Boku no Hero Academia 73 Review: Hellraiser

Boku no Hero Academia, Chapter 73: Good Evening

Can I just say how much I appreciate Boku no Hero Academia's "Cover Pages" with their faux-retro-comic-cover art? Because I really appreciate them. 

Anyway, the Villain Alliance apparently has even more people coming in, with Toga (whose new mask makes her look like Bane form Dark Knight Rises) and Dabi noting that they're waiting until all ten are assembled. Toga doesn't care much for her Bane mask and apparently some underground designer supplied the Villain Alliance with their new equipment. Well, if the good guys have specialized equipment... the Darth-Vader-cosplayer short dude is far more analytical, while giant Jason-Voorhes-cosplayer just wants to smash stuff. We see three more of the Villain Alliance member show up: a relatively normal-looking dude with big lips and long hair, some really twisted-looking motherfucker in bondage gear with only his mouth being visible and holy shit is this a Shonen manga or Hellraiser, and this lizard-dude with giant swords and a pair of goggles and he seems to be actually cosplaying as Stain now that I think of it. Which is hella appropriate considering the impact that Stain made on the villain community.

The rest of the chapter is more training stuff. We get a long, long string of nice dialogue from Aizawa about how the various quirks are supposed to be trained -- interesting world-building stuff that give us more insight to how the various powers can be improved instead of just 'burning justice do a thousand push-ups in heavy armour'. Raising capacity, raising duration, stuff like that which actually can be improved. Also, sucks to be the four remedial kids because Aizawa doesn't let them participate in any of the fun games and basically slave-drives them to work harder.

Midoriya gets a nice, short speech with Todoroki about Kouta, and Todoroki notes how it would be pretentious for random strangers to just drop and give a big speech about their point of view to someone who's clearly been nursing their hatred for years, and Todoroki is all like 'actions speak louder than words'. Is... is that a little jab at Naruto, that line of dialogue about how "if he were the type to be moved by words alone, then his hatred only runs skin-deep". Because that is easily one of the largest problem with a lot of Naruto. (Maybe I'll do a little rant about Naruto next year)

The rest of the chapter sets up this 'Courage Run' thing that's a cultural thing in Japan where students go in pairs into a jungle where some scary things have been prepared -- except, y'know, this one has superpowers in play, and a little contest between Classes A and B. There's some fun fluff dialogue in-between, until we cut away to a bunch of Class B students preparing frights. This black-haired girl Kodai can apparently phase out of the ground to jumpscare people, there's this ponytail girl who can stretch her hand, and this skull-faced dude called Honenuki. Honenuki suddenly collapses due to inhaling some gas, however, showing that the villains have attacked. Ponytail uses her stretchy arm to cover Kodai, but we don't really see what happened to them or indeed the Class B people.

I don't think this manga will be that dark and kill off, like, half of Class B or something -- it certainly would be the way that makes sense if it was realistic, but this is a Shonen manga, after all.

Apparently the burning smoke thing is Dabi's superpower, appropriate considering his cremation theme. Darth-Vader Gas Mask wannabe seems to be the one behind the poison gas... or something. I dunno. Meanwhile, Toga with her weird Bane mask is stalking Tsuyu and Uraraka. And apparently the cool-looking Lizard Stain cosplayer and Normal-Looking Man (who has this wrapped up giant stick) has gone in and taken out Pixiebob rather brutally, who is really the only one among the Pussy Cats that has a combat-oriented quirk. Someone sneaks up behind Kouta but I don't care about Kouta.

We haven't really seen just what these villains can do. Dabi and Toga have obviously been built up a fair bit, though they haven't really been seen in battle. For all we know, Midget Darth Vader and Jason Voorhes cosplayer and Hellraiser Bondage Man are actually very weak and are just disposable troops that the Dabi just happened to answer Dabi's call. It really depends on just how much the students have improved their quirks, because at this moment they're still in training and the professional heroes there that really can put up much of a fight are Aizawa (who's back at the lodge) and Tiger.

We'll see. Power level management and hyping up villains only for them to be taken out by random second-stringer characters who shouldn't be that powerful is one of the things that some mangas really screw up, so I'm curious just how Academia will handle it. I highly doubt anyone's going to die, though, even the Class B people. This is a Shonen manga, after all...