By
Kenneth Lopez
My Hero
Academia is
Japanese Manga that debuted in 2014 in the magazine, Weekly Shonen Jump.
The story about a young boy who wanted to become the world’s greatest hero
received an anime adaptation in 2016 has been soaring in popularity ever since.
It is especially popular here in North America; with millions of fans young and
old drawing fan art, cosplaying as their favorite characters and making
countless amvs of their favorite moments in show or their favorite ships.
But
despite this popularity, I (and a minority of people) do not feel this show is
worth the hype and has a lot of problems that either no one has picked up or
are being ignored.
The first
problem I have with it is how similar it to other shonen (especially Naruto).
You’ve got your underdog main character who has no superpowers (and in the
future, might be revealed to have parents who were really important people and
might be related to royalty)and lives in a world where everyone has a super
power. He later gets a power to make himself feel better and gets respect from
a high ranking member in his society. You have rival character foil for our
mainlead. You have an expanded cast of characters who are all colorful and
likable. And there’s a tournament arc later on.
Now this
isn't just a problem with My Hero, it highlights more of the problem
with the shonen genre and how oversaturated it is. Any idea you could come up
with has already been done in another story. So the only way to make your story
stand on its own comes down to two things: the writing and the characters. And
My Hero Academia struggles with both.
Let’s
begin with the characters, starting with the secondary characters. My Hero
Academia has a huge cast of characters, a majority of them being pretty
bland having no personality; only being defined by a certain trope. Uruaka is
your standard romantic interest who doesn't stand on her own and is only there
to cheer our protagonists on. The frog girl is…..uh….has frog powers I guess.
The weird pervert midget is a pervert. That weird French guy is…..iritating and
shouldn’t exist. I'm pretty sure you’ve noticed at this point that I’ve only
referred to ¼ characters I listed by their first name and everyone else buy
their defined trope, and that’s a major issue. If you are going to write a
story where there's a huge cast, you have to give them some sort of personality
to make them standout (like Naruto). If you struggle with writing for more than
5 or 6 characters, don’t write a story with a large amount of characters.
But that
doesn’t mean the main cast is any good either. Though Izuku is one of the more
relatable characters, I do question why he didn’t physically train himself to
become a hero. In My Hero Academia, you need a quirk to become a hero and he
wasn’t born with one. But you know who else is a superhero but doesn’t have a
superpower, Batman! He was born with no superpowers but that didn’t stop him
from becoming the badass hero that defends gotham. What this does is this gives
unintentionally gives off the impression that Izuku is spoiled, which is not
the case. In fact, why was he still holding onto that dream into his teenage
years (when the show takes place). Realistically, after his dreams of becoming
a hero had been squandered as a kid, he probably would’ve given it up as time
went by and moved on. But he didn’t, he still held on to that dream, but yet
did nothing to move closer to that goal. He didn’t learn any fighting moves, he
didn’t train himself to become stronger, nothing! I mean, he did write down
notes about heroes and their powers but they do nothing in the long run.
Bakugo is
rival character of this show and his is unapologetically a complete bully. He
has bullied Izuku since childhood (A/N: despite Izuku being bullied by Bakugo,
he still looks up to him for some reason) and even told him to kill himself in
the first episode. He’s an egotistical maniac who only wants to become a hero
to be the best and not help others. And his temper is on another level, to the
point of almost being a psychopath. It’s astonishing that he was able to enter
the hero academy, and it’s more astonishing that this character is well beloved
and attracts so many fangirls.
Todoroki
is a Zuko clone, plain and simple. He has an abusive father, he got a scar in
his childhood, he’s an outright rip off from Zuko from Avatar The Last
Airbender. But well Zuku’s an actual well written character, Todoroki is not.
The only
character in the main cast I sort of like is Ida. I really liked his character
arc about avenging his brother and taking his hero name to honor his brother.
Other than that, there’s not much to say about him.
Moving
onto the writing, I absolutely hate the story structure and this leads to
believe the author has no idea what he’s doing. To explain myself, I’ll go over
the plot of Season 2.
The
season begins with a tournament arc which isn’t that good but the season really
picks up steam when we’re introducing the Stain, who injures Ida’s brother.
After a less than impressive fight, Stain is defeated but not before exposing
certain heroes and inspiring others to become villains. Now what do you think
could come next after this very impactful arc? Our hero’s more on their guard
as the attack from dangerous villains becoming more likely. The story picking
up speed. But no. Instead, we just get more hero exams. Yes, that very dark
story that could impact the world of My Hero is never added upon and is
brushed aside to focus on more tensionless fights. This happens in Season 3 to
my knowledge (considering I stopped watching mid way through Season 2). It
opens with an intense arc with earth shattering events and the arc after that
is just another tournament arc.
This is
not how you write an interesting story! Take a look at Saint Seiya: the show
begins with tournament arc but that's quickly scrapped when one of the Saints
steals the prize. And after they defeated the villians and things seem like
they’re gonna die down, our hero’s are ambushed again by another dangerous
enemy and prize is stolen once again. That’s how you write a gripping and
interesting story, you make the next arc more intense than the last. You don’t
go from gripping plot to tensionless fluff to gripping plot! This gives off the
impression that My Hero Academia doesn’t have a story and is just making
up stuff as it’s going along.
There are
more problems I have with shows like how the fights are uncreative and are over
dramatic scuffles. Or how the author tries to flesh out bland background
characters later into the story instead of doing it after they’re introduced.
Or Izuku gains 6 more powers later on in the manga but I’m sure you don't want
to be here for days.
Though My Hero Academia
is popular, it’s quality isn’t equal to that. Sure the animation is fantastic,
but that doesn’t fix the bland cast of characters, poorly written main leads,
terrible story structure, and relying too much on it’s inspirations instead of
carving out its own identity. At the time of writing this, the Season 4 is
already out and I am not sure if it’s good or not. But what I can say is that
there are more shonen anime out there that are worth more of your time than My
Hero Academia.
