English Dub Review: My Hero Academia “End of the Beginning, Beginning of the End”

The symbol of peace is no more, and the world must recover from his fall.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

All Might has lost has powers after his brutal fight with All for One. It now falls onto the rest of the world, namely the students of UA, to pick up where he left off and keep the world safe.

But ideals are one thing, and realities are another. With All MIght’s absence, the world is changing, and the world is a lot less secure. All Might meets with Midoriya to congratulate him on his efforts to rescue Bakugou, and rolls out with Eraserhead to convince the parents of the UA students to allow them to move into the school dorms. The faculty of UA believes that by having the students close to them, they’ll be safer against villain attacks.

But all is not well, Midoriya’s mom is scared and unwilling to let Midoriya attend another semester of school at UA. She’s torn, but desperate to keep her son safe, and simply can’t entrust UA to protect him. Midoriya insists, however, showing his mom the letter he received from Koda, and All Might joins in too, begging Midoriya’s mom to allow him to become the symbol of peace the world needs him to be. Their protestations give her confidence, and she settles on letting her son go back to become the hero he’s meant to be.

Our Take:

Our episode this week follows an eclectic sort of structure; is not so much a consistent plot as it is a collection of small character scenes to pave the way for later episodes. As we follow Eraserhead and All Might going to the homes of each of the students, we get to see the corners of their world painted to life a little bit more. The implications of All Might’s inability to be the symbol of peace are driven home through these scenes, where fear starts to leak into the minds of the parents of the students of UA. It’s a transitional episode, here to carry us along to the next chapter in My Hero Academia.

The biggest drawback to this kind of episode is that it verges on the realm of filler. In the manga, this particular bit of the story just took one chapter, but manga chapters to anime episodes are not a 1 to 1 ratio. In My Hero Academia, we’ve gotten used to high octane episodes, full of passion, action, and heart. And while this episode has the last of that list in spades, it still feels a bit drier than I would prefer. Though the information presented here is important, it probably could have been presented in a way that is more accommodating to the shonen palate.

Despite these setbacks, however, this episode does a solid job with its voice work, dialogue, and localization. When most of the episode is dialogue taking place in mundane settings, it’s especially important for there to be a nice flow of speech to the script, and for the performances to bring life to its scenes. Having Midoriya and All Might meet on the beach where Midoriya first trained is a nice throwback, indicative of the level of quality and attention to detail that has made this anime work in the past. Though the waterworks from Midoriya felt a little excessive, it was still a wonderful moment to see those two embracing each other after the struggles they’ve been through.

All the things you’ve come to expect from My Hero Academia are present and accounted for here. Though your fighting spirit won’t necessarily be invigorated by these scenes of people talking on couches, you’ll have an excellent time with this episode. You’ll laugh, you might cry, but you’ll feel the heaviness of the world that Midoriya and friends are getting into weighing on your shoulders. A solid accomplishment for any story.

Score
8/10