My Hero Academia Episode 107

My Hero Academia Episode 107

Oboro Shirakumo

I’m pretty conflicted about My Hero Academia Season 5 Episode 107. On one hand, I think it was probably the best episode of Season 5 so far. But on the other, I can’t help but view the twists introduced in this episode as being a copy of Naruto: Shippūden.

I’m going to be including spoilers for Shippūden in this review as a comparison. So if you don’t want to be spoiled on that, go watch all of Naruto and then come back. It’s only 720 episodes (not counting Boruto) — it shouldn’t take too long.

Alright, so the big twist in this episode is that the villain Kurogiri is actually a Nomu that was constructed using the corpse of Oboro Shirakumo. Who’s Oboro Shirakumo? Great question. He was just mentioned for the first time in this episode, but he was Eraser Head’s and Present Mic’s friend when they were students.

Aizawa, Shirakumo, and Yamada from the anime series My Hero Academia Season 5
Aizawa, Shirakumo, and Yamada

During their work-study as students, Oboro died after being crushed under a collapsing building. And after that, his friends Aizawa and Yamada never expected to see him again. Now, if you’ve seen Naruto: Shippūden, you may have noticed the similarity.

In Shippūden, it was revealed that one of the bad guys was none other than Obito, Kakashi’s former squadmate when they were younger. And, just like Oboro, Obito was thought to have been crushed to death — only by a boulder, not a building.

It’s exactly the same. In both cases, a never-before-mentioned teammate of the protagonist’s teacher was crushed when they were younger and then showed up as a villain later on. And even the names Obito and Oboro are very similar.

I’m sure some My Hero Academia super fans will try to say I’m just biased or something, but it’s literally copying Naruto.

Beneath the Nomu

The one difference between Oboro and Obito seems to be that Oboro is actually dead. I’m not convinced that’s actually the case just yet. But for now, that’s what we’ve been told. So Oboro’s body was recovered by the villains, while Obito was actually rescued from beneath the boulder by a villain.

Since we did see Oboro’s face show through Kurogiri’s void, and he spoke to Aizawa and Yamada, I have a feeling that he might not be dead. But even if he’s not dead, it doesn’t appear that he was turned to the dark side. His body is being controlled.

So, anyway, Nomu are revealed to be built on the corpses of people with “good” quirks. All-for-One specifically mentioned using UA as a hunting ground because strong quirks gather there. So we can assume they’re not using any random person as the base for a Nomu.

Aizawa attempting to break through to Shirakumo from the anime series My Hero Academia Season 5
Aizawa attempting to break through to Shirakumo

Something I’m not entirely clear on is how a Nomu like Kurogiri works. It was mentioned that Kurogiri’s quirk was found to be the same type as Oboro’s. So was Oboro’s quirk the time/space gate quirk? Because if so, that seems like a very obvious connection.

That means Kurogiri must have another quirk that’s Oboro’s original quirk. I believe this is also something that was stated briefly; something about the Nomu having additional quirks forced into their bodies. But, that also doesn’t make too much sense.

I can understand if All-for-One was implanting additional quirks into the Nomu. But now that he’s locked up, I don’t see how they’re able to continue creating Nomu. As far as we know, his quirk is the only way to implant quirks into people — with One-for-All as a special case.

Has the mad scientist character we saw at the end of the episode figured out how to do this?

All-for-One’s Successor

Building upon the scene of the mad scientist at the end of the episode, something interesting was mentioned in the next episode preview. It was stated that Gigantomachia (remember him?) wanted to test the members of the League of Villains to see if any of them were ready to become All-for-One’s successor.

I believe that’s why we see Shigaraki in bad shape at the end of the episode. He was clearly injured by something, and my guess is that it was the battle against Gigantomachia. So, does this mean that Shigaraki is going to become All-for-One’s successor?

The obvious answer is probably yes. But what I mean by “successor” is that Shigaraki will actually take on the All-for-One quirk just as Deku has taken on the One-for-All quirk. That may have been what we saw happening at the end of the episode.

Shigaraki being experimented on from the anime series My Hero Academia Season 5
Shigaraki being experimented on

I don’t remember how many episodes ago it was now, but do you remember how one episode began with a city being destroyed by someone? At the time, I thought it looked like Shigaraki. But that didn’t make sense to me because we know what Shigaraki’s quirk is, and it wasn’t used to destroy the city.

That scene is starting to make more sense. I think that was Shigaraki in the present, and the Shigaraki we saw at the end of this episode is what happened to him just before he destroyed the city. It makes sense to me that he destroyed the city upon receiving All-for-One’s power.

From what little we saw of the destruction and Shigaraki afterward, I don’t think he did it to test his new powers. To me, it looked more like he went berserk. And if he was just implanted with a quirk like All-for-One, I could definitely see that happening.

Conclusion

What do you think of My Hero Academia Season 5 Episode 107? Was it the best episode of the season so far despite not having any action? I liked the exhibition match action from the start of the season, but this episode had some very good character moments and seems to be building up to something.

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My review of Episode 108 is available now.

2 Replies to “My Hero Academia Episode 107”

  1. What was said about Kurogiri’s quirk was that it was made up of a bunch of different quirks fused together to make a new quirk and that Oboro’s original quirk served as the base/foundation for it.

    I don’t know if this has ever happened before with other series but Oboro actually first appeared in the spin-off manga My Hero Academia: Vigilantes. Vigilantes is set a few years before My Hero Academia begins and actually introduced Oboro as well as showing the events leading up to his death along with his friendship with Aizawa and Present Mic. Readers who read the main manga as well as Vigilantes knew who Oboro was before the Kurogiri reveal. However readers who only read the main manga were a bit confused and wondered if they’d missed something.

    It’s interesting because the reveal had a lot more emotional impact for people who had been reading Vigilantes than for those who hadn’t.

    Next week’s episode is the beginning of a story arc from the manga called My Villain Academia. This season of the anime has actually rearranged the story arcs from the manga. My Villain Academia was supposed to take place after the Class-1A/Class-1B tournament arc and before Deku, Bakugou and Todoroki went to Endeavour’s agency. Basically starting next week everything we are going to see is a big flashback to 2 months previously from the League of Villain’s point-of-view.

    So just bear in mind that everything we’ve seen for the last few weeks is set in the present and what we will be seeing over the next few weeks is set in the past.

    1. Well, hopefully the anime covers a bit of the Vigilantes content. Because as it stands now, I don’t think many anime-onlies like myself are going to be invested in Oboro at all.

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