Warning: contains spoilers for My Hero Academia chapter 344!
The final battle appears to be on in My Hero Academia, but the sudden jump from preparation to fighting has confirmed that the series just missed out on what should've been the peak of Shota Aizawa's arc.
It's been known for a while that the endgame of My Hero Academia was imminent, and series creator Kohei Horikoshi had previously indicated that he hopes to wrap up the story by December of 2022. At that time, the story was in a bit of a lull - Deku had returned to the fold from his stint operating solo, and American hero Star and Stripe had sacrificed herself to buy the heroes in Japan some time before All For One achieved his ultimate form. With one week of extra time, it seemed like the series was setting up for a lot of action to take place in that window.
Unfortunately, the end of chapter 342 skipped straight to the "day of the operation," ing over those last few days before the fight. While fans have complained a bit about how slow-paced the story was throughout 2021, it seems almost pointless to introduce this week of preparations only to rush past it. Since much time and effort had been spent on Kurogiri and Aizawa's shared history, it seemed like the story was setting up for Aizawa to have successfully resurrected some aspect of his friend in Kurogiri, a fact which would alter the balance of the fight significantly. Instead, Chapter 344 reveals that it was a student from class 1-B who copied Kurogiri's quirk and made use of it for Chapter 343's Avengers Endgame-style moment - a far less satisfying answer.
Aizawa's backstory with Kurogiri (in his former identity, Shirakumo) has been a major defining aspect of his character; it explains much of his approach towards teaching students, since he's seen how fast hero work can turn ugly. It's come up several times in the main story, particularly when Aizawa discovered the truth of Kurogiri's identity, but more than that, Aizawa and Shirakumo's youth together formed a story arc several chapters long in the spinoff series My Hero Academia Vigilantes. All of this seemed like it was building up to a major moment, especially after they successfully got a single word from Shirakumo out of Kurogiri.
The conclusion of this plotline should've been another confrontation between Aizawa and Kurogiri, possibly even involving Present Mic since he was friends with both of them. Such a twist might also make use of Eri, the young girl with restoration powers that Aizawa had taken into his care. Reawakening Shirakumo's consciousness and gaining the nomu Kurogiri's would have been the ultimate success for Aizawa, making all his sacrifices worth it. It would also have made the use of that teleportation quirk feel earned, and be a major blow to All For One's confidence to have his own creation turned against him.
Since Aizawa's stuck on the sidelines, it's technically still possible that he could have a breakthrough with Kurogiri later in the fight. Even then, however, this would represent a big missed opportunity, and fans will be left to imagine the scenes that could have played out in that week, as Aizawa pleaded and argued and fought for his friend's return, knowing that there was a hard deadline creeping ever closer. One can only hope that My Hero Academia won't skip other major character opportunities as it did for Aizawa.
