Who will be teaming up next?
Japan has received one shakeup after another since Izuku Midoriya began attending U.A. High. All Might, the Number One Hero, has been forced to retire after his final battle with his archenemy, All For One. Without the Symbol of Peace, villains from long past have started crawling out of the woodwork, and Japan's heroes have been struggling to pick up the slack. To address this, the Public Safety Commission has started training prospective heroes to work in teams to lessen the need for a singular symbol to carry the hopes of society.
To facilitate this and give the students some much needed field experience, the Team Up Mission system was founded. It gives a team of students a one-time team-up with a pro hero in hopes of fostering communication and teamwork among them, even with heroes they don't know. Who will be placed on a team? Which heroes will 1-A learn from? U.A.'s heroes in training eagerly open their invitations to start their latest Team Up Missions!
My Hero Academia: Team Up Mission is a bi-monthly Spin-Off of Kōhei Horikoshi's My Hero Academia written and illustrated by Yoko Akiyama, her second series after My Heroine Academia. It follows an episodic format that gives U.A.'s hero students a chance to team up with and learn from a pro hero with every installment.
Since this takes place at an unspecified time after the Culture Festival arc, all spoilers up to then will be unmarked. You Have Been Warned.
My Hero Academia: Team Up Mission contains examples of:
- Action Hero: As what amounts to superpowered cops fighting supervillains, the heroes of the story do a lot of fighting. However, as Midoriya notes in the first chapter, heroes kick villain ass only a means to help save people.Midoriya: A hero's job isn't to defeat villains. A hero's job is to save people in trouble.
- Anachronic Order: The stories have an episodic format that doesn't necessarily flow one into another. As a result, one story can take place in the winter, and another some time before.
- Batman Gambit: During Bakugo's and Midoriya's team up with Hawks, the hero entrusts them with the task of luring the Spider Villain to a dead end and allow themselves to get caught in order to buy time for him. Hawks is betting on the Spider Villain's pride in his own speed to chase down the boys while Hawks quietly takes care of all of the villain's minions. Once he's done, Midoriya and Bakugo cut themselves free with the feathers Hawks left for them before Hawks corners the villain and allows the boys to finish the fight.
- Blow You Away: Midoriya makes use of his Delaware Smash Air Force to blow away the Deadly Gas infesting an area of town.
- Butt-Monkey: Poor Midoriya still can't catch a break. On his first team up mission, Mirko admonishes him for not doing anything compared to Bakugo's direct and bloodthirsty approach and Uraraka's jump into the action. In another chapter, he's the test dummy for Melissa's and Hatsume's gadget competition, getting crushed by boulders, stripped naked, and stuck in a whirlpool because of the inventors' hijinks.
- The Drifter: Mirko is a new type of hero who doesn't have a hero agency she regularly operates out of. Instead, she bounces all over Japan, setting up temporary offices in hotels and other lodgings, busting crime nearby until she moves on to the next town.
- Holodeck Malfunction: In chapter 3, Melissa and Hatsume simulate so many disasters in the Unforeseen Simulation Joint while testing Midoriya's new costume that it overloads the system and causes all the disasters to go off at once, nearly burying them all under tons of rubble.
- In the Hood: The "villain" of Chapter 1 hides his face in a hood to avoid drawing attention to himself and help contain the Deadly Gas leaking from his body.
- I Work Alone: Mirko is insistent about this, only taking on Midoriya, Bakugo, and Uraraka because the Public Safety Commission ordered her to. Even then, she doesn't try to teach them anything and tells them to simply follow behind her during her usual crimefighting, only providing commentary on their performance.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Bakugo, as usual. He laughs his ass off as Midoriya is repeatedly humiliated by Hatsume's and Melissa's constantly malfunctioning inventions, but leaps in to help the moment Midoriya is in actual trouble. Bakugo even reins in Kaminari and Mineta, getting them to do something productive rather than allow them to chase their Rescue Romance fantasies.
- Late-Arrival Spoiler:
- The story takes place at an unspecified time after the Culture Festival arc. The chapters do not seem to be in chronologically order, as Bakugo appears in his original hero costume during his, Midoriya's, and Uraraka's team up with Mirko, but he is later shown wearing his winter outfit during his team up with Hawks.
- Similarly, Chapter 15 involves Rody Soul and his family from My Hero Academia: World Heroes' Mission showing up to visit Deku and go on vacation in Japan for a weekend. The story assumes that you're already familiar with Rody, Roro, and Lala and the book comes with a suggestion to watch the movie first before reading the manga.
- Mistaken Identity: Invoked. Chapter 14, "Shuffle It Up, Class 1-A!" focuses around Midnight running a class on roleplaying for the sake of going undercover and fooling villains, leading the members of 1-A to dress up as and imitate each other in order to fool a robot and pass a test. Despite dressing up flawlessly for the part, Midoriya struggles to fool the robot due to his personality being so different from Bakugo's. But this disguise is good enough to fool a young boy who'd only seen Bakugo on TV and Midoriya doesn't correct him because he's trying to get into the part. So when the boy shows up to chat later, the real Bakugo is confused and scares the boy off with his attitude.
- Not Evil, Just Misunderstood: The villain Mirko's team confronts at the end of their first team up mission doesn't want to cause any harm at all. Instead, he's spent years holding back his poison gas Quirk and is searching for a place where he can release it all before he's torn apart from the inside. Mirko and Bakugo would have kicked his ass had Midoriya not realized this, defusing the situation and inspiring Bakugo to burn away all the gas with his explosions. However, the gas that did escape while the "villain" was fleeing the heroes incapacitated several people, so he was arrested by the police regardless. Luckily, most of the passerby were understanding and signed a petition to get his sentence lightened.
- Precocious Crush: A little girl comes to the Fatgum agency looking for her "prince", a handsome hero who helped her during a villain attack. Despite the triviality of the request, Fatgum takes his intern, Amajiki, as well as Iida and Yaoyorozu across town in hopes of finding the hero in question. It turns out, Fatgum is the prince she was looking for. More specifically, his slimmed down version after he burns up all of his fat for a counterattack. She's distraught when he starts fattening himself up again.
- Save the Villain: After realizing that the Not Evil, Just Misunderstood guy they were chasing was simply looking for a way to release his Deadly Gas Quirk before it killed him, Midoriya jumps between Mirko and Bakugo to break up the fight. Bakugo then has Uraraka float himself and the guy into the air so he can burn it away without hurting anyone else.
- Shout-Out: The series is pretty obviously homaging various "team up" comics by Marvel Comics and DC Comics.
- Useless Accessory: Subverted. Midoriya has had the same metal mask hanging around his neck since his costume was first repaired after the Sports Festival, but has never worn it. This story reveals that it can also work as a makeshift gas mask.
