My Hero Academia FINAL SEASON

Episode 168

The final battle is over, and now all that's left is to rebuild. The physical reconstruction is easy. Despite large portions of Japan being destroyed, the convenience of quirks accelerates the reconstruction process. What's more, assistance and outside aid from other countries smooth things more than expected. Students finally get to graduate, and everyone gets to move up another year. On the surface, things seem to be getting back to normal, but as Shigaraki made painfully clear, what happens next is important. I appreciate the speech hammered in by Mirio during the graduation. We have to do more than get back to where things were before; we need to go beyond.

This episode is about getting into the emotional and social fallouts. The reality of the situation is finally hitting everybody, and we're starting to see the closure of everybody's individual stories. Aoyama is allowed to return to school as a student, but still feels like he needs to earn back his place after acting as a mole. I understand the boy's guilt, even though I personally feel like his parents are more to blame. I can see certain things that are being expanded upon a bit more compared to the original manga, and it's nice to see that Hawks is taking over his boss' job after losing his quirk, as that feels like a logical conclusion to his character. But most of this has been told from the perspective of the kids who were on the ground, and that makes sense.

It's fair to say this episode fully closed out Bakugo's character arc. Just seeing this guy, who previously bullied Deku relentlessly since they were five, is now sitting here crying over the fact that he may never get to compete with him in a hero setting again. It really does hammer the fact that Bakugo took Deku for granted ever since they were younger, and while he didn't express jealousy over the fact that Deku got One For All, you can tell there was a part of him that was excited over the fact that he would have somebody that he could regularly compete with. Now that One For All is gone, Deku is back to being how he was before, and there is a tragedy to that, even if Deku is trying not to let it show. He tries to put a positive spin on it, like how he got this amazing dream, but it really does suck that he sacrificed a lot. All Might's words resonate strongly, but they leave the question of what is left for Deku now that he can't use any of his powers.

Now we get to the Todoroki family, and OH BOY, there is a lot to unpack here. Despite being strapped to a huge life support machine and only being able to talk a little bit each day, it is genuinely insane that Toya is alive, considering that this man basically burned through his entire body. Still, he is the only character who had a direct personal relationship to our main cast, so if anyone was to survive life-threatening injuries to get that sense of emotional closure, it makes sense that it would be him. I feel like reactions towards Endeavor are still going to be mixed, and I think a lot of that comes down to the fact that I don't know if we're going to actually see HOW exactly he is going to atone for his sins. A lot of what revolves around Endeavor is interesting and pretty bold compared to what you see in a lot of other shows in this genre. The issue is that I don't think we see exactly how he plans on atoning for his past actions, both the abuse towards his kids, towards his wife, and the neglect that ended up leading to Dabi being made in the first place. It would also be nice just to hear more conversations between him and his wife. While it is an interesting reversal that she is now the one wheeling him around because he can't walk anymore, I want to know emotionally what's going through their heads as parents.

I do like the fact that all the Todoroki children seem to have different reactions to where they're going to go from here. Natsuo is more or less done with the family as he wants to move on and create his own. He doesn't need to forgive his father for anything that he did, no matter how many years he tries to atone for everything that happened. I think that's pretty realistic, and I like the detail that there is a little bit of sadness in Natsuo's eyes, indicating that he wishes he didn't have to do that, but he still feels like he can't forgive his dad. It looks like Fuyumi is going for the middle ground approach, where she'll still be around, but she won't try to keep the family together anymore. It looks like it's time for her to get support from other people instead of always being the one doing the supporting

That final interaction between Toya and Shoto admittedly did get to me. Kudos to the animation team for adding in the detail of hearing Toya's constant noises as everybody was trying to plead with him. At first, it almost sounded like he was laughing, but as time went on, you could tell that he was crying over the tragedy of the fact that, at the end of the day, he did finally get what he wanted, but he had to sacrifice so much. Shoto wants to know about the brother that he never had the chance to meet. That little moment at the end, where they both realize that they like the same food, is so bittersweet and a good cap off to the fact that soba was almost used throughout the show as a gag. I love My Hero Academia's occasional moments of taking seemingly inconsequential bits and putting a lot of emotional weight behind them.

This is just one part of a longer epilogue. There are still characters that need to get their sense of closure. Spinner's still alive, so let's see what the fallout for that looks like. Now we have a couple of lingering shots implying that everything that happened is still heavily on Uraraka's head, and it looks like Deku is the only one who noticed. I'm sure the conversation between them will act as a good capstone to the previous conversation they had before things reached their climax. The world is healing, but it can't go back to the way it was before. We can't sweep under the rug the sins and mistakes that led to the creation of these villains in the first place, especially when the show makes it clear that there are more people out there, one bad day away from turning into the next Shigaraki. The question is, how do we make things better? The first step is acknowledging what got us here in the first place.

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My Hero Academia FINAL SEASON is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.