YMMV / New Game Plus (2022)

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Due to being set in an universe where a lot of characters are worse than in canon, Deep Dive #1 is very open to this.
  • Is Nedzu, despite his influence and contacts, just powerless when having to contend with a hostile All Might? Or should he be held more responsible for how much festered inside UA under his watch, coming out too clean at the end?
    • Ironically a later Deep Dive (#8), even if much less dark, has Nedzu ultimately forced by a third party to face UA's many shortcomings.
  • Is All Might a Well-Intentioned Extremist who realizes too late that he's trampled on the legacy of Nana Shimura and all the other predecessors of One For All, or nothing more than a hypocritical bastard who got Drunk with Power?
  • Are Ochako and Kirishima victims of peer pressure, toxic competitivity, the reign of terror Aizawa exercises over 1-A and the suddenness of some events, all causing them such severe lapses in judgement? Or do they simply consider their aspirations to be Pro Heroes more important than any morality, and they realize too late?
• Angst? What Angst?:
  • Izuku seems quite cool about the whole situation of being sent back in time, never wonders what may have been of himself in the original timeline, and doesn't even apparently think much about all the changes he's bringing to history.
  • Ai Uzumaru has recovered quite well for someone who spent most of her life as a prisoner in her own body while an evil personality used it. Although Aoi's suicide being prevented and herself being freed shortly after surely helped lift her spirit, compared to the original timeline where she was too broken by the time she regained control. She has no thoughts nor sorrow for the death of her horrible parents.
• Archive Panic: As of January 2024, the fanfic has over 130 chapters between the main story and the several spin-offs. While no chapter is long - it's taken 60 of them for the main fic to reach the 100k words milestone - it can be hard to keep track of the whole narrative due to how important the spin-offs are, with essential details and reveals spread out between them and intended to be read at certain points, their original publication dates the only aid to understand when.
• Base-Breaking Character: Ronri. Those who like her see her as an immensely sympathetic figure whose fragile mental state, extremely powerful nature, and true identity as a version of Eri who lost basically everything makes for an interesting and tragic character and possible threat. Those who dislike her see her as an unlikeable, boring, Invincible Villain who actively steals attention from other, more interesting characters and whose actions throughout the story and side stories kill whatever sympathy she otherwise would have. The fact that she keeps getting a fair share of focus after her introduction only increases this divide further.
• BLAM Episode:
  • The third Side Story involves ghosts appearing in toilets from popular Japanese urban legends, something completely out of the usual My Hero Academia subject and themes, and has no bearing to the main story except a passing mention of Eri being found in a toilet, looking transfixed.
  • Deep Dive #2 has some of the cast from one of the many universes talking about witnessing Ronri dropping an Evangelion Unit through a portal, something treated almost dismissively for the appearance of a whole other franchise and the implication of The Multiverse being even more vast.
  • Deep Dive #3 is set in an universe without Quirks, where very different versions of some characters go through what is essentially a recreation of Skinamarink.
• Broken Base:
  • Chapter 16 is the most divisive among readers to date, due to Nejire's tragic and gruesome death and the follow-up to it. For some it's a twist that keeps the story fresh and introduces a novelty idea; others consider it a bad case of Cerebus Syndrome and the way Nejire ends up becoming a vestige of One For All an Ass Pull. A few of the most vocal detractors even claimed they regretted having read the fic firsthand.
  • The ending of Chapter 40, Todoroki insulting Momo, was equally divisive despite the narrative making clear that it didn't come out of nowhere, given the direction the events of the new timeline brought both characters. Mitigated throughout the following chapters, as both go through further development that realigns them closer to canon.
  • The arc starting from Chapter 82, featuring multiverse hopping and characters from other franchises, which were limited to spin-offs beforehand, has got mixed receptions from readers, part of them feeling a loss of focus, on top of being a contrived way to push some developments, like Izuku learning more about Ronri.
• Complete Monster: The Hirikones are a wealthy couple who hate Quirkless people and love to lord their status over anyone they consider beneath them, and think they can buy and bully their way through everything. It is revealed that they hated Ai—their own daughter—for being born Quirkless, gentle, and humble, to the point they sought All For One and had him force a Quirk and alternate personality on Ai, resulting in the latter becoming a cruel, spoiled bully, but imprisoned in her own body for almost a decade, Forced to Watch all the horrible actions the other personality committed.
• Fridge Horror: It's heavily implied that Detnerat being the only company still mass producing shoes specifically tailored to Quirkless people and their extra pinky toe joints, which may appear as a generous decision to the general public, is in truth a sneaky way to have them singled out thanks to the shoes' stand-out designs and colors. In fact, Hirikone almost immediately tries to pick on Izuku until she realizes he's got in fact a Quirk.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • While the raid against the Shie Hassaikai is being organized, Nighteye prays it won't end like in the original timeline, as he died there. It's instead Nejire, whose presence in the mission was questioned by Nighteye, who dies.
  • Rock Lock, who already questioned the presence of students in the raid, is even more concerned here as Izuku is a middle schooler, no matter the backing that has allowed him to get a provisional license already. He's sadly proven right in a way, as a student (Nejire) dies in the raid.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Just a few months after the fanfic described Nejire as having been unhappy, until not even that far in the past, due to her personality causing most people to stay away from her, the manga would reveal that it was exactly the case, although not as dark as in the fic (no suicide attempts we know of).
  • The humorous idea that All For One wiped out the Mario franchise and its memory because of the casting of Chris Pratt for the CGI movie has aged quickly in front of the movie's massive success once released, also with Mario fans outside of a vocal minority. Although it works in making AFO look even more petty.
• Iron Woobie: Ai Uzumaru develops into this. First suffering living a prisoner in her body for over half her life, ultimately because of her parents' hate for Quirkless people, then witnessing firsthand the discrimination the Quirkless can face, yet getting even stronger from these experiences.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Overhaul is about to cross it even further by rendering Eri comatose, just like her grandfather, before Izuku stops him.
  • While it can be argued that All For One and Dr. Garaki gleefully walk towards that horizon all the time, targeting a four years old child to be turned into a Nomu for the Ultra High End project may be an even further crossing.
  • In the universe of Deep Dive #1, All Might and Nighteye having Izuku imprisoned for accidentally learning about One For All; Aizawa being their accomplice in that, and having Mina also arrested when she protests; Bakugo being proud of the past Suicide Dare to Izuku and happy about his death.
  • It can be argued whether Ronri crossed it several times in the events between her origins and the present, due to her sympathetic backstory and overall mental state, but she definitely does in Chapter 89, where she casually causes death and destruction on a city, gleefully, to show off her power to Izuku and make a point of being stronger than him.
• Nightmare Fuel: During Chapter 36, in the midst of the U.A. attack, Ai has her arm touched by Shigaraki, which begins to decay. In order to prevent her death, Kamakiri is forced to cut off her arm from the elbow down, all the while Ai is left screaming in terror and pain.
• One True Threesome: Izuku, Ochako and Aoi as of Chapter 23.
• Squick:
  • If you value your stomach, don't research the cheese All Might mentions in the first chapter, apparently highly sought after by Nedzu.
  • According to some notes, Ai's alternate personality was such an Extreme Omnivore, it once plucked the eyes out of a roast pig at a party.
  • When Nejire's body is destroyed by Overhaul, some of her blood ends up in Izuku's mouth, who's too shocked to realize or care right that moment. As she later manifests as a new Vestige of One For All, the implication would be that ingesting DNA of dead people may give Izuku their Quirks.
  • Mineta looking at Eri from afar and thinking he may even skip the Jail Bait Wait with her.
• Sweet Dreams Fuel: The What If spin-off, one-shots set in timelines where featured characters get the best outcome. Except maybe Aizawa and Shinso.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • While it's refreshing to have Hisashi Midoriya shown to be present in Izuku's life despite living abroad, with him even returning temporarily to Japan midway into Act I, after departing again he's been barely if ever mentioned since.
  • The story creates a reason for Izuku to meet and befriend Tsuyu, Iida and Shinso even before entering UA, however they are barely used by the time the school year there starts.
  • While not exceptionally characterized, the British villains could have used more time due to being a whole original group of enemies, pretty diversified and even delivering some entertaining lines.
  • In the timeline of What If #2, Jirou becomes friends with Izuku and Aoi even before UA, while Shoji is the successor of One For All^note the author clarified it's one of those universes where OFA can be passed safely even to people with Quirks and becomes friends with the others during the Takoba cleaning, but really little is done with them and their closeness to Izuku in this reality.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Even if often just gratuitously Darker and Edgier, Deep Dive #1 could have used more exploration of some characters who are shown to not be completely bad but are swallowed by the generally awful environment around them, especially Ochako and Kirishima. Instead, moments of characterization come mostly in the aftermath of Izuku's suicide, making their arcs feel incomplete by the time they reach a Heel Realization - also made moot by Ronri killing them soon after.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring:
  • The optimism of the premise - Izuku doesn't even come from some doomed timeline as often in Peggy Sue stories but from one where things ended well - and the early chapters quickly leave room to the dominant idea that altering history to try and make things better doesn't come without consequences, as just as many other events can go wrong and people can take darker directions. The death of Nejire clearly marks that (and in fact some readers quit after it). And despite several positive events, oftentimes the impression is that the new timeline as a whole is getting worse than the original one. Becomes especially evident in the new Hosu arc, and gets even darker afterwards.
  • Parallel to that, the abundance of negative events and suffering some characters live through, both in the past and the present, can get hard to swallow. Aoi and Ai are especially subjected to this in early chapters; they get better but by the end of Act I they are plunged back, one losing an arm (the trauma of that staying even if it's regenerated) and the other narrowly escaping a rape, and in Act II Ai has also to suffer through targeted discrimination for being Quirkless. The spotlight of darkness however moves to Hanako and Ronri, both also covered a lot in the spin-offs: their lives can make Ai and Aoi's feel decent in comparison.
  • The first chapter of The MHA Multiverse: Deep Dive can be hard to read from start to finish, as it's set in an universe that's out to chew on Izuku and ultimately swallow him, with most of the cast being adaptational jerkasses if not completely un-heroic, until Ronri comes and gruesomely kills almost all of them. It may be not a case that most of the following chapters of that spin-off have gone much lighter-hearted.
• Toy Ship:
  • Eri is very happy to be reintroduced to Kota and she immediately drags him to play together. This causes the little boy to quickly become smitten with her.
  • Ronri has a crush on Katsuma Shimano and even gives him Valentine's chocolate. She also asks him to be nice to Eri when he'll meet her (as she's another version of her).
• Ugly Cute: Ms. Futakuchi, the homeroom teacher of Izuku, Ochako and Aoi, has got a second mouth with sharp teeth on the back of her head, which also seems to be partially sentient as it occasionally starts talking by itself. It doesn't however detract from the warm kindness of the woman, who even adopts Aoi eventually.
• Unexpected Character:
  • Eri's mother, who in canon exists only in flashback narrations, shows up as a mental patient in Rehabilitation.
  • Melissa Shield, limited to a cameo in Act I, suddenly shows up in Act II in a scene that implies she's now a second-year transfer student at UA.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Ronri is a mentally unstable little girl who was denied an happy ending at every turn in her original universe, with events causing her to both lose her sanity, and possess a great power she uses to travel across the multiverse and protect Izuku. The story clearly portrays her as dangerous, volatile, yet tragic and redeemable. She is however shown to be capable of acts that range from petty pranks to gruesome murder.
  Deep Dive #1 takes that to much greater levels as Ronri kills most of the cast of that universe in revenge for Izuku's suicide, despite most of them being either uninvolved, unable to help, or not speaking up due to the toxic environment. Except a few the victims are portrayed sympathetically and Ronri as a Tragic Villain who's lashing out in her Disproportionate Retribution. However this angle is hard to read as Ronri is brutal during her rampage, inflicting many cruel and unusual deaths on those who don't deserve them. Ronri can come across not as a child lashing out but rather a villain who takes pleasure in making her victims suffer for their perceived role in wronging Izuku.
  Furthermore, while motivated by a deep-seated trauma, there's her attack on All Might in Chapter 45; the mere realization this one is not a bad person at all, is enough to send her into a mental breakdown.
  All of this can kill the reader's sympathy for Ronri's situation and make her come across as an unreasonable and irredeemable psychopath, in spite of the story's continuous attempts to drive further sympathy for the girl. Additional reveals that she's even developed a Split Personality due to the guilt over her own actions, which can feel like an easy cop-out to at least partially absolve her, and that she even possesses her own instance of One For All, like she wasn't overpowered enough already, don't help.
  • Deep Dive #10 shows Ronri at her lowest so far; while she causes a situation for a character to get worse involuntarily, her response to their reaction is disproportionately brutal, and over a ruined dress. It feels unnecessary and cruel because at that point it's clear enough how unpredictable, umoral and violent Ronri can get, and a big sympathy-killer after several chapters that showed better sides to her.
  • And then comes Chapter 89...
• Viewer Name Confusion: Quite a few readers admit mixing Aoi and Ai up.