Boku no Hero Academia 4th Season

*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.

Due to the nature of the second season, the third season was bound to have a weaker start. Even so, with 2-cour duration it had all the time it ever needed to pick up the pace and improve, or at the very least build a solid foundation for this fourth season.... But it didn't do any of that and now we're more or less back to square one.

The classic shonen series have never exactly been the most flawless type in the arsenal, but few of them have struggled with their arc and tone shifts to the same extent with Boku no Hero Academia. While it's ... not uncommon that old story arcs become history and the new current arc gets the unconditional focus, it's rare to see a series which transition is this awkward.

Once again we start our newest season with a recap filler, followed by a build up phase which I'd like to metaphorically compare to the act of someone trying to restart a fusion core after it's been poisoned. It's slow, boring and drags on, and it would be faster to just shut it down entirely and try again. I find myself asking why exactly am I once again stuck at watching this series like it's a new slice of life IP when it's supposed to be a BTS on full roll and come with some type of smoothness already at this point. Instead it repeatedly falls into its own trap, repeating this cycle each new arc to a point where it has become tiresome and feels like a task. The sad part being that this level really seems to be what the series is now aiming to achieve, not even trying to be better, just settling with utter mediocrity and being okay with that. Will it ever maintain some type of stability instead of sawing up and down like Tesla's stock? At this point I very much doubt it will and, based to the lack of hype, it's safe to conclude that I am not the only one. You could literally start watching this series directly from season 4 and only miss the parts where the series was still entertaining to follow.

For years now, manga readers have been echoing that this fourth season will be the best one because it supposedly covers the best arc. While this is entirely possible in term of writing and characters, after all, there is still very little development thus far and the story board has now infinite different possible routes to take, I can't help but to be very skeptical about its delivery due to Bones' vision with the series. For some reason, our director's idea for the action sequences is to make them drag on, pause them, make them overly dramatic, play spoon-fed flashbacks from events that occured just few seconds earlier, and.. simply make them feel like a tease without any reward to be had. Why not make them like, you know, thrilling instead? Remove;tension Add;idle time! This series currently would really need some more classic shonen tropes and less of this nonsense that ruins the flow of these scenes entirely. The writing itself is still far from impressive and quite dull. "We, the selected few, are looking for this specific guy." And 2 minutes later "Oh, look, it's that guy. Sup?" The story board is just weak. If the plot was a line, what it does is put one dot next to the ongoing line and immediately connects it. There aren't many people on this planet who cannot do that. Not much room to be impressed.

To continue with the lack of development: It's really making this series problematic. When I am looking the characters now versus what they were in the beginning of season 3, I do not see much growth. In the beginning of last season, the characters were acting highly comedic and the feelings related ponder was also used as a running gag. It was lame and just a waste. During end season, the focus was in drama, and what this did was show us fractions of different sides of the cast, sides we had not seen before - like proving that these sides also exist. And now we are once again looking at characters who could be removed from their current timeline, get the "relife treatment" (current self send in the past shell) and there wouldn't be much differences to spot. Send Naruto from the beginning of The 4th Great Ninja War into Pain Saga and see how history is rewritten. Do this with Deku and be prepared to listen to Initial D's OST, more specifically 'deja vu' on repeat. ♩ ♪ ♫ ♬ It's not even a mystery~yy~!

The characters really don't seem to carry anything special with them from previous arc to next. This is a huge difference compared to other shonen titles and perhaps the reason why - at least I personally - as a viewer, am feeling very distanced from the series. It's not resonating with me on any level anymore. Be it Deku doing a smash the 9th milliont time, Bakugo yelling at 135dB or Uragravigirl being too close! with her body, none of it just has its charm anymore at this point. Rather it feels like some outcast, once-upon-a-time-famous celebrity is trying to be relevant with gimmicks that got old a decade ago. If I was the editor, I'd have adviced this guy write an arc where Deku stops being useless, Bakugo is forced to go on an anger management meeting, Uragravity actually does something to move the relationship onward -- like there's a filler I'd watch, and also give the frog girl all the screen time because she is the best girl. The series is at a point where I don't prefer the canon, even at times when it tries to distant itself from these same goofs it has already overusen.

As it is, I do believe that this season is going to improve since it's unlikely that it would dwell in its slower parts for 2 cours, but I also find it as unlikely that the series as a whole is going to improve for the better, or that I'd personally start caring again. New high peaks may occur but the same errs are bound to exist forever since the characters' lack of improvement seems to be something like a reflection of the author not learning from his own mistakes either. I'd say it's now a good time to lose hope with this and start looking for new titles to fill the shonen quota with something that has a bit more -- or preferedly; a lot more heart to it.

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.

My Hero Academia's biggest weakness is how painfully slow the plot moves forward. We're 6 episodes into the season, and nothing has happened that couldn't have been condensed into 1 episode.

That's not to say there aren't other glaring issues like a dialogue that could be written by a 12 year old. To the point you could skip an entire scene and know what happened. But we aren't here to be blown away by dialogue, it's a shounen. We're here to see good animation, fun characters, and an intriguing plot. So do we get any of that?

Animation: 4/10

The animation quality is the same as it's been ... in season 1 with no progression. It seems they're content with "mediocre" to "bad". Fight scenes are very rare, and when they do occur there's a whole lot of stills with camera panning. It feels like a cop-out and the rest of the show are stills with moving mouths... where's the budget for an insanely popular show?

Characters: 1/10

So are the characters fun at least? Not really. They've been the same person re-learning "I need to be the best" in varying ways. They're all identical to who they were in Season 1. There is nothing interesting about Midoriya since he's a parrot that can only say "I need to get stronger" for 70 episodes. His arc for every season is the same because it's solely that. Everyone else is just as bad or simply forgotten about unless they want to spend 10 minutes naming them all. The humor in this show is so repetitive and childish. All of the characters suck is all I really have to say.

Plot: 2/10

But the plot must be good! Alas, it isn't. The villains screen time is so limited it's basically them doing "villain" things and what that means is... they show up on screen as stills for 5 seconds and some announcer tells you what they did and then we get to hear the heroes talk about it for 10 minutes. That or they get an actual scene and it's some of the best the show has to offer, but it ends on a "mysterious" note never to be touched up on again. Each episode ends on a "wow, this is about to get real" but it's just a cliffhanger that ends anti-climactically every time. There's no pay off, it's just forced tension. Now it's just another plot line where they get to talk about what they're going to do for 2-3 episodes to save on budget and get you "hyped" for a fight incoming. Which will most likely be underwhelming as well.

Summary: 2/10

So is it worth watching? Not really, you could skip past all the dialogue and know what they talked about(and even if you didn't) they'll bring it up in flashbacks every episode anyway. Painfully boring dialogues and humor that's mixed in serious scenes to make it so you aren't "as bored" always miss and just make it worse... I guess you could skim through episodes and wait for the pay-off episode at the end where they actually fight and the animation is either mediocre or good in places. That's about where all the budget for this show goes considering it sure as hell isn't in writing or talking mouth stills.

If I were to resume this season of MHA in one word it would be : Boring.

*This review may contain mild SPOILERS*



As someone who loved last season and cried my balls out I came in this season excited and boy was I disappointed. I liked the first episode. I thought it did a good job of closing Midoriya and All might arc. Or so I thought. First of all I didn't read the manga and I don't really care about what happened there, it has no value in an anime review.

- Characters :

Midoriya is the main character, he's supposed to take the mantle of ... All might and become the new symbol of justice. That's something that has been talked about for the last 3 seasons. Why is it that in the 4th season he's still struggling to know who he is as a hero and what he should do? What is Midoriya's value to the overall story? I'm seriously asking. It's been the same since season. I always found his relationship with All Might pretty toxic but that's a subject for another discussion. Please at the end of this season make him grow up, take firm and smart decisions by himself and be a real hero. Also his power is awesome so just having him do the smash thing over and over again is lazy.

Funny how we are introduced to new characters without even completing any of the previous characters arc. Everyone is still the same goofy boring person they were in season 1. Except frog girl and pervy dude, I like them. What's worst with these new characters is that someone at the studio thought it would be smart to put in the middle of a fight a freaking backstory. Why would you do that? Do we need to know how each and every one of them was treated as a child to understand them? Do we even have to understand someone who's gonna have 10 min of screen time and then disappear forever?

The only lovable characters this season are the villains. I even thought it would be the focus. I thought we would see how they operate, understand better their convictions. They did a little bit of that but not enough. It's just someone does X thing. X thing is bad. Only villains do bad things. Therefore someone is a villain.

Plot :

Who wrote this thing? What was their objective? With a world as rich as MHA world with so many powers and possibilities why did they choose to go this way? Eleven episode in and nothing special happened. I kid you not they spend most of the episodes talking. There is that one fight episode where they seriously spent 80% of the run time explaining powers and doing backstories. It went like this :

- Here's this random hero, his power is this and that and he can also do that other thing.
- What? you mean he can do this and that and that other thing as well?
- Indeed, but only when this and that condition are met.
- So you mean this and that condition are met right now?
* camera shift to random hero*
- "Now I will use the power of this and that and that other thing to defeat him. Luckily for me the condition for this and that are met so now I can unleash my full power"
*shows 10s fight*

Even the villains big plan which was teased in the beginning of the season seems like something that came out of a kid's mind. They happened to find something that happens to do that other thing that prevent the hero from winning. But thanks to the power of friendship the hero will win. I know it's a shounen but gosh...

Too much stills, it's a shounen I want to see some action. Stop with the powerpoint anime !

I don't know if the second half of the season will be better but so far it's bad. And we haven't even seen Midoriya fight yet. You showed us since Season 1 that the show is "Midoriya & friends". Why make it "Random new characters & Midoriya" now?

Do better.

The annual tradition continues and that means, we have another season of hero and villains in this franchise we should all be familiar with by now: My Hero Academia. With the expanding roster, this is a franchise that has been adding its legacy to catch up to the manga at every chance it gets. But with all the chances it has cashed on, isn’t it ironic that the more we see this show, the weaker it gets? As someone who has been following this anime from the very beginning back in 2016, this season hit me like a hammer on the hand. And that’s not ... a pleasant feeling.

We start out with a seemingly long recap event episode because the season decided it’s suitable to retell the plot most fans are familiar with. Shounen adaptations are known for this cliché but My Hero Academia seems to let the narrative run its mouth with no shame. Nonetheless, we are soon given the circumstances of a new threat in the form of a character named Overhaul. He leads a group known as the Eight Precepts of Death and acts as one of the major antagonists this season. What he has is an ambition, a personal goal this season to wipe out individuals with quirks. This seemingly goal is driven by his deep desire to reform the world and in essence, allow him to rule with dominance. The first half of the season deals with this looming threat in society as his ideals and plans clashes with the heroes.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll realize that My Hero Academia consists of a large cast of heroes made up of unique individuals with special abilities. Among the main cast is a young boy named Deku and up to this season, he has evolved into a confident hero with an identity. He’s making a name of himself in both the public and underworld for his deeds and even earned the respect of powerful heroes such as All Might. In this season, he also catches the attention of Nighteye, an intimidating pro hero with great intelligence but also one shrouded with mystery. And as the season progresses, Deku once again gets caught up into complicated affairs with events of the dark side. We soon meet Eri, a young girl who is an absolute essential to Overhaul’s grand plans. Eri’s innocence and vulnerability shows that Overhaul is willingly to do anything to make his dream come true. Unfortunately, she becomes a trapped animal just waiting to be used like an experimental weapon. A main objective involves the heroes trying to prevent Overhaul’s plans from succeeding and also free Eri from her cage.

But how should the audience judge Eri? On the surface level, she’s a vulnerable girl with a dark past. It doesn’t take long for us to realize that she is fearful not just for society but herself. The quirk she possesses causes great psychological distress to the point that she is socially withdrawn from people. That is…until she meets Deku. Fate seems to designate him to change Eri’s future of becoming an experimental weapon. Deku’s ambition to help Eri see the light and rebuilding her life is a complicated process. It takes time, commitment, and is a personal challenge for Eri. Given her age, she’s at the stage in life where there are limitless choices. If she makes the wrong choices, she could become a person worse she is now. But of course, Deku is there to guide her to make the right choices. That’s right, this season has this theme about choices in which characters follow their paths. It’s a recycled concept since the beginning and honestly, Season 4 doesn’t step up to the plate with its storytelling. Even with returning characters such as Toga, Twice, Eijiro, All Might, Fat Gum, and others getting some occasional spotlight, the show never seems to take risks to be more different from its previous seasons. In respect, it’s easy to feel bored when watching this season with the oversaturated character cast. In some cases, it injects elements of humor with comedic episodes. These include the heroes interacting with kids or character gags such as Bakugo’s short temper. But is that what the fans really want?

Honestly, it’s an ambiguous question but after running over three seasons, My Hero Academia feels like it’s overstayed its welcome. Let’s face it, the show took its hero elements to the point where there’s not much more it can expand on. Or at least from face value, this became a season that’s hard to get excited about. There are fans that have said this season had potential to be the best one but to me, it’s far from the truth. Maybe if you’re a hardcore fan of the franchise, this could be like a Christmas present. But for most people, My Hero Academia Season 4 seems more like a show for fans to see what else is really new rather than what to get excited for. Sure, there are some new characters introduced but they don’t make a heavy impact in the show together. The biggest culprit is Eri, an underdeveloped character that needs more time to really appreciate. Likewise, you’re probably not going come out of this season with a memorable quote besides the iconic ‘Plus Ultra’.

With four seasons and a fifth one announced for future broadcasting, this is a franchise that I think people needs to start keeping their hype in check. I used to really enjoy the previous seasons but this sequel has showed me that it contains haunting weaknesses. And while I do appreciate this series for making the hero theme more popular for the anime medium, time has done its damage in the creativity realm. That is to say, you can certainly watch season 4 and it has its moments. But getting excited about it? That’s sadly a bit out of reach.

There it is, the fourth installment of one of the most successful battle shounen of the recent years. 4 seasons and 2 movies in the spawn of 4 years is no joke. Hero Academia had the charm of being simple and for that, I respected it. I used to be a fanboy for the first 3 seasons, thinking it was one of the best recent shounen, peaking at Stain's arc and delivering a great sendoff with AFO vs OFA, and after season 3 ended, I came to realize that it wasn't as good as I initially thought, but I still respected it for it's simplicity.

It ... wasn't until Season 4 came that everything fell apart and I started to realize how the small issues that were present before started to mass, draining the enjoyment and love I once had with this series. You see, there's nothing wrong on aiming for something different, the problem is, that many things that Season 4 introduced, were introduced way too late and/or felt like a spit to the face. Suddenly, the simplicity I praised on this anime, vanished, and every detail on the plot started to be spoon fed to you as if you were mentally ill to the point is obnoxious. I understand the point of adding flashbacks and monologues, that's important when it comes to the manga, because manga lacks animation, so it's understandable that they add the thought process of the characters and what are they thinking on certain scenarios, however, when it comes to anime, you can rely more on "show, don't tell" instead of relying on monologues and flashbacks to explain what's happening. We can see what's happening, we know what the characters are thinking by looking at their reaction, there's no need to keep showing the same flashbacks over and over again. You may debate whether or not the audience that this anime is aiming for needs it or not, but I refuse to think that teenagers need to be constantly told what a character is thinking to understand what's happening. Nighteye's flashbacks were exhausted to the point it was obvious what was going to happen, because, if you remember, Deku is the one narrating his own story, so we know as a fact that he's going to succeed no matter what. All emotional weight Nighteye could've had is thrown to the drain by this fact. His quirk should have been only movement prediction rather than future sight. The only way that could've worked were if Nighteye's future sight wasn't put on Deku, but rather, on another character that doesn't have plot armor and could actually had the risk of dying, like Mirio for example.

Now that I talk about it, remember when I said that this season felt like a spit to the face? Mirio, is part of this problem, not because I hate him or anything, but because it's crystal clear that he should have been the main character since day one, it shadows Deku in every way and his quirk, while it doesn't rely on random power ups, is the best when it comes to skills, it's a matter of seeing how bravely Mirio fought against Overhaul. This isn't just about Mirio, Gentle, while I hated him for being a shitty excuse of a villain, still had a better and understandable background story than Daddy Issues Shigaraki, if Gentle were a Day 1 villain, I probably wouldn't have hated him. Sadly, just like Stain, Mirio and Gentle are just disposable plot devices for Deku.

This season also fell on the same mistakes many battle shounen do (specially, recent battle shounen) and it's the poor power balance these series have. I once praised the creativity behind quirks and how I thought it was a great power system, boy I was wrong. It felt in the same problem Re:Creators had, there's barely any control to it, it was never properly explained, and, because of that, broken and overpowered quirks is a thing. Let's take Hunter x Hunter for example, it's power system is very open and wide, but it's restricted to the user and it's type and achieving incredible powers has a lot of consequences, it's only through long long training that Gon and Killua were capable of improving a lot without random power ups, not a single character in HxH felt broken and/or over powered with no reason. Ever since AFO vs OFA, Hero Academia kept adding over powered stuff for the fun of it. Deku's fight against Overhaul was extremely insulting as it was a battle of insane powers rather of skills: Overhaul transforming himself into a giant while Deku had a battery on his back that was able to restore him, making him able to use his powers to the max without breaking his bones. It was just a flashy fight of insane powers clashing with each other with absolutely no value at all, Bones then relies on adding cheap audiovisual value in an attempt to make this fight memorable, but backfires, as the whole fight isn't even tense at all, specially since we know Deku succeeds. All the budget should have gone towards Mirio's fight rather than Deku. There is this short middle arc for the ones who failed the license exam, which is one of the most ridiculous things I've seen when it comes to power balance, can someone explain me, how the heck does some kids have full control of crazy abbilities and better thought process than heroes in training?

Another big problem of this season, is that it keeps introducing more and more and more characters, which, if done right, shouldn't be a problem, however, we already have a large cast of characters, which, not even half of them are relevant and aren't really fleshed out properly, yet, this anime introduces way more characters, shadowing those that were already established, and even if they get their spotlight, it arrives way too late. If, we had a smaller cast, this could've worked way better, that way characters wouldn't be left out and development would feel rewarding. Giving several characters a tiny bit of development each time the story feels like remembering them isn't a good way to develop or even try to add depth to a character. There is a good chunk of characters that doesn't add ANYTHING to the plot, and makes me think, how the likes of Mineta or the Invisible girl approved the hero test while someone like Gentle didn't. It just doesn't make sense and it's heavily contrived in favor of shitty comic relief and wasted potential.

Talking about Comedy, while it is a very subjective topic, making a joke by explicitly making a character point it out ISN'T BY ANY MEANS FUNNY, it actually ruins the visual joke which are all lame and repetitive anyway. Recent battle shounen comedy heavily relies on doing silly faces and very predictable jokes that are often out of place.

The only thing left out to talk about is the animation, which took a massive downgrade of still frames that were already happening since Season 3. I know there was a movie in the making, but that's not excuse for doing a power point presentation. The scene I'm talking about is Mirio's fight, which entirely consisted on still frames, specially the quirkless Mirio part. Many people excuses this by saying that all they got in the manga was a black panel of Deku Narrating what happened, but that's not an excuse. David Production did a 1 minute lenght of 4 small manga panels for Vento Aureo, so why couldn't Bones do it?

If only this anime had stuck to it's main simplicity instead of aiming for a more ambitious approach, things could've gone better, what I got in return was a disjointed ambitious project filled with plot holes, plot devices, conveniences, wasted potential for ideas that could've worked since day one and many other small issues that made this season a complete disappointment.

You Say Garbage

My Hero Academia continues its quest to systematically murder the battle-shounen genre in its 4th installment, which promises to be more epic than any that came before it. Can it end its previous seasons' trends of never developing its secondary cast in any meaningful way, making its characters mary sues, never giving enough time to important events, and using one repeated piece of OST to cover for its lack of substance?

Nope.

To elaborate:

The overhaul arc happened. And when it happens, oh boy does it happen with a whimper. It wasn't like the show had built up a reputation for delivering on hyped up characters ... in any way, starting the trend of squandering all for one last season immediately following beating the first villain of the show in the second episode he showed up in... but nonetheless, it felt like overhaul was going to be different. It felt like he was going to pose a real threat. And the show doesn't put itself out to make you feel like anyone is legitimately threatened except for, ironically, other villains.

This kind of character wouldn't be a problem in seasons 1 or 2. Keep in mind, shounen progression usually deals with this kind of format where the enemies get progressively more and more hyped as they go on, even when the pacing stays consistant and power scaling isn't an issue. But that's what shiguraki's first appearence and stain were for. We're way past the point where villains should posing a real threat to our main characters, and we still haven't seen enough of this beyond the one time somebody killed a dude in season 3. An unbelievable butchering ang plummeting in quality in nearly all aspects of the show that was previously. Animation is the most obvious downgrade, but isn't even the worst aspect of this terrible season. The sound mixing... most people don't mention this, but it is bizarely bad. There are episodes with awkward silence and literally no background noises and music. I've never seen it this bad anywhere else.

Every character was flanderized and/or made act like a young child. The story became boring, horrendously paced, self-contradictory and hones in on borderline creepy levels on this one girl, every single character's lives now seem to revolve around her for no particular reason, and no one has any other goals, except to.. play in a band?

A joke of a season and I don't see the point to break down everything wrong with it, because that would take absurdly long and in no way be worth it.

Deku's trend of beating everybody on the first try sucks for a shounen like this, and it continues all throughout this season. It's horseshit. Every time he needs to, he has a new upgrade to perfectly deal with every new guy that shows up. And somehow it's always just through the virtue of being the most epic perfect guy ever, which I just don't buy. Deku is trash. He is always treated like he is so much better than all the other characters (hes not), and whenever there is a new villain he just happens to get a new upgrade or learn a new technique that will make it much easier to beat the villain. He always beats the villain easily and I personally just dont like his character.(also i wish he had a cooler quirk.SUPER STRENGTH??? REALLY??) If you want to watch shounen just watch naruto, its so much better.(except for all the annoying fillers).

If the show has to position itself perfectly around a character just to prove how great they are, that makes that character a mary sue. And that's what deku has become. It's asinine, and after 4 seasons I'm just sick of him being treated more importantly than everybody else. He's lost any good will as a protagonist. And his character stays totally stale during season 4.

The season's most egregious sin was once again playing you say run over an "epic" moment to give it that feel, even though the moment they played it over was mundane and empty of personal emotion for the characters involved. Every time they do this I can just picture the director, bashing his head on the table while reading the source material just wondering how he can possibly make this wet fart of a final scene have any impact at all before he has an "eureka" moment and slams it in the "add you say run" cupboard.

The only good parts of this show were the villains besides overhaul. The league of villains feels like the return of the phantom troupe, and is the group I would rather be focusing on, and Gentle Criminale is probably the only character I could see deserving a main character slot in this show, as he's actually more likable than the entire main cast as well as La Brava (but of course the anime sucks deku's dick the entire time he's onscreen regardless). Suneater and Red Riot had good episodes, but they were rare good moments in an otherwise horrible season of anime that I couldn't wait to be over with.

All of the secondary cast besides those are wasted. Everyone besides the main few are treated like sideshow acts, some characters still only get anything to do when there's nothing at stake. The characters were so wasted they even kill them off before we have a chance to care who they are.

The animation was fine despite suffering slide-show disease in a few episodes, and the music, being multiple versions of the same fucking track i've heard a billion times on "inspirational compilations on youtube", sucked balls. Make a new fucking song.

You may notice that the overall score is much lower than the other parts of the score. That's because this show rates a 0 in seasonal improvement, bringing the average down.

If nothing else, MHA 4 proves that the series has no desire to grow or improve, respect its own ideas or characters, actually bother to write real drama, or innovate in any way. And you gotta respect a show that proves itself.

2/10.

A work that starts presenting us with super powers, high school and romance is not something we can expect much from innovative, as Boku no Hero is definitely not a work for teenagers or pre-teens, but for children. Children who like to see something generic, who try to bring excitement to every episode, and fail. Or adults, who have not yet accepted the reality of the world and prefer to live their dreams within these types of bad, forced and extremely untrue stories.

Characters & Antagonists [0/10]

Midorya is the protagonist who dreams of being a hero, even though he doesn't have superpowers, but he still wants ... to be a hero, no matter what. For him to be like this, he has to have a very strong motive there, something that a person never gives up, no matter how difficult it is, but, Boku no Hero does not present this reason to us, and sooner or later we realize that he does not have a great deal reason. He just wants to save people, he's just good and pathetically self-pity, and that's it. There is nothing else, no plot, no trauma, nothing that changed that person's life, nothing.
To tell you the truth, it seems that the author took his childhood dream and turned it into reality in his work, it's even beautiful. But, that's not how the world works, let alone well-developed characters. When you create a work, you intend to captivate it to the point of making your characters look like real people, people who suffer, people who go through bad times in their lives, people who make mistakes, fatal or not, who can or not be solved and that still has consequences, but... Boku no Hero does not present this to us, and not only is the main character like this, but no other character is either.

I'm not going to talk about all the character mistakes, but it's noticeable where this is going. The characters have such small developments that they don't even look like people, and amazingly, all of their mistakes are extremely abnormal that almost never add anything to their development. The consequences are almost nil every time. Character training does not look like training, and of course all the interesting characters that appear throughout the story are not at all interesting in the end.

Boku no Hero's antagonists are villains because they are... well... villains and there's nothing more than that. All the explanations or reasons they had for some were minimal and they did not even need to appear because they are so futile. Boku no Hero manages to worsen an antagonist who is badly developed enough. In the whole work, there were two antagonists that caught my attention, the first: Shigaraki; and the second: Overhaul.

1. Shigaraki was introduced to us early, and for me he could indeed be a great villain, his coldness infected me and his look was horrifying, but incredible. Okay, so he had to have a reason, at least he did, right? When we saw his backstory, we realized that he’s just one more, that he’s doing what because, well, he wants to. When we realize that Shigaraki is really crazy, and all he wants is destruction. It reminded me of the Joker, only of course, with the author of Boku no Hero putting it all of a sudden.
2. Overhaul was introduced to us this season, and everything about him was good. A real anti-hero, who was perfect at what he did. Overhaul had no common plans, much less small, he had a single goal, and again, for him to be like that he had to have a reason. When Overhaul's past goes deeper, we discover that the reason was a tantrum, something that you pick up and leave out early because it's teenager tantrum.

Not every cliché is bad and this is true. However, in all Boku no Hero fights there is a cliché that the antagonist is going up the level in the fight. What is the problem with an antagonist going full force on a character?
You know... This is not the way to fight an antagonist, not really. Antagonists are made to show how strong they are (from the beginning) and are there to cause a disorder in history for some reason, a very strong one. But Boku no Hero can't even do that with his antagonists, instead he treats them as mere characters who are there just to bring a smile to the children who are watching in the end they are defeated. Which is sad... very sad.

Story [1/10]

The more we see the work, the more we realize that some episodes are completely useless, that seem to be important at the beginning, but that we realize in the end that they were useless. To be more precise, we realized this only episodes later, when the arc ends. In other words, arches that were absolutely useless in anime are completely animated. It seems that they are spending money for nothing. Arches are moments of the work that in the end bring a meaning/lesson to the people who are watching and to the characters of that arc, but that never happens in Boku no Hero. The story is extremely slow and after 4 seasons in which there are 20 episodes each, the story still takes place in the first year of high school. Why? I tell you why, the studio thinks it can make this anime have more than 400 episodes and the author with more than 800 chapters and keep making infinite money from people who think this work is incredible.

The story follows a line of boring and bad clichés. The fanservice is something that appears throughout the work. Sometimes showing unnecessary scenes; jokes that are not jokes; and a clearly not well-built romance between some characters. Example of Kirishima and Mina that we never saw them interact in the whole work, suddenly they have a back story together.

This arc by Jiren that is coming this season about music and something more scholarly seems to be interesting and fun, and it is something that is very difficult to ruin, but that I do not doubt anything of this work to achieve, and because of that I decided that I will not watch to finish at least this work with the good feeling that something good is coming.

Art & Sound [6/10]

The animation of Boku no Hero is simple, but with a complex style, which makes the animation not fluid and ugly. I wouldn't really care about that if it were just that problem, but the design of the people of Boku no Hero is awful. The author when creating the design seemed to completely forget about anatomy and created characters with long, large legs, but forgot that the rest of the body had to be proportional, making strange faces of the more human characters.
Boku no Hero's soundtrack is very good for a generic and repetitive shonen, but the way it was misused since the first season made us completely forget about her existence. So far there have been a maximum of 2 songs in addition to the openings and endings that have been well used, one this season and one the first.

Enjoyment & Overall [2/10]

The episodes since season 1 are totally monotonous, simple and predictable, with a failed attempt to be exciting. There are clear references to old animes, like Naruto and Dragon Ball that are all bad, Midorya and Bakugo look like Sasuke and Naruto, only without any apparent reason. Bakugo hates Midorya, the anime saint who never does bad things, which wants to be Bakugo's friend.
This season there was a fight that kept me watching and it even surprised me, it had random power boost (as always in BnH), but I didn't care much.
You can't be hopeful at any point in this work because in the end it will always be something bad and badly developed, so throughout everything there is nothing you can expect besides a repetitive and boring work.

Since the season 1 of the anime launched 5 years ago, I’ve been watching it, hoping that at some point in the anime they’ll be able to get better, but they don’t get better, instead they will get worse and worse.
I know that I have not reviewed the entire work, and that I focused on specific moments, because it is simply what I can remember now, but I guarantee that all the problems I have shown happened several times in the work, with different characters or arcs.

[NOTE]

There are many works like Boku no Hero, and many say that comparing anime/manga is wrong, but I don't think that way. Works in general: books, films, series, scripts ... they were made to be compared, not their characters themselves, but how the characters are made and develop, and this applies to the story as well. Boku no Hero in general reminds me of animes like: Hunter X Hunter, Charlotte and Kimetsu no Yaiba. They are anime that have errors, flaws, but all of them become irrelevant due to successes and twists that form an excellent story.

Again, there are many works like Boku no Hero, small, medium, other giants, I guarantee that if you give the chance you will be surprised by the amount of interesting stories, captivating characters, unforgettable villains and life lessons that we learn many times, seeing a anime, reading a manga or watching a movie. So look well.
Many times people watch an anime or read a manga because it is famous and many people are talking about it well, but because of that, those people can regret these kinds of things and even create an aversion to anime and think that every anime is like that. Which is something no fan of Japanese works wants either.

Anyway, it seems that the author has not partnered with one of the most important lessons in life, we all have to suffer, we all have to go through bad times and we all make mistakes, regret and learn to never make these mistakes again, and that they helped to be who we are now. I really hope that the author of Boku no Hero will someday begin to realize these mistakes that he is making in his work and that, perhaps, in his next work, or even in this one he will develop a better story, better characters, and inevitably his magnum opus.

Boku no Hero Academia is a simple and predictable shonen anime. Boku no Hero Academia for the fourth season in a role brings the same plot points from the previous three seasons. It’s pointless. In this season, Midoriya encounters a villain that uses a child for benefits. Apparently, that child has some special quirks that can be used to create a “bullet” that temporarily messes with another Hero’s quirks. So, you guessed it, the plot is now to rescue the child because they are HEROS. The same thing happens in season 3. Villains capture Bakugou and their intention is to have him join ... them to destroy the Heros and its society. Of course, the heroes rescued him eventually. In season 1, the villains directly come to the Academy to kill the Heros in the hope to start their plan to destroy the society. In season 2…. I forgot. I guess what I want to say is this anime series is forgettable trash when it comes to storytelling.

Story: 4/10

If you have seen all three seasons, then you probably noticed the trend here. This anime focuses on one or two-character per season. When I post this review, I have watched 10 episodes. In this season, we see the character’s back story and development of Kirishima. Not gonna lie, this is the best of the anime. In season 2, it was Todoroki, season 3, it was Bakugou. For me, it works. Though, the anime doesn’t continue the further development of its characters. After, they finished Bakugou and Todoroki’s character arcs they forgot about it. The anime left them on the sidelines. Thus, they became again uninteresting. As of the main character Midoriya...I don’t feel a thing. He’s just an average protagonist that we have seen countless times. I don’t even want to get into his motivations, personalities and character traits. It’s pointless.

Edit: As of Episode 14, Nighteye dies. (I laughed the whole way through that scene.) Everyone including Midoriya was crying their eyes out. I'm sorry, but I didn't feel a goddamn thing! This anime is trying so hard to make you care, but it just landed flat.

Character: 4/10

This anime is really enjoyable to watch when you are in the moment. Largely due to this anime’s fight scenes and they are the best. That is because of each character’s back story and their motivations are revealed right before the fights. After that, you forgot about it. Lastly, the pacing of this anime is terrible. We start the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th season with an episode recap. I really don’t understand why they feel urgent for a recap episode of the previous season. Especially, when we have watched the previous seasons. Then, they have to start developing the story for the current season from episode 2 to episode 7. This really messes with the pacing of this anime, and it tests my patience. Whenever an anime test a viewer’s patience, it’s a clear sign of a problem.

Enjoyment: 5/10

Overall, this anime series has lots of problems with pacing, characters and story beats. But. it is enjoyable to watch when you are in the moment.

Overall: 4/10

What a let down. I've been a fan of both the manga and the anime since season one and was expecting some good things from this season. Now I am just disappointed.

The animation has declined and it seems like the Studios' passion for the series has also. Despite having quality source material, they managed to make the Overhaul Arc feel lifeless. There are lots of good parts that feel rushed and bad parts that seem to drag out for much longer than they have any right to. I tried watching more episodes in hope that they improved but alas, they did not.

BNHA"S CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT IN A NUTSHELL:

Mineta in episode 1: "OMG NOSEBLEED BOOBIES!"
Midoriya in episode 1: "*crying* ALLL MIGHTTTT *crying*"
Bakugo in episode 1: "DEKUUUUUU VIOLENCEEEEEE"

Mineta 80 episodes later: "OMG NOSEBLEED BOOBIES!"
Midoriya 80 episodes later: "*crying* ALLL MIGHTTTT *crying*"
Bakugo 80 episodes later: "DEKUUUUUU VIOLENCEEEEEE"

...
Almost 90 episodes in and there has been almost zero long term character development. Every character is the exact same as they were at the beginning of season 1. This seasons first half felt extremely rushed, and the only people that left the first half with any lasting consequences were characters that were only introduced like 5 episodes ago. Every single character that was introduced in s1 has plot armor. Also, over half of the enormous cast of cliché characters did NOTHING for the entire first half of this season.

After suffering through the first half I got hit with the second half of the season which is a school festival psuedo filler arc where not a single meaningful thing happens. Zero character development, zero story progression. The "bad guy" of the second half is just a guy who wants to sneak into the school festival and film a youtube video. Such a great villain concept. I am shaking in my boots at the thought of this guy filming a youtube video at the school. The fact that this arc technically isn't filler because it was actually in the manga is astounding to me. This author seriously wrote a filler arc into his manga. Wow.

This anime series used to be interesting to watch but the quality just keeps on dropping it's just getting worse and worse. I don't even think I can finish this season there are too many episodes for the side characters that I don't care about, and the plot became BAD like really bad there's too much screentime for heroes I don't care about, not enough story for the villains and the characters are just boring everyone screams that they're the best hero, fight a bit then everything is alright, rinse and repeat. I don't even know how this season has an over 8 score ... it just proves that no one cares about quality anymore and just prefers an anime with bad plot and bland, boring characters.

This anime is bad.If you like this anime, then i feel sorry for your entire family for your upbringing.The anime starts off well in it's first season showing a teenager aiming to be the number one Hero in a world where quirks mean everything.As the season progresses,he is still the crybaby he used to be even after gaining the quirk of his idol.

As for character development, he hardly see anything in that regard with characters like Bakugo and Todoreku the worst shounen characters ever!!
The only positive thing in this anime is the animation which is quite decent in compared to other animes.Apart from that,this ... show is horrible

[LIGHT SPOILERS]
Maybe, it's hard to tell what qualifies as a spoiler at this point.
Anyways, around season 2 of MHA i started getting the sneaking suspicion that this is not a good show but i couldn’t pinpoint why. I think i get it now. After sitting with this show for another 2 seasons i think i get it.

Is the hero-job pointless?
No seriously. As i watch the backstories of the various villains in the show i see that none of them just randomly became villains. The usual trend is that society failed them some place along the way and this drove them towards crime. ... All heroes talk about their goal being creating peace in society. But if society is producing these criminals doesn't that mean that the only way to bring peace is by changing society so that it no longer does so? That isn’t what heroes do. The job of the heroes isn’t to change the way society is structured so that society no longer produces criminals, their job is to stop criminals in the act and minimise that damage that they do. Changing the way society is structured is the job that politicians among many others do.

The heroes can stop all the criminals they want but at the end of the day society will always produce another one. Thus, the heroes will never achieve their goal of bringing peace to the world. Their efforts are completely pointless. This pointlessness is a problem as it disincentives me too root for the heroes knowing that what they do will never help them achieve the goal they’ve set out for themselves. Don’t get me wrong, minimizing damage is a valuable job, but it’s not the job the heroes proclaim to be doing therefore i can’t help not feeling invested.

A show on its last legs:
Additionally it’s just clear that this show is on it’s last leg. Our new top hero, the symbol of “peace” is Todoroki’s abusive dad. Yup, that’s the best the heroes have to offer us. But it’s fine! All his past transgressions are forgiven because he defeated a nomu! Seriously, i’ve never seen something more forced than that pathetic attempt at making Endeavour the new symbol of peace. Also, since we’ve already established that the heroes will never bring about peace, the moniker “symbol of peace” just comes off as a cruel joke.

There are of course more basic critiques of the show, like how the writers don’t even bother giving any characters except the villains elaborate motivations for their actions anymore thus making empathizing with the heroes imopssible. Or how the personalities of the entire main cast has completely stagnated. Or maybe how every big fight at this point follows a predictable formula. Here’s the formula:
Hero and villain fight evenly, hero struggles and almost loses, hero remembers some random shit and gets a power up for no reason at the last moment, hero defeats the villain in a big explosion whilst screaming a corny catchphrase at the top of their lungs.

These are all critiques you’ve probably heard already though so there’s no point in me going into detail on them. The point is that this is a very bad and sloppily executed superhero show. The only character that i like at this point is hero-killer Stain (maybe), it’s not supposed to be that way.

WOW! This season was SHIT.

I usually like this show, but holy fuck this season was bad.

-[25 Episodes of Absolutely Nothing]-
There were two arks covered in this season. One was moderately interesting, the other was complete filler bullshit. Both arks were lame, played-out, and melodramatic. The interesting ark had a neato concept, but the execution was majorly lacking. The other ark was, well, not so interesting. I'll spoil it: it was a cultural festival ark. Maybe a UA festival would be interesting, right? Nah. Unlike season 2's sport festival ark, this one had almost nothing to do with quirks. Instead, this ark is ... dedicated to a side character who nobody cares about at all. Basically, this was a really fucking slow and boring season. From start to finish, the status quo didn't change at-fucking-all.

-[Sakuga?]-
So, how about that sakuga? Well it was pretty good- for the 4 times it actually happened. The fight scenes in this season weren't bad- they just weren't plentiful in the slightest. The rest of the art, though, was dogshit. Really. This season looked terrible. The animation quality was utter trash. There were very few good-looking scenes in this entire season. Dialogue scenes were horribly generic, with eyes following the sound of a character's voice, and everything else remaining completely motionless. Obviously, the whole budget was spent on the sakuga scenes (as well as hookers for the staff), because single other frame was 3/10 at best.

-[Characters]-
The new characters introduced this season were just okay. One was interesting, and all of the others were pointless. None of the characters will be recurring in the major story, so in reality, even the good character is worthless.

There were like, 4 instances of character growth in this entire 2-cour season, so there isn't a whole lot to talk about in this regard. The growth was mostly believable, if not a little sappy. Honestly, the longer this show goes on, the less of a fuck I give about any character who isn't All Might. Even Midoriya is getting old at this point. He's fucking static and uninteresting. Back when he was growing during the first 2.5 seasons, he was tolerable, but now he just feels like any other shounen protagonist, who only exists to spout out garbage about the power of friendship and shit.

-[Comedic Value]-
The little enjoyment I derived from this season was from watching it with my friends. It was fun to laugh at how terrible this show has become. Other than that, I barely enjoyed anything about this season. It was bad. If I hadn't already read ahead in the manga, I probably would have just dropped the show after the first arc finished.

-[Overall, Plus Ultra]-
My Hero Academia is empty now. After the fall of All Might, this show lost all of its appeal to me. All-dude was such a great character and his dynamic with Deku made the show thoroughly entertaining. Sure, I'm invested in Midoriya's character, but he can't carry a show by himself. He isn't an interesting enough character. In the seasons to come, this show is gonna get fucking dumb, so get ready for it. The author knows how fucked he is at this point, so he's just pulling things out of his ass to drag this show on as long as possible. I just hope the next season looks good, cause if not, I'm out for good.

4/10

This was so awful that I am no longer willing to review this in any intellectual manner.

BNHA was absolute gunkus ballsack smegma cake tik tok reddit wojack big chungus goo goo ga ga garbage. There are no stakes, the charaters are bland and uninteresting, and the only people that can genuinely enjoy this are probably just starting out or complete beginners in anime. That, or they've been living under a rock as they are completely oblivious to actually good shows.

If you want an actually good shounen with STAKES and interesting characters, please just watch Assassination Classroom.

The only thing that could redeem BNHA is ... if everyone got merked, probably.

What the fuck is pacing? What is non-repetitive dialogue? If I had to take a shot every time someone said "We'll save her...for sure this time", I'd have died of alcohol poisoning. This show is a far cry from what it once was. The writing formula is so offhanded. It's an endless cycle of flashbacks and needless backstory surrounding 30 seconds of actual action. It's getting old.

I'll give you an example. Hazukashi. Don't know who that is? Good, you shouldn't because he had literally 37 seconds of screentime. Writers had the audacity to give him flashbacks and backstory, just to instantly get foiled by Hawks. ... Why bother? Why even spend ten seconds on the guy if that's all he's there to do? But wait, that's not all he's there to do. Hawks apparently heard him say one thing that kind of had something to do with the current "metahuman" Nomu problem.

Now what you're probably thinking is, "So what you're saying is that they introduced a new character and gave him 37 seconds of screentime just to flimsily further the narrative?" And the answer is yes. That's the narrative device they decided to use. This is likely the most egregiously lazy writing of any scene I have ever seen on television. It's unbelievably offhanded.

Aside from that, there were like six fights, and all but two were okay at best. They're getting in a bad habit of injecting flashbacks during their fights and it ruins the moment. The only fight in this show where interspersing flashbacks worked was Deku v Bakugou in S3. Fights are painfully short, the most offensive example being Deku v Overhaul. What a waste of potential that was. The ones before that have moments (the Suneater fight and the Red Riot-Fat Gum fight for instance), but they're marred by flashbacks that are inexplicably in the middle of each of them.

There were only two decent fights: Endeavor v High-End Nomu and Deku v Gentle. Gentle's fight in particular is fantastic because they didn't overly rush Gentle's character. He's instantly become one of my favorite characters and I hope they use him more.

It pisses me off that they brought in Nighteye just to die. Can't have anyone important dying, right? But boy did they make it feel like viewers were supposed to care when he bit it. Man, they really milked that for all it was worth. His quirk is ridiculously powerful, but nope, dies within a season. More offhanded writing.

I've heard My Hero being called the next generation's Dragon Ball. Are people really dying on that hill? That's an awful comparison, it's just a cringier knock-off.

Oh, and the disco theme is insufferable, glad they're done using that forever. Kind of a nitpick, but I hated Eri's dub voice. It was...overly precious, I guess. It was annoying, Eri's sub voice was far more bearable.

All in all, mostly bad.

This review will contain tiny vague spoilers, I will be mentioning things that happen in the anime but will not say when or who the character is.

Story: 5/10

The whole theme of this arc is quite interesting, especially when reading the manga. The only problem I had with this is the pacing. 12 episodes in and nothing. HAS. HAPPENED.

In the manga, you could read this within a span of 1-2 days (or if you were me, in a few hours) but because this is an animated version it can feel as though it is dragged on. Certain points of the show they are just talking. ... Nothing else just talking. Another point is the horrible way they animated the fight scenes.

Art: 7/10

I quite enjoy BNHA art, it might not be the 10/10 that others are hoping but the details they do in each scene is alright and the consistency with the previous season is a bonus. A problem is the way they toned down the damage in one of the scenes.

Sound 5/10

Other than the OP and ED, I do not really know about the music. Oh except that in certain scenes they may be too much lol

Character: 3/10

WOW. There are only 2 characters that I had enjoyed in this arc, and perhaps it was due to the pacing as I remembered I quite enjoyed the manga version despite it being the same. New characters are introduced but from memory, only some of them get a backstory. Most of all the only characters I like are the villains but even then it was meh.

Enjoyment: 2/3

I might have ruined it because I read the manga and knew what was going to happen but I personally did not enjoy this arc animated. Probably due to the poor pacing and the absurd amount of flashbacks in fight scenes.

Overall: 4/10

If I hadn't read the manga would I have joyed this a bit more? perhaps but we will never know. It was alright either way, not something I would search up and watch on my own free will but if it were shoved in my face I would still watch it.

I'm going to preface this review by saying that this anime is one of my guilty pleasures. It's hard to say if that's because of the sunk cost fallacy since I watched the previous seasons, or if I actually enjoy the "quirkiness" of the characters and this world, however cliche and one-note they might be.

The unfortunate truth behind this anime is that it packs in so much filler that it takes a while to get through it all. The effect this can have on the audience would give them more a feeling of relief rather than appreciation for major action scenes or climaxes. ... I asked myself at times during this season "is it backstory time, or will the climax come soon?" Sometimes when the climax finally did come, rather than playing it all out at once, it would go deep into each of the backstories of the characters involved. I often forgot why exactly the flashback was happening when it was shown this way.

Spoilers from this point onward.

This season of My Hero Academia was contrived in nearly the same way the second season of One Punch Man was, with events happening in such a way that it literally prohibits the hero from ignoring the villain. Consider that Eri bumped into Midoriya first, because the guy watching after her was "incompetent." Little did we know that the villains as a whole are incompetent since they can't seem to place importance on what might single-handedly bring down the hero population. Overhaul even asks Midoriya if he understands how important Eri truly is. I guess he just doesn't care about the security of his most important asset.

Consider another example. When Overhaul was being escorted to a hospital/prison, the police force decided that a single hero and a few cops would be enough to keep the biggest threat to their society safe from outside sources. You know the rest. Because of their limited man power and heroes, the police got ambushed by members of the League of Villains. From there, Shigaraki cut off Overhaul's hands, thus rendering his quirk useless. This conclusion would work nicely as a scene to display the motive of the League of Villains (and show that Overhaul got what was coming to him) if it weren't for how they got there. It's quite obvious that whoever wrote the story wanted this to be as easy for them as possible.

You know what makes less sense? Dedicating three episodes to showing off Deku's new attack strategy on some wannabe villain non. Yes, I would be referring to that "Gentleman" guy and "La Brava." What exactly was accomplished with those episodes? The rest of the season plays out like normal, without even mentioning the duo Deku fought earlier. To make matters worse, our main protagonist is asked to get ROPE from the nearby hardware store, but the closest place to get it at happens to be next to an unassuming coffee shop where these misfits begin their operation. Ignoring the fact that UA would not have ROPE of all things, the Gentleman trying to make a name for himself just so happens to bump into Midoriya, who would not have known about him if it were not for his ACCIDENTALLY clicking on a video by him a few days prior.

Aside from how predictable it was, there's more I could go into about story, but for the sake of simplicity I'll stop criticizing that here.

Regarding art, I couldn't help but notice a slight shift in direction. It was rather weird at times, to the point that I couldn't help but wonder who was working on it. You could see where they cut corners, but for the most part it's still recognizable as the packed shounen that we all know and (mostly) care about.

I have little to report on in the sound department. Everyone sounded as themselves, perhaps with exception to Yaomomo, who ended up more high pitched and girl-ish than her original character was. Besides this, the music ended up as being the same tracks before this season with some new ones added. Despite the festival event for 1-A being a band with flashy lights and such, I'd argue that even something like Angel Beats! did this better. Comparing the power of sound with emotional moments of this season to previous ones, you'd likely notice a huge contrast. Whether it be the moment when Izuku was told he could be a hero, or Stain intimidating even the most seasoned hero, this season of the anime doesn't even hold a candle to those events.

A lot of that can be attributed to their character development, which is hard to do well in an anime with practically limitless potential for new quirks. Unfortunately, rather than focusing in on a small group of individuals, the writers focus on developing everyone remotely related to Midoriya. In this way, a lot of these characters get development and a backstory once, and end up being mostly one-note for the rest of the show unless the writers need them again. Uraraka needs little more introduction that "Izuku's love interest." Kachan needs little more introduction than "angry bomb boy." Todoroki needs little more introduction than the cliche "fire and ice" guy. I wish I was kidding, but each of these characters have only enough screen time so they stay "relevant."

Despite all of this, if you've still got a young heart like I have, you can really appreciate the action and silly nuances of this anime after being built upon three existing seasons. By this point, some of us aren't watching for the plot. I mentioned the "sunk cost fallacy" from earlier, mostly because all of the problems I have with the show are at least tolerable, and I can't say that about many shows. If you're expecting a change from the boring last season, I can't guarantee this season will meet your expectations. What I ended up doing is blowing through this season in a few days while I was sick and behind, but I personally don't view it as time wasted.

The future is bleak for this franchise, but I'll hold out hope. If things go downhill anyway, I look forward to make in-depth critical analysis reviews to contrast this one. Until then, thanks for reading!