English Dub Review: My Hero Academia “Shiketsu High Lurking”

Those darn Shiketsu kids are at it again.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

The provisional license exam is well underway, and the students of UA find themselves completely surrounded, but that doesn’t mean they’re out of the running yet. Through their excellent teamwork, class 1-A is able to band together against the competition, who aims to bring the smackdown to these chickadee heroes.

After a powerful special move from You Shindou, Class 1-A gets split up in the rubble of the ensuing earthquake, leaving Midoriya to fend for himself. No sooner does he find himself separated from his friends that the cunning and devious Camie Utsushimi arrives to see just what he’s made of. Her ability to hide from people’s senses proves to be an excellent way of getting past Midoriya’s defenses.

Midoriya manages to get away, but gets distracted once again when he sees a distressed Uraraka under attack. He jumps in to save her, but turnabout occurs when he realizes that the person he saved isn’t Uraraka at all, but Camie in disguise as Uraraka. Just then, the real Uraraka and Hanta Sero arrive to bail Midoriya out, but things are far from over for them.

Meanwhile, off on the other side of the exam arena, Todorki finds himself outnumbered by a team of ten students. He stands tall against them, but it looks like he won’t be able to hold them off unless someone comes to his aid.

Our Take:

The provisional license exam is shaping up to be one of the more exciting arcs in My Hero Academia so far, and in a series that has impressed the anime world as much as it already has, that’s really saying something. Last week brought us to the precipice of the provisional license exam, but this week puts its money where its mouth is, delivering an action-packed episode that keeps you gripped the whole way through, and leaves you hungry for more.

This is one of those episodes that from start to finish is nothing but that juicy shounen action people come to a show like this for. Get ready for lots of visceral scenes packed with color, flash, and some excellent voice work. The episode goes all over the place, not just focusing on Midoriya but expanding the scope of the action to the class of UA as a whole. Its a great sign for this show that after fifty-two episodes of development, it feels like each character is important in their own way. You get Todoroki, you get Midoriya, Uraraka; the whole nine yards. Even Hanta Sero’s previously ridiculous tape power looks cool.

Camie Utsushimi gets introduced in this episode, and boy does she steal the show as a sinister femme fatale. Her serpentine wiles juxtapose Midoriya’s boyish naivete perfectly, and every time she was on screen I was completely transfixed by her creeping, subversive dialogue. A character like that is really hard to pull off, and its a credit to the sterling voice acting My Hero consistently delivers that even a minor villain like this one is so well done. Shiketsu prodigy Inasa Yoarashi also comes in guns blazing this week, showing off just what he can do in a scene that’s small, but powerful. I wouldn’t be surprised if cosplays of this die-hard dynamo take the convention world by storm.

But that doesn’t mean that this episode jostles you by the throat the whole time. You get some nice little bits of levity to relieve the tension coming from the depressing administrator’s antics on the loudspeaker. I hope he sticks around because his shtick has made me laugh more than once.

My Hero Academia brings the heat once again this week in an episode that is sure to delight. We get a couple of great new characters to mix things up, some love for the cast that we’ve spent so much time with, and its all paced out splendidly, creating 22 minutes of start-to-finish interesting.