My Hero Academia Season 7

Episode 152

Hoo boy, we've got a big one this week. I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel out of my depth on this one. Nevertheless, we're here, so let's talk about heteromorphs.

First, let's talk about the concept of Fantasy Racism. There is a long, complicated, and highly divisive history of taking the real-world dynamics of bigotry and transplanting it onto entirely fictional races like orcs dwarves, and elves. There are many reasons of varying creative validity for authors having used this trope. The most prevalent reason for MHA is pretty simple: Shonen Jump, an extremely mainstream publication with an editorial board so infamously conservative that it took over 5 decades before they had a female editor working on the main magazine, was never going to let anything it published do something as potentially divisive as directly address racial inequality and oppression. Even The Promised Neverland with its bald-faced social commentary, had to filter it through a fantasy world of demons and separate dimensions. Any author wanting to even gesture at real-world politics in the pages of JUMP almost certainly has to take the X-Men approach, and MHA is no exception.

So then, how does MHA's attempt at the topic turn out? It's...complicated, in part because the idea of people with heteromorphic quirks being discriminated against has only barely been brought up before now. It was briefly discussed by the Meta Liberation Army and during Spinner's backstory but it's only in this episode that the topic gets fleshed out into something we can discuss with any depth. That's always going to feel awkward, and it only gets messier with just how heavy the topic is. We as an audience might not know what the “Great Jeda Purge” is, but we can conclude the unusually brutal flashes of violence accompanying the name drop. MHA has always featured a fairly high level of bodily harm, but there's a much more potent, upsetting nature to seeing people being attacked and maimed in the streets—and I wouldn't blame anyone for being put off by it all. This isn't cool cartoon violence where everyone gets healed offscreen or cool cyborg arms in the aftermath; it's cruel, inhumane, shockingly grim violence being meted out by ordinary civilians. There's a fine line between that being a daring escalation to make a point and feeling like a tonal misfire out of step with a superhero cartoon for kids and teenagers.

Further complicating is how this topic is integrated into the larger narrative. Namely, how thousands of victims of oppression and marginalization are currently being used by the villains—most of whom quite clearly aren't interested in furthering the cause of the downtrodden. The knee-jerk reaction might be that MHA is trying to equate violent opposition to oppression with the literal super-villainy of AFO but I don't think that's the case. The people we see on the streets aren't cackling supervillains but just regular people, fighting largely unarmed against a smaller but far more equipped group of police. Their anger is intimidating, egged on by Spinner and Liberation Army members but at no point is that anger treated as invalid or unsympathetic. Rather, this is a macro-scale version of the same dynamic the show explored through characters like Twice—people who were mistreated and abused by society at large finding solidarity and wanting to strike back against the systems that hurt them, only to have that energy co-opted by an ever-opportunistic AFO.

As is usually the case, MHA is more comfortable and salient with its message when it narrows things down to a personal level, bringing Shoji and Spinner as opposing voices for hetermorphs at large. Both are young people who have faced violent abuse for the crime of looking different but have found very different answers in the wake of that violence. Spinner was isolated, and only found a cause when he saw Stain's message. Since then, his journey has been mostly about loyalty to his companions and friends, with little thought to the larger consequences of his actions—settling to follow Shigaraki's desire for destruction and following AFO's instructions. Spinner sympathizes with the many regular people who have joined him, but he's ultimately a figurehead, being manipulated and manipulating in-kind rather than enacting an actual political will of his own.

Then there's Shoji. Much like this larger heteromorph conflict, our many-armed hero hasn't had much prior development, but what we see from him is impacting all the same. He too faced vicious hate, but rather than internalizing that pain, he resolved to value the ways his body let him help others and has carried that on to his nascent career as a hero. Most importantly, he doesn't try to tell the people he's facing that violence is wrong or that they should just move on from the oppression they face. Rather, he demands that Spinner and his followers demonstrate a plan for actual change. Have they considered what the cause has to gain from attacking a hospital? Is Spinner a real leader with a vision for the future, or just a puppet for AFO? Shoji's big action moment is when he throws that big punch against Spinner, but his moment of defining heroism is when he implores the people around him to use the bodies they've, in his words, “been blessed with” to channel their anger in the right direction.

It's a lot, as this already too-long review demonstrates, and I'm still not entirely sure how to feel about it. Lord knows I'm not qualified to decide if this story is or isn't a responsible take on marginalized people rebelling against the society that's harmed them for generations. At the very least, I appreciate that there's more thought here than just condemning violence for order and harmony. It certainly would have helped if the show had started addressing this material earlier in its run, if it wanted to tackle such a topic, rather than fitting it all in one episode.

Yet I can't deny that when the music started to swell as Shoji and Koda had their big hero moments, it got me. It felt sincere When Shoji bared his scars and begged the crowd to be manipulated by their pain. Is that me being a sop for some likable kids trying their best? Maybe, but I can't deny that I teared up at it nonetheless, and I came out of the episode mostly clicking with what it had to say. Whether this episode represents a cogent political message, controversial baggage tagged onto a standard superhero story, or a total mess is anyone's call.

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My Hero Academia is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.