My Hero Academia Season 7 episode 16 became wrapped around the theme of sinner’s redemption. With former villains joining the fight to aid the heroes, the series took an interesting turn just as things looked bleak. The episode provided a different viewpoint on the world of My Hero Academia that hasn’t been explored that much outside of the main characters themselves. The latter half of this episode outshined the beginning, uplifting yet another smaller part of the manga that originally didn’t hit as hard.
Sinner’s Redemption
Sinner’s redemption is a theme I tend to enjoy in stories if done properly. Of course, there’s a grey area that lies there depending on certain factors. Sometimes, a sinner is beyond redemption like many others in My Hero Academia. But I feel like the villains that made their rather clutch appearances in this episode were the perfect ones worth exploring the theme for.
Let’s start with the main one—Gentle Criminal. His entire purpose of being a villain in My Hero Academia is to shine a spotlight on the fact that not everyone who does something wrong is necessarily a bad person. Requesting simply to see the one person (La Brava) who supported him no matter what is something many of us could relate to.
And, I may be in the minority here, but I was actually feeling hyped and getting goosebumps watching Gentle Criminal put his all into saving UA. The voice acting from Kouichi Yamadera was wonderful. But that’s to be expected from a veteran who voiced other big-name characters such as Spike Spiegel from Cowboy Bebop and Beerus from Dragon Ball Super who have also had plenty of big moments for Yamadera to flex his voicing prowess.
The second is La Brava, of course. The heroes had no answers for Skeptic’s hacking so counting on a former villain to help get the heroes back on their feet was a nice touch. Opinions about to set aside, the dialogue between La Brava and Gentle Criminal before he went to work was some of the best in the season, especially when we consider the romance-talk nonsense between Ochako and Toga.
The third villain to show up at the perfect moment is the fan-favorite Lady Nagant. While her screentime was nowhere near the length of Gentle Criminal and La Brava, I still love that her moment came against Shigaraki directly. It almost felt like a giant middle finger to All For One in a way and the history she has with him. She’s one of the few side side characters that many fans seem to love more than a lot of the more popular side characters and she proved why yet again.
I think what I loved about these three showing up is that they are specifically the villains, outside of Twice, who always walked the thin line between hero and villain. And in the massive world that series author Kohei Horikoshi created, those kinds of characters are surprisingly few and far between. So it was nice to see those three all help simultaneously in the story.
My Hero Academia Season 7 Episode 16 Production and Script
Production in this episode stood out to me for better or worse. The A-half was really rough. There were a lot of still images that just took away from the drastic moment of Kurogiri and everyone else joining the main battle. Twice’s skin melting off half of Toga’s face was probably the highlight of it all and that only lasted a couple of seconds.
The dialogue between Gentle Criminal and La Brava really put the one between Ochako and the others to shame. I sympathized with Hawks when he finally took a shot back at All For One losing to All Might in an almost will-you-shut-up-already kind of tone. Thank you, Hawks. Now, let’s get a few more of those in before All Might shows up.
The latter half of the episode was surprisingly well done. The impact frames were eye-popping and the entire animation around Gentle Criminal in most of his close-ups looked great. Hyuuga Yamamura made her proper episode-directing debut this week and it’s easy to say she did an overall solid job. Despite my criticism of the beginning, there were many shots from the episode that looked wonderful and had substance.
Take the two shots above for example. Gentle Criminal stood facing backwards against all of the criminals then in two scenes later, he’s facing forward to the guards in the sunlight. When someone can make something creative hold even more meaning, then they’re doing an anime justice.
Episode 16 Wrap-Up
Overall, I think this was one of the better episodes of the season, possibly the biggest surprise. When reading this part of the manga, I didn’t really care for any of the events that occurred. Writing-wise for the three former villains, sure. But something was missing. It was thanks to Yamamura and company for changing that for me. This episode shows that even if you don’t like certain parts of the manga, the My Hero Academia anime has the capability of really making it even better thanks to the staff and cast working on it.
Episode rating: 8.5/10
If you loved episode 16 of My Hero Academia Season 7, then be sure to vote for it in our weekly poll! Episode 17 will be released on Saturday, September 14, 2024. Crunchyroll is streaming the anime with English subtitles.
Screenshots via Crunchyroll
©K. Horikoshi / Shueisha, My Hero Academia Project
The comments are temporarily unavailable for maintenance.