WARNING: The following contains spoilers for My Hero Academia, Episode 81, "School Festival," streaming now on Crunchyroll, Funimation, Hulu and VRV.
There are a multitude of anime out there that feature gentlemen thieves -- the sort of characters who politely appear on the scene, declare their intentions to commit a crime, before disappearing quietly into the night. My Hero Academia's cast of characters has expanded rather abruptly with the introduction of its new villain, who might offer an odd twist on this formula, as he seems to buck all previous trends by uploading his crimes on video hosting sites.
But while this might at first appear to be just another fun quirk, the implications of Gentle Criminal's actions run far deeper -- and far more disturbing.
INTERNET SUPERVILLAIN
Gentle Criminal is introduced via the videos he uploads to the internet. The police are tracking the villain's whereabouts online, with him uploading a video of himself robbing a store and being confronted by at least five superheroes, only to beat them all off-camera. At this point, he hasn't even used his quirk in the anime, so his abilities and goals remain unclear.
What is obvious throughout the episode, though, is that the villain has some bigger scheme, pouring tea into the wind as he speculates about what he can do next to outdo his latest series of crimes. The episode ends, however, by inter-cutting between Gentle Criminal's brainstorming for his next big criminal performance and images of Eri, the young girl who Overhaul used prior to create his quirk-neutralizing drugs. This seems to imply that Eri might be entangled in his next goal, though at the present, it appears even he's uncertain what he's going to do next.
HIS OBJECTIVE
So far, Gentle Criminal's only accomplice appears to be La Brava, a small girl who films his crimes for him. At this point in the anime, her quirk is unknown. Noticeably, he seems to have no ties to the League of Villains nor the crumbling yakuza left behind after Overhaul's defeat.
He leaves the money behind after defeating all the villains, so even his objectives are shrouded in mystery. It remains unclear why he's going out to scrounge up all this money and then uploading his crimes to internet hosting sites, going as far as to polish them to make them entertaining for his viewers.
The answer, seemingly, is that crime itself is his objective. He appears to be in it for the thrill of it, using the internet to essentially brag about how powerful and suave he is. That also said, he asks La Brava to cut out the parts of himself committing violence against heroes, which ties in with the fact that he wants to be likable, committing crimes while not hurting those who protect society. In short, it appears he wants to be an outlaw without coming across as evil or violent.
THE PARALLELS BETWEEN CLASS 1-A AND GENTLE CRIMINAL
One odd concept established in Gentle Criminal's introduction is that both he and Class 1-A have an image problem. Gentle Criminal is very conscious of the image he presents to the world. With the School Festival, Class 1-A wants desperately to change how the rest of U.A. Academy sees them. With all of the hero fighting performed by Class 1-A over the last year, a lot of pressure has been put on U.A. Academy. While Class 1-A is directly confronting all of those matters, the other courses, such as the Support or General Studies Courses, are being negatively affected by these actions and can do nothing about it. As a result, Class 1-A is doing their best to make the rest of the school comfortable with them by doing their best to give back to their fellow student body.
On top of that, the League of Villains is actively trying to deface the name of heroes everywhere. All-For-One's big scheme involved breaking society's faith in heroes. If not for the actions of All Might, he would have succeeded in turning the world against U.A. and heroics. However, society's faith in heroes is shaken, as seen by all the children Bakugo and Todoroki had to fight last episode who thought themselves better than heroes.
Both Gentle Criminal and Class 1-A are doing their hardest to put their best face forward, which will only make their inevitable collision course later this season all the more cathartic when one's image is confronted with the reality of their actions. On top of that, with Gentle Criminal filming everything, this could be Class 1-A's chance to go viral online. If they're shown performing heroically, it could salvage 1-A's image problem. Or, potentially, forever tarnish the names of heroes forever. However, with Deku bringing Eri to the school festival, it will no doubt end up going on Gentle Criminal's net account.