Boku no Hero Academia 174 Review: Tea Leaves

My Hero Academia, Chapter 174: Imperial Golden Tips

More of a comedic, 'filler' chapter, really, which is, again, completely fine. After the full-throttle stuff that was the Overhaul arc, this is honestly something that I unexpectedly enjoy -- it's slow-paced, sure, and it doesn't really leave me a whole lot to talk about in my reviews, but don't take it as me disliking any of these chapters. It's very nice! This chapter's slightly weaker because I think they tried a bit too hard with "oh look at how ridiculous Gentle and La-Brava are" and it went on for a wee bit too long, but the rest of it is neat. 

I don't particularly care all that much about the school festival drama, although it's certainly delivered well and doesn't overstay its welcome. We get a cool bit of All Might and Midoriya training, which I think is my favourite part of the chapter. Not because it's the big fight-relevant parts of the chapter, but because it actually shows off the bond between All Might and Midoriya, as well as establishes that despite all his kookiness, All Might is actually a prodigy himself, able to master One For All mostly by instinct, as well as a lot of practice in the past where he used support items in the past... although they ended up being too bulky. We also get a bit of Hatsume experimenting, and she's just wholly devoted to her tinkering and doesn't even care that All Might is there with Midoriya training. Hatsume's honestly been reduced slightly to a plot device to provide Midoriya with upgrades, but she's an entertaining plot device, so there's that. 

We then get Midoriya stumbling into a Youtube video of Gentle when looking for videos of All Might with support items (which is non-existent, apparently), and also Momo talking about tea leaves and whatnot, the titular Imperial Golden tea. 

Then we cut away to Gentle and La Brava hamming it up, and Gentle goes through this long, long spiel about the way to reach a location, but it's apparently the way to get to the tea leaf shop that sells the same elite tea leaves that Momo has. And then as a post-script, Gentle goes "oh and by the way U.A. is on the other side of the hill". It's... it's a neat gag, but it's not one that as hilarious as the manga thinks it is. La Brava continues to ham it up, talking about how she's a hacking pro, and we get the origin story that she's apparently Gentle's first fan that came up to him? Eh. The two of them are neat, but, again, they're more tolerable than laugh-out-loud-at-every-dialogue. Maybe if they're voiced it'll be a bit better-delivered? I know a lot of Gintama's jokes that fell flat on me in the manga ended up being oh-my-god-so-funny when vocalized, so maybe it's that? Eh.