My Recap Academia – Chapter 178

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Missed the latest chapter of My Hero Academia? Need someone to geek out with about it? It’s fine now. Why? Because I am here!

Welcome to the next installment of AiPT’s My Hero Academia recap column! As each new chapter is released, I’ll be sharing my reactions, so be warned that there will be SPOILERS for the newest chapters of My Hero Academia as well as the series thus far.

This chapter is okay. We get to see some of the girls prepare for the beauty pageant, which is fun, as well as a brief moment where All Might and Midnight wonder whether Midoriya will make it back to the school in time. Good to know the teachers are aware that Midoriya left in case his fight with Gentle keeps him away too long. I will say the brief moment with the pageant contestants gave me my favorite panels of the chapter, courtesy of Bibimi Kenranzaki’s eyelashes:

And I thought Trixie Mattel wore a lot of eyelashes; Kenranzaki probably orders 301 lashes by the shipping container. I hope her lashes are that long because of her quirk and I really hope Gentle makes it to the school so we can see Miss Kenranzaki of the House of Kenranzaki use her Quirk to kick some ass while looking fierce. (She even has an ojou-sama laugh. I stan.)

Moving on to the Midoriya-Gentle conflict, here we get more of La Brava’s backstory and learn about her Quirk! Let’s start with her backstory because it’s really lame. Really? She had her heart broken by a middle-school crush, lost all hope in anything, and her new love for Gentle is the only thing that brought her out of her depression?

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Boooo, Horikoshi! All of La Brava’s motivations have been framed to be completely dependent on whether or not male characters are giving her the acceptance she desires and I’m bored. At this point, she’s basically a toned-down Harley Quinn to Gentle’s Robin Hood, but with all of Harley’s dependence on Joker (when she’s being written lazily) and none of her expertise or agency. I do think her support-style Quirk that supercharges the target of her love is interesting since we haven’t seen a Quirk that affects other people like this before. It would have really cool potential if it were used by a couple that was much more developed. But in this scenario, it feels wasted on a character with little foundation to stand on.

This moment where Gentle draws dark circles around his eyes with a marker to help La Brava feel better about her own eyes is cute though:

That’s all for this chapter! Want to read more of our thoughts on My Hero Academia? Check out our latest review of the collected volumes and last week’s recap column. ‘Til next time, keep it Plus Ultra!