My Hero Academia 215 Review: Who Will Win

Boku no Hero Academia, Chapter 215: Final Chapter - Midoriya vs. Shinsou

This definitely was supposed to go up last week, but due to a mishap in date typing, it didn't get uploaded timely. Whoops!

Anyway, chapter 215 of My Hero Academia. It's... it's interesting. One of the tropes I dislike the most about shonen manga as a genre is the fact that the main character is soooo much better than everyone else that it's not even funny. My Hero Academia sort of already has this problem by giving one of the strongest quirks around to the main character, giving him a pretty unfair advantage to the rest -- something that the Midoriya/Shinsou dynamic actually explores pretty well. And, yeah, Midoriya does a lot of work, and tries very hard to harness a very destructive quirk. But this chapter really kind of rubbed me the wrong way. Sure, there does seem to be some sort of a drawback to Midoriya using the Black Whip in generic arm pain, but the fact that he damn near ends up using the whips effectively in battle is just utterly out of nowhere and, honestly, even with the off-handed comment of Uraraka helpin Midoriya to control his power, nothing sort of an asspull. And, granted, the fight's not over yet, but if this fight ends up with Midoriya pulling a win out of his ass, it's not going to be something that I'm going to be very fond of.

It's also feels pretty bad for Shinsou, too. A good part of their argument in their first fight is how Midoriya gets a traditionally heroic and awesome quirk, while Shinsou gets a pretty villainous quirk that doesn't give him an edge in a combat setting if he's unable to get someone to answer him. And the way he gets around this is to train hard with Aizawa's bandages... but then Deku goes on and develops a second quirk that's essentially like the bandages, but better -- almost entirely by accident.

I have enough faith in the writer to know that this could be resolved pretty well -- or lead to some interesting developments for Shinsou if we're going in a darker route, but this is definitely a storyline that I do note has the potential to be pretty disappointing if it goes in the way I hope it doesn't go.

We also get a fun bit with Uraraka dragging a captured Monoma along, and apparently Monoma has improved his quirk as well, extending its duration and the fact that he apparently can store two quirks now. We get some confirmation of Monoma's quirk -- he can't use multiple quirks at the same time, but the effects of the quirks he copies will remain even after he swaps it out, and we get a pretty cool bit where Midoriya gets whacked in the face due to Monoma's last trap, a delayed Twin Impact copy.

The rest of the fighters basically do that trope where the B-team seems to be winning against the A-team, but then the A-team pulls off a comeback. It's kinda cool to see Uraraka and Ashido do something on their own -- Uraraka in particular, since she's been pretty much out of the spotlight for a long while -- but like I mentioned before, unless it leads to some interesting story development, I'm still pretty cautious about the Midoriya development.