Correct me if I\'m wrong but it seems your main gripe with the series is \"Too many of Midoriya\'s classmates don\'t get proper development\" and while that\'s definitely a valid criticism, I disagree that the fault lies in Horikoshi\'s writing style. If any fault lies with Horikoshi, and I do think he\'s somewhat to blame for this issue, it\'s that he was too ambitious with his characters. That is to say we should\'ve had way less characters in Class 1-A to ensure they were each given proper development. Give some of the greatest writers in history a story with what essentially amounts to 20 main characters, and giving them all proper development still would\'ve been an uphill battle.
You raise some interesting points about the story's thematic elements, but this reads more like an analysis piece than a review of whether MHA is worth your time. It also doesn't help that it's one and a half times as long as the character limit.
To a certain extent, I agree with MagisterFlopsy that there were too many characters in 1-A, and a few could have been trimmed out with no effect on the story. However, the story still could have prioritized the main characters, and should have given Uraraka and Iida more screentime and development.
Incidentally, I'm considering rewriting my review, since it's been over a year and a half since I posted it and it could use an update.
@MagisterFlopsy @Valiona Fair enough, I kinda wrote this really early in the morning when I should have been sleeping, so it was a bit of a rambling mess that probably needs a bit of rewriting.
I saw an interesting YouTube video called "The Arc that Broke MHA," which suggests that the Villain Hunt arc was the start of speedrunning to the end and discarding established plotlines, a bit like Season 8 of Game Of Thrones; saying that this comparison is a bad omen for MHA is a massive understatement.
One popular idea I saw in the comments section was having the series cover all three years of U.A., rather than just one, which would have given more time for the protagonists to grow as heroes.
I'm in the process of rewriting my almost three-year-old review to reflect current developments and my changing opinion.
I’m not sure I completely agree, since I do still enjoy it and most of the takes I’ve heard about why people don’t are takes I strongly disagree with, but I will listen to what you have to say.
Really, My Hero Academia is up there with Worm, Naruto, and Harry Potter: It used to be a great series, but now it\'s a sandbox made for fanfiction.
And yes, it\'s extremely uneven. We know why each of the Lo V are villains but most of 1A (and ALL of 1B) had no known motivation for why they want to be heroes
All is not lost. Not yet.
Personally despite its flaws I still think MHA remains a great series, even if the 3rd and \"Final Act\" is very rushed. 1 and a half of arc and the War Arc happens again? Nevertheless even then it still got a few very great moments and if anything else, the art remains constantly amazing.
At least one thing fans and haters can agree on is that Hori deserves to go on long break after this series ends.
Dude i could be gaming
It's interesting that TheSinful would bring up Naruto as being like MHA in that regard given how many similarities there are between the series. I personally enjoyed Naruto all the way to the end despite its flaws, but time will tell what my final judgment on MHA will be.
Incidentally, I'm watching Season 6 of the anime and enjoying it, since while there were a fair amount of things I disliked about that arc(AFO hijacking the Big Bad role, Midnight being killed off-panel with no follow-up on her death), there were a lot of things I enjoyed(Twice's death scene, Bakugo's near-fatal Heroic Sacrifice with callbacks to Midoriya saving him at the start of the series). The anime sometimes has crude art and occasional weird parts, such as it taking almost half a minute for Aizawa to walk over to Garaki's clone even though it should be a few feet away, but it's still entertaining to watch.
TL;DR? There's a lot of things I criticize about the series, but other parts that I enjoy, which is probably why the former bug me so much.
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Strong Start, Unevenly Integrated Thematic Elements and Characters
My Hero Academia starts off on a straightforward note, with a cast of colorful characters and a simple plotline about Izuku Midoriya aiming to become the world's greatest hero. Along the way, the story ends up shining a spotlight on it's own tropes and themes, steadily deconstructing it's elements to slowly highlight the themes of the story.
What sacrifices does one make to be a hero, and are those sacrifices worth making?
What kind of society enables the kind of situations where heroes are so plentiful, and what happens when the people (or person) involved in ensuring such a status quo can no longer continue to uphold said status quo?
What problems arise from a society where your value is determined by a power given from birth, and who falls between the cracks of such a society?
What does it really mean to be a hero or a villain in a dystopian society that relies on snap judgments, discrimination, obsession with power, flashiness and prestige to determine their status, and is built on standards that inevitably create the circumstances for villains to rise?
These themes are interwoven throughout the series, and while more questions are asked as time passes on, it's easy to see that they, for the most part, are generally given the attention and consideration they deserve. For example, the early Myth Arc of All Might's impending retirement as the Symbol of Peace acts as a constant element for the first few seasons, highlighting the end result of not only building an entire society around the idea of one man holding it up, but also just how much of a toll it truly takes on that man to become that kind of person, and how society as a whole struggles to cope when that hero can no longer compensate for it's flaws any longer.
For that matter, the Villains initially play the role of the absolutely flat evil side that is evil for the sake of it, but it steadily becomes increasingly evident that many of them are deeply broken people who have been forsaken by the dystopian elements of this Hero Society, where superpower-related discrimination and the control said society holds over the regulation of said powers, and how these things influence their characters and arcs.
However. This is not something that is done particularly evenly, because while the Villain side has been relatively consistent in this thematic integration, the Hero side is much more erratic in terms of quality.
Out of the entire cast of Heroes, the only characters I can say with certainty are integrated with these themes are Izuku, All Might, Endeavor, Bakugou, Todoroki and MAYBE Eraserhead. The rest of the cast, while initially making a strong start (especially Uraraka and Iida), suffer from not only an erratic cast focus, but also from the simple fact that their role in the thematic elements of the story is extremely situational, and that the majority of them tend to be somewhat interchangeable.
This primarily stems from the fact that their personalities and backgrounds, while colorful enough to work to sell that the world is alive and vibrant, are often not given much depth beyond that, or have their character depth more heavily interconnected with the overarching themes of the series more evenly. While "Heroism" is generally something they tend to be the most connected to, other aspects such as the issues of superpowers in a highly restrictive society, or how the heroism-centered society affected them is often glossed over or underutilized.
The end result is that despite the status of protagonists being put upon them, a very substantial number of the cast struggles to have any relevance, either from a character level or from a thematic level, outside of their connection to the very small number of characters who are relevant, and oftentimes very unevenly.
And this has only gotten more prominent as the series draws to a close, due in part to how the series creator Kohei Horikoshi handles his writing. In earlier chapters/Seasons, the brisk speed ensured that the pacing would not be bogged down in superfluous information or details, while ensuring that the series remained engaging. However, his briskly paced, economical style of writing has arguably also become the series' Achille's Heel as the series went on, with important information either sped past or glossed over, thus resulting in thematic oddities and inconsistencies that could have been avoided if more time had been given.
The ultimate end result is a series that has a very strong start, but starts to struggle with the burden it created due to it's own strengths becoming a weakness, and it's uneven application of it's themes across it's vast cast of characters, leaving many to become little more than extras.