English Dub Review: My Hero Academia “Class 1-A”

I love it when a plan comes together.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Last week, Todoroki was on the ropes, cornered by a team of heroes dressed like a mix of old school ninjas and the Power Rangers. Their teamwork nearly gets the best of Todoroki, but he turns the tables on his foes by using his environment to bury their attack, and becomes one of the lucky few to pass the exam.

Meanwhile, Yaorozu, Tsuyu, Jirou, and Shouji are rolling together to survive the Provisional License Exam inside of an office building. Their relative safety is soon compromised, however, when they realize they’ve been surrounded by a group of students working together to trap them in the office. This crack team of pristine maidens is led by “Saiko Intelli”, a genius whose quirk allows her a temporary boost in IQ, making her a tactical mastermind.

Utilizing her team’s quirks to their fullest, Yaorozu and pals are swiftly trapped and weakened, with Saiko and her team waiting outside their room to subdue the young heroes and finish them off. But, turnabout is fair play, and Yaorozu outsmarts Saiko, using her “Item creation” quirk in combination with Jirou’s ear jacks to blast a powerful soundwave throughout the building, neutralizing Saiko’s team.

Eraserhead watches on as his students press on against their unforgiving foes, and is filled with pride seeing Midoriya and Bakugou perform so well. The episode ends on a high note, as Class 1-A fights their hardest, preparing to finish this exam once and for all.

Our Take:

This week, things don’t hold up to the standard My Hero Academia has set for itself to this point. A disappointing main fight and scattered plot focus weigh down the episode, making it the weakest MHA episode I’ve seen in some time.

Yaorozu is actually one of my favorites among Class 1-A, and a character that has gone pretty underused in this series thus far, so we’ve been long overdue for an episode that gives her a little love. Unfortunately, that makes this episode’s flaws a little more glaring, especially when you realize that this is probably the most attention she’s going to get for a while and that her time in this episode wasn’t exactly “Plus Ultra.” A battle of wits is a perfect way for Yaorozu to showcase her skills, so it’s a shame that setup was bogged down so much and ultimately not too interesting. A good “Masterplan” character needs to surprise the viewer with their cleverness, but neither Yaorozu nor Saika impressed me with their strategic ability. Rather, it felt like Saika and Yaorozu were just reading the episode’s script; having precognition about their enemy’s next action without having real cause to know such a thing.

Surrounding the main fight that dominates the majority of the episode, things are continuing about as well as expected. Bakugou continues to chew on the scenery in every scene he’s in, and its entertaining to see his explosive personality clash with Kaminari’s cowardice. Todoroki, meanwhile, continues to dominate over his opponents with his genius level abilities. After seeing him stand head and shoulders above most everyone in Class 1-A so consistently, it would be nice to have him get his ass handed to him at some point.

Ultimately, this episode is a bit of a misstep from the three episode combo that has enamored me with the Provisional License Exam arc. While the episode focuses on giving the non-Midoriya characters something to do during the exam, it fails to capture the magic of these characters in its scope. My diagnosis? An unfortunate case of “Too much to do and too much time wasted.” MHA is well-known at this point for its compact storytelling, but when you want to showcase a fight depending on complex strategy, then you need to be efficient enough with your runtime to give it complexity. Too much of that precious time was wasted on the slow, meandering sequence of Yaorozu and friends getting trapped in the building. What could have been done in 20 seconds took four minutes, time that could have been spent on a better battle?