My Hero Academia, Chapter 172: The Most Enjoyable Time is Preparing for the Culture Festival
Another pretty great chapter! As with the previous chapter, the first half of the chapter's honestly just fluff, but it's well-written fluff. It's these sort of things that separates a manga (or any fiction with a large ensemble cast) that really cares about its side characters and is willing to develop them beyond a colourful menagerie of character quirks. It is this development that lesser manga doesn't quite manage to grasp -- it's sometimes enough to hold someone's attention with quirky designs and quirky personalities, but if you don't develop them they end up being glorified wallpaper decorations. And while this chapter doesn't necessarily give us any groundbreaking character-development moments, it is definitely much appreciated to see the members of Class 1A interact with each other, and sometimes with people they've never interacted before. (Plus, the mangaka is clearly having a crapton of fun with Ashido's expressions in this chapter)
I don't think there's much that I really need to discuss here -- there was a hilarious bit where Ashido decides that the big staging thing is to strap poor Aoyama onto a spinning metal bar and turn him into a disco ball. There's the big 'd'aww' moment with Jirou apparently having a husky, sexy rockstar voice. There's the running gag of Mineta being completely useless, at one point crying because "I can't play the guitar because of my character design", before being cheered up by Ashido giving him a 'harem part' just to cheer him up. Tokoyami's also a guitarist, which... yeah, that makes a lot of sense, doesn't it. It's definitely a chapter that would read a lot better in tankobon format where we don't have to wait weekly, but I do like it.
This chapter also gives us a bit of the fighty-fight stuff. We don't see Gentleman and La Brava again, but rather Midoriya and All Might, something we haven't seen in a while. There's a neat discussion and clarification on the One for All power stuff, with All Might telling Midoriya that, yes, with full cowl, he can unleash gigantic shockwaves by swinging his legs, and the reason that he didn't do so was that the fight with Overhaul was defensive in nature.
All Might then gets Midoriya to go through all of his tricks -- "unleash 100% from one place", "control a percentage in one place", "control a percentage throughout the body", "Shoot Style", "increase upper limit to 8%" and "draw 20% out for a short period". It's definitely very refreshing, and when I saw that Boku no Hero Academia's main power depends on percentages I think I groaned a little since it's just going to be a boring serial power-up, except unlike Super Saiyans or One Piece's Gears, there's a definite upper limit. But here, Midoriya isn't just going "I need to unlock 30% now!" and I absolutely love that the development of his power is of better control. This time around, they decide to make ranged attacks by combining Midoriya's ability to control a percentage of One for All in one part of his body with his short burst of going to 20% for a short boost, essentially turning his finger into a temporary 20% shockwave-shooting gun...
Of course, that's probably a power that, in true shonen fashion, Midoriya will only unleash in the climactic fight of the arc, so we cut away to Eri being greeted by Mirio and Aizawa at U.A. Thanks, brief time skip! Overall, a pretty decent chapter and one that is satisfying in both fluff and serious moments.
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