#honestly the Todoroki vs Midoriya fight mostly will stay the same

[masked-umber]

U.A. Sports Festival arc(part 9)

(Katsuki Bakugou vs Yui Kodai)

Kodai sits in the waiting room fidgeting with her shirt. Can she do this.. what if she isn't strong enough.. Bakugou is stronger than her.. she knows that. Kodai takes a deep breath calming her nerves, she needs to think of a plan.

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Katsuki Bakugou vs Yui Kodai:

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Kodai walks out onto the field as Present Mic announces her to the crowd. Kodai's heart is beating extremely fast but she keeps a calm face. She can hear her classmates cheering her on.. she can hear Midoriya cheering her on. She watches as Bakugou walks out onto the field as Present Mic announces him to the crowd.

Bakugou strikes first launching an explosion straight for Kodai, but she dodges, rolling out of the way as the explosion hits the ground. Bakugou scowls as he unleashes more explosions, causing dust to create a cloud around the field. Bakugou looks around searching for any movement in the cloud of dust, it's Kodai.

Bakugou sees the dust fluctuate and launches an explosion towards her, but Kodai reacts quickly and uses her quirk to enlarge a piece of rubble to block the explosion. Bakugou clenches his teeth, this bitch is trying to wait him out until he gets dehydrated. Bakugou charges towards her, unleashing another explosion to destroy the rubble. Kodai bolts out of the way, and Bakugou quickly uses his other hand to launch and explosion straight at her face. Kodai flies backwards, tumbling across the ground. Kodai pants as she struggles to get up. Bakugou charges again but Kodai again rolls out of the way, the explosion grazing her shoulder.

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Midoriya watches from the stands, his heart beating quickly as he watches Kodai fight, he's focused on the fight and doesn't hear the crowd booing Bakugou. Kamakiri taps Midoriya's shoulder telling him that his face is red as fuck. Midoriya jumps slightly, as he turns to look at Kamakiri, blinking a few times, he apologizes, before shaking his head to clear his blush. Kamakiri narrows his eyes before leaning back into his seat.

Midoriya hears Tetsutetsu complaining about how Bakugou is toying with a poor quiet girl like Kodai, but Tokage shuts him up by saying that he could be giving Kodai a chance to fight. Midoriya is unsure of what Bakugou is doing, he could've ended this quickly if he wanted to, suddenly Eraserhead's voice can be heard over the intercoms. Eraserhead explains that that if as Pro Heroes, or Heroes in training, if they can't handle a fight like this, than maybe they shouldn't be Heroes. This is how fights are in the real world of Heroes. Present Mic quickly apologizes for Eraserhead's statement, saying that his friend is very opinionated.

Monoma scoffs saying that he can't believe that Pro heroes don't even know what Kodai is doing. Tetsutetsu blinks and asks what he's talking about, and Monoma explains that Kodai is using Bakugou's explosions to create rubble so that she can use her Quirk to trap him.

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Kodai holds darts around the arena, touching the rubble that's spread around the arena, thanks to Bakugou's explosions. Bakugou notices this and smirks, this extra is putting up a fight, even with her weak ass quirk, He charges at her and uses and explosion straight at her again, causing Kodai to stumble backwards. Kodai holds her shoulder, her breathing is heavy as she stares at Bakugou, before darting again, trying to reach the last piece of rubble that's surrounding Bakugou.

Bakugou cracks his knuckles as he watches Kodai touch a piece of rubble with her hands before causing it to grow in size. Bakugou looks around and sees the other pieces of rubble grow in size as well. Kodai pants as she watches her plan work.. when suddenly there's a flash of light and a massive explosion heads her way, breaking the rubble and launching it towards her. The explosion hits Kodai head on sending her backwards, she hits the ground hard. She tries to get back up but Midnight calls the match, Kodai stepped out of bounds.

Katsuki Bakugou wins

Bakugou leaves the arena not even checking to see of Kodai is okay. He makes his way to the corridor. He sees Deku walking with a group of extras. (Yanagi, Rin, Tsuburaba, and Kamakiri) Bakugou confronts Deku accusing him of giving Kodai a strategy, but Deku denies it, Kodai came up with her own strategy to try and defeat him. Bakugou scoffs as he pushes past Deku.

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Kamakiri scowls and calls him an asshole, Yanagi agrees with him as they walk. The group makes their way to the waiting room Kodai is most likely in. Kodai is sitting in a seat staring and her hand, her wounds are mostly healed, her eyes look sad. Kamakiri walks over to her first and pats her on the back saying she fought well. Tsuburaba agrees with Kamakiri saying that she did great. Rin and Yanagi look at eachother before walking over to her, Rin crouches down putting a hand on Kodai's arm with a smile, he doesn't say anything but he's there which is enough. Meanwhile, Yanagi moves behind Kodai, Kamakiri steps back, as Yanagi gives Kodai a hug.

Midoriya's heart is beating fast, as he walks over to Kodai, and Rin scoots over to give Midoriya room. Midoriya smiles and tells Kodai she was amazing out there, and Kodai's mouth quivers slightly. Kodai asks for them to leave.. she wants time alone. Midoriya nods and the group leaves, but Kamakiri stays back for a split second before Yanagi drags him off.

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Meanwhile, Tetsutetsu and Kirishima have a tie-breaking arm-wrestling match to see who moves onto the next round. Kirishima wins the match and is able to move onto the next round. He grabs Tetsutetsu's hand and the two grin at eachother, as Kirishima promises to make him proud.

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At the same time Kodai gets a call from her parents. She answers the phone only to hear her parents telling her how dangerous that was. She's just a girl, there was no way he could win that fight. Kodai's eyes water as she listens to her parents talk. Eventually Yui is able to speak and she asks her parents if she even made them proud. They pause before Kodai's father tells her that he's proud of her for not giving up, and then says her determination is what would make her a good nurse in the future when she gives up on her silly hero dream.

Kodai asks her parents if they could just not try and tell her that her dream is stupid.. at least for today. Kodai's mom agrees, before she mentions that her brother, Takao wants to talk to her. Kodai waits for her younger brother to speak and when he does he tells Kodai or Yuichan, that she was amazing and so cool. That Bakugou guy was so rude, and how he thinks his big sister Yuichan so should have won. Kodai smiles slightly as tears flow from her eyes, she tells Takao that she appreciates it. Takao tells Yuichan that she's his hero, before telling her that he loves her. Kodai says she loves him to, before hanging up. Kodai sets her phone down on the table, as she sniffles and rubs her eyes to wipe away her tears but they just keep flowing.

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Midnight announces the matches for the next round of the tournament:

Shoto Todoroki vs Izuku Midoriya

Tenya Iida vs Mina Ashido

Eijiro Kirishima vs Juzo Honenuki

Katsuki Bakugou vs Momo Yaoyorozu

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First round of the one-on-one tournament is done.

Fun Fact: Kodai can control when she sizes up/down an object, which is why she needs to stay focused.

Fuck Kodai's parents, sure they love her and they think what they're doing is for her own good but they're blissfully ignorant to how much it hurts Kodai.

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Beginning: First day in 1-B

Next: U.A. Sports Festival arc(part 10)

Previous: U.A. Sports Festival arc(part 8)

Table of contents

Extra: Parents

[aerislei]

MHA Season 2 Wrap Up

First, for my wrap up specifically about the stain arc go here. If you have any interest in my thoughts specific to that arc, there you go. Lol. It will get mentions, but I’m not intending to reiterate anything that I covered more in-depth there because it seems silly. 

Second, I’m sorry but this thing is huge. In the future I may break up character discussion and possible theories into a separate post. Is that a thing you guys would prefer? Or do you like the whole wrap in one?

Now. Holy... wow. A lot happened in season 2, and the arcs felt like distinct arcs. By that I mean... like um. In season one everything felt like a natural progression, from one to the next - meet all might, train with all might, get into school, school classes. I know it’s technically broken into “arcs” but it didn’t feel like it, really.

In season 2 each arc is extremely distinct, though of course they are tied together so they don’t feel disjointed. We start with the sports festival, which ends hinting at the stain arc, then we flow into the stain arc, and then, almost anticlimactically, we come back to school and do our final exams because this is a school, remember? And all the chaos that has happened over the semester doesn’t change that.

So, generally, I’ve got to say the extra episodes did this season a load of good. The extra screen time did wonders for allowing a little more exploration with all the characters. Some are still way less fleshed out than others, but almost none of them are just floating question marks. ... At least not out of the 1-A members.

This is super pleasing because it was one of my biggest frustrations out of season 1 - because we spent so much time gearing up for UA that we didn’t really get to explore much of the class that was suddenly tossed in front of us. And because class time was limited, obviously, by screen time, we got a somewhat limited view of who was who and who did what. Personalities were very vague at best and while I had impressions for several characters I didn’t... feel much for any of them, outside of a select few I already knew something about either because they were important (Midoriya, Bakugo) or because I had pieces of the puzzle handed to me in the form of spoilers (Kirishima, Todoroki, Momo/Jiru).

Things went better this season in terms of giving us information about everyone, at least in a limited form, and thus in endearing more of the cast to me.

Sports Festival Arc

Okay, so. First arc of the season. It gave me all the information about Todoroki I could have asked for - even though I guessed at least 80% of it with the pieces of the puzzle I’d already been handed and my parallels to prince Zuko. Despite that it was a wild ride. I enjoyed the arc in a way I don’t enjoy most tournament arcs.

Biggest negative, in a sense for me was that the fight I was most looking forward to - and, imo was the most hyped up - was in round two of the event (Todoroki vs Deku) and... to me at least everything after it fell flat. None of the fights after Todoroki and Deku made any real impression on me. Even the final battle between Shoto and Bakugo was comparatively uninteresting. I know that was important, I do. I know why Shoto “stepped back” so to speak, I get that he had something to figure out for himself before he could really keep charging forward there.

... But the fight was dull and it had very little weight for me. I’m quite sure that that’s an unpopular opinion, but here we are.

The tournament set up a lot of important things and it opened a lot of doors, so to speak. Which does redeem the anticlimactic final battle, if only because it wasn’t “just” a tournament, important things happened there too.

Stain Arc

One of the biggest events of our protagonist’s careers so far, quietly skated over by the media and the glory given to someone else. Other than Stain’s ideology blowing open the doors for the Villains to explode into action, we get a lot of growth for Izuku, Shoto, and Iida. We also got some significant growth for Uraraka as far as combat goes.

We get our first look at the real villain that Midoriya is eventually going to have to face, and some important exposition about how One for All came to be. We also got to see a ton of other pro heroes in action which was a lot of fun.

Final Exams

You know after Stain, this arc was a nice lowering of the adrenaline. I know I called it anticlimactic up there - because it was, in a sense - but it was also rather important for it to be. First, it reminds us that our main characters are still in school and they’re still learning. And second it highlights the fact that life doesn’t stop no matter how disastrous the world seems to become.

Still, it was in no way boring and the exam itself was a nice reminder that our characters have a long way to go before they’re ready.

The BakuDeku fight was my third favorite thing this season. (Stain fight in first, Tododeku fight in second). I was so pumped to see those two have to work together for something and they DID IT. Not well, especially not at first, but they were able to put aside their differences and in the end did succeed against All Might.

And then, of course, the end of the season gave us what to expect next time (hey we’ve got training in the woods for a week coming up) and also gave us the current stance of the Villains - All for One being pleased at Tomura’s finally gaining a firm resolve to destroy All Might. It was a good place to end the season all in all.

Again, not going to do every character by any means, just going to touch on a few. More than I did last time though because I have things to say.

Yaoyorozu Momo

So I was surprised to see her lose so much confidence in herself after the Sports Arc - but then again she got in on recommendation not by her own actual talent. She didn’t earn a score, she didn’t have to fight nearly as hard. Momo is... that character who’s used to her family name getting her everything and coming to UA she’s realizing that not only is it not that simple in the real world, she doesn’t want it to be, because she wants to do it herself.

But she’s not used to failing. She doesn’t seem to be used to other people showing her up, so to speak, and apparently losing to Tokoyami really shook her up.

I’m glad the exam with Todoroki did her some good in getting her feet back under her and I hope we get to keep seeing more of her because she actually seems to be a fun character.

Todoroki Shoto

Todoroki is our other character that is the character who’s used to getting by on his family’s name alone. ... Except dialed over into the Family Issues troupe and so he doesn’t like getting anywhere with that name. Seemingly unlike Momo he works much harder because of his father’s name - because he wants to be separate from it. He wants to do it himself.

But he undeniably has gotten to where he is because of his father. And also undeniably his father’s training affects absolutely everything he does - including how he interacts with his classmates (see: flatly laying out his plan to Momo without asking her anything even though she clearly wanted to say something.) Yeah.

I’m hoping the exam with Momo remains as a lesson that communication is kind of a two way street, and a partnership requires compromise on both sides. The whole thing could have been avoided if they’d actually spent pre-their exam discussing how they wanted to handle it instead of coming into the arena and then sharing the plan.

(These two are interesting to put side by side because they basically come from the same place - roots that can get them wherever they want to go in life, but they’re learning how to stand on their own too.)

Midoriya Izuku

His growth this season was glorious. Once Gran Torino got him thinking about One for All the right way, he made leaps and bounds of progress - maybe a little too quickly - but we can’t have everything. There was also some personality growth that is starting to show through. He’s not the same as he was in season 1, even only by the end of his first semester. He still gets nervous but it’s less often, he still cries easily - too easily - but it’s not as often.

He’s gaining confidence in the fact that this is his path to walk now, like he’s always wanted.

Shigaraki Tomura 

So as far as villains go he’s not really my favorite. He lost a lot of his creepiness from the first season as we see him more and more. ... Probably because he mostly acts like a petulant six year old in an adult’s body.

I accidentally spoiled myself looking for something else, so I am aware of his actual identity. But it doesn’t change the way I honestly feel about him. (I do look forward to seeing how/when it’s revealed in the show, because I’m curious if All Might knows.)

The more he talks, the less scary he seems. He throws his power around, and that’s about it. ... His quirk has the potential to be devastating so there’s that.

I’m hoping now that he’s gained his... resolve or whatever we want to call it that he centralizes into a more interesting threat and less like a kid playing a video game and whining when things don’t go his way.

Dabi

So. He’s just a question mark. Mostly. Adult, early-to-mid twenties if I had to guess an age. Turquoise eyes. I happen to know that his quirk is fire based (I told y’all I’m terrible at staying out of trouble lmao). And he is specifically endeared to Stain’s ideals.

There’s also a pretty prevalent fanon idea that he is the eldest Todoroki child. And I uh, I’m not going to lie, but it’s a pretty intriguing idea, and I can easily see how someone raised by endeavor - especially someone who was deemed ‘unworthy’ the way Shoto’s siblings all were - might come to support the ideals of someone who believes heroes should be heroes selflessly.

I look forward to seeing how things go forward with Dabi and the villains in general. ... I also feel like Dabi and Tomura are not done clashing quite yet.

So for final thoughts...

This season opened up a number of doors and set into motion a lot of things all around our characters. Some of those things they are aware of, others... well, there is time enough for them to find out about later.

Our heroes made it through their first semester at school, but it’s pretty clear that their story has only just begun.

I was right, the extended season does this show a lot of favors, and I’m glad to see that season three is similarly long.

See you all next time!