My Hero Academia Season 2 Episode 8 Recap – Battle On, Challengers!

First Round Matches

The next battle gets delayed as the staff clean off the ice enveloping the stage. The match is between Shiozaki Ibara from 1-B against Kaminari Genki from 1-A. Present Mic declares a flashy fight, but Shiozaki corrects the commentator for calling her an assassin. She explains that she has no evil intentions and only wants to inspire people. Present Mic apologizes while Kaminari gets charmed by her graceful moves.

Kaminari invites her to dinner as the fight starts, stating how he’ll end it with a singular attack of 130,000,000 volts. Shiozaki turns her back and protects herself with vines. Meanwhile, a separate undergrowth of vines attacks Kaminari and paralyzes him. Shiozaki wins with graceful charm.

Back at the stands, Midoriya starts mumbling into his notes about the previous bout, which gets the attention of his classmates. He explains to Uraraka that it’s his hobby and shows her his collected info on the class A quirks. She realizes how amazing Deku is and puts on a determined face.

The next match is against Iida and Hatsune Mei from the support course. Everyone wonders what kind of a fight it could be. Iida wears a piece of new equipment for the match, but Midnight prohibits it as it doesn’t have permission beforehand.

Inventive Genius

It was one of Mei’s inventions that she made for Iida. Due to her gracious offer and the boy’s reasoning, Midnight allows its use. The match starts with Iida gunning for her, but Mei simply talks about her invention with a microphone.

She explains the benefits of her gear and watches her potential investors with her quirk: Zoom. A quirk that enables her to see five kilometers away. She continues explaining the benefit of her inventions while avoiding Iida’s attacks. The match ends with her stepping out of bounds while Iida complains of being tricked even though he won.

The next match is between Aoyama and Ashido. The former’s long-range beams and the latter’s quick mobility will make this an interesting matchup. But Ashido knows that Aoyama’s stomach hurts after continued use of the quirk. She catches him on the belt and punches her opponent for a KO.

The sixth match is Yaoyorozu against Tokoyami. Midoriya thinks that timing will dictate the outcome of the match. And true enough, Tokoyami wins by pushing his opponent away with continued strikes of the dark shadow that push her out of bounds.

The next match is Kirishima against Tetsutetsu, two students with almost identical quirks. The two duke it out in a no holds barred slugfest.

On my own

Iida finds Uraraka in the waiting room with her eyebrows furrowed. Her next match is against Bakugo, which proves to be scary. Midoriya joins them to help prepare. Iida thinks Bakugo won’t use his explosion against a girl, but Midoriya knows better. His childhood friend would not be holding back, so he offers to give his notes to Uraraka.

She thanks him but refuses the offer. Back at the Cavalry battle, she thought it would be great to team up with a friend, but she now finds that she’s heavily relying on him. When Iida said earlier that he would challenge Midoriya, she felt embarrassed.

Everyone is looking out to build their future, so she should look at everyone as her rival. She gives them both a thumbs up and leaves for the next match.

The battle between Kirishima and Tetsutetsu ends in a draw, which will be decided with an arm wrestling match as soon as they recover. The next match is announced, with Bakugo going against Uraraka. The match-up makes everyone nervous, but Uraraka is determined to fight.

Our Thoughts

My worry was that the tournament arc would get montage-y. Thankfully that didn’t happen. 3.5/5.