Pictured: Shoto Todoroki, Izuku Midoriya, and Katsuki Bakugo, about to bellyflop.
"Game Start" is the first episode of My Hero Academia's third season, and the 39th episode overall.
Before the summer training camp, Class 1-A decides to have some fun at the school pool. Several characters reflect on events thus far.
Tropes exclusive to the anime:
- Anti-Climax: The climactic final race between Midoriya, Todoroki, and Bakugo is immediately stopped by Aizawa, who orders them out of the pool. Lampshaded by one of the students, who claims they were just getting to the good part.
- As You Know: Vlad King asks Eraserhead to confirm 1-A's Quirks to him despite this information being readily available to them as teachers for the audience's benefit; Aizawa's explanation is accompanied by flashbacks of the students' powers in action.
- Batman Gambit: Attempted by Class A's resident creepers. It failed, and failed HARD. Mineta and Kaminari caught wind that the girls of 1-A were organizing a meeting at the school pool to celebrate their break. The two tried to sell Midoriya on the idea of a boys' meeting at the pool at the same time as an excuse to ogle the girls' swimsuits, because if Midoriya was in on it, the teachers would suspect nothing perverse and see it as a training regimen. Unfortunately, Midoriya saw fit to contact all the other guys and invite them to join and quashed any hope of drinking in the sexy... which never had a chance in the first place of happening because UA provided modest and plain uniform swimsuits, because of course a school would do that.
- Beach Episode: The class uses the school pool for some rest and relaxation (or at least the girls do; the guys do endurance training instead). The fanservice part of this trope is played with; while Mineta and Kaminari expected the girls to wear cute, revealing swimsuits, they instead all show up in the conservative School Swimsuit. Ironically, it's the guys who get more fanservice in this episode.
- Evasive Fight-Thread Episode: Played for Laughs. The boys of Class 1-A compete to see who's the fastest, and eventually Izuku, Todoroki and Bakugo, the finalists of the three heats, are about to race... only for Power Nullifier Aizawa to kill the fun upon arriving to inform the students that their time in the pool is up.
- Everyone Has Standards: Mineta is disappointed that the girls aren't wearing bikinis, but still admits he enjoys them in school swimwear. Kaminari is pretty disturbed that Mineta averts this trope.
- Filler: The material covered in this episode is not in the manga, which jumped right into the summer training trip from Shigaraki's attack at the mall. All this does is gently acclimate new viewers to the show and smooth the transition and give the students a little time to ease into their summer before things really heat up. It also shows what Class 1-B looks like in UA's summer uniforms and gives Monoma a chance to mock Class 1-A about their class having five people stuck in remediation (which lends credence to an ironic moment coming up later), before Kendo gives him the routine Dope Slap and another classmate from 1-B remarks he's scary. However, the one thing which isn't filler is the brief Imagine Spot Mineta has of the 1-A girls in swimsuits, which is actually a summer vignette from one of the MHA volumes.
- Honesty Is the Best Policy: Mineta and Kaminari's lie to use to the pool to train in order to see the girls there wearing skimpy bikinis ended up dragging them into an unwanted training session with the rest of the guys, while the girls spend their time having fun in the water. But how did the girls got permission to use the pool for leisure to begin with? They just asked for it. Lampshaded by Kaminari. Oh, and the girls weren't wearing bikinis, but rather conservative one piece swimsuits that covered all the way down to their knees.
- Mundane Utility: The boys do a race to see who can swim 50m the fastest, and are allowed to use their Quirks. This results in quite a few of them never even touching the water.
- Recap Episode: Partly. Aizawa recites the students' powers to a fellow teacher. Midoriya and Iida recount Midoriya's journey until that point, Todoroki reflects on his own, and all three remember the Stain attack. Tsukauchi and All Might also recount the villains' movements against UA. These are accompanied by flashbacks to important events.
- School Swimsuit: Kaminari and Mineta hoped to see their female classmates in bikinis, but they instead wear school-regulated swimwear. Mineta accepts this either way, which actually disturbs Kaminari.
- Shirtless Scene: All the male students; justified as they're at a pool.
- Uniformity Exception: For some unexplained reason, Mineta imagines almost all of his female classmates wearing skimpy bikinis, but Asui in a one piece swimwear.
