Bones

Eri’s First Day Out

Kapodaco’s Thoughts

So, this is… still going… Are we going to end the season with this as an actual arc? That would be… something.

I have to admit: I’m starting to like Gentle and La Brava in a sort of dumb, wholesome way. They’re like the bumbling idiots who are just trying their best that you can’t help but support… with questionable motives. Almost like Team Rocket or… uh… another duo like them. I have yet to deduce what exactly Gentle wants (Attention? Fame? Bored?), as his reasoning from the last episode doesn’t really add up. Perhaps that will be explained in time; I’m not sure.

We have five episodes left in this season, and assuming this all doesn’t end next episode (I believed it would end this episode), I’m inclined to believe this “Gentle” arc is an actual arc that the author intended for people to take seriously, as opposed to just some filler fluff. That being the case, it’s an arc that reminds me of the earlier days of the series (first season specifically), only with the weight of substance of all that came afterwards. It’s interesting that the circumstances have changed the way I perceive its importance. Where the first season was fresh-faced and unpredictable, now we’re at a point where the series doesn’t seem to have anything more to say. So while the semi-aloof manner of this point kind of worked in the first season, it’s not as becoming currently.

What more can I even say? I feel like my thoughts are just going to get shorter as the season continues, with the pretense that this is all that’s left. What more can be said? “Ah, Mirio’s butt hanging out of the bush was really funny and saved the entire season!” It’s pretty by-the-numbers. I appreciated it as a cooldown segment, but an entire arc like this? Not sure I dig it.

Affiliate Link – Soundtrack

Karandi’s Thoughts

So we’ve gone from catching up with the class and the support characters we actually like to meandering about the school and catching up with every bit character Midoriya has previously encountered whether they are of any importance or not? In the grand scheme of this season calling this arc padded seems fairly pointless and yet most of this episode feels entirely skippable. About the only noteworthy facts are that the police wanted the festival cancelled so when it inevitably ends badly that will surely have consequences and that Midoriya has ordered a new support item from the weird girl in the support class.

Gentle and La Brava seem as underwhelming as a potential threat this week as they did last. They save their appearance for the end of the episode but really there’s nothing there worth noting. The interactions between these two characters are not that interesting and when you couple that with their plan feeling doomed to fail and not even in an interesting way there’s little reason to bother investing any thought in them.

Meanwhile class 1A are rehearsing and making tea. That’s cool but not exactly compelling viewing. 

Even Eri’s first day out ended up being a bit of a fizzle with limited interaction between Midoriya, Mirio and Eri as they moved around the school. If they’d had less input from other bit characters and more actual interaction between each other it may have been half-way interesting but honestly they really just used the visit as an excuse to take the audience on an unneeded tour of the school and side characters.

While certainly not the worst episode there’s little to really get a viewer excited here.

---

Thank-you for reading 100 Word Anime.
Join the discussion in the comments.
Karandi James

---

Keep up to date with Kapodaco and I as we cover the latest season of My Hero Academia!

Images from: My Hero Academia Season 4. Dir. K Nagasaki. Bones. 2019.

Festival Time

Kapodaco’s Thoughts

O-kay! So! This episode may turn off some people. From the very beginning, we are treated to the high-octane heroism of breakdancing! “Filler” is a word we tend to throw out somewhat often, and here, it fits spectacularly well. This is a filler episode, with only gradual indications that it will mean anything to the whole of the story.

Establishing this, I will admit (if that’s the appropriate wording) that I liked this episode a lot. More than that, I think this might be my favorite episode in the entire season. Why? Spirit. Never at any moment in eighteen episodes had I felt like it exhibited the same spiritedness and exuberance as that of previous seasons, whether in learning to be a hero or just goofing around with classmates. Karandi and I were reluctant to become comfortable with an overall lack of screentime from the entire U.A. body. Huzzah! This is the first episode where the writing complements the usage of every voice within the class, even Koda, whom I completely forgot had a very tiny voice for their gargantuan form. For the first half of this episode, it felt like the class was an actual class and the antics among them were… enjoyable?!?!?

It could’ve played out harmlessly, but then they decided to incorporate Eri into the picture. A glimpse of meaning has invaded the filler! Even that was cute! Using the school festival as a means of providing relief for a small child, who apparently can’t even smile from the tortures pressed onto her, is a quaint, but nice proposal. This seems to be a two (maybe three?) part episode, so it only promises more filler time to come.

Yet said filler can’t be left without a little conflict. Some stupid dude named Gentle and his little cohort in La Brava are on the loose among the city and… they don’t seem threatening in the slightest. Their only reason for existence seems to be a possible curveball thrown into the plans of the school festival, which I expect to see next episode. Really, this whole bit could be a two-episode OVA thing and it wouldn’t remove anything from the main plot, except perhaps the moments with Eri. That’s where I believe some will chastise this.

I’m sold, though. I don’t think the series has been this fun since the end of the second season. I’ll take a lack of consequence if it means the students of U.A. are back to being prominent. Just seeing Ashido dance without warning to open the episode, with others viewing it in their own ways, was incredulous. “Are they really doing this?” As it continued, I found myself accepting it, which gradually became that rare ecstaticism that came with watching My Hero in ye olden days. For me, it’s always been the characters. When they’re being cute, I’m smitten. Whether they drive the plot or are lazily enjoying life, that’s what I’m here for.

Affiliate Link – Figures

Karandi’s Thoughts

Kapodaco is right. This episode brings back some of the old spirit from My Hero Academia. While from a narrative point of view this episode seems largely meaningless outside of reuniting Togata with Midoriya and Eri and their plan to take Eri out of the hospital (nothing could go wrong with that), just getting to hang out with the whole of class 1A and seeing them bounce off of one another reminded me of when I actually enjoyed watching the episodes of My Hero Academia unlike most of this season where I’ve just kind of endured them. 

Where I am a little less thrilled is that it does seem decidedly pointless. When they announced a school festival coming up I was hopeful the League of Villains would have some ambitious plan and we’d end the season on a reasonably dramatic note and yet instead we’re apparently introducing what feels like another throw away villain into the mix who will probably end up being the focus for the time. Now he could end up being another Stain, an independent villain who actually had major narrative consequence, but I’m not seeing Gentle being anything but filler and I’m so far not particularly impressed by him as a character.

Still, the bulk of the episode is taken up by the class meeting about what they will contribute to the festival and that does give each of the students a chance to share their idea, returning their voice and personality clearly into the series. Seeing Iida leading the meeting was actually really fun and in small doses I find his character to be very entertaining, particularly when balanced by the voices of the rest of the class.

Overall though, this episode isn’t exactly a massive turning point for the show. We’re still just kind of puttering along without really getting anywhere and after feeling like the story has been locked in neutral for a season, seeing that not changing as we head towards the final episodes is a little on the disappointing side (though it isn’t unexpected at this point).

That said, I’ll take it. This episode was pleasant, seeing the class interacting made me smile, I loved the scene where Midoriya and Togata visited Eri, and the festival looks like it will be reasonably fun as far as school festival arcs go. If Gentle turns out to be even a half-decent antagonist for the sequence this could be a reasonable way to close out the season but again, I’m keeping my expectations low.

---

Thank-you for reading 100 Word Anime.
Join the discussion in the comments.
Karandi James

---

Keep up to date with Kapodaco and I as we cover the latest season of My Hero Academia!

Images from: My Hero Academia Season 4. Dir. K Nagasaki. Bones. 2019.

Kapodaco and I aren’t exactly seeing eye to eye this week as we review episode 17 of My Hero Academia over on The Visualist’s Veranda. Check out our latest episode review and if you’ve missed any be sure to find the other reviews below.

• 

• 

• 

• 

---

Thank-you for reading 100 Word Anime.
Join the discussion in the comments.
Karandi James

---

Keep up to date with Kapodaco and I as we cover the latest season of My Hero Academia!

Images from: My Hero Academia Season 4. Dir. K Nagasaki. Bones. 2019.

Babysitter Club Edition

Karandi’s Thoughts

I considered editing my initial thoughts. I thought of maybe toning them down, stepping back, looking for more positives… But you know, ultimately my initial thoughts are how I feel about this episode so I’m just going to let them go.

So last week I went and said I was looking forward to seeing Todoroki and Bakugo trying to get their provisional licence. I take it back. I hated this episode. I hated it with an absolute passion and spent the majority of it resisting the urge to skip ahead or just exit out of the window. 

Why did I hate it?

Largely because it reminds me of the episodes of Bleach that focus on Don Kanonji. Ultimately relatively pointless and with an annoying central character. In this case, they unleashed an entire class of annoying and pointless characters in the form of an elementary group on four of the students resitting the exam and then made us watch them fumbling around for far too long before ending the episode with the would-be heroes deciding that challenging the group to a battle would somehow be a good plan. I’m calling this absolute idiocy and going to forget it and move on.

The only redeeming parts of the episode came from the conversations between All Might and Endeavour but this could boil down to about three minutes of the whole thing. 

Yeah, I’m just going to go with ‘ouch’ and move on.

Affiliate Link – Nendoroid

Kapodaco’s Thoughts

…Well, I can’t say I share in my colleague’s resentment, but the whole of the episode is pretty reminiscent of the season itself. Stilted, uninspired, a little off, and containing only hints of genuinely interesting material.

Whatever significance the episode had in making these heroes try and do good by, uh, doing good, I guess, was not lost on me. Clearly stated by the Orca dude, these heroes were lacking in the mental compartment of heroism, relying on the strength of their quirks to blaze through without any second thought. This is especially apparent of Bakugo and the Wind Dude, but Todoroki can be a little stiff and… uh… Camie? Who is she again? I remember her from last season, but was she always this… sexualized valley girl type? Why is she here? To make breast jokes? Yeah, probably. Anyway, to try and quell the sullied hearts of these problem children makes sense in theory. Inspire and impact these brats to do good.

The issue is that it’s played off as mostly comedy… that isn’t really funny. This anime’s had some comedic moments, sure (a lot more this season, it feels like), though the spirit has always been a sort of action/thriller type. If they had brought in, say, a few kids who were reserved, maybe rude and standoffish (mini-Bakugo’s, perhaps?), and had them individually try and get them to feel inspired by the might of heroism or whatever, with a serious enough intent and tone, it may not have felt so inauthentic. Instead, they paint it like some zany babysitting gig that everyone in the audience is using for vapid entertainment. And the fact that they basically push all the no-name heroes aside and just focus on the four “important” characters was laughably apparent. That blonde kid in the corner spouting painfully mature dialogue was also hysterical.

Like Karandi, the only bits of the episode where things began to swing in its favor were the dialogue between Endeavor and All Might. I’ll say this now, but I think All Might is the best character in this show, as he’s had so little done with his character that hasn’t been in ill taste or of little importance. When he’s onscreen, it always leads to something more, and his very figure moves people just from its representation and past. A true hero, and one that thinks and acts like one, too, complete with inner struggles and faults that make him human. He’s great. So to see All Might involve himself with a former rival, who now takes his place, and for said rival to reveal to him some indecision of his worth as replacement, that means something. And it’s taken with enough conscious consideration to not make it feel dumb. More of that, please.

I can’t really describe the worth of this episode in words. I’d rather go with a single action: a shrug. Whatever. Okay. Fine. Yeah. It exists and it continues to masquerade as the great show this used to be. The writing’s too far gone, and it seems like it’s said all that it wants to say. Anything past this is icing, so hopefully people like that enough to keep watching. I want a bratwurst.

---

Thank-you for reading 100 Word Anime.
Join the discussion in the comments.
Karandi James

---

Keep up to date with Kapodaco and I as we cover the latest season of My Hero Academia!

Images from: My Hero Academia Season 4. Dir. K Nagasaki. Bones. 2019.

You just have to wonder sometimes what is going on with season 4 of My Hero Academia. The series seems to be going through an awkward phase and while there are plenty of good moments to point to, the whole season isn’t really coming together in some clear manner. That said, Kapodaco and I continue our episodic coverage this week over on The Visualist’s Veranda.

• 

• 

• 

• 

---

Thank-you for reading 100 Word Anime.
Join the discussion in the comments.
Karandi James

---

Keep up to date with Kapodaco and I as we cover the latest season of My Hero Academia!

Images from: My Hero Academia Season 4. Dir. K Nagasaki. Bones. 2019.

The Aftermath

Karandi’s Thoughts

I’m just wondering how much My Hero Academia actually expected the audience to care about that ending? It seemed they were trying really hard to have a big, dramatic moment and yet my lack of emotional attachment to the central character in the situation more or less meant that while I felt bad for a few of the onlookers, the situation itself I was more or less indifferent to and so the quietly devastating ending that I believe we were supposed to get seemed mostly a fizzle at the end of what was actually a pretty solid episode for season four of My Hero Academia. 

However, before I get to what I liked about this episode, and there was actually a lot, I’ve got another issue with this episode. After getting to do practically nothing for the entire arc, Uraraka finally gets to swoop in and arrest someone, after they are already beaten and mostly unconscious. Really? This is the girl who went one on one against Bakugo way back in season 2 and made him work for the victory, and now she gets to be the clean-up crew? It seems like a horrendous waste of a character to be perfectly frank and I am kind of sick of the girls in the class getting shafted any time anything cool actually happens in this story. – Okay, sorry, rant over… except, why even include her in the arc if she doesn’t actually get to do anything useful? Literally anyone could have done what she did. Ahh! So frustrating.

Alright, now that I’m over that, let’s discuss what this episode did very well and why overall I still actually quite liked the episode. In the aftermath of the fight, The League of Villains actually make an entrance. They don’t just go in guns blazing against the heroes. Nope, they make one strategic attack against a transport well away from the scene, exact their revenge against a certain arrogant man, and claim a very crucial package. It is an almost perfect moment. We didn’t need as many episodes as we had to get to this point, and Overhaul as a character wasn’t anywhere near developed enough for me to really care too much about the rivalry between him and Shigaraki, but honestly it was a solid sequence with some short, tight action, some interesting use of the three villains’ known quirks against a throw-away hero who for once was treated as throw-away and there was no stretching out of this sequence. Very nicely done. Okay, terrifying ramifications, but this was so much cooler than any of the overblown fights we have been watching for the last month.

There’s also the very real aftermath for the heroes at the hospital with broken bones and other injuries to deal with, including one that leads to the aforementioned, less effective than they want it to be, conclusion. But I always like that My Hero Academia, after major incidents, does deal with the fall out. Characters are injured and recovery takes time. Some things can’t be healed. There’s real consequences to being a hero unlike so many other super hero stories where no matter what injuries are sustained during a battle at the end the characters get up, dust off and they are ready to go again more or less instantly. My Hero Academia always makes its heroes very human and also breakable. It adds a bit more weight to everything they do.

On the very positive note, the reason I’m really walking away from this episode happy, is because I am very keen to find out what direction they go from here. There’s a lot of possibilities and I’m actually quite excited to see it.

Affiliate Link – Nendoroid

Kapodaco’s Thoughts

Oh, my goodness! Karandi! Beautiful wrap-up of the episode; there’s very little I could add on to it. Part of me simply wants to respond to the points you raised throughout your piece, so I’ll try and mix and match some things.

Regarding the impact female heroes have made on the story so far, I have actually had a similar mindset since the very beginning of the operation! Notice how all the heroes that went in were male, and all the females were outside, away from the spotlight. When Uraraka, Tsuyu, and Dragon Hero entered the plot again in a way that implied that they would help, it reversed course and had them play observer yet again to Midoriya’s heroics. If one were to watch this from a socio-political perspective, women have had no significant impact on anything this season. I absolutely understand the frustration, and part of me is glad that you brought it up.

As for the ending, I actually appreciated what they tried to do, even if it had little impact on me. I was gracious of the series to include some sort of negative aspect to heroism, because the sequence before Nighteye’s situation was continuously forgiving and merry, which I thought was silly. “Everyone was kind of injured, but they’re fine! Teehee!” It even managed to have me audibly say, “Nice touch,” at the very end when they muted the volume to everything, forcing everyone to take in what had happened and imagine how it must have been to be within that moment. Nighteye was a logical choice, considering his ability would’ve been a nightmare to explain and justify now that the future he saw had changed (his theory of “amount of energy” affecting the outcome was laughably stupid), so it was, in a twisted sort of way, convenient. And hey, he meant a lot to a lot of people. I think that’s enough.

But yes! The League of Villains making their grand entrance and making quick work of Chisaki was extremely cathartic. A group of characters we have, for better or worse, gotten to know over the last two-ish seasons being back in the forefront is a welcome addition. Quick, clean, and pretty well executed, their scene was among my favorites from this entire season… perhaps because it was like getting a smoothie after feeding on sand for the last fourteen episodes. More time with them, even if just them lazing around and interacting, would be most appreciated. Seriously, why do I like the villains so much?

I suppose the only thing I can add is that, with Chisaki now incapacitated, what’s next for him? There has been way too much attention given to him for them to simply write him out of the story completely, right? He was given a pinch of sympathetic irony here (having his quirk taken when his entire goal was to take quirks away), and he was kind of just… left there. Will he join the heroes? What of Eri? How will she play a part in the story now? It’s almost as if the season had essentially rebooted, and now we’re back in a place where anything’s on the table, only with a few key additions (and one subtraction).

This is probably my favorite episode of the season. Not one moment (except the very beginning when I thought it would spend a million years from the perspective of the bad dude and Aizawa) left me bored and I actually found myself enjoying the progression of things happening onscreen. The ending was solid, despite my generally apathetic demeanor, and there is a lot to go off of, along with a lot of potential for further “adventures” to be had. Man, I’m almost in the mood to watch another pointless preliminary exam!

---

Thank-you for reading 100 Word Anime.
Join the discussion in the comments.
Karandi James

---

Keep up to date with Kapodaco and I as we cover the latest season of My Hero Academia!

Images from: My Hero Academia Season 4. Dir. K Nagasaki. Bones. 2019.

Here we are at episode 13 of My Hero Academia and Kapodaco and I are discussing the fight between Midoriya and Overhaul, and you know whatever else caught our attention this week. Be sure to check out the full post over on the Visualist’s Veranda.

---

Thank-you for reading 100 Word Anime.
Join the discussion in the comments.
Karandi James

---

Keep up to date with Kapodaco and I as we cover the latest season of My Hero Academia!

Images from: My Hero Academia Season 4. Dir. K Nagasaki. Bones. 2019.

Still Fighting Overhaul

Karandi’s Thoughts

I’m a little stumped this week.  Lots of things happen with the heroes and the police separating, Eraser Head getting slowed down and then captured, Nighteye and Midoriya taking on Overhaul and Eri getting away from the passing out Mirio and returning to the fight before the whole ceiling caved in and the heroes from the surface come crashing in for a cliffhanger ending. So, lots of stuff was going on. Yet, for whatever reason I found myself very much at a distance from the events.

Part of it might have been the flashbacks. Early in the episode we get a look at Lock Rock’s newborn child so that he can sentimentally reflect on how well the students have done. We also get flashbacks from Nighteye talking with Gran Torino and more or less concluding he shouldn’t look at people’s futures because he can’t change them. However, the flashbacks aren’t as prolific or intrusive as they have been in earlier episodes so I doubt that was the whole problem.

I think it really was just how piecemeal this episode was which gave us little to really draw us in. The episode opens with Midoriya marvellously breaking down yet another wall and landing a solid hit on Overhaul and then we go back to see how the heroes got there even taking a few minutes to see the villains having a bit of a planning session about how to get even with Overhaul (yeah, that alliance went well). Even when we get back to the main event, we’re jumping between Eraser Head, Mirio, Midoriya and Nighteye and the fight never really feels like it has anyone’s full attention. Not to mention, Nighteye’s introduction this season hasn’t exactly made me care whether he gets injured in this fight or not.

Which is a bit of a shame because after getting injured Overhaul takes some fairly drastic measures. Despite mostly using his power in this fight to make spiky rocks, he’s shown off a number of diverse uses for his ability and if the focus was on taking him down and figuring out how to neutralise that quirk this probably could have been a pretty epic fight. 

Incidentally, does anyone else find it somewhat contradictory that a guy who relies so heavily on his quirk feels that removing the quirks of heroes will somehow improve the world?

There are some good moments in this episode but the episode as a whole just didn’t do much for me emotionally. It really did feel like they were marking time in places and other bits, like Lock Rock’s few minutes just felt totally unnecessary. Still, at least we are still making some forward progress here.

Affiliate Link – Game 0 Pre-Order

Kapodaco’s Thoughts

I found the decision to start this episode off with nearly five minutes of recap and a “few minutes earlier” scene where it shows what the heroes were doing prior to breaking down the wall to face Overhaul. This was a significant decision because it sets the tone for the rest of the episode, which was slow and kind of bloated. When push came to shove, I believed the series would start the fight off immediately between Midoriya and Overhaul. It didn’t, and barely had them fight at all, really. No one fought all that much.

Karandi couldn’t place what was so uninteresting about this episode, when for me, it was clearly the pacing, once again. When a story doesn’t have much to say and they’re trying to even out the rest of the season with content, they stretch out scenes as long as they can, which is what they did here. Lots of random cutaways to information hardly necessary for the current moment (including Nighteye claiming he can’t change fate, which I’d call bullshit on). And for good measure, they end the episode in the exact same way as the previous one. That was pretty funny.

If nothing else, this is an episode used to showcase that Overhaul is not to be trifled with, as he cleanly handled just about everyone. That, and Aizawa being captured and inevitably being used for experiments for the bad guys (I predict the heroes will get Eri but not him). Otherwise, it’s a really slow episode that could’ve taken half the full length of the episode but instead threw in a lot of filibuster to keep the viewers in check. Lots of “Har, har, I am evil and you cannot defeat me!” as the heroes grimace in pain/terror.

Feels almost appropriate that after the best episode of the entire season, the story returns to its uneven self once again. Like an alcoholic living across the street from a noisy bar, this season seems destined to resort back to its bad habits of indulging in Shounen clichés (like overextending battles or dialogue) to pummel the pace into the ground. There’s nothing really more to say; the episode ended the same as it did last time, and aside from the heroes backed into a corner, the rest of it felt like a parade of tyranny that tried to fill a time quota. Ho-hum.

---

Thank-you for reading 100 Word Anime.
Join the discussion in the comments.
Karandi James

---

Keep up to date with Kapodaco and I as we cover the latest season of My Hero Academia!