English Dub Review: Marriagetoxen “Heart and Soul”
OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)
Toshiro pulls out all the stops to fight Hikaru, who does the same by activating the Gero family’s most powerful technique: Poison Blood.
OUR TAKE
Well, at least we know what all the My Hero Academia animators got to do after that series was over! Seriously, this is the episode that pulls out all the stops, which makes sense considering it is the climax of the season. I haven’t seen the finale yet, but based on how this ends, it looks like it will be more about falling action and settling the smaller things that happened here. But as for this episode specifically, it’s definitely this show turning the action up to eleven. While the flashiness and trademark excellent animation from BONES is to be expected, what makes the fight meaningful is the key differences between our two fighters and what they represent. We’ve been following Hikaru this whole show as he tries his best to learn how to open himself up and trust others while seeking companionship, and while he’s shown his physical abilities are top notch, his issues and challenges are all internal, much like where the poisons he uses on his enemies go. That analogy doesn’t line up as well as I thought it would when I imagined it, but my point is that what Hikaru has gone through and learned over the course of this season shows that he is basically a good predator against Toshiro, who is trying to fashion himself to be the ultimate predator.
Unless I’m forgetting it, I’m glad that no one has mentioned the idea of “alphas” in relation to leaders in animal packs here, since that’s based on a long since debunked study about wolves in captivity. Although if Toshiro did mention that, it would be a good example of how we’ve seen he sees himself, as the one at the top of the food chain who needs no one and expects others to follow and die for him. As we see during this fight, Arashiyama arrives after rallying all of the prisoners, showing the importance of a pack and community that Toshiro has denied himself, to point that even the spirits of the animals he used leave him to be with their former owners that he imprisoned. Fortunately for him, Byakko is still fiercely loyal to him, carrying him princess style while running buck ass naked through the woods, but before Hikaru and the others can stop them, they are stopped instead by Tonako, Toshiro’s sister and the newly elected leader of the Beast Clan. And we’ll see how that and this season wraps up next week in the first season finale of MarriageToxin!
