My Hero Academia Episode 84

My Hero Academia Episode 84

Deku vs. Gentle Criminal

Based on the pacing of My Hero Academia episode 84, I think it’s safe to say that the next episode will not feature the school festival. We have four episodes left in the season, so here’s how I think it will be wrapping up:

Next episode will focus on La Brava’s quirk, the episode after that will be the school festival, the episode after that will be the arc wrap up episode, and the final episode of the season will set up the next arc of the series (hopefully with Endeavor vs. Gigantomachia).

Of course, some of those things I’ve laid out may bleed into more than one episode. But that’s roughly how it’s going to work out if I had to guess.

Originally I was thinking that Gentle Criminal and La Brava would successfully infiltrate U.A. and hijack the school festival. For example, I figured La Brava might sneak into the beauty pageant and win using her still unknown quirk. However, based on something Deku brought up in this episode, I no longer think that’s an option.

Deku reminded us that if the alarm sounds for any reason — even if it’s a false alarm — the festival will be canceled. So for that reason, I think Gentle Criminal and La Brava will have to be defeated before the festival begins, or at least before they reach U.A.’s campus.

Gentle Criminal’s Quirk

Unfortunately, we still don’t know what La Brava’s quirk is. But the good news is that Gentle Criminal’s quirk has finally been revealed — and I’m not sure if it’s good or bad. It’s definitely versatile, and he’s had a long time to perfect his use of it, but I think you can achieve some of the same results with better quirks at the end of the day.

He can turn anything he touches into an elastic substance which functions much like rubber. This could be steel beams, the ground, or even the air itself. We don’t know exactly how strong this elastic quirk is physically though.

When he turns a steel beam into elastic, I assume that it still has the strength of a steel beam. However, when he turns the air into elastic, that’s a bit more difficult to quantify. How strong is air?

Gentle Criminal from the anime series My Hero Academia season 4
Gentle Criminal

At the very least, we know that Gentle Criminal’s quirk is strong enough to the point that Deku can’t simply break through his elastic air. Of course, that could also be due to the fact that the force of Deku’s body was spread out. If he focused all of his force in one point, like a finger, he might be able to pierce right through.

This reveal of Gentle Criminal’s elastic quirk also explains some of the things we previously saw him do. When he defeated those four or five heroes at the supermarket, he did so by creating an elastic shield of air — at the end of the fight we see this shield dissipating.

Also, when he and La Brava jumped of a building and landed safely on the ground, I was curious as to what quirk allowed them to do that. As it turns out, this was achieved by Gentle Criminal creating elastic air “steps” to slow their fall. He can also increase his mobility to the extreme by using his quirk in this same way.

Deku’s Air Force

This week we also got to see Deku’s new move, which involve him flicking high velocity bursts of air at his opponents. He’s done this in the past, most notably during the sports festival arc when facing Todoroki. However, this attack no longer works in the same way.

Back then he was using excessive force to create an air blast which covered a wide area with as much power as possible. The way Deku uses this attack now is by focusing a smaller amount of force in a small area. This means his attack is much more accurate, but also lacks a lot of power.

During the sports festival arc we saw that just one flick of his finger could tear up the cement platform he was fighting on. However with his new Air Force attack, Gentle Criminal was able to tank multiple hits. It didn’t even seem to hurt Gentle Criminal, just knock him off course.

Izuku Midoriya from the anime series My Hero Academia season 4
Izuku Midoriya

So even though Deku has this new attack in his arsenal, along with the gauntlets he received from Hatsume, it’s not a very good attack currently. He’s going to require a lot more training with his quirk and this attack in particular before it can be used in any real fight — not just against someone trying to flee.

And, I can’t discuss this new attack without mentioning how it’s name, “Air Force,” is pretty bad. I get it, it’s called Air Force because he’s shooting a “force” of air, and all of his/All Might’s attacks are named after American things. But wouldn’t Shoot Style have been better for this one?

Deku’s Shoot Style is just him kicking things instead of punching them — where does the shooting come into play? With Air Force, he actually is shooting something, but that name has already been taken by an attack which isn’t shooting anything.

La Brava’s Quirk

As I mentioned earlier, we still don’t know what La Brava’s quirk is, but did get a bit more information about it. For starters, we know that she hasn’t actually used her quirk in the past — or that seemingly nothing about it has been revealed.

This in itself is actually pretty important, because it implies that her hacking and burglary abilities are unrelated to her quirk. But with that said, last week I did theorize that even if her quirk doesn’t include those abilities, it could still be tangentially related to them.

Gentle Criminal and La Brava from the anime series My Hero Academia season 4
Gentle Criminal and La Brava

However, potentially the most telling thing about La Brava’s quirk is her seriousness when she suggested that it be used. Either her quirk is going to be something extremely powerful which is only used in the most dire circumstances, or it’s basically going to be a joke.

I know those two things are opposites, but my point is that I don’t see her quirk falling anywhere in between. It’s going to be at one of those two extremes, and we’ll just have to wait and see which extreme it is. I’d like for her to actually be powerful, but we need to keep in mind the structure of this arc.

She’s a filler villain’s sidekick, and she needs to be defeated in the next episode or two. And I know some people have an issue with me calling this school festival arc filler because it does appear in the source material, but it’s still filler — it’s just source material filler like Long Ring Long Land from One Piece.

Conclusion

What are your thoughts on My Hero Academia season 4 episode 21? Do you think Gentle Criminal has a good quirk? I’d say it’s good, but definitely not one of the best. And what do you think La Brava’s quirk is going to turn out to be: extremely overpowered or a joke? Let me know in the comments.

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My review of the next episode is available here.

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