A glimmer of hope for MHA's future · Waifora

The Decline of My Hero Academy Part 2: Heroes Rising

Name: A glimmer of hope for MHA's future
Item: My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising
Rating: 60
Author: Bubblesssssss

Season 4 (This is the last part of a series of videos and reviews called The Decline of My Hero Academy. If you only want a review of Heroes Rising, stop at the "The Decline of My Hero Academy Conclusion" section.)

Heroes Rising blew my mind because it’s kind of the opposite of the first one. Whereas movie 1 looked horrendous and like they threw most of it together in a month, movie 2 looks…good. Especially compared to the rest of the series. Where movie 1 somehow looked worse than the series, Heroes Rising looks infinitely superior to the series. The entire time I was watching it, the dominant thought I had was “holy fuck why does this look so good?”

Like really:

Story

As far as the story goes, it’s…okay. It’s mostly just the students running errands on this island until the villain attacks, and then the rest of it focuses on…stopping the villain. But there are a couple of moments in the movie that caught me off guard. Like the villain just beating the shit out of Deku and Bakugo. That’s a really good way to establish a villain. Just have him beat the shit out of characters that usually have plot armor. And the blood! YES!

This is especially great considering all the class A students were written out of the moment where the villains take over in the first movie.

Also, Shigaraki kills Nine, the antagonist of this movie. Truth be told, I was hoping they would do it when Nine lost. And…the crazy bastards actually did it. Kind of stunned they didn’t pussy out and have him arrested like the series would usually do.

Bad stuff

Don’t get me wrong though. There are things I don’t like. The villain starts off promising. His power and backstory are somewhat interesting. But when it comes to his ideology, he ultimately just ends up being another “I’m going to make a world for the powerful and strong” type. Disinteresting. Recycled. Boring.

And while the ending is really cool, seeing Bakugo run around with One for All and everything. I really wish they didn’t bother with all the non-canon course correcting at the end. This is a battle shounen movie. Everyone knows that what happens in them never affects the main story. So don’t worry about making sure there aren’t any plot holes for the next season. No one cares!

Conclusion

Overall though, Heroes Rising is (if you choose to look at a movie’s production as an indicator of quality for an upcoming tv series) a glimmer of hope. It at least points to Studio Bones proving they can still put together a solid production if they need to, which is something I just didn’t believe anymore after how disastrous seasons 3 and 4 were visually.

Decline of My Hero Academy Conclusion

I think I've pretty well established how and why the My Hero Academy anime declines as it goes along. Also I basically already did the conclusion earlier, so I'll use the conclusion to clarify a few things that might get misconstrued:

1: Some of you might be asking, why did you make all these videos and reviews on a series you don't like? Well, that's the thing. My Hero Academy isn't inherently bad. After all, it started off well. But its potential is being wasted by 2 entities, and I think it's very easy to fix (most of) the problems that are plaguing it. You might have noticed after a lot of the issues I brought up, I also gave solutions to them at the end of those sections. That's because I believe My Hero Academy is salvageable, even after 2 full seasons of crap.

I would never throw hundreds of hours of my life away making a review like this about something like Fairy Tail because I don't think it has any real value. All I would say is "its really bad and don't watch it". You can't fix something that is broken on paper, that doesn't even have a solid blueprint for a good show. But My Hero Academy isn't like that. It could be good, if its issues were ironed out. And I think that alone is reason enough to make these reviews.

2: It was not my intention to use the Hunter x Hunter, FMA, and Naruto comparisons to do the whole "lol other show better" thing. That's dumb, and I think it would be disrespectful to both Kishimoto and Horikoshi.

It was also not my intention when comparing to say the show should always do what Naruto or Hunter x Hunter did. That isn't really fixing My Hero Academy, its changing it into something I like more. And to be honest, I don't really want every new shounen to be like those shows. They should strive to carve out their own identity. But if you're going to utilize the same tropes, I think it's more than fair to illustrate how My Hero Academy doesn't use them as effectively, and why that is.

3: I don't hate Horikoshi and I don't hate My Hero Academy. I liked the potential it had, and am frustrated with Horikoshi for wasting it with lazy writing. He's clearly a very talented illustrator, which is all the more reason to be frustrated with Bones for making his show look like ass. And it's always possible some of the things I attributed to Horikoshi could actually be the result of an editor, or JUMP, or something. You never know. I'm happy for him that his manga is super successful and I'm sure he's a nice guy. He just happens to have written a popular manga that he's pissing away the potential of.

I'd like to end things on that note, because that's probably the most important thing I want to express here. My criticism of MHA comes from a love of the battle shounen genre. And that love makes it very hard for me to watch Horikoshi continue to spin gold into bronze.