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The shounen that took Naruto's place was a huge disappointment for me and I will try to explain why here. I do not think that this review will change a lot of opinions, but I found it fun to write this, so here is a piece of my mind.


Starting off with the... start: the setting.
From the very beginning what I noticed is that there is a distinct lack of effort put into the setting and the world-building in general. The story takes place in a world where everyone has these quirks and those with useful ones in battle become heroes. Makes sense... But you know… ... Starting from the acquirement of quirks to the establishment of a society that functions is a veeeeery long way, which was all completely missed.
In this season, we do get some hints about certain things that happened in the past, but instead of answering important questions we just get more of them. All the details regarding the events which involve All-For-One are missed and yes I understand that there will be a follow-up later in the anime, but the whole thing barely seems believable when you start asking questions like “Why?” and “How?”. From a technical perspective, nothing makes sense and we as an audience have to just move ahead and swallow it.

The next thing in this 'world' that was extremely poorly handled was the Heroes vs Villains theme. In this show, it is presented as the most basic and boring Good vs Evil clash. The way this anime handles its villains is simply disgusting and their motivations are so non-existent....... with one exception. This is where I want to give Hero Aca its low amount of credits - Stain. I'd go as far as say that this is the most well-handled character in the series with a motivation that makes perfect sense. There is also some foreshadowing about the hand guy's motivation, but he is so over the top edgy that I hardly consider that to be a character.


As for the quality of the actual story... *sigh*
It is very basic and simplistic, which in itself is not a bad thing... unless it's full of plot holes... which, HEY, it actually is...
Not only that the quirk mechanic is clearly not explored enough, we even have a villain with teleportation power! Isn't that the best way to pull anything out of your backdoor? By the way, if you think about it... there is no way that guy can lose... ever... unless the plot says so...
And this is not the only offender in this regard - Deku easily predicts the future and then defies the laws of physics in the very first arc of the season; Todoroki getting super nerfed for unknown reasons in the fight against Deku; the mind control guy getting hacked out by the power of the Main Character because FkU; Deku's instant no-effort powerup; Stain attacking Iida's brother for unknown reasons (considering Stain's motivation) etc. etc. I won’t get into specifics to keep the spoilers minor.
All these and other small details keep adding up throughout the duration of the show making everything that happens less and less believable.

The next things in the story to take a look at are the themes Hero Aca tried to explore. I could find a few main ones and let’s take them one by one.

Heroism
Somewhat okay-ish handled in my opinion and it does have its really good moments periodically.
Starting with the good part – the anime clearly tells on many occasions that Heroes INSPIRE others and not only save them in dire situations. Heroes are symbols and enforcers of peace and are the target for a human’s basic need – to admire someone/something. The show never hesitates to make All-Might explain the reason why he smiles which is a pretty nice thing overall.
This is also where the Stain arc goes in and scores some points for this anime, saving it from being horrible. Without spoiling the thing… Really well executed, believable and relatable – a solid commentary on what it means to be a hero and finally draws that small grayish line in the whole Good vs Evil issue.
The problems on this topic mostly include the one I mentioned above about villains (WHICH IS A HUGE ISSUE) and some questionable things about the education of the heroes and by that I mean the whole existence of Bakugo.

Hard work / Working for your dream
A complete joke since season 1. The whole idea of working hard is undermined by the very fact that the Main Character gets the super powa just because he’s good. There are some training sequences, but the only huge power spikes are achieved through ass-pulled power ups. Extremely cheap and lazy overall.

The Todoroki thing
Here I refer about the whole parents forcing their dreams upon their children, despite their wishes. If I ignore some technical issues, this is handled fairly well and I really loved the conclusion that Todoroki reaches in the end.
This would really be something nice if only Endeavor wouldn’t be such a 1-dimensional ass. Sadly, this fact just undermines the whole issue and all I can say is that it could’ve been so much better.


And now I got to the biggest issue of this show – THE CHARACTERS.
Simply, horrible. Bland, uninteresting and almost everyone is defined by one quirk (pun intended).
The whole attention of the show is focused solely on Deku, which to be honest, simply gets obnoxious. Everyone else is given so small attention! I still remember how that same Naruto (before it became horrible) focused on its side cast and fleshed it out down to its core. What do we get here….? Absolutely nothing. Nothing matters besides Deku. Deku is the center of the world. Even the fights in the tournament arc took place in a flash as if to fast forward to the important part, which is DEKU.
One could obviously argue that the show also focuses on Todoroki and Iida, but to be honest… even in those parts, it is very easy to follow what the thing is focusing on (*cough* Deku being such a good guy *cough*).
And now Deku himself is a huge problem as well. He follows the same bland shounen self-insert protagonist formula without a single unique trait. He is as typical as a character in anime can ever get and there is literally nothing to talk about here.


And finally the execution of the show… To describe the feeling I got here – LOW EFFORT.
Everything in this anime screams of lack of attention to any kind of detail.
The art style is maximum simplistic as if to make a joke about how bland the characters are. The villains even look as evil as they possibly can…
If you’re going to look for any details in the character behavior or certain situations – HA HA HA. None. Everything is extremely straightforward and dumbed down as much as possible.
The good part here is the music… and damn it is so catchy. The OPs are great, EDs are fine, “You Say Run” does most of the job in crucial moments and the timing on the OST usage is great. The Deku vs Todoroki scene is executed brilliantly and is the only awesome moment in the anime (including season one).
By the way… I still couldn’t forget that horrible Deku crying scene from the first season, which was executed in the most disgusting way possible. I think a kid with actual autism wouldn’t look as bad. Also, going back to the issues with details starting with season one... One more striking detail is how bland the One-For-All quirk is… Simply, power. Goooooing baaaaack to our Deku being a bland self-insert issue……


One more thing that strikes me about this show is how it is afraid to have actual progress. It tries to keep its status-quo as much as possible all the time while slooooowly progressing with the main conflict.
To explain better what I mean, I’ll take the Stain arc.
In this arc, Iida gets the same treatment that Todoroki does in the tournament arc, aka DEVELOPMENT. But where the show succeeded in the first case, it completely failed in the Iida case. What happens here is that Iida just goes back to his normal state that he had, right before the arc started. Not only that, but the whole damage he creates by screwing up is as minimal as it can get. Unlike the Todoroki case, there are no real consequences to this whole issue except that moving the main plot slightly forward.


So, overall… This season did a better job than season one, which was literally a bunch of “nothing happens”. It finally tried to do something and had a few themes to explore. Some of them were handled okay-ish and some worse, but the main issues that I had with the show since the first season are still there: a terribly bland cast, a cheap plot with no attention to details or world-building and a striking simplicity in literally everything to the point of insulting the viewer’s intelligence.

TLDR: A pretty interesting but poorly handled idea wrapped into ok action, extremely ruined by unnecessary edge.

(spoiling out only episode 1 and 2)

We start off at episode 2 where the plot instantly presents a very interesting idea of Rational vs Emotional. On one side we have an over the top rational guy that won't believe in god even if one appears in front of him and on the other side we have the guy that was driven into a corner, which ended up murdering him and the god (or being X).
This was a very intriguing start and what I liked the most about it is ... that the main character didn't lose his s**t even facing a situation like this, showing again to which extreme he's on the Rational side.

Now this is where my very first problem with the show appears - the fact that what I said above is episode 2.
This looks like a small detail, but in reality the first episode is the one that tries to appeal the most to the audience (aka the hook). So we learn here that the hook of the show is not the interesting above mentioned conflict, but action and edge. Also, it has a psychological effect to set the main hero in your brain to the loli...

And daaaamn the edge gets annoying as hell at points. Not only that the thing is aesthetically extremely displeasing, but it conflicts the very main idea of the show by taking off the Rational side of the MC, turning... it... into a typical sadist.
The most obvious next complain is - why a loli?
I am 100% positive that giving the MC like 5 more years wouldn't damage anything in the plot, so the obvious remaining answer is - to please the edgelords (sometimes... really.... fu Japan...). And again it makes no sense within the theme of the show! When the MC is so interested in just securing his easy life, he should have just chilled out for as much as possible. I am sure he would be provided an ok life, considering the importance of the mages in the setting.
These two things are actually the biggest flaws in the show and damage it from multiple aspects. If you can get over these, then your experience with it will be a lot better than mine.

Now the logical question that follows is - how does the show handle its core idea and does it go anywhere with it? The answer is - kinda...?
If you look at it on a superficial level - yes. This whole thing is like a game to the being X (going to call it that, it cracks a smile on my face), which constantly sets up bad situations for the MC, at some points making it even look like trolling and watching the MC struggle can be very entertaining at points.
But again there's this thing that keeps bugging me... Being X is the biggest a**hole in the series. In the Rational vs Emotional fight, I'd really like to see both positives and negatives of both sides. In the Rational camp we can see them both: negative - can't understand human emotions and pays for it; positive - brings results. Yet in the second camp there's only an ass that keeps making wars and killing off people just for the sake of fking around with one person and not only that, but gives power to that person so that it stands a chance so that the killings continue. It's way too easy to take a side.
I have to say that I'm not trying to nitpick this, because it really doesn't take that much effort to show another side of X - just a few scenes here and there where blessings save life. Then it would perfectly symbolize what Emotions are - sometimes warm, sometimes self-destructive.
In the end we have to blame the laziness of the scriptwriter and the low demands of the audience.

The last thing one could care about are the characters... and we have literally one. Everyone else is of low to no importance and the only opposing force in the form of an actual character will exist in the sequel.... YAAAAAAY!
I also generally tend to hate on "perfect" characters. I'm talking about Narsus from Arslan Senki or the MC from Alderamin etc. This is the category that the MC of this show falls into. All the judgments he makes are always corect and his logic has no flaws, being dragged down only by others, even to the point of unjustified hate, despite the MC having the right predictions.

In the end, it's as I said before. Watch this for some action, ignore the rape faces (unless you're into this kind of thing) and try to not too dig too deep into the plot. This is a decent time-waster, nothing more nothing less.