After the teachers see how well the students did in the Battle Trial, they now take a trip to the Unforeseen Simulation Joint Facility to train their rescue skills. However, villains unexpectedly show up and now the students must battle and survive their first real-life fight against actual villains.
Class 1-A is sent away in a training session to practice for disasters. Once in the area, escorted by Aizawa and Thirteen, they are surprised by a sudden mass villain invasion. The villains are led by a strange young man named Tomura Shigaraki, with a huge black humanoid monster named Nomu by his side; Shigaraki claims to want to kill All Might.
Kurogiri, a villain with teleportation powers, manages to scatter the students across the different zones and subsequently lethally harms Thirteen when she tries to defend the students. Aizawa goes to the forefront and fights against all the small villains by himself. Eijiro and Katsuki are isolated on a destroyed building. Fumikage and Koji are in a stormy city. Shoto is isolated and surrounded by villains. Momo, Kyoka, and Denki fight against villains in a stony area. Izuku, Tsuyu, and Mineta get together in a boat surrounded by water-based supervillains. The class members still together at the entrance combine their strength to get Tenya out of the building and speeding towards UA to get help.
Izuku manages to use the powers of Tsuyu and Mineta combined with his own to get away from the boat and trap the enemies at the bottom of the water. Shoto and Katsuki flawlessly deal with enemies. Kyoka, Momo, and Denki, using pragmatism and ingenuity, are able to get a hold of the villains.
Izuku gets to the shore, but they are perceived by Shigaraki, who had just severely harmed Aizawa with the Nomu's help. Shigaraki threatens to destroy Tsuyu's head with his quirk, but they are saved in the nick of time by All Might showing up. All Might fights to a standstill against the Nomu, who Shigaraki reveals was specifically made to fight All Might, and is able to absorb impacts making him immune to his power. A team effort of Kurogiri and the Nomu puts All Might's life in danger until a combined effort of Eijiro, Katsuki, Shoto, and Izuku keep him alive while Tsuyu and Mineta drag Aizawa to safety.
All Might manages to figure out a weakness to the Nomu's powers and defeats him but uses up his remaining time in his muscle form. He tries to bluff Shigaraki and Kurogiri into retreating, but the teleporter convinces his boss that Nomu has weakened the pro enough that they can finish him off. As the two run up to try to kill All Might, Izuku suddenly bursts onto the scene and tries to attack Shigaraki. While he is no match for the two villains, his intervention distracts them just long enough for the other teachers to arrive, with Snipe poking holes in Shigaraki with his gun. He and Kurogiri retreat and Izuku helps All Might cover his weakened form.
Shigaraki and Kurogiri are transported to a bar, where the young villain complains to a mysterious man through a computer monitor about the failure of their mission and that he was wrong about All Might being weaker. However the person speaking to Shigaraki just notes that they were overly optimistic in this case and next time, Shigaraki will show the world that he is someone to be feared.
Back in the school, the students are safe and sound and praised by their bravery against villains. All Might presents Midoriya to Naomasa, a police officer, his best friend, and one of the people in on his secret. Noamasa confirms that Aizawa and Thirteen will make full recoveries in time and that All Might's intervention likely saved the children's lives. All Might, however, denies this and says that it was the villains who underestimated the students and that they will all make fine heroes.
Tropes
- Adaptation Expansion:
- In the anime, All Might's fight with Nomu takes a few minutes and has All Might throwing the Nomu up and down and destroying the ground and the ceiling with his punches.
- We don't get much of it, but we see a bit of other students fighting villains, such as Mashirao.
- All Women Are Prudes: When Momo's costume gets torn up by her Creation Quirk, Kyoka, having little tolerance for nudity, is more embarrassed by Momo's skin exposure than she is.
- Arc Villain: Tomura Shigaraki, with Nomu as The Heavy.
- Big Damn Heroes:
- After Izuku gets dropped into the water zone and almost gets eaten by a shark-based villain, Tsuyu comes from nowhere, drop kicks into the shark's face, and wraps her tongue around Izuku before swimming away.
- All Might's sudden arrival at the USJ, where he busts down the door and reassures his students, is framed this way. He then proceeds to take down several minor villains although he finds out that Nomu is a far more difficult fight.
- Katsuki, Eijiro, and Shoto all arriving on the scene to save All Might from almost being bisected, allowing the Symbol of Peace to get back up and start fighting again.
- Izuku flying towards All Might and trying to stop Shigaraki from touching him. While he isn't able to do much against the villain, and in fact almost gets killed, his intervention distracts the villains long enough for the teachers to arrive. All Might later thanks Izuku and tells him he would have died if not for him.
- The rest of the teaches arrive and proceed to make short work of the low-ranked villains, saving Denki from the electric-based villain, and shooting Shigaraki full of holes. With this intervention Kurogiri decides to make a getaway with his boss.
- Bittersweet Ending: More hanging on a sweet then bitter side. Students are rescued from unforseen danger with little to no injuries surviving their first villain encounter, majority of the League members are captured, and despite major injuries Aizawa and Thirteen got, they end up alive. However, All Might shortened his usage of One For All even more than ever and it's revealed that things are only going to get worse from then, with a hint that Shigaraki will become a much greater threat in the future.
- Bloodier and Gorier: Aizawa's injuries and Snipe shooting Shigaraki's limbs are much more bloody in the anime than they were in the manga.
- Cerebus Syndrome: Things turn dark the moment the League of Villains shows up, as most of the students have never seen actual villains up close.
- Characterization Marches On: Shigaraki acts very different from what he behaves like in subsequent appearances, being more unhinged, nervous and prone to use video game lingo as metaphors. Even before his latter Character Development kicks in, in his next appearance, he uses video game lingo to a much lesser degree, and is not nearly as nervous as he is here. Slightly justified, since this is his first solo mission for the League of Villains.
- Chronic Hero Syndrome: All Might's tendency to get involved in any minor skirmish he can find ends up being deconstructed in this arc. Since he spends all morning taking down minor villains that other pros could handle, he almost completely burns through his time and can't make it to the USJ. This also means that when he does show up, he only has a limited amount of time to defeat Nomu before he runs out of steam, and afterwards he can barely stay on his feet and defend himself when Shigaraki and Kurogiri try to kill him.
- Conservation of Ninjutsu: Invoked by the League of Villains during their raid on the USJ; while the majority of villains are rough and tumble thugs, they've been saving Nomu specifically for All Might.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Shoto gives another one of these, easily taking out the thugs that the League of Villains brings to attack USJ.
- Darker and Edgier: Comparing to previous arcs at least, we get an actual showdown with villains, who are very dangerous.
- Exact Words: Important during All Might's fight with Nomu.All Might: He said your power was shock absorption, not nullification! That means there's a limit to what you can take, right?!
- Failed a Spot Check: The villains never bothered to look up the students' Quirks before storming the USJ. While many of them are bested by the students, after being teleported to different areas, only a few are lucky enough to capture them before All Might and the other Pros arrive to stop them. Izuku lampshades this when he realizes that while he, Tsuyu, and Mineta have been sent to a water area, Tsuyu's Frog Quirk gives them a good advantage thanks to her jumping and swimming skills.
- Kung-Fu Sonic Boom: The clash between All Might and Nomu resulted in gale-force wind that prevented anyone from getting within several meters of the fight.
- Near-Villain Victory: While the plan was a bit thrown together, the League comes alarmingly close to succeeding in their plan of killing All Might multiple times. If not for multiple interventions by the students, it's very possible that the Symbol of Peace would have been killed right there and then.
- Nose Bleed: Denki gets one after noticing Momo's costume has been torn up by her Creation Quirk.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Izuku always sees All Might performing heroics with an iconic smile on his face, which is why he anticipates that things are about to get really serious when the Pro Hero is seen without one.
- Pervert Revenge Mode: When Mineta touches Tsuyu's breasts twice during the arc, she slams him onto the boat, and later dunks him to the point of near-drowning.
- Red Herring: Nomu wasn't meant to kill All Might, he was meant to simply contain him. Kurogiri was supposed to kill him by bisecting him with his portal quirk. Thankfully, this doesn't happen.
- The Stinger: In the 13th episode and thus final episode of 1st season, in post-credit scene, we get a first look on Hero Killer Stain, hanging on the rooftup of the building, serving his role as Knight of Cerebus.
- Things Get Real: The students end up having to fight real villains when they were doing a training session.
- We Will Meet Again: While he is being teleported away, Shigaraki tells All Might that he hasn't seen the last of the League and promises that one day he will succeed in killing him.
- Wham Episode: Chapter 13 starts off like a regular lesson-of-the-day chapter, only to turn into a life and death situation at the end, when the League of Villains reveal themselves to the students.
