English Dub Review: My Hero Academia “RUSH!”

Oh, it’s on, now.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

It’s the final stages of the first round of the provisional license exam, and things are really heating up. Bakugou and Kaminari have just come across a new foe from Shiketsu, the illustrious Shishikura. He stands as the antithesis to the “degenerate” behavior that Class 1-A has exhibited so far, and sees it as not just a requirement for the exam, but a moral imperative that he weed out those unworthy to become heroes here.

He puts up a good fight, initially getting the drop on Bakugou with his bizarre “Meatball” power, but Kaminari brings the pain with an electric turnabout using some new equipment he got from the development branch.

Meanwhile, Midoriya and his crew manage to pass the test with a powerful joint attack, leaving only the scattered remains of Class 1-A to secure their positions. Iida and Aoyama roll together, but Aoyama’s weakness makes him more of a burden than a boon.

As the enemy students close in, Aoyama decides to sacrifice himself for Iida by using his navel laser as a beacon for the other students to come and get him so Iida can catch them by surprise. He shines his laser to the sky, but to his surprise, is soon rescued by the rest of Class 1-A, who arrives his laser as a beacon for them to work together.

With their combined powers, each and every one them passes the exam in excellent fashion, securing a blowout victory for UA high in the first round of the provisional license exam.

Our Take:

Gah, what an episode. After last week, I was a little worried that this arc was going to be bogged down in some less-than-stellar fight scenes, but it looks like that last episode was just a road bump on an otherwise excellent journey. Here is an episode that delivers on all the promises of a shounen anime in the way that only My Hero Academia can. It’s exciting, has a whole bunch of great character moments and concludes the first stage of the provisional license exam with a sparkling finish.

The big draw to this episode is the fact that everyone in Class 1-A gets represented fully and without exemption. Even the less popular characters get a chance at the spotlight here, but that’s not to say that this is just a “B-team” episode, rather it reveals a larger satisfaction to the story that My Hero Academia has been building towards since episode 1. While its mostly Midoriya’s story, the fact is this story is much more about “Class 1-A” than anything else. It’s not the story of one, but many, and here we get to see it all come together with flying colors. Joke characters like Kaminari and Aoyama have small but exciting moments that reveal their inner drives and capabilities. Furthermore, having all of Class 1-A come together to save their classmates and simultaneously ace the exam is brilliant; its everything one could really want, compounded into just a few powerful minutes.

I can’t stress enough as well how important the efficiency of My Hero Academia is. In storytelling, less is more; the editing down of scripts and scenes to their most essential properties is a fine craft of the art, a way to create scenes that give us nothing but the good stuff, that maximize value with visual potency. It’s hard for a show to give us a good character moment, but with My Hero’s compacted storytelling, we get a bunch of them all at once in one episode, while still maintaining tension and focus. That is no easy feat.

From start to finish, I was having a great time with this episode, and I’m sure you will too. It’s a bit exposition heavy on the dialogue, something that has plagued My Hero for a while (And, let’s be honest, most shounens) but if you can accept that as a limitation of the form then you can really enjoy the superb storytelling that’s at work here. Also, don’t forget to bring a tissue.