Manga Review: My Hero Academia, Volume 29 by Kohei Horikoshi

Hey all, Sam here.

Here we are at another Manga Monday, and we’ve almost reached the end of a full month of blogging here at Free State of Geek. That feels pretty darn good. And I can already say that I have a rough schedule for the entire month of March mapped out. So we’re really excited about the content we’re going to be sharing, and I sincerely hope that y’all enjoy what we put out there as well.

I don’t want to take too much time with this intro or writing up this review, because David’s been getting everything ready for a little photo shoot for everything we’ve been 3D printing over the last few weeks. Keep an eye on the Free State of Geek Facebook page and David’s Instagram (@freestateofgeek) for those photos, because we’re really looking forward to sharing them with y’all.

All right, well, every Monday I spend some time talking about one of the various manga that I’ve been reading, and I’ve been trying to catch up on some of these series. I’m getting pretty close, so when I run out of volumes on The Seven Deadly Sins and My Hero Academia then I’ll be working on getting caught up with reviews on other series…such as Necromance, Black Clover, The Saint’s Magic Power is Omnipotent, My Isekai Life, and many others.

So with all this excitement to come, we might as well get started with today’s review. Let’s go!

What would the world be like if 80 percent of the population manifested superpowers called “Quirks”? Heroes and villains would be battling it out everywhere! Being a hero would mean learning to use your power, but where would you go to study? The Hero Academy of course! But what would you do if you were one of the 20 percent who were born Quirkless?

Tomura Shigaraki has finally awakened, and as he begins to unleash his savage powers, the heroes realize it’s going to take everyone and everything they have to stop him. Several heroes have been lost already, and even as the number one hero, Endeavor, takes on Tomura, Midoriya and Bakugo must put themselves on the line. Meanwhile, the massive villain Gigantomachia rampages toward Jaku City, and it seems nothing can stop him—but the students of U.A. are determined to succeed or die trying…

My Thoughts

Rating: 5 stars

I read this in September 2021. And this was the last MHA volume I read until very recently. Obviously it’s been more than a minute since I’ve been so into the MHA world, especially since David and I still haven’t watched the latest season of the anime…which we probably need to do.

Okay, the biggest thing I’m going to say about this volume is that I loved how there were a couple panels with Bakugo that perfectly mirrored a couple panels with Midoriya at the very beginning of the series…and come on, that was honestly kind of beautiful.

It took me a while to grow to like Bakugo, because he was such a jerk in the beginning. But the further we went in the story, the more I could see that underneath that brash, rude, loud exterior, there is an intelligent young man with a big heart, someone who cares about his friends…..even if he definitely tries not to admit that Deku is his friend.

But when he knows that Deku is in trouble, he jumps into action. We get to see some of the more main powerhouses (Deku, Bakugo, Todoroki, Endeavor, Aizawa, etc) working the Shigaraki issue…while a lot of our other UA students are focused on taking care of Gigantomachia. It’s two huge battles taking place in different spots, but moving closer together.

We are definitely speeding towards some sort of a finale with this story…and so much has happened in such a short time. I should have expected that this story would just lead to a whole bunch of battles, getting bigger and bigger as time progresses. But I was really hoping that we would see the students get all the way through their schooling, graduate, and rise to Pro Heroes as the finale. This way…well, we still might see them go Pro, but in a much different journey.

I’ve seen on my Goodreads where Vol 38 has been announced. I don’t know how many more of these are coming, but this long final battle arc is certainly going to be intense.

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All right, well that is all from me for today. Thank you so much for stopping by, and I’ll be back soon with more geeky content.