Visualist x100!! – My Hero Academia Season Three: Episode Seventeen

The latest slog in the current arc of My Hero Academia has Karandi and I looking at different spots for hope and dismay. What offering do the hero gods bring forth this week? And will either of us even appreciate it enough to pray in humble gratitude? Let’s spin the focus to our thoughts now!

Karandi

Tragically it doesn’t feel like this arc is going to end up defying my expectations of tournaments and training arcs by actually impressing me. While it was great to see Todoroki has in fact overcome his lack of planning demonstrated in the fight against Aizawa and Yaoyorozo seems to have overcome her general indecisiveness, both of these are character revelations that have already happened and building on that might help with overall cohesion in their character arcs but it didn’t bring anything new to the table.

And essentially that is all this episode brings. Short skips to several groups with Todoroki’s fight and Yaoyorozo and co’s fights resolved and Midoriya and Bakugou’s fights still undecided because why not drag this incredibly dull match out another week. Again, there hasn’t been a single character development or plot point in the last two episodes of particular note, and being told by people who have read the source that there will be a payoff at the end doesn’t make this any more interesting to watch.

Here’s hoping Bakugou can add some excitement to the mix, or at the very least some explosions, next week. Then again, with Kirishima turned into an incredibly gross blog of flesh (and can someone please explain how that quirk works and is allowed to be used on other humans because yuck) I’m thinking Bakugou should be careful about what he blows up… Then again, we are talking about Bakugou.

Honestly though, this was slightly more interesting than last week because we got to see more of the supporting characters, but still not exactly what I would call particularly fun to watch.

Kapodaco

When I logged in to Twitter this morning and saw that Karandi had sent me a direct message, I was rather surprised. Usually my Saturday mornings begin with no contact, or I would have to contact her about when I can have my part of the post up. This week, which has only occurred one other time in the last five-ish months, Karandi bit the bullet and already watched the episode before I was even awake, and also wrote up her impressions. When said direct message included her dismay at this episode and her pessimism regarding this arc in general, my expectations effectively plummeted.

However, getting to the episode itself, it’s totally… fine. An episode I can wholeheartedly look forward to in terms of pushing the plot forward. Not without its issues, which I’ll get into soon, but this episode did have something that the last episode didn’t: showcasing eliminations. Sorry, one person was shown passing the exam… in a super easy fashion in a matter of seconds. This episode gave us that in a much more dramatic and satisfying way, even if compared to its series’ own standards is pretty trivial.

One should only spy with their little eyes the screenshots I chose for this episode and how I arranged them to signify the type of writing that was rampant in this episode. With no context, they signify a process of “Bad guys trap good guys” → “Good guys are on the verge of losing; bad guys laugh in triumph” → “Good guys find a way to win; bad guys are flabbergasted that their ‘foolproof’ plan has failed them.” The kind of development one would likely see in a Saturday-morning cartoon. Oh, shit. It’s Saturday morning.

And in some ways, this episode heavily mirrors the previous episode. Outside the situation just described, it ends with a member of U.A. beginning to combat a student from another school and does little to show whom out of U.A. is still even out there. Bakugo, Kirishima, and Thunderhead (can’t remember his name) will undoubtedly be the Yaoyorozu, Asui, Jiro, and Shoji of this episode next episode. Will it play out the same way? Probably.

That said, I’ll reiterate that I thought this episode was fine. I was never at any point bored, but I did scoff at the writing a few times and how Shounen-y it was. Future prospects haven’t lit a fire in my closet hero-loving soul for some time and likely won’t do so in the near future. Better times to come, perhaps, but they’re probably not here in Finesville.

(To see all posts concerning this collab, check out my Collabs page!)