My Hero Academia 160 Review: Villain-vs-Villain

Boku no Hero Academia, Chapter 160: Highway

A pretty grand chapter, really. It's more of an epilogue/setup chapter, but it is a pretty kickass one. I've stated many times how I feel like the yakuza arc started off really strong, but ended up falling to the sides in the final 5-10 chapters due to repetition and generally slow pacing. It's not the worst I've seen out of shonen manga, of course, but I did feel that it ended in the most generic way ever, with Midoriya beating Overhaul with strength and determination, and proving the future-sight prophecy wrong... it's executed well, but I don't think it's particularly as satisfying or as well-done as it could've been. 

This one brings us back to the larger world of Boku no Hero Academia that had appealed so much to me. Basically most of the entire chapter is just the Villain Alliance attacking the prison convoy that's transporting Overhaul, and I'm reminded once more just how well-defined the characters in the Villain Alliance are, even Dabi and Spinner, who both occupy relatively unique niches in Shigaraki's army -- Spinner as this extremist that's worrying if they're actually creating a 'true hero society' like Stain wanted, and Dabi as a psychopath who just delights in blowing up people. We get so much cooler visuals with Dabi's black flames and the sand powers of the superhero Snatch (because suna is sand in Japanese) being far, far more cool-looking than Midoriya's punches and Overhaul's rather abstract 'bwaaa destruction' stuff.

We get a pretty cool fight between Snatch and the Villain Alliance, how Shigaraki seems to be temporarily incapacitated because he can't blow up something like sand that's already a million pieces. Mr. Compress also does some really cool shit with his powers, like throwing a little pellet that expands into a big rock to whack a police car into the air. Dabi and Compress manage to take out Snatch, and even maybe kill him -- Compress notes how only Snatch's top half transforms to sand, and shrinking that into a pellet probably kills him.

Then they confront Overhaul. Mr. Compress rips off one of Overhaul's arms (he has a fancy new robotic arm to replace his decapitated one), and Shigaraki rots and slices off another, all the while giving him a speech about how he relies too much on his own quirk despite running a modus operandi of erasing people's quirks. They steal the completed product, and Shigaraki gloats over Overhaul -- he doesn't have any other way to really do jack shit because he doesn't have arms or powers left. And... did they burn him up as they leave? Either way... Overhaul's out for the count. He ended up being significantly less interesting than how he was early when we first met him, but Overhaul's definitely a pretty cool villain nonetheless, and this exit after the yakuza/villain alliance team-up thing is a pretty neat way to wrap up this particular story arc. Definitely far more pumped about My Hero Academia more than I've been in a while.