Creative Staff
Story/Art: Kohei Horikoshi
Translation: Caleb Cook
What They Say
Class 1-A is working on developing their ultimate moves—a process that will test their strength and creativity in all-new ways! To help them out, Mei Hatsume, a student from the Support Class, is brought in to develop improvements to their costumes. The attention from Mei might be more than Midoriya can handle, but he’ll need every edge he can get to pass the next hurdle for the students of U.A.—the Provisional Licensing Exam!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
So this time around, we actually join our fledgling heroes in the midst of a lesson. The topic of the day is ultimate moves, but… actually, Deku isn’t really all that involved in doing that so much, so it surprisingly becomes sort of a background thing. No, instead our hero is concerned about his basic fighting style in general, since he’s continuously been damaging his hands more and more. And frankly, I love both the way that All Might subtly mentors him, and the solution that he reaches. It’s simple, but it makes a lot of sense and is an interesting change-up for Deku.
The main focus of the volume, though, is the provisional hero licensing exam. Now what this does first off is actually introduce characters from different schools, expanding the cast in a natural and organic way that’s pretty cool. But then, when the exam starts, something else very logical happens: everybody rushes the U.A. team. It makes a lot of sense that would happen, and puts them at a pretty intense and intriguing disadvantage. It’s just a simple yet very logical way to make our heroes struggle despite being considered the elite, and I really appreciate that. Oh, and some of the other students prove pretty nuts with their Quirks too, so that’s cool as well.
Anyway, our heroes do eventually manage to blow past the first round, with a combination of teamwork and ingenuity. But will they prove so fortunate in the next round of the exam?
In Summary
Now, this volume is a step down from last time, but that’s no surprise considering how much that one nailed everything. And in fact, what we get here actually isn’t half bad. We’re thrown back into more proper school activities, but it’s all handled rather well. And I’d actually give this volume some special praise for coming up with some logical yet effective twists along the way. They’re all simple little things, but they make a lot of sense rather than feeling at all contrived, which I definitely appreciate. So while I do hope we reach the bombastic highs of last time, I’m certainly not disappointed with what we get here, where things have inevitably slowed down in the aftermath.
Content Grade: A-
Art Grade: A-
Packaging Grade: B+
Text/Translation Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Viz Media
Release Date: April 3rd, 2018
MSRP: $9.99