s ice-fire ability. And Shigaraki is laying waste to everything he touches, not least Mirko, as things look increasingly hopeless. Bakugo remains quite lifeless, with Jeanist unable to do more than cosmetic repairs. But Edgeshot appears, and announces that he can use “Foldabody” to do what Jeanist could not – ninja his way into Kacchan’s body and fix him (not to mention perform CPR) from the inside.
By all accounts this looks like a suicide mission for Edgeshot, as using his ability in this fashion saps his own life force. But children are our future and all that. The aim overall is to stall for time with Shigaraki – both to give Edge the time to work and to give Midoriya-kun time to show up. Mirko, doing a bit of a “Black Knight” impersonation, does her best. So do Mirio, Hado, and Tamaki. But Shiggy, for his part, is irked that the heroes are trying to bring back something he already destroyed. And once he dispatches Hado and Tamaki he doesn’t even acknowledge Lemillion as worth crushing.
This is the harsh reality for Tintin – his quirk, isolated, is weak. He’s really only strong when using it to support another – or when he can apply his sheer force of will. To me he deserves a lot of respect, because in quirk terms, I’m not sure anybody in the cast gets more out of less. But it does reduce him to comic pratfalls as a means of slowing Shigaraki down – which, thanks to the element of sheer amazement, he momentarily does. Long enough for the electromagnetic shield to be lowered for two seconds for Deku to get in, without Shiggy getting out.
Now, at last, the two main players are in the arena. Or at least the two main players of their generation – neither All For One or All Might are, but the latter is a shell of his former self and seemingly not destined for the main stage. The whole point of this plan was to separate AFO and Shigaraki, and in that it’s thus far been successful. But All For One has a new sense of urgency now that he’s pressed rewind, and that means Izuku is on the clock too.
DukeofEarls
August 4, 2024 at 4:27 amI feel a bit like the “akshually” meme guy saying this, but for whatever reason it’s just where I’m at with the past few episodes: I’m really having my suspension of disbelief challenged a lot with this show recently. It’s making it more difficult to enjoy, and this is probably in my top 5 anime of the past 10 or so years.
1. I’m really not a fan of Shigaraki’s “growth” ability. The series has already established a system where powers are derived from quirks, but now we’re supposed to believe science could bestow upon people an even greater power? I feel like militaries around the world would have discovered this a long time ago, not some rogue scientist in service of All for One. This could easily have been circumvented by having some combination of quirks that All for One bestowed on Shigaraki that somehow nullified the eraser quirk. Or if you want to get more indirect and creative with it, All for One gave the scientist guy a suite of quirks that boosted his intelligence towards bioengineering to a level far beyond normal humans.
2. Speaking of militaries around the world, I’m not a huge fan of MHA’s dip into “international relations” this season. To keep it simple, where are the Chinese heroes? A neighboring country with well over a billion people; with that sample size, you can’t produce a hero relevant to this situation? Expanding a little further geographically but still in the same region of Earth, where are the Indian heroes? They’re all just occupied by All for One’s “allies” or however he referred to them in a basically throwaway line a few episodes back? Nobody from the rest of Asia, Oceania, Africa, Europe, and both American continents have anything to lend to the situation? I get that it’s ultimately a show for kids, and specifically kids from Japan, but as an adult… it’s just stupid, I could accept that the ultimate villain threat could appear anywhere, but some simple statistical thinking would imply there are super powerful heroes elsewhere that would be stepping in here to help. I’m not saying they even have to win… just, if you’re showing me “the world,” don’t try to hand wave all the other countries on Earth away and expect me not to raise an eyebrow. If you don’t want to have a cavalcade of international heroes in your story, just keep it a regional conflict and don’t reference other countries at all. Can’t really have it both ways.
That said, still looking forward to the upcoming fight, so I’m not dropping the series or anything. This is just the first time I’ve been a little annoyed with it as a viewer.
MentalGymBro
August 4, 2024 at 11:51 amThank you!
As a long time fan of this series I had the exact same thoughts! Should have kept it regional.
Simone
August 6, 2024 at 12:30 amIt’s kind of like the Harry Potter problem. Magical Britain gets taken over by an insane fascist lich, and for some reason France next door, Germany, and so on so forth, all just sit back and don’t interfere in the least, despite the obvious instability this brings right to their door step.
Jujutsu Kaisen (manga spoilers)
is also doing the “Japan gets left on its own” bit, with a short interlude to show the US trying to intervene. Though in that series it has at least been stated that for some reason Japan is home to most of the world’s sorcerers to begin with.
Yukie
August 25, 2024 at 1:17 amSpeaking of suspension of disbelief, for me it’s the fact that Dabi mastered Shoto’s move just by looking at it. I thought it was a decent end for his character and whatever’s left of his story can be dealt with in the slammer. The only reason I can see Horikoshi keeping him around is perhaps for a Dabi vs Endeavor fight, but I can’t help feeling that will undercut what Shoto tried to do+what Endeavor is trying to do against AFO.
Nadavu
August 4, 2024 at 4:55 amI like Shigaraki’s new form. I found it hilarious that the hand motif is so strong he now has chimpanzee feet.
nickk
August 5, 2024 at 3:52 amStarted watching BnHA two months ago and finally caught up!
Unfortunate it seems that the next episode will be delayed to August 17 due to the Olympics broadcast… which places the ending of the season at an awkward location given that this season supposedly has 21 episodes?
Just a thought as I was watching, but it would have been really cool if they showed the exact time each event was happening when switching among the different battlefields. I was wondering how long it took for Deku to fly there LOL