Boku no Hero Academia 142 Review: ORA ORA ORA ORA

My Hero Academia, Chapter 142: Shield, Shield, Spear & Shield

So the chapter's mostly a setup for the next fight, but at the same time they still made something as simple as a setup still very, very interesting. We get a couple of cursory 'point A to point B' type of scenes, like showing Suneater tying up Setsuno and his cronies, before passing out of his injuries himself, some discussion about Mimic's power (it's so weird seeing him as an angry veiny eye in the wall instead of a chibi little bird-buddy) and we see Mimic engage in battle and try to take out Eraserhead -- the most troublesome element in the strike force -- first. 

There's a bit of an interesting scene as Bubble Girl and the cockroach hero arrest the rest of the Cleansers, and one of them shows a fair amount of resentment towards Overhaul, the Capo of the organization. They note that 'the Boss', the dude we saw on the sickbed, was the charismatic man who turned the Eightfold Cleansers into a group of chivalrous mob family with a code of honour, and they are not just another run-of-the-mill villain group. But now Chisaki's taking villains into the organization and villain codenames like Overhaul, and one of them even makes a comment that seems to imply that Chisaki might have something to do with the Boss's deteriorating health.

After a brief fight with Mimic, Fat Gum and Kirishima gets pushed into another room where they face off against two of the Expendables. The two they meet, the titular 'spear and shield', is this muscular Nitro-esque dude with gauntlets that unleashes a JJBA-style ORA ORA ORA onto Fat Gum and Kirishima, both of whom are defensive heroes. I really like why Kirishima quickly activates his new form, the Unbreakable form, but at the same time he's still a junior and gets pushed back by the barrage that Rappa unleashes towards him.

Rappa's buddy is unnamed at the time, but he is this monk-like dude that's able to create a barrier to surround Rappa, making them the perfect 'spear and shield', as they say it, whereas Kirishima and Fat Gum are a 'shield and shield'. There's a brief bit that Kirishima looks like he's about to lose confidence because his high-vaunted durability ends up not shattering per se, but definitely pushed back... but Fat Gum just shouts him back to relative normalcy, and we'll pick this up next issue.

Overall, definitely a decent chapter. I'm a big fan of the designs of all of these plague mask dudes. Honestly, there's just not much I can say about these My Hero Academia chapters when it's mostly action, but it's always great.