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Dec 17, 2017
While some might disagree with me, I feel this is one of those anime that isn't for everyone. If you don't like shounen, you probably won't like this. If you prefer stories that are more cynical and down to earth, you probably won't like this. If you're not a fan of old fashioned superhero stories, you probably won't like this.
Both the shounen genre and the superhero genre have done a lot of growing in the past few years. Similar to more recent magical girl shows, these genres have been trying to break out of their previous molds. The stories and characters are becoming more grounded.
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More time is taken to explain how and why certain things happen. The characters are put through harsher situations to make the tension more realistic. In short, gritty and dark has been a trend as of late.
Boku no Hero Academia is nothing like that. For the most part, it's lighthearted. The line between good and evil is drawn very clearly. There are certainly stakes, but even when things are at their toughest, you can count on everyone making it out alive and mostly unscathed.
The plot is pretty basic. One day, people started being born with "quirks," the term for superpowers in this anime. There's no real reason given for it, it just happened. Following that, villains started appearing around the world, and professional heroes rose up to fight against them.
Our main character, Izuku, was born without any sort of quirk, which has become rare in this world. Despite that, he still dreams of becoming a great hero and being able to save others like his idol, All Might. Through a series of coincidences, he ends up meeting All Might, and he manages to leave an impression on him that leads him to decide to take Izuku on as a pupil.
And that's about as far as I think I can go without spoiling anything, though it's really easy to figure out where the plot is going from there if you know anything about your shounen or superhero tropes.
The reason I'm still giving this series such a high score is a matter of how well it does all these traditional ideas. This is a very basic superhero story, but the fact of the matter is, superheroes haven't actually gotten that much exposure in anime. Not as much as in the West, at least. There are some superhero anime, but most shounen focus on something more connected to a type of mystical lore.
Naruto is about ninjas. Dragonball has aliens and powerful attacks fueled by qui. Bleach is about soul reapers. Soul Eater is about the same thing, but looks at it from a different angle. Bnha is about an academy for training superheroes, plain and simple.
This simplicity allows the writers to get away with certain things that other shounen can't. I've never seen a shounen that was this popular that only had 13 episodes for its first season. Bnha cuts a lot of the fat, because they assume you'll just accept that this is a world with superheroes and that schools for training superheroes just are a thing now. They assume you won't question how a lot of the quirks work or why they appeared in the first place.
If you're not a person who can handle that, then this isn't for you. This is a show made for people who are looking for this kind of thing and just want to have fun with it. Is it deep? No. Is it thought provoking? No. Is it any sort of masterpiece? No, but it's a heck of a lot of fun for those who like these tropes and want to see them at their best. If you just want to see cool people do cool things while screaming about friendship and justice and the like, you can't do much better than this. It's nothing that will leave your mind blown the way some smarter anime will, but it'll leave you with a good feeling. If you're having a rough day and you're not up for something deep or dark, I say pull up a chair and enjoy. Bnha might be just what you need.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Apr 21, 2015
I'm...I'm just so shocked that people are giving this a 10. This definitely doesn't deserve a 10. Everyone's dishing out perfect scores way too easily.
I'm not going to lie, I was intrigued by the concept. At first I thought this series was a romcom or something, but when I realized it was about a brother and sister, I thought I was in for some cute, feel-good anime candy. That's not quite what I got.
Don't get me wrong, there's some likable stuff here. Both Atsuhi and Atsumi are likable characters who act their age, and I've got to give props to Atsuhi's voice actor for being
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able to perform so well. When the show really wants to try, it'll deliver just what you'd expect. Nothing spectacular, but something kind of cute and quirky if you're into this kind of thing.
But then there are the pedophile jokes. Literally every other episode has Atsuhi getting arrested because he's mistaken for a pedophile. You'd think that his parents would take the time to explain things better. You'd think that after the millionth time people would recognize him and leave him alone. Comedic misunderstandings don't work by their very nature since the joke is literally making a character you're supposed to like suffer for something they didn't do, and it's even worse when it's happening to a 10 year old boy. I remember one scene where he comes home and curls up in a corner crying because he's so upset. How do people find this funny? It was extremely unpleasant for me.
Fortunately as the show goes along they slowly start laying off that gag, but its presence is still extremely painful. Like a parasite feeding off of what could otherwise be a perfectly decent, cute little show.
If that doesn't bother you, by all means give it a watch. Otherwise I say skip it.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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May 17, 2014
The yaoi fangirls are going to kill me here. Loveless stands up with Gravitation, Junjou Romantica, and Sekai Ichi Hatsukoi as one of those BL anime that all yaoi fans love. While out of all of those the only one I legitimately enjoyed was Gravitation, that is just a matter of personal taste. Junjou and Hatsukoi are at least somewhat decent, especially when compared to what BL anime that came before them were like. With that out of the way I can safely say that Loveless is one of the few anime that made me want to claw my own eyes out.
The story centers around
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Ritsuka Aoyagi, a grade school boy who lost all of his memories two years prior to the start of the series. At that time, he also did a complete 180 in personality, going from an outgoing and popular boy who didn't have the best grades to a student with perfect grades who avoids any kind of social interaction. This apparently put such a strain on his mother that she began frequently beating him (and much worse in the manga) and claiming that he isn't her son, but someone else in her son's body. Apparently, if he does anything that the old Ritsuka wouldn't do, his mother will beat him. Things were at least tolerable for awhile, since his older brother, Seimei, protected him from his mother's beatings, but then Seimei was discovered burned to death in Ritsuka's classroom. The anime itself begins after all this when Ritsuka is transferred to a new class. A girl named Yuiko tries to befriend him, but Ritsuka regards her coldly since she's only doing it because her classmates put her up to it. After receiving harsh criticism from Ritsuka, Yuiko decides not to be pushed around by her classmates anymore and pushes for a genuine friendship with Ritsuka. After that, Ritsuka meets Soubi, a man who claims to be an old friend of Seimei's. Soubi tells Ritsuka about his arrangement with Seimei that if anything were to happen to Seimei, Soubi would "belong" to Ritsuka. Soubi turns out to be Seimei's "sentouki," a companion who would fight battles with magic, while Seimei was the "sacrifice," or the person who would take the damage in these battles. Since Seimei is now dead, Soubi must become Ritsuka's sentouki and Ritsuka will become the sacrifice.
Oh, and did I mention that it's a huge plot point that virgins have cat ears? Yeah, way to throw random sex into the plot. That's one thing I really hate.
However, after that huge info dump, nothing is really completely explained again. Most of the episodes consist of Soubi battling another pair of magic fighters and trying to protect Ritsuka in between molesting him. The story itself is so poorly explained that I had no idea what was going on half the time and ended up consulting wikipedia and the manga several times during the course of an episode, and that is not a good thing. I gave it a decent rating merely because it was interesting, but it never did anything more than that. I never really even knew why half these characters were fighting other than some taboo about the fact that Ritsuka and Soubi shouldn't be a team because both their names aren't "Loveless" or something like that. The only thing I could understand was the adult molesting the child frequently. Hooray for pedophilia, I guess! Especially on an already traumatized and broken child!
The art was...well, it was actually fairly good, at least on the characters. The backgrounds were a bit lazy most of the time, but at least the magic battles usually looked good, and the character designs were at least distinct. However, the style reminded me a lot of Higurashi in that, while it used bright colors, it always looked like there was a film over the animation giving it a weird misty look that seemed out of place, though that could be because of the poorly done backgrounds.
The sound was easily the best part of the show. I can't really say the dub of either language was particularly outstanding, but the soundtrack was done by Yuki Kajiura. 'Nuff said. It's far from being her best work, but it's Yuki Kajiura nonetheless. What's not to like?
The characters are not so lucky. Most of them are boring, unlikable, or underdeveloped. The worst offender of this is Soubi himself. Since he's one of the two main characters, he should be someone the audience can cheer for and want to see succeed, or at least care somewhat about what he's doing. I really didn't feel anything toward him, even when part of his history as revealed. He has very little personality, and he's constantly flip-flopping when it comes to his actions. I can at least understand his motives of wanting to keep Ritsuka safe, but it's hard to relate to that when he's such a shameless pedophile. The only reason I gave the characters a decent rating is because of Ritsuka. He wouldn't have much of an effect if he was a side character, but as a main character he does well. He has a very distinct personality, and his development is very well handled. Sure, he starts off rather depressed at first, but he has every right to be, and unlike some anime characters he does grow quite a lot. His circumstances barely change at all, so the fact that he's able to change his attitude is impressive.
However, the fact that Ritsuka's such a good character actually works against the series. When you actually care about a character, it's not enjoyable to watch him suffer so much without any happy ending in sight. Nobody who knows about his abuse is doing anything about it, even Soubi who claims to love him. Soubi's sexual advances on a boy who's underage even in Japan, especially one who has enough mental trauma on top of amnesia and a possible personality disorder, is just disgusting. I continued watching until the end in order to see something good finally happen to this kid, and it really doesn't. I could barely stand a moment of this, so the enjoyment factor was very low. I was able to enjoy the few quiet moments Ritsuka had with his friends, at least, but that's about it.
All in all, there were a few things in this series that were okay, and the main character is really good. However, it's just unpleasant to watch and I find the fact that all of this is fetishized to be disgusting. Any time I hear someone praising this series, I feel a little sick inside. I suppose people are allowed to like what they want, but I personally find this show terrible. The overall score of 3 out of 10 is surprisingly generous, and I only gave it because of Ritsuka and the soundtrack by Yuki Kajiura. That's all.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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