Warning: contains spoilers for My Hero Academia chapter 322!
As Class 1-A finally persuade Deku to return home in My Hero Academia, fans have been given their first real glimpse at U.A. High School since society began to fell apart, and the changes are jaw-dropping.
In chapter 322 of My Hero Academia, Iida, Bakugo, and the rest of Class 1-A have finally convinced Deku that it's time to stop running and fight together, rather than continue struggling alone. Since the story has followed Deku almost exclusively in recent chapters, it's been a while since anything going on with the school has been shown. Before he left, it was established that the hero schools across Japan were to become designated shelters, a place where civilians would be evacuated to and that could be more easily protected than an entire city. While some civilians who've turned their backs on the idea of heroes have refused, the majority of people had taken up residence in some of the bigger hero schools alongside the students.
While it's been shown before that the hero schools have superior defenses to discourage villain attacks, the sheer scale of the structures in U.A.'s Emergency Security System are incredibly impressive. Walls of thick metal now reach high into the sky, making frontal assaults from the ground irrelevant. What was once a relatively welcoming school campus now looks far more like a prison - a subtle acknowledgement of how bad the situation has become with the villains running free and the innocent forced to keep themselves under lockdown for safety. But as Sero says, "the giant wall is just the tip of the iceberg."
Toru Hagakure (Invisible Girl) begins to elaborate, saying that the system is allegedly capable of combining with that of Shiketsu High's campus, but she's cut off by angry civilians before she can finish. What exactly "combining" means here isn't clear yet, however. The implication seems to be that these Emergency Security Systems aren't just massive; they're mobile, and capable of combining Voltron-style. It could also be that the computer systems of both schools can be tied together for high tech operations, although that wouldn't be quite as crazy as Hagakure claims the system is. Giant robots would certainly be a major divergence from what My Hero Academia has been, but recently chapter 321 had a (non-canonical) splash page showing Class 1-A working on an All Might-shaped mecha, so it might not be as far-fetched as it appears. There's also the possibility that this defensive set-up at U.A. is more akin to Evangelion's Geofront, capable of retracting underground to keep occupants safe and buildings from being damaged. The schools could then be connected underground, so as to facilitate collaboration and/or mass evacuations should one of them be breached.
No matter what U.A.'s secret combining ability turns out to be, the fact remains that in just under a year, this expansive and open school campus has turned into a prison-like fortress. Even for Deku, few things have driven home just how far the world has fallen than seeing his old home in this shape, and it seems to have had more than a little impact on his willingness to cooperate. While the fortress U.A. definitely looks cool, fans of My Hero Academia may find themselves hoping it doesn't have to stick around too much longer.