Name: The fourth season of My Hero Academia is the slowest pace yet for the series, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad.
Item: My Hero Academia Season 4
Rating: 85
Author: tsugan

Waifra

The fourth season of My Hero Academia is the slowest pace yet for the series, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad. · Waifora

I wasn’t going to review this season because it’s an interlude from the main plot turned into a 25 episode season with a lot of filler, however, the final episode convinced me that it would be a crying shame to not send the season off properly. Seriously, the finale alone was enough to raise my final score by five points, I enjoyed it that much.

Story

It’s always a bit jarring when a shounen suddenly shifts the focus of its storyline from the main protagonist to other characters, and that is what Season 4 of Hero Aca does. Midoriya takes a back seat - temporarily - as Nighteye, Mirio, Kirishima, and Tamaki Amajiki take turns being the focus at various stages. Midoriya sees character growth through the 25 episodes, to be sure, but this more wide lens approach to the story is a welcome changeup to the familiar formula.

The story is cleanly divided between the two cours, so for clarity’s sake I will also be dividing my Story review.

First Cour:

This is My Hero Academia — and shounens in general — at its best. Slow buildup into a climactic ending. Some may disagree with me here but I felt this cour was amongst the best the show has yet produced.

Learning more of the backstory for Mirio was great, and they successfully added another good side character to their collection with Amajiki. The dynamic between Nighteye, All Might, Mirio, and Midoriya is complex and something I hope they continue to develop in future seasons.

Spoiler, click to view

The ending is really what makes it. Mirio loses his powers to the drug Chisaki made with Eri’s blood, and Nighteye dies. Whatever notions of plot armor the audience had after All Might didn’t kick the bucket against All For One are shattered here. It was also awesome seeing Midoriya go super saiyan with Eri’s help to kick Chisaki’s ass.

Eri is an interesting character, but I can’t help but think she exists solely to be a deus ex machina at some future point in the story. We all know she’s either going to heroically save Midoriya’s life at the cost of her own, or somehow lose her powers after doing something, becoming an ornament in background scenes. There’s also no way that Mirio never gets his powers back, I would be shocked if that were the case. That would be a lot of character development down the drain and wasted potential.

Second Cour:

The first filler-esque cour in the show, and it’s quite lengthy. It isn’t bad by any means, but did it really need to last for as long as it did? As a sort of palate cleanser, it does its job well enough, by the time the narrative hints for the next season were being dropped in the last three episodes, I was ready.

Spoiler, click to view

Gentle Criminal and La Brava are actually quite a cute little sideshow, they’re like if Disney decided to make the Joker and Harley Quinn. Their saturday morning cartoon hijinks bring some levity to an otherwise douring plot line with all the unresolved badness. The problem is their arc is like 11 episodes long! My God! Am I watching a 00’s era shounen?

The final two episodes of the season could warrant their own, separate, review, alas they’re technically part of this season, so they’re tied to the other 23.

Endeavour was nearly an anti-hero until this point in the story — less of a character and more of a sentient plot device for Todoroki — it’s hard to feel sympathetic towards a domestic abuser, and even harder to write one in a sympathetic way without normalizing and implicitly justifying abuse.

They achieved that in two episodes.

I cannot express here how nimbly they communicated Endeavour’s character arc in essentially 40 minutes. The only setup they established before was like two lines from Endeavour to Todoroki, then BAM, you’re hit with a whirlwind of character development and one of the best fights in the series. That’s what separates Hero Aca from lesser shounen, when it’s firing on all cylinders and lets itself go, it’s out-and-out one of the best anime in this generation.

Enjoyment:

Overall, Season 4 of Hero Aca is really Season 3.5. The first cour is very nice, right up there with the best the show has to offer, but the second cour drags… until the final two episodes, hot damn, watch all the episodes just for those.