Boku no Hero Academia 7th Season

By now, we kind of know what's going on with My Hero Academia Season 7, but it's insane that they've been able to keep up the high pace of action without really making me feel bored - which I feel was a downfall of a series like Naruto Shippuuden. My Hero Academia just does it better. I'll assume you've seen all the prequels for the purposes of this review.

Story & Characters: My Hero Academia Season 7's story basically hasn't changed since the previous season. The new Liberation Front, along with One For All, is making it their goal to create complete destruction ... upon the world, but have set their sights on Deku, being the holder of All For One. Now, with a world threat present, Stars and Stipe, the number one hero from USA has been called to the battlefield and it's up to her to turn the tide of the war.

Star and Stripe is awesome. Very early on, they present her backstory where she forms a bond with multiple army vets, none of which really come close to matching the spectacular strength that she holds. I loved it, making her scenes on the battlefield all that more fun, along with her quirk. After her brief arc completes, the rest of the season basically sees us with multiple groups of enemies fighting against each other - akin to the shinobi war that Naruto Shippuuden had. Most groupings that are create make sense from an emotional standpoint, though does have a tendency to drag the plot a little more than I would have liked. Toga's fight was one example of this, even though I kind of get what they were going for.

There aren't really more new characters added to the roster, even though this season has twenty one episodes in it. Most of our favourite characters are still present, putting everything on the line - Phantom Thief might have been my favourite from this season, though Shouto, Kachan, Fumikage and All Might are worth mentioning too. Whoever your favourite hero - or villain - might be, they likely got some screen time here. Some uneven pacing here or there is kind of to be expected, but the most upsetting thing might have been the ending because of the cliffhanger they left us with. (Story: 9/10, Characters: 9/10)

Art: Animation still feels very consistent, one thing that Naruto never seemed to be able to keep up. They do all their characters justice and I love how each scene looks and feels. (10/10)

Sound: Sound doesn't disappoint either with the OST bringing in a bunch of new tracks that fit what we are seeing on screen. I've never been high on the OPs of EDs that this series seems to offer, but that's very minor. Voice cast continue to be amazing, with Luci Christian (Ochako) and Austin Tindle (Phantom Thief) impressing me the most. Top to bottom, this voice cast is top notch. (10/10)

Overall: My Hero Academia Season 7 brings the action to the party with basically every episode featuring some fight or another. Even if you're not a big Shounin fan, this season would appeal to most every audience - it's that good, especially if you've been low on some of the previous seasons. With only one season remaining, I really hope they keep up the momentum, because it's been an awesome ride. (10/10)

The pacing of this show has gone completely haywire.

This entire season feels like it should have been spread out over multiple arcs rather than crammed together in this one chaotic battle where so much is happening at once with so many different characters and so many different plot points that are all attempting to be resolved simultaneously that it ends up feeling like a chaotic mess of a series that barely resembles the My Hero Academia that was so exemplary in its storytelling in the early seasons.

It's as though the author simply got tired of writing it, and so he decided to just rush to ... the finish line skipping across entire books straight to the final battle.

The result is that none of the personal struggles that each character is coming to grips with gets the space to adequately breathe and tell its story. When everyone is having their personal epiphany all at the same time, it ruins the impact of each individual one.

To add on to that, the power scaling in this series has gone completely crazy to the point where none of the fights feel like genuine battles. Rather they all feel like scripted events of deus ex machina after deus ex machina. Villain Plot A is countered by arrival of Hero B from 2 seasons ago, and Villain plot C is interrupted by the sudden awakening of power from Class member D but wait, the villain accounted for that with plot twist E. If you thought the first half of Season 6 was bad in this regard (and I did) then Season 7 is just a LOT more of that.

All of that said. The series is still very enjoyable to watch from an animation and music perspective. Despite how choppy the story has become, the art and music of My Hero Academia still manages to convey a lot of heart and emotion even despite the plot's best efforts to ruin all of it. This season is watchable and even somewhat enjoyable in spite of how much it seems to be trying to get itself over with as fast as it possibly can.

6/10

What can I say about this train wreck? Villain power creep with "we win" pawn powers; the heroes who seem to have gone from seeming like a powerful army protecting peace are now a mere resistance movement against evil, and worst of all having the arch enemy magically return from a near death state.

What sort of lame ass, half baked story telling is this? After the investment in watch hours of the previous series, the story likes screwing over the heroes time and time again. If there's no hope in the story, there's no point watching it.

Art, audio and the animation is as good, ... if only the story didn't take a left turn into the ditch, bounce off and plunge into the lake of an abomination it turned into...