My Hero Academia 111 Review: Gang Orca, Gang Orca, does whatever an Orca can

Boku no Hero Academia, Chapter 111: A Smoldering Beginning

(Missed this chapter a couple of days ago, mostly because I thought Academia was on break alongside One Piece)

Sometimes two heroes come into conflict. It's a very common trope in fiction, especially superhero fiction. Why, the two biggest movies in this year's summer had DC and Marvel's two most powerful and popular superheroes fight each other. The motivations for their discord might be different. Sometimes it's a simple case of mind control. Batman vs Superman (in the extended edition, anyway) had Luthor manipulate the world-views of Superman and Batman to make the former see the latter as a psychotic, violent vigilante with no respect for human rights, while the latter sees the former as a ticking bomb, a godlike being that answers to no one who needs to be taken care of. Civil War had Captain America go off to save a mind-controlled friend, trying to hunt down the villain that hypnotized him in the first place, while Iron Man tries his best to work within the rules of the government to keep their cooperation, plus a bunch of other personal problems thrown intoo.

Todoroki and Inasa? Todoroki's father was a dick and refused to give Inasa his signature. Not... not the best of reasons to hate each other.

Still, it does help to make the things a bit less serious and to remind us that these are little kids that are in their early teens. Granted Inasa's "your dad is a dick" reason it's a bit of a stark difference compared to Todoroki's own daddy issues with Endeavour, but it's not a plot point that I begrudge too much.

We get a brief look on the heroes' board or whatever designing the tests, so it's nice to see that this isn't entirely arbitrary "let's have them shoot balls at each other!" and the thought process is to not look for the next All Might to become the new superman, but to create teams of superheroes that work together. There's a nice little 'take that' to Endeavour when one of them notes that the gap between All Might and Endeavour is so high. We also learn that each superhero has an examiner that's observing everything that's going on and that's how their marks are calculated, which is a nice logistics question I've been having for some time -- like, what about the heroes that are moving rubble or directing the rescue efforts or whatever? They don't exactly interact with the fake casualties the way Midoriya or Bakugou were doing last chapter.

Shindou, one of the other school's kids, creates one-second-interval earthquakes to stop the marching army of "villains", but Gang Orca shows up and, yeah, he does look like a villain. It's his very disturbing eyes, I think. His quirk is "killer whale", which the manga describes as "allows him to do killer whale things... ON LAND!" which is just hilarious. Boku no Hero Academia's very tongue-in-cheek descriptions and narrations is an understated but very awesome part of the manga. We get an explanation that for this particular takedown, Gang Orca uses a focused ultrasonic blast, so it's not just "WHALE THINGS".

Torodoki and Inasa charge in with their elemental powers and just unleash destruction -- Inasa's insanely steam-punk-y costume is a very cool design, in a hilariously very clunky and impractical yet still looks awesome way. However, Inasa immediately calls Todoroki a shit, and the two... kind of argue all the time, with Todoroki's fire screwing up Inasa's wind and sending it away, while Inasa's wind blows Todoroki's fire away. Gang Orca has a hilarious 0.o reaction to their argument. Naruto and Sasuke, this ain't.

We then have a brief flashback where Inasa's autograph is rejected very rudely by Endeavour, who tells him that he's on his way, and how Todoroki basically did the same thing to him and tells him to piss off in more or less the same way during the day of the exam. That's... I mean, yeah, I get the spirit of 'heroes aren't supposed to be like that!' but really, Inasa? You quit your application to your dream school only because a dickbag's son happens to attend? Jeez.

Gang Orca and the examiners aren't impressed, and Todoroki is still nursing some grudges against his father that gets quickly brought up by the conversation. This unstable anger on both their parts causes the blast of wind and fire to spin out of control and very nearly hit Shindou... but Midoriya springs in to help and asks a very appropriate question: "what the heck are you people doing?"

Yeah. Not the most dramatic conflicts out there, but I really like Todoroki and I'm all up to anything that gives him focus, plus Inasa's got a cool design and a hilarious expression in his face so I'm happy to see those two get the focus for now.