My Hero Academia Episode 92

Make It Happen, Shinso!

My Hero Academia Season 5 Episode 92 was a definite improvement over the episode that came before. Most notably, it didn’t involve characters explaining how their quirks work to their opponents in the middle of combat.

Of course, there will still explanations of quirks and strategies, because that kind of thing is somewhat necessary in a shounen battle series. But at least it was either via internal monologue or teammate communication. That’s a much better way to handle ability explanations.

Speaking of explanations, last week, I explained how Shinso’s quirk is deceptively strong. However, we didn’t really know everything about how his quirk worked at that time. Now we do. So, let’s revisit how good Shinso’s mind control quirk really is.

First of all, I’m going to say that, despite being similar in that they’re both voice-based, control abilities, Shinso’s quirk works in a very different way from Toge’s cursed speech in Jujutsu Kaisen. Shinso’s quirk has many more limits but also isn’t as volatile.

Shinso needs to mentally activate his quirk by thinking about controlling someone. Then he needs to speak to them. And if that person responds to him, they’re then under his control. This means that if someone knows his voice and about his quirk, they can choose not to respond.

That’s where Shinso’s voice changer comes into play. He can make his opponents think they’re responding to their allies.

But, there are some other drawbacks as well. Sudden shocks, such as an impact or injury, can break the mind control. And, he can only make people perform basic actions that don’t require thinking — he can stop a fight with it, but he can’t use it to gather information.

The Vine Saint

From that explanation of Shinso’s quirk, it might seem like it’s not all that good. But, you have to consider how Shinso’s quirk is really meant to be used. Shinso isn’t a front-line fighter. His quirk is much more geared toward a supporting role.

At the beginning of the episode, we see that he was able to temporarily neutralize an enemy threat in the form of Shishida, thus giving the rest of his team a better chance. But a better example of Shinso’s quirk at work comes when he’s able to help take down Shiozaki.

Shishida is definitely a strong opponent to go up against. However, it’s Shiozaki who’s the real threat on this first Class 1-B team. She was even identified as such in the previous episode by the members of both teams.

Shiozaki’s quirk is a relatively simple and straightforward one. But, as I’ve explained many times before in other reviews, those are often the most powerful because of their versatility. Shiozaki is able to control the vines that are her hair — using them for offense, defense, and even support.

The real problem Shiozaki poses to the Class 1-A team is that they don’t have any quirks that are necessarily strong against her. Tsuyu’s quirk can’t do anything to Shiozaki’s vines, Shinso’s quirk isn’t offensive, and as anyone who’s played Pokémon before knows, Denki can’t do much because electricity is weak against grass.

But, despite Shinso not having an offensive quirk, he can use his quirk in a team setting to defeat Shiozaki. As long as she’s distracted by one of Shinso’s teammates, she won’t be thinking about the threat of Shinso’s quirk lurking in the background.

At this point, Shiozaki already knew what Shinso’s quirk was and that he can change his voice. So on his own, Shinso wouldn’t have been able to defeat her. But when paired with others, Shinso’s quirk becomes much stronger.

Disrupting Communication

So far, I’ve just mentioned how Shinso’s quirk directly affects his opponents. However, what really makes his quirk so strong is how it indirectly affects them. If the enemy doesn’t know about his quirk, he can trap them with it. But what happens if they do know about it?

You’d expect that once Shinso’s opponents know about his quirk, they’d be able to plan around it. And to an extent, they can. The issue with this is that by working around Shinso’s quirk, his opponents are also handicapping themselves.

How do you avoid Shinso’s quirk once you know that he can change his voice? You simply don’t respond to anything. But, this also means that your communication with the rest of your own team is disrupted. If you can’t respond to each other, you can’t strategize easily.

Now, I will admit that you don’t necessarily need to verbally respond to someone in order to strategize with them. If your ally yells at you to dodge to the right, you can do so without responding and thus putting yourself at risk of Shinso’s mind control.

However, if you can’t be sure whether it was actually your ally shouting out that direction or Shinso using his voice changer, you may not want to listen to it. If Shinso was actually the one who told you to dodge to the right, that might be because he’s setting you up for one of his allies to take down.

This is the exact situation Shishida and Hiryu find themselves in after Shiozaki is incapacitated. Shishida can’t be sure if the voice he’s hearing is Hiryu’s or Shinso’s, and so he ignores it. He only realizes that it was Hiryu when he notices that he was referred to as Apocabeast, the nickname Hiryu calls him. Unfortunately, it was too late.

Conclusion

What do you think of My Hero Academia Season 5 Episode 92? I thought this episode did a fantastic job at showing us what the strengths of Shinso’s quirk really are. And considering Shinso mentioned that he might be able to control multiple people at once, we may get to see more ways he can use his quirk in the future.

If you enjoyed this review, remember to click the like button ❤️ down below. Also, follow me over on Twitter @DoubleSama so you don’t miss out on any future content. And come join our Discord server if you’re interested in discussing anime with other members of the community.

Finally, I’d like to thank Roman for supporting DoubleSama.com at the Heika tier this month. To learn more about how you too can become a supporter of this blog, check out Patreon.com/DoubleSama.

My review of Episode 93 is available.