My Hero Academia Episode 83

My Hero Academia Episode 83

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The only reason I’m still doing these weekly My Hero Academia episode reviews is because I know there are some of you who want to read them. But honestly, there’s less to discuss about this school festival arc than there is to discuss about Boruto filler arcs — and that’s saying something.

In fact, if not for Overhaul being in this season, I’d probably have it rated below Boruto.

And I know there are some people out there who will try to argue that this is an important arc. But when there’s an episode named after the brand of tea Gentle Criminal is going to drink before his “master plan,” that shows you just how little is happening. If that’s the most important part of the episode, why even watch?

Because this arc of the series is boring me so much, we’re going to do something a bit different this week. We’re going to focus exclusively on the female characters, because they don’t really get the attention they deserve in the anime.

I get it, this is a shounen battle anime, so female characters are just there for teenage boys to gawk at. But these girls could actually be really interesting and cool characters if they were given the chance — which they aren’t.

Remember when Uraraka seemed like she was going to be important at the start of the series? Well, she’s not. And most of the other Class 1-A girls are just as forgotten. They only really become relevant in arcs like this because it’s more slice of life, which I guess the author believes is where female characters belong.

Beauty Pageant

This week we learned that there’s going to be a beauty pageant as part of the school festival. However, I somehow doubt that we’re really going to see much of it. The pageant itself isn’t important, but I do have a prediction about it to mention towards the end of this review.

However, even if the pageant isn’t important, there’s at least one reason why we should pay attention to it, and that’s Nejire Hadou. Obviously she’s taking part in this beauty pageant because of her looks, but we should also keep in mind that this is a beauty pageant taking place at U.A.

Quirks are almost guaranteed to play a role.

Nejire Hadou from the anime series My Hero Academia season 4
Nejire Hadou

Although Nejire’s character seems to mostly exist simply to be eye candy, she’s still one of U.A.’s “Big Three.” Not only does that mean she’s powerful and a promising future pro hero, but it also means she has one of the more interesting quirks in the series so far.

We only got to see Nejire’s quirk in action briefly during the raid on Shie Hassaikai arc, but I thought it was pretty cool. Generally speaking, I’m always a fan of characters with electric-type abilities (except for a certain male electric character in Class 1-A), and Nejire falls into this category.

However, what sets Nejire apart from most electric-type characters is that she doesn’t have most of the classic electric-type traits. Usually they’re depicted as being fast attackers who hit hard, but neither of those describe Nejire. Instead, her electric attacks are slow and more geared towards a supporting role than an offensive one.

I hope we’ll get to see her doing more hero things in the future, but I don’t think we’ll get to see much.

Support Class

As I mentioned, probably last week, the school festival is the time for the non-hero students of U.A. to shine. This includes the support class students, even though they also got to show off their inventions during the sports festival. And the only real support student we know about is Mei Hatsume.

But get this: Apparently Mei isn’t even important enough to be listed as a character on My Hero Academia’s MAL page. I searched. She’s not there.

The random background members of Shie Hassaikai (who are male) are listed as characters, but Mei isn’t. I don’t even think all of them had dialogue lines in the anime, but yet they’re apparently more important then Mei is.

Mei Hatsume from the anime series My Hero Academia season 4
Mei Hatsume

I like Mei as a character, and I want to see more of her in the series just like Nejire. But, I will admit that Mei isn’t exactly the most unique character around. At first you may think, “wow, a female character who’s an engineer! That’s so cool.” But in reality, this is an extremely common character type.

Most robotic engineer side characters are female in anime. Winry from Fullmetal Alchemist, Mary from No Guns Life, and Eriko from Texhnolyze are just the first three that come to mind.

However, the reason I think that female engineers are so popular in anime is that while they’re engineers, they’re basically fulfilling the role of doctors/nurses in their respective series. However, Mei isn’t like that. She’s an engineer who doesn’t work on robotic limbs, but instead creates completely external inventions.

I want Mei to play a bigger role in the series going forward, but I think we’ll realistically only see her whenever Deku needs an upgrade.

La Brava

The last female character I want to discuss this week is La Brava, who surprisingly is included on MAL’s My Hero Academia character list even though Mei isn’t. There isn’t too much new information given to us about La Brava this week, but there’s still enough to discuss.

I had previously assumed her quirk would have something to do with love because of her character design. However, although her quirk has yet to be confirmed, it would seem that this might not actually be the case. But that’s not to say her quirk has nothing to do with the heart.

We’re told by La Brava herself that she’s an expert hacker — she can break into any electronic system. And, we’re told that she can also physically break into anything, such as a locked building. So it seems to be implied that her quirk is what allows her to excel in both of these fields.

La Brava from the anime series My Hero Academia season 4
La Brava

I’m not sure how this would work from a quirk perspective, but what if her quirk allows her to break into anything? She can break into online servers, bank vaults, or even the hearts of her enemies. That final point is where I think her character design comes from.

And now that I think about it, being an expert hacker or burglar might not actually have anything to do with her quirk. It may simply be that her quirk, which allows her to break into people’s hearts, just so happens to go along with those other skills she has.

So, based on this information, I’m predicting that we’ll see La Brava hijack the beauty pageant and use her quirk to win. She’ll control the hearts of the audience so they all vote for her.

Conclusion

What did you think of My Hero Academia episode 83? Do you enjoy this arc even though it’s basically meaningless? Do you want to see the female characters treated like real characters rather than props? And, which female character is your favorite? I think Nejire might be mine, but I also want to see Bubble Girl more.

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My review of the next episode is available here.

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