The first time I watched this season, I gave up around episode 18. On a rewatch of them all from the start, the season felt a lot better than the first time I watched it. The first season essentially carried all my interest in the show, and even if it's a generic battle anime at many parts, the fact it has characters you know makes it feel better.
The season is split into two halves, so I'll cover them seperately:
In the first half of the anime, some of the UA students get to do work studies, which is a level up from the internships before. This eventually leads to an attack on the Shie Hassaikai, who are attempting to make drugs to stop quirks. Their main aim is to rescue Eri, a child who is being used to create the drug.
The Shie Hassaikai are pretty generic tough villains and could have really done with some buildup beforehand. Overhaul had some backstory given during the fight, but it's a bit too little too late to have much of an impact.
In contrast, Nighteye and his conflict with All Might felt pretty great, and it really hurt when he died. LeMillion as a character felt really good and it was great to see that they didn't just make the next One for All candidate obviously flawed to show Midoriya is the only one who is 'worthy'. Eri was really understandable and worked well as a goal, an interesting new quirk, and a new character to make the future more interesting.
The other characters were also decent, but while there were good characters such as those above, there weren't any great characters/character arcs. Midoriya especially seems way too simplified with his only motivation being to get stronger to save everyone. He's so pure it's hard to believe and there aren't really any consequences to that. However that does likely make it feel better for a younger audience.
Overall the arc was decent with a lot of action, but it's lost a lot of the magic from the first season. This is largely because Midoriya is no longer a normal person who wants to be a hero. He is just a hero.
The second half was quite different to the first. It spent most of the time building up to a festival. This made it essentially feel like filler. The main villain, Gentle Criminal is mildly interesting, but not really enough to care about, and felt like a villain whose only purpose was to make the festival more exciting. But I actually hope he appears again as it felt like that was starting to go in an interesting direction. The show could do with a lot more building up excitement for things before showing you.
None of the characters again were too special, but I did really appreciate their attempts to redeem Endeavor, and makes me appreciate him a lot more. MHA has been really good overall at giving redeeming factors to anyone not a straight-up villain.
The season was decent and follows on nicely from season 3. But watching it on it's own after a long time it doesn't hold up much at all. Hopefully season 5 will be able to bring back the feelings from season 1, making us care about Midoriya, and feel like we're watching students going to a school to learn rather than fight.
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