The students of U.A. compete in a series of events in U.A.'s annual Sports Festival.
A still injured Aizawa warns the students about the upcoming Sports Festival. The event is as big as the Olympics in Japan, and All Might encourages Midoriya to be outstanding in order to make a presence of himself world wide.
The class is introduced to students from other classes, including Class 1-B, their sister and rival class and Shinso, a boy who wants to joining the Hero course, but is stuck on General Studies.
While talking, Uraraka admits to her friends that she wants to be a hero for the money, since her family always had money troubles.
Todoroki, the Class 1-A Ace takes a moment to tell Midoriya he intends to defeat him.
The First Event: Obstacle Race
A race with giant robots, pitfalls, and minefields are the first event. Midoriya realizes that he can't use his quirk so he must focus on wit to get an advantage. Several people show their quirks versatility to get to the end, including a witty engineer named Mei, who shows odd her inventions.
Midoriya takes a large metal plate from one of the defeated robots to use later. At the end of the course, a large expanse of minefields are the final obstacle, Todoroki has a noticable lead, with Bakugo closing in fast. Midoriya gets together a large amount of mines and explodes them with the metal plate, resulting in a large explosion that send him to the front, and after he uses Bakugo and Todoroki as further propulsion, he lands first place, with Todoroki on the second and Bakugo on third.
The Second Event: Cavalry Battle
The top runners in the previous challenge are now divided in groups to fight the cavalry, each one worth a certain amount of points. The four top scoring ones will make it to the next round. Midoriya is worth 10 million points as the first place, so he becomes the target for everyone. He tries to make a group with his friends, but only Uraraka accepts, as Iida decided to also challenge him and step out of his shadow by teaming up with Todoroki.
Midoriya makes a team with Uraraka, Mei (who wants to show off her inventions) and Tokoyami.
Several teams fight along each other, and Midoriya is targeted by almost everyone, with Todoroki targeting him in particular. Monoma, a member of 1-B with a grudge against 1-A, meanwhile attacks Bakugo.
In the end, Todoroki snatches the 10 million points, but Midoriya's team still ranks among the top 4 along with Bakugo's and Shinso's team.
Meanwhile, All Might tries to bond with Endeavor, Todoroki's father and the number 2 hero.
Todoroki takes Midoriya way from the class and explains to him his past and his obsession with defeating him.
The Third Event: Fighting
The four final teams (minus Ojiro and Nirengeki, who ask to step down) are divided in pair in order to fight one on one to determine the winner.
The first fight, between Shinso and Midoriya, ends with Midoriya winning over the former's mind control powers and having a vision related to One For All, but Shinso ends up having a more positive outlook in life and respecting him. The fight between Bakugo and Uraraka is drawn out when she turns out to be a formidable opponent to him, but he still manages to win. Midoriya tells him that the whole plan was hers alone.
After telling Endeavor off, Midoriya fights Todoroki, who finally makes use of his fire powers, helping Todoroki comes to terms with his issues, but losing in the process.
The final fight, between Todoroki and Bakugo, ends with Bakugo as the victor, but only because Todoroki wouldn't use his fire powers like he did against Midoriya which infuriates him. He is tied down to a pole and forced to receive a victor medal from All Might.
After the festival is over, the students get two days off.
Midoriya realizes he needs to learn how to control his powers quick after learning his mother fainted several times watching him compete. Uraraka meets her parents at home as they wanted to congratulate her on her performance. Shoto, motivated by a newly formed friendship with Midoriya, goes to see his mom and start connecting with her again to the surprise of his sister. Iida learns that something terrible happened to his brother during the festival.
Tropes
- Abusive Parents: We learn that Shoto's father, the hero Endeavor is this. Beyond his unpleasant personality, he views Shoto as an extension of his efforts and disregards the rest of his children. This along with a bad marriage led to Shoto's mother snapping due to her inability to handle the stress and Shoto growing to resemble Endeavor to where she retaliated by throwing boiling water on his face. The incident led to Endeavor sending his wife to an institution and Shoto's hatred for his father and fire powers.
- An Aesop: A rather interesting and unconventional one - if you're in a competition, it's important to give it your all even if you have a massive advantage over the rest of the contenders. There are two reasons for this:
- The first is that if you underestimate your enemies it becomes easier for them to completely sweep you off your feet, as shown by Neito and Bakugo both suffering humiliating defeats at the hands of others because they disregarded them as a threat. Neito learns nothing from the experience, but Bakugo learns to judge others by their own merits, and as such secures a win from Uraraka after she lays a pretty devastating trap for him.
- The second is that if you don't give it your all, you're insulting your competitors and disrespecting their efforts. Todoroki holds back on his devastating potential and half of his quirk, which results in a lot of people coming to dislike him. Despite having his own reasons to do so, Midoriya eventually reaches out to him and convinces him that the fire half of his Quirk belongs to him alone, not his father's.
- In relation to this, you can't choose your family, but you can choose to overcome their way of thinking.
- While not explicity mentioned, it's also naive and dangerous to not give your all and in a dangerous field like heroics since lives are one the line.
- Bad Powers, Good People: Hitoshi Shinso has a Quirk, referred to as "Brainwashing", that lets him take total control over anyone who responds to him verbally. Nearly everyone he's ever known remarks how the power is perfect for a villain, but he desires above all else to be a hero.
- Breather Episode: After the intense USJ battle against real-life Villains, the UA student take part in a more public event to make themselves known to various Hero Agencies. While there is some drama involving Shoto Todoroki and his father Endeavor, the arc overall is Lighter and Softer.
- Boxing Lessons for Superman: All Might suggests to Tokoyami to improve his physical conditioning since the latter was defeated by Bakugo when he broke through Dark Shadow and grappled Tokoyami to the ground.
- Chronic Hero Syndrome: Deconstructed. During his fight with Todoroki, Izuku forces himself to break already broken fingers for the sake of simply keeping up competitively to the best of his ability, and comes away from the fight with a permanently disfigured right hand. His need to remind Todoroki to give it his all is valiant, but it costs him the match.
- Curb-Stomp Battle:
- Uraraka has a clear disadvantage against Bakugo, since she needs to get close to touch him to be affected by her Quirk. It's because she refused to give up and had an effective strategy that it wasn't reduced to a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown. Despite her best efforts, she suffers a brutal loss.
- Todoroki does this again, using the full power of his ice side in his battle against Sero after being triggered by Endeavour.
- Degraded Boss: The feared 0-point robots from the entrance exam are reused as obstacles in the Sports Festival race, where several students are easily able to handle them. Discussed by the proctors, who point out that the robots not being treated as hazards to be avoided has a different psychological effect on the kids.
- Double Standard: During Bakugo and Uraraka's fight, many spectators start booing Bakugo for not going easier on a girl. It immediately gets called out by Aizawa; this is the same audience that was fine with the three other male vs female matches, including a boy who could shoot lasers against a female opponent. The only difference is that Bakugo is seen an unlikable jerk who refuses to hold back against someone seemingly weaker, leading the audience to assume that everything he does is to bully his opponent.note
- Establishing Character Moment: All Might's encounter with Endeavor, juxtaposed with Todoroki's description when he speaks to Midoriya, gives the audience a pretty good idea of what he's like. The former shows that he's an unpleasant Jerkass who's very envious of All Might, while the latter sheds light on the Domestic Abuse he put his son and wife through.
- Entertainingly Wrong: Todoroki, having recognized the similarity between Midoriya's powers and All-Might's, but not knowing about the fact that All-Might's power can be deliberately passed down, asks Midoriya if he's All-Might's illegitimate child.
- Famed In-Story:
- Because of its large national audience, students of U.A. have the chance of making their name known across the whole nation at the U.A. Sports Festival.
- Even compared to other U.A. Academy students, Midoriya's class of 1-A is revealed to have become famous after the class was able to repel the villain ambush at USJ. Because of this, both the media and audience pay more attention to them during the sports festival, with other classes largely being overshadowed.
- Greek Chorus: Commentary on the matches for the benefit of the audience switches between the official commentators (Present Mic and Eraser Head), the other students, and the visiting heroes.
- Golden Snitch: As a result of coming in first place in the first round of the sports festival, Midoriya becomes the Snitch in the second round. His point value of ten million is greater than the rest of the students' points combined.
- Know When to Fold Them: Mei wipes the floor with Iida during their match. That is to say, she uses him to promote her gadgets to the audience. Once she is finished and satisfied, she decides to forfeit and give Iida an easy win, much to his annoyance and humiliation.
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome: A lot of the fights in the third round amounted to this in the manga because they were over very quickly. However, all examples of such are completely undone in the anime, where all of the fights happen on-screen (likely not included in the former medium due to time constraints; a manga may be pruned down to meet the demanding release schedule, but an anime has more time to work with and the removed content can help fill out the season's runtime).
- The Perils of Being the Best:
- The final hurdle in the Sports Festival obstacle race is a mine field, which means whoever was in first place is at disadvantage — they have the maximum chance of encountering one of the mines.
- The festival then punishes the winner of the obstacle race by declaring a cavalry battle; every team will is assigned the total of points earned by its members in the race, and the first place position is awarded a whopping ten million pointsnote , making them the biggest target of all. Midoriya, who holds this position, very briefly experiences the combined enmity of everyone in the competition, which All Might was hoping for as a taste of what being the No. 1 hero is like.
- Right for the Wrong Reasons: When Bakugo and Uraraka are paired up to do battle in a tournament, Bakugo keeps a heavy hit in reserve in case Uraraka, who he knows is friends with the ever-wily Midoriya, has some sneaky trick up her sleeve. He's right about the sneaky trick, though Uraraka actually declined Midoriya's help before the match and the idea was wholly her own. Midoriya sets him straight in the next chapter.
- Rocket Jump: During the Sports Festival's first competition, Izuku launches himself into first place by stockpiling land mines and then detonating them all at once, using a fragment of robot armor as a blast shield and platform. He then does it a second time.
- Super Breeding Program: In chapter 31, Todoroki explains the idea of Quirk Marriages, marriages planned with the express purpose of maximizing a Quirk via the children of the couple. Though there is no guarantee that a child born this way will have the desired Quirk mixture.
- Tournament Arc: The Sports Festival, where classes compete to be noticed by sponsors. It even transitions into one-on-one battles for the top sixteen participants from the Human Cavalry event.
- Understatement: Sero's statement, "A little much, don't you think...?" to Todoroki who basically froze him with enough excess ice to be visibly seen from outside the stadium, as in covering roughly one half of the stadium's open roof. Not surprisingly, many of the spectators were shocked and none of them could blame Sero for losing to Todoroki's attack.
- Underdogs Never Lose: Midoriya doesn't hold back in his fight against Todoroki. Regardless, he loses because he needed to have him see reason, allowing Todoroki to use both halves of his Quirk for the first time.
- Warrior Therapist:
- Deconstructed. One good pep talk while battling will hardly solve years of internalized issues, such as what happened between Midoriya and Todoroki. While the former did help the latter overcome some issues with his Abusive Parents, he still has a long way to go to actually overcome them, is still dealing with trauma, and comparing him to his father is still his Berserk Button.
- Reconstructed in the sense that it still provided the push Shoto needed to begin overcoming his trauma. He even notes that he now considers working under Endeavor as despite his hatred of his dad, he acknowledges that Endeavor is the #2 Hero for a reason.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Midoriya tears into Todoroki when he realizes the latter is shivering because of his own ice and is still refusing to use his flame powers to defy his father Endeavor. Midoriya points out that all of the other students are trying their best and giving everything they've got to win. Todoroki deliberately holding back like that is an insult.
