My Hero Academia (Episode 85) - School Festival Start!!

Midoriya chases after Gentle Criminal and La Brava determined not to let them infiltrate UA and put an end to the school festival that he and his friends worked so hard on. What is Gentle Criminal’s goal and will it matter?

What happened?

Realising that Gentle Criminal’s elasticity runs out after a certain amount of time, Midoriya is able to follow and once he gets close enough is able to bounce his air cannon attack off the elastic pockets and hit Gentle Criminal. With his and La Brava appearing to be down for the count, La Brava reminisces about the events that led her to partner with Gentle Criminal. She then whispers that she loves him and because of her quirk he receives a temporary power-up. He knocks Midoriya down and continues on his way, but that’s not enough to keep him down. Midoriya gets back up and continues to fight Gentle as La Brava tries to hack the UA security system. When she’s unable to do it, she runs back to find Gentle Criminal pinned to the ground. She pounds her fists against a befuddled looking Midoriya, complaining about how he has destroyed Gentle’s dream.

My Hero Academia 4 Episode 85 Midoriya and Gentle fighting before La Brava

What was your favourite element?

I did enjoy the moment that Midoriya used Gentle’s elasticity against him, but other than that I came away from this episode feeling quite glum. We got to see Gentle Criminal’s past and I can’t help but feel like the system failed him. A system that is designed to create heroes will invariably create villains too. I wonder if this is part of the problem that Stain saw in the way the world worked. Was Gentle really a criminal of just a nuisance? I feel like it was the later and that made Midoriya’s victory seem fairly hollow. Seeing La Brava crying and pounding her fists against him left Midoriya feeling pretty shocked and I can only hope that this is the issue Horikoshi was trying to highlight. It wasn’t the most elegant of ways and I’m still not enjoying season four anywhere near as much as the others, but this could be the underrated moment of the season.

My Hero Academia 4 Episode 85 Midoriya chases Gentle and La Brava

What have you learnt?

Creating parallels with characters in a story is a great way to show the potential for improvement or even how things could have gone if something hadn’t worked out quite as well as it did. Midoriya was a quirkless nobody until All Might saw the potential in him to take on One for All, but that was a chance meeting and could so easily have never happened. How would Midoriya’s life changed had he not gotten into UA? His obsession with heroes and their abilities and strategies could have easily become an asset for a villain. I’m not sure Midoriya would have become like Shigaraki, but seeing him become someone like Gentle wouldn’t be too much of a stretch. It’s nice to focus on the less desirable aspect of this society and it’ll be interesting to see if Midoriya is changed by this encounter.