My Hero Academia 194 Review: The A/B War, Redux

My Hero Academia, Chapter 194: Wintry Sky, UA High!

A bit of a follow-up to the previous chapter, which felt like so long ago. Basically, Midoriya's dream ended when the hands of the original One For All touched him, with the visages of everyone arrayed before him -- notably, All Might is all blurry, and two of the other silhouettes are blacked out. Quite curious just what the criteria are for being 'blacked out' is. Are two of the previous One For All users still alive? Or is there something even more complex with the nature of the One For All quirk, since we got the revelation that it's originally from All For One? Midoriya even mentions this later on in the story, noting that All Might is still 'blurry', probably because he's still alive, but why can't he see the other two people? 

(That paragraph was way harder to write because of me constantly fucking up "one for all" and "all for one")

Interestingly, All Might claims to have never seen such an Avatar: The Last Airbender style vision before, only glimpses and traces. At this point, though, I'm not quite sure if All Might is telling the whole truth... but even if he is, I'm not really sure what motivation would cause All Might to hide such a crucial part of the quirk from Midoriya. And if All Might really never saw such a vision, why didn't he, and why did Midoriya? 

Throw in the ambiguous conversation in the flashback between All Might and Nana Shimura, where they discuss the 'remnants' and the fact that the quirk preserves the will of its previous users, blurs lines even more about just how much All Might knows about the nature of this quirk. 

We get to see a bit of Aizawa and Shinsou, a.k.a. that one kid with mind-control powers that didn't make it through the selection examination, and fought Midoriya in the competition waaaay back in the twenties and thirties. It's actually interesting to have Shinsou appear when Midoriya's first encounter with the 'remnants' was during the Shinsou fight where they slapped Midoriya out of the trance. 

We then cut away to another class, where Class 1A has apparently updated their costumes for winter gear... and poor Hagakure is apparently still buck-naked? Poor girl. I'm not 100% perceptive enough (nor do I really care enough) to detail each change, although Bakugou's gotten a full skintight deal going on because his quirk makes use of sweat glands and it's extra important for him. He gets to bite the fourth wall, Uraraka gets a jealousy moment, and then we get the pretty badass entrance of Class 1B and its roster...

And I can't say I remember much of them or their quirks other than Testutetsu Tetsutetsu, the loud-mouthed Monoma, the monster-headed Kojiro and Ibara the thorn-girl. There are a bunch of characters here like a mushroom girl and a lizard-dude that I don't think I've seen before -- or at least, not in full costume. And while Monoma talks shit and basically demands a challenge like his normal self, Aizawa shuts him down, and notes that the class A/B fight is going to have a special guest, which, of course, is Shinsou. Interesting, and I'm curious if Shinsou and Midoriya is going to have a rematch that'll trigger another influx of memories from the One For All stuff.