Endeavor Agency Arc

The seventeenth story arc of My Hero Academia and the eighth within the Rise of Villains Saga, running from chapter 241 to chapter 252 and adapted as Episodes 101 through 106. It sits between the Meta Liberation Army arc and the Paranormal Liberation War arc, though the anime places it before the former rather than after.

With the Hero Work-Studies restarted, Class 1-A's three strongest train under the country's new top professional and unknowingly prepare for a war. Endeavor, meanwhile, undergoes an epiphany nobody would have predicted of him.

December closes with an interview that Shoto Todoroki answers straight and Katsuki Bakugo answers by shouting, which gets his footage cut entirely. Mt. Lady arrives as a guest lecturer on handling the press, and Shota Aizawa notes that she, and every other professional, has changed since the public rallied behind Endeavor. Izuku Midoriya manages a thin wisp of Blackwhip and impresses nobody. The Hero Public Safety Commission then orders every hero-course student into work-studies, an instruction the faculty reads as a warning about something enormous coming. At the Christmas party, with Eri in a Santa outfit and nowhere left for Izuku or Katsuki to intern, Shoto offers them his father's agency.

Keigo Takami is deep inside the Paranormal Liberation Front with Skeptic's listening devices seeded through his wings, unable to say anything aloud. When Starservant rampages through a business district preaching the end of days, Endeavor shatters his glass sphere and Hawks appears from nowhere to flatten the man's followers, stealing the students' moment on purpose. Afterward he presses the Meta Liberation War book on Endeavor with a face that does not match his voice, and marks certain sections. Locked in his office, Endeavor reads the highlights and decodes the message: the Front intends to move within four months. Reporting back to the lieutenants, Hawks leaves a feather behind and hears that Tomura Shigaraki gains a new power on the same timetable. In Kyudai Garaki's laboratory, Tomura submits to an operation the doctor promises will bring four months of hell and then power beyond All For One's own, enough to put One For All within reach.

At the agency, Endeavor asks the three what they want. Izuku's rambling explanation of Air Force and Blackwhip loses everyone in the room except Endeavor, who follows it exactly and tells the boy he is like them, a person carrying a power that can maim him. Katsuki wants only to find what he lacks. Shoto refuses the question's premise and says the quiet part aloud: he came to use his father, his inspiration is All Might, he has not forgiven anything, and Endeavor should stop performing fatherhood while his classmates watch. Endeavor takes it and begins the training. Heroes work on rescue, evacuation and battle, he tells them; his agency does all three, and their task over the break is to beat him to a villain.

Fuyumi Todoroki's dinner puts the family in one room, where Natsuo Todoroki eats fast and leaves, and Izuku suggests aloud that Shoto has already decided to forgive and is only holding out for the moment to do it. Enji prays at the altar holding Toya Todoroki's photograph. Outside, Ending, an ex-convict obsessed with dying by Endeavor's hand, takes Natsuo hostage with his Whiteline Quirk.

Endeavor freezes at the sight of his son's face, and the three students go past him. Shoto builds and releases his fire the way he was taught, Katsuki condenses a single explosion to snatch Natsuo out of a car's path, and Izuku, working one step at a time as instructed, finally lands Blackwhip and catches every falling vehicle. Shoto ends it with a fire-covered punch and an ice wall. In one week they have grown enough to save a life, and they have beaten Endeavor to a villain exactly as ordered.

Endeavor admits he hesitated because saving Natsuo might have cost him his son's voice forever. Natsuo tells him he will never forgive him, and Endeavor answers that he is not asking for forgiveness, only the chance to atone. He tells Fuyumi he will build a home for her, Natsuo and Rei Todoroki, and live alone in the old house, because his presence only hurts them. Katsuki, meanwhile, has chosen a hero name and refuses to say it to anyone before Best Jeanist. Elsewhere, Best Jeanist is presumed killed by Hawks, and Starservant's warning that Endeavor will drag the world into darkness goes unexamined.