“Oopsie Daisy!!”
Creative Staff
Story/Art: Kohei Horikoshi
Translation: Caleb D. Cook
What They Say
Midoriya inherits the superpower of the world’s greatest hero, but greatness won’t come easy.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Jumping into My Hero Academia as the big arc plays out continues to be a good bit of fun but it’s not without its problems. While my initial jumping on landed me into some decent character material and then some solid fight material, the exploration of longer character issues I’m unfamiliar with has hit as well. With the series working some big moments and playing with an interesting cast of characters, it’s easy to get into it at this point. But there are areas of struggle at times because it does lean into over three hundred chapters of history, so I know I’m missing out at times or having a harder time connecting things. I had liked what little I had seen of Horikoshi’s previous work in Shonen Jump and it’s clearly been a few years since Barrage, so I was looking forward to revisiting his artwork.
With this installment coming at like fifteen pages or so, it’s a pretty tight and somewhat dense piece but it is mostly focused on the action. And a chunk of that is obscured by the dialogue to help smooth things over a bit as there’s a lot going on. This arc was always going to have a ton of action but with the style of it and the powers at play, such as with Endeavor, it’s something that dominates in a way that feels like it obscures things in its own way. There’s a solid fight going on here with Endeavor and Hawks dealing with All For One while understanding what’s at stake but the reality is that All For One always has just a bit more that they can draw from that will eat and mess with Endeavor and throw him off balance. Just the mention of how Toya’s body was never found really makes an impact even as restrained as it feels.
The back and forth is what drives this installment and it really does keep it between this group of characters without too much of a nod toward other characters and events. We do get that bursting into the scene toward the end of the chapter with Earphone Jack arriving on Tsukuyuomi to help out. It’s nicely timed and standard superhero fare when you get down to it so it definitely tracks right. It provides some variance in the fight as it plays out and lets a little different style of dialogue and action to push into it all as it was feeling grim with what Endeavor and Hawks were dealing with. It sets up for a decent fight to come and gives All For One more to deal with, but unless something really unusual happens, these are the types of characters that he should be able to brush off easily and refocus where he needs to.
In Summary:
My Hero Academia does continue to be a bit of a struggle in some ways as I’ve talked about and an installment like this feels it just a bit more because of how busy the artwork is. It’s well-detailed with a lot going on but it becomes, at times, a bit indistinct as to the who, how, what, and why of it all. There are some really big action moments that really work well, however, so it’s a land of contrasts as always. Watching as All For One continues to tweak and torment Endeavor definitely makes for some good material as the fight escalates.
Content Grade: B
Art Grade: B
Text/Translation Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Shonen Jump
Release Date: May 29th, 2022
