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Thoughts on My Hero Academia

Throughout all my pretty much status updates about HeroAca as I was watching it, I never really said what I thought about the show beyond “I enjoyed it”, so since I’m bored and want to write instead of trying to sleep, I’m gonna uh, do that.

So season 1 was pretty fun I felt, I didn’t rewatch the first 2 episodes that I had seen like, a year prior, because I recall them being kinda boring and feeling like they would’ve flown better as a single double-length episode, though from 3 onwards the show felt paced quite nicely. It’s a pretty satisfying underdog narrative seeing Deku learn how to use this quirk that absolutely fucking physically decimates him, and season 1 did a pretty good job of having that learning process feel slow yet rewarding – Deku uses his quirk in not necessarily creative but decently interesting and pretty shounen-hype ways, so lots of the stuff was still fun to watch. Little attention is given to the cast outside of Deku and All Might, though most of 1-A have enough appealing basic traits to where you don’t really hate them, and the aforementioned All Might is genuinely a really fun and loveable mentor character, plus by far the most hype moment in the season was All Might’s fight with Nomu, where Bones went fuckin sicko mode and we just got this hype as hell display of some really great sakuga. Loved it. The League of Villains themselves felt really not interesting honestly, though they at least feel plenty threatening at this point, certainly 1-A felt very outclassed which made All Might’s appearance all the more hype and relieving and stuff. Overall a pretty fun season and a good start to Deku’s character, though in being as focused on him as it was despite such an expansive cast made it feel pretty secular, and a fair amount of the content sorta just had generic shounen impact and not much else. I also couldn’t stand Bakugo, I’m not the sort that really cares about “oh Bakugo is evil and abusive to Deku” or anything like that, frankly I couldn’t give two shits, I just think he’s a really grating shounen rival played up to an obnoxious degree and no amount of “oh he tries really hard” or whatever managed to make me care whatsoever. Overall had enough fun with relatively little issues to where I felt 7 was a good score.

Season 2 opens on a tournament arc, which can be a red flag for shounen, but HeroAca pulled it off really well I felt. Having just complained about season 1’s Deku focus making stuff feel really secular, I greatly appreciated how much this arc opened up the world of the show – we learned a lot more about not just the characters we’re already acquainted with from 1-A, but some other pricks too from all the other classes. Arguably it might’ve been better off focusing on all of 1-A but I think this setting’s a good opportunity to bring in the other classes, and the rest of 1-A still have all the time to develop, so like, yeah. The race before the actual fights wasn’t that interesting, though Deku going Plus Ultra with the debris on the landmine was pretty hype, but the actual fights are what were worth staying for, and they were really solid. Before that though was the cavalry battle, I thought it was sorta meh, the million points were a fun gimmick that made it not terrible though. Moving on to the real fights, Deku’s fight with Shinso wasn’t fun to watch and iirc Deku wins because he’s Deku so that was lame, but afterwards they were great. I think Ochako should’ve beat Bakugo in that fight since she did do the ”I’m 3 steps ahead” thing and it felt like she only lost because Bakugo’s role in the narrative is main rival whereas hers is closer to love interest so why should she win? And that was lame. But nah otherwise they were sick, cause fuckin, Deku vs Todoroki is honest to god hype as fuck, I think Todoroki has a pretty solid character arc throughout this arc that impacts on his character in the future in nice ways, plus we got more Bones sakuga and that was sick as fuck as well. Todoroki losing to Bakugo is whatever, I get why, though I do wish all of that thinking about his quirk and stuff that Todoroki supposedly did after this point was shown to us a little bit more.

Next arc is Hero Killer and first off is meeting Gran Torino, who I felt was pretty annoying and his role as a mentor is done in a really boring way, he really is just cranky old fuck with nothing to make him likeable or distinct. Then we get the actual Stain stuff, and I gotta say yo, I did not like Stain. Ugly ass character design aside, Stain’s supposed to be this sort of anti-villain type character that hates what heroes are these days and is trying to incite a revolution – he kills heroes to send a message unless he respects them in which case they can stay alive or whatever. The problem is though, the problem Stain tackles is one that doesn’t exist in the narrative, or at least hasn’t been shown to us. Heroes are obsessed with money and glory or whatever and being a true people who saves for the sake of saving is what Stain hates but we never get to see that at all, he’s fighting an issue made up to give him a motive so I didn’t give a fuck at all. I mean maybe Ochako’s said she wants to be a hero for money so she can support, thank and reward her parents, but that’s one person, with noble cause, and whom Stain wouldn’t know anyway, so who fuckin cares. Fuckin Alpharad out here “Stain’s best villain” and “if you can’t relate to a villain they’re a bad villain” like dude that’s such a shit take. Fortunately the fight against Stain is pretty great, Iida has a pretty nice arc here, Deku’s still fun to watch at this point as he works out 5% or whatever, Todoroki gets to show up and be cool, it’s a pretty fun time. Even if I didn’t like Stain it was nice seeing him get beat the fuck out of, and while he sorta gets up from what should be him out of commission a few too many times, every time they take him out is better than the last so I sorta didn’t mind.

All the fights against the teachers were pretty engaging and let us see more of 1-A which is always appreciated, Momo got a pretty good character moment alongside Todoroki, and I did honestly enjoy Deku and Bakugo fight and then work together in their weird little way to take on All Might, who himself felt like as much of an insurmountable wall as he should. Fun little mini-arc. And then I liked the encounter with Shiguraki afterwards – dude felt like a generic villain in season 1 but seeing him be inspired to do worse based off of Stain’s popularity and have that chat with Deku, that was all pretty cool, it’s neat seeing the existence of one villain tie into the eventual motives of another like that. Things were looking up for Shiguraki as a character as the point. Because of that, it’s really disappointing that in both of the next seasons he sorta just feels like any evil mastermind type villain, but fuckin, I loved the bit in season 4 when he and the squad fuck up Overhaul in the ambulance. I’m getting ahead of myself though, so let’s get back on track. Season 2 was overall really fun, it dealt a lot more with a wider cast and I think it did a great job at that, and the shounen hype moments were a lot more shounen hype. Deku’s underdog arc is sorta trailing behind him at this point, but he’s still enough of an underdog for you to want to root for him, so yeah. I gave season 2 an 8/10.

Season 3 opens on the forest training arc, which I fuckin loved. The tiny bit of slice of life we get before it is appreciated, and then all the actual fights are hype as fuck, we get to see a lot of different events transpire at once that are all really exciting and fun, 1,000,000% Delaware Detroit Smash is absolutely incredible, I fuckin loved when the dude pulled the gun on Tetsutetsu that was sick as hell, having 1-B in there in general opened things up nicely, this entire arc was just high-stakes hype as hell shounen-fun and I enjoyed pretty much every second of it. Seeing Bakugo get kidnapped and the ensuing public fallout was all fun stuff as well that allowed the next arc to tie really neatly into this one.

Speaking of, that next arc is pretty great. I’d maybe call it the best arc even? We get a fairly good cast of randos from 1-A that go on the save Bakugo mission and that was fuckin great, their actual saviour plan of flying through the sky was sick as hell, and what really makes this arc is the All Might vs All For One fight. If you’re reading this far, you’re probably into HeroAca to some degree, and you’ve probably seen this fight, so I don’t even need to explain how hype it is. But just… fuckin

It might be the most hype anime fight I’ve ever seen?

All Might versus All For One is just however long amount of time it is spent in a state of sheer, overwhelming fight, and desire for All Might to conquer this fuckin absolute monster of a villain, I wasn’t even that invested in All For One as a villain but what backstory we’ve learned at this point is enough for the fight itself to feel meaningful, and moreover, just to use the show’s own imagery, those last flames of One For All being pushed to their absolute units is just fuckin, it’s incredible. I absolutely adored this fight with every fibre of my being because even though most of the previous fights had been pretty great, this was just the moment where I just felt the hype the most, and this is especially helped by a moment so stunningly animated as to be a contender for most hype sakuga moment I’ve ever seen. Fuck dude this arc was amazing.

Next arc was pretty weak in comparison. The first phase of this test was the ball exercise and it was sorta just pretty decent for the most part and not much else, though I did like the stuff with Momo’s group quite a fair bit. And then after that is all the rescue stuff, it’s pretty neat, and then we get Pro Heroes being villains, and it’s all pretty good and fun. But what sucks about it is the contrived as fuck excuse to have Todoroki and what’s his name be fighting each other. I don’t mind that they failed for that since it’s a fair narrative consequence to have, even if it means Todoroki spends the next loads of the show just being like “I need to catch up” which was boring, but fuckin, staying on topic, Todoroki’s history with the dude is why they’re fighting, fair enough, but we’re supposed to feel like Todoroki’s grown by this point, right? So shouldn’t he just fuckin, apologise to the dude? Pull a fuckin “sorry about being a prick, I was too focused on hating my dad” or something like that, he doesn’t need to divulge his entire history or anything but even the slightest explanation could’ve solved that whole situation and I really hated that we had such a huge fallout because one character couldn’t be bothered saying something so basic that he should’ve said given his apparent arc.

Closing out the 3rd season is a fight between Deku and Bakugo that I honestly thought was pretty fun, a lot that being to do with how much Deku ends up enjoying himself at 8% and stuff, feels like a good development for him. And I was, okay with the result of the fight for Bakugo’s character as well, that stuff about holding Deku to his word or whatever and blah blah blah they push each other further. The thing is I think it’s a good moment for Bakugo relative to what his character is, but while I’ve grown tolerant of Bakugo by this point he still annoys me enough to where I’m not invested in this moment for his character. I can recognise that it’s neat and that’s my only opinion on it, it doesn’t make me like him more or anything. Still a good closing note for the season at least. Oh also at the start of this arc everyone moved into a dorm and we had a decent slice of life moment where they all share their rooms or whatever, at this point in the show we’ve spent enough time with most of the cast for this moment to work so I quite enjoyed it. And that’s season 3, I gave it an 8/10 as well, 2 pretty okay arcs and 1 really really good arc will just do that, so, yeah.

Oh also season 3 introduces some new characters at the very end in the form of U.A’s Big Three and I wish more had been done to suggest they’d existed before this, but whatever. They’ll all play a prominent role in season 4 so I’ll talk about them in a bit I guess.

Speaking of, season 4’s first arc sees Deku be introduced to Sir Nighteye by Mirio of the Big Three, and just to get Sir Nighteye out of the way, fuckin hated him. His character’s not even remotely interesting, his obsession with humour isn’t an appealing character trait to balance that out, his quirk doesn’t do as much for the narrative tension as it’s supposed to and it’s fucking lame that Deku escapes his vision because he’s Deku, and while I’m glad he died because hey HeroAca can kill off characters, it’s obviously gonna have no impact if you kill this dude in the same arc you introduced us to him when you’ve done nothing to earn it. And then speaking of that arc, it felt really, flaccid to me I guess? All the events sorta just happen with no transition into them, and it ends up being this way grander in scale thing than it looked like it would be. I actually really like the idea of using quirk reversal to restore the basically defunct Yakuza to what it was in quirkless society, at least in theory, but Overhaul’s fucking boring, the Yakuza overlord in a coma’s boring, it’s all stuff that ends up being way more boring in execution than the premise would make you want. And Eri’s cute, sure, but she is just a plot device, her basically healing on Deku is so cool and hype an idea but the fight that accompanies it is really dull and visually not that stellar. Also Mirio’s role in this arc feels similarly odd. Because the thing is his narrative role anyway is sorta just like, a slightly further along Deku that causes a tiny rift between him and All Might for a minute. And then what else is Mirio? His quirk’s cool as fuck but his actual character has about as much actual interest in its execution as the rest of this entire arc. Him losing his quirk had very little impact, him continuing to fight on is pretty sick though and it seems like he’ll continue having a presence which is at least quite good, keeps Eri in the narrative too which I’m okay with because she’s cute.

Speaking of keeping them in the narrative, the next arc is the school festival arc, which felt like a well earned break given all the shit all the characters constantly go through. Or it would do, if not for Gentle Criminal, a villain who comes out of nowhere, isn’t remotely interesting, has an even worse sidekick, and whose interactions with Deku are lame and forced as hell, they try to artificially inflate his importance so much, Deku saying he’s the toughest opponent he’s ever faced and that Deku could have turned out like Gentle Criminal, it’s all fake bullshit they say to pretend this mattered, when really it just distracted from the one moment of levity we had. I hated Gentle Criminal is the point. Also this season’s 2 main villains are obviously Overhaul and Deku so that’s just a really weak showing, but more than that I hated that it ends up feeling like Deku’s the only one who even takes them on? I mean, he literally is with Gentle Criminal, meanwhile Overhaul gets up after being defeated every single time, and unlike with Stain the succeeding beatdowns aren’t better or anything, it just fucking drags and drags until Deku can sort shit out. The one fight I was sorta invested in this whole season was Kirishima versus other dude because the visuals were good and it was way more time spent on a character that’s not like, a main character, than is usually the case so I appreciated it, but even so it’s still just “losing, backstory thought, winning” which is dumb.

Back to the school festival since I went off topic and I’ve already complained about Gentle Criminal, the actual festival did end up being pretty enjoyable, once again we’ve spent enough time with this cast for slice of life stuff to be bearable, and I did sorta feel the hype during the live performance they all put on, even if Hero Too or whatever was kinda trash. Also I don’t really like that they did the English speaking VA thing for Jiro’s singing voice, it’s just a guaranteed way to take my investment out of the vocal aspect and that was lame. Ngl though, seeing Eri smile was pretty nice, but more than that, seeing Mirio smile honestly nearly got me dude, closest the entire show got me to tears tbh. Yeah, I know I said Eri and Mirio aren’t the best or whatever, but they’re both likeable enough for me to sorta care and because this arc here is built off of the previous arc there’s already more to be invested in, I cared about seeing Eri smile is basically the point.

Weirdly enough, that doesn’t close out season 4, and instead we get two episodes pretty much spent on Endeavour doing stuff. It felt enough like “start of an arc” stuff to where I honestly think it should’ve been saved for season 5 instead of being awkwardly pushed into the end here, but like, eh. The fight’s really hype and for some reason is by far the best animation in season 4, it looks really good which I honestly can’t really say for the rest of this season – the artwork and animation are obviously HeroAca solid but there aren’t nearly as many epic huge moments, which helped this Endeavour versus Nomu fight stand out at least. Also, just to be honest for a second, Endeavour’s obviously a shit person and I wasn’t really invested in his character either since he felt like a narrative tool for Todoroki’s arc and nothing else. But I’m honestly about whatever this redemption is gonna shape up to be. I say “redemption”, I don’t want him to be redeemed per se, but it can make Endeavour more interesting in his own right and give Todoroki an avenue for further development so I think narratively it’s good. And beyond that, I’m just interested in the idea of seeing someone like Endeavour go through whatever this arc will be. Because whenever a character does something bad in fiction and ends up on the path of redemption, the bad thing they did is always contextualised with some sort of mistake in beliefs or sympathetic backstory or just, something like that. Which is fine, but you rarely just see someone do an unambiguously horrible action that can’t be defended in any capacity, and still end up on a more positive path for themselves, however many years later. And I just, I want to see how that goes, you know?

So that’s season 4, which was overall pretty weak I felt, especially compared to what came before. Mostly it just suffered from shit villains, shit pacing, pretty poor cast of newcomers (I didn’t end up talking about the other 2 in the Big Three but that’s cause their actual characters are forgettable as hell, girl’s cute and that’s it), and an ending that’s the start of some interesting new stuff but felt weirdly placed. However, it had enough of the usual HeroAca flair for me to care a little bit, the school festival arc I mentioned being enjoyable, Gentle Criminal aside, and I mean, I can vibe enough with what it generally was for me to still say I enjoyed it, hence the 6/10 I gave it.

And then movie 1 was a really fun action romp but I think everyone ending up on I-Island for different reasons was fucking stupid and contrived and unbelievable as fuck, literally just make it a class trip and it’s so much easier to accept. Villains and, twist villains, were all perfectly acceptable for what this was. Big epic climax was fun as hell. I gave it a 7.

Movie 2 was quite a bit weaker in comparison. To get the main praises out of the way, movie looks absolutely incredible.

As for everything else? Pretty bad. Villains felt like they played a much bigger role in this than they probably even needed to given how every single one of them was complete and utter fucking trash, there are 3 of them that are subservient to this 1 guy and the 4 of them collectively are like the textbook definition of a filler villain, except it’s like a textbook that’s missing some pages so these guys are somehow even less interesting than the fuckin most stereotypical villain trope ever played completely straight. And because they’re so much of the movie despite being such total shit, most of the movie is pretty hard to care about at all. Dude’s power is that he can steal quirks which we’ve seen before on a way better established and charismatic villain with All For One, and then he also some how gets Shiguraki Tomura on his side without telling him anything which completely goes against how he was acting in season 4 where he like, you know, forced Endeavour to bow down to him, pretty much? On the side of the heroes, everyone not named Deku or Bakugo gets to do pretty much equal amounts of nothing, as in participating in fights that mean nothing because who cares. At least Todoroki freezing that one dude super hard was cool? Uh, and then for Deku and Bakugo, they’re mostly just being Deku and Bakugo. Sans the big moment at the end where Deku gives Bakugo One For All and then uses his own embers a la what All Might was doing for most of the show so the two can give the villain what’s for (also they just let some slow melodic vocal track play here and cut out all sound which really hammered home how important sound design is because for as beautiful as this scene looks I didn’t feel anything). And the thing is, this is honestly a cool idea in theory, Bakugo being forced to come to grips with outright taking the power Deku cultivated and using it to become stronger himself, while simultaneously ending his rivalry with Deku, but because it’s an anime movie and it literally can’t have any impact on canon, Bakugo like subconsciously gives it back and forgets about the whole thing. It should honestly be a cool moment between the two characters but the moment Deku decides it should happen, it does, there’s no buildup or development or anything, and then once it’s all over it’s handwaved away like it never mattered. Because it doesn’t.

Movie 2 just overall felt like, a weaker version of everything we’ve already seen in HeroAca – main villain is shitty All For One, Shiguraki Tomura kills him in the end like a shittier version of the Endeavour ambulance scene, the two fuckin rando kids that need to be in the movie have the same arc as every other basic nobody in this show, the big moment at the end wants to retread All Might vs All For One but just sorta, doesn’t. It’s just fuckin, all kinda trash.

But honestly I still gave it a 6/10. Animation’s flashy enough, action fun enough, the setting we end up in is pretty nice this time around, and one of the two kids is voiced by Tomoyo Kurosawa who is a sound for sore ears. I don’t think the movie’s all that great, but I certainly enjoyed watching it, so, yeah, 6/10,

And that’s my thoughts on HeroAca, so let’ do some miscellaneous stuff!

- Favourite character probably is Todoroki? I like his design enough, his arc when it’s happening is really solid, I do wish he didn’t pretty much stop developing across the next 2 seasons but he’s got enough presence to where I don’t think he’s done at least.

- Honestly don’t know how I feel about Deku, because he’s a funny meme character and genuinely likeable, when he’s not fighting something or someone he does actually feel pretty distinct for a shounen MC, the problem is that it doesn’t take that long for Deku’s underdog story to stop and from like middle of season 3 onwards he’s sorta just, it doesn’t feel like he can lose honestly, he’s managing everything with what feels like relatively little struggle, and I also don’t like that we’ve already been told “this is the story of how Deku became the greatest hero” since it removes the intrigue of so many conflicting character arcs with how many people are aiming for number 1 and also does away with a lot of the stakes of Deku’s goal, since we’ve literally been told he’ll get it.

- Bakugo still sucks and I don’t like him still.

- Mineta is obviously obnoxious and unfunny, but seeing what the community reaction to him is, it’s obvious how many HeroAca fans have never seen any other anime before. Mineta sucks, whatever, but he’s not even close to as bad as any other pervert character or any coward character, especially since he’s pretty much always punished for his actions anyway. Do I think the show’d be better off without him? Yeah, probably. Am I frothing at the mouth with rage because fuckin Horikoshi dare have such a character? Nah dude, chill out.

- Aoyama is as annoying as Mineta but his gimmick isn’t problematic so who cares. His friendship with Deku that starts in season 4 maybe was pretty nice actually.

- All of the girls are worth being in one bullet point since I sorta feel the same about all of them lol. I like Ochako because she’s cute and has a neat fight with Bakugo. I like Momo because she’s pretty and has a couple of decent character moments, plus while I have no investment in HeroAca shipping and I hope never to, she’d probably be good with Todoroki? I like Jiro because she’s cute and has good fashion. I like Hagakure even if I never remember her name because she sounds like Aki Toyosaki, even if she isn’t voiced by her. Mina’s really cute and has a lot of charm plus actually is voiced by Eri Kitamura which is pretty sick, so I like her. Hatsume’s just fuckin great, mad charismatic and I love the voice. Tsuyu might actually be best girl because she’s voiced by Aoi Yuuki and has quite a good amount of okay character moments, plus what feels like a lot more screentime than many of the other girls, and like I’ll be honest with myself she’s not the cutest, weird ass fuckin frog tongue having motherfucker, but nah she sorta cute anyway though. Point is I feel about the same as all of them, they’re cute and I like them but there’s not too much else there for me to feel. Gun to my head I’d probably choose Jiro as best, maybe? Idk, pull a gun to my head and find out. Also Himiko, I’m not into yanderes but I sorta vibe with her anyway, she’s got good expressions and also sounds like Aki Toyosaki.

- Bubble Girl is hot, maybe she’s best girl.

- Might be obvious but I do love All Might, he’s great. Aizawa’s great also. Didn’t care about any of the other teachers really. Present Mic didn’t seem like he’d be a recurring character at all but he was okay enough for me to be sorta happy he is.

- Iida turned out to be a lot more likeable and had a more solid arc than I expected him to so I was happy with him. Kirishima’s pretty sick, Kaminari’s okay, Fumikage’s kinda cool. Tape guy’s forgettable as fuck, sugar prick is even more forgettable, animal dude is forgettable also and why does he look like that, tail guy’s forgettable, Shouji’s forgettable but I did like his strat in the cavalry battle, I think that’s everyone in 1-A now then.

- HeroAca is obviously a pretty strong show visually but I wasn’t really fond of many of the character designs, at best they’re fine but the ugly ones are really ugly. I guess it’s just because the American comics influence isn’t really my style anyway, but idk other than cute girls because cute there was never really anyone I was all that happy to be able to look at.

- Music was pretty solid, Ops peaked at The Day, had no strong opinions on any of the Eds.

- I gave the season 1 OVA where All Might pretends to be a villain a 6/10 because I remember it being decent, I gave the season 1 recap a 4 because it was meh I guess, I gave the season 2 OVA, Training of the Dead, a 6 because it was pretty fun and had Tsuyu being cute, and movie 1 has some specials that were completely okay and I gave a 5.

Can’t think of anything else to say tbh. Overall had fun with HeroAca, definitely liked it quite a lot more than I was expecting to, even if it is still sorta just an entry level shounen. It has the fun factor, it has the hype factor, it has enough decently likeable characters, and like, yeah it’s just a likeable experience. Odd for me to speak in past tense there since I absolutely will watch the 5th season whenever that comes out, plus whatever content gets animated in the future. But yeah, Cool, we’re done.

#heroaca #josh reviews #i think that tag can be used #13.7.20 #btw i wrote the movie 2 thing like 2 weeks after the rest #and haven't read the rest since i wrote it #this isn't proof read is the point