Mei may not be a hero, but she plays an important role on the sideline.
Kodoani.com – Mei Hatsume is a student in the UA High School Support Course in the anime My Hero Academia. Although she’s only appeared a few times in the anime so far, she’s quite an important character. Her inventions help other characters, such as Izuku Midoriya, the main character. Mei is a support character that creates the weirdest and most effective support items. When it comes to supporting characters, Mei Hatsume takes the mechanical cake.
She is often seen covered in dirt or oil from her latest invention. She views failure with optimism, using destroyed inventions to learn better next time. Hatsume practically lives in the UA High School Support Room. Speaking of Support, what exactly is that?
Brief explanation of UA high school courses
My Hero Academia has briefly presented the courses students can pursue so far. In UA High School, there are three courses that students can pursue: Hero, General, and Support. The students of the Hero Course are trained to become future professional heroes. The General Course is full of general education students.
Most of them don’t want to become professional heroes, but they can switch to the Hero Course like Hitoshi Shinsou in Season 5. The Support Course is the place for Mei Hatsume. Support Course students create boosters and learn how to support future pro heroes.
Character
Her personality is refreshing in the sense that she’s a light comedian, but she’s also more of a personality than a light note. She’s somewhat in the sights of a cranky mechanic, aka “wrench wrench,” as she’s often seen with oil on her face and holding a wrench. This is extremely reminiscent of Winry Rockbell from Full Metal Alchemist, who was also in a similar situation. Explosions are a common occurrence in Support with her because she’s experimented a lot. Hatsume’s need to invent good boosters earns praise from the Support Course’s lead teacher, Power Loader, who tends to collaborate with her. Many other students feel annoyed or even scared by Hatsume’s forward-thinking and superhuman personality despite how much she helps.
While a lot of her personality revolves around her inventions, other installments can be seen throughout the series. Hatsume is extremely outgoing and isn’t afraid to get up close and personal with other characters. She tends to be the “straight to the point” type of girl. She seems to have only inventions on her mind, even in fan service scenes like the one where she falls on top of Deku in Season 3, episode 14. In a classic anime scene like this, typically the girl is seen slapping the guy even if she is the one at fault. On the other hand, Hatsume doesn’t care about his position, and starts rambling about his ideas, curious as to why Deku would visit the UA Support Department.
She seems to care only about whether her inventions are useful and noticed. She even refers to her inventions as her “children” throughout the series. In the recent season 5 OVA “Laugh Like You’re In Hell,” she used her genius of invention to create a robot that could help with the task. Unfortunately, her robot malfunctioned due to the villain’s monstrous speech, and she was really upset about it. Hatsume seems to view his inventions as pets or works of art rather than simple machines. Her motivation comes from the need for inventions rather than money, even though she desperately wants more investors.
What does Hatsume do?
Hatsume creates a variety of items and equipment to support Hero Course students. Most notably, she is the main person to refurbish Deku’s equipment when he needs to strengthen his limbs. She initially suggested a prototype suit that looked like a headless mech suit, but Deku thought it was a bit too bulky.
Hatsume agreed and redesigned the concept quickly and efficiently. With some input from Deku, she designed his Iron Armor Stand and Air Gloves. She practically gives Deku his Force Glove the next day with clearly tired eyes but an excited attitude. It was her technical expertise that kept Deku from completely destroying her body.
Hatsume has a question?
Some viewers may forget that Mei has a confusing situation, as it is not so obvious. Her dexterity is a mutant form, which means it’s part of her body. Other characters of the mutant type are Class 1-A’s Fumikage Tokoyami and the Villain Alliance’s Spinner. Although her vice is less visible than others, it still falls into the same category due to the fact that it changes her irises. This also means she can’t turn off her freaky habit.
The name of her prank is Zoom and it makes it so she can focus on something up to five miles away. Often, she is seen using it to find investors for her backing gear. This can be seen in her hilarious “fight” with Iida during the UA Sports Festival in Season 2, episode 8 when she zooms in on investors to see them talk about her potential. Her downside is that she can’t hear anything with it, just sees everything. If Mei Hatsume were to pursue becoming a regular Professional Hero, she would have the same great scouting potential as Kyouka Jirou.
Relationships with other characters
Since My Hero Academia has a million and one characters, it’s hard for Hatsume to interact with all of them. She is mostly seen with Deku, Iida and sometimes Uraraka. Hatsume’s relationship with Deku was the most developed as they had the most screen time together. In certain episodes, Deku can be seen talking to Hatsume about boosters. If Deku had remained silent all his life, then it was possible that he would have ended the Support program with Hatsume. They make a great team and even though Deku is on a Hero course, they can still come up with ideas for each other.
Iida is mostly seen interacting with her during the UA Games, where he agrees to wear her support gear. However, their relationship began to become difficult, when it was revealed that Hatsume was simply using Iida as a guinea pig to showcase his inventions to potential investors. . The scene where she uses Iida to show off really demonstrates her unique mindset when it comes to her invention. It also shows her relaxed attitude about how others think of her. Iida actually called her a “scoundrel” for tricking him, but she refused.
Despite the scene where she tricks Iida, she is an incredibly kind character. While her dedication to assistive devices shows how excited she is about engineering, it also shows how dedicated she is to helping people. Hatsume is very hardworking and wants to help professional Heroes by being a hero in a different way. She believes that “developing tools is how the course aids in making heroes” and explains this to Deku in the manga.