English Dub Review: My Hero Academia “Let’s Go, Gutsy Red Riot”

 

 

Overview:

The Hassaikai and the League join forces.

Our Take:

Chisaki reveals two new drugs that he has put on the market: one that amplifies already existing quirks for a short period of time, and the other that robs people of their quirks entirely. It’s not stated just how long the latter one lasts, but even for a short amount of time has the potential to be deadly. If a hero is hit with that in the middle of a deadly fight, then that puts them in an extremely compromised position. These two, especially the quirk erasing drug, could do a lot of harm down the road.

This episode also showed a lot about Kirishima, who has been relegated to the background for quite some time. Even though he’s without a doubt one of the main members of the class, he’s not as prominently featured as Midoriya, Bakugou, or Todoroki. He’s been feeling increasingly frustrated, because he feels like he’s been slipping behind compared to his peers. While he’s still determined to become a good hero, he’s starting to have some doubts about what he’s been doing for the past couple of months. He managed to get Tamaki to allow him to intern with Fatgum, which puts him at the forefront. It’s a good opportunity to learn. 

Kirishima is a gentle, kind person at heart. He approaches the blade villain by empathizing with him, and to be fair, none of Kirishima’s points are wrong. He encourages the villain to be courageous, if he really cares about his gang, and tries to offer understanding. Of course, this ends up going over poorly with the villain, who sees Kirishima as already strong, and therefore not being able to properly understand him. The villain is a coward, he admits it himself, and cowards will often do whatever it takes to save themselves. In this, Kirishima has a lot to learn. He does fail to capture the villain, but he does succeed in one regard: protecting the public.He powers himself up to protect the bystanders that haven’t fled, and he succeeds in leaps and bounds. 

Thing is, Kirishima really might know what the villain was talking about. A short cut of a flashback shows Mina running towards a threat, while Kirishima stays behind, likely out of fear. While he may be excitable and outgoing now, it’s extremely likely that he wasn’t like that all the time. This is truly Kirishima’s episode and I had a good time with it.