I got the Blu-Ray of this movie for Christmas and ended up watching it on New Year's Eve.
When the film started, it looked like it was going to be the best MHA film. The new villains were interesting, being a religious cult that wants to eradicate everyone with quirks, with their own quirked-up members willing to die for their cause. That opening scene of them bombing a city that causes everyone’s quirks to mutate was grotesque. Like, a dude turned into a turtle, and some woman melted into a pile of skin, and... okay, I was mostly disturbed by the melting woman part, but it was still freaky.
I also liked the new character, Rody Soul. His character design is great, and he's a likable Robin Hood type of character. The development of Rody and Deku's relationship takes up a good portion of the film's first half, with them taking a cross-country road trip to avoid being arrested for mass homicide (long story). I gotta give props to actually getting me to care about a movie-original character for once.
The visuals were the main reason I watched this film, though, and they are by far the best out of the MHA films. The animation was great, and not just the “oh boy, the last minute of that fight was so hype, and nothing else” kind of great. The character animation was so lively, and the facial expressions were so expressive, greatly adding to the more comedic moments of the film. There was great action throughout, with some of MHA's best scenes appearing in this film. There was a fight midway through the film that was a minute-long one-take cut, and it was one of the best pieces of animation I've ever seen. It was just as good as the film's final fight scene, if not better. Even the setting was great, with the city of Otheon seeming like an actual place that might exist, which I wish the first two movies had. Everything about this movie seemed to exceed my expectations.
...Then the second half of the film happened.
Around the last 40 minutes, Bakugo and Todoroki got into their own sets of fights, but I only really cared about what Deku was doing. Still, when we get to Deku's fight with Mr. Cult Guy, it does the anime thing where you can hear the character’s thoughts even though you could figure out what’s happening without Deku’s echoey voice telling you what’s happening. Then Mr. Cult Guy reveals his motivations, which were the saddest excuses you can think of to start a DEATH CULT. Then the whole moral of the story was that the bad guy never tried to improve or be loved or whatever, and that's why he lost, then they showed how cool the other heroes were, and it was like “Not All Heroes” propaganda, and I started to cringe from all the over-positivity, then I started to cringe harder because my dad walked into the last 40 minutes of this movie and he now knows that I still watch this stuff at 23 years old and AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Overall, this film still ended up being my favorite of the MHA films, somehow. Even though I was frustrated in its final moments, it's still better than Heroes Rising, whose story I thought was blander than white bread. Still wouldn’t recommend this movie to any non-anime fan, but it was a decent time nonetheless.
