BOKU NO HERO ACADEMIA

DESCRIPTION

CAST

CHAPTERS

ANIME ActionBoku no Hero Academia
MANGA ActionBoku no Hero Academia Smash!!
ANIME ActionBoku no Hero Academia 2
ANIME ActionBoku no Hero Academia 3
ONE SHOT ActionKitto Daremo ga Dareka no Hero
MANGA ActionVigilante: Boku no Hero Academia ILLEGALS
ANIME ActionBoku no Hero Academia 4
ONE SHOT ActionBoku no Hero
ONE SHOT ActionBoku no Hero Academia - All Might: Rising
MANGA ActionBoku no Hero Academia: Team Up Mission
MANGA ActionDeku & Bakugo: Rising
ANIME ActionBoku no Hero Academia 5
ONE SHOTBoku no Hero Academia - Villain Rengou: Undercover
MANGA ActionDeadpool: SAMURAI
ONE SHOT ActionBoku no Hero Academia: Endeavor's Mission
ANIME ActionBoku no Hero Academia 6
ONE SHOT ActionHawks: SOOTHE
NOVEL ActionBoku no Hero Academia THE MOVIE: Futari no Hero
NOVEL ActionBoku no Hero Academia THE MOVIE: Heroes:Rising
NOVEL ActionBoku no Hero Academia THE MOVIE: World Heroes' Mission
ANIME ActionBoku no Hero Academia 7
NOVEL ActionBoku no Hero Academia: Yuuei Hakusho
ONE SHOT ActionBoku no Hero Academia: Tokubetsu Spin-off - CONNECT TO THE DAY
ANIME ActionBoku no Hero Academia FINAL SEASON
NOVEL ActionBoku no Hero Academia THE MOVIE: You're Next

REVIEWS

• 

  deadscream

  50/100
  My Hero Academia is one of the manga of all time

  For this entire last arc of My Hero, I’ve repeatedly thought “Wow, this is cool! I bet this would really land emotionally for most readers!” So why does it not work for me, lover of superheroes, shounen, and sappy shit? I decided to delve DEEP into my brain lands to try to see if there was a reason I could put into words. (Warning: this review is not written logically at all and is more like an aggregate of like three different posts I made about this series.) #IN THE BEGINNING My Hero has probably one of the most perfect first chapters, at least in Shonen Jump. A while back I was reading [a Kieron Gillen newsletter about first issues](https://kierongillen.substack.com/p/078-first-it-and-second-it) and he brought up the point that many hit comics open with “first it, second it”. In simple terms, (as far as I can understand it, do keep in mind I’m not a very smart person) this is high concept/pitch -> hook/here’s why you should care. In My Hero, the first “it” that you know like three pages in is that the majority of the population has superpowers, and the most exceptional of these people get to hog the limelight as superheroes. This is pretty cool by itself, but then Horikoshi throws in the second “it”, the All Might Twist! This one’s good enough for me to write a whole section about it in this review. If that’s not enough, it goes for the two main reactions one can get reading a shounen manga: crying (Deku risking his life to save Bakugo even though he has no powers and Bakugo’s an ass) and saying “fuck yeah” (Detroit Smash). And THEN they hit you with the roadmap for the rest of the series: All-Might will turn weak-ass Deku into the greatest hero. #ON THE AUDIENCE In my experience, I’ve found that most fans of MHA (at least in the spheres I lurk in) fit into two groups. The first group is more into manga or anime than superhero comics. And on a surface level, this is a really refreshing take compared to the most visible pieces of superhero media, your Marvel movies and what have you. Unfortunately, I’ve been wading through the sea of American comics for as long as I can remember. I’ve seen superheroes played straight, I’ve seen parody, I’ve seen deconstructions, I’ve seen deconstructions *of* deconstructions. The second group (I’ll be straight with you; these are mostly adult men who write comics) are extremely into superhero comics but don’t really touch battle shounen manga. I’m not quite in this camp either; while I’m not a shounen expert MHA certainly isn’t my first. And as a shounen, it hits the necessary beats fine, with the occasional incredible moment (whenever All Might shows up, but more on that later) #ON THE X-MEN A buddy of mine used to call MHA backwards X-Men, which I think is extremely off base. The only consequence of being quirkless is not being able to be a superhero, whereas the consequence to being a mutant is being hunted by robots, bigots, the US government, time travellers, and racist robot American time travellers. This isn’t to say the mutant metaphor is perfect, it’s very sloppy, but the premises of X-Men and MHA are not similar beyond “young people who go to a school have superpowers”. Whereas mutants are (whatever broad marginalized group of people strikes the creator’s fancy), the heroes in MHA are much closer to celebrities! What do they do with the premise of “the most powerful beings in the world are the most famous”? Jack shit! Deku is a fanboy and Endeavor practiced eugenics on his own children but that’s about it. On the other hand something like Tiger and Bunny deals with corporate mandates, consumerism, etc. X-Statix is a book based entirely around this premise and gets into heavy shit like “TV shows and superhero teams keep one Black man on the team for optics but once he can be replaced, he will die”. #ALL MIGHT All Might! There have been as many “grounded” or subversive takes on Superman as there have been isekai novels, but something about All Might just *hits*. The twist of All Might isn’t “he’s evil”. I thought it would be going in, his weird non existent eyes imply that, the setup of having somebody who is not the main protagonist as the number one hero leans toward that, his creepy skeleton form and shadiness in chapter 1 kind of suggest that. And so on and so on. I went into MHA blind and I expected that. Instead, he is played surprisingly straight. He’s exactly what everybody thinks he is, aside from the fact that his clock is ticking. And *that’s* what makes him interesting, not “a huh huh he’s a fascist” or whatever your Boys and Invincibles and Irredeemables and Marvelmans and Injustices and such do. All Might combines “Superman feels he can’t live up to his myth” and “Superman is dying”, two of my favorite types of stories, and he’s easily the best character. He’s one of two characters I like along with Mirio, probably because they have some of the only moments where being a superhero isn’t just set dressing but actually at the core of the story. Deku would be in this group too but as he’s the main character he’s bogged down in too much shounen bullshit with the finite number of powers and percents and on and on. Aside from that, the only thing about this comic that makes me think “superhero” is the decompressed storytelling amirite folks???? #QUICK ASIDE WHERE I EXPLAIN THAT TERRIBLE JOKE: DECOMPRESSED STORYTELLING: There’s been a trend in superhero comics, especially recently where like nothing of substance happens in an issue but it moves the story forward one percent so it was still worth buying. I can’t stand this shit! If you can purchase a comic in that small a unit, shouldn’t it be at least somewhat satisfying on its own? Of course, this is only a problem if you read as it releases-- it all tends to come together once it’s all collected. But man is it a slog dealing with that every month. Anyway My Hero does this but on a weekly basis. I've talked to a bunch of people about this and a good number have said they wait for a bunch of chapters to build up and then binge, and I think that's really the only way to read this so in some ways it really is the premier superhero manga. ok next up i spoil events from recent chapters so uh avoid that if you want #THE POWER OF FRIENDSHIP I hope you liked my gushing over a My Hero Academia character because I think the rest are all just dreadful. In the most recent arc, all of Deku’s classmates show up to try to help him with all his edgy shit, and a number of them have the moment of “oh, Deku… you helped me with X, Y, and Z. Thank you… my friend”. *fuck tail guy fuck tail guy fuck tail guy* This isn’t even something I necessarily dislike, it’s just that I forget who 90% of these people are. Instead of feeling like Deku’s friends showing up to help him, it feels like an awkward school assignment where you have to say one nice thing to the kid in class you never talk to. It’s fucking weird! If I’m expected to care about how any of these characters feel I’d appreciate more than three pages of them throughout the entire run of this series. An interesting thing that I've found with My Hero fandom is how some people can just latch on to these nothing characters. Maybe they just like the design? My working theory is that at some point they exhausted discussion about the real characters and started going wild with headcanons until the perception of that character was something wildly new. Uh back to the moment at hand the only one of these to work is Bakugo, because it’s actually motivated by character and not box-checking. #THE ONE WHERE THEY TALK INSTEAD OF DOING ANYTHING Deku’s sufferin’ and getting yelled at! How’s the gang gonna get out of this one? By getting scolded, of course! So Uraraka shows up and talks about how cool and important civilians are and how they need to support heroes. A good number of my favorite superheroes are or have been generally despised by the public, so I’m not super into this. Wealth and fame, they’re ignored, but action is their reward. I’m not even saying that support from civilians is a bad thing in superhero comics, but this example was so insipid and weak. This kind of moment actually occurs in a lot of my favorite superhero stuff, but there it’s actually good. Why? I think it’s because the victory is never “Superhero got the public to be nice to them”. Instead, it’s “Superhero inspired the public to take action despite typically being powerless”, whether it’s something like “everybody runs to generate enough energy for the Flash to outrace a cartoon mouse” or something as simple as “random New Yorkers throw garbage at the Green Goblin”. People point to Frank Miller’s Batman as being fascist, but again and again Bruce and Carrie turn the symbol of the Bat into a social movement and unite the people to defeat a tyrant. Of course this doesn’t happen though, because we only see how superheroes inspire ordinary people like one to three times in this series. To use an example outside of superhero comics, Dragon Ball does the same shit! But again, this moment isn’t cool because of stupid shit like “clap your hands if you believe in Goku!”, it’s great because a (formerly) scummy weakling like Mr. Satan becomes just as useful as Goku and Vegeta by using the lie that he told the entire Earth to save the universe. It's a nice little redemptive moment, even if he's already had like three in that arc. In this latest My Hero chapter, the victory is “Uraraka yells at people and they shut up long enough for Deku’s fanboy to run at him”. It just fizzes out when you’ve seen the same thing done better. HOWEVER! If they did shift this entire chapter to a POV of the random Deku fanboy, I probably would have liked it, if only it meant being spared the stupid speech about how it’s on thousands of random people to make sure Deku smiles again. I’m not even against superheroes being vulnerable or crying all the time, but I wish it was done in a less “everything can be solved with a speech” way. Perhaps I simply prefer the “hero relies on the people they protect” moment to be exciting and not pitiful? I don’t know. I’ll at least give it points for being different, though, I rarely ever see a teen hero this reliant on randos to make him feel better, if this scene played out anywhere else Uraraka would have just told all the civilians to go fuck themselves and move on. #OH I ALSO JUST REALIZED ONE PUNCH MAN DOES THE SAME THING BETTER MULTIPLE TIMES: Like after the Sea King arc everybody starts shit talking the other heroes for getting beaten but instead of preaching at them Saitama lies and says the other heroes weakened the Sea King enough for him to one shot him, thus saving their honor but making him a lame cheat in the eyes of the public! Now *that’s* a cool hero. TLDR My Hero barely says anything interesting about what it means to be a superhero/celebrity and what it does say is very much not for me. Oh, and there are far too many stupid characters I don’t give a shit about. It’s a serviceable battle shounen with fantastic art and some real highlights here and there, but that’s about it. A friend of mine had a theory that all battle shounen are the same thing and your enjoyment depends on which gimmick you vibe with the most. I don't think that's true, but My Hero is the closest we've come as a species to proving it. I'd say read this series if you're not as jaded about superhero shit as I am, otherwise I think you can skip it.

  EDIT: Deku’s fanboy was actually an established character and I just didn’t remember. This should speak to either my stupidity or the quality of the characters in this series

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• 

  SpikeWasAlreadyTaken

  79/100
  A simple shonen that's still a whole lot of fun

  This review contains extremely minor spoilers, as well as Chapter One spoilers.
  Disclaimer: I rate manga here based on how well I think they compare to other manga, not just based on enjoyment- so a manga that I find to be average but still a decent read will be around a 50, 60s and 70s are a bit above average, etc. Don't let the score make you think I consider this a bad manga- it's pretty darn good, and it's the manga that got me into reading manga.

  My Hero Academia is a simple shonen with a simple premise. In a world where superpowers called Quirks are present in most of the population, Izuku Midoriya dreams of being a hero. Constantly obsessed with heroes like his idol, the #1 hero All Might, Midoriya's dreams are crushed when he finds out that he's Quirkless. Continuing to try and get into the top school for would-be heroes, UA High, Midoriya catches the attention of All Might, who tells Midoriya that Midoriya can inherit his Quirk and become a hero. MHA follows Midoriya and his fellow heroes-in-training on their paths to become heroes.

  Love it or hate it, that simple shonen premise has grown into one of the most defining manga of the last decade. It blew up in the West, sells well in Japan, and looks like it'll end at around 40 volumes, selling millions of copies of each. Still, why is MHA such a big deal? What makes it good?

  Well, in short, MHA just does a really good job with that simple shonen premise. When it comes to battle shonen, normally there's a few things that make it good- a developing protagonist, interesting characters, good villains, an interesting power system, well done fights, and an overarching story. MHA delivers on all of those pretty well.

  First off, the protagonist. Midoriya is a pretty standard shonen protagonist- extremely emotional, strong sense of morals, no father. At the start of the series, the first one is obvious, and Midoriya is borderline annoying at first. Lots of tears, lots of overexcitement. However, throughout the series he continues to develop, and becomes a well done character. He also develops as a hero, and the decision to initially make him Quirkless and force him to play catch-up with all the other heroes in training who've been experimenting with their powers for years works really well. A lot of the moments where Midoriya develops as a character go hand in hand with some new application of his Quirk, which makes it really satisfying to see his growth. Is he a perfectly done character? No, but he's an endearing underdog and over time he's become a very good one.

  As for the rest of the cast, well, there's a ton of variance. As you'd expect from a shonen with a large cast, there's some side characters that get a lot of time spent on their development and some that are notable but don't really get spotlighted. The characters have great dynamics, particularly the heroes-to-be, and feel like they're supporting each other in a way not unlike a sports team, which leads to a lot of likable characters. Overall, I do think the series does a good job with making sure most of the primary cast gets their time in the sun, as well as a few of the professional heroes, and it does a decent job bringing characters in and out of the story in a natural way. There's a character or two that're just not well handled (Mineta is a notable one for his personality, but several of the pro heroes and characters like Hagakure or Sato get pretty much ignored), but considering MHA juggles like 60-70 characters in a some way or another, that's expected.
  The villains are, in my opinion, what really makes MHA shine. For the most part, they don't have grand goals, most aren't out to rule the world or commit mass genocide or anything crazy like that. In many cases, they're written as just people trying to live life their way and deal with their personal issues, even if that means they're killers and criminals. Are they good guys, no, but they aren't, for the most part, "evil". Spinner and Twice are good examples of that, and Twice in particular is an extremely compelling character. Overall, the villains are characters that you can somewhat sympathize with, and that they get highlighted is always awesome.

  As far as the power system and fights go, MHA takes advantage of its superpower system to have some really interesting abilities. Sure, there's super strength, or speed, or creating electricity and whatnot, but there's also creative abilities like tape dispenser Spider-man and the ability to change elasticity. The characters' personalities also often reflect their power, which is nice and keeps the powers themselves from feeling out of place. As far as fights go, they're pretty solid and the pacing feels good. There's some that have truly creative applications of powers, and even when they don't, they're almost always satisfying and entertaining.

  Lastly, the overarching story. MHA's overarching story is driven by a great parallel between Midoriya's development and that of the villains, and it works extremely well. To its credit, the series is unafraid to go off on tangents with the side characters, fine with letting the heroes lose or be flawed, and doesn't shy away from deaths. What you wind up with is a shonen that isn't entirely heroic, and that dynamic sets it apart from most other basic battle shonen out there. The worldbuilding is also pretty good, even if I'd like to see more of the politics driving pro heroism, and the series naturally weaves in explanations of how the world works after the advent of superpowers.

  As far as art goes, MHA has really good art for a weekly. It's extremely clean, with enough detail to make it interesting, and the series has extremely striking panels when they're appropriate, with the occasional facial expression or close-up that gives the moment extreme impact. Particularly later on in the story, it feels like the art shifts a little bit to match the tone, and when the story is less hopeful the art takes on the same quality. It's pretty damn impressive.

  EDIT: Thoughts on ending... final arc has its flaws (splitting the fights up and splicing them into each other was just weird to read), but I liked the ultimate ending. Will update review at some point.

  Overall, MHA is definitely deserving of its success. It's not perfect or particularly inventive by any means, but it's taken all of the tropes and hallmarks of a basic battle shonen and used them extremely well. With great villains, a fairly well-handled cast, engrossing fights and high quality art, it's well worth the read.

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• 

  Biisoo

  85/100
  A very basic and typical Shounen with excellent execution.

  My reason for writing this review is very simple, All I see are negative things and reviews on the internet about this anime/manga when infact it does not deserve all the hate that it has garnered over the years since it's release. It was hailed as the next big Jump manga for a while but in recent years perhaps due to it's toxic fandom, it has garnered quite a negative reputation which doesn't sit well with me. All I ask is that you give this series a chance.

  I will elaborate why this series is worth all your time via some key points, This review encompasses both the anime and manga and will try to convince (you)the reader that this series is actually a well thought out Shounen.

  1. Let's start with the main character Izuku Midoriya, Typical cookie cutter Shounen protagonist, Starts out really unremarkable but actually develops into a really emotional guy. His kindness towards all attitude is something that we all need to follow in our lives atleast. I see the criticism that he cries a lot, Now tell me why that should be a negative thing? Infact, Izuku is one of the most emotional Shounen jump characters due to his diversity in emotions. Now let's come to his motivations, Pure and simple which are to surpass his teacher. (Seen a million times but where's the harm eh)
  2. The cast is really amazingly well developed and the author is a genius when it comes to character development. The villains in this series are actually one of the best written including the main Antagonist (Shigaraki). Initially, I also hated him but after reading through, I was like damn this is some really intense backstory and I couldn't help but understand his point of view. Horikoshi (The author) has a way of handling even side characters so well.
  3. Katsuki Bakugo (Yes you heard me right, The character which was hated by everyone including myself at the start of the series). At first glance he pisses everyone off but I swear in all my years of Shounen watching, I've never switched my perspectives about a guy as much as I did with him. Horikoshi really really nailed his character development and I think he became one of the biggest strengths of this series.
  4. The story. It doesn't do anything fancy, just takes the basic Shounen formula and amps it up. Arcs are done well and it does not feel like it's going in a confusing way or anything like that. Every arc has purpose and every plot point is covered very neatly. It's not the best story out there but it gets the job done. Power of friendship stuff is here too but I mean, Isn't that in most Shounen? So I won't subtract points for that haha.
  5. People actually die here, surprise surprise. Most Shounens play it safe by doing off screen deaths but the author is very bold when it comes to deaths and does them in a flashy yet thought provoking manner. You can't help but cheer for the losers and villains lol.
  6. Godly art. Horikoshi Kohei is an absolute madman when it comes to drawing. I won't be lying if I said that part of the reason of the success of MHA is due to his amazing illustrations. Now incase of the anime, It's handled by Bones. One of the best studios of modern times does a perfect job of adapting the manga. Very little room for error actually.

  These are the points which I think make MHA a very splendid Shounen. See, if you don't like Shounen then you won't like this. But if you've read or seen a few of them then chances are that you'll probably like this one too because while MHA doesn't do many new things, it certainly does what it does excellently.

  I hope this review convinced even one person to give this series a chance, If yes then welcome aboard because the series is in its final arc at the time of writing of this review.
  All we need is a solid ending and I think MHA will go down as one of the most popular Shounens of this generation.

  The series overall gets a 8.5-9/10 from me. It's no masterpiece but it's pretty damn fun to read and watch.

  Thanks for reading this review!

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