English Dub Review: My Hero Academia “Battle Without a Quirk”

Overview:

Toga returns the smile of Ochaco, who tried to befriend her. What does Toga do to the seriously injured Ochaco? Meanwhile, All Might uses “power” developed by a friend to face All For One!

Our Take:

The first half of this episode showed a beautiful friendship between enemies. After Toga and Ochaco’s faceoff, you might expect Toga just to let her enemy die. But after confronting her feelings she can’t just let Ochaco die. I know when it comes to fiction we have to handwave some things because it would never happen in our world. It was neat to me that they explained why Toga was able to give Ochaco her blood and it was compatible. When she changes into someone and can use their quirk she hoped that meant her blood turned into theirs as well. She was right but unfortunately, Ochaco lost so much blood that Toga is going to die if she gives her that much blood.

We then get to see All Might do his best Iron Man impression as he dons a power suit. I had no idea how much I would love a version of All Might that talks so much shit but this was awesome. He wasn’t about to let All for One rest as he went in on that boy both physically and mentally with a verbal whipping. What made the power armor idea cool to me is that he incorporated abilities from all of his students into the armor to fight All for One. It was awesome to see that he knows there are things his students can teach him as well.

This was a hell of a cliffhanger before the final season, which makes the recap episodes even more of a puzzle to me. We’ll get into all of that in the season review but this episode was top tier and My Hero Academia fans are eating good.