My Hero Academia Volume 17: “Lemillion” (Chapters 148 through 157) Manga Review
Major Spoilers are included in this manga review. Please read with caution.
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.
On August 5, 2020, I started and finished reading My Hero Academia’s Volume 17. This volume had made strides—making up for the slow pace in Volume 16: “Red Riot”—to set-up the climax of the “Overhaul Arc”. While there were valid flaws in this arc when it came to Chisaki’s Yakuza villain organization and their disinteresting members, the League of Villains’ limited involvement, and the exclusion of the female hero characters, the arc was mostly held-together by the series’ amazing ensemble cast. The characters were basically so amazing that they kept the plot from coming apart.
The title character of this volume—Lemillion—was doing fantastic work throughout this volume and the past few volumes since his awkward introduction into My Hero Academia. Lemillion’s fight against Overhaul and his minions was nothing short of epic.
Lemillion—powered by the mistakes he made as a hero to enforce the question, “What makes someone a hero?”—mirrored the rage we felt as readers when we learned what Overhaul had done to Eri. The fight scene was splendid and proved heroes are more than just their Quirks. While the Yakuza villains fell flat during this arc, their mere presence made Lemillion look better if that makes sense. Honestly, Overhaul’s goal for a “Quirkless society” should be a compelling one, but then he uses his destructive Quirk to the extreme like he’s exempt from his own rule.
The League of Villains members who joined up with the Yakuza for an alliance—Himiko Toga and Twice—had a stronger motivation than Overhaul himself. They merely joined on Tomura Shigaraki’s orders to exact revenge for the member Overhaul killed when they first met-up. Twice was also furious when Overhaul purposely misgendered said dead comrade—Magne—by calling her “him”, needing Toga to keep him from attacking for the offense.
While Toga and Twice make a fascinating villain duo that has potential for the future, they didn’t add much to the arc other than setting the heroes and the Yakuza against each other, wanting both enemies to destroy each other while they watched from a distance.
While there were numerous red flags that would normally bog down the manga’s success from Sir Nighteye’s Foresight Quirk determining Deku will die to Eri being a plot device, the well-written characters managed to pull everything together anyway for an epic climax. Overall, I still had a good time with this manga book. Thanks for reading my manga review, everyone! Let’s keep it reading—Plus Ultra!