Welcome back to the middle of My Hero Academia‘s summer festival preparation! This week, we see the fruits of Izuku’s training as well as the students of 1-A feeling more and more comfortable in their performative ability. Plus: Gentle Criminal begins his plan to break into UA! Read on as well look at five big things that occurred in this week’s MHA!
1. Final preparation
As the episode opens, we see the class of 1-A brushing up for the last time on their respective roles in the performance, and it’s super cute how invested everyone is getting. There’s a neat character moment between Izuku and Kyoka as the latter reveals how she gave each of the musicians their own scrapbook full of notes and tips for their instrument. Izuku, being the huge data and binder nerd that he is, completely fawns over this idea and approves of it wholeheartedly, giving these two characters a great connection point.
The show keeps continuity pretty well here as the scene ends. While the students continue to get overly invested in their practice, the school’s guard Hound Dog comes around harassing them about the curfew, and finally, I see why he’s considered such a threat and so terrifying to the students: because he is.
2. New tech!
We see Izuku training with All Might again, doing more of the same long-range training but not dwelling too long on it so that it becomes repetitive. As a change of pace, we see the support student Mei pop up from the surrounding bush, looking totally in character and as grubby as a car mechanic. She comes with the final product to help Izuku channel his long-range attacks: a pair of pretty slick gloves that contain areas that can effectively shoot Izuku’s physical force in a more direct manner. Anime science!
Prior to this, however, Izuku agreed to buy some new rope to help support Yuga in their special mirror-ball part in the festival, of which he has a time period of between 8 and 9 am to purchase before the party starts. Izuku is about to get stuck into training with All Might but the screen flashes the time, which makes Izuku really reassert his priorities and run off to the general store. Conveniently, the same general store that sits next to the tea house Gentle Criminal will be arriving at before his break in!
3. Confrontation with a masked pair
The scene that unfolds when Izuku stumbles across Gentle Criminal and La Brava who are loosely incognito is both tense and subtly hilarious. We see interior monologue from both sides, with Izuku as he tries to pick where he remembers Gentle saying Gold Tips Imperial from and Gentle constantly on edge that he will be found out because he let slip a little too much when speaking passionately about tea. I love that Gentle is constantly on the offense, saying over and over that he just doesn’t want the aftertaste of Gold Tips Imperial to be spoilt by this bratty kid.
There’s some great back and forth throughout both character’s internal monologues before La Brava starts to worry about how invested Gentle is getting in this, and rightly so! Izuku slowly starts to connect this man’s voice to the sound of Gentle’s from the video he watched the last episode, and we once again see that patented Midoriya rage starts to boil as he realizes the ramifications of this.
4. The rubber man
Hilariously, before everything starts to really kick-off, Gentle asks La Brava to start recording for their channel, which is so pitch-perfect even though we’ve only known the character for roughly three episodes. Similarly, Izuku psyches himself up for a big fight too, noticing that there aren’t any hero agencies around this part of town and that the police would take a while to provide back up. But we really see that protagonist spirit shine through when Izuku proclaims to Gentle how he could dare ruin the brief moment of serenity and peace that UA has managed to clasp onto just for this short amount of time. Honestly, this is the one thing I don’t get about Gentle Criminal myself, considering that he doesn’t seem to be too horrible of a guy, but I’m sure the show has some motive reveal up its sleeve to pleasantly surprise me.
We found out, however, that Gentle has the odd power of being able to turn anything into being super-elastic. Like… air (Anime science! Again!). He’s able to trap Izuku in this elasticized air and fling him backward violently into the ground, proving that his innocent seemingly Quirk has some serious deadly potential.
5. La Brava steps up
The battle rages on for a while until the pair find themselves fighting in the midst of building scaffolding high above the ground. Turns out, this is the perfect playground for Gentle, as he elasticizes all the surrounding steel beams and flings himself around, keeping Izuku on his toes. Gentle then proves he’s a true chaotic neutral by supposedly endangering a passerby so that Izuku can be distracted, only to reveal he would have saved the passerby from his own falling pylon anyway. Later still, in a nice bit of episodic continuity, we see that Izuku has learned from not just his training with All Might about his long-range abilities, but combines them with the precision dance training he learned from Mina earlier on, shooting at Gentle and distracting him from escaping.
The show ends in a huge cliffhanger as we see La Brava reveal she might have to use her powers to get them out of this situation! Of course, this is done in La Brava’s overly dramatic tone, so this could all be building up to a false climax, but nonetheless, the mystery of what La Brava’s begrudgingly-used quirk is remains palpable in this final scene!
That’s it for this week. Now speculate away as to La Brava’s mystery power, and if you’ve read ahead in the manga, don’t spoil it for others, please!
