U.A. Sports Festival Arc

The fifth arc of My Hero Academia, and likewise the fifth within its opening U.A. Beginnings Saga, covering Chapters 22 to 44 and Episodes 14 to 25. It follows the U.S.J. Arc and leads into the Vs. Hero Killer Arc.

The annual Sports Festival is a nationally broadcast test of physical ability and the single best chance a student has to be noticed. Everyone declares for the win, and Izuku Midoriya finds himself pulled into Shoto Todoroki's private war with his father.

U.A.'s faculty meets over the League of Villains and gets nowhere: no leads on the attackers, only Naomasa Tsukauchi's read that Tomura Shigaraki's childish mindset is what drew followers to him. Shota Aizawa then tells Class 1-A to get noticed at the festival. Ochaco Uraraka reveals she wants the money to make her parents' lives easier, and All Might asks him to announce on that stage that a successor to the Symbol of Peace has arrived, a request Izuku cannot yet accept. Rival classes crowd the doorway to size up the students who survived villains, and Hitoshi Shinso warns that results here can move people between departments in both directions.

The first event is an obstacle race around the stadium. Shoto freezes the field and leads until robot wreckage and a minefield close the gap, and Izuku, refusing to burn his Quirk early, decapitates a robot with scrap metal and then rides that same plate off a detonating mine into first place. The second event is a cavalry battle, and his placement makes his headband worth ten million points and every team's target. Ochaco, Mei Hatsume, and Fumikage Tokoyami ride with him. Neito Monoma steals Katsuki's headband and taunts him into a private war; Tenya's Recipro Burst lets Shoto snatch the ten million; and Izuku, clashing with Shoto, provokes the boy's left side into igniting by accident. Fumikage's quiet grab of a 615-point headband is what puts them through in fourth.

Over the break Shoto explains himself. Endeavor engineered a marriage to produce a son built to outgrow All Might, drilled him from the age of five, and abused his mother until she broke and poured boiling water over his face. He intends to reach the top on his mother's ice alone, as a total repudiation of his father, and beating someone connected to All Might is the proof he wants. Izuku sympathizes and tells him he will win anyway, because too many people are behind him to disappoint.

The tournament begins. Izuku breaks Shinso's Brainwashing when One For All fires on its own, eight strange eyes watching from the dark, and throws him out of bounds. Ochaco puts everything into a meteor shower of rubble against Katsuki and loses only after he blasts it apart. Then Izuku and Shoto meet. Izuku spends his fingers one by one destroying ice with wind pressure, tells Shoto he is shaking from his own frost and still refuses to fix it, and demands he fight with everything. When Izuku insists the fire belongs to Shoto and to nobody else, his mother's words come back, and he ignites, smiling. Their final clash blows through Cementoss' wall and knocks Izuku out of bounds; Shoto advances and Izuku goes to surgery.

Katsuki grinds Eijiro down by exploiting Hardening's decay under repeated hits, and Shoto ices Tenya's engines mid-Recipro Burst. In the final, Shoto hesitates over his left side, remembers his mother's reaction to it, and shuts it off, and Katsuki's Howitzer Impact ends it. Furious at a hollow win, Katsuki has to be chained and muzzled for the medal ceremony.

All Might hands out the medals with advice attached: Fumikage should build strength rather than lean on his Quirk, Shoto has his reasons and the power to resolve them, and Katsuki will be called number one whether he accepts it or not. Endeavor tries to claim Shoto's ignition as proof of obedience and is told the disavowal stands, that the fire only came out because for one second his father did not exist.

Tenya reaches his brother's hospital room and finds Tensei crippled, apologizing for failing to be the model Tenya believed in. Shoto walks into his mother's hospital room, something he has not done in a very long time. Ochaco comes home to a surprise from her parents and cries. Izuku's mother tells him she will keep cheering while the risk keeps frightening her, which convinces him to find his own approach, one that stops frightening everyone who watches.

Elsewhere, a bandaged man stands over a bleeding hero and declares that only All Might deserves the title, and only All Might is permitted to kill him. Kurogiri finds him and tries to recruit him for the League, without success. Izuku's right hand is left scarred and slightly deformed, and Katsuki's performance draws exactly the wrong kind of attention.