It’s been an uncharacteristic love-fest so far with Boku no Hero Academia: Final Season. And justifiably, as it’s been epic every week and featured some of the finest animation TV anime has seen in years. But we’re headed into the stretch of the manga now where some readers started to push back. I’ll be interested in seeing fan reaction for the final half-dozen or so episodes. Will history repeat itself? Anime viewers are, broadly speaking, somewhat different from manga readers. A glorious adaptation like this can change the way a manga-anime crossover consumer perceives a story. Will any of that matter much in the end?

At this point it’s clear what the basic strategy is to take down the seemingly unkillable Shigaraki. That comment All Might made all those years ago – “it can be forced” – seems to reveal that Horikoshi Kouhei had this planned basically since the beginning. And that tracks – Horikoshi-sensei is a very meticulous writer. I’ve never had the sense that improvization was happening with HeroAca. There was always a map, and he’s always been following it. That implies that the things he doesn’t develop or resolve are omitted for a reason – but that’s a subject for later…

Kudou’s plan is a product of desperation, no question about it. But if the current situation isn’t desperate I don’t know what would be. To give Shigaraki exactly what All For One was seeking all these years seems counter-intuitive. But if he can’t be worn down from the outside in, you have to try the opposite. In addition to all the others issues here there’s also the fact that the execution itself is incredibly difficult. How does Izuku get close enough to Shigaraki – and wound him – in order to plant some DNA in there?

Smokescreen – and a cape – are the key. Shigaraki’s comment about seeing ghosts stuck with Deku, who’s certainly thinking on his feet here. He’s not missing a trick – he even had the foresight to use blackwhip to carve up massive chunks of earth as he hurtled towards Mt. Fuji. Shigaraki’s ability to see One For All is not limited to Deku himself. And Deku managed to get a hit in, but only Second makes the jump – Shigaraki manages to shut the others out. But he’s clearly – and uncharacteristically – unsettled by Deku’s actions. He has “Danger Sense” now, and it’s telling him this is bad news.

Izuku presses the attack – because really, what choice does he have? If the others can be transferred over to Shigaraki, the chances of this plan working increase for obvious reasons. We’ve rarely seen Shigaraki on the defensive like this – he’s running scared, and that’s not a familiar sight. Eventually Deku breaks through and lands one more massive blow, allowing the rest of his passengers to transfer trains. All but one – Seventh, Shimura Nana. The one closest to Shigaraki, and the one for whom his universal hatred is more personal than any of them. Seventh, she’s locked out.

The clue that this is working is the jumble of shared memories that Izuku now sees. His and Shigaraki’s – the two eternal foes bound together by fate. And because he still has Seventh inside him, he knows exactly what he’s looking at – the house where it all began. We’ve seen glimpses of these memories, but Deku never has. What does the boy who’s too nice for his own good do now, with the mind of his enemy and the destroyer of worlds opened up before him like a dissection model in a science lab?