‘My Hero Academia’ Reveals New Best Girl With Serious ‘Sherlock’ Ties

My Hero Academia‘s latest episode was full of content original to the anime production (meaning not seen in series creator Kohei Horikoshi’s original manga), and fans have agreed that the series even handles its filler episodes excellently.

But one of the major reasons the episode has gotten fans’ attention is the addition of brand new Seiai Academy, led by the poised and super intelligent Saiko Intelli. She’s giving off major Sherlock and Jimmy Neutron vibes.

Saiko Intelli was introduced during the Hero License Exam as her school pinned down Yaoyorozu, Shoji, Tsuyu, and Jiro inside of a building. Saiko made a huge impression on fans for her demeanor and look, first off, but it’s her Quirk that made her stand out from the crowd all the more.

With the unique “High IQ” quirk, Saiko’s intelligence (which starts at an IQ of 150 points) multiplies every time she drinks tea and closes her eyes. The resulting visual of plans being made around her drew parallels to Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss’ Sherlock television series. In that series, when Sherlock (played by Benedict Cumberbatch) plans his next move it’s often visualized for the audience with numbers and words floating around in the air.

Saiko’s quirk acts in pretty much the same fashion, but that’s not the only hilarious parallel. Fans have likened it to everything from the “Galaxy Brain” meme, the famous “Math Lady” .gif, Zack Galifianakis’ card counting in The Hangover film series, and even going all the way back to Nickelodeon’s Jimmy Neutron. Every time Jimmy Neutron was hit by inspiration, it was followed by a “Brain Blast” animation which took viewers inside of his brain.

Saiko definitely could have used that same amount of inspiration because even with all of her intelligence, she and Seiai Academy were soundly defeated by Yaoyorozu and company when Yaoyorozu thinks more outside of the box than Saiko expects. Even with all of the intelligence in the world, it doesn’t beat good old fashioned teamwork.

My Hero Academia was created by Kohei Horikoshi and has been running in Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump since July 2014. The story follows Izuku Midoriya, who lives in a world where everyone has super powers but he was born without them. Dreaming to become a superhero anyway, he’s eventually scouted by the world’s best hero All Might and enrolls in a school for professional heroes. The series has been collected into 15 volumes so far, and has been licensed by Viz Media for an English language release since 2015.