My Hero Academia Episode 55

My Hero Academia Episode 55

Introduction

Considering my weekly Boruto reviews seem to be some of the most popular content on my site, I’ve decided to introduce weekly My Hero Academia reviews as well. These will likely continue on until the end of the Summer season, when it will then be replaced by something else for the fall (Attack on Titan?).

I know I’ve missed a few weeks of MHA content this season, but my summaries of (almost) every episode from last season (the first cour) are included in the Spring 2018 weekly reviews. Also, while I know some of what happens later on in the manga, these reviews will focus on the anime.

Summary

This week’s episode starts off with Shouto Todoroki facing off against a group of shinobi-clad hero students from an unnamed school. I was kind of hoping for these characters to be more of a reference to Naruto than they were, because aside from their looks, they didn’t really do anything ninja-like.

The ringleader of the group has a quirk that enables him to enlarge the size of objects (and hopefully reduce them again later if need be, otherwise it would get kind of annoying), and he uses specially made metal objects designed to withstand the heat of Todoroki’s flames.

The other students with him have less interesting quirks. Two of them simply appear to be extra strong, and two others have the ability to shoot water out of their hands (although one of them shoots brown water? I’m not sure what the significance of that is).

Todoroki was able to easily defeat this entire group by himself, however, and moves on to the next stage of the exam. Just as he learned to accept his fire quirk during the sports festival arc, I’m predicting Todoroki will have to learn to use teamwork later in this exam arc.

The next group of antagonists we meet are from another unnamed school, but all appear to be servants of their leader, some tea-drinking rich girl. While we see some of the quirks for these characters, the only one we’re actually told is that of the leader.

Her quirk is her IQ. She has a base IQ of 150 (which is very high), but when she drinks tea and closes her eyes, her IQ increases even further. I’m not entirely sure why drinking tea has anything to do with her quirk, but her character was probably written that way because simply being smart isn’t a superpower.

By using her high IQ, this student is able to formulate a plan with her classmates to defeat a group of four U.A. students made up of Shoji, Jiro, Tsu, and Yaoyorozu. As an aside, writing these weekly reviews is going to be a great way for me to learn the names of the U.A. students, I previously didn’t know half of them.

The enemy class first uses loud music to render Jiro’s super hearing useless, and then shatter the windows and lock down the floor to make Shoji’s eyes useless as well. Next they locked the U.A. students in a single room and filled it with cool air to make Tsu start going into hibernation.

However, Yaoyorozu figures out that the cold air was actually meant to force her to use up her creation quirk, and then the enemy class would storm the room while the U.A. students were helpless. Instead, Yaoyorozu creates a giant amplifier which Jiro connects to and plays a high-pitched sound through to knock the enemies out.

Momo Yaoyorozu, Kyouka Jiro, and Mezo Shoji from U.A. (My Hero Academia anime)
Momo Yaoyorozu, Kyouka Jiro, and Mezo Shoji from U.A.

It would seem that the decision to jump from Todoroki to this group of four was intentionally done to show the difference between working alone and working as a group. If there’s anything I’ve learned from shounen exam arcs, it’s that teamwork is the key to victory.

We then move on to two other battles happening elsewhere in the arena. First we see Deku, Uraraka, and Sero hiding from the school of U.A. bootlegs (you probably know who I’m talking about, the ones who look like knock-off versions of the U.A. students). The other fight is between Bakugo, Kaminari, and a student from Shiketsu.

While there’s not really much to say about the first fight involving Deku’s group, Bakugo and Kaminari are forced to fight against the Shiketsu high school student because he used his quirk to capture Kirishima, who was also with them. His quirk seems to turn people into flesh-potatoes.

Next Episode

The next episode is likely going to focus on the two fights involving both Deku’s and Bakugo’s groups and their respective adversaries.

As for Deku’s group, I’m predicting they’ll manage to make it out of the fight while only defeating a small portion of the enemy students, and eventually regroup with others from U.A. However, Bakugo’s group is only fighting against one opponent, and knowing Bakugo, he isn’t going to flee.

Instead, I’m expecting Bakugo to defeat the Shiketsu high school student single-handedly, thus taking the point for defeating him all for himself. By doing so, despite that meaning he’ll have saved Kirishima, he’s most likely going to abandon him and Kaminari once he passes this stage.

One of the Shiketsu High School students and Eijirou Kirishima from U.A. (My Hero Academia anime)
One of the Shiketsu High School students and Eijirou Kirishima from U.A.

Just as Todoroki’s fight served as a foil to the one involving Jiro, Shoji, Tsu, and Yaoyorozu, Bakugo’s fight is likely to be a foil to the one Deku, Uraraka, and Sero are involved in.

While I don’t expect Kaminari to be any help to Bakugo, I am interested to see how Sero is used in his respective fight since he’s not a student we’ve really seen much of. I know his quirk has to do with tape, but I want to see more of the unique ways in which he can use it.

Conclusion

Leave a comment to let me know your thoughts on this week’s episode as well as what students (U.A. or otherwise) you want to see more of. As I mentioned, I’m interested in seeing more of the U.A. students use their quirks in unique ways, and the next episode seems like a good time for Sero to shine.

As you may have been able to tell if you’ve also read any of my content on the Naruto series (including Shippūden and Boruto), that’s more of my specialty than My Hero Academia. I have had over 700 more episodes of information to work with after all.

Despite that, if you enjoyed this post, consider scrolling down a bit and clicking the heart button under this post. Likes let me know what kinds of content I should focus more on in the future.

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My review of the next episode is available here.

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