Hero Academia really makes me think of something like a particularly good Naruto arc with all the filler cut out.
So what made this show so great? I think it’s probably for the same reasons One Punch Man was such a wild success, people like a good hero. Dark, gritty, real, none of those are words you would use to describe either of our heroes in Hero Academia or One Punch Man. In both of these anime the hero is someone who genuinely wants to help people. (Sure, I guess you could argue that Saitama is a self proclaimed hero for fun, but at the end of the day he’s not the type to walk passed a mugging just because he didn’t really feel like being a hero that day, and I think the fact that in his heart he’s truly self sacrificing for the greater good is shown throughout the series.)
The trend recently is to make things real. Heroes might not all be so good, sometimes good people do bad things for the right reasons, sometimes seemingly good people ultimately have a very dark ulterior motive, all that jazz. It’s everywhere in movies, games, anime, you name it. Goody two shoes have taken a very hard fall out of being fashionable. But I think people actually like a genuine hero more than they like a “real” hero because the “real” heroes don’t give us anything to believe in. I thought “Man of Steel” was a cool movie, but it didn’t make me want to be Superman. The really corny, always doing the best thing for everyone Superman? That guy actually makes me want to be a super hero. And I think My Hero Academia tapped into that same vein. It made me want to be a hero like All Might, and in doing so it made me really relate to Midoriya’s aspirations.
Watching Midoriya fight against the odds to fulfill his dream made me want to fight for my dreams too, the same way superman swooping in to save a cat from a tree or jumping in front of a kryptonite fueled train inspires me to be heroic too.
