My Hero Academia Episode 85

My Hero Academia Episode 85

School Festival Start!!

My Hero Academia episode 85 really made me like Gentle Criminal and La Brava more. I already liked La Brava, obviously, but seeing Gentle Criminal’s background as well as him actually fighting was pretty cool. It’s just unfortunate that these two antagonists had to be part of this arc.

If they had been real antagonists in an arc that wasn’t about a school festival, they could have been so much better. As I mentioned last week, once I was reminded that the school festival would be canceled if anything happened, it was clear that Gentle Criminal and La Brava weren’t going to be very important.

Sure, we could have seen them sneak into the festival and do random things throughout it without actually getting caught, but that would have had even less of an impact than this episode did. That really would have sealed their fate as “filler villains.”

Did they have any real impact on the story? No. Are we ever going to see them again? I doubt it. Are they even going to be referenced again after this arc? Probably not. In the end they don’t matter, and that’s too bad.

Gentle Origins

From the start we’ve known that Gentle Criminal isn’t a real villain. He doesn’t like violence, his crimes were pretty minor, and he’s basically just an adult who’s committing child-like crimes for his YouTube channel. Regardless of how strong he is, he’s not actually a threat because he doesn’t want to be.

Originally, Gentle Criminal wanted to be a pro hero — and I’d imagine this is the case for many of those who end up becoming villains. He wasn’t good enough to become a hero, and the one time he attempted to save someone he just ended up getting in the way of the real heroes.

Was anyone else surprised when it was revealed the guy Gentle tried to save actually survived? He fell off a building and then was crushed by a giant metal box. I was pretty sure Gentle killed that man.

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

The thing about Gentle, though, is that he didn’t seem to want to become a hero for the right reasons. This is why he ended up becoming a villain, not because of his many failures along the way. Failing to become a hero on it’s own doesn’t drive someone to then become a villain.

Gentle’s motivation the entire time was to become famous, and he thought that becoming a hero was a good way to accomplish that. So once he could no longer become a famous hero, he decided that he could become famous as a villain.

However, because he’s not actually a bad guy, he’s not very good at doing villainous deeds — which is why he’s considered a nobody. Really, becoming a villain was probably his worst choice. He could have become more famous doing literally anything else simply because he’s so bad at being a villain.

La Brava

For a few weeks leading up to this episode I had been speculating about La Brava’s quirk. It was obvious that her quirk had something to do with love based on her character design, but how exactly it was going to work I wasn’t quite sure.

It’s safe to say that I wasn’t expecting her quirk to work in the way which it does.

La Brava has a powerful support quirk which boosts the physical abilities of one of her allies. She can only use it once per day, but when she expresses her love to someone, it can drastically increase their strength — up to 10x depending on the strength of her own feelings for that person.

So when she tells Gentle Criminal that she loves him, we can assume he received the full 10x multiplier.

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

But, Gentle Criminal isn’t exactly the most powerful person we’ve met so far. What if La Brava was paired up with someone else who was already extremely strong? What if she was allied with Overhaul? Or the League of Villains? Her support could make them nearly unstoppable.

And if she was paired up with All Might during his prime, he could probably destroy the entire planet in one punch.

However, there are drawbacks to this quirk. As I mentioned, she can only use it once per day. Also, it scales up based on her feelings for the person she’s using her quirk on, so there’s no guarantee the multiplier will be maxed out. And, the power buff only lasts for a short amount of time.

Deku’s Strongest Opponent

During his fight against Gentle Criminal, Deku states that he’s fought opponents much stronger in the past (and won). And while I think that was a pretty mean thing of Deku to say, he’s not wrong. Gentle Criminal simply isn’t that strong.

Sure, he knows how to use his quirk exceptionally well, and his quirk is pretty versatile. But part of the problem lies with his quirk. You simply can’t compare Gentle Criminal’s elastic quirk to the quirk of someone like Overhaul. Overhaul’s quirk is in another league entirely.

But what if we include Gentle Criminal’s Lover Mode — when he’s powered up by La Brava’s quirk. Is he Deku’s strongest opponent in under those circumstances? No.

Gentle Criminal in Lover Mode from the anime series My Hero Academia season 4
Gentle Criminal in Lover Mode

I kind of felt bad for Gentle Criminal at the end of the fight. Not because he has to distance himself from La Brava so that she can have a second chance at life, but because Deku lied to him about his strength. Deku “admits” that Gentle Criminal was his strongest opponent, but that’s simply not true.

Overhaul was stronger. Tomura might be stronger. I know Deku hasn’t fought him, but Dabi of the League of Villains is probably stronger. Stain could be stronger. I think it’s fair to say Gentle Criminal is stronger than Toga, Twice, and Muscular, but I also don’t think that’s saying all that much.

So, sure, Gentle Criminal isn’t the weakest opponent Deku has faced, but he’s also nowhere near the strongest. He’s somewhere in the middle. And I get that Deku has trained a lot since fighting someone like Stain, but I think Stain is probably the closest in strength to Gentle Criminal.

Conclusion

What did you think of My Hero Academia season 4 episode 22? Do you think we’ll see more of Gentle Criminal and La Brava in the future? Do you think Gentle Criminal actually was Deku’s strongest opponent? And, what do you think of La Brava’s quirk as far as support quirks go? Let me know in the comments.

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My review of the next episode is available here.

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