Boku no Hero Academia 82: Gambit Pileup

Boku no Hero Academia, Chapter 82: Round and Round and Round

What a fucking tense chapter! The first half dials back the time to when one of Dabi's clones attacks the remedial kids, and he fought Vlad/Blood -- who has blood manipulation powers as everyone guessed. Aizawa, fresh from meeting up with Midoriya and Kouta a while back, helps to beat Dabi's clone up, and we get some nice little introdumps about the motivation of the Villain Alliance to fuck up society's trust in the superhero community. 

We then have a really fun and well-choreographed free-for-all as Dabi launches a blast of fire at Midoriya, Todoroki and Shouji, while Twice the cloning man is just saying all sorts of weird contradictory things, weird fellow that he is. Touga is all BDSM blood-love with Midoriya and wants to cut him up, Twice fights Todoroki with some weird tape thing and gets absolutely outclassed with ice creation. 

Mr. Compress recovers and is all suave and shit, and then Shouji reveals that, hey, Compress has been protecting his right pocket and Shouji has in the confusion recovered the Bakugou and Tokoyami spheres! Except... well, Black Mist shows up, and everyone (including Chainsaw Noumu) retreats. Mr. Compress takes off his mask to gloat that he's hidden the real spheres in his mouth all along! What a great little trick!

Which... is the wrong move, because SUDDEN LASER BLAST! Belly Button Laser hits Mr. Compress straight in the face, thus making him awesomely and utterly relevant to the plot with this dynamic surprise attack. Midoriya, Shouji and Todoroki jump to grab the two compressed heroes, and I do like how Midoriya's injuries basically incapacitate him. It's a nice, tense, dramatic moment where you really don't know if Bakugou's going to be rescued or captured, and it really could go either way, something that a lot of other mangas (Bleach and Fairy Tail are two of the greatest offenders among my regular reviews) fail to conjure up anymore. It's tense. And Dabi ends up grabbing Bakugou, de-compressing him and pulling him into the darkness by the neck, as Bakugou tells Deku to stay back.

Abduction successful! Now, a lot of people are calling out how this is a Sasuke situation... but really, Sasuke and Bakugou are two very different characters. Sure, they are both jackass talented rival characters compared to the main great-hidden-potential-but-need-to-work-hard main character, but their motivations for turning to the dark side (possibly, in Bakugou's case) are extremely different. Sasuke has always been dark, focusing on obtaining vengeance for the death of his clan since day one, and his focus has always been about getting stronger to get power to defeat Itachi, and eventually he gets seduced by the dark forces of Orochimaru and whatnot. Whereas Bakugou? He's a gigantic jackass and a tool, but he's through and through a heroic character, and if he actually turns into a villain because of this it would be brainwashing and mind-raping as opposed to a more machiavellian corruption and playing to a person's emotional and moral weaknesses.

We'll see how this progresses. Overall, though, it's a great little mini-arc, and I am definitely excited to see the villains that we've gotten little hints of like Dabi or Touga or Mr. Compress get a more dedicated arc or screentime.