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My Hero Academia Season 1 Review

My Hero Academia is a superhero anime series. The first season consisting of thirteen episodes was released in 2016.

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“When the enemy becomes certain of their victory,

that will be our chance“

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It follows Izuku Midoriya, a boy born without superpowers in a world where they are the norm, but who still dreams of becoming a superhero himself, and is scouted by the world’s greatest hero who shares his powers with Izuku after recognizing his value and enrolls him in a high school for heroes in training. Right off the bat, I love this premise. It’s timely for the superhero craze today and it twists the usual storyline of this genre on its head with a normal protagonist.

It fits the anime underdog narrative, and although the show can become rather predictable in that regard, the emotional investment behind this story and the protagonist’s quest is undeniably very strong. The second half of the first season was weaker than the stellar beginning, but overall this was a pleasant, quite strong introduction to the show.

Izuku is so well developed and it is immensely easy to just root for this little fellow. His energy and his love for superheroes are infectious. The backstory that he got is great and his mother is just a wonderful human being, very supportive. I also loved everything about All Might. He is very memorable in both forms and is just a super cool, lovable big guy. The relationship between these two is the heart of the show, but I did find it too inconvenient how his quirk is to send his quirk to another person as a vessel. It was just too much for me.

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Of the other boys and girls in his class, Ochako Uraraka is excellent as the potential love interest. Their dynamic is wonderful and again it is easy to root for them. As for Bakugo, he got a standard anime backstory and the two have that kind of problematic and toxic relationship that most of these shonen shows have, but it still works because the flashbacks are for the most part very well told and this character is very memorable in his angry outbursts.

My Hero Academia has good action, but nothing particularly innovative nor memorable. Some of the fights are excellent, especially that assignment with heroes versus villains in school between the three above characters. That entire episode was amazing and the best of the whole season. I wish more episodes were as fun as that one, but for the most part the action is just okay without ever being particularly fantastic.

The animation is also good, but again nothing truly incredible. The character designs are solid and the effects are pretty good while the action is also solidly executed. The score is fine, but once again hardly iconic. What I particularly liked here is the dialogue, which is very good, and also the humor, which can be great, but it is rather diminished in screen time inarguably.

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