My Hero Academia Volume 13 is marked by several shifts in tone and content, as the free-for-all format of the provincial licensing exam concludes with a canned catastrophe; in a cool jazz intermission, All For One games All Might in the supervillain prison, Tartarus, in an intellectual spar a la Silence of the Lambs; and, Bakugo ambushes Midoriya, not only with a braggy rationalization worthy of a bully, but, as the culmination of that challenge to a pissing contest, lobs an actual fireball at Midoriya. Volume 13 brings forth dozens of licensed heroes, leaves All For One moldering in his cell, and ends with the Midoriya and Bakugo showdown undecided.
The most interesting revelation about volume 13, which promises upcoming twists and kinks, is that Himiko Toga of the League of Villains used the provincial licensing exam as a pretext for getting close to Midoriya. On the one hand, Not only is Midoriya clueless to the fact that he was played, because Toga’s quirk is shape shifting by ingesting the blood of what or who she wants to become, and she uses this to impersonate another budding heroine, but Toga’s playful flirting while in guise suggests that she has a double agenda for Midoriya, and is serving herself more than the League of Villains. This is a marvelous set-up that a creator can only enjoy if they trust their characters, good and bad, and allow the villains a chance to get one over on the hero, as well as one over each other (no honor among thieves), once in a while.
Obstensibly, Toga was to acquire a vial of Midoriya’s blood—check–but as she might have taken this from Midoriya any number of times during the competition, rereading the Provincial Licensing Exam gives you the idea that she has designs for this fake romance, and would like to see it outlive the machinations of the League of Villains due to her genuine interest in Midoriya. I was reminded by the 1990s retcon revelation in DC Comics’ Legion of Super-Heroes that Shrinking Violet was a Durlan spy who fell in love with Colossal Lad over the course of her impersonation and marriage under her assumed identity. While Kohei Horikoshi may not intend the embedding of an insidious retcon in a false, far-reaching continuity, let us say that I would not be surprised if in Volume Eighty-Nine it turns out that Midoriya’s wife Ochaco was actually Himiko Toga.
That said, the immediate suggestion formed by Toga’s secret mission is that she is to impersonate Midoriya in a future volume, thus undermining the public trust as a prefatory bid to getting Midoriya to turn from good to evil and join the League of Villains. If there’s another reason to acquire Midoriya’s blood when one of your assets is a shapeshifter with blood-based powers, I can’t think of what it is. If they wanted him dead or defamed, they’ve had a few opportunities.
If I have a complaint about this volume, it’s that Bakugo got twenty more pages to noise loudly about his cranky motivations and his cellophane masculinity. Midoriya also disappointed me, in that he absorbs this fractious whining like Charlie Brown sucking up Mrs. Othmar’s “mwah-mwah-mwahs” when every other second he should cut off sparky with a “Shut up! You told me to kill myself in Volume One.” Bakugo’s sniveling train continues down the track laid in recent volumes, that his spunk is founded on a solid gold core of fanboy fanning a bro-crush for All Might, and since All Might’s Might imploded, the All collapsed as well, resulting in a kind of Superboy Breakdown for ‘Lil Bo Bakugo, who proceeds to lose his sheep, which is to say, his marbles and his cool. Midoriya should have given Bakugo a talking to that All Might only lost his superpower, not his meaning, and regardless, a deflated icon is no excuse for ambushing a peer at school. I am looking forward to the end of the Midoriya / Bakugo rivalry, as it has never yet added a sense of urgency to a story arc, and in a few cases strained credulity. I’m also more or less done with Bakugo, who thinks he’s Batman, when he’s really the Guy Gardner of the group.
Despite my vitriol for Bakugo, I enjoyed much of Volume 13, as I’m a fan of transformation tales whether in myths, movies, or comics. Toga is an excellent villain, not only for Midoriya, but for the reader, who for the first time might be fretting over our hero. While physical contests have pained Midoriya, this is the first time we’ve seen deception flexing its lithe muscles against our innocent idealist, and if Horikoshi was planning a crushing defeat to spike the rhythm of Midoriya going from victory to victory, this could be it.
Viz Media sent the review copy.
