Reviews

This is what My Hero Academia would have been if you hired a bunch of crude and shallow marketing execs to write a hero show. The heavy branding and commercialization of hero work in the show is supposed to be cheeky satire, but it becomes too meta when the actual show itself feels like a cheap cash grab exploiting the same superhero genre. The characters are shallow, melodramatic, and bicker constantly, lacking any seriousness, tension, or emotion. It feels like a bad reality TV show. The Real Housewives if the housewives were dorky superheroes in heavily branded ugly mecha suits performing in front of a camera, where the meaningless fake drama overshadowed any life threatening situation or semblance of hero work.

There is no deeper exploration of the ramifications of turning hero work into a 24hr show business or how a society is willing to compromise rational behavior for petty entertainment. The TV director even takes on the role of operations manager during a hero mission, it's so sad. The broader implications of superpowers suddenly manifesting in people are mostly ignored, with just occasional mentions of fear or discrimination. After about half a dozen episodes, a supervillain finally shows up, preaching death to criminals, no matter the crime, and a draconian approach to justice. His debut is underwhelming, his speech crude with no charisma, but somehow his five minutes of wanton destruction is able to magically stir the audience hive mind into a murderous bloodlust, to flip the tables so casually on law and order in favor of carnage. How have such gullible people survived for so long without destroying themselves? Then the very next day, the introduction of a new character who is clearly the same villain out of costume. Not even the slightest attempt. It's poor writing followed by even poorer writing. I dropped it knowing both the cast, the plot, and the premise wasn't going to get any better.