My Hero Academia Volume 2: “Rage, You Damned Nerd” (Chapters 8 through 17) Manga Review

Major Spoilers are included in this manga review. Please read with caution.

On July 22, 2020, I started and finished reading My Hero Academia’s Volume 2.

Synopsis: Written and drawn by Kohei Horikoshi, the main series follows Izuku Midoriya—nicknamed Deku—and his dream to become a hero someday. In a world where 80% of the superhuman society had powers—dubbed Quirks in this series—the dream to become a superhero became way more common. Sadly enough, Deku fell into the 20% category, effectively making him average—or Quirkless. After a fateful encounter with the number one hero All Might though, Deku’s fate changes forever.

Picking up where Volume 1: “Izuku Midoriya: Origin” left off, Deku had successfully inherited All Might’s “One for All” Quirk and passed U.A. High School’s entrance exam, adjusting to his new school life and preparing for All Might’s—a new teacher at the school—Battle Training exercise. Essentially, Volume 2 is broken into three parts.

The first part focuses on the Battle Training exercise and the rivalry between Deku and Kacchan—Deku’s childhood nickname for Bakugo. After receiving his costume and getting paired up with Uraraka to fight against Bakugo and Iida for the Battle Training exercise, Deku has to do everything he can to hold his own against Bakugo without breaking any bones or failing the exercise.

The Battle Training exercise has Deku and Uraraka—Team Hero—infiltrate a building to disarm a “bomb” guarded by Bakugo and Iida—Team Villain. The bomb is a prop, of course. This whole sequence was incredibly action-packed, mostly driven by Bakugo going full-throttle with his explosions. How everyone responded during this exercise also revealed how dangerous—but necessary—this Battle Training was. How they responded during this hero exercise wouldn’t have been acceptable if this were a real-life crisis.

The emotional flashbacks to Deku and Bakugo’s childhood and the insight into Bakugo’s mindset regarding Deku’s “betrayal”—Bakugo initially believed Deku hid his Quirk this entire time—made his character less villainous than he initially appeared to be during Volume 1. Revisiting these heartfelt scenes—I had seen the anime’s first four seasons at this point—had me tearing up all over again. My Hero Academia wasn’t holding back the punches.

Volume 2’s second part centered around Class 1-A—Deku’s class—electing a class president. Tenya Iida was given special attention during this mini-story, as we learned more about his background and his elite hero family during lunchtime. His older brother Tensei Iida is also a Pro Hero known as the Turbo Hero: Ingenium, someone Tenya Iida looks up to and aspires to be someday.

Tenya Iida’s character is similar to Joe Kido from Digimon Adventure—a boy who tends to have too much responsibility on his hands. Tenya Iida’s serious nature and ability to handle a crisis—intruder on campus—without panicking led to Deku deciding to step down from class president and declaring Iida the right fit to lead their class.

The third and final part focused on a rescue training mission at Unforeseen Simulation Joint (U.S.J.), where things took an unexpected turn with villains invading the exercise in order to kill All Might, who hadn’t appeared on the scene yet. All Might was running late to the exercise, so the class and their teachers—Eraser Head and Thirteen—had to fight back and stall for time until more help arrived.

The most fantastic thing about these action scenes were the students—like Uraraka, Mineta, Tsuyu, Kaminari, and Yaoyorozu—utilizing their Quirks in unpredictable ways to defeat the villains. The amazing fight scene between Eraser Head and an army of villains showed great motion and momentum through Horikoshi’s artwork, which conveyed the huge power gap between the students and an actual Pro Hero.

Kohei Horikoshi’s artwork excelled in showing the full impact of these Quirks—especially SMASH—while also keeping in tone with the cartoony aspect of the manga. For example, Mineta acting like a pervert and groping Tsuya’s boob—she nearly drowned him in response—while trying to survive a dangerous life-or-death situation. The facial expressions also conveyed the characters’ emotions—ranging from scared to brave then back to terrified—in an effective way.

Overall, Volume 2 did an excellent job on following up Volume 1’s beginning chapters. The ensemble cast were given perfect amounts of character moments and intense action along with them. The cliffhanger at the end of this volume would make any reader—such as myself—want to pick up Volume 3 immediately to read what happens next. On note, I’d recommend My Hero Academia wholeheartedly. Thanks for reading this manga review, everyone! Let’s keep it reading! PLUS ULTRA!