This Gentle Criminal fella is a real card. A self styled Robin Hood/Anonymous figure who commits crimes against those he deems “ungentlemanly”. I like him a lot, although I’m not really sure what his beef with U.A. is. But that’s not the only thing going on in these two episodes, nu huh, we have a show to put on.
The hero side of this story centres around class 1-A’s efforts to put on their musical performance for the rest of the school, while the villain side focuses on Gentle and him lamenting the lack of traction his Youtube page is getting. Despite him being a pretty petty criminal in comparison to the likes of the League of Villains and Stain.
We get to see some of the continued animosity certain parts of the school hold over Hero class 1-A, as the general studies group are heard complain about their choice to put on a show. I know teenagers can be real assholes, but come on… You’re going to hold their choice to try and entertain you against them because they were victims of a number of life threatening attacks?
Christ, get over yourselves.
Although, Bakugo’s involvement is surprising, as his entire approach seems to be to knock them on their asses with how amazing they are or they can go die. It’s as good a motivation as any I suppose and the best reason for the most antisocial guy in class to actually get involved.
While the class all have their own jobs, Midoriya approaches All Might, voicing his frustrations at his continued limited control over One for All. Even in his fight with Overhaul, he was still only able to use 20% of the power, and not for all that long. As well as his lack of any real ranged abilities.
All Might tells him that he was never at 100% all the time, and adjusted his use of the power as needed. Which seems kind of obvious in retrospect, so Midoriya’s next job is to gain a finer control over how much power he’s using at any given time and adjust it on the fly. Apparently, All Might could use 100% of One for All perfectly as soon as he attained it, which really shows how good of a hero he really was when Deku is still only using 10%.
I guess we still have to remember that it’s only been what, six months since Deku inherited the power. I mean, when you think about it like that, it’s impressive he’s made as much progress as he has. Especially considering his woeful lack of self confidence.
In amongst all that, we get to see Eri visits the school being an adorable little peanut and seeing all of the kids working had to put the festival together, even a month before it happens. There’ a lot of setup for what the different classes are doing and we get to check in with some of the lesser seen kids not from class 1-A.
It’s all good, fun, wholesome stuff.
Speaking of which, we get a further insight into the weird and wonderful mind of Gentle Criminal. Him and La Brava continue to scheme their invasion of the school festival, the motivation behind which seems to be nothing more than “that’ll show ’em”. The pair are very cute and while still criminals, seem pretty toothless for the most part, just wanting to be a nuisance more than a menace.
I’m still hoping this will end with an extended celebration rather than a confrontation and the Gentle thing gets swept under the rug as a hilarious sidebar, as much as I do like him. I kind of just want to see this festival go off as a great success and see these kids be happy. They kind of need it after all the crap that’s been going down these past few arcs.
A Richard Wood Text Adventure 