My Hero Academia, Chapter 161: A Bright Future
A bit of a recap chapter for the good guys, and honestly the way it starts makes me really get caught off-guard by the huge event that happens at the end. It starts off as a comedic recap -- everyone's fine, Kirishima makes mummy jokes, there's a brief recap about how it's so fortunate that only four houses were destroyed and like two people were injured or something. Eri's not dead, but quarantined and tired after using her powers, and I for one am definitely glad that she won't become what Elizabeth became in Nanatsu no Taizai, a walking healing deus ex machina machine. She's rescued, but it's going to be some time before she rejoins society.
And then we get a mood whiplash around the halfway point from the fun-slash-introdumpy talk between Midoriya and Aizawa to... Nighteye on his literal deathbed. And I'm like 'oh yeah, we're going to see how Eri's miracle cure fixes Nighteye', because this is a Shonen manga and no good guys are allowed to die.
But he does, which is the biggest surprise for me. So far the manga's killed a couple of bad guys, sure, and some good guys did lose their quirks permanently, but the manga didn't kill All Might when they had the chance, and neither did they kill off like, Mirio or Gran Tourino when I thought they would. I mean, the sand dude last chapter probably died, but it's not like he's a character we care about.
And especially after a couple of chapters back was so focused on slapping us with the whole 'Midoriya can change the future with DETERMINATION AND JUSTICE' or whatever the fuck, and it's really surprising, for me at least, that they actually played Nighteye's death straight. Nighteye talks about how Midoriya managed to change the future in his visions because he and Midoriya had different personalities and different 'energy'. Which is as cheesy as hell, and I still don't quite like the whole 'change the future with willpower' trope, but my take on the trope is more like 'I didn't believe enough' or some such. Well, basically Nighteye's final diagnosis is that 'the future isn't certain'. Still definitely not a big fan about this particular plot point -- I don't think it's necessary at all for the whole oddity about whether the future's set in stone or not to even be a plot point... but eh.
We get a final farewell with Mirio and Nighteye... and it's now that I remember that Mirio's quirk is still a casualty of the current arc, which makes the farewell between Nighteye and Mirio so much more tragic because, shit, Mirio's lost his utterly powerful quirk. I guess he can be the Boku no Hero Academia world's equivalent of Batman, but still... Nighteye dies, the chapter and arc ends in a very bittersweet note, and I'm definitely a fair bit more excited for Boku no Hero Academia than I was two chapters ago.
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