SMASH NOTES // MHA: War ABRIDGED

EPISODE RECAP:

• FLASH BACK: young U.A. students Aizawa (Eraserhead), Micycle (Mike) and Shirakumo (Haze) have little future prospects and vow to stick together no matter what

  • Mike mentions that Kaya (Midnight) has a bright future as a hero if she keeps things appropriate

• PRESENT DAY: Mike returns to U.A. faculty after resigning in solidarity with other teachers

  • He’s only been back for half a day and already requesting a mental health day off

  • Despite his initial protests, Eraserhead agrees to go on a long vacation with Mike and Eri after things settle down

• SHADOW CANON: Bakugo and Deku argue if the events of Heroes Rising even happened

  • Deku claims to have the Explosion quirk now, but Bakugo retorts it was his leftover sweat from after they touched hands

  • Additionally, vestiges of One for All refer to Bakugo as “#2”

• HONEST ROUTE: Eraserhead and Mike are called over to Tartarus to interrogate Haze

  • Mike reveals Shirakumo founded the League of Villains, granted, it was merely a group of pranksters at the start

    • Eraserhead adds that Shirakumo died in an “accident,” implying this may have been the same incident in which Eraserhead erased Nana’s quirk when she needed it most

  • Eraserhead discovers that Haze and Shirakumo are the same person, or at least, Shirakumo is among several corpses and quirks combined to create Haze

    • Haze reveals to the heroes that Shigaraki is Nana’s son, and that it’s been his self-appointed mission to protect him

    • Additionally, a “doctor” was responsible for his creation

  • Meanwhile, Hawks has milked Twice for every morsel of intel on the Meta-Liberation Army and believes Hero Society must strike immediately

    • Hawks’ true allegiances feel muddy. On one hand, snuffing out the Meta-Liberation Army in the crib would make his life easier; but on the other, he’ll be forced to kill Twice, whom he has formed a genuine friendship and made future plans in a post-Hero world

• WHAT’S UP DOC? Several strike and evacuation teams are deployed to apprehend as many villains as possible while reducing civilian casualty count; it does NOT go well

  • Dr. Holocaust is revealed to be an actual nazi scientist who’s quirk has allowed him to live and collaborate with villains beyond a natural life span. He was hiding in plain sight because he colleagues lacked historical context

    • Doc stops resisting arrest, only for the heroes to beat him for their own satisfaction. He awakens Shigaraki from stasis to protect him, and several heroes are killed; namely Upper Crust, who saves Eraserhead

    • Mike ultimately apprehends Doc, who reveals that Hero Society was supplying him with the bodies to make Nomu

  • Nomu are confirmed as humans (and assholes); Mirko murders several of them

  • Evacuation teams appear to be displacing civilians with no concrete plan of where to keep them. Ochako remarks that there are little to no hospitals available to send critical patients and is told “not to think about that”

  • Hawks murders Twice, but barely escapes with his own life thanks to Levity’s intervention with Dabi

    • Coincidentally, the first hero and villain death occurs at the exact same time

• RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE: Before Shigaraki fully awakens he is met by an old vestige of AFO’s will, implanted for Shigaraki’s use once he developed the conviction to activate it

  • He also admits that he’s forgiven his family for his traumatic upbringing, but rejects everything else; particularly the unfixable systems that oppressed them from the beginning. If anybody dies in his crusade, he will consider it a mercy

  • The living AFO senses this powershift and warns Deku through One for All (which Bakugo is able to hear too) that Shigaraki will be coming after him, but he will be use whatever control he has left over his vestige to impede Shigaraki

  • Gigantomachia also awakens and shifts the tides of the war firmly in the villains’ favor

    • With several heroes missing or dead, Midnight declares Yomama interim Principal of U.A. before she is killed

    • Yomama forms her own strike team with available U.A. students to impede Gigantomachia

  • Deku ultimately fights Shigaraki after Gran Torino is seemingly killed, with their respective vestiges within OFA clashing as well

• CHOOSING SIDES: Toga abandons the League of Villains, reasoning she has more friends on the heroes’ side. However, Ochako rejects her (and regrets it)

  • Spinner has not been shy about voicing his disapproval over the League of Villains’ direction and focuses on protecting his friends rather than contribute to the war

  • Dabi uses the war as a stage to air out all his dirty laundry with Endeavor and Hawks, broadcasting their misdeeds to the public

  • Best Jeanist arrives to turn the tables once more in the heroes’ favor. His apparent assassination by Hawks is revealed to be a ruse

  • Touchstone is revealed to be the son of Lupin III and aides Shigaraki’s escape just for the sake of being a bastard

• AGE OF OLIGARCHY: Redestro has been chilling this entire time at a federal office, waiting for his opportunity to negotiate newer, lucrative defense contracts with Hero Society

  • They refuse and attempt to arrest him for his involvement in the Meta-Liberation army, but Redestro remarks that they’ve run out of heroes to threaten him with

  • Before Redestro kills everybody in the building, Rem is dismissed from the Safety Commission 

IMPLICATIONS FOR THE MULTIVERSE:

• This is a fairly self-contained story, but it’s no secret Yomama has been building up to becoming the next big bad. The impact of this War is a huge motivation for Yomama’s plans; and Midnight granting her authority over U.A., albeit temporarily, has aided that

THEMES AND SUCH:

• “Fascism doesn’t go out of style… just the uniform it wears”

  • Are the heroes categorically fascists? Yes. They are an unchecked authority that operates on probable cause to brutalize targets who threaten their status quo (many of which are former collaborators or monsters of their own creation), displace civilians and destroy infrastructure with the expectation that civilians will pay for it

    • As far as we’ve seen in this abridged series, once a hero obtains a license, the only thing they appear to be banned from is war. Laws are only set in place to distinguish students, villains and the general public from the heroes

  • So the heroes were supposed to just let the villains run wild? No. Hero Society needed to introspect on the root cause of villainy. Who provoked who first, and who was going to be man enough to make amends? Villains like Twice don’t wake up in the morning and decide to trash everything for no reason, THEY WERE CORNERED AND IGNORED. If you don’t want a terrorist attack, don’t make it the only option to be heard.

    • Even a monster like Gigantomachia takes a brief moment to pause and reflect on the moral complexity of “hurting and helping” and “hurting to help.” Regardless of the answer he arrived to, he thought about it more than most of the other heroes/villains did

• “I don’t blame people… I blame systems”

  • Rem and Shigaraki, a hero and villain respectively, share this same sentiment

  • Even a hero does not wake up in the morning excited at the prospect of beating people senseless in the name of the status quo (ok… maybe Mirko does, but she’s a small sample size). They’re just cogs in a greater oppressive machine fueled by social and economic pressures

TRIVIA:

• At the time of production, My War Academia was the biggest JoyRide abridged project. With no prior experience with a project of this size (the first My Hero Abridged movie and Dr. Stone Abridged the Movie had significantly smaller casts and less visual effects) it was divided into 2 halves, each roughly 30 minutes in length

  • Part 1 took several months to produce, while Part 2 was edited and released in less than 3 weeks after Part 1

  • Both were later combined into the “Complete” version and kept as a substitute in case any part was taken down for copyright, which did in fact happen