Summary

The School Festival arc in My Hero Academia provides a much-needed break from the intense storylines, focusing on character development and lighter moments. Gentle Crime adds complexity as a villain, with similarities to Deku and a unique approach to crime that challenges traditional villain tropes. While this arc has highlights like Eri's happiness and Deku's new technique, it relies too heavily on coincidence, making it one of the weaker arcs.

My Hero AcademyThe School Festival arc of the series isn't the most exciting in the series; it won't keep viewers on the edge of their seats, nor is the fate of the world at stake. However, following on from the incredibly tense Shie Hassaikai arc, this lower-stakes storyline is exactly what the doctor ordered.

The School Festival section sees students participating in Work-Study as part of a back-to-school raid, just in time to help prepare for UA's annual school festival. With tensions running high at UA, the school festival is in a tense state and even the slightest mistake could cause the entire event to be canceled. The Class 1-A students feel some responsibility for the situation, as their class has been targeted multiple times, and hope to put on a performance that will help the other UA students relax and enjoy themselves. festival.

Meanwhile, a minor villain named Gentle Crime is plotting to infiltrate the school essentially as a stunt man.

The School Festival arc includes chapters 169-183 of the manga and episodes 81-86 of the anime.

A much-needed chance for the story to breathe

In serialized fiction, there is a concept called a “breathing” episode, which is essentially an opportunity for the audience to relax and settle back to a baseline after a particularly tense moment or interesting happening. My Hero Academia often balances story arcs and breather episodes by alternating between the two, with most of the content involving normal day-to-day studying serving as breather episodes. As the longest and most intense arc in the series to date, the Shie Hassaikai arc really needed some space to let things settle down afterward.

Series creator Kohei Horikoshi takes advantage of that need for a moment of relaxation to help understand some of the recently introduced characters a little better, especially the young girl Eri. Eri's rescue is the goal of the Shie Hassaikai arc, but little is known about her other than the fact that she is a naive young girl. The School Festival arc allows fans to get to know Eri as a character – one who is still haunted by her past. Like Deku, the audience wants to see this girl happy, and that becomes the driving force of this arc.

This arc also spends time with a lot of the distracted students, like Jiro, as well as providing an opportunity to get to know Mirio better, especially after he lost his Quirk and with it his identity. that. a hero. The School Festival arc is as much about the aftermath of the Shie Hassaikai as it is about the festival itself, exploring the aftermath of the major events that occurred.

The gentle criminal is a complex character

Of course, one cannot discuss this installment without discussing its villain, Gentle Crime. Gentle is a man who once wanted to be a hero, but after his own attempt to save someone interfered with a pro hero's rescue, he became involved in a criminal record that led him to We go down a dark path. Gentle considers himself a gentleman, and thus tries to avoid violence and present a classy look with each of his crimes, which are recorded and shared online with help from his assistant/lover. him, LaBrava.

Gentle's past makes him have some similarities with Deku, who also tried to save someone (Bakugo) before becoming a hero, but was not punished for his intervention like Gentle, because everything was fine. Because of their similarities, Deku found it extremely difficult to fight Gentle, realizing that he was not inherently a bad person like previous villains such as Chisaki. That's an important lesson for Deku, because not every villain is as crazy as Shigaraki has been so far.

On the other hand, Gentle may be a controversial character in the My Hero Academia fandom. While Gentle's official age is 32 and LaBrava's is 22, his appearance makes him look much older, while hers makes her look much younger, creating something of an uneasy feeling between the two. . This isn't helped by the fact that LaBrava's Quirk is based on love, forcing the issue of their relationship to become a major factor in the plot. It's enough to completely ruin the arc for some, though that obviously can vary.

The School Festival arc, while it has some highlights, is possibly the weakest arc of the series

This season has some great moments; it was great to see Eri finally have a moment of happiness, and Class 1-A's performance was an excellent performance and a lot of fun to watch. Deku also develops his Air Technique in this arc, giving him a long-range attack option for the first time. However, these highlights can't really make up for some of the weaker aspects of the arc.

Deku's awareness of Gentle Crime was pure luck. He accidentally clicks and watches a video of Gentle, warning of his upcoming plans, and Gentle happens to be drinking the same tea that Momo made. Afterwards, Deku happened to go into town, went to the hardware store next to the tea shop that Gentle was at, and happened to be there at the same time as Gentle. That's a lot of coincidences in one plot, which brings down the quality of the entire story.

Given the overall very solid quality of the series thus far, it's a bit disappointing to see a plot this late in the game rely so heavily on random chance. There's nothing wrong with a random event kicking off the plot, such as Deku and Lemillion's chance encounter with Eri, but having too many back-to-back events is a sign of weak writing.

Perhaps that was understandable, since Horikoshi himself was also recovering from the darkness and intensity of the Shie Hassaikai, but it was still weak nonetheless. However, even if the School Festival part was the worst part My Hero Academy has to offer, which makes it so much better than most anime and manga.