THIS REVIEW IS ONLY FOR THE FIRST SEASON

I can't pinpoint exactly what it is, but there's just something about shonen manga and anime that just pushes all of the right buttons for me. HeroAca, while not being the most innovative title in the genre, takes the best parts of shonen, and perfectly refines it into something truly amazing.

The premise here is fairly par-for-the-course, with the protagonist Izuku Midoriya having a fairly believable reason for his underdog status. He is a high schooler without superpowers in a world where over 80% of the population possesses superpowers, otherwise known as Quirks. This changes when he is the first to act in a crisis situation. This grabs the attention of his idol and #1 Hero, All Might. All Might passes his quirk to Midoriya in order to help him achieve his dream of surpassing his idol and becoming the #1 hero. If you've read/watched Naruto, Fairy Tail, or Black Clover, this should sound extremely familiar to you. The cast is rounded out by Midoriya's friends Iida and Uraraka and his rival, Bakugo. The designs of all of Midoriya's friends and classmates are striking, and despite the limited screentime most of them get, you get enough from it such that they are believable, and I'm certainly excited to see where things are gonna go from here. The story itself is paced really well and it felt like something was actually achieved every episode. I'd say my only complaint would be the lack of any compelling antagonist until the last few episodes. Bakugo works well enough as a rival to push Midoriya's development, but I wouldn't really call him an antagonist. Shigaraki has potential, but he was given so little time here and the way they ended things with him this season sets up the next season well enough.

On the technical side of things, Studio Bones brought their A-game. Aside from some weird perception issues here or some backgrounds having some less than stellar detail, the animation and art are really good. I touched on it before, but the designs of all the characters just grabs your attention, and you can tell a lot about the characters' powers and personality just from their designs, which is something I really appreciate, and it compensates perfectly for the tiny bit of screentime the members of class 1-A outside of Midoriya's group receives. The animation is really fluid, and that combined with the audio design you can almost feel the impact of some of the attacks. I especially liked how stylized the fight between All Might and the Nomu was. The voicework is also really well done, even with the minor characters. Lastly, the music is just fantastic. Every track perfectly accentuates the scene it's in. Some standout tracks include Plus Ultra, You Say Run, and My Hero Academia.

If by some miracle you haven't watched this show yet, you absolutely must watch this first season at the very least. It takes the best parts of all of the battle shonen series to come before it and mixes it into 13 episodes of pure fun and entertainment.