My Hero Academia, Chapter 180: Secret
That's a pretty bombastic ending to the Midoriya/Gentle fight. The previous chapter ended with the two of them clashing, both in terms of power and in arguing about their ideals -- Midoriya is fighting for justice, for U.A. and for Eri. All very laudable and lawful goals... but Gentle is definitely also extremely sympathetic. Ultimately Midoriya's goals is a lot more easily understandable and justifiable than Gentle's, but at the same time there's a definite sense of the two of them having to trample on the other's dreams for the sake of their own -- Midoriya can't be a hero, protect U.A. and Eri's smile without stopping and beating down Gentle and La Brava (or Love-Lover, or whichever version of "ラブラバ" you prefer). And Gentle can't achieve his dream of being famous and being all well-known as the gate-crasher of U.A. without completely fucking up everything Midoriya is fighting for.
And while Gentle himself is also sympathizing with Midoriya in this fight, we also get scenes of La Brava desperately fighting as the only person who's on Gentle Criminal's side, running and trying to get close enough to U.A. in order to hack into U.A.'s mainframe with her laptop, with tears in her eyes and sheer desperation on whether she could help out Gentle reach his dreams... it's really heart-wrenching, and the manga gives us some amazing artwork for this chapter as far as Gentle's angry determination and La Brava's tear-filled hopefulness.
Gentle goes all out in order to completely pound Midoriya to the ground, disregarding his gentlemanly style, all the while La Brava ends up running towards a bunch of Ectoplasm clones and... Hound-Dog Man? Watch-Dog Man? Blood-Hound Man? Something along those lines. Midoriya ends up taking down Gentle with this "St. Louis Smash", but there's nothing glorified about it, no triumph in the same way that Stain, Overhaul or All For One were taken down in their respective arcs. Midoriya notes that "you're the most difficult of all my opponents", and I genuinely don't think he's talking about difficult as in it's so hard to overcome Gentle's powers, but rather it's emotionally difficult for Midoriya to get in a headspace to ruthlessly 'trample' upon Gentle's ambitions, as much as they are in opposition to what is lawful good.
And then, as if to rub salt in the wound, we get to see La Brava all tearful and panicking, completely unable to even lay a hand on Midoriya, and she's just crying about how "don't take my Gentle away from me!" As Gentle has a brief flashback to him warning La Brava to not get arrested alongside him, the artwork between happy-cheerful La Brava and the fucked-up face with the tears, bloodshot eyes, ominous shading and screaming mouth is done amazingly well. Again, you can't say Gentle and La Brava are blameless -- they clearly broke a lot of laws and are definitely categorized as criminals, but just like real life, their motivations are pretty interestingly formed by the society of this fictional setting and are definitely extremely likable to root for.
Gentle boings Midoriya to the air, and gives himself up to the U.A. teachers (how creepily ominous do the superhero teachers in that last panel?) in order to protect La Brava's future. It's an amazingly well-told story, honestly, and I'm a big fan of how it ended. It's not the most plot relevant story, of course, and one that, as a whole, feels more of a 'filler' or 'breather' mini-arc... but god damn if the writer didn't make these two of the more thought-provoking and compelling villains I've seen in manga for a while.
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