My Hero Academia, Vol. 19 by Kohei Horikoshi
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*Published June 4, 2019*
This volume is more about snippets of school life and we seem to be going back to normal for a bit. There is a villain in the making, but we’re focusing more on the Cultural Festival at the school right now, rather than the villain.
Midoriya inherits the superpower of the world’s greatest hero, but greatness won’t come easy.
What would the world be like if 80 percent of the population manifested superpowers called “Quirks”? Heroes and villains would be battling it out everywhere! Being a hero would mean learning to use your power, but where would you go to study? The Hero Academy of course! But what would you do if you were one of the 20 percent who were born Quirkless?
In the wake of tragedy, Class 1-A prepares for the upcoming culture festival. While the students are busy planning for success, other forces are at work with their own agendas, and Midoriya, amid the preparations, continues to train with All Might. But when he runs into the failed hero Gentle Criminal, what lesson will he learn?
I like manga volumes when the main character can connect more with a character that you don’t normally think of. This one is Deku connecting more with Aoyama, the potential hero who shoots a laser from his stomach. Aoyama, we learn in this volume, has always had trouble with his Quirk; in his own words, his body wasn’t built to deal with his particular Quirk, so Aoyama has to work harder than anyone else in his family in order to control his Quirk. He recognizes that Deku has this same issue, which is true. Deku’s body wasn’t built for his Quirk, All for One. In recognizing this though, Aoyama does what he can to try to help Deku, in his very weird ways.
We also see the start of the planning of the Culture Festival for school, another S.L.E. (school like event). And this may be just me, but I’ve always wanted to do to a Japanese school festival, if just to see what they are actually like as I’ve only seen them portrayed in manga. Either way, it looks like it would be awesome, if only the Gentle Criminal doesn’t show up like he plans to. And he’s a very strange villain, if you can call him that.