The Paranormal Liberation War Arc of My Hero Academia represents a pivotal moment in the series, where the stakes are elevated significantly as the heroes confront formidable adversaries. Christian Ashley and Liz Clyde delve into the profound implications of this arc, exploring the multifaceted challenges faced by the characters as they grapple with the reality of war. They address the harrowing question of how one might vanquish an invincible foe, a theme that resonates throughout the narrative. Furthermore, the episode examines the psychological and emotional toll that warfare exacts upon both heroes and villains, underscoring the moral complexities inherent in their respective struggles. As the discussion unfolds, listeners are invited to reflect on the broader themes of heroism, sacrifice, and the quest for justice amidst chaos.

The Paranormal Liberation War Arc in My Hero Academia unveils a tumultuous chapter in the ongoing saga of heroes versus villains, marked by significant character development and profound thematic explorations. This arc, sprawling across numerous episodes, delves deep into the fabric of hero society, presenting the audience with a stark portrayal of the consequences of war. Christian Ashley and Liz Clyde embark on an analytical journey, examining the intricacies of this arc, where the stakes have never been higher. They dissect the strategies employed by both the heroes and the villains, contemplating the implications of betrayal, sacrifice, and the quest for justice in a society riddled with moral ambiguity.

The panelists highlight pivotal moments that define character arcs, particularly focusing on the emotional weight carried by characters such as Hawks, Twice, and Toga, whose narratives intertwine in a tragic yet compelling manner. The discussions reveal how the clash between the Paranormal Liberation Front and the heroes serves as a catalyst for personal growth and reflection among the protagonists, compelling them to confront their values and beliefs amidst chaos. Moreover, the episode underscores the arc's exploration of systemic flaws within hero society, challenging the audience to question the efficacy of the established order and the true meaning of justice.

In conclusion, this episode of Systematic Geekology not only reviews the action-packed sequences of the arc but also delves into the philosophical underpinnings that drive the narrative forward. The conversation encapsulates the essence of what it means to be a hero in a world where the lines between good and evil are increasingly blurred, leaving listeners with much to ponder as they await the unfolding of future events in My Hero Academia.

Takeaways:

• The Paranormal Liberation War Arc is a significant turning point for the series, showcasing the devastating impacts of war on both heroes and villains.
• This arc highlights the complexities of moral ambiguity, as the heroes face the repercussions of their actions while the villains reveal their motivations.
• The deaths of characters such as Twice and Midnight serve to elevate the stakes, profoundly affecting the emotional landscape of the narrative.
• The reveal of Dabi's true identity as Toya Todoroki adds depth to the familial themes within the series, complicating the hero-villain dichotomy.
• Deku's decision to separate himself from his friends illustrates the burdens of heroism and the sacrifices that come with it in the face of overwhelming odds.
• The arc serves as a critique of societal structures, questioning the efficacy and morality of the hero system in a world rife with prejudice and power imbalances.

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We discuss all this and more in this one! Join in the conversation with us on Discord now!

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Systematic Geekology

Our show focuses around our favorite fandoms that we discuss from a Christian perspective. We do not try to put Jesus into all our favorite stories, but rather we try to ask the questions the IPs are asking, then addressing those questions from our perspective. We are not all ordained, but we are the Priests to the Geeks, in the sense that we try to serve as mediators between the cultures around our favorite fandoms and our faith communities.

How do you defeat an invincible villain? We're going to be asking that question a lot more on today's episode of Systematic Geekology. We are the priests of the geeks.

I'm your host, Christian Ashley, here to continue on the series of My Hero Academia. We're very close to the end. We've only got a couple of arcs left.

And you know her because she's been with me pretty much the entire time that we've been going through this. Your favorite co host. That's not me, of course. Elizabeth Pangaling and Clyde. How's it going, Penguin? Hello.

It's going pretty well.

All right, Peng, what have you been geeking out on recently?

Shockingly, it's not romance at all. It is anime, though. It is anime because we have to windbreaker. I decided, like I watched.

Okay.

You know, I binged the first two seat.

Well, it was only two seasons, but I binged, you know, all of season one and like a day because I might have been driving home from Orlando with my nieces and nephews in the car. So I put my noise canceling headphones in, positioned my phone just right, and I was like, all right. Aunt Liz was see you guys later.

And pretty much, you know, listen, binge the whole first season. It was great.

Oh, man, such an attentive aunt. So caring, so kind. That's a good one to. To binge. The second season wasn't as good for me as opposed to the first one, but, you know, I still like it.

It's a good series. Now, me, I years ago bought like, the complete works of Edgar Allan Poe and I have not touched it since I bought it.

And now I'm only like 100 pages into an 800 page book. And I'm glad they started with what they did because these are the stinkers at the beginning.

And I finally got to the murders in the Room org and something good. But yeah, I've read Poe before, but I've never actually read everything he's done, so I'm looking forward to it.

There's a reason some of his stories aren't as well known as others. I'll put it that way.

Are you going to go to the Edgar Allan Poe Museum in Richmond, Virginia? You should go.

You know, I've never thought about that, but that does sound like fun.

It was fun. You can see his childhood bed. So a lot of the night terrors that, you know, inspired him to write all of his works. You're not supposed to touch it.

I did.

I mean, if we're sharing That. I mean, I got to share a story.

I was in high school, and my small group leader had a friend who worked in the White House at the time, and we went up to Washington, D.C. as a small group and had a lot of fun, you know, going to Smithsonian, other stuff. When we actually went to the White House proper, she was giving us a tour of stuff. But you couldn't actually go into the Oval Office at that time.

For some reason. They had it, like, security lockdown. So what I did is I stood right beside the Oval Office entrance and discreetly stuck my foot inside of it.

You know, just because I'm such a rebel, and that way I can actually say I've been inside the Oval Office.

I mean, I see no problem with that.

You know, the biggest security threat to America is definitely me. So. All right, you didn't come to hear us reminisce about times we broke the rules.

You came to actually hear about my hero academia as we continue on through the series. Like I said, we are very near the end here.

In one of the larger arcs here, there's over 50, some chapters, 20 some episodes devoted to this, the Paranormal Liberation War arc. So, Pang, do you want to help me unpack what happens here? I've got the bulk of it. If you want to chime in whenever have.

I mean, I'm gonna just say ish goes down.

Oh, it goes down huge.

Big down.

Huge turning point for this series.

Yeah, I mean, like, it's just. It's. It's what it says. It's literally war. And they didn't sugarcoat it at all. Which I really appreciate.

It is you feel the devastation of war in this ark, which I appreciate.

Oh, most definitely. So for the sake of time, we're not going to go into every single thing that happens. I'm going to be hitting, like, bullet points of what goes on.

And once again, chime in as you please, paying for what goes on here. So we kind of start at the beginning with the kids at the.

What's happened after last time, they're getting a little better with their powers and stuff. And we go see Eraserhead and President Mike go to prison.

They found that Kurogiri is there and that he has actually been a Nomu created from the corpse of their old friend and fellow superhero, Shirakumo, who you don't actually see this in academia, but you do see this in the manga Vigilantes, which, by the way, has just had its most recent season, first season, show up fairly recently. And they've announced the second season coming very soon.

So if you want some more of My Hero Academia, that's a good way to go about it because just a different exploration of the world a little bit. Couple years before the events of My Hero Academia.

So they try and talk to him, and there's a brief moment where they kind of like get him to come back to his senses, but it goes back to being Kurogiri again. We didn't flash over to the Paranormal Liberation Front, who are, like, getting things ready for the upcoming war.

They've got these different teams assigning names to them, and Hawks has been still acting like his double agent. So he's feeding this info to the heroes, discreetly letting them know they're about to attack.

So both sides are preparing for war without trying to let the other one know. But the heroes know and the villains don't know that the heroes know.

And at the same time, Shigaraki is being implanted with more power, more quirks from the Doctor who has been working with All For One this whole time. And they know, like, we have a better chance of winning. The heroes do if we attack when Shigaraki is still getting this done.

So that's the plan, is to do this and attack before he can come out of this and be stronger than he is before, because he's already pretty strong now that he's taken on All For One and has also taken down Star and Stripe. So we go over to All Might and see that he's researching, like, the old users of One for All. And he's telling Deku and Bakugo about this.

And he says that the Black Whip that Deku used was the quirk of the fifth user, Banjo. Great name. And that his mentor, Nana Shimura, actually had a quirk too, and her quirk was Float.

So one of the things they're going to do is actually train some of Deku's quirks a little more. He'll unlock more along the way as we're then, you know, Hawks tells everyone what's going to happen.

So the heroes start forming their teams to get ready for this attack. We've got one that's going to the hospital where Shigaraki is, like, having the experiments done to him.

We've got another one that's gonna, like, try and take the hugest part of the army away and, like, imprison them. Then we've got some of us students just kind of being backup for that team just in case anything goes wrong.

And another group is going to be evacuating civilians. So Right before the battle actually stop starts, Hawks confronts Twice and tells them, look, I'm a double agent. I got to kill you first.

Because, well, he's trying to apprehend them first, but because he doesn't want him to die, because he actually does kind of like him, but he betrays him.

And they go through a process where Twice ends up actually dying, but not before he sends a clone away and sends multiple clones of himself away to be a huge threat to the heroes.

And that's why Hawks wanted them out, because if he just keeps copying himself and copying himself, he could be an army to himself to get to one army that goes to take down Shigaraki. They confront the doctor, find out that he has a quirk too, and it's allowed him to stay alive for as long as he has.

And he actually gave that quirk to All For One, which explains why he's been alive for as long as he has. And then he recreated the quirk so he could stay alive.

And through that process, they learn, oh, no, we actually aren't as early as we thought we were. Chigaraki is almost done. He comes out of what's been enhancing him, and he kills some of the heroes around him, activating his Decay.

Anything you want to add before we head forward?

No, because we'll talk about, like, the favorite characters and introductions and stuff along the way.

So now that he's out, Shigaraki wants to track down All For. Excuse me, One for All, because that's, like, the one thing missing.

Like, just to make All For One's plans and his plans go through, he needs to take off For One Away.

Deku kind of realizes this, and through the process uses himself as bait to try and make sure that other people aren't attacked as much, because with that Decay, he can pretty much kill anyone. So Eraserhead is also happened to be there to stop him from using some of his quirks.

He can't stop all of them, the ones like the physically enhancing ones, but he can stop the ones like Decay. And through this, Shigaraki has also ordered Gigantomachia to appear on scene, now that they're Buddy Buddy.

And he starts attacking some of the heroes. Mount lady tries to fight him, and Momo and some of the other kids are fighting against him, trying to sedate him and put him out of the fight.

And through this process, Gran Torino ends up injured. Should have died, but kind of emboldening Deku and Bakugo a little more to fight through this.

And Todoroki comes in to Help him out as we get through some further things where Deku kind of reveals that he's learned to master Float as well as the Black Whip and a couple of other ones. We'll see a cute little flashback where he's helped out Biochako. Very sweet romantic moment between them before they're actually anything.

Then we find that. Oh gosh, where is it at? What is? Bakugou has been saving his hero name this whole time. And everyone else thinks that Best Jeanist is dead.

He's wanted to save and let Best Jeanist know the best. Genus shows up on the scene. Mirio shows up on the scene too.

He's giving his quirk back thanks to Eri, who the more her horn grows, the more she can, like, restore things. And now at the cost of her horn, she. Until it regrows, she's able to give him his quirk back.

But in the middle of this fight, Bakugo reveals his hero name finally. And it's. I think it's great. Explosion, murder, God dynamite.

I love it. It's fantastic. 10 out of 10.

That's perfect. It's something that a kid would think is cool. And even someone as high strung as him, like, of course he thinks this is cool.

And of course he'd never say this because forever, when they said, here we have to make good hero names for everyone, this would have been turned down immediately. But it's too late now. He's announced it to the world.

And then as Endeavor and some of the other heroes are fighting, Dobby ends up showing up on the scene and we finally get the big reveal about who he is. He is not just Dabi, he is Toya Todoroki.

The Todoroki that everyone else thought was killed or not killed died while Endeavor was training him, being too harsh for his own good. And he's letting the entire world know what a scum of a father he has and starting to try and break down the people's belief in the heroes jacket.

Amalki is able to get free, but he's able to get knocked out by Endeavor.

In the midst of this, we learn that Mr. Compress is actually, I think it's great, great grandson of an old villain back in the day, and that he kind of sacrifices himself, not like dying to. To safety for a little bit there.

And Deku and Shigaraki are still fighting each other, but it gets to the point where all for one kind of takes control from Shigaraki.

And then as everyone's kind of beaten down from the fight, they flee Shigaraki, now controlled by all for One, goes to a prison, breaks out a bunch of people also to get his original body back. So there's an all for one in control of his body and an all for one in control of Shigaraki's body. Oh, wait, did I skip ahead?

We haven't gotten Star and Stripe was before or after this.

I think it was like, eluded, like near the. Like, like almost like. Like, she's coming, but she hasn't came yet. You know what I mean?

Yeah, I'm confusing myself.

She doesn't show up until later.

That's next. So sorry. Spoilers for what? For what happens next. Yeah, my bad. I was getting all over the place there.

So comes a point where the heroes have lost, but also won, the villains have lost but also won, and now there's this uncertainty about what's going on.

Deku meets in while he's in the hospital, the other members of One for All, and they basically tell him, look, your powers are going to die if you give it to someone else who doesn't have a quirk.

And the chances of that happening are very slim to none because it kind of fights against other quirks in the body if that person already possesses one. So the fact that all might had it and got it to his full potential is why he was able to do that, because he was quirkless. Same way with Deku.

He's getting to that point. So it's kind of the make it or break it, you're the last guy. You better defeat Shigaraki all for One. Otherwise it's not going to happen.

And that's where we kind of end here, as Deku has decided that he can't stay with his friends anymore. He's a target. All for One. Shigaraki can always find him because of the search quirk that he has that he stole from Ragdoll.

So he goes off to become his own vigilante hero. And that's where this arc ends. So hang now when I'm done with all that. Do you have a favorite character in this arc?

I mean, I want to say Hawks, but I feel like I can't say Hawks. I'm not going to say Hawks, even though we all know it's Hawks. Make sense.

Yes. Yes.

Okay, so I feel like I was trying to think of a character you wouldn't expect me to pick.

Okay.

So I'm gonna say Mirko, because she literally gave an arm and a leg. And a leg. And I. Yeah, she wasn't really my favorite Because I mean, if you guys don't know, she's the tan bunny girl, quirk type deal.

And I just didn't love the macho ness, you know, she portrayed, I don't know, like I'm a girl's girl, I guess. And so I'm like, you know, that's great for you, but she just never stuck out to me. But she kicked booty seeing five no moves by herself.

So that was impressive. And I mean, when, like, she couldn't prolong, you know, I stopped. Why can I think of Shigarachi? I can't speak. Well, she couldn't stop them, but.

But she. She still kind of went for him, even like literally losing limbs.

So I feel like she needs to be the favorite character of this arc because she, I would say, I mean, gave up the most. Most that was not her life. Because obviously some people gave up their life. So.

Yeah. And we do have some people dying here. We have lesser heroes, like Ex list.

Then we have one of the top 10 in crust who we haven't actually like, met a lot. So his death doesn't really do anything for me.

Yeah, no one major that we know.

Besides twice Midnight does die in this arc.

I forgot about that.

It's not really focused on too much as in, like showing the death and like, it's shown the reactions of the students. But yet she does die in this arc.

They made it seem like more like I was like, oh, is she unconscious? But then you're like, oh, wait, no, she's dead.

Yeah. For me, going through this, like, plenty of people get some really good moments here.

Like, Tokoyami gets some nice moments, like trying to fight some villains. Momo does has a great plan in trying to sedate Gigantomachia. And it's not really her fault that the dosage is kind of wrong. It's kind of a plan.

It had to be made up on the fly. And she did really well. See, who else? Of course, Mirio, my boy, my number one, shows back up with his powers as a threat.

That's the one to be taken seriously, which couldn't have been done without Eri. And some people would accuse her of being like a prop or just a plot convenience. But no, it's established there's a cost for her doing what she does.

Like, she can't just do it every day. She had to build up her power to the point where she could bring Mirio his a quirk back, which is great.

Eraserhead Aizawa brings a great moment here where when he yeah. He gets hit with a quirk erasing bullet and before it can spread to the rest of his body, and.

Which would mean that he'd not be able to shut off Shikaraki's powers, he cuts off his God dang leg. Now that's a man right there. Yeah, that's a hero. And he did his job well. But, I mean, honestly, I might have to give it to Deku here.

Oh, yeah, when he used his tongue.

To fight, I mean, like, how he adapts his abilities. Like, learning from how his other classmates have done stuff. Like, he calls it, like, froppy style. Using Black.

Black whip in that manner because it shows. Like, he's been studying them like he's been doing since the first chapter.

We've seen him studying other heroes, how they do stuff and jotting it down for future reference. And now, oh, if I use my power like this, I can do that. And then him realizing, oh, Shigaraki is after me.

I can't explain that to everyone on the air, but I just need you to trust me. And the fact that Endeavor does trust him when that scene comes up is pretty relevant. It's pretty well done.

And of course, the confrontation he has for Shigaraki is pretty. It's a great, fun fight. So I'm actually gonna give it to Deku. And, like, even his choice at the end is kind of.

It's a kind of not really controversial choice, but it's one where it kind of went. I don't know about that, buddy, but it makes sense. It's like, oh, he can find me wherever I go, so let me not endanger everyone else.

Let me just endanger myself, which is a reckless move. But he's also a teenager, so I'm fine with that.

All right. Yeah. I mean, Deco just seemed. Deku seemed obvious, but, like, Hawks. But I'll give it to you and Hawks, we can't.

I mean, like, we have to discuss that too. He does his job well in this arc. All that double talk. And I'm on your side, right, guys? But I'm actually on this side.

Poor Twice.

And I like the betrayal that Twice feels. It's real because he thought that they were friends. And, like, Hawks does want to be friendly to him, like, but he also wants him to be reformed.

He doesn't want him to be a villain. He wants him to get proper treatment for what's going on. But it's a really bad time to reveal all this to the man, so the fight was inevitable.

I don't know what you what else you thought would happen. And it does get its point where he actually does have to kill twice. And you can tell his immense regret because that's not what he wants to happen.

But he knows for the greater good, it has to be done.

It's just. It was a sad time. I like you. I always.

Whenever you feel sympathy for the villain, you know, it's well written because normally you cheer when they die or you cheer when they're defeated. But, like, in that scene, like, you felt so much empathy and you felt sadness, and even for.

Gosh, Toga, knowing that she's gonna be affected, like, it was just really played out on both sides. But, I mean, I had to do what he had to do, that double agent.

Do you have a favorite scene or moment from this arc?

I mean, probably. I would say the.

The Twice versus Hawks, because, I mean, you couldn't help but if you were on your phone while watching it, you would have put it down or, you know, full focus on it. And then it's just.

I mean, and especially because after we already know Twice, his backstory now, and his mental, like, unstable, like, stability and all that stuff, and I'm like, oh, it's like, Hawks, you kind of suck.

Well, we also get some of Hawks's backstory here, too.

Oh, yeah. How he was the prodigy, and, like, he had to, like, pretty much meet a standard his whole life, and so that's always hard, too. Like, you would.

You think people who are naturally gifted have it easy, but then that, like, added pressure of them having to perform and not really getting to do what they want to do, that makes a psychological toll on you as well.

We also find out that he's basically the son of criminals, and that's a huge.

Didn't they sell him off, too?

I think that's what it was.

Yeah.

I can't remember off the top of my head, but one of his small comforts during that time was a doll of Endeavor, and that is a huge reason why he looks up to Endeavor now. Even knowing what the man is like, even knowing what he's done to his family, like, there's still that part of him.

You were my hero, and you're why I do what I do. Because you gave me hope, because he made me want to be better.

Yeah, I was trained to be this hero who's always backstabbing people and doing stuff like that, but I do it to make people have easier lives. Now, me, man, it's a rough one because, I mean, there's a lot of really Good moments here. Yeah, it's some very.

Some good suspense in the fight in the hospital. It's like, when is Shigaraki going to come out? Are they going to be able to get there in time?

That's a fun one, but really, I'm just going to say the Free for all fight against Shikaraki as he's gaining new abilities, learning how to use this new body better. Deku showing off some of his new skills that he's learned from the quirks that have activated from the previous users of All For. Excuse me.

One for All. I always do that. It's so easy to flip the two. One for All. All for One. Deku is One for All.

And then of course, Bakugo kind of doesn't sacrifice himself, but he, as in dying, but he takes a hit for Deku in the midst of all that, proclaims himself to be great Explosion Murder God Dynamite. Great moment for him. And then, of course, Mirio joining into the fight.

Aizawa acting as he does to like, make sure that they can survive because if he goes down, they're all dead. Like the sheer willpower to not only cut off your leg, but then to remain standing and looking at this guy because his power requires eyesight. Yes.

Yes. Like, they did a tremendously great job with that. And I guess that ties into fights. We both talked about fights.

I mean, is there anything better than the fights we've mentioned?

No. I mean, yeah, the Miracle versus the Nomu Twice versus Hawks, and then Deku's fight. Those are like the top three of this arc.

Yeah, this is a very fight heavy arc. And there's a reason for that. Yeah, you're in the middle of a war.

If there wasn't a lot of fights here, I don't really know what I'd be dealing with here. It's kind of hard to call it a war arc. But then, like, we just talk and have our feelings out. Like, it's not that kind of show.

Not that kind of manga. So beyond that, as we get to the final part here of our little introduction, like, what do you think Quirks introduced in this arc?

Do you have a favorite?

Let's see. I know the washing machine quirk got like a little bit of highlights with the floating people to safety.

So that was kind of nice because you're like, what the heck is this person useful for? And you're like, oh, that the heck is what this person's useful is for.

So we're introduced to nana's quirk, his.

DK 2.0 was introduced.

Yeah, he had the decay, but he extrapolated on that. Made it a little bigger this time.

Yeah.

Then we've got the shield quirk that Crust uses to manifest like the Rocky kind of shields. Then let's see what else this. The Exilus laser quirk, which is basically just Cyclops. A dumber. Way dumber Cyclops in this series.

He totally deserves his death, let's just put it that way.

Yeah, I don't think, like, any of those really stuck out to me, so I'm gonna just. Even though we already kind of knew about the washing machine quirk, we actually got to see it in action.

So I'm gonna go the washing machine, but whatever the hero name is.

Okay, then there's the Doctor's quirk. And I'll get to my actual answer after this one.

The one where it's revealed that he can pretty much, like, double his life by sacrificing the fact that he is not as agile or something like that anymore. So he can live two times longer than anyone else. That's cool. Not my favorite by any stretch of the imagination.

My actual favorite is the Danger Sense quirk that Deku kind of activates in the middle of the fight from a previous user for of one for all. And you know me, Big Spider man. Guys, Spider Sense. It just makes sense. And Horikoshi is a huge Spider man nerd. It's also a huge Star wars nerd.

And Danger Sense is also an ability there. I think it shows up first in one of the Anderson novels. I want to say it's like Champions of the Force or something like that.

Or Children of the Force. I can't remember off top of my head. But, yeah, it's a super useful one. It's like, oh, if I.

Someone's about to attack me, I need to get out the way or something's going to go wrong. What's going on? Well, let me check my surroundings again as someone.

I'm not clumsy by nature, but it'd be nice to have this for when those moments do come up and go, oh, wait, what was I about to do? Or where was I about to go? Where something would have, like, tripped me or caused harm to me.

Well, I mean, I was like, I don't pay attention to the new quirks, like, because I like my oldies. Like, when a new kid comes, I don't like to accept them as much.

Okay.

Unless they, like, you know, show up in a big way. And I feel like, to me, they didn't show up in a Big way.

Let's get into the content.

Let's do it.

And as addressed earlier on, All Might does his work, does his research and into the previous wielders of One for All and finds out some of their quirks, how they died. He doesn't know everything. Like, specifically it mentions, I think, the third and fourth or maybe the second and third thing he knows nothing about.

But, like, how is this portrayed when it shows up? And what were our expectations before this?

I was kind of shocked that because I guess he was number one and he didn't have, like, he had a foe, but, like, he was better than his foe. So I'm like, why didn't you do this before? Dire, like, circumstances, right?

Like, why didn't you think about, like, you know, exploring all that one all for One had to offer? But I'm like, it's fine. I guess we're doing it now. Better late than dead, right? But that was kind of like my thing.

I was like, why didn't you already know this? What do you mean? You don't have all the information already? Like, Gran Torino doesn't know.

Like, well, that's part of it is that he had to go and do his research because no one really knows. Because if you remember when All For One was like top dog back in the day, they were at war during the entire time.

So the records aren't kept as well. They don't know.

There were plenty of heroes, but not everyone had their own academy or what's the word, what are they call their internships and stuff like that. So they were just fighting to survive. So no one was writing down, hey, Banjo had his Black Whip quirk and that's why he does what he does.

Or this guy had his danger sense.

They really needed a deku during that time.

Yeah, because it was extremely fractious time period where they were just trying to live, trying to bring stability to the world that just barely was able to stop All For One by the time of. I think Nana is. When she doesn't take him out, but she's fierce enough against him to make him lesser of a villain.

And then when all might of course shows up, that's when he takes them out of the fight for a little bit. So now they're finally to the point where they can live and reconstruct some things. So that's. That's the reason why it didn't happen.

And I didn't think about that until this arc when I said, oh, that makes sense. Why wouldn't he know about the People who came before him, you mean they weren't talking? Well, as we'll learn in this arc.

And then later on, some of them literally died. Found the next person right next to him and said, look, I've got, like, five seconds to explain this.

Take this quirk and then give it to someone else later on. And that's just how it worked.

Poor planning, if you ask me. But whatever. It is fun to know.

Like, whenever we do learn more of the quirks that not all of them are, you know, it wasn't like all of the past people were the number one heroes, right? So they.

Some of them were just average heroes, or some of them didn't even have, like, a court, like an original quirk that was super useful in fighting. So that was kind of nice seeing how it, I guess, was so diverse in the past.

Yeah, and it's great the Horikoshi does this. He doesn't, like. He's not trying to make Deku, like, the strongest hero in the world. He's just trying to, like, give him something that can help him.

Like, you think of someone like Spider man, you know, it's good. He's got super strength, taking web swing across the city, but he. The original one until later on. And then I got retconned.

He doesn't actually produce the webs. He actually had to, like, make him up himself.

The danger sense is great, but if I don't have the agility and reflexes to get out of the way of trouble, it's not going to do me much good. So for someone like Deku, who is already very agile, already very strong, the danger sense makes perfect sense for him to have something like that.

The float is great too. That means he can suspend himself. The Black Whip is good too, because that means he has ways of traversing around the battlefield he wouldn't have.

So, like, yeah, it's done in a way. Like, yeah, he gets other quirks, but he's. He's not like, the best of the best. He has to actually train in them too.

So, as mentioned earlier, we finally get the reveal of Dabi's true identity, something people have been speculating about since he showed up on the scene.

Since he seemed to have kind of a grudge against Endeavor, turns out he's actually his son Toya, who Endeavor thought died in the middle of a training accident and when he was pushing him far too much. And so, Peng, how does this play out in the story, and what are our thoughts on the reveal?

I'm going to just say because as someone who didn't read the manga and I didn't have any spoilers, and I'm. I'm not a speculator. I had no idea. I was completely blindsided. I was like, what? Wow. Mind blown. So that was kind of nice.

Yeah.

I didn't think it was obvious or, like, anything like that. I was like, oh, yeah, he hates superheroes. Got it. So the reveal was crazy, and he did it in the most public way possible.

He really, you know, was out to destroy his dad's facade, which I get it. I mean, seeing the, you know, the abuse and everyone love, like, experience the abuse, and then everyone loving him on the surface, like, that's.

That's crazy. When, you know, he is the worst. I mean, I. Very, very, very loosely.

I. I see it a little bit in, like, the church world because I married the very talented, very anointed worship pastor who has a voice of an angel. And when people see him on stage, like, he's so anointed, like, the God is using him.

And, you know, they just have all the praises for my husband, which is fantastic. But I'm like, you guys don't. Didn't see him. Literally. We just came from a doctor's office.

He got frustrated and mouth off at the secretary, the receptionist. Granted, yes. He apologized before we left. So he did. Because we're all allowed to be human. Right. And we're all allowed to, like, you know, come short.

He apologized for his frustration because we just were not getting, like, answers that we wanted. And. But the point is, is, like, I see that side. A side of my husband that the world will never see.

And so Dahvie was like, no, you guys will see what we've seen and exposed them. So I'm kind of like, dang, I get it.

Of course. Yeah. What Endeavor did was way worse than simply, like, getting angry at someone at their job. Like, he literally abused his family.

Yes.

Caused harm to them.

It's just crazy. Like, the public unmasking and I mean, whether you.

You know, this, obviously, like, he did what he did, and he is trying, like, at this point, we've talked about it before, he's trying to do atonement and stuff like that. And so sometimes your atonement has to be public. So this is a part of his atonement journey. Go. Go at it.

Like, I didn't really feel, like, sympathy for him, but I'm kind of like, this is. You did do this.

Just like these pastors who have fallen short and they have to go before the public and Do a public apology and like, this is a part of your atonement. Yeah.

Yeah, that makes perfect sense to me. So sometimes you might be able to keep something hidden. Other times it's just better for it to be brought into the light.

Especially if you're in a position of authority like that. Say, look, here's what I did. Here's how I screwed up.

Especially if you're counseling someone who's struggling with that thing and you're going to act like you never went through it. Like, if they ever learn about that, you've broken trust immensely.

I'm not saying you have to tell them every little detail about what's going on, but as someone who has counseled people in the past who have done things that I've done, I have admitted freely, like, look, I struggled with this. Here's what I did, here's what someone else told me, because I want to make sure they know the truth. Yeah, it may lower their opinion of me.

You know, that's fine, as long as it means that the truth is out there and they are hopefully getting better. And it's also healing for you to admit it, too.

And when it comes to this, like, I'm not going to pretend like I knew it was Dabi was tell you from the beginning. I had to actually see someone write it on. I think it was on Reddit.

It's like, I think that Dabius told you and here's why, and listed the reasons, like, okay, that makes sense. And I'm rereading the chapters. Go. Okay, I see that. I see that. I think the same thing.

I'm going to adopt this hypothesis for myself and turned out to be true. So I can't claim credit for that. But, yeah, it was a fun reveal because I was kind of expecting it.

And I'm not one of those people who hates being spoiled about something or feels that if I figure something out, that automatically makes it bad. It depends on how you deliver it.

And this was delivered fairly well in a way that has lacked repercussions for the my hero academia world, because it's a huge public event and there's no way to get ahead of it. There's no way to spin it any other way. Everyone knows you're an abuser. You thought your son was dead.

You thought that you killed him by accident, and he's still alive. He's a villain. And now the world is having to deal with your villain son because you were a terrible person and a terrible father.

No wonder the public starts losing faith in the heroes at the end of this arc.

Mm, yeah, I like, especially because they're already kind of like, what are they doing? And they've been put in danger before.

And so this really did kind of crack that facade to a lot of people of like, well, if endeavor is doing this, what are the other ones doing too?

Right. And it's the same thing. You mentioned pastors and stuff. Like, well, if this pastor, you know, slept with the secretary or embezzled this.

Money, all of the pastors are doing it.

I mean, surely the rest are hiding something. Yeah, yeah, we're all human beings. Yeah, we're all screwed up.

But you create that perception that if you had just either A, avoided the sin or B, acknowledged it before it came out, things wouldn't be as bad in people's perception of that position that you've now tainted with what you did. So next up, this whole arc has been accused. There's been an accusation thrown against by some people about this arc.

Essentially that it's a fight between government mandated forces who are maintaining the status quo versus a group of political dissidents and reformers. Do you agree or disagree with this take?

Yeah, I would agree with that. Because like the villains, they claim to be exposing a broken system built on the privilege.

So like the pretty heroes, they get more recognition or more perks, or the one with the cool quirks or the one more respected. And so I get like, there is a broken system. We've already talked about that and agreed.

But their liberation is just a little twisted, you know, I mean, they're not really vigilantes where they're doing it for the overall good and trying to bring justice. They're just doing destruction and like, doing it out of like, you suck and we're gonna get you for it.

Yeah, there's more of a pettiness behind it. It's not. And that's what the words they use. But the actual leaders don't care that much.

Not to say they don't care at all, because I think Shigaraki does actually like his friends and he does want to see someone like Spinner respected more, even though Spinner as a reptilian person, looks very different than regular humans. So I think there's something there, but it's used for their gain rather than actually being the heart and soul of why they do what they do.

And yeah, there are certain parts, like we've discussed before, that need to change about the current hero system that favors some over others, that allows discrimination to take place even with just the Quirkless as opposed to people who still majority with quirks. Yeah.

Something needs to be done there, but this is not the way to go about it because at the end of the day, you're just trying to make things in your image versus one that actually benefits as many people as possible.

Yeah. I mean, if they were more about reform and not destruction or ruin, then I would probably gone with like the, like.

No, I disagree the being good peeps. But nah, they just got a bunch of feelings hurt and they want their way and they're mad they're not getting their way.

Yeah. And one of those people affected by that is Twice. And as we mentioned, he dies in this fight.

So, like, beyond what I've said, like, how does this happen? How does this affect the story?

This affects the story a lot because as we will know in the next arc or in two arcs from now, this is. I mean, there's. There's pretty much a lot of rejects. You know, there is in the system.

And so just kind of like how I was talking to Taylor yesterday when we had our team meeting. I'm like, do you know we have 20,000 listeners? I mean, like, there's a lot of nerds out there. And when you have a common goal, you can be powerful.

So all of these rejects have a common goal and they're being pout and they can be powerful. And so now they're coming together and so it. They're getting momentum.

And even after this war got even more momentum, especially with the public losing faith in the heroes. So this changes everything pretty much. It's not going to be the same.

Yeah. And for Twice, like, he suffered immensely from mental illness as a result of not only his biochemistry, but from his quirk.

And he finally found a group of people who accepted him and loved him and were friends with him.

And then he's betrayed by one of those people who likes him and wants to see him well, but cannot abide what Twice and his friends are planning we have in Hawks. And so that betrayal kind of cuts him even deeper and it affects how Hawks is going to look at the villains from here on out.

There's always that question of what could I have done to save Twice? Because I had to kill him.

There was really no other way to go about that, because things would have been a thousand times worse if he unleashed all those clones at once. Then of course, Toga is hugely hit by this because she was really the closest one to him outside of Hawks.

And we start learning things about her quirk and how she's able to adapt things and how that will affect things later on, given her relationship with him and how her quirk has to work in order for that to be successful. So she's going to carry that with her for the rest of the series.

And that's going to, of course, affect her, like, rivalry, pseudo friendship with Uraraka based off of this, because she's gonna go, well, you want this world, but your world rejected my friend twice. So what's. What's going on here?

Even to the point of your world killed my friend twice, which holds even more weight.

Yes. All right. Complicated character. So a big factor and huge part of this arc is that the villains kind of win.

Even though you could argue they lost the battle, they kind of won. Not the war, but a huge propaganda boost for them.

As we see some heroes retiring at the end, thinking they're not good enough anymore, the public turning their backs on them. Deku being separated from his classmates and his mentors. How do we take this as it happened and what does it mean for the series future?

Yeah, so I mean, as we said, like, they may not have won the war, as in, like, they defeated the heroes, but as we mentioned before, they won because not only did they take out, they. They definitely crippled the hero forces.

So they may not have, like, won the this specific war, but they definitely, you know, won the battle of we crippled them. They are experiencing hurt and loss, and because they're righteous, they feel it more.

But as we mentioned, the public now has even less faith than the heroes, and this is going to turn the world upside down. They don't know who to trust or who's in the right. And so now they don't have the public support.

Yeah, there's an image used here that's very telling. It's graffiti on an all might statue that says I am not here. And I mean, that's been from the very beginning.

Like I am here is supposed to be a rallying cry. It's supposed to give people comfort. And though the.

The heroes are out there watching them and protecting them, looking out for them, and now the public doesn't feel that way anymore. And it's going to cause huge fractious arguments and disturbances throughout the series because the villains kind of own parts of Japan now.

And yeah, we were able to get some of the army and imprison them, but all for One. Shigaraki also broke the original all for One out of prison and a lot of prisoners, including some who are going to show up in later arcs.

So that that's going to kill your belief in the system when it's destroyed like that in front of you. So no wonder people are lashing out. No wonder they're going to have issues with the heroes, because they're not the ones.

I mean, they're not supposed to be using their quirks, these regular people, by law. So what does that mean for them? Are they able to use them now? Do they have to listen to authority?

Or does that mean they're just going to join the other side? Now, those questions to ask, that didn't exist when the heroes were actually 100% doing their jobs.

Well, Yeah, I mean, with.

And I've said it before in other podcasts, like, I'm always going to side on the side of law and order, but at this point, the question of what is law and what is order? Because now the line is completely blurred. And so now, as we're going to see, society is going to fall into chaos. And I wouldn't say despair, really.

Some people would be despair, but it's just going to be like chaos and unknown.

Yeah, I mean, it's very anarchic in certain parts of Japan after this because they don't know who to trust anymore. Like, there used to be something they could trust in, and now it's taken away from them. So how are they supposed to live?

And it's going to be not a huge part, but it's going to be a part of what is a motivating factor for certain people as the series continues. And I think it's done really well here because you want your heroes to win.

But even though, I mean, they achieved some of their objectives, they didn't get everything. So there's still hope that things will get better, but it's not as hopeful as it was before this arc happened.

All right, well, Thang, you have anything else you'd like to add before we start wrapping things up?

We would like to say rest in peace twice and midnight.

All right, so, guys, we're gonna have a special bonus question today for our Patreon Captivate supporters. That question is going to be, who would we have had die in this arc to raise the stakes more? Because some of these jokers should have died.

I just putting it that way. But we'll get there when we get there. So, out of 10 Pang, what are you rating this particular arc?

I'm gonna say an eight.

Okay. I'm gonna throw a nine. I think this is really well done. You got some good fights here, some good reveals that happen.

Great character motivations for based off of those reveals and prior revelations. It's just really well done. It's very fun. It's not the best of the best, but it's good.

I agree.

All right, so do you have a recommendation for the audience?

Go to Disney. I just got back from Disney and I went with kids and that was the worst. So go to Disney by yourself or with a close friend. No kids.

That's my recommendation to you.

Okay, so pretty soon I'm gonna be on an episode that normally would just been a comic book catch up, but we're actually, I think gonna make it a full episode.

Going over the career and comics of Peter David who recently passed and in doing that I've reread some of his old spectacular Spider man and gosh, it's good.

Like the senator storyline alone, Spider man and Daredevil's friendship becoming even better with the reveal, their secret identities greatly done, we've lost a real titan of the comics industry and we're going to have more to say when the episode releases. Maybe it releases before this, maybe after, I don't know. But look on that in the horizon. So guys, thank you for all that you do.

Please get a chance, leave a five star review on your podcasting platform of choice. Help us with the ratings there to help find us more people that would be interested in the show. We just said numbers earlier.

That number was not the number when I first got here and it's because of people like you sharing the show with other people, suggesting ideas to us, joining discussions that we have on Facebook and more like thank you for all that. I really appreciate it as well.

If you have any questions or episode topic ideas you want to send our way, shoot us an email@systematicecologymail.com I'd like to shout out some supporters. Thank you to Aaron Hardy, Daniel Sigmund, Trip Fuller and James Barrett. You guys are the best.

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