My Hero Academia season 5

 As Noshi and me are playing the anime catch up game, the next on the list to watch between episode releases of the new Demon Slayer season was MHA's 5th season.

And it did certainly start with a whole lot of story arcs!

If one ignores the first episode, which is basically a recap of the students powers during a training excersise, the season already gives us a lot of intakes for the season in episode 2.  The first is that Hawks is infiltrating into the League of Villains, in order to get their thrust and as such can report on their plans.  In the meantime, the healed from his battle with the Nomu Endeavour is setting on a path of atonement with his family.  And Deku learns that his One For All power is actually created by One For All in order to give his quirkless little brother, the first of the 9 wielders of the power, his abilities.  And that was all in just one episode!

The first big arc f the story is a school training battle between classes 1-A and 1-B, but Shinzo, the boy with the Brainwash powers Deku faced at the sports festival, also joins.  He wants to transfer to the hero course, and has been training to catch up with the students.  The class duels show the progress and experience both classes obtained since the sports festival.  As the classes face off in a series of 5 battles, allowing some of them like Shoto to unlock even greater potential, it comes down to the fifth and final match to decide the winner.  In which Deku's team now must face Shinzo... and it won`t be a walkover like Bakugo and his team did in the fourth match, clearing the enemy out in under 5 minutes.

During the final match, Deku's powers go out of control as a black whip of energy manifests.  He learns in the One for All quirk from a previous owner, that he will have access to all their quirks over time, but that he must learn to control himself and them in order to unlock it's fullest potential.  While they win the match in the end, Shinso also passes his entrance exam to the hero course.

The second part returns to the arc of Hawks infiltrating the Liberation Army, making use of secret messages to alarm Endeavour and start preparing the students for the big battle that is to come in only four months.  Endeavour keeps pushing them to their limits during their internship as such, all the while trying to reconcile with his family and Shoto.  He wants to atone for the death of Toya, an older brother of Shoto, as he sees how his children blame him for it.

When President Mic and Eraser Head are called in to try and talk to the nomu Kurogi, who creates warp gates, they learn he was once their fallen youth friend Shirakumo.  The series then turns to become My Villain Academia, and in that story arc we get to see the sad pasts of Toga, Jin and Tomura.  They face the Liberation Army who wants to use Tomura as a base for another Nomu, but this plan backfires as they overcome the leader, Re-Destro, and Tomura settles himself as the new lord of the bad guys...

A season that for me felt a bit mixed.  The first class vs class arc was long winded and not that exciting, but the second part of the season more then made up for this in my opinion.  Especially the villain part, which delivered just as epic a battle as the heroes usually do.  It was perhaps striking that the League actually functioned better as a whole then the pro-heroes often do...

And of course, never enough Toga...