English Dub Review: My Hero Academia “My Villain Academia”

Overview:

We go two months back in the past. Shigaraki comes across one of All for One’s most devout followers, Gigantomachia. He doesn’t see Shigaraki as worthy. Shigaraki spends a month and a half facing him in combat to try and prove his worth. But Re-Destro, the leader of the Meta Liberation Army, has other plans. He wants to face Shigaraki himself, so Shigaraki formulates a plan that just may allow him to kill two birds with one stone.

Our Take:

Now we get the villain’s side of the story. After an emotional gut-punch last week I guess this is a palette cleanser of sorts. Don’t get me wrong I’m sure there will be more heart-wrenching things that happen but for one week at least we are saved some heartbreak.

I am really looking forward to seeing this arc get animated. We are long past the days of villains just being evil for evil’s sake being fun. Don’t get me wrong we still have that, I’m pretty sure All for One just likes to be evil. But it looks like we are going to delve into what makes a few members of the League of Villains tick. I can’t wait to see that play out, we get a glimpse of Shigiraki’s this week but I definitely hope we get more.

My one concern is there might be almost too much going on. Shigaraki is already having to prove himself and now an entire army wants to pick a fight? But it seems like Shigiraki isn’t dumb and has a plan to pit one against the other. With Gigantomachia having tunnel vision, focusing only on Shigaraki, that might just work out.

In this episode, we got to hear quite a bit more from the leader of the Meta Liberation Army, Re-Destro. He is voiced by Sonny Strait, and man does he do a good job. The voice took a bit of getting used to, it wasn’t how I imagined him sounding but after you get used to it, it’s great. He really does a good job of sounding menacing using a calm demeanor.

I can’t wait to see how the plan works out next week! It’s a little weird to jump into this after all the emotion of last week but time marches on! It’s really cool to see the villain’s side of things and it makes us start to care for them as well. I don’t want anything bad to happen to Toga or Twice, but I fear it’s inevitable, they are the bad guys after all…