My hero academia television show season 4

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Apr 4, 2020

bend_over

Not Recommended

*Spoiler Warning*

My Hero Academia is slowly but surely becoming Fairy Tail 2.0.

Every time I hear something good about "My Hero Academia", it has mainly to do with its writing and how beautiful it is. There are also so many great developments from many characters, so they say, but I don't see any of this. I really don't. I'm probably being a bit too nitpicky with the show but I really wouldn't mind at all if only people would stop calling this show's writing a magnum opus when you all know that's not true. I, personally would call "My Hero Academia" a cringe show and not ... in a good way, either. It's a show that gets on my nerves, can't stand, and yet, I've seen all 4 seasons of this damned franchise and I will finish everything with a little hope that its writing will be a little better, but I don't think it will ever happen since you know, I'm reading the fucking manga and it's looking real bad there as well.

The third season starts with a filler and despite my hatred for fillers in general, the first episode was genuinely a good episode (as far as fillers go) but it was still a recap of the story and honestly I would have gladly done without. Then it starts with the arc of "Saving the girl from the bad guy, because we're heroes even though there are so many other people out there that need our help and we should dedicate our time to them as well but who cares about them as long some one random kid is saved and let's cliche the fuck out of it". Oh yeah, it's just happen that the girl has the power of rewind time (VERY convenient for what's going to happen later). Fortunately for everyone, she has not control over it, so our boi, Deku - was able to save her and in the meantime Mirio lost his quirk powers, a random dude dies, some chicks do nothing, random stuff happens at random, 3-5 episode fillers, a not-so-good animation is not-so-good and predominantly we get to see many bad dudes. They show up now, but not before, because why exactly? I see, because the plot didn't want them before. Oh Yeah, It's All Coming Together.

Basically the whole premise of this season is basically to save her (and give her the happy life everyone needs, lol), a kid nobody cared before, and I can't believe it took that many episodes to save her who to tell you the truth, can't give a damn about. Like, no. She's that one girl everyone wants to protect but why though? Because she's cute? Because, you know, she's a kid? Dude, if I were a hero, i'd go from town to town to look for people who need my help. I'm not gonna take days staying around her as Midoriya and others do because... reasons? In fact, I don't think I exactly know why it was so necessary to save her... no, I actually know the reason of such thing, it's because we have to make our main character somewhat revelant. Whatever happens, Deku will take care of the main villain of the arc.

What bothers me is the coincidence that both Midoriya and Mirio stumbled upon her just after Midoriya somehow got Nighteye's approval on becoming his student and before somehow after Nighteye himself apparently had a plan to bring down Chisaki and his gang that just happens, the little girl both our heroes stumbled upon, I think a day before, is in that group, too. In my entire life i've never seen a more convenient thing than this part here. Think about it. If Deku never went to Nighteye, all this would probably never happened, and thus, the girl would have suffered even more before someone really was able to save her (if not never saved), but because Midoriya is the main character, he'll save her anyway (which he did), even going up against a probably much stronger enemy but because she has the power of rewind throughout the fight she was able to repair Deku's body, so he wouldn't explode and all this make the entire fight, a complete ex machina + asspull and bullshit, too. Look, the problem here is Deku and nobody else. He's writen in such a nuance that is so repetitive, nausating and predicable.

I can predict what he'll do because he has the same personality he had at the beginning. He has been doing stuff over and over again with the same outcome that wouldn't put him in any danger. He ain't in danger and probably never will. Did you see how he beat Gentle? Did you? It was a total bullshit of a fight. Deku was down. He was annihilated by gentle and yet, he won? How that happened? He doesn't surrender. He's persistent. Yes, this is what the author has made of him. Persistent. You'd think that does mean shit, amirite? Yes, but who the fuck cares anyway, he's the protagonist, logic means shit here anyway. Both Gentle and La Brava would have won since the beginning but because he's the main character and because of his own victories he'd became a much mature person, according to the author.

Has he become one?

No and probably never will. Being a cringy kid and shooting clichés every two seconds doesn't make you one. Being over obsessed with "justice" doesn't make you one. Being the overprotective person doesn't make one.

My Hero Academia is badly written. The series has way too many characters that does not flesh out a single one. They are all here because they're told to be and when they fight, they do win but they win in "Deku style". You know, the villain has the upper hand but because of a flashback or that set character endurance they force their body to its limit and win, by one blow. Have you noticed this patern? You never see a flashy fight but rather a dull one when some people hit each other non-stop for a few seconds multiplie times and the winner is the most obvious you can think of. I tell you, on this season there should have been at least 5 deaths. Some characters have a plot armor beyond belief. They won't die no matter what. Anyways, as I said, the writing is bad, so I chosed a random scene just to prove it to you:

- Uraraka gets knocked out by a big dude.
- Asui too gets knocked out by the same big dude.
- The big dude is about to deal up to the 9th strongest hero.
- It is not so clear whether one of the strongest heroes would win against him or not.
- Uraraka sees Deku (Toga in disguise).
- Uraraka, real shit, despite I can't move and despite being almost unconscious by the enemy's power, I have to force myself moving because (this is repeated later in the episode, but this time she sees the real deku) we are taught by seniors not to give up and somehow move the villain to where Deku (Toga in disguise) had said, with Asui, in case you didn't figure that out. Asui came outta nowhere to help Uraraka and split some clichés alongside Uraraka. Did she also saw Deku? I do assume she stopped "being unconscious", by seeing him, right? Above all, how they both were able to escape from that big dude's power? Whatever that fucking thing was, it was something that made both girls lose senses. You'd think even if the bad dude were to be defeated, it'd take a minute or so for them get conscious, but nope, it only took less than 5 seconds for them completely be fine and be able to use their powers at full. Man, some of these scenes are incomprensibile.

It all goes like that. Instead of using strategies to defeating the bad dudes, they get overpowered by them, rarely goes vice versa and by the end of the fight, heroes win. Now, how come the heroes win when they're clearly not strong enough to have the better? The answer is pretty simple, they SHOULDN'T. What they should, though, is to have a proper training such as fighting with professionals, until the proper gets unconscious more and more times until the victory goes the vice versa. It's gonna take a while but because it's writing is really bad they'll face off a villain anyway and eventually win, presumably without too many consequences if not any. They obviously do it but it is very rare. Students should be pressured many times to learn the dangerous that is the outside.

Also, let's talk about Uraraka a bit since now we're here. Is there anything useful she can do without yelling "Deku" every two seconds? We all know she loves him, and i'm happy for her but she only needs to hear his name or see him fighting to make herself do something is something i'm not happy of. She should have some character development, at the very least, by the end of the story. At least I hope because as for now, she's quite literally useless. Most of the girls are, in fact. At no point any of them got their shining moment. What a shame.

Least but not last, allow me to spare two words about something that I, for the love of god don't understand. I am obviously referring to the "characters power and their name" via text that appears on everyone's appearance. And not only that, do you guys remember Hizashi? He's that one character no screen time was given, instead the author has found a clever way to making him talk as much as one can by repeating the same stuff over and over again. If it's a new power and Hizashi explains it, i'll be completely fine with that but because we're given explanation to powers we have the knowledge of already, it's making me to believe it's just added there to pad some time. Considering this is the 4th season of the franchise, I doubt it's gonna stop anytime soon but it really should. It's annoying and distracting.

My Hero Academia is highly praised and I have nothing against that but people need to know that its writing it's not pioneer and overall it'll never be. Whatever the reason you are watching this anime, I say, hats off to you on appreciating these characters and their story. I really couldn't. I tried, but I just couldn't since most of the characters are both uninteresting and annoying.

Reviewer’s Rating: 2

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Apr 4, 2020

Goober-fish

Not Recommended

Since it first began airing, “My Hero Academia” has been the unwitting punching bag for joyless old dogs like me who have lost the childlike fascination with watching cartoon characters whale on each other with little rhyme or reason. Not that My Hero Academia has ever really prided itself on intricate or brutal fights worth revisiting when compared to some of its peers, because in all honesty, as of late, this anime has lacked even that to keep me motivated to continue on.

If there’s one thing that My Hero Academia’s 4th season has proven, it’s that mangaka Kohei Horikoshi has mastered the art ... of spinning his wheels. And that’s not to say that the production team attached to this project doesn’t share a portion of the blame, for all I know, the manga could just be THAT much better. But this score, this review, it’s not a nagging response as a disgruntled fan of the manga frustrated with the panel to frame fidelity, I don’t have that frame of reference to care all that much. I’m sure it doesn’t need to be said because the general lack of excitement for this season more or less speaks for itself, but this is the most uneven and nonessential season of the My Hero Academia anime to date.

Not counting any brief transitional arcs, Season 4 can essentially be divided into two major story arcs, the “Shie Hassaikai arc” (for brevity's sake I’ll simply refer to it as the “Overhaul arc”) as well as the “U.A. School Festival arc”. If I were to describe the essential structure of this season, it’s sort of a weird Frankenstein’s monster of the latter halves of both the Second and Third season. Cursory filler aside, the Overhaul arc doesn’t take much time to get going and after a point resigns itself as a collection of poorly strung together action sequences of varying quality. Let me just say, for as poorly handled as that License arc was in the third season as both a transition from the previous arc and as a necessary plot device, I contend the School Festival arc might be even worse.

There are plenty of fans who have dubbed this arc “filler”, which isn’t necessarily true in the literal application of the term. But the severe lack of consequence in this arc does make it feel like fluff. I’ll humor anyone who’s curious about Gentle and La Brava later.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a season of My Hero Academia without debilitating amounts of pointless character introductions, most of which you’ll probably never see again and live and die with their shallow characterization. The reverence for comic books is cool, it really is, but unlike comic books which have the benefit of recontextualization, My Hero Academia feels pointlessly overstuffed. I’m not expecting Frank Miller or Grant Morrison to write their own takes on these characters, so it just feels like Horikoshi is overpopulating this world for the sake of it (I will gladly eat my crow if more manga like Vigilantes are green-lit).

One issue I have with the way Horikoshi writes characters is the utilitarian manner in which he will introduce and then dispose of them like they never mattered all that much I.e., scapegoating. This happens a few times throughout this season, one of which is with Mirio. With the way the kid was gassed up by his peers and specifically by Nighteye for being more deserving of the torch that All Might left behind than Deku, it was a clear path to this kid’s demise.

The obvious parallel you can draw with the Overhaul arc is with the Hero Killer arc but it also heavily treads territory that the Raid arc did in Season 3. Mirio is essentially a stand-in for All Might, both of them being used in the exact same way. Have both of them fight the villain, have both of them lose their powers, have both of them reaffirm Deku’s goal as the “Number 1 Hero”. Not to diminish Mirio’s character, he’s likable enough on his own, but his lack of presence in the story up until that point only makes his story beat vastly inferior to All Might’s (and it’s already annoying enough that they were used in the same way). Nighteye is handled in a similar fashion. The show expects you to care about what ultimately ends up transpiring but barely gives you a chance to even digest his character before it happens. If nothing else, it’s pitiful.

Eri is the latest addition in a long line of prepubescent power-sources (lolis specifically) to be exploited for the protagonist’s use. You’ve seen it in Berserk. You’ve seen it in the Monogatari Series. You’ve seen it in the A Certain Series. I get it though, I get the fun hacky appeal of having a little girl be the source of immense power, it’s “ironic” if not just a bit on the nose. The issue is, compared to characters like Schierke and Shinobu, Eri’s character starts and ends with her status as a plot device. She has no personality, not much of a backstory, not much of anything really, but the story expects you to care and buy into the other characters’ investment in saving her because she’s a little girl. It’s such an easy out.

Deku in Season 4 is like that beater car you bought with your first two paychecks in high school. 6 years later and now it has a tacky spoiler, phone mount, and a full tank of gas. At this point, you can’t be bothered to change anything about it because you’re just going to get rid of it when given the chance. Deku in Season 4 is just Deku from Season 1, except now he has cup-holders. I get that the intent was to make his conflict simple and relatable for the audience by having him overcome his bullies as well as the societal role handed to him because of his shortcomings. But all of that hard work and studying is undercut by the number of plot conveniences and hand-outs hoisted upon him. For as hard as Horikoshi tries to make this kid relatable, his character arc feels as insincere as Naruto finding out he was kid Jesus.

That said, Horikoshi, please, You have A TON of characters in Class 1-A that have yet to do much of anything, stop needlessly proliferating this fucking cast like a pack of rabbits in heat and use the characters you’ve already established for crying out loud! Bakugo for instance, he had a great character arc that culminated fantastically in the previous season! He’s an afterthought in this season!

The conflict in My Hero Academia just isn’t palpable. Cutting up Deku's fingers and giving him a sunburn on his arm just isn’t good enough for me. Having All Might fall from grace is a given, but a good step in the right direction but that’s not enough to hold things over for much longer. There is no tension in this series, it’s only a step-up from shows like Fairy Tail that tout friendship and love as a badge of honor. Nothing of significant consequence happens in this show’s story, and Season 4 perhaps the worst offender of that notion to date.

In itself, the entire concept of having these kids do work-study/interning for agencies that will very likely throw them in perilous situations is just asinine to me. The series made it a point of conflict in the past to highlight the school's reckless abandon for security as a fundamental flaw in the system, so why leave these kids to handle these situations on their own when death is clearly a looming danger? I get that these kids are hot-shots with provisional licenses but why leave Mirio, Tamaki, Deku, Kirishima, etc. to their own devices when they are clearly dealing with literal Yakuza who are out for their heads at any given chance? For consistency’s sake, isn’t that an incredible oversight in terms of the school’s security policy? Does this piece of plastic essentially wipe the school’s hands clean of any responsibility if a death were to occur while a student is on assignment interning for an agency?

You know, maybe it’s just the child murder renaissance we’re living in (I’m American if you couldn’t tell), but it’s not like Horikoshi has a limited roster to choose from. It’s a simple solution and admittedly would probably only put a bandaid on this series’ several chronic ailments, but having the guts to kill a major character from 1-A can be spun in a variety of ways. Imagine the fallout and backlash this would cause for the school. Imagine how Deku would internalize this. That’s an interesting conflict to work with, and as I already hammered down on, this show is in DESPERATE need of decent conflict and tension.

Oh God, I haven’t even touched base with the villains yet.

I have my reservations about Stain, his paper-thin platitudes, and the very obvious holes in his flawed ideology, but I could buy into his persona as a delusional loon with a few screws loose. Overhaul doesn’t really have much of an excuse.

The dude comes in and kills one of Shigaraki’s goons (good, Shigaraki and the League of Villains get on my fucking nerves) and clearly carries himself with a menacing cool. Another notable aspect to his character is his overtly paradoxical ideology. So you’re telling me the guy considers Quirks a plague upon humanity (setting aside the fact that he himself heavily relies on his own Quirk) and his master plan is to create a vaccine as well as a vaccine for the vaccine...because Yakuza? Overhaul is a joke, to put it bluntly, and to further rub salt in the wound, he lets a loser like Shigaraki get the best of him.

Gentle and La Brava have been both hated and lauded for their pitiable backstories and relatability. If it wasn’t made clear by La Brava spelling it out during their fight, Gentle is essentially a “this could’ve been you” character for Deku. Gentle lacked the aptitude and ambition to make the cut as a pro-hero and spirals into depression when he is ostracized from society after making a miscalculation. Listen, I appreciate the sentiment and under the supervision of a better writer, this very well could’ve been an effective dynamic, but does anyone really expect the thematic underpinnings of these two characters’ stories to significantly alter the trajectory of the story or Deku’s character?

The story has already moved on without them like they never mattered. It’s like Horikoshi lacks the self-awareness to realize that these villains deeply undermine Deku as a character. I get such mixed messages as to what the point of these characters was because they only make Deku look like even more of a child of privilege. Was that the message he was trying to convey by introducing and disposing of these villains? That if you hit a rut in life but still have that fire in your belly to realize your dreams and “be a hero” maybe some venerable benefactor will literally drop from the heavens and bail you out? It’s depressing to think about.

Fittingly, there were plenty of power-point reminiscent montage stills of characters just doing things, really dialed back my clock to high school when I would do the same thing. I guess that was the point since they’re in high school? But hey, at least Horikoshi’s designs are perdy to look at. I haven’t fully kept up on news as far as this season’s production schedule but it’s worth noting that this season was produced in tandem with a film (that I’ve yet to see) which apparently affected which animators were available to work on the TV series. Maybe my eye isn’t trained enough to catch the subtleties in the key-frames or perhaps my lack of investment in the manga makes this a point of contention that just flew over my head, but this season seemed pretty par for the course for the previous seasons. If there’s one thing I’ll say about Horikoshi, it’s that he’s a fantastic character designer and a pretty talented artist, even if the anime doesn’t properly translate his panel-work.

Horikoshi has gone on record taking breaks for “research”, but in reality, I feel that research is really just to buy himself time to conjure more story. For lack of a better phrase, it really does just feel like he’s making shit up as he goes along or rehashing the same story with a shallow coat of paint. This season is so under-written that you could basically just read a list of a handful of notable bullet points and skip the entire thing without missing so much as a good action sequence. Perhaps I’m overthinking it, but to that end, I’d say that cutting this show slack is only doing a disservice to the countless number of well-wrought comic books and battle shonen to choose from in this modern era. Some may call this a predictable review, and to them I say, it’s only appropriate to fight fire with fire.

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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Apr 4, 2020

Johan__Liebert_

Mixed Feelings

My hero academia, after having an explosion in its popularity while season 2 was airing, is arguably the most popular shounen right now that is not One Piece. And the hype is mostly deserved be it for having a well-balanced cast of characters, or for the fantastically animated and choreographed fights, the latter of which had a massive dip in quality this season. This entire season does not live up to the extreme hype perpetuated by the manga community.

The animation is very stiff even relying on still frames at times; the characters feel like they haven’t progressed at all since the beginning of season ... 3 even though some of them went through huge developments; the main antagonist, Overhaul, isn’t explored through introspection, and the potential he had is lost when reliance on flashbacks is preferred for the “justification” of his motives.

Every season of MHA can be broken down into two sections, viz. the villains attacking UA, and the villains planning on attacking UA, and this season is no different. The season can be split into two parts – Overhaul arc, and the Cultural Festival arc. Herein lies the pacing problem of the show, the splitting of a season into two works for seasonal runtime but in reality, the actual plot, the story that it set out to tell, has been lost somewhere. It has been 88 episodes since the debut of the first episode and we have seen very little plot progression. The overhaul arc was unnecessarily long, eating up 17 episodes when it could’ve been truncated to 12. The said arc, though entertaining, did little for almost all characters, except Kirishima and Mirio, and was of even less import in the big scheme of things.

For me the characters in MHA have always been the highlight. The characters are quintessential shounen characters but are imbued with subtle nuances and traits, but after witnessing them in this season I feel like they’re slowly regressing back to being just your average shounen protagonists and sidekicks. Bakugo for example, who had a change of personality in the preceding season, is more or less back to his previously angry self for no reason. Sure, there are changes to his prior disposition, but they don’t seem to follow up. Midoriya had some interesting moments in S3, for example the aftereffects of his fights with Muscular and Bakugo were enduring to watch, but this season he has reverted back to being the character who says “I want to become stronger” a lot. Kirishima and Mirio get some good character work done on them and I’m thankful for that. Kirishima’s backstory with Mina did feel like a plot device as we’ve almost never seen them interact as friends on any prior occasion, but suddenly it’s revealed that Mina was in the same middle school as Kirishima? I call BS.

Sir Nighteye, Mirio’s mentor and All Might’s former sidekick is introduced this season, who had chosen Mirio to be the successor to All Might and was against the fact that All Might had passed on One for All to Midoriya. This leads to the development of some great character dynamics between Midoriya and Nighteye, which, unfortunately were only touched upon superficially. It had potential to lay solid groundwork for Midoriya’s development, but no such task is undertaken by the author.

One unfounded complaint I’ve heard about this season is that only a few characters get the focus while the rest are discarded which is a problem only if you see it as one. Other characters do get the spotlight at various instances in the previous seasons, but the seasonal nature of the show makes it seem like characters are forgotten at times. Take the Chimera Ant Arc in Hunter x Hunter for example. In this arc two of the main protagonists are not given any screen time for 60 straight episodes and no one batted an eye.

As for the main antagonist this season, Overhaul, was neither exceptional nor bad, he was just OK. He didn’t stand out as much as Stain did, but he felt like a rehashed version of him. I liked Overhaul aka Chisaki as a character, but his motivations are baseless and his ‘means justify the end’ scream hypocrisy. He proclaims that quirks are diseases and should not be allowed to transfer on the next generation, but at the same time invents drugs to increase the potency of one’s quirk.

Speaking of antagonists, it doesn’t feel like the main antagonist of the series, Shigaraki Tomura, has done much progressing since the beginning of the series. I really hope he gets some major role in the upcoming seasons, because I’m honestly starting to get tired of him. At least he’s stopped scratching his neck and being pissed about anything and everything, which is a plus, I guess.

One of the most disappointing aspects of this season has been the lackluster animation. The fights don’t have the fluidity they possessed in the earlier seasons. For the climax of one of the biggest fights this season, Mirio vs Overhaul, we get an amazing slideshow which anyone could’ve made given they had access to the manga, photoshop and MS Powerpoint. They totally made up for it in the succeeding fight, but the stagnant animation and lack of music towards the climax of the previously mentioned fight really takes away much of the poignancy off the payoff.

The animation is by no means bad, but it’s not what I’ve come to expect form My Hero Academia. I hope they’ll fix it in the Blu-ray.

The music is great as always. I wasn’t a fan of either the first or the second opening and ending songs, but that’s just me. Rest of the music, though misused at times, was great.

For me, this season of MHA has been the weakest season yet. I’m more disappointed in the writing and pacing in this season than I am in the animation.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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