Boku no Hero Academia, Chapter 171: Gentle and La Brava
There's definitely a "fun vs gritty seriousness" vibe going on here. Maybe it's just me and the fact that I've been involved in many arguments about whether the more campy superhero movies are better or the serious, darker superhero movies are better, but there's definitely a neat vibe to it that doesn't get too meta. Basically La Brava is a relic of a bygone era of a more romanticized superhero-vs-supervillain time where it's more about showboating than actual evil take-over-the-world-murder-everyone style grimdark anarchist villains. It's as if Cesar Romeno's Joker is trying to one-up Jared Leto's Joker in relevance.
There's a cool little montage in the first page about the 'greats' of both sides, including hints of characters we've not seen before. The hero Brave, and the villains Destro (leader of a Special Abilities Liberation Army... a Magneto?) and the "uncanny thief" Ouji Harima. It's a bit of a shame that I didn't quite take onto Gentle and La Brava as they probably intended to, because they feel a bit too much of a caricature of zaniness half the time. And while the talk about being upstaged in popularity by Stain is neat, they don't actually go much other than inform their motivations in this chapter -- which is to gatecrash the UA program.
The remainder of the chapter is just Bakugou being all tsundere about playing drums for class 1A disguised within an angry speech about "fuck enjoying things!" and seeming like he doesn't give a shit when he's going to do it anyway. It went on for a bit too long, and I really wished that the gag just stopped at Bakugou going "eh?" with the same pissed-off expression when everyone acts shocked at the fact that he can play the drums, at his immediate smash-cut showing off of his talent, to everyone's reaction to his skill. Overall, it's a bit of a slower, less eventful chapter than most, but it's neatly solid.
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