The events of the Final War arc in My Hero Academia have continued to escalate. Kohei Horikoshi has finally delivered the big battle between Izuku Midoriya and Tomura Shigaraki that this entire series has been building towards from very early on. The fight has been much more once sided than expected with Izuku Midoriya using all of the Quirks he has thanks to past users of One For All. But we know things can’t go as easily as they appear since even if this battle turns in the heroes favor the war between heroes and villains is not close to being over. One of the big things that All For One has created as part of his plan to create an uprising with the heteromorph Quirk users with Spinner at the center of the plan. That is what it looks like we are going to be examining with how things ended in the previous chapter. Let’s find out with My Hero Academy Chapter 370.
CREATIVE TEAM
Writer & Artist: Kohei Horikoshi
SYNOPSIS
A young heteromorph (Quirk users whose ability mutated them to have animal or other non-human appearance) remembers the hate they got from society throughout their lives.
Going back to several hours earlier Spinner leads an army of heteromorph to retrieve Kurogiri from the hospital detainment the heroes put the High-End Nomu in.
Present Mic uses his Loud-Out Shout attack to disperse the heteromorph army. Anima and Rock Lock help Present Mic out but the three are quickly overwhelmed by the heteromorph army’s numbers. In the chaos some of the heteromorphs call out Anima as a traitor to their kind.
One of the heteromorph’s makes a speech about how history has never bend kind to them. They bring up The 6/6 Incident: The Great Jeda Purge, an event when many heteromorphs where massacred just because of their appearance. The heteromorph declares they will take their rightful place with Spinner as the leader.
A hulked out Spinner goes on a rampage but is stopped by Octoblow. Dozens of heteromorphs suddenly tackle Octoblow and beat him up for being a traitor. Remembering everything the heroes did to protect and save everyone back Jaku,
Octoblow knocks the heteromorphs attacking him back. Octoblow then tells Spinner he will not let them attack the hospital no matter what. End of chapter.
REVIEW
Given what has been going on in My Hero Academia thus far it is an odd narrative choice to suddenly change things to another part of the war just as the fight between Izuku Midoriya and Tomura Shigaraki started. The story with the heteromorph army that All For One created is certainly an important one. But this way of doing it does show that Kohei Horikoshi may have many stories going on within the Final War arc to give fans proper time to get invested in.
On the positive end, Horikoshi does a great job quickly reminding fans why hetermorph Quirk users were so easily assembled into an army by All For One. There are a lot of parallel to mutants in the Marvel Universe when it comes to the heteromorphs that Horikoshi is playing with. Even bringing up The 6/6 Incident: The Great Jeda Purge event has clear similarities to the iconic Mutant Massacre storyline from the X-Men. Even if we didn’t see The 6/6 Incident: The Great Jeda Purge go down in the moment the dialogue from the heteromorph making the speech got over how traumatic an event that was.
This feed into how well the anger from the heteromorph army that Horikoshi tapped into throughout My Hero Academy Chapter 370. Yes, the heteromorph army’s mission was to get Kurogiri back to All For One but as the chapter went along this represented much more than that. They were all releasing all the emotions they had from not only being ostracized but also abused mentally and physically by society for such a long time. All For One was just able to channel all that anger to achieve his own goals.
That’s where Spinner’s role in the story is elevated. Which is impressive given that Horikoshi has had All For One caused Spinner to now have a Hulk-like transformation due his body not being capable of properly using two Quirks at the same time. Being in such an unstable state meant a lot of how Spinner is put over is by the way he acts and the hype man the heteromorph that makes the speech is.
What makes all this work even more is the roles Anima and Octoblow play in all this. Both of these characters fall in the heteromorph class of Quirk users. But unlike those in All For One’s heteromorph army both Anima and Octoblow have been able to take the hero path in their lives. Which in turn does make them traitors in the eyes of All For One’s heteromorph army. Anima’s terrified expression when the other heteromorphs gang up on him while calling him a traitor puts over the impact of all this.
At the same time this was a big time elevation for Octoblow’s character. While he has had his moments in this series Octoblow has largely been a background character up to this point. Horikoshi changes that as Octoblow is positioned as the antithesis of Spinner. You get that as Octoblow finds his own strength in remembering what it means to be a hero through the memories of the Paranormal Liberation War. Like with the battles of Izuku Midoriya vs Tomura Shigaraki and Shoto Todoroki vs Dabi, we now have another rivalry in Octoblow vs Spinner that has deeper personal stakes than just the typical hero vs villain fight.
All of that said, it is hard not to think about how much going to this story is disrupting the other major events in the Final War arc. It is a reminder that Horikoshi is spinning so many plates with the Final War arc that we have multiple battlefields that we still have to revisit. The fight with Himiko Toga is one that we have not seen since Midoriya left that battlefield. That’s on top of what we have seen in the All For One, Shigaraki, and Dabi battlefields that still haven’t been completely resolved. How Horikoshi plans to split chapters up to give proper time while building a way to bring everything together is something to keep an eye on as it is what can either make or break this final story.
FINAL THOUGHTS
On its own My Hero Academy Chapter 370 works really well in shinning a spotlight on heteromorph class of Quirk users. Kohei Horikoshi gets over the history of the heteromorph in a way that gives a different level of intensity to the fighting that goes on in this chapter from other battlefields in the Final War arc. That said, My Hero Academy Chapter 370 is held back with how Horikoshi can’t shake how abrupt this change in locations is to the overall flow of the Final War arc. Hopefully Horikoshi finds a better way to flow between all the different battlefields in this story.
Story Rating: 8 Night Girls out of 10
Art Rating: 7 Night Girls out of 10
Overall Rating: 7.5 Night Girls out of 10
