Boku no Hero Academia 85 Review: Public Opinion

My Hero Academia, Chapter 85: So Full of Fools

Boku no Hero Academia’s anime is out. It’s got the first episode. I haven’t watched it and I probably won’t watch it until much, much later, but it’s nice to give it a shout-out. Let’s talk about this chapter first, though. It’s mostly a standard chapter to build up this assault on the Villain Alliance, and we get a short one-page flashback of Midoriya’s mother finally doing what mothers do and, y’know, worry. She asks Midoriya whether he really needs to go back to Yuuei.

We get more reassertions that Yaoyorozu and Iida are just there to supervise and keep the three hotheads out of trouble. There’s some discussion of Bakugou’s ego and how heroes can’t turn their backs on someone, before they arrive on the Kamino area, which I assume is an actual place in real-life Japan as opposed to a storm planet with long-necked aliens and cloning technology. There’s a bit of a comedy moment where they disguise themselves in the most ridiculous way ever thanks to a cosplay shop thing.

And there’s a bit of a nice moment where we all know was going to happen – public backlash against Yuuei. We get the principal, Aizawa and Vlad make a public apology and give, y’know, the standard PR answers about ‘we’re doing all we can, and we’re increasing security’. And both the cast and the readers get to see how the people actually react against these recent events instead of it just being told off-handedly in last chapter’s narration, which is great.

Granted, it is stupid for the civilians to blame the school as opposed to blaming the villains who actually went and attacked a bunch of kids, but since practically everyone likes to blame the establishment and the government more than the actual criminals, well, it’s not far off from the mark at all, really.

We get Shigaraki and Spinner giving this long speech to Bakugou about their ideals and about how society is fucked up, how society isn’t really just, how the idea of heroism itself has been warped. Shigaraki basically wants to ‘win’, how they’re trying to break free from their shackles and everything, and while there is some merit behind some of what they are talking about, this is what makes them be a bunch of insane psychopaths as opposed to the rebellion fighting the empire… they go around kidnapping people and unleashing giant muscle monsters into towns. This is why they are villains.

I like Twice, by the way. “Release him? Me? No way!” before proceeding to, um, release Bakugou. Twice is like a hyperactive, less imposing version of Bizarro and I like him for that.

Bakugou, of course, gives no shit. Despite Shigaraki being cocksure that Bakugou won’t dare cause trouble in front of so many villains, he straight up explode-punches Shigaraki in the face. Bakugou just goes ‘that ain’t happening’ in response to them wanting to use Bakugou to harass heroes, and we get a short flashback of kid Bakugou fanboying over All Might, and he just stands all crazy like in front of the villains, declaring that he’s never ever going to go to their side. Sasuke he ain’t. Overall, a pretty decent and informative, if overall uneventful, chapter.