My Review Academia S5 E18: Kindness

So… the next episode is going to be an epilogue to the Endeavor work study arc. Which gives the villain arc five episodes. That… is really starting to make me sweat.

Shortly after the painfully awkward Todoroki family dinner, Natsu is attacked by a psychotic villain who wants Endeavor to kill him. With Endeavor unable to save his son, it’s up to Deku, Bakugo, and Shoto to step in and save the day!

All in all, not very complicated. Bad guy shows up, good guys beat him up and save everyone, the end. The villain isn’t especially deep or complex or all that memorable. It’s a beautifully animated episode where the main three manage to finally outdo Endeavor. It’s a decent but somewhat forgettable ending to the arc.

It’s what’s going on under the hood that makes this episode memorable.

Most of Endeavor’s scenes in this episode are incredibly powerful this time around. We see some of his most human moments here. Some are heartwarming. Some are heartbreaking. And some perfectly show just how hard of a position Endeavor really is in.

The most powerful one, at least for me, is when Endeavor hesitates to save Natsuo. In any other story, there would be some lame excuse for this. “If I go in there, he might kill Natsu!” You know, something like that.

That’s not the case here. Endeavor doesn’t hesitate because he couldn’t risk it. In fact, he could have probably saved his son with ease. He did it because he feared that if he did, Natsu never speak to him again. In one brief moment, Endeavor’s duty as a hero conflicts with his fears as a father. He feared that by saving Natsu, he’d forever burn the bridge that he’d been trying to rebuild between them.

Because of this, Endeavor makes a powerful and tragic realization about what he must do for his family. In the last episode, we learned that he dreamt about his family being happy without him there. And here, he comes to the decision to make that dream a reality. Because of his mistake, he decides to make the decision that would hurt him the most in an attempt to make right all the wrongs that he had done.

Is that a mistake? Is Endeavor doing the right thing? Or is he simply giving up and taking the easy way out? It’s a beautifully tragic and complex situation and I can’t wait to see the repercussions it has later on in the story.

If we ever get there. The pacing of this season is really starting to worry me.