In this episode 19 of My Hero Academia Season 2, we learned a great deal about Todoroki’s past and what motives him to reject his left side….
We found out what drove Todoroki to avoid using his left side and why he despises his father so much. As it turns out, Enji forced a marriage with Shoto’s mother in an attempt to conceive and raise a child with a powerful Quirk to surpass All Might as a Hero. Realizing this, along with his mother been unhappy in his memories, drove him to resent his father and ultimately lead him to not using his other half of his powers.
Todoroki also confronts Deku about his powers and his relation with All Might, but ultimately he drops it after realizing that Deku wasn’t going to tell him anything. I have to say, Todoroki’s past really is messed up in a way and to hear that his won mother poured boiling water at his face made it even more tragic.
We also got a small snippet of Enji’s personality, coming of as very prideful and resentful, the opposite of All Might. His powers and outfit are dope as hell though, I’ll give him that.
We also learned something interesting about the student that Deku will be fighting against in the first round in the tournament. Apparently Hitoshi Shinso used his quirk, which has yet been explained, and made two of the other students join his team. However it was revealed that none of them can remember what happened and decided to drop out because of it.
We see that Mashirao Ojiro prevented Deku from answering Shinso question about looking forward to the battle and later appears to have explained to him some details about his quirk. The episode ends however with Deku falling prey to his quirk after being provoked and gets paralyzed.
Overall this was a top notch episode. We got great character development from Todoroki and a a better understanding of his character, we got a good deal of fan service thanks to Denki Kaminari and Minoru Mineta and a great set up for next week’s episode. It’s going to be very interesting to see how Deku will overcome this obstacle.
