#volume 04

Observation notes:

We don’t have much Shōto in this chapter that is meant to introduce the ‘kibasen’ (騎馬戦 “cavalry battle”), also repeating some things that were said in the previous chapter.

Everything is fundamentally reduced to two glimpses of Shōto as Īda informs Midoriya he won’t be part of his group as he will join Shōto’s group along with Yaoyorozu and Kaminari so as to challenge Midoriya.

Cultural notes:

Kibasen (騎馬戦 “cavalry battle”): a sport activity that mimics a battle between mounted warriors, and is a standard event at sports days. Three people form the shape of a horse with one rider riding on top of it (騎馬 ‘kiba’), and compete to win by snatching the opponent's hat or headband. Normally in a Japanese cavalry battle only two teams will fight, though, in some variations of it they might have more than one horse (in short more people play but they are all split in two groups). Also usually one team has lost if either they lose their headband or the rider falls on the ground. These rules are happily ignored by the manga that only set a time limit. A timelimit can also be used in normal cavalry battles when there are two teams with more horses, so the winner can be declared according to which team managed to lose less horses.

Retcon notes:

So this chapter makes explicit how, in this Hero saturated society, there isn’t enough Hero work for everyone. Heroes have to steal jobs from each other, or they might not manage to have enough to eat and be forced to close their agency. We saw it right in Chap. 1 with Mt. Lady stealing the Villain from Kamui Wood, but it was subtly hinted in chap. 13 as well, when we have All Might defeat Habit Headgear and Mt. Lady points out if All Might keeps this up they will end up out of business. Basically this means there is not enough work for them.

Jump to chap 186 and all this will be retconned by Hawks who will claim he wants to make this a world where Heroes have time to kill, all this implying that Heroes are actually suffering of overwork because there is too much work for them. Now, I get that with All Might’s retirement things became worst but, canonically, it is implied it was a subtle worsening, after all All Might retired in August (and he was working less than 3 hours prior to his retirement) and Hawks says this in November and in those 3 months nothing catastrophic happened.

This societal retcon is more due to Horikoshi identifying himself with Heroes than a planned evolution. At the beginning of BNHA, in 2014, he was a young author struggling to continue get published, hence the idea that the world is in a dog-eats-dog status, by the time Vol. 20 came about, in 2018, he was a successful mangaka oberate with work who longed for some free time.

Even if we go and assume both problems exist (minor Heroes don’t work enough, major Heroes work too much), the Hero situation is nowhere near comparable with the one of a mangaka. Major Heroes aren’t forced to overwork or they will lose their job, it is their own choice to also work to stop minor Villains that could be handled by minor Heroes and it is society’s fault for not better distributing the Hero forces (think to small villages like Shōji’s where there are no Heroes that try to save drowing little girls or kids getting scarred, or Nabu island which remains without a Hero and so 20 Hero in training teenagers are sent there without even an adult supervising there to practicize).

Teaching notes:

I guess the idea to put a lot of pressure on the one on the top is meant to teach the students what being at the top means... but it is not a grand strategy as there are 42 students and just one person at the top who will feel the brunt of it. Even if we spread it to his group members, it is not really the same and honestly it seems to serve more the purpose of the story than the purpose of teaching the students something.

So, as said in chap 22, nowadays sport festivals tend to avoid the ‘kibasen’ (騎馬戦 “cavalry battle”) due to the risk of injuries and media scrutiny and, when they do it, they use helmets, crash mats and strict spotters. Of course here they don’t care at all about the risk of injury there is not a single protection item used by the students because, as the previous chapter said, is a battle for survival.

Midnight though also says another thing.

MIDNIGHT ‘“Kosei” hatsudō ARI no zangyaku FIGHT! Demo…… akumade kibasen. Akushitsuna kuzushi mokuteki de no kōgeki-tō wa RED CARD! ippatsu taijō to shimasu.’ ミッドナイト「上位の奴ほど狙われちゃう──────────…下克上サバイバルよ！！！」 Midnight “It's a brutal/cruel fight with Quirks in action! But... it's still a cavalry battle. Any malicious attacks aimed at breaking down the opponent will result in a red card! You'll be ejected immediately.”

While it is nice that they say you can’t harm the opponent and that they will be expelled if they do because it is still a cavalry battle well... WHERE WE SEE THIS?

Skipping how the story adds rules as the battle goes on, we see that Bakugō attacks Team Midoriya with his explosions and yes, they stop him but, again, they could have failed to do so and then Kaminari gives a shock to everyone which is not healthy and could have caused someone to fall... but no red card for him.

Long story short it feels more like lip service than anything else but, truth to be told, it is also tied to Horikoshi’s way to handle Quirks and things that can be deadly (think at the explosions of the previous chapters) as if they weren’t.

We also have some Heroes discussing the sport festival claiming U.A. High is doing the festival in such way to prepare the kids to be Heroes in a society where dog-eats-dog, revealing that Heroes won’t hesitate to get in the way of other Heroes, dragging them down, all to gain the credits for defeating a Villain (remember how Mt. Lady stole the victory from Kamui Wood in Chap 1?).

In another manga this would be a good point of discussion for how this kind of society is wrong, but here society is just accepted as it is, and the students aren’t encouraged to change it but just to deal with it and become part of the system so they too can steal jobs from other people. It is really not an inspiring teaching, especially for kids that should become Heroes.

On the other hand they observe that the Cavalry Battle might also help forming cooperation spirit, so the kids can learn to coordinate sidekicks or do team up with other Hero agencies... but this doesn’t really seems the core of the exercise since, with competition spirit flared up as much as it can go, we see Īda refusing to join Midoriya’s group because... he is challenging him too. He wants to show to the Pro he is better than Midoriya.

Midoriya Izuku ‘(Mō hajimatteru!! Zenin… teki. Sōda… boku wa ima toppu… tomodachi-gokko ja… i rarenai--!!)’ 緑谷出久「(もう始まってる！！全員…敵。そうだ…僕は今トップ…友だちごっこじゃ…いられない──！！)」 Midoriya Izuku “It's already started! Everyone's an enemy. That's right... I'm the top now... I can't just pretend to be friends anymore──!!”

This doesn’t really promote team spirit between future Heroes but competitivity, with alliances done merely out of self interest so as to lead them to victory or to be noticed by the Pro.

Translation notes:

Īda calls Shōto ‘Todoroki-kun’ (轟くん “young Todoroki”). ‘-kun’ (君/くん) is usually used for addressing males younger than the speaker. However teenagers in the same age group can call each other with ‘-kun’ and this is what Īda does with his male classmates.

Attentive readers might notice that here Midoriya uses an expression similar to the one Shōto used in chap 23. Shōto said they couldn’t do ‘Nakayoshi-gokko’ (仲良しごっこ “pretending to be friends/companions” and Midoriya says they can’t do ‘tomodachi-gokko’ (友だちごっこ “pretend to be friends”).

‘Tomodachi’ (友だち) is a general term for “friends”, while ‘nakayoshi’ (仲良し) specifically means a close or “intimate” friend, often used to describe a close-knit group of friends. ‘Tomodachi’ can be casual, but ‘nakayoshi’ emphasizes the closeness and good relationship between people. Likely Shōto used ‘nakayoshi’ to emphasize even more how they were the opposite of it.

Extra notes:

In this part of the story becomes prevalent the attitude at revealing things AFTER they have happened. For example this cavalry battle allows such a peculiar formation like the one of Team Mineta or allows riders leaving their units as long as their feet don’t touch the ground...

While this is used mostly for humoristic value, this will be a technique Horikoshi will slowly start to like more and more even for what’s not fun, that gets revealed without foreshadowing and often, after it had happened (see for example in chap 29 Īda’s new technique that appears out of the blue to solve the problem at hands). While this kind of technique can surprise the reader, when abused it ends up on feeling a cheap resulution and expedient for surprise.

Now, regarding the anime version...

Episode 17 - Strategy, Strategy, Strategy (策策策 Saku saku saku)

Added parts notes:

There is not much to say about the additions, we only have some more glimpses of Shōto.

Changed parts notes: