My Hero Academia Episode 42 Review: My Hero

The freshmen’s test of courage in My Hero Academia became a literal test of their courage! Instead of ghosts, villains suddenly appeared! They didn’t come to just scare them, though, but to actually deliver trauma and injury! What horror!

Japanese Original Episode Title: 僕のヒーロー

Plot

Even though the students and teachers outnumber the villains, the situation was still dire because the villains didn’t seem to be like the thugs back at USJ! They were highly-trained criminals who’ve been doing this for a long time, but never got caught! Mandalay figured the students would be in grave danger if they fought them so she told them to rendezvous back at the camp, but unfortunately, these students are too brave for their own good.

Episode Highlights

Ambushed!! Pixie-Bob’s out of commission, Aizawa was caught off guard and attacked, Mandalay and Tiger had their hands full, and Ragdoll only left blood splatters by her post! What’s more, a lot of students have gotten knocked out by the poisonous gas! Someone’s arm, probably either Shoji’s or Tokoyami’s, was even lopped off! To make things worse, they can’t expect any reinforcements because their camp is in the middle of nowhere with no other heroes knowing of the location! Can you say alarming? To think, all of this just because they were targeting who? Bakugo? What could they want with him?

Class B’s opportunity: I’m torn. On one hand, I understand Tetsutetsu wanting Class B to take advantage of the opportunity to gain experience, just as Class A had with the USJ and Stain incidents. As they say, ‘Experience is the best teacher,’ especially since they’ll learn firsthand how to deal with villains unknown to them. That is if they survive. Because, on the other hand, did Tetsutetsu not consider that people almost died from those crises that ‘Class A turned into chances’? Don’t get me wrong, I’m so proud of Tetsutetsu for being brave and wanting to bring justice to those villains. But, I just wish it was more to help the Pro Heroes protecting them (cause they’re terribly outnumbered), instead of just thinking of it as a chance to become better. I hope you understand that these are two crucially different things, since ‘Oh, he died because he wanted to gain some experience,’ sounds like a terrible thing to say to someone’s parents.

What a coincidence! Whoop! How amazing is it that, not only did the killer of Kota’s parents join the League of Villains’ vanguard, but he even arrived at the right place at the right time, being able to meet Kota! Talk about immediate closure, either by Kota dying or Muscular being defeated. Poor kid, though! Imagine how terrifying it must’ve been for him at that moment! He even had to learn that his parents died just because the villain wanted to kill some people! Just because of a selfish whim, his parents were suddenly taken away from him. This realization makes me want to hug poor Kota! That’s why, thank goodness Midoriya came in the nick of time to save him!

Deku vs. Muscular: Deku’s intense determination never fails to amaze me. Despite getting a terrible beat down, being toyed with, his 100% power not being enough, resulting in his arm being broken, he still kept at it! He was even ready to die just so Kota could run to safety! When he was apologizing to his mother and calling out to All Might while slowly being crushed under Muscular’s weight, my heart felt like it was being crushed, too!! Aaaahhhh!! But unfortunately (and fortunately) Kota still didn’t run away, but instead was prompted to save Midoriya by using his own quirk, which became a distraction! Thanks to that, we got to see the true power of One for All, the culmination of 8 generations’ strength! That was so awesome!! I feel terrible for his arm though, but at least his desperate efforts proved Todoroki’s opinion true: people will be swayed once you back-up your words with your actions! Kota was finally able to understand why heroes do their job despite the dangers!

Themes & Trivia

Gas masks: When it was mentioned that Yaoyorozu made gas masks to protect everyone, some of you might’ve only thought of it as neat and handy. But did you know that gas masks are actually more complicated? They have particle filters that trap the toxins when inhaled, then there’s a chemical process called adsorption that removes the toxic molecules. Most masks are even made out of activated or oxidized charcoal that help in filtering out the toxins. That means that Yaoyorozu needed to memorize these things beforehand to make effective gas masks! My respect for this girl went up another level.

Comments

What an intense episode this was, don’t you agree? But, even if it had a lot of exciting action scenes, it also didn’t lack in the drama department! I don’t know about you, but I personally always loved that My Hero Academia doesn’t leave out the emotions for the sake of action! It makes you root more for the characters and understand why they fight! Sure, it can take up a lot of time instead of making the story progress faster, but I say a fast-paced story will be useless if you don’t know the characters well! You feel me?

Give it your 1,000,000%!!

While it’s great and all that Deku defeated Muscular so fast, what will he do with his arms now? There are still a lot of villains running about, and he’s the only one who knows they’re targeting Bakugo! Won’t he be useless at this rate? We’ll just have to wait and see!

Did you love this episode? Were you proud of Deku? Or did you have complaints? Share them all in the comments section, please! Go and read our Spring 2018 reviews as well!

NEXT: Drive it home, Iron Fist! (ブチ込む鉄拳!!!)