Chapter 165

The four keep failing to reach the children of Masegaki Municipal Elementary School. Their teacher tells the heroes that counseling is what the school offers, that its reach has limits, and that these students have shut everyone out. Her hope is that time around trainees will crack them open and bring back something of who they were.

Inasa Yoarashi decides the whole task boils down to making friends, while Katsuki Bakugo just wants the babysitting finished. Katsuki calls out the toughest kid for a fight, and the snotty child from earlier lectures him on his dreadful upbringing instead.

Inasa tries a different tack, asking which of them dreams of heroism, and briefly catches some attention. The spell breaks when a child in his arms informs him that he could never become one himself, since attending a remedial course only piles work onto teachers and heroes. The kids swarm him, leaving him no closer than before. Camie Utsushimi realizes these children are far harder work than expected, though Shoto Todoroki thinks a better angle exists.

In the stands, Endeavor presses on with All Might. He explains that he reached the number two ranking at twenty and understood at once that the summit would never be his, which is why he poured everything into Shoto. Had he wanted the top spot badly enough, he could have smiled at the public the way All Might did, but raw strength was what he actually wanted. All Might notices how unlike himself Endeavor sounds, yet the man refuses to drop the question.

All Might answers that a Symbol of Peace was what the country lacked, and he shaped his whole life around becoming one. He swore to be a beacon of hope and never stopped running at it. Before that era, faces in the street carried anxiety, and even with heroes around, fear persisted. To lift that weight, he shut out the people near him and chased the role, and that was the road he picked. He knows exactly what Endeavor is facing and what the public says about him, and his advice is to stop retracing his footsteps and stop trying to be the same kind of symbol. Endeavor has to pick his own road and settle on his own methods, and All Might tells him not to hurry, which eases him somewhat.

Shoto attempts to interest the children with his own history and gets nothing. Camie proposes showing off what their Quirks can do. The effort slides backwards when one child questions whether the current crop of heroes can save anyone at all. Some of the children start displaying their own Quirks, echoing what their parents told them about their generation turning out better. Katsuki is delighted and offers to take on all of them at once. Hizashi Yamada finds it dispiriting that trainees are struggling against schoolchildren, though he keeps the thought to himself, having retained just enough conscience for that.

The exam students continue to fail at getting the Masegaki children to listen, with Katsuki's challenge and Inasa's hero pitch both backfiring and Shoto's personal history landing flat.

The children begin flaunting their Quirks, convinced by their parents that their generation will surpass the current one.

All Might tells Endeavor to stop retracing his footsteps, and instead to define the number one hero on his own terms, warning him against rushing it.

Installment 165 covers 17 pages of the Remedial Course arc and collects into volume 18. Japan saw it on January 8, 2018, in issue 6 of that year.

All four trainees take the cover: Shoto Todoroki, Camie Utsushimi, Inasa Yoarashi, and Katsuki Bakugo. Episode 79 handles the adaptation. Whirlwind, Explosion, and Half-Cold Half-Hot see use alongside Hellflame and a child's Binging Ball, the Grenadier Bracers appear again, and the Provisional Hero License Course is logged as continuing.

Chapter 164 sits before it, Chapter 166 after.