What They Say:
In the future, mankind is blessed with superhuman abilities called Quirks and in a response to the growing crime rate, superheroing becomes a viable profession. Izuku “Deku” Midoriya dreams of one day becoming a great hero like his idol All-Might, but he was born completely quirkless with no powers at all. However, when Deku ends up having a chance encounter with All-Might in the flesh, it changes his destiny forever.
The Review:
Content (warning as portions of this review may contain spoilers):
My Hero Academia returns after another two-week long absence for what’s probably its last arc of this season. This time around Deku and the gang are gearing up for their final exams, and it’s looking to be a pretty crazy set up as they find themselves in a battle they weren’t quite expecting. Unfortunately, the show’s sense of pacing seems to have taken a few steps back again, making a lot of this week’s events feel a bit padded, even for an episode that’s mostly just meant to be set-up.
After a weirdly focused gag about sexy hero costumes, the focus for this week shifts to the kids preparing for their final exams. This mostly results in another series of generally solid gags as we find out which kids are at top and bottom of the pack in terms of grades. There’s nothing too amazing here but it is kind of funny seeing that Mineta and Bakugo of all people are somehow in the top half of the class (and that Bakugo’s grades are better than Deku’s no less), and it was kind of cute seeing Momo’s reaction to having friends over for the first time when everyone asks her for help with studying. It’s all in good fun, but this material mainly feels like fluff to pad things out, and the fact that it ends up taking up the majority of the episode’s first half didn’t really do much to help things.
From there, things shift to the exam itself, as the kids find out what they’re up against. While they came into the exam expecting to fight more giant robots, this time they’re being paired off in teams of two to fight against one of the teachers. There’s a few interesting match ups here but the biggest is definitely Deku and Bakugo being paired off together to fight All-Might. With how big the wedge between Deku and Bakugo has grown that sounds like a recipe for disaster, and one that Aizawa hopes will help the two boys to grow. Interesting as this mash up sounds though, we don’t really get to see too much of either Deku or Bakugo’s reactions as the exam instead kicks off with another team getting wiped out by one of the teachers in an attempt to hammer in that the kids are in for a real fight. Outside of that one little match-up though, this half of the episode doesn’t really move much faster than the first and I couldn’t help but feel like most of this one could have been cut in half without losing much. I’m looking forward to seeing how the Deku/Bakugo team up works out, but for right now, there’s not really a whole ton to talk about and I’m just kind of hoping the rest of the arc will be a bit more exciting than this episode was.
In Summary:
Class 1A’s final exams get off to a slow start, as this week’s episode spends most of it’s run-time setting up the big event. While I generally expect these kinds of episodes to be on the slower end of the spectrum this one felt a little too padded for my tastes and so little really happened that I couldn’t really find much to talk about. The promise of Deku and Bakugo having to work through their differences long enough to fight All-Might is a good enough proposition to make me interested for that match up, but for now I just wanna see things pick up a bit again.
Grade: B-
Streamed By: Funimation, Crunchyroll, VRV