"Deku vs. Gentle Criminal" is the 21st episode of My Hero Academia's fourth season, and the 84th episode overall.
Class 1-A wraps up their dress rehearsal the night before the School Festival. Midoriya realizes that the rope he needs to haul Aoyama with had been frayed during the performance, and elects to go to a hardware store the next morning to buy more. The next day, Hatsume interrupts Midoriya's early-morning training with All Might to hand him the new gauntlets he had requested. He gets caught up in using them and has to rush to the store, stumbling across Gentle and La Brava as they exit the neighboring cafe. Midoriya recognizes Gentle as the villain from the video he had seen the other night, and draws him into battle when he realizes Gentle means to sneak in to the school festival.
This episode contains examples of:
- Batman Gambit: Gentle threatens to drop a steel beam on a civilian, knowing that Midoriya will leap to catch it and trap himself. He even explains that he had no intention of dropping it on the man and just wanted to trap him.
- Contrived Coincidence: Midoriya's battle with Gentle relies on quite a few: the rope for the performance had to be frayed, Yaoyorozu (who could make more) had tucked in early, and Hatsume finishing his gauntlets earlier meant he went on his shopping trip late. Thus, he arrived at the nearest hardware store just as Gentle was exiting the neighboring cafe. Further, Midoriya only recognizes Golden Tips Imperial because Yaoyorozu had served it the other night, and the two of them talk long enough for Midoriya to recognize Gentle's voice from a video he accidentally clicked that same night.
- Hypocritical Humor: Kaminari calls his classmates out on their unwillingness to wake Yaoyorozu to make more rope when they have no problem asking him to charge their phones.
- Race Against the Clock: Midoriya gets to the hardware store at 8:30 AM, and has to defeat Gentle before the class performance at 10. Emphasized by the In-Universe time being updated as the fight proceeds.
- Versus Title: "Deku vs. Gentle Criminal", pitting the protagonist and the Arc Villain against each other.
