For this entire last arc of My Hero, I’ve repeatedly thought “Wow, this is cool! I bet this would really land emotionally for most readers!” So why does it not work for me, lover of superheroes, shounen, and sappy shit? I decided to delve DEEP into my brain lands to try to see if there was a reason I could put into words. (Warning: this review is not written logically at all and is more like an aggregate of like three different posts I made about this series.)
#IN THE BEGINNING
My Hero has probably one of the most perfect first chapters, at least in Shonen Jump. A while back I was reading a Kieron Gillen newsletter about first issues and he brought up the point that many hit comics open with “first it, second it”. In simple terms, (as far as I can understand it, do keep in mind I’m not a very smart person) this is high concept/pitch -> hook/here’s why you should care. In My Hero, the first “it” that you know like three pages in is that the majority of the population has superpowers, and the most exceptional of these people get to hog the limelight as superheroes. This is pretty cool by itself, but then Horikoshi throws in the second “it”, the All Might Twist! This one’s good enough for me to write a whole section about it in this review. If that’s not enough, it goes for the two main reactions one can get reading a shounen manga: crying (Deku risking his life to save Bakugo even though he has no powers and Bakugo’s an ass) and saying “fuck yeah” (Detroit Smash). And THEN they hit you with the roadmap for the rest of the series: All-Might will turn weak-ass Deku into the greatest hero.
#ON THE AUDIENCE
In my experience, I’ve found that most fans of MHA (at least in the spheres I lurk in) fit into two groups. The first group is more into manga or anime than superhero comics. And on a surface level, this is a really refreshing take compared to the most visible pieces of superhero media, your Marvel movies and what have you. Unfortunately, I’ve been wading through the sea of American comics for as long as I can remember. I’ve seen superheroes played straight, I’ve seen parody, I’ve seen deconstructions, I’ve seen deconstructions of deconstructions. The second group (I’ll be straight with you; these are mostly adult men who write comics) are extremely into superhero comics but don’t really touch battle shounen manga. I’m not quite in this camp either; while I’m not a shounen expert MHA certainly isn’t my first. And as a shounen, it hits the necessary beats fine, with the occasional incredible moment (whenever All Might shows up, but more on that later)
#ON THE X-MEN
A buddy of mine used to call MHA backwards X-Men, which I think is extremely off base. The only consequence of being quirkless is not being able to be a superhero, whereas the consequence to being a mutant is being hunted by robots, bigots, the US government, time travellers, and racist robot American time travellers. This isn’t to say the mutant metaphor is perfect, it’s very sloppy, but the premises of X-Men and MHA are not similar beyond “young people who go to a school have superpowers”. Whereas mutants are (whatever broad marginalized group of people strikes the creator’s fancy), the heroes in MHA are much closer to celebrities! What do they do with the premise of “the most powerful beings in the world are the most famous”? Jack shit! Deku is a fanboy and Endeavor practiced eugenics on his own children but that’s about it. On the other hand something like Tiger and Bunny deals with corporate mandates, consumerism, etc. X-Statix is a book based entirely around this premise and gets into heavy shit like “TV shows and superhero teams keep one Black man on the team for optics but once he can be replaced, he will die”.
#ALL MIGHT
All Might! There have been as many “grounded” or subversive takes on Superman as there have been isekai novels, but something about All Might just hits. The twist of All Might isn’t “he’s evil”. I thought it would be going in, his weird non existent eyes imply that, the setup of having somebody who is not the main protagonist as the number one hero leans toward that, his creepy skeleton form and shadiness in chapter 1 kind of suggest that. And so on and so on. I went into MHA blind and I expected that. Instead, he is played surprisingly straight. He’s exactly what everybody thinks he is, aside from the fact that his clock is ticking. And that’s what makes him interesting, not “a huh huh he’s a fascist” or whatever your Boys and Invincibles and Irredeemables and Marvelmans and Injustices and such do. All Might combines “Superman feels he can’t live up to his myth” and “Superman is dying”, two of my favorite types of stories, and he’s easily the best character. He’s one of two characters I like along with Mirio, probably because they have some of the only moments where being a superhero isn’t just set dressing but actually at the core of the story. Deku would be in this group too but as he’s the main character he’s bogged down in too much shounen bullshit with the finite number of powers and percents and on and on. Aside from that, the only thing about this comic that makes me think “superhero” is the decompressed storytelling amirite folks????
#QUICK ASIDE WHERE I EXPLAIN THAT TERRIBLE JOKE: DECOMPRESSED STORYTELLING:
There’s been a trend in superhero comics, especially recently where like nothing of substance happens in an issue but it moves the story forward one percent so it was still worth buying. I can’t stand this shit! If you can purchase a comic in that small a unit, shouldn’t it be at least somewhat satisfying on its own? Of course, this is only a problem if you read as it releases-- it all tends to come together once it’s all collected. But man is it a slog dealing with that every month. Anyway My Hero does this but on a weekly basis. I've talked to a bunch of people about this and a good number have said they wait for a bunch of chapters to build up and then binge, and I think that's really the only way to read this so in some ways it really is the premier superhero manga.
ok next up i spoil events from recent chapters so uh avoid that if you want
#THE POWER OF FRIENDSHIP
I hope you liked my gushing over a My Hero Academia character because I think the rest are all just dreadful. In the most recent arc, all of Deku’s classmates show up to try to help him with all his edgy shit, and a number of them have the moment of “oh, Deku… you helped me with X, Y, and Z. Thank you… my friend”.
fuck tail guy fuck tail guy fuck tail guy
This isn’t even something I necessarily dislike, it’s just that I forget who 90% of these people are. Instead of feeling like Deku’s friends showing up to help him, it feels like an awkward school assignment where you have to say one nice thing to the kid in class you never talk to. It’s fucking weird! If I’m expected to care about how any of these characters feel I’d appreciate more than three pages of them throughout the entire run of this series. An interesting thing that I've found with My Hero fandom is how some people can just latch on to these nothing characters. Maybe they just like the design? My working theory is that at some point they exhausted discussion about the real characters and started going wild with headcanons until the perception of that character was something wildly new. Uh back to the moment at hand the only one of these to work is Bakugo, because it’s actually motivated by character and not box-checking.
#THE ONE WHERE THEY TALK INSTEAD OF DOING ANYTHING
Deku’s sufferin’ and getting yelled at! How’s the gang gonna get out of this one? By getting scolded, of course!
So Uraraka shows up and talks about how cool and important civilians are and how they need to support heroes. A good number of my favorite superheroes are or have been generally despised by the public, so I’m not super into this. Wealth and fame, they’re ignored, but action is their reward. I’m not even saying that support from civilians is a bad thing in superhero comics, but this example was so insipid and weak. This kind of moment actually occurs in a lot of my favorite superhero stuff, but there it’s actually good. Why? I think it’s because the victory is never “Superhero got the public to be nice to them”. Instead, it’s “Superhero inspired the public to take action despite typically being powerless”, whether it’s something like “everybody runs to generate enough energy for the Flash to outrace a cartoon mouse” or something as simple as “random New Yorkers throw garbage at the Green Goblin”. People point to Frank Miller’s Batman as being fascist, but again and again Bruce and Carrie turn the symbol of the Bat into a social movement and unite the people to defeat a tyrant.
Of course this doesn’t happen though, because we only see how superheroes inspire ordinary people like one to three times in this series. To use an example outside of superhero comics, Dragon Ball does the same shit!
But again, this moment isn’t cool because of stupid shit like “clap your hands if you believe in Goku!”, it’s great because a (formerly) scummy weakling like Mr. Satan becomes just as useful as Goku and Vegeta by using the lie that he told the entire Earth to save the universe. It's a nice little redemptive moment, even if he's already had like three in that arc. In this latest My Hero chapter, the victory is “Uraraka yells at people and they shut up long enough for Deku’s fanboy to run at him”. It just fizzes out when you’ve seen the same thing done better. HOWEVER! If they did shift this entire chapter to a POV of the random Deku fanboy, I probably would have liked it, if only it meant being spared the stupid speech about how it’s on thousands of random people to make sure Deku smiles again. I’m not even against superheroes being vulnerable or crying all the time, but I wish it was done in a less “everything can be solved with a speech” way. Perhaps I simply prefer the “hero relies on the people they protect” moment to be exciting and not pitiful? I don’t know. I’ll at least give it points for being different, though, I rarely ever see a teen hero this reliant on randos to make him feel better, if this scene played out anywhere else Uraraka would have just told all the civilians to go fuck themselves and move on.
#OH I ALSO JUST REALIZED ONE PUNCH MAN DOES THE SAME THING BETTER MULTIPLE TIMES:
Like after the Sea King arc everybody starts shit talking the other heroes for getting beaten but instead of preaching at them Saitama lies and says the other heroes weakened the Sea King enough for him to one shot him, thus saving their honor but making him a lame cheat in the eyes of the public! Now that’s a cool hero.
TLDR My Hero barely says anything interesting about what it means to be a superhero/celebrity and what it does say is very much not for me. Oh, and there are far too many stupid characters I don’t give a shit about. It’s a serviceable battle shounen with fantastic art and some real highlights here and there, but that’s about it. A friend of mine had a theory that all battle shounen are the same thing and your enjoyment depends on which gimmick you vibe with the most. I don't think that's true, but My Hero is the closest we've come as a species to proving it. I'd say read this series if you're not as jaded about superhero shit as I am, otherwise I think you can skip it.