Boku no Hero Academia, Chapter 74: Signal Fire
Well, been a while since I did a Boku no Hero Academia review. It's more setup, really, as the villains start to make their move. We cut to and fro several places, and it's mostly just setup... we learn some fun information about Kouta, who manages to not be annoying for the duration of this chapter, and apparently he's got some personal history with one of the villains' First Strike Team.
The first few pages seem to be taking it easy. Eraserhead is just bringing the remedial bunch to study with Blood King (who still has one of the most awesome names in the manga), and we get a short bit of jackassery courtesy of Class 1B's Monoma, who's all like 'lolololo only one student from class B needs to attend remedial'. Man, someone needs to whack Monoma in the head. More than once, I mean. They get interrupted by Mandalay's telepathy, which basically brings the rest of the characters in the area up to speed about the goings-on of the whole villain attack. Kaminari sneaks in a bit of an introdump that Mandalay can only send out telepathic messages and can't receive them, which definitely complicates matters.
Eraserhead panics and runs out, straight into the waiting hands of Dabi, whose powers apparently fits with his whole cremation theme as he creates this bigass two-page-spamming explosion of fire that engulfs Eraserhead. Now while I don't think Eraserhead's going to be taken out just like that, it's still a pretty effective scene that the only character that's an established badass fighter ends up getting taken out by the apparent leader of the bad guys. Blood King is right in a nearby room, though, and there's a couple of students that seem like they could put up a fight. But it's a decent setup scene, that's for sure.
Meanwhile, the other dudes -- long-haired hipster dude and Lizardman Stain Cosplayer, are facing off against Tiger, Mandalay and Class 1A. Lizardman Stain Cosplayer announces himself as Spinner, and he's, well, basically a self-styled Stain successor. Also his giant sword... is a bigass blade made up of smaller blades chained together. And I do mean freaking big-ass. He's definitely compensating for something, and, well, lizards are small in one particular department if you know what I mean. Tiger is absolutely furious about Spinner and his buddy beating up Pixie-Bob, talking about some weird thing regarding how scarring the face of a woman looking for a suitor (wait what) is an unforgivable crime. Spinner recognizes Iida, but Tiger and Mandalay hold the line.
Midoriya goes off to do his own thing, talking about how he knows what this is all about... which doesn't make sense since he goes off to Kouta's hideout. Yes, he found the villain there by coincidence, but still.
Kendou, the 1B girl with a gigantic hand, manages to meet up with TestuTetsuTetsuTetsu and Ibara, who apparently are fortunate enough to be around Yaoyorozu when the gas attack happened and she shat out (an appropriate word to be used here considering the joke a couple chapters back) the gas masks for them. Tetsutetsutetsutetsu talks a bit about how much better class 1A is than them simply because of the fact that they've faced actual danger, and how ready people like Yaoyorozu is in charging into battle against the Darth Vader cosplayer and his smoke abilities.
Jason Voorhes Cosplayer, meanwhile, has shown up in Kouta's cliff hideout, blocking the kid off, and talks about how Kouta isn't in the registry or whatever. He's apparently a newcomer being hazed, which explains the weird mask. He's got a big-ass muscly hand as part of his quirk and seems to be pretty quick as well... Kouta gets a quick flashback to the news report about the death of his parents, the Water Horse heroes, and the villain, of course, is this very one who's menacing Kouta right now. He's got a scarred left face, replaced with cybernetic implants it seems, which is a helluva distinguishing feature.
Of course, before Mr Scarface manages to beat Kouta to a pulp, Midoriya zooms in and gets him out of the way. I do like how while Kouta is supposed to be a plucky character, he's still scared shitless at this point. Not a big fan of plucky-but-useless-in-a-fight character retaining their plucky attitude in the face of utterly overwhelming odds like this -- it's just unrealistic IMO. Midoriya, meanwhile, analyzes the situation quickly. He went up to that cliff for some undefined plan, yes, and his all mysterious act means that no one knows what he's up to, and his phone got smashed, so no backup like the Stain fight. Plus he had to protect Kouta, and he has to fight this big bad villain. So, of course, like any good hero, Midoriya gathers his resolve.
Overall it's just setting up the various fights -- Midoriya vs Scarface, Tiger and Mandalay vs Spinner and Spinner's Buddy, Yaoyorozu's team vs, uh, Kylo Ren, and Eraserhead vs Dabi. Next chapter we'll get some proper fighting I guess.
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