The battle against Dabi has ended, at least for now. Kohei Horikoshi has shifted focus to the battle against Himiko Toga and her Sad Man’s Death Parade army that’s been unleashed on heroes at Gunga Mountain. This battle has been emotional in a different way that Dabi vs the Todoroki Family was. With Himiko things are personal test of what love and friendship does to people, specifically the extreme emotions. After a short previous chapter dedicated to this let’s see what Horikoshi does with a full-length chapter with My Hero Academia Chapter 392.
CREATIVE TEAM
Writer & Artist: Kohei Horikoshi
SYNOPSIS
Himiko Toga forces Uravity, who is held back by the Twice clones, to watch as she goes to stab Froppy.
As that happens Himiko remembers her childhood and how her parents went crazy being unable to understand their daughters desire drink blood. This emotionally damaged Himiko as her parent called her inhuman for loving blood.
In the present Himiko imagines Curious (Chitose Kizuki, who was killed by Himiko in My Hero Academia Chapter 226) taunting her for becoming someone else just to push away her emotions.
While Uravity saves Froppy Himiko’s Twice clones suddenly start transforming into all of the heroes, revealing she has be drinking the heroes blood.
With things completely chaotic the real Froppy tries to convince Himiko that Ochaco Uraraka is truly trying to help her. Himiko is not up for being pitied and stabs Uravity in the gut. End of chapter.
REVIEW
While longer than the previous chapter, My Hero Academia Chapter 392 was shorter than normal. Though given the reasons for delays Kohei Horikoshi has faced this is totally understandable. Even with being a shorter chapter Horikoshi, as with the previous chapter, knew how to maximize the page count for “Villain Name.”
Like Dabi, Himiko Toga has been developed in a way that she could’ve been the main villain of a saga within My Hero Academia. There are many reasons why Himiko is a compelling villain. One of the biggest is how Himiko is one of the biggest examples of the nature of Quirks. As we once again see in My Hero Academia Chapter 392, Himiko uncontrollable nature is the biggest game changing wild card for All For One.
What makes Himiko’s arc so interesting is that her character brings up the whole nature vs nurture argument to the forefront. With Himiko’s character it is not a battle of the two but rather how both nature and nurture have shaped her. Because as has been talked about in the past, Quirks have the ability to shape the personalities of their users. The impact of a Quirk on a person can be effected by those around them for the positive or negative but it all comes back to what the powers of the person are.
With the flashback we once again see that it wasn’t just Himiko’s Transform Quirk being activated by ingesting a person’s blood that shaped her. Its her parents and those around her reaction to Himiko’s bloodlust. No one knew how to handle a child acting the way Himiko did, leading to a lot of emotional damage. It says a lot about these childhood memories that Himiko remembers her parents and therapist as faceless people compared to people she did not know.
This all helps to further explain that in using Twice’s powers to create Sad Man’s Death Parade it has strained Himiko’s emotional state to being uncontrollable. With her Sad Man’s Death Parade, Himiko is the definition of chaos as she is made it impossible for heroes to know who they are fighting now. There is a horror element to all of this that amplifies the stakes of what is going on.
Tsuyu Asui stepping up to try to help Ochaco Uraraka try to get Himiko to just talk was an important thing to happen. Up to this point it has been just Ochaco who has attempted to reach out to Himiko as everyone has treated her as villain. Ochaco getting this back-up from Tsuyu showed the strength of their friendship. Especially when you consider that Tsuyu believes in following the hero rules much more that Midoriya and Ochaco. It shows an understanding on Tsuyu’s part of what her friend is trying to do.
The ending with Himiko stabbing Ochaco in the gut built on the chaos of what is going on. Himiko appears to be too far gone to be saved or even talked to at this point. This creates a situation where we don’t know how our heroes will stop Himiko and her Sad Man’s Death Parade.
The artwork in My Hero Academia was the one weak point in the issue. While it was good in the opening few pages, once we got passed the flashback it did feel like Horikoshi was rushing the artwork. A big factor could be that he is drawing a lot in every panel with the nature of Himiko’s Sad Man’s Death Parade. Hopefully he is able to spend more time to deliver the high-quality art fans know he can deliver.
FINAL THOUGHTS
My Hero Academia Chapter 392 spotlights how dangerous Himiko Toga is. The flashback further builds Himiko as one of the most compelling characters in the series. The chaos that she created by using her Quirk along with Twice’s creates a lot of questions of how things will turn out. Those questions drive the interest for the next chapter even higher.
Story Rating: 8 Night Girls out of 10
Art Rating: 6 Night Girls out of 10
Overall Rating: 7 Night Girls out of 10
