Boku no Hero Academia 143 Review: Bide

My Hero Academia, Chapter 143: Let's Have Ourselves A Match, Rappa

Honestly, it's a pretty basic fight. One of the good guys gets a little shocked at the power gap and doesn't do anything, but seeing his comrade in danger he finally mans up and jumps into the fray and becomes the all-important game-changer.

But My Hero Academia puts a spin on it. Kirishima's BSOD is justified because Unbreakable is a power-up he recently obtained and is over the moon with, and to see it broken so easily, and the fact that even his pro hero mentor is taking such a pounding, would break him. And Rappa and Fat Gum's fight is pretty brutal, with Rappa's unstoppable ORA ORA ORA's being tanked by Fat Gum and it looks hella painful. The manga establishes relatively early on that Fat Gum is trying to store up the energy from those punches to unleash all at once, Meliodas Full Counter style, but even with his powers he's getting seriously worn down. Then Kirishima jumps into the barrage, and tries his best to withstand the barrage of fists, hardening whenever he breaks... and when Kirishima is about to counter-attack, the barrier comes back up and the boy, exhausted, falls down.

But that brief moment of badass defiance, while ultimately not landing a single blow onto the bad guys, allows Fat Gum to transform into a skinnier version of himself and is about to unleash all the power launched upon him.

The two villains are also an interesting dynamic. Rappa tells his zen monk partner, Tengai, to shut off the barrier because this whole 'combo' thing was enforced by "Overhole". So yeah, Rappa isn't a manic Overhaul worshipper like the other disposables that Suneater fought in the previous fight. He just wants to fight fight fight beat beat beat and he even punches Tengai (well, Tengai's shield) at one point to get him to stop interfering, and when Tengai does put up a shield at the end of the chapter to block Kirishima's one strike, Rappa's pissed as hell. Again, pretty basic chapter, but it's intense and brutal, and very enjoyable because of that.