Wednesday 13 May 2015

Boku no Hero Academia 41 Review: Todoroki vs Iida

Boku no Hero Academia, Chapter 41: Fight, Iida


Haven't reviewed Boku no Hero Academia in a while, mostly because I kind of didn't keep up with it and only binge-read like a couple months' worth of chapters in one go. It's been really enjoyable, what with the tournament and delving into Torodoki's fucking awesome backstory. Todoroki is one of the more complex characters and I'm surprised to see so much being delved into this early on. I just hope we actually get something interesting with Torodoki, unlike Hyuga Neji from Naruto who got a really interesting backstory during a similar tournament like this but didn't really get much characterization (or screentime, really) after that.

Anyway, it's a pretty good chapter. The first half focuses on Midoriya kind of being bummed out after the state he finds himself in. The healer lady refuse to heal Midoriya if he keeps injuring himself like that again -- and we see that using One-for-All actually left some tangible scars on Midoriya's right arm even after healing. The healing lady demands that Midoriya and All Might find some other way to use One-for-All because she refuses to heal any more of Midoriya's senseless injuries. Which is a fair thing for a healer to say. Midoriya then talks to All Might about how one of the others, who's fighting so hard, would be a more appropriate candidate for One-for-All. All Might even hypothesizes that Todoroki would be a superhero with three powers if One-for-All was given to him... but then All Might reveals that he, too, used to be quirkless.

That's not that big of a surprise -- I kind of guessed it some time back -- though for Midoriya it kind of is. This is a pretty great moment for All Might to spill the beans, though, and All Might makes it clear that the bearer of One-for-All before him does have a different quirk. All Might gives some nice encouraging words, like how Midoriya is better than he was when he first started out, then we go back to the sports festival again.

Bakogou is battling Kirishima, and apparently prior to this, Iida has already beaten Shiozaki (thorn girl), while Tokoyami has beaten Ashido (-looks up- dark skinned antenna girl). Iida gives a quick replay of his fight, which involves just speeding and throwing Shiozaki out of the ring as soon as the bell rang. Midoriya gets some talk with Iida, talking about Iida's brother Ingenium. Iida talks about how Ingenium only had the time to give him a call, but that just means Iida will call him back after he won. Well, Ingenium seems like a more decent fellow than that jackass Endeavour, so yeah.

Bakugou, meanwhile, figures out that all he needs to do is to strike the same part of Kirishima multiple times, so he does something similar to Luffy's Gomu Gomu Gatling but with explosives. Bakogou wins, and advances to the semifinals. Tetsutetsutetsutetsu seems to have grown fond of Kirishima and is cheering for him. They can be hardening buddies.

Iida and Todoroki clash against each other, and they both go for the offensive. Todoroki does this ice-carpet thing while Iida does a long jump, noting that he can't do ranged attacks and all he has is around 10 seconds before his engine stalls. Iida does some nice fast kicks, but Todoroki manages to freeze Iida's engines before he can throw Todoroki out of bounds. Well, it looks like Iida isn't the only one observing other people's matches! Todoroki takes Iida out by freezing him, though he does admit that he couldn't dodge the initial kick despite knowing that it's coming.

Endeavour, dick that he is, only cares that Todoroki isn't using flames. What a dick.

Meanwhile, the last page shows an armoured fellow down on the ground with blood all over who I assume is Iida's brother, Ingenium. Some news report is talking about a hero-killer appearing, while this really creepy fucker talks about how no one is a damned hero and only All Might is allowed to do him in.

Well, Ingenium falls to the syndrome of being a relative to one of the main characters and this is a superhero comic, after all. All in all pretty interesting. Iida and Todoroki's fight isn't quite as emotionally charged as Todoroki and Midoriya's, but it's still pretty well done. Iida gets some nice characterization of his own and it'll be interesting to see how this creepy fellow will play into the whole sports festival arc... because honestly if it's just a fighting tournament there really isn't much fun to it other than seeing who's the strongest.

I really want to see more of Tokoyami, though, that weird bird-headed shadow-powered dude. Maybe he can pull off the unexpected and beat up main-rival-character Bakugou?

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