This week in anime was Holy shit did you see that My Hero Academia episode. I’m sure other stuff happened, but oh my god, All Might versus All For One, what an incredible event. Easily the best episode of the season, and possibly eclipsing the Deku-Todoroki fight as the best episode of the show altogether. Fortunately, while All Might’s battle cast a long shadow this week, everything else I was watching also turned in reasonably solid performances. The theme of this week seemed to be “strong execution of fundamentally iffy material,” as Hinamatsuri managed to turn a one-joke bit into a highlight, Megalo Box did its best to work around the Burroughs fight’s dramatic limitations, and Legend of the Galactic Heroes spun drama out of “our supply lines are getting overdrawn and everyone back at command is an idiot.” It’s frankly nice to not be watching anything whose wild, flailing fortunes could stress me out – there are no temperamental half-masterpieces here, it’s all sturdy productions by very consistent teams. But anyway, let’s get right back into the All Might gushing and RUN THIS WEEK DOWN!

This week’s climactic My Hero Academia was everything I could have hoped for, bringing all of this adaptation’s formidable resources together to make All Might’s battle likely the single most satisfying episode of this show so far. All Might’s dual with All For One was always going to be a spectacular fight, given its significance in the narrative and original impact, but I was still stunned by the beauty and energy of this phenomenal episode. With the world watching and his strength at its obvious limits, All Might’s battle truly felt like a fight over the soul of society, an argument regarding the limits of altruism in the face of the truly selfish. His and his opponent’s powers each essentially represent one pole of human motivation, with All Might continuously giving of himself to help those in need, while All For One’s abilities mirror his desire to restructure society around the primacy of the self. Given this, All Might’s perpetually battered and desperate state throughout this battle felt like an all-too-true reflection on the fraying hopes of humanism in the face of a philosophy that is never forced to compromise, never interested in self-growth, and never limited by moral constraints. This world’s bulwarks against evil have never felt more fragile, and All Might’s slow rise to defend them felt like an overwhelming validation of the base principle of selflessness. I’m happy to have this very special show.

Hinamatsuri was in solid form this week, with Nitta himself performing as the comic star in both this episode’s major segments. The first segment was essentially one extended riff on how well Nitta works as a straight man, as his fundamental straight man-ness actually destroyed Seta’s hopes of making a compelling documentary. I felt the comic escalation throughout this whole sequence kept things both funny and propulsive in spite of the segment ultimately hanging on one extended joke, and basically any scene of Hina and Nitta being begrudging sorta-family is hilarious (“I’m your daughter” “Not by choice”), so this whole segment was a winner for me. The second half’s “Nitta attempts to sabotage Anzu’s good girl nature” wasn’t quite as satisfying, and felt like a bit of a character stretch for Nitta, but Anzu’s such an endearing presence that the segment kinda succeeded in spite of its comic limitations. Hinamatsuri is not turning out to be a show likely to stick with me, but it’s been a fine friend all through the spring season.

Joe’s match against Burroughs in this week’s Megalo Box definitely wasn’t a highlight, as it was still held down by this arc’s not-that-engaging match throwing conflict, but I feel like it did the best it could given the base ingredients of this particular arc. “The team feels sad about Joe having to throw a match until they all decide he shouldn’t” just isn’t that strong of a conflict – there are no tangible mechanics for us to grab onto there, it’s just a steady procession of melancholy reflections until everyone decides it’s time to get serious. While the fight against Nanbu’s former student was tethered to some sturdily articulated emotional beats that were able to carry dramatic weight on their own, there was no similar “big turn” to experience or hurdle to overcome here, leaving the episode feeling a little shapeless, and the actual exchanges of the fight itself feeling like an afterthought.

That said, in spite of not really being a fan of the overall choice of conflict, I felt this show sold the delivery of this conflict as well as it could. Sachio’s rap was adorable as heck, and the sound design overall felt even more impressive than usual this week. I really loved the eerie synthetic tones laid over a great deal of this episode’s content, and what we actually saw of Joe’s exchanges with Burroughs was relatively static, but still quite beautiful. Megalo Box’s fundamental aesthetic variables are strong enough that they can still carry not-that-thrilling narrative content; I only hope the final bout against Yuri matches this show’s exceptional delivery with a story worth telling.

This week’s Legend of the Galactic Heroes had the interesting dilemma of centering on a moment so true-to-life it actually felt unrealistic. The fleet commander’s conversation with Commodore Falk, where Falk basically just accused him of being a coward until he got so mad he had a seizure, felt almost preposterously childish given the stakes of this situation – but hey, Trump’s actually my president, so I can’t really say leaders who crow about meaningless ideals of strength while personally being the most immature, temperamental, and weak-willed people in the world are all that unrealistic. The only response we’ve really got is Yang’s perpetually fatigued smile, that sad smile that always seem to contain an acknowledgment of just how selfish and self-destructive of a species we are. On the whole, this episode’s focus on the Alliance’s dwindling supply lines didn’t really allow for too many highlights in terms of either speeches or battles, but it was a necessary illustration of exactly why this was all such a bad idea, and did some reasonable work in further illustrating the relationships between Yang, Reinhard, and their various associates. Certainly not a highlight, but Legend of the Galactic Heroes remains as reliable as ever.