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 Onee 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.
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