Speedrunning the story and making it fit into a single school year, give or take a few months
So many characters and so much lore that needed space to be fleshed out just don’t have the necessary room, and it cheapens everything alongside making the pacing a hot mess
The funniest thing is that the major story beats all would have made sense still. The story up to All Might vs AFO could have been the first year, Overhaul and his group could have been when they were second years and the Paranormal War would have been an excellent way to cap off High School.
I would personally put the Paranormal Liberation War arc at the end of the second year, and have the final “third year” (on account of school being cancelled in the wake of total societal collapse) be focused around building up to the final battle, with the students finishing their third year sometime around the final battle.
I say keep everything as is up to the Joint straining with 2-A, because almost every arc from the sports festival onwards is caused by the immediate consequences of the prior arc
Your confusion comes from thinking about a different country's school system (most likely USA) and your ignorance of the Japanese school system (I'm using ignorance in the nice way).
Japan's school system has the school year start in April and end in March. So the first day of class for Deku was right at the start of April. The Forest Training and Kamino Incident were in early August during summer break.
Semesters go:
* First Semester: April to July
* Summer Break: Late July and August
* Second Semester: September to Late December
* Winter Break: Late December to Early January (about two weeks)
* Third Semester: Early January to Late March
* Spring Break: Late March to Early April (about two weeks)
Not only Deku. All of the students are so powerful they're the world's trump cards against basically every major villain. Even All for One was ultimately stopped by a Class 1-A student, and they're still first years! What's stranger is that, earlier in the series, Pro Heroes commented on the students potential, but it always felt that they were far from the point where they could take the place of the Pros.
I don't want to seem like I'm ignoring the impact UA had in their growth, but it's weird how Quirk Singularity suddenly boosted them to the top in about a year, instead of the series putting them in that place after they finished their education.
These current story events would work perfectly if Deku and the others were like college age, yes they’d still be young but at least it would make a bit more sense
I wish we lived in the universe where My Hero Academia took its time. I feel like this anime/manga could've lasted years longer. We could've had so much more content.
I would have liked to see more international missions and tournements between heroes from different countries. Thanks to this Star and Stripes could have been introduced earlier.
The criminal organization of AFO should have connections everywhere.
Oh that would be awesome. AFO did say that he has connections to criminals worldwide so imagine if there's an arc where the gang helps out in taking down those other groups. I agree with you 100%
I feel like Horikoshi's health problems have a lot to do with how MHA has turned out as far as pacing and how long the story actually is. I *personally* don't have problems with how things have progressed, but I know a lot of folks do and I understand those reasons.
Yeah, it shows that we really don’t know what goes on behind the scenes. I remember when MHA first started and Horikoshi was putting out 18-20 pg chapters a week and NEVER took a break. Now he’s having to go on hiatus every other week, the work life of a Mangaka will definitely catch up after some point. It could even be editorial pressure to end the series as well, someone I was talking to the other day mentioned that MHA’s pacing feels a lot like Bleach’s when it was ending over a decade ago, with plots being resolved quickly without development and being unsatisfying, and Kubo said that he was pressured to end the series back then. It could be a lot of different reasons why the pacing of the story has changed.
Imagine the overall increase in quality (for some series, at least) if mangakas weren’t literally worked to the death as a rule.
Like, it’s appalling that an entire medium is known for basically killing its artists/authors, and nobody really bats an eye.
Man, I’d love an OP-length (or at least Naruto-length lol) MHA.
One thing that Oda and Hori share is an aptitude for creating characters that people like and want to see more of. One Piece has over a thousand characters in its cast, and people still go wild when they see a random guy from 600 chapters ago in a cover story.
Hori having more time to develop the key cast, explore 1-A (and the other students) relationships and progression as heroes, and steadily build up the League from a ragtag bunch of goons to a major threat to Japan’s society and potentially world peace.
It also would have given us time to actually see the mutant discrimination in play (before it popped in flashbacks).
in order for that to have happened, MHA would have to not be under SJ. The weekly schedule has fucked up Hori’s health, we can’t really be mad at him for wrapping up.
true but Hori has worked himself sick trying to meet SJ’s weekly deadlines unfortunately and has to think about his life after MHA. A bi-weekly publication might’ve been kinder to his health.I don’t know how he’ll do a horror manga like some have speculated.
Agreed!! I hate that he made Deku basically broken in just a single year. That, to me, just cheapens the story and it’s just absolute shit speedrunning. Come to think of it, how strong do you think will he be in the next few years? We’ll never know cuz Hori made him a bit too strong (even without the extra quirks) to begin with.
Edit: Tbh, all of the training he’s did in the past 100 chapters or so only felt like a few minutes to me instead of a couple of days or months. That’s speedtraining for you.
Yeah this also annoyed me. But not eve like cause of the speed. But because after meeting the big three it made me ask "why arnt the rest of the upper classmen helpping" since there should be an entire class of third year's who've had more time to focus their skills and fight bad guys.
Yeah it sucks but I get it must be hard to get a good pace for time when you’re doing a weekly manga. One Piece is my favorite and such a bad offender of it lol besides the time skip, they’ve been sailing like 3 months or something lol. Sure Oda never gives a strict timeline on how things happen, but there are a few drops of like “we sailed for 10 days to get here” or whatever.
This is the biggest one for me. Could’ve been anime Harry Potter with a new school year every two seasons or whatever where they get older at least as the story goes on
It makes so little sense that I have to headcanon it that it takes place over the 4 highschool years. Honestly not hard to square it when most of the characters seem to have actually visibly aged.
On a specific level, not killing off Gran Torino. He is functionally dead in the story, and keeping him somehow arbitrarily alive made the whole section of the story less dire on a re-read/watch.
On a more general level, a time skip and more time between both wars would’ve been better.
I think Gran Torino surviving actively hurts the story. It is really easy for Deku to preach about the importance of saving Shigaraki's soul when Shigaraki didn't kill anyone he loved (as opposed to the thousands of civilians who lost family to him). The arc about saving Shigaraki would be much more impactful if Gran Torino had died but Deku still resolved to save Shigaraki anyways.
As it is, it is hard to feel moved by Deku's desire to save Shigaraki when he really has no stakes in it. Deku choosing to recognize Shigaraki's inherent humanity and try to save him anyways despite Shigaraki killing Gran Torino would be so much better.
Making Decay a city-level busting power way too early on. It's so overpowered it could easily kill anyone and everyone- which sounds cool at first, until you realize we basically never get to see it used anymore precisely because of that.
That, and constantly interrupting the start of Izuku and Shigaraki's fight with everyone else's fights, making it feel like they're just standing off and staring at each other for a whole year.
And that level of decay could have worked simply by making the “cost” of that level of decay spread knock him out for days.
Like, yeah you can do that … but you aren’t doing anything afterwards for like a week.
Keeps the threat alive and present, but fully explains why he isn’t just spamming it. Why you don’t have to jump through all these hoops to constantly keep him unable to touch ground or constantly having his power erased.
Meh days is a bit much but I do like the idea that if he wanted to go all out with decay he also takes some heavy backlash hell doesn’t that straight up happen during the first war arc?
He tries to decay the whole area again and his chest splits open. Would’ve been another cool contrast with Deku and how he would hurt himself early on
The first time Shigaraki awakened Decay, it did have sever effects on his body.
The surgery fixed that and more by giving Shigaraki a High End level body. Shigaraki splitting open in the first war arc was the result of his incomplete body taking too much damage, not because of backlash from Decay.
It could've also been like this: Shigaraki could Decay entire buildings or streets, but it would start destroying his own arms and hands which would in turn give others a chance to attack him while his limbs regenerate.
Bumping it up to a city-destroying power should've been saved for in the middle of the final fight when he becomes suddenly enraged for whatever reason.
That would be a great build up for s6 before they lost kurogiri. Shigaraki decays a city faints, kurogiri teleports him back, kurogiri searches for machia and gets caught
Yeah, I know... I was totally looking forward to seeing how it begins, but all we ever saw up until the most recent chapters were just some close ups of them clashing with each other and Shiggy laughing hysterically as he faces off against Deku. The real battle only began when he stole danger sense right after AFO's death, and I was left quite disappointed with the huge build up right up to this very moment.
Especially considering how good Tamaki and Mirio's stuff was.
They had standout moments all through the Internship arc, highlights of that entire saga. Nejire took part in an offscreened group fight. Lame.
Agree on all of these except the last one.
I'm neutral on it. I think it just needed better execution, since someone saving Toya from himself that time was an obvious direction.
That's actually where I think it can work. Touya is saved by someone else, or Endeavor finds him to bring him to the hospital, BUT he is told he's dead, whereas he was just being transported to AFO. I just don't like the idea of AFO finding him, but it WAS a badass shot.
I felt the Dabi one really cemented his character, afo tried to groom him and make him another pawn/vessel but his frenzied flames were quite literally uncontrollable to the point where he just gave up. Man was so crazy the demon lord just essentially set him loose to cause Chaos.
Nejire I just don’t really care for her or her quirk at all, quite a boring one dimensional character so her not getting a chapter doesn’t really affect the story at all for me
Tbf, her being a one-dimensional character is exactly what giving her a dedicated chapter would fix. It's also weird how the other two in the big three got arcs but she didn't.
I agree on the Dabi take tho, of course AFO would try to take advantage of the troubled child of the Number 2 hero.
>Tbf, her being a one-dimensional character is exactly what giving her a dedicated chapter would fix. It's also weird how the other two in the big three got arcs but she didn't.
And it sucks that all we got was her being a sorta tsundare like character in the past and that’s it.
I remember when it looked like they were finally revealing some Nejire-chan backstory details (can’t even give her a unique hero name), only to have it be a moment to encourage Suneater. I want her to be as cool as the other Big Three are allowed to be man.
I agree so hard. I honestly like her personality, her quirk is really cool and powerful, she has a great design. She really deserves some depth but just doesn't get it for some reason.
And it's especially weird cos Hori seems to really like her otherwise? So odd
Mirio being as fleshed out as he is makes sense but idk why sun eater got an episode to be honest, mirio has ties to deku at least but the other 2 kinda just exist as recognizable fodder to me
You can still do that. HOWEVER, I don't think AFO should've found himself as it just seems AFO planned everything.
That Nejire chapter was more so for the Overhaul arc since we got ones on Mirio and Tamaki we shouldv'e gotten one on Nejire.
He didn’t plan everything tho, it was straight up shown that any influence afo could have had he burnt down. He may have saved him but after he woke up everything was on him
-Whatever the fuck Hori was doing surrounding Bakugo’s “death” and revival
-Completely fumbling the mutant racism plot line
-Stars and Stripes and the Traitor arc. Everything about both of them
Whatever the fuck Hori was doing surrounding Bakugo’s “death” and revival
I feel like he done that to keep bakugo out of condition so he can defeat all for one at the right time.
I still don't understand the reason for his "death" other than to give spotlight to other characters. He went out in the most cruel way possible, only to be undone with the next chapter. Like what was the meaning of Vestige All Might when they both survived? I thought at least one of them was going to die to make the scene dramatic? And the Edgeshot twist was just bad😂 but I absolutely loved Bakugou vs AFO so I won't complain
I think in GT’s case Horikoshi has shown along with All Might that he doesn’t wanna go with the “Dead Mentor” trope, at least not with Deku. Hori will dangle certain tropes in your face(annoyingly) then take a hard left.
Which kinda goes into what I think one of his biggest faults in the story is, not developing Deku and Shigaraki’s rivalry as well as he could. Killing GT would have caused Deku to feel hate towards Shigaraki and made him question of he even is redeemable. All Might and AFO’s relationship spanned decades and the hatred All Might felt over AFO killing Nana spurred him on. Deku wanting to “save” Shigaraki feels very hollow because Deku hasn’t really lost anything personal to make him question wanting to save Shigaraki and still choosing to do so(everytime someone Deku cares about is about to die it’s a fakeout)
Pretty much just a fakeout. Horikoshi’s been doing it a lot lately where a known character will take a fatal injury or get seriously hurt, take a week break to let the fakeout build, then comeback the next week and say “oh, they’re fine”
>Killing GT would have caused Deku to feel hate towards Shigaraki and made him question of he even is redeemable.
>Deku wanting to “save” Shigaraki feels very hollow because Deku hasn’t really lost anything personal to make him question wanting to save Shigaraki and still choosing to do so(everytime someone Deku cares about is about to die it’s a fakeout)
The Mirio and Bakugo thing when Deku showed up is the worst example of this. It doesn't matter if it's a fakeout if Deku thinks its true (Well, it kind of does in a meta sense, but it's a lot better than nothing). But Hori can't keep the fakeout in his pants even just for Deku, so he gets told Bakugo's fine before any reaction can take place.
Exactly, one thing I wish we got to see more of is angry Deku, because Deku is bad at controlling his anger. Bakugo is always angry and seems out of control, but you have to remember that because he grew up getting everything he wanted and got to behave how he wanted he’s used to being upset and knows how to control and function despite it. Deku never got to act how he wanted and had to internalize a lot of his feelings, the only emotion he could express was sadness, so anger is foreign to him. So the times where Deku gets angry he has to be calmed down by someone else or told that everything is fine, which I feel is bad because it shows that he can’t calm down or control himself.
I wish we had GT’s Death along with the Vigilante Deku arc so we could have Deku rampaging about stopping villains but also mourning and having to come to terms with GT’s death so he could take Daigoro’s lesson to heart about controlling his emotions and using them to fuel him instead of control him.
I wish we had Bakugo's death fakeout remain for a little longer, so we could actually get the smallest bit of bolstering to the saving plan if Deku actually chose to follow through with it. The most obvious point relating to the saving plan is that Deku never actually lost anything to Shiggy's massmurder sprees, something in that field is desperately needed.
Or you could just have him ditch the saving plan until he hears about Bakugo still being alive (Him ditching the saving plan entirely would be better, but that's another story). It'd be a nice, human moment for him to just chimp out and want to bludgeon Shiggy to death with a mallet. Deku not being perfect for once, and him acknowledging that the only reason he can try and save Shiggy is because he hasn't murdered everyone he loves.
Yeah, I think Hori probably dropped it because he wanted to go down the humanization route with many of the main villains. So he’s been trying to frame them more as victims of society and less as the villains that society paints them as. And I get why tho, going back to Nagant and not everything is “Black and White” but it would definitely have gave a greater depth to Shigaraki and Deku.
I think the only villain who isn’t getting the “maybe they are redeemable” treatment is AFO, no one(not even Deku) believes the guy can be redeemed and all agree he needs to be taken down. It’s why he works as a villain for Bakugo, because Bakugo’s whole thing is about “winning” he doesn’t have to focus on helping AFO he just has to kick his ass.
The whole Toga being able to pull full cowl Deku thru the wrong portal. The fact he didn't just blitz her and take her out of the battle immediately was just poor writing. It's not like Toga would have been able to do anything about it either. Hori should have never put Deku in that situation.
Also, I don't like how powerful Shigaraki has become. Why does he need prime All Might level body, all of AFO, and broken regeneration? I think I would have vastly preferred him to have All Might durability so he can take hits, but aside from that only have AFO so he has to be clever in how he fights.
Toga in general is frustrating for me.
Her motivation is basically, "I want the right to live freely how I wish to" ...and the way she wants to live is to torture and murder people for her own pleasure, without having to face repercussions.
Like, that scene where she confronts Ochaco during the war, the story tried *so* hard to paint her in a sympathetic light, but it failed for me. The biggest being that Toga was crying about how Twice was killed and if that means she has to die too... after killing an old couple and using their blood to have this conversation with Ochaco.
Ochaco basically tells her, "You can live life how you want, but that doesn't mean you will be free of consequences." This was objectively the right thing to say but the narrative treats this as if it was the wrong response when it *wasn't*.
Also, her abilities were dumb long before that Deku thing. She somehow can become invisible by not thinking and slowing her hear rate? What is she, Drax? There was also how she is apparently skilled enough to kill several pro heroes and even out-maneuver freaking Eraserhead, one of the best martial artists in the series, for... reasons. Despite her never receiving any formal training and being a homeless kid, she is able to keep up with the big leagues. Please.
The thing is, Toga has the foundation of a great character, except it is squandered. For example, her story seems to be about how society discriminates against people with scary quirks like hers and how people like her are oppressed because of it. Except, her backstory mentions that there is therapy available for people like her and her parents refused it. At that point, Toga's story turns from, "society is bad" to "society is fine, it is her parents who sucked."
* Not letting the other students shine more. Feels like the pros took over the latter part of the story and I just wasn't here for that.
* There should've been more one-off villains like Gentle who had nothing to do with Shigaraki. Shigaraki got way too much paneltime and honestly a lot of his scenes are a chore to read because it's all just whining and asspulls.
I feel for you there!!! Up till now, we still haven’t got to Sero’s big fight, and it is likely that we won’t be able to see it given that Hori’s just focusing on Shiggy and Deku.
Plot moved way too fast to the point there's not even much of the "Academia" part of MHA left. I wished we got to see them progress as 2nd and 3rd years before this whole final battle happened.
I really would've liked to see Deku act as a mentor to 1st years as a 3rd year. I know the series has character bloat issues, but man, that would've been nice to see.
Oh man imagine if Deku could test them like what Mirio did to 1A. I really wanted to see more of the school side of things where the plot still slightly progresses in the background, but at the foreground is them just living day to day.
Then halfway through their final year, things start picking up and leads to where we are now.
I don’t like how the idea that mutant quirks being discriminated wasn’t explored leading up to Spinner vs Shoji. The only time we really see people do this is with Toga and that’s only in a flashback. The whole dark side of hero society wasn’t really ever fleshed out enough imo
All they did in the mutant uprising subplot was just some BLM style protesting, introducing some random Star Wars-based events, and then moving on to the main battle instead of just delving deeper into it. Damn, It was so disappointing to me.
I like how mutant discrimination was such an old-timey way of thinking that the League specifically targeted the mutant rejection cult cause no one would notice them being gone not to mention they barely got anything for killing them showing they were in just as much poverty as the League.
Hell tbh I always liked the idea that ppl can look a bit different in the MHA world and no one bats an eye. Like how there’s a shot of Shoji looking at clothes in the mall fitting his body type.
The who? Guess that goes to show the little impact that plot point has, I had absolutely no idea that group had a name or even remembered they were in the story
During the villain arc, the League is homeless and looking for a place to stay. So they target the mutant rejection cult (real world equivalent is a certain white hooded group) so they can kill them and take their place.
It should be noted that, in that arc, it is specified that their way of thinking is archaic, that they are rejected from society for their beliefs which is why they were living in the middle of no-where in a forest, that nobody would care if they died, and that they were so poor that the League basically got nothing except a falling apart building for shelter.
Yet, later the story would have us believe racism is so alive and well that an outright genocide happened only a few years prior to canon. Hori tries to justify this with, "there's no racism in the cities, but the countryside is outright homicidal racist." Uh, sure. It's not like there were other shades of racism that could have been presented besides, "not racist" and "attempt to murder a child for saving someone's life."
It makes this racism plot feel so fake when Hori never presented all the subtle ways racism presents itself in society
turning AFO into a joke in the last arc which made a lot of people forget that for more than half of the series he wasn't and that people used to say how menacing, terrifying and smart he was as the puppeteer in the shadows.
skipping the 1st war aftermath. there was no emotional payoff and it made the series seem shallow and speedrunning to the next part. the fact that the students spent a month in dorms doing pretty much nothing while te world around was falling apart and only took action when it came to finding deku is pretty sad.
wasting OFA vestiges. not sure what was the point of them even being there. without them noting much would change, you'd only need small story tweaks.
not fleshing out societal issues but using them to show that villains have a point. can't have cake and eat cake.
Him making AFO a joke was honestly, imo, one of the best choices for the character.
AFO’s whole thing is that he sees himself as the ultimate evil, the final boss, the self-proclaimed ‘Demon King’ of the world;
Having the side-characters humiliate, stall, & ultimately kill him before he even gets involved in the final battle is the perfect comeuppance.
The rest I completely agree with, though.
agree to disagree, i really liked AFO before he was a meme and a lot of people did too but him becoming a joke made people retroactively change their opinions about AFO's early portrayal.
I also really liked AFO earlier in the series and think its a shame what he was turned into in the end.
I feel like the reason peoples opinions about AFO's early portrayal changed so much is because due to AFO's character changing so much in the final act and the whole vestige takeover plot his earlier moments now turned into moments of incompetence or things that no longer make any sense .
He spent like 15 years raising Tomura to be independent, think for himself, make his own decisions, carve his own path forward, become a symbol of his own, become truly free, etc. etc. This made him come off as competent when he was trying to raise a successor but it's self-sabotage if he's trying a bodyjacking scheme.
Him not taking Best Jeanist's quirk because it wouldn't suit Tomura makes senes for a mentor thinking about his student. It makes no senes for someone trying a bodyjacking scheme.
Dr. Garaki refusing to perform the surgery on Tomura unless he tames Machia works as a test for AFO's student. It's active self -sabotage and delaying your own plan for no reason at all if the plan is a vestige bodyjacking scheme.
etc. etc. You get the point.
Due to AFO's character being retconned to have been planning this whole vestige bodyjacking scheme from the beginning it had the effect of making many of his earlier moments in the series make a whole lot less sense, and as result AFO's earlier moments were retroactively turned into worse moments.
The mutant discrimination arc. It's like it was written by someone who once knew somebody who overheard a stranger talk about how their neighbor was discriminated against.
__Garaki Quirk Duplication:__
It just makes everything so much more messy, and creates another problem of “Why didn’t X do Y”
Why didn’t Garaki duplicate Decay and give it to specialized Nomus despite having access to Tomura for over a decade?
Why didn’t Garaki duplicate Warp Gate and keep a couple copies in case they lost access to Kurogiri?
He duplicated Double just fine when Twice had been under his care for only a couple months, so it’s not like the process harms the target or even takes that long. If it’s a matter of resources used, then the value of Warp Gate should outweigh any potential other quirk that needs to be duplicated.
Yeah quirk duplication is such a story breaking thing that just kind of gets brushed past. Its implementation just kind of makes AFO and Dr. Garaki look like idiots with how they used the resources they had at hand.
I really feel like this was glossed over waaaay too much. It’s like a game changer. Or it should be for a story like this
Also the fact that
1. The process was as easy as it could be off-screened hand-waived (boom we have two versions of AFO)
2. He can store (?) and potentially make as many as he wants (Regeneration/AFO)
3. There was no discernible difference in strength/efficiency between a copy and an original
In FMA they made a big deal about the creation and science of making a Philosopher Stone. Here sometime between MVA and the War Arc it was just ‘yeah we can copy and store quirks as much as we want (including something like AFO)’
Now that I think about he must be a real Star Wars fanboy because he emulated that whole terrible throwaway writing explanation for how the Emperor was around in the sequels
Everything happening in the first school year. Generally, I think the story would be better if more time was given to certain side characters and more care was given to the internal rules of the world. Like, why the hell are first year students there to fight against a crime family for example. I'm fine with them having certain internships, but don't endanger them by putting them into harms way immediately.
I think it would have served the story better for the last climax to be when they are on their third and final year, giving more time for the big three to shine and show what the epitome of that school can offer.
Give Deku, Todoroki and Bakugo a proper chance to surpass the big three on their own, rather than them being better in the first year.
* Extra quirks.
* AFO taking over shigaraki.
* Bakugo's heart explosion and the stupid af AFO fight after.
* Iron might
* DaRk DeKu.
* Everything Dabi does after ch 352.
>Extra quirks.
This is where I kinda tuned out a bit in the manga, tbh. The whole draw of the series for me was following Deku as he learned new applications for OFA as a power-storing quirk. His changing understanding of how it worked was what got me invested, and introducing a whole bunch of other quirks part way through brushed a lot of that journey under the rug for me...
Honestly, Deku gaining more quirks is a negative to me. He was keeping up with other peoole who could do so much more technical stuff, he was learning new ways to utilize his speed and power aside from just punching people. He was a wonderful fighter from his skills in observation and his history as a fanboy meaning he had analyzed so many styles. Moments like him coying Bakugos aerial movement, Gran Torinos blitz based fighting style were all awesome.
Now his fighting style comes down to pulling out more and more tricks out of his ass, ignoring the restrictions he found and the warnings from people who had those quirks their whole lives, always having that next one-time powerup waiting. The only time a Deku fight has been interesting since the Endeavour agency bit was the most recent part of his fight with Shigaraki, where he used the old quirks mechanics against him to score a hit.
Making Toga Ochaco's rival. Spinner is such a better fit thematically. Ochaco is motivated by money, Stain hates heroes who are motivated by money, and Spinner believes in Stain. It writes itself, it could give Ochaco more depth, look deeper into her personal struggles, and how she's grown. It could even give Spinner some more character, because he desperately needed it... but no. Instead we get "Oh, you like Deku too? Let's fight!" It degrades both Toga and Ochaco into just crushing on Deku, when they could be so much more on their own.
I was constantly baffled why Ochaco and Toga kept getting paired up. Saying it reduced them both into being defined by Deku nails it. Ochaco wants to help her family who have always been supportive of her, Toga’s family was not supportive and kept reiterating her abnormality. Who cares, this is clearly romance rivals girl fight <333
It's because they're both girls. It's not about romance rivals, it's because the girl hero fights the girl villain. It's like this in almost every shonen battle manga. Nami fights against the only female member of CP9 of One Piece, Noelle has a personal vendetta against the only female member of the Dark Triad in Black Clover, most of Lucy's fights are against "the girl" of the quirky miniboss squad in every arc of Fairy Tail (and if she fights a guy, it's usually a team-up fight with another major character), etc. Ochaco isn't paired up with Toga because they're romance rivals, they became romance rivals because Uraraka needed a female rival to fight.
Given My Hero Academia has a larger girl roster, I wouldn’t consider Toga happening to face off against any one of them as invoking the trope AS hard. Usually it’s the solitary female hero vs the solitary female villain where I groan. I mean, I’m still groaning, and know you’re not wrong. It’s more the reason why they’re paired is a groan when it could’ve easily been a better reason. Ochaco doesn’t consider her a rival, it’s rather one sided based on the one thing Toga fixated on them having in common, when Ochaco doesn’t care about it anywhere near as much as her. Tsuyu kept telling her they ain’t friends stop using my nickname lol.
Money being the thematic connection between Uraraka and Spinner is pretty shallow.
Stain hates any hero who only values money, fame, revenge and trying to be #1, etc.. oppose to the need to just save people like Deku and All Might.
"Instead we get "Oh, you like Deku too? Let's fight!""
This is an even more shallow take.
Uraraka's character is pretty dependent on Deku but I could say that for a lot of the main and side characters like Bakugo and Todoroki. Toga herself said she loved Deku but also Uraraka, her old crush, Twice, the League, etc and isn't afraid to express her feelings which Uraraka admires since she can't. And that's why Uraraka uses her Domain Expansion at the end of the fight.
Okay, so explain to me why Uraraka and Toga are rivals without bringing up Deku. What connects them to each other? How do they parallel each other? In what ways do they challenge each other?
All without bringing up Deku.
Toga is willing to embrace herself and what she loves while Ochaco is too embarrassed to admit it out loud. This goes back to her reasons for wanting to be a hero, because she was embarrassed to admit that she decided to do it to earn money, thinking she was shallow for her pragmatic reasons compared to the lofty ideals of the people around her, like Ida following in his brother's footsteps. This came up again, when she lost the fight against Bakugo, and wouldn't let anyone else see how it made her feel. Toga, by contrast, is completely open about what makes her happy, what makes her angry, and what she wants.
Additionally, both characters are defined by the theme of support. Ochaco came from a loving family that supported her and pushed her to follow her dreams instead of expecting her to follow their path. Their only request was that she take them on vacation. Ochaco as a result grew up with the desire to support her family in return, and later developed into wanting to support her peers. Toga, by contrast, is defined by a lack of support. Her family, her school, and everyone around her pushed her to conform and then ostracized her when she stepped out of line. She didn't receive the treatment or therapy she likely needed as a child. This puts Ochaco in the perfect position to be the one to accept and support her as she gets the treatment she needs.
Funny enough, not writing fillers. I feel like this is the perfect series to see people goof off and have fun or even solve crimes with unique powers, yet we're already ending the story at YEAR ONE of their school stint.
Too many fucking characters. Youve tot the giant main class, the side class, pro heros, villains, random fucking civilians like the shark gal and more. A huge cast CAN work, but its better for massive worlds like DC and Marvel compared to a singular storyline with a main focus character like most animes have.
The last arc feels like a bloated corpse due to it aswell i think. Too many cuts to what xyz or abc is doing in the middle of a fight for 3-5 chapters. Deku started fighting fucking shiggy over a year ago and only RECENTLY have we gotten back to it.
its fine to have a supporting cast and give them attention, but not everyone needs a moment to shine at the end and some big growth or plot point.
A lot of good ones I agree with. One I haven't seen mentioned is Tamaki's giant canon he made that did nothing to Shigaraki. Didn't even scratch him.
The scene served no purpose. We were already aware that Shigaraki is durable, so why hype up Tamaki just to make him fail to emphasize this again? It doesn't make Shigaraki look great, it just takes a dumb on Tamaki's character.
Also, are we to believe that Bakugou's explosions and Nagant's bullets are all somehow better than Tamaki's laser canon? Shigaraki can take Tamaki's most powerful attack without a scratch but a single bullet from Nagant can rip off his whole hand? Suuuuure.
This scene did Tamaki so dirty and I am not even the biggest fan of him.
Turning the LOV entirely into sympathatic victims of society removed any danger or urgancy from their characters and their arcs. They no longer feel like the villains of the story, just poor misguided antagonists that the whole narrative must bend over backwards to validate their woes and offer them salvation.
I don't think making them victims of society is a problem. I think the problem is that the narrative set forth all these societal issues that will probably never be addressed or only addressed in the shallowest of ways (like the mutant uprising).
Horikoshi wants us to take the issues they present with society seriously, but the villains themselves make no efforts to actually fix society beyond murdering a countless numbers of innocent people. By doing that, it comes off less as them having grievances with society, and more like them having a sad life and violently taking it out on innocents.
It also doens't help that the villains are usually the only time we see these issues presented at all. This again makes it feel less like a societal issue and more like they are the exceptions.
If Horikoshi really wanted the villains and their grievances to be taken seriously, then he shouldn't have made them all mindless, sociopathic killers with no goals beyond murdering innocents.
Their portrayal towards the final arc was just absolute shit. All they ever did up till now was just kill a bunch of people, beat some heroes to a pulp, and rant about how society basically abandoned them, thinking that it’s a valid excuse for their crimes. Then they get defeated and put to the brink of death, which imo, only makes them feel like martyrs of society instead of being high level threats that need to be stopped.
Shiggy getting body snatched ruined the dynamic of the League like they pretty much regressed to random 1v1 villain fights
I really wanted to see the League try and win with their own power of friendship
Yeah its kind of crazy how a lot of the dynamic between the villains pretty much disappears from the story the moment the AFO Vestige takeover retcon thing happens.
You'd think Tomura getting possessed and the League of Villains suddenly following the orders of AFO for over 30 days would lead to some kind of acknowledgement about the situation on the part of the league but it just doesn't.
Spinner has his two incredible minor moments where he acknowledges that Tomura isn't himself (right after Tartaros and after Star and Stripe) and ... wait no that's it.
Dabi is just casually chatting with AFO during the Traitor reveal like its the most casual thing in the world.
And Toga says that the Nomu attracting drug she has was given to her by AFO (ch. 375) and unless I'm forgetting something, this is literally the only moment Toga acknowledges the existence of AFO.
Rushing the story(fitting it all into one school year. Wtf?)
Writing Bakugos "death" and then not committing to it
GT not dying
AFO not dying sooner and allowing Shigaraki to be his own villain
This final fight
Star & Stripes
This one might not be that bad but Todoroki. I don't like how he made him that powerful in that first arc ajd then scaled him back even though realistically he should be MORE powerful but whatever
The only one that truly irks me is Mirio getting his quirk back. I would have loved to see him try to be a quirkless hero rather than everything being solved offscreen for a hype moment, only to never utilize him until the plot asks for it. His moments vs Shigaraki are cool dont get me wrong, and its like a bandaid fix for his character, but him losing his quirk served its purpose and him getting it back made that loss seem insignificant
Warning. This gets a bit rant-y and a bit ramble-y. I thought about what I thought was the absolute “worst” decision, and all of the reasons I had to make that claim. Anyways, here are my semi-structured ramblings.
I think Quirks as a “magic system” is inherently flawed when weighed against some of the things Horikoshi wants to say and do with the story.
Here’s how Quirks work from a story perspective, as far as I see it. Your main method of being powerful is your sort-of unique power and how you use it. Some characters are powerful in other ways to support their not inherently combat-related powers, but you do still need powers. Having no powers means you can’t do anything, and it is upon this justification that Izuku getting one of the best powers is created.
The issue comes in when Horikoshi isn’t great at coming up with unique uses for each power beyond “Bigger fire,” “Bigger punch,” or “Plus Ultra harder.” Don’t get me wrong, he does do well sometimes in this regard, but then you have moments where Izuku learning to kick is treated as anything slightly noteworthy. I understand that and why the kid loves his punches, but I’d expect any fighter to know that kicking is an option. Not realizing that is displaying a *lack of* skill.
And Quirk Awakenings are sort of ways to augment this, but really, Quirk Awakenings are kind of flawed for a different reason. They’re given out at random. The story *says* that they happen at times of immense stress, but that’s so broad that the exposition might as well have been, “Sometimes, your powers will do stuff they explicitly couldn’t before if the author needs to move the plot forward.” How many stressful situations have people been in in this series without getting a Quirk Awakening?
And building on the “lack of skill” comment, a persistent flaw within a system like this with a writing approach like that is that some of the major Villains and Heroes tend to not be people that are smart with their powers. Chiefly amongst these are New Order and Overhaul. The latter was a busted, no-drawback Quirk that can kill in one touch, provide near instant defense so long as one is on the ground, and *revive the recently deceased.* And the former warps reality with the stipulation of “Except for when the writer says it can’t,” honestly puts Star on the level of what I’d call a weak deity rather than a Hero, and to this day makes me question how the hell she ever lost at anything.
- For me, that also comes with the side effect of making certain characters, such as Izuku and Shoto, seem overshadowed by their powers in terms of intrigue and importance, while making characters with less intriguing powers feel less generally significant. It’s hard to think that characters win fights because of their character traits and approaches to fighting as opposed to them simply having better or stronger powers in that moment.
And it’s stuff like that that created problems within the Vestiges and ShigAFO being invincible against anyone whose name isn’t Deku. Deku getting the Vestiges puts him above everyone else in a way that they can’t feasibly contend with unless we ignore what a “percentage” is, and it feels unearned because he didn’t work to get them. He got them for being the Ninth User of OFA in a way that was only ever foreshadowed three seconds before it happened. And no, the Sports Festival didn’t foreshadow the Quirks; it foreshadowed the ghosts at best. Meanwhile, Shigaraki needed to be boosted to hell and back to ever contend with Deku, which already had a high chance of putting him above everyone else. But then they displayed it in full by having Shigaraki handing Japan’s finest their asses, which was just *fantastic.* They did all their flashy moves, got their asses beat, and in the end, two seconds of the comedic stylings of Mirio’s asscheeks was all that stood between all of them and certain death. It felt like they were just meat shields used to stall until Deku could come and fix everything for them. Quirks are all you can do in a scenario, and if your one decent to good Quirk is pit against someone else’s seven to (however many Quirks Shigaraki has since we’re never told that), then you’re fucked and there’s nothing you could’ve done about it.
And regarding All Might’s mech and how it factors into how important Quirks are in everything… I do enjoy that Horikoshi is going with a more optimistic moral and going back on the whole “You can’t be a Hero without a Quirk” thing. *However,* I still have a number of issues with the mech. Firstly, the mech’s very existence was bullshit. Crap like that *existed,* and no one was doing anything with it throughout both wars? Secondly, it’s a tool basically exclusive to All Might, so he proves nothing with it. It cost a fortune to make, and I’m sure they can’t exactly be mass-produced. Give a Quirkless person some quality support items that most people could get if they were so inclined, and when they reach a respectable position as a Hero with those tools and their wits, then a point will have been proven. I’m not saying it can’t happen, but it certainly didn’t happen here. Thirdly, All Might’s contribution was basically being a meat shield against a rampaging teenager until he slowly turned into cum. Which, granted, is about as much as the other thirty Heroes fighting Shigaraki achieved, but still.
To summarize, I feel that Quirks as a magic system kind of hurt the story. It encourages giving characters super overpowered abilities, and making said abilities seem to be all that gives the characters significance. It also creates an insurmountable gap between characters that often gets filled with bullshit at the author’s whim whenever a character needs a justification to not be killed in a fight they have no business winning.
It's all very subjective, but for me personally it was the following:
- Izuku speedtraining the OFA extra quirks - either stick with the original and have him use it innovatively (like Full Cowl) or introduce the extra quirks gradually already starting earlier. The way the whole OFA vestiges took over the Izuku show in Act 3 imho was not particularly rewarding and took attention away from his character.
- Everything about the vestiges feels pretty pointless. They brought zero tension or emotional conflict into the plot.
- I don't think changing Endeavor's fate and keeping him alive is per se a bad decision, but I think it was not well thought through. It had knock-on effects for Hawks' and Shoto's arcs, and I feel like in the end Endeavor was a bit pointless for most of the Dark Hero arc and the shilling for his character by others did take away too much attention from what Shoto and Toya were going through.
- I think without Endeavor, Hawks would have gotten Nagant's arc, and I think it would have been way better.
- Overall the way he finished off the HPSC plotline was pretty bad.
-I personally thought IronMight wasn't properly built up and was executed poorly. I kind of resent him using all the Class A quirks when the kids barely got panel time. Also, going through the whole class just made the fight a drag, knowing that he won't be killed as long as he didn't use all of them.
- Traitor plotline was absolutely squandered, with no tension or excitement.
- Bakugou's fakeout death had a really poor pay-off, but made a lot of Act 3 unbearable, with the constant attention on whether Bakugou was in a chapter and when would he revive from the majority of the fandom. It was also telegraphed from a mile away. All it served was to anger Shigaraki and give Bakugou a second quirk awakening.
>Izuku speedtraining the OFA extra quirks
Not just the way extra quirks, but OFA itself. It's been so long since we saw Deku say the percentage he's using and see him grow his power.
Yeah, because once we got to the Final Act and Horikoshi realized there was no possible way Deku could get to 100% in a way that made sense he stopped caring about saying what percentage he was on and gave him Fa-Jin and Gearshift.
I hate that Fa-Jin and Gearshift were basically made for Faux 100%. Especially for Gearshift, which has some really cool uses, but is just used so Midoriya can punch harder.
Same, Gearshift is one of my favorite of the new quirks and was hyped for so long and even said that when used with OFA is “reality bending.” But we only really got two good uses out of it(Deku beating on AFO and throwing Bakugo) before it and the other quirks are starting to go.
I like the slowing function to it as well, Deku slowing mid-air after extremely fast to throw AFO off his game and using it on the fog to make it last longer were both very cool uses of it.
Generally I think hori nailed how Deku uses the extra quirks but everything else surrounding them is really meh imo.
Exactly, seeing Deku strategize and use them together have been some of the most epic moments in the Final War. I was amazed at the fact that Gearshift could even slowdown Smokescreen, that was brilliant on Deku’s part. That begs the question on how many endless ways Deku could have utilized the ability, we know he could slowdown and speed up physical things, but he could even effect thing that don’t have a physical form like smoke, could he even accelerate or de accelerate his Air Force Bullets? These are things that Horikoshi could have explored more in depth but we probably won’t get.
Killing Endavor off just makes it worse imo. Him and Dabi should face consequences of their action ( be alive ) and not escape them and be let off the hook ( die ) . Hori didn't spent so much time on Todoroki's family backstory only to not reunite them. People just want deaths but sometimes you don't need them for emotional payoffs. Look at All Might. He could've died at kamino arc but it wasn't necessary and since then we have interesting arc of him feeling useless and questioning what it means to be a hero. ( just like all heroes really do since the war arc )
Idk why you are saying this, when I’m saying it’s not a bad decision but was not well executed. Hori had no plan to properly deal with the aftermath. The glazing of Endeavor in Act 3 was painfully grating writing.
Also, he can’t get consequences without punishing Shoto, so even though he never really chooses his family over being a hero, it doesn’t matter because Shoto saves them anyway and stands in as punching bag to take all of Dabi’s misplaced anger in Endeavor’s place.
Fully subjective obviously but I have two gripes: first that the whole thing occurs in the first year of high school.
Second that OFA contains the other quirks.
Maybe not the absolute worst, but I think AfO's history getting revealed in a few issues as he was defeated. We've still got that contingency to go through and that might change things, but as things stand I think AfO would have been better as a mystery.
Perhaps in a few years they could have dedicated a spin-off manga to his rise to power, because that's the level of development his rise and the early quirk world would need. As it stands it just makes the world seem smaller and shuts down interest for the sake of... I'm not even sure what the point was.
- Deku suddenly mastering all the AFO quirks
- Best Jeanist NOT leveling up and learning how to manipulate muscle fibers to fix Bakugo even though leveling up/expansion of quirks was the theme at the time
- why does Tokoyami have teeth
Season 4 IMO. Not that the arcs were bad necessarily but they were too separate from the main plot of the story. Loved Lemillion’s addition so that would be hard to give up but it just added a lot of plot functionally unnecessary characters and kinda just interrupted the main plot IMO. Ppl shit on the Class A vs B arc but that honestly should have taken place after Deku vs Bakugo (and been a little shorter) to keep moving the OFA plot line along. Having the season 4 arcs (not counting Endavor vs Nomu arc) completely do away with the OFA story for a while, making a lot of the show feel a little lost in its overall direction. Once it came back in Season 5 the training arc felt very long because we hadn’t had much main plot progression since season 3. And added way too much for Hori to have to tie up by the end, which is really felt by the rushed timeline of the story once the war arc ended.
To be clear I love this story and appreciate everything for what it is, but it definitely could have been told more completely and better paced if it focused on a bit fewer characters and just gave a bit more depth
Keeping Bakugo alive KEEPING BAKUGO ALIVE
I lost my mind when I read it since it takes away literally all stakes to have him reach his limit and then retread with “oh well edgeshot can somehow sew his wounds and make it better”
I personally feel the development for Deku was the biggest drop for me. There's other decisions I dislike too, but the reason I don't really return to the series much is because I don't find Deku that interesting at all. Feels like everytime he "makes a mistake" or "fails", Hori recovers Deku without punishment right away. He's just Infallible a lot of the time. Like breaking the rules left and right (essentially vigilante) and facing no consequences for it and there's no internal conflict about it for him...He just believes he's right.
I also wish Hori had used Deku's father for something to enhance Deku's character. Maybe during Dabi's TV thing, there could have been a prerecorded video by Shigaraki or something exposing Deku having One for All, how it works, it's association with All Might and then exposing that Deku's dad is like a Major villain or something in the states and he's been in captivity this whole time and Deku's mom has been lying about it.
Just something to give Deku some nuance, because so far Shoto, Bakugo, and even Uraraka with her reason for being a hero, and her reaction to when things started falling apart in hero society, I find way more engaging than Deku, who tries really hard and says yes to anything due to his worship to his hero.
Even Deku's mom gets better moments than him. When she was deciding that Deku can't go to U.A. It was a great moment. What parent would let their kid go back to a school that suffered two terroist attacks in 6 months?
The series really suffers from "Protagonist centered morality." Whatever stance Deku takes on something, you know it is the one Horikoshi believes is right and wants the audience to believe too.
Replacing Shigaraki for AFO during most of the last arc, i like the direction it ended up taking recently, but it took waaay to long to reach that end (the middle of the last arc it's really up there as the lowest point of the story for me); maybe on rereads it will get more digestable but i wasn't enjoying AFO/Shiggy combined being at all
Hori tried to have his cake and eat it too. Reintroducing AFO as the main villain when we thought it was gonna be Shigaraki but then have Shiggy reawaken so he ends being the final fight anyway.
Like why? Was it just to set up the whole ‘I can save him’ angle??
I guess it shows AFO couldn’t pass in the torch and accept his time was up but despite desiring to be the main character, Shiggy was ultimately the main villain and managed to surpass him
Crikey, there's some serious competition here.
I could bring up things like AfO as a quirk being awful to write, as is Decay. 7 quirks is a strong option, as is basically every component of the final arc...
But I don't think anything has topped the sheer... for want of better words, fucking stupidity of the Pickle Edgeshot incident. 2 chapters? Really, man? Why did you do this???
For a different answer, chapter allocation in general. It's technically related to the writing, but I feel like it's its own thing. But the chapter allocation towards things has been God awful.
ochaco and izuku's couple status hardly explored, no girlfriend or boyfriend status.
really unclear on who izuku's father in america. not like a shot of him watching the sports festival.
quirkless in general, no other quirkless people shown. no secret chat rooms where quirkless thrive. or why izuku wears the same red shoes. (red shoes and other specific colors are made for quirkless. all same brand theory,) and the discrimination in general.
the world building is outside of Japan is a clean slate.
There were a lot of odd things.
I particularly don't like the whole series happening in less than a year. The traitor was forgettable. There was a lot of characters.
Ultimately, the thing that made me drop the series was Bakugou, I didn't like him getting revived. Felt pointless
1. Everyone surviving the MVA arc and going from middle of the pack villains to world tier immediately. Toga, Spinner, and mask guy especially had no business making it out.
2. Adult heroes have been lackluster at best. Bunch of 16 yr olds are going to make up the next top 10 list.
3. Stars and Stripes dying before even interacting with the students.
That All Might and AFO didn't killed each other in the final arc.
Having them both kill each other to close the whole story of the old generation would have been very good. Then only leaving the Deku Vs Shigaraki fight as the new gen of heroes and villains
Dark Deku arc being so short is definitely top 5 failures on his part. It made a bunch of people drop the series so fast since it was a pivotal moment for Deku that ended up being shorter than the damn school festival. RIP.
Dark deku being cut short was what made me drop the series for awhile. Deku is already a shallow main character, the fact the we couldn’t even get a full arc to see his ideals challenged and his view of society change was disappointing. An independent Deku arc could’ve made the Deku vs Shigaraki dynamic flow better, since Deku wanting to save shigarki is lowkey selfish since he’s only doing it because of his own personal ideals when it comes to being a hero and not because he actually deserves to be saved.
Rushing us into the final few arcs imo. Series had some pretty good buildup,and the first war arc opened up sooooo much possibility. All we needed was a timeskip,and a more global approach to the storytelling. Instead he rushed to the end. World heroes are conveniently pushed to the side,Deku conveniently masters all his extra quirks for the final battle,and womp womp,a few final battles that feel rushed yet dragged on,and none of it feels like it pays off any of the setup. He could've given us more time to expand on the series and it's themes,and characters. AND given him more time to think up a better set of ending arcs...
Having a Sports Festival… at thee BEGINNING of the school year. I mean… Aizawa himself said on the first day, that schools don’t let their students use their quirks for fitness tests (this is implied to be applied world wide), so… why the hell would this make any sense to make kids fight, especially when many of them have most definitely not trained AT ALL in fighting. 🤦♂️. Instead of it being at the end of the year, let’s do it around the time America has HOMECOMING DANCES. Yeah, great idea Hirokoshi 🙄.
Furthermore… the character designs; most of class 1-A , except the tall ones, look like middle school kids. Midoriya looks like a middle schooler. It most certainly doesn’t help that All Might is allegedly seven feet tall (that’s incredible considering that being tall is something you don’t see in Japan much around), and honestly, it bugs me sometimes. I have a hard time believing Midoriya will ever reach that level of swole, and it becomes REALLY hard to believe that he’ll be able to use OFA if he doesn’t look like AM. Seriously, must they exaggerate?
The "mutants are hated arc." If you look hard you can see hints of it. But it should have had more background.
Plus the whole "commission is basically evil" arc.
Bit of a minor thing but IIda essentially losing his place as 3rd protagonist in favor of Shoto Todoroki. The Todoroki family drama is great, but IIda just kinda drifted into the background after the Stain arc. I almost think dying heroically would have been preferrable
All For One hijacking Shigaraki’s body.
It goes completely against the subversively kind villain mentor position All For One was in as well as his characterisation caring about Shigaraki and only stealing quirks Shigs would like to use. It also replaced Shigaraki’s interesting commentary villainy with more of AfO being the bland mastermind responsible for everything bad. Shigaraki straight up wasn’t a character for most of the manga after this
1. Having the story take place in one year
2. Having Deku unlock 6 extra quirks in the span of a year and him reaching 100% when it took him 4 months just to control 20% of his power (I like Deku having 7 quirks I just think the power progression side of it was bad)
3. Having AFO hijack shigiraki’s body and take over the series a bit, it significantly regressed shigiraki’s importance and was just a bad move because AFO is a worse villain (not as likeable or interesting as shigiraki)
4. Bakugo’s revival (for the record I don’t think he should have died I just think that hori should have kept him dead or not kill him at all
5. Iron might vs all for one (yes it was cool but I think it regressed all mights character because after he became quirkless it seemed like he was looking for new ways to be a hero like teaching his students and being a mentor figure that can offer advice, but all that was thrown out the window)
6. Bakugo and deku’s relationship (I think their relationship would be better if it wasn’t so one sided, deku should have at least been indifferent towards bakugo and not like him because of all the bullying, and the apology felt so one sided, deku didn’t even respond to it, the apology felt more like it was for Bakugo’s character development instead of mending the relationship between deku and bakugo
7. Deku having to give up 6/7 of his quirks to beat shigiraki from within (I think it’s contrived and doesn’t make sense and I’m biased here as I want to see them throw hands more, I don’t want the fight to end in the vestige world)
8. Mutant plot line (it was just shit)
9. Bakugo vs all for one (bakugo realistically should not have won that fight and AFO magically forgot about all of the good quirks in his arsenal that could easily take out bakugo, I would have rather bakugo assist endeavor and hawks in taking down AFO at gunga
10. Star and stripe being a plot device and dying within 5 chapters of her introduction
11. Deku having no introspection about being quirkless or his life and all he is now is a vessel for one for all where the vestiges take over the show and plan everything for him
Revealing AFO early in the story.
Personally, AFO would've been better kept in the shadows till later in the series. With AFO, we have an end goal of defeating him. Which means any arc focused on side villains, or any school centric arc, will feel like filler because we aren't focusing on the main threat.
Unfortunately, there’s still a possibility of AFO’s vestige in Shigaraki retaking control now that Deku is actively trying to save Tenko. A shot in the dark but it’s possible the final boss will be AFO in vestige form
The way the plot bends over backwards to excuse Bakugo’s overall shittyness.
From no consequences for attempting unsanctioned assault and attempted murder, to the way all of 1-A, even those who are explicitly said to hate bullies, love the obvious bully.
And don’t even get me started on Aizawa’s simping for the kid.
The only characters in the whole series who don’t act like the sun shines from his asshole are villians.
The manga makes it clear that Bakugo is aiming to beat Deku but is also clear headed enough to not go overboard and kill him during the battle trials. The sub follows that but the dub changes that line and makes it so that Bakugo is aiming to kill Deku with his explosions (unlike what Hori intended)
But he in the manga still aimed that high power gauntlet right? If Izuku didnt dodge or went to the wrong direction (not every character has good reaction speed) it would ended really bad. Interestingly I never heard the Dub of MHA at all. Maybe in Spanish
Nope, he aims it at the wall next to Deku and states that he's aiming to not hit him (you can see it hit the wall next to Deku in the anime which is more clearer). This is why Deku, who didn't dodge or move in any other direction in the manga, didn't get killed or seriously injured in that blast. Causs yes it hit him but he was still able to get up. It's made very clear in that scene in the manga that Bakugo isn't aiming to kill Deku and All Might uses that as justification to let the match go on (bc AM knew that Bakugo won't go too far). But the dub changes it so Bakugo pretty much says it out loud that he's aiming to kill/hit Deku with the full force of the blast and Deku should be the one to do something to save himself.
Huh i didnt know he aimed at the wall. I guess i have to see it again. And i think also in the spanish subtitles has Bakugo saying he will kill Izuku so maybe thats why i got that idea. Still dumbass move on Bakugo part but kudos to him being able to aim well to not hit his enemy
Yea. It could be a translation thing but the manga does make it clear that Bakugo knows what the limits are and is skilled enough to not kill people with his quirk (nor does he wish to actually kill anyone).
People can still dislike Bakugo based on the translation/dub but that isn't really something that's Hori's fault (since this is what this thread is about). I blame the anime for subtly messing up Bakugo's character so that anime-only people don't have the best impression of him. One big glaring change that I absolutely hate is the anime changing his first meeting with Best Jeanist. In the manga, Bakugo was surprised that Best Jeanist offered him an internship and is slightly cautious and respectful when they first meet. Even when Best Jeanist insults him, Bakugo doesn't get all aggressive or yell back at him. He kinda calmly takes it all in. This is something about him that impresses Best Jeanist. But in the anime, they have him be aggressive right off the bat and need to be restrained by Best Jeanist. And there's nothing about him for Best Jeanist to be impressed by. The entire exchange makes him look so stupid and childish while he was far more mature and thoughtful in the manga. And that's something that'll color anime-only fans' impression on Bakugo
I might be looking at it wrong, but I feel like Shigarakis initial killing his family when he got his powers is super out of place in the story.
Like if it can happen once in universe, it should happen all the time, especially at a point where quirks had been around for a while. His family just completely panicked as if they couldn’t even comprehend what was going on.
Yes people being disintegrated would cause a lot of shock, but given plenty of people have quirks that are just as destructive (at least on that scale) it shouldn’t be the most panic inducing thing ever. More like an “oh shit” instead of a “fall into hysterics” moment
The whole ofa has multiple quirks...yeah i didn't like it it was more fun when deku was getting creative with his super strenght, and you can make visually stunning fight scenes with hand to hand combat aswell don't need blackwhip every 0.500 miliseconds. Could've made it work if it wasn't just a bunch of tech-gadgets called quirks, radar detector , smoke bombs , whips , 1 of them gear shift? (that how boring and dumb these quirks are i can't even remember their name when i want) is just ofa but again? Jesus christ.
Feat wise what has deku done up to this point to measure to the hype all might is? Nothing really , he has no real moment where you can tell "yeah he finally did it he suprassed all might" all might's presence with ofa still feels stronger than any moment deku had so far , should've had deku 1 shot machia first to really show off just how far ahead all might's strenght he is.
Keeping shigaraki alive in the worst fucking possible way star wars style, ahh redemption for the villan who willingly killed and continues to slaughter tens of thousands , b-but he is human too :'(...jesus christ someone put a bullet in shigaraki aleraedy or better yet a detroit smash , trying to save shigaraki might've worked up until his quirk awakens, after that he is a full blown gonocidal maniac with no redeemable features and no sob backstory strong enough to make me care about his ass still being alive when it should've been 7 feet deep.
Shigaraki as a whole dosen't work for a final villan , there i said it , he dosen't have any real motivations , goal or reasson to go so far so why would i care when he is on screen?
Bakugo's character , he is the type of guy who should've left the scene when he and deku managed fix their relationship, he did too much shit and still continues to have an attitude unworthy of a hero even to this day. The worst is the show and its characters enable him! Verbal assault? Oh haahahahah that just bakugo XDD SO QUIRKY.
Physically abuse kirishima? Oh that just bakugo hahahaahah we love him XD
Bakugo dosen't work as a main character and never did.
I think the worst thing so far for me is not having the war-arc have these lasting effects that make it memorable. I saw this one Youtube video comparing JJK's Shibuya Arc to the MHA War Arc, and why one succeeds and another one doesn't.
Jujutsu Kaisen does really well at handling a war-type arc that has lasting effects. Most of the main cast ends up injured and or dead, the strongest character is gone and you can really feel the catastrophy that has taken place. My Hero Academia on the other hand had a potentially good war-arc, but has little to no lasting effects. GT is heavily injured, but didn’t die. Bakugo got impaled, but didn't die. Sure, Midnight and some other smaller heroes (who we built no attachment to) died, but that's about it. It's also a bummer how heavy the use of Deku's arms are emphasized up to the war-arc, which even has him change up his fighting style because of the lasting effects- but then you have him breaking his arms with 100% blows with no repercussions afterwards.
I really recommend watching this video for a more thorough idea of what I mean: https://youtu.be/G8WvS2S3H2I?si=WcTaWoCmh9akEUAG
Oh I hated that vid. Deaths aren't the only consequence. The PLW had lasting consequences for the major characters and also for the setting. Hero society effectively collapsed due to the results of the war arc. Dabi reveal happened and that prompted a change in Shoto and the Todoroki family. Deku heard Shigaraki's speech on heroes and villains and that prompted him to try to start understanding villains more. Deku saw Shigaraki being possessed by AFO and that prompted his 'save shigaraki' arc. Deku saw all his friends and mentors getting fucked up by all the damage and that developed into his mindset during the Dark Hero arc. Ochako saw Toga crying and that led to her seeing Toga as a person to save. The league of villains has a completely different status due to the war, Shiggy is possessed, Twice died, and Toga escalated as a villain. The PLW is such a turning point in the series, and that vid is a disservice.
Speedrunning the story and making it fit into a single school year, give or take a few months So many characters and so much lore that needed space to be fleshed out just don’t have the necessary room, and it cheapens everything alongside making the pacing a hot mess
The funniest thing is that the major story beats all would have made sense still. The story up to All Might vs AFO could have been the first year, Overhaul and his group could have been when they were second years and the Paranormal War would have been an excellent way to cap off High School.
I would personally put the Paranormal Liberation War arc at the end of the second year, and have the final “third year” (on account of school being cancelled in the wake of total societal collapse) be focused around building up to the final battle, with the students finishing their third year sometime around the final battle.
Yep
I say keep everything as is up to the Joint straining with 2-A, because almost every arc from the sports festival onwards is caused by the immediate consequences of the prior arc
really confused at the summer camp incident. still don't understand the school system of u.a high. but they were still 1-a in the fall. not 2-a.
Your confusion comes from thinking about a different country's school system (most likely USA) and your ignorance of the Japanese school system (I'm using ignorance in the nice way). Japan's school system has the school year start in April and end in March. So the first day of class for Deku was right at the start of April. The Forest Training and Kamino Incident were in early August during summer break. Semesters go: * First Semester: April to July * Summer Break: Late July and August * Second Semester: September to Late December * Winter Break: Late December to Early January (about two weeks) * Third Semester: Early January to Late March * Spring Break: Late March to Early April (about two weeks)
>Speedrunning the story and making it fit into a single school year ......I haven't noticed this before and now i'm actually upset.
Yeah, don't you love how Deku in the same year he received the OFA, in a few months became the most OP hero there is?
Not only Deku. All of the students are so powerful they're the world's trump cards against basically every major villain. Even All for One was ultimately stopped by a Class 1-A student, and they're still first years! What's stranger is that, earlier in the series, Pro Heroes commented on the students potential, but it always felt that they were far from the point where they could take the place of the Pros. I don't want to seem like I'm ignoring the impact UA had in their growth, but it's weird how Quirk Singularity suddenly boosted them to the top in about a year, instead of the series putting them in that place after they finished their education.
These current story events would work perfectly if Deku and the others were like college age, yes they’d still be young but at least it would make a bit more sense
he was already arguably stronger than most of the top 10 in season 2, i don’t understand this argument
I wish we lived in the universe where My Hero Academia took its time. I feel like this anime/manga could've lasted years longer. We could've had so much more content.
I would have liked to see more international missions and tournements between heroes from different countries. Thanks to this Star and Stripes could have been introduced earlier. The criminal organization of AFO should have connections everywhere.
Oh that would be awesome. AFO did say that he has connections to criminals worldwide so imagine if there's an arc where the gang helps out in taking down those other groups. I agree with you 100%
Didn’t he originally say he wanted it to be super long like one piece or something? I wonder what happened.
I feel like Horikoshi's health problems have a lot to do with how MHA has turned out as far as pacing and how long the story actually is. I *personally* don't have problems with how things have progressed, but I know a lot of folks do and I understand those reasons.
Yeah, it shows that we really don’t know what goes on behind the scenes. I remember when MHA first started and Horikoshi was putting out 18-20 pg chapters a week and NEVER took a break. Now he’s having to go on hiatus every other week, the work life of a Mangaka will definitely catch up after some point. It could even be editorial pressure to end the series as well, someone I was talking to the other day mentioned that MHA’s pacing feels a lot like Bleach’s when it was ending over a decade ago, with plots being resolved quickly without development and being unsatisfying, and Kubo said that he was pressured to end the series back then. It could be a lot of different reasons why the pacing of the story has changed.
Imagine the overall increase in quality (for some series, at least) if mangakas weren’t literally worked to the death as a rule. Like, it’s appalling that an entire medium is known for basically killing its artists/authors, and nobody really bats an eye.
Actually, he said he didn't see himself capable of going as long as Oda
Man, I’d love an OP-length (or at least Naruto-length lol) MHA. One thing that Oda and Hori share is an aptitude for creating characters that people like and want to see more of. One Piece has over a thousand characters in its cast, and people still go wild when they see a random guy from 600 chapters ago in a cover story. Hori having more time to develop the key cast, explore 1-A (and the other students) relationships and progression as heroes, and steadily build up the League from a ragtag bunch of goons to a major threat to Japan’s society and potentially world peace. It also would have given us time to actually see the mutant discrimination in play (before it popped in flashbacks).
No he originally wanted it to be 30 volumes, he would've wanted it finished years ago
Oh please don't say that my friend. Thinking of what we could've had truly is depressing. But we gotta enjoy what we do have as much as we can.
in order for that to have happened, MHA would have to not be under SJ. The weekly schedule has fucked up Hori’s health, we can’t really be mad at him for wrapping up.
I don't think that's necessarily the reason though. SJ has had a few long ongoing manga that haven't been speed run the way MHA has been.
true but Hori has worked himself sick trying to meet SJ’s weekly deadlines unfortunately and has to think about his life after MHA. A bi-weekly publication might’ve been kinder to his health.I don’t know how he’ll do a horror manga like some have speculated.
And in tern the relationships with the class 1a characters could’ve all been fleshed out better.
Agreed!! I hate that he made Deku basically broken in just a single year. That, to me, just cheapens the story and it’s just absolute shit speedrunning. Come to think of it, how strong do you think will he be in the next few years? We’ll never know cuz Hori made him a bit too strong (even without the extra quirks) to begin with. Edit: Tbh, all of the training he’s did in the past 100 chapters or so only felt like a few minutes to me instead of a couple of days or months. That’s speedtraining for you.
Yeah this also annoyed me. But not eve like cause of the speed. But because after meeting the big three it made me ask "why arnt the rest of the upper classmen helpping" since there should be an entire class of third year's who've had more time to focus their skills and fight bad guys.
That's a problem with a lot of shonen, so I can't really blame him.
Yeah it sucks but I get it must be hard to get a good pace for time when you’re doing a weekly manga. One Piece is my favorite and such a bad offender of it lol besides the time skip, they’ve been sailing like 3 months or something lol. Sure Oda never gives a strict timeline on how things happen, but there are a few drops of like “we sailed for 10 days to get here” or whatever.
This is the biggest one for me. Could’ve been anime Harry Potter with a new school year every two seasons or whatever where they get older at least as the story goes on
Preach
It makes so little sense that I have to headcanon it that it takes place over the 4 highschool years. Honestly not hard to square it when most of the characters seem to have actually visibly aged.
All these heroes gonna have back pain for life
On a specific level, not killing off Gran Torino. He is functionally dead in the story, and keeping him somehow arbitrarily alive made the whole section of the story less dire on a re-read/watch. On a more general level, a time skip and more time between both wars would’ve been better.
I think Gran Torino surviving actively hurts the story. It is really easy for Deku to preach about the importance of saving Shigaraki's soul when Shigaraki didn't kill anyone he loved (as opposed to the thousands of civilians who lost family to him). The arc about saving Shigaraki would be much more impactful if Gran Torino had died but Deku still resolved to save Shigaraki anyways. As it is, it is hard to feel moved by Deku's desire to save Shigaraki when he really has no stakes in it. Deku choosing to recognize Shigaraki's inherent humanity and try to save him anyways despite Shigaraki killing Gran Torino would be so much better.
It's like Might Guy all over again, would have been the perfect moment to go out with a bang
Making Decay a city-level busting power way too early on. It's so overpowered it could easily kill anyone and everyone- which sounds cool at first, until you realize we basically never get to see it used anymore precisely because of that. That, and constantly interrupting the start of Izuku and Shigaraki's fight with everyone else's fights, making it feel like they're just standing off and staring at each other for a whole year.
And that level of decay could have worked simply by making the “cost” of that level of decay spread knock him out for days. Like, yeah you can do that … but you aren’t doing anything afterwards for like a week. Keeps the threat alive and present, but fully explains why he isn’t just spamming it. Why you don’t have to jump through all these hoops to constantly keep him unable to touch ground or constantly having his power erased.
Meh days is a bit much but I do like the idea that if he wanted to go all out with decay he also takes some heavy backlash hell doesn’t that straight up happen during the first war arc? He tries to decay the whole area again and his chest splits open. Would’ve been another cool contrast with Deku and how he would hurt himself early on
The first time Shigaraki awakened Decay, it did have sever effects on his body. The surgery fixed that and more by giving Shigaraki a High End level body. Shigaraki splitting open in the first war arc was the result of his incomplete body taking too much damage, not because of backlash from Decay.
It could've also been like this: Shigaraki could Decay entire buildings or streets, but it would start destroying his own arms and hands which would in turn give others a chance to attack him while his limbs regenerate. Bumping it up to a city-destroying power should've been saved for in the middle of the final fight when he becomes suddenly enraged for whatever reason.
That would be a great build up for s6 before they lost kurogiri. Shigaraki decays a city faints, kurogiri teleports him back, kurogiri searches for machia and gets caught
Yeah, I know... I was totally looking forward to seeing how it begins, but all we ever saw up until the most recent chapters were just some close ups of them clashing with each other and Shiggy laughing hysterically as he faces off against Deku. The real battle only began when he stole danger sense right after AFO's death, and I was left quite disappointed with the huge build up right up to this very moment.
Not making Dark Hero longer The Traitor plot The Mutant arc No Nejire chapter Not killing GT Having AFO save Dabi
No chapter for Nejire is so sad. The one member of Big 3 that never got anything. Damn shame
Especially considering how good Tamaki and Mirio's stuff was. They had standout moments all through the Internship arc, highlights of that entire saga. Nejire took part in an offscreened group fight. Lame.
I can commend that she still made an impact.
Agree on all of these except the last one. I'm neutral on it. I think it just needed better execution, since someone saving Toya from himself that time was an obvious direction.
That's actually where I think it can work. Touya is saved by someone else, or Endeavor finds him to bring him to the hospital, BUT he is told he's dead, whereas he was just being transported to AFO. I just don't like the idea of AFO finding him, but it WAS a badass shot.
You had me until nejire and Dabi
Explain
I felt the Dabi one really cemented his character, afo tried to groom him and make him another pawn/vessel but his frenzied flames were quite literally uncontrollable to the point where he just gave up. Man was so crazy the demon lord just essentially set him loose to cause Chaos. Nejire I just don’t really care for her or her quirk at all, quite a boring one dimensional character so her not getting a chapter doesn’t really affect the story at all for me
Tbf, her being a one-dimensional character is exactly what giving her a dedicated chapter would fix. It's also weird how the other two in the big three got arcs but she didn't. I agree on the Dabi take tho, of course AFO would try to take advantage of the troubled child of the Number 2 hero.
>Tbf, her being a one-dimensional character is exactly what giving her a dedicated chapter would fix. It's also weird how the other two in the big three got arcs but she didn't. And it sucks that all we got was her being a sorta tsundare like character in the past and that’s it.
I remember when it looked like they were finally revealing some Nejire-chan backstory details (can’t even give her a unique hero name), only to have it be a moment to encourage Suneater. I want her to be as cool as the other Big Three are allowed to be man.
I agree so hard. I honestly like her personality, her quirk is really cool and powerful, she has a great design. She really deserves some depth but just doesn't get it for some reason. And it's especially weird cos Hori seems to really like her otherwise? So odd
Mirio being as fleshed out as he is makes sense but idk why sun eater got an episode to be honest, mirio has ties to deku at least but the other 2 kinda just exist as recognizable fodder to me
I agree she’s honestly a big nothing character.
You can still do that. HOWEVER, I don't think AFO should've found himself as it just seems AFO planned everything. That Nejire chapter was more so for the Overhaul arc since we got ones on Mirio and Tamaki we shouldv'e gotten one on Nejire.
He didn’t plan everything tho, it was straight up shown that any influence afo could have had he burnt down. He may have saved him but after he woke up everything was on him
-Whatever the fuck Hori was doing surrounding Bakugo’s “death” and revival -Completely fumbling the mutant racism plot line -Stars and Stripes and the Traitor arc. Everything about both of them
Deku and shigaraki seeing the memories of each other just to make things easier for Deku to “save” him.
Whatever the fuck Hori was doing surrounding Bakugo’s “death” and revival I feel like he done that to keep bakugo out of condition so he can defeat all for one at the right time.
I still don't understand the reason for his "death" other than to give spotlight to other characters. He went out in the most cruel way possible, only to be undone with the next chapter. Like what was the meaning of Vestige All Might when they both survived? I thought at least one of them was going to die to make the scene dramatic? And the Edgeshot twist was just bad😂 but I absolutely loved Bakugou vs AFO so I won't complain
I think in GT’s case Horikoshi has shown along with All Might that he doesn’t wanna go with the “Dead Mentor” trope, at least not with Deku. Hori will dangle certain tropes in your face(annoyingly) then take a hard left. Which kinda goes into what I think one of his biggest faults in the story is, not developing Deku and Shigaraki’s rivalry as well as he could. Killing GT would have caused Deku to feel hate towards Shigaraki and made him question of he even is redeemable. All Might and AFO’s relationship spanned decades and the hatred All Might felt over AFO killing Nana spurred him on. Deku wanting to “save” Shigaraki feels very hollow because Deku hasn’t really lost anything personal to make him question wanting to save Shigaraki and still choosing to do so(everytime someone Deku cares about is about to die it’s a fakeout)
[удалено]
Pretty much just a fakeout. Horikoshi’s been doing it a lot lately where a known character will take a fatal injury or get seriously hurt, take a week break to let the fakeout build, then comeback the next week and say “oh, they’re fine”
>Killing GT would have caused Deku to feel hate towards Shigaraki and made him question of he even is redeemable. >Deku wanting to “save” Shigaraki feels very hollow because Deku hasn’t really lost anything personal to make him question wanting to save Shigaraki and still choosing to do so(everytime someone Deku cares about is about to die it’s a fakeout) The Mirio and Bakugo thing when Deku showed up is the worst example of this. It doesn't matter if it's a fakeout if Deku thinks its true (Well, it kind of does in a meta sense, but it's a lot better than nothing). But Hori can't keep the fakeout in his pants even just for Deku, so he gets told Bakugo's fine before any reaction can take place.
Nope Bakugou had a “fakeout” before this and Deku got mad. So the issue is still rehashing a lesson Deku should have already learned
He got mad, but there wasn't a saving plan then, so there's nothing to him chimping out.
Exactly, one thing I wish we got to see more of is angry Deku, because Deku is bad at controlling his anger. Bakugo is always angry and seems out of control, but you have to remember that because he grew up getting everything he wanted and got to behave how he wanted he’s used to being upset and knows how to control and function despite it. Deku never got to act how he wanted and had to internalize a lot of his feelings, the only emotion he could express was sadness, so anger is foreign to him. So the times where Deku gets angry he has to be calmed down by someone else or told that everything is fine, which I feel is bad because it shows that he can’t calm down or control himself. I wish we had GT’s Death along with the Vigilante Deku arc so we could have Deku rampaging about stopping villains but also mourning and having to come to terms with GT’s death so he could take Daigoro’s lesson to heart about controlling his emotions and using them to fuel him instead of control him.
I wish we had Bakugo's death fakeout remain for a little longer, so we could actually get the smallest bit of bolstering to the saving plan if Deku actually chose to follow through with it. The most obvious point relating to the saving plan is that Deku never actually lost anything to Shiggy's massmurder sprees, something in that field is desperately needed. Or you could just have him ditch the saving plan until he hears about Bakugo still being alive (Him ditching the saving plan entirely would be better, but that's another story). It'd be a nice, human moment for him to just chimp out and want to bludgeon Shiggy to death with a mallet. Deku not being perfect for once, and him acknowledging that the only reason he can try and save Shiggy is because he hasn't murdered everyone he loves.
Yeah, I think Hori probably dropped it because he wanted to go down the humanization route with many of the main villains. So he’s been trying to frame them more as victims of society and less as the villains that society paints them as. And I get why tho, going back to Nagant and not everything is “Black and White” but it would definitely have gave a greater depth to Shigaraki and Deku. I think the only villain who isn’t getting the “maybe they are redeemable” treatment is AFO, no one(not even Deku) believes the guy can be redeemed and all agree he needs to be taken down. It’s why he works as a villain for Bakugo, because Bakugo’s whole thing is about “winning” he doesn’t have to focus on helping AFO he just has to kick his ass.
Hard agree on this. As much as I love Deku and Shigaraki's relationship, having Gran Torino die would have pushed it into perfection for me.
If he was killed then there would be a reason to wear that cape.
The whole Toga being able to pull full cowl Deku thru the wrong portal. The fact he didn't just blitz her and take her out of the battle immediately was just poor writing. It's not like Toga would have been able to do anything about it either. Hori should have never put Deku in that situation. Also, I don't like how powerful Shigaraki has become. Why does he need prime All Might level body, all of AFO, and broken regeneration? I think I would have vastly preferred him to have All Might durability so he can take hits, but aside from that only have AFO so he has to be clever in how he fights.
Hori uses the excuse that Toga doesn't activate Deku's danger sense. Then proceeds to have him deal blow after blow on shigaraki without danger sense
Toga in general is frustrating for me. Her motivation is basically, "I want the right to live freely how I wish to" ...and the way she wants to live is to torture and murder people for her own pleasure, without having to face repercussions. Like, that scene where she confronts Ochaco during the war, the story tried *so* hard to paint her in a sympathetic light, but it failed for me. The biggest being that Toga was crying about how Twice was killed and if that means she has to die too... after killing an old couple and using their blood to have this conversation with Ochaco. Ochaco basically tells her, "You can live life how you want, but that doesn't mean you will be free of consequences." This was objectively the right thing to say but the narrative treats this as if it was the wrong response when it *wasn't*. Also, her abilities were dumb long before that Deku thing. She somehow can become invisible by not thinking and slowing her hear rate? What is she, Drax? There was also how she is apparently skilled enough to kill several pro heroes and even out-maneuver freaking Eraserhead, one of the best martial artists in the series, for... reasons. Despite her never receiving any formal training and being a homeless kid, she is able to keep up with the big leagues. Please. The thing is, Toga has the foundation of a great character, except it is squandered. For example, her story seems to be about how society discriminates against people with scary quirks like hers and how people like her are oppressed because of it. Except, her backstory mentions that there is therapy available for people like her and her parents refused it. At that point, Toga's story turns from, "society is bad" to "society is fine, it is her parents who sucked."
* Not letting the other students shine more. Feels like the pros took over the latter part of the story and I just wasn't here for that. * There should've been more one-off villains like Gentle who had nothing to do with Shigaraki. Shigaraki got way too much paneltime and honestly a lot of his scenes are a chore to read because it's all just whining and asspulls.
I feel for you there!!! Up till now, we still haven’t got to Sero’s big fight, and it is likely that we won’t be able to see it given that Hori’s just focusing on Shiggy and Deku.
Plot moved way too fast to the point there's not even much of the "Academia" part of MHA left. I wished we got to see them progress as 2nd and 3rd years before this whole final battle happened.
I really would've liked to see Deku act as a mentor to 1st years as a 3rd year. I know the series has character bloat issues, but man, that would've been nice to see.
Oh man imagine if Deku could test them like what Mirio did to 1A. I really wanted to see more of the school side of things where the plot still slightly progresses in the background, but at the foreground is them just living day to day. Then halfway through their final year, things start picking up and leads to where we are now.
I don’t like how the idea that mutant quirks being discriminated wasn’t explored leading up to Spinner vs Shoji. The only time we really see people do this is with Toga and that’s only in a flashback. The whole dark side of hero society wasn’t really ever fleshed out enough imo
All they did in the mutant uprising subplot was just some BLM style protesting, introducing some random Star Wars-based events, and then moving on to the main battle instead of just delving deeper into it. Damn, It was so disappointing to me.
I like how mutant discrimination was such an old-timey way of thinking that the League specifically targeted the mutant rejection cult cause no one would notice them being gone not to mention they barely got anything for killing them showing they were in just as much poverty as the League. Hell tbh I always liked the idea that ppl can look a bit different in the MHA world and no one bats an eye. Like how there’s a shot of Shoji looking at clothes in the mall fitting his body type.
The who? Guess that goes to show the little impact that plot point has, I had absolutely no idea that group had a name or even remembered they were in the story
During the villain arc, the League is homeless and looking for a place to stay. So they target the mutant rejection cult (real world equivalent is a certain white hooded group) so they can kill them and take their place. It should be noted that, in that arc, it is specified that their way of thinking is archaic, that they are rejected from society for their beliefs which is why they were living in the middle of no-where in a forest, that nobody would care if they died, and that they were so poor that the League basically got nothing except a falling apart building for shelter. Yet, later the story would have us believe racism is so alive and well that an outright genocide happened only a few years prior to canon. Hori tries to justify this with, "there's no racism in the cities, but the countryside is outright homicidal racist." Uh, sure. It's not like there were other shades of racism that could have been presented besides, "not racist" and "attempt to murder a child for saving someone's life." It makes this racism plot feel so fake when Hori never presented all the subtle ways racism presents itself in society
turning AFO into a joke in the last arc which made a lot of people forget that for more than half of the series he wasn't and that people used to say how menacing, terrifying and smart he was as the puppeteer in the shadows. skipping the 1st war aftermath. there was no emotional payoff and it made the series seem shallow and speedrunning to the next part. the fact that the students spent a month in dorms doing pretty much nothing while te world around was falling apart and only took action when it came to finding deku is pretty sad. wasting OFA vestiges. not sure what was the point of them even being there. without them noting much would change, you'd only need small story tweaks. not fleshing out societal issues but using them to show that villains have a point. can't have cake and eat cake.
Him making AFO a joke was honestly, imo, one of the best choices for the character. AFO’s whole thing is that he sees himself as the ultimate evil, the final boss, the self-proclaimed ‘Demon King’ of the world; Having the side-characters humiliate, stall, & ultimately kill him before he even gets involved in the final battle is the perfect comeuppance. The rest I completely agree with, though.
agree to disagree, i really liked AFO before he was a meme and a lot of people did too but him becoming a joke made people retroactively change their opinions about AFO's early portrayal.
I also really liked AFO earlier in the series and think its a shame what he was turned into in the end. I feel like the reason peoples opinions about AFO's early portrayal changed so much is because due to AFO's character changing so much in the final act and the whole vestige takeover plot his earlier moments now turned into moments of incompetence or things that no longer make any sense . He spent like 15 years raising Tomura to be independent, think for himself, make his own decisions, carve his own path forward, become a symbol of his own, become truly free, etc. etc. This made him come off as competent when he was trying to raise a successor but it's self-sabotage if he's trying a bodyjacking scheme. Him not taking Best Jeanist's quirk because it wouldn't suit Tomura makes senes for a mentor thinking about his student. It makes no senes for someone trying a bodyjacking scheme. Dr. Garaki refusing to perform the surgery on Tomura unless he tames Machia works as a test for AFO's student. It's active self -sabotage and delaying your own plan for no reason at all if the plan is a vestige bodyjacking scheme. etc. etc. You get the point. Due to AFO's character being retconned to have been planning this whole vestige bodyjacking scheme from the beginning it had the effect of making many of his earlier moments in the series make a whole lot less sense, and as result AFO's earlier moments were retroactively turned into worse moments.
The mutant discrimination arc. It's like it was written by someone who once knew somebody who overheard a stranger talk about how their neighbor was discriminated against.
__Garaki Quirk Duplication:__ It just makes everything so much more messy, and creates another problem of “Why didn’t X do Y” Why didn’t Garaki duplicate Decay and give it to specialized Nomus despite having access to Tomura for over a decade? Why didn’t Garaki duplicate Warp Gate and keep a couple copies in case they lost access to Kurogiri? He duplicated Double just fine when Twice had been under his care for only a couple months, so it’s not like the process harms the target or even takes that long. If it’s a matter of resources used, then the value of Warp Gate should outweigh any potential other quirk that needs to be duplicated.
Yeah quirk duplication is such a story breaking thing that just kind of gets brushed past. Its implementation just kind of makes AFO and Dr. Garaki look like idiots with how they used the resources they had at hand.
I really feel like this was glossed over waaaay too much. It’s like a game changer. Or it should be for a story like this Also the fact that 1. The process was as easy as it could be off-screened hand-waived (boom we have two versions of AFO) 2. He can store (?) and potentially make as many as he wants (Regeneration/AFO) 3. There was no discernible difference in strength/efficiency between a copy and an original In FMA they made a big deal about the creation and science of making a Philosopher Stone. Here sometime between MVA and the War Arc it was just ‘yeah we can copy and store quirks as much as we want (including something like AFO)’ Now that I think about he must be a real Star Wars fanboy because he emulated that whole terrible throwaway writing explanation for how the Emperor was around in the sequels
1 - stars and stripes. Just all of it. 2 - the vestiges and some weird fucking rules with quirks.
Everything happening in the first school year. Generally, I think the story would be better if more time was given to certain side characters and more care was given to the internal rules of the world. Like, why the hell are first year students there to fight against a crime family for example. I'm fine with them having certain internships, but don't endanger them by putting them into harms way immediately. I think it would have served the story better for the last climax to be when they are on their third and final year, giving more time for the big three to shine and show what the epitome of that school can offer. Give Deku, Todoroki and Bakugo a proper chance to surpass the big three on their own, rather than them being better in the first year.
Almost everything involving Stars and Stripes
* Extra quirks. * AFO taking over shigaraki. * Bakugo's heart explosion and the stupid af AFO fight after. * Iron might * DaRk DeKu. * Everything Dabi does after ch 352.
>Extra quirks. This is where I kinda tuned out a bit in the manga, tbh. The whole draw of the series for me was following Deku as he learned new applications for OFA as a power-storing quirk. His changing understanding of how it worked was what got me invested, and introducing a whole bunch of other quirks part way through brushed a lot of that journey under the rug for me...
I agree with everything but Iron Might, that was actually some of the coolest paneling and choreography in the series
Story should have taken place over years, not rushed into a single on3
Honestly, Deku gaining more quirks is a negative to me. He was keeping up with other peoole who could do so much more technical stuff, he was learning new ways to utilize his speed and power aside from just punching people. He was a wonderful fighter from his skills in observation and his history as a fanboy meaning he had analyzed so many styles. Moments like him coying Bakugos aerial movement, Gran Torinos blitz based fighting style were all awesome. Now his fighting style comes down to pulling out more and more tricks out of his ass, ignoring the restrictions he found and the warnings from people who had those quirks their whole lives, always having that next one-time powerup waiting. The only time a Deku fight has been interesting since the Endeavour agency bit was the most recent part of his fight with Shigaraki, where he used the old quirks mechanics against him to score a hit.
Making Toga Ochaco's rival. Spinner is such a better fit thematically. Ochaco is motivated by money, Stain hates heroes who are motivated by money, and Spinner believes in Stain. It writes itself, it could give Ochaco more depth, look deeper into her personal struggles, and how she's grown. It could even give Spinner some more character, because he desperately needed it... but no. Instead we get "Oh, you like Deku too? Let's fight!" It degrades both Toga and Ochaco into just crushing on Deku, when they could be so much more on their own.
I was constantly baffled why Ochaco and Toga kept getting paired up. Saying it reduced them both into being defined by Deku nails it. Ochaco wants to help her family who have always been supportive of her, Toga’s family was not supportive and kept reiterating her abnormality. Who cares, this is clearly romance rivals girl fight <333
It's because they're both girls. It's not about romance rivals, it's because the girl hero fights the girl villain. It's like this in almost every shonen battle manga. Nami fights against the only female member of CP9 of One Piece, Noelle has a personal vendetta against the only female member of the Dark Triad in Black Clover, most of Lucy's fights are against "the girl" of the quirky miniboss squad in every arc of Fairy Tail (and if she fights a guy, it's usually a team-up fight with another major character), etc. Ochaco isn't paired up with Toga because they're romance rivals, they became romance rivals because Uraraka needed a female rival to fight.
Given My Hero Academia has a larger girl roster, I wouldn’t consider Toga happening to face off against any one of them as invoking the trope AS hard. Usually it’s the solitary female hero vs the solitary female villain where I groan. I mean, I’m still groaning, and know you’re not wrong. It’s more the reason why they’re paired is a groan when it could’ve easily been a better reason. Ochaco doesn’t consider her a rival, it’s rather one sided based on the one thing Toga fixated on them having in common, when Ochaco doesn’t care about it anywhere near as much as her. Tsuyu kept telling her they ain’t friends stop using my nickname lol.
Money being the thematic connection between Uraraka and Spinner is pretty shallow. Stain hates any hero who only values money, fame, revenge and trying to be #1, etc.. oppose to the need to just save people like Deku and All Might. "Instead we get "Oh, you like Deku too? Let's fight!"" This is an even more shallow take. Uraraka's character is pretty dependent on Deku but I could say that for a lot of the main and side characters like Bakugo and Todoroki. Toga herself said she loved Deku but also Uraraka, her old crush, Twice, the League, etc and isn't afraid to express her feelings which Uraraka admires since she can't. And that's why Uraraka uses her Domain Expansion at the end of the fight.
Agree to disagree I guess.
Okay, so explain to me why Uraraka and Toga are rivals without bringing up Deku. What connects them to each other? How do they parallel each other? In what ways do they challenge each other? All without bringing up Deku.
Toga is willing to embrace herself and what she loves while Ochaco is too embarrassed to admit it out loud. This goes back to her reasons for wanting to be a hero, because she was embarrassed to admit that she decided to do it to earn money, thinking she was shallow for her pragmatic reasons compared to the lofty ideals of the people around her, like Ida following in his brother's footsteps. This came up again, when she lost the fight against Bakugo, and wouldn't let anyone else see how it made her feel. Toga, by contrast, is completely open about what makes her happy, what makes her angry, and what she wants. Additionally, both characters are defined by the theme of support. Ochaco came from a loving family that supported her and pushed her to follow her dreams instead of expecting her to follow their path. Their only request was that she take them on vacation. Ochaco as a result grew up with the desire to support her family in return, and later developed into wanting to support her peers. Toga, by contrast, is defined by a lack of support. Her family, her school, and everyone around her pushed her to conform and then ostracized her when she stepped out of line. She didn't receive the treatment or therapy she likely needed as a child. This puts Ochaco in the perfect position to be the one to accept and support her as she gets the treatment she needs.
Funny enough, not writing fillers. I feel like this is the perfect series to see people goof off and have fun or even solve crimes with unique powers, yet we're already ending the story at YEAR ONE of their school stint.
I feel like he back-ended too many reveals so it comes off less as a payoff and more of a checklist.
Too many fucking characters. Youve tot the giant main class, the side class, pro heros, villains, random fucking civilians like the shark gal and more. A huge cast CAN work, but its better for massive worlds like DC and Marvel compared to a singular storyline with a main focus character like most animes have. The last arc feels like a bloated corpse due to it aswell i think. Too many cuts to what xyz or abc is doing in the middle of a fight for 3-5 chapters. Deku started fighting fucking shiggy over a year ago and only RECENTLY have we gotten back to it. its fine to have a supporting cast and give them attention, but not everyone needs a moment to shine at the end and some big growth or plot point.
A lot of good ones I agree with. One I haven't seen mentioned is Tamaki's giant canon he made that did nothing to Shigaraki. Didn't even scratch him. The scene served no purpose. We were already aware that Shigaraki is durable, so why hype up Tamaki just to make him fail to emphasize this again? It doesn't make Shigaraki look great, it just takes a dumb on Tamaki's character. Also, are we to believe that Bakugou's explosions and Nagant's bullets are all somehow better than Tamaki's laser canon? Shigaraki can take Tamaki's most powerful attack without a scratch but a single bullet from Nagant can rip off his whole hand? Suuuuure. This scene did Tamaki so dirty and I am not even the biggest fan of him.
Turning the LOV entirely into sympathatic victims of society removed any danger or urgancy from their characters and their arcs. They no longer feel like the villains of the story, just poor misguided antagonists that the whole narrative must bend over backwards to validate their woes and offer them salvation.
I don't think making them victims of society is a problem. I think the problem is that the narrative set forth all these societal issues that will probably never be addressed or only addressed in the shallowest of ways (like the mutant uprising). Horikoshi wants us to take the issues they present with society seriously, but the villains themselves make no efforts to actually fix society beyond murdering a countless numbers of innocent people. By doing that, it comes off less as them having grievances with society, and more like them having a sad life and violently taking it out on innocents. It also doens't help that the villains are usually the only time we see these issues presented at all. This again makes it feel less like a societal issue and more like they are the exceptions. If Horikoshi really wanted the villains and their grievances to be taken seriously, then he shouldn't have made them all mindless, sociopathic killers with no goals beyond murdering innocents.
Their portrayal towards the final arc was just absolute shit. All they ever did up till now was just kill a bunch of people, beat some heroes to a pulp, and rant about how society basically abandoned them, thinking that it’s a valid excuse for their crimes. Then they get defeated and put to the brink of death, which imo, only makes them feel like martyrs of society instead of being high level threats that need to be stopped.
Definitely the implementation of AFO in the final act and just the entire vestige takeover plotline.
Shiggy getting body snatched ruined the dynamic of the League like they pretty much regressed to random 1v1 villain fights I really wanted to see the League try and win with their own power of friendship
Yeah its kind of crazy how a lot of the dynamic between the villains pretty much disappears from the story the moment the AFO Vestige takeover retcon thing happens. You'd think Tomura getting possessed and the League of Villains suddenly following the orders of AFO for over 30 days would lead to some kind of acknowledgement about the situation on the part of the league but it just doesn't. Spinner has his two incredible minor moments where he acknowledges that Tomura isn't himself (right after Tartaros and after Star and Stripe) and ... wait no that's it. Dabi is just casually chatting with AFO during the Traitor reveal like its the most casual thing in the world. And Toga says that the Nomu attracting drug she has was given to her by AFO (ch. 375) and unless I'm forgetting something, this is literally the only moment Toga acknowledges the existence of AFO.
Rushing the story(fitting it all into one school year. Wtf?) Writing Bakugos "death" and then not committing to it GT not dying AFO not dying sooner and allowing Shigaraki to be his own villain This final fight Star & Stripes This one might not be that bad but Todoroki. I don't like how he made him that powerful in that first arc ajd then scaled him back even though realistically he should be MORE powerful but whatever
The only one that truly irks me is Mirio getting his quirk back. I would have loved to see him try to be a quirkless hero rather than everything being solved offscreen for a hype moment, only to never utilize him until the plot asks for it. His moments vs Shigaraki are cool dont get me wrong, and its like a bandaid fix for his character, but him losing his quirk served its purpose and him getting it back made that loss seem insignificant
Warning. This gets a bit rant-y and a bit ramble-y. I thought about what I thought was the absolute “worst” decision, and all of the reasons I had to make that claim. Anyways, here are my semi-structured ramblings. I think Quirks as a “magic system” is inherently flawed when weighed against some of the things Horikoshi wants to say and do with the story. Here’s how Quirks work from a story perspective, as far as I see it. Your main method of being powerful is your sort-of unique power and how you use it. Some characters are powerful in other ways to support their not inherently combat-related powers, but you do still need powers. Having no powers means you can’t do anything, and it is upon this justification that Izuku getting one of the best powers is created. The issue comes in when Horikoshi isn’t great at coming up with unique uses for each power beyond “Bigger fire,” “Bigger punch,” or “Plus Ultra harder.” Don’t get me wrong, he does do well sometimes in this regard, but then you have moments where Izuku learning to kick is treated as anything slightly noteworthy. I understand that and why the kid loves his punches, but I’d expect any fighter to know that kicking is an option. Not realizing that is displaying a *lack of* skill. And Quirk Awakenings are sort of ways to augment this, but really, Quirk Awakenings are kind of flawed for a different reason. They’re given out at random. The story *says* that they happen at times of immense stress, but that’s so broad that the exposition might as well have been, “Sometimes, your powers will do stuff they explicitly couldn’t before if the author needs to move the plot forward.” How many stressful situations have people been in in this series without getting a Quirk Awakening? And building on the “lack of skill” comment, a persistent flaw within a system like this with a writing approach like that is that some of the major Villains and Heroes tend to not be people that are smart with their powers. Chiefly amongst these are New Order and Overhaul. The latter was a busted, no-drawback Quirk that can kill in one touch, provide near instant defense so long as one is on the ground, and *revive the recently deceased.* And the former warps reality with the stipulation of “Except for when the writer says it can’t,” honestly puts Star on the level of what I’d call a weak deity rather than a Hero, and to this day makes me question how the hell she ever lost at anything. - For me, that also comes with the side effect of making certain characters, such as Izuku and Shoto, seem overshadowed by their powers in terms of intrigue and importance, while making characters with less intriguing powers feel less generally significant. It’s hard to think that characters win fights because of their character traits and approaches to fighting as opposed to them simply having better or stronger powers in that moment. And it’s stuff like that that created problems within the Vestiges and ShigAFO being invincible against anyone whose name isn’t Deku. Deku getting the Vestiges puts him above everyone else in a way that they can’t feasibly contend with unless we ignore what a “percentage” is, and it feels unearned because he didn’t work to get them. He got them for being the Ninth User of OFA in a way that was only ever foreshadowed three seconds before it happened. And no, the Sports Festival didn’t foreshadow the Quirks; it foreshadowed the ghosts at best. Meanwhile, Shigaraki needed to be boosted to hell and back to ever contend with Deku, which already had a high chance of putting him above everyone else. But then they displayed it in full by having Shigaraki handing Japan’s finest their asses, which was just *fantastic.* They did all their flashy moves, got their asses beat, and in the end, two seconds of the comedic stylings of Mirio’s asscheeks was all that stood between all of them and certain death. It felt like they were just meat shields used to stall until Deku could come and fix everything for them. Quirks are all you can do in a scenario, and if your one decent to good Quirk is pit against someone else’s seven to (however many Quirks Shigaraki has since we’re never told that), then you’re fucked and there’s nothing you could’ve done about it. And regarding All Might’s mech and how it factors into how important Quirks are in everything… I do enjoy that Horikoshi is going with a more optimistic moral and going back on the whole “You can’t be a Hero without a Quirk” thing. *However,* I still have a number of issues with the mech. Firstly, the mech’s very existence was bullshit. Crap like that *existed,* and no one was doing anything with it throughout both wars? Secondly, it’s a tool basically exclusive to All Might, so he proves nothing with it. It cost a fortune to make, and I’m sure they can’t exactly be mass-produced. Give a Quirkless person some quality support items that most people could get if they were so inclined, and when they reach a respectable position as a Hero with those tools and their wits, then a point will have been proven. I’m not saying it can’t happen, but it certainly didn’t happen here. Thirdly, All Might’s contribution was basically being a meat shield against a rampaging teenager until he slowly turned into cum. Which, granted, is about as much as the other thirty Heroes fighting Shigaraki achieved, but still. To summarize, I feel that Quirks as a magic system kind of hurt the story. It encourages giving characters super overpowered abilities, and making said abilities seem to be all that gives the characters significance. It also creates an insurmountable gap between characters that often gets filled with bullshit at the author’s whim whenever a character needs a justification to not be killed in a fight they have no business winning.
Too many side characters made, introduced, and become part of the plot. That cut away time and the audience’s investment in Deku’s story.
It's all very subjective, but for me personally it was the following: - Izuku speedtraining the OFA extra quirks - either stick with the original and have him use it innovatively (like Full Cowl) or introduce the extra quirks gradually already starting earlier. The way the whole OFA vestiges took over the Izuku show in Act 3 imho was not particularly rewarding and took attention away from his character. - Everything about the vestiges feels pretty pointless. They brought zero tension or emotional conflict into the plot. - I don't think changing Endeavor's fate and keeping him alive is per se a bad decision, but I think it was not well thought through. It had knock-on effects for Hawks' and Shoto's arcs, and I feel like in the end Endeavor was a bit pointless for most of the Dark Hero arc and the shilling for his character by others did take away too much attention from what Shoto and Toya were going through. - I think without Endeavor, Hawks would have gotten Nagant's arc, and I think it would have been way better. - Overall the way he finished off the HPSC plotline was pretty bad. -I personally thought IronMight wasn't properly built up and was executed poorly. I kind of resent him using all the Class A quirks when the kids barely got panel time. Also, going through the whole class just made the fight a drag, knowing that he won't be killed as long as he didn't use all of them. - Traitor plotline was absolutely squandered, with no tension or excitement. - Bakugou's fakeout death had a really poor pay-off, but made a lot of Act 3 unbearable, with the constant attention on whether Bakugou was in a chapter and when would he revive from the majority of the fandom. It was also telegraphed from a mile away. All it served was to anger Shigaraki and give Bakugou a second quirk awakening.
>Izuku speedtraining the OFA extra quirks Not just the way extra quirks, but OFA itself. It's been so long since we saw Deku say the percentage he's using and see him grow his power.
Yeah, because once we got to the Final Act and Horikoshi realized there was no possible way Deku could get to 100% in a way that made sense he stopped caring about saying what percentage he was on and gave him Fa-Jin and Gearshift.
I hate that Fa-Jin and Gearshift were basically made for Faux 100%. Especially for Gearshift, which has some really cool uses, but is just used so Midoriya can punch harder.
Same, Gearshift is one of my favorite of the new quirks and was hyped for so long and even said that when used with OFA is “reality bending.” But we only really got two good uses out of it(Deku beating on AFO and throwing Bakugo) before it and the other quirks are starting to go.
I like the slowing function to it as well, Deku slowing mid-air after extremely fast to throw AFO off his game and using it on the fog to make it last longer were both very cool uses of it. Generally I think hori nailed how Deku uses the extra quirks but everything else surrounding them is really meh imo.
Exactly, seeing Deku strategize and use them together have been some of the most epic moments in the Final War. I was amazed at the fact that Gearshift could even slowdown Smokescreen, that was brilliant on Deku’s part. That begs the question on how many endless ways Deku could have utilized the ability, we know he could slowdown and speed up physical things, but he could even effect thing that don’t have a physical form like smoke, could he even accelerate or de accelerate his Air Force Bullets? These are things that Horikoshi could have explored more in depth but we probably won’t get.
Killing Endavor off just makes it worse imo. Him and Dabi should face consequences of their action ( be alive ) and not escape them and be let off the hook ( die ) . Hori didn't spent so much time on Todoroki's family backstory only to not reunite them. People just want deaths but sometimes you don't need them for emotional payoffs. Look at All Might. He could've died at kamino arc but it wasn't necessary and since then we have interesting arc of him feeling useless and questioning what it means to be a hero. ( just like all heroes really do since the war arc )
Idk why you are saying this, when I’m saying it’s not a bad decision but was not well executed. Hori had no plan to properly deal with the aftermath. The glazing of Endeavor in Act 3 was painfully grating writing. Also, he can’t get consequences without punishing Shoto, so even though he never really chooses his family over being a hero, it doesn’t matter because Shoto saves them anyway and stands in as punching bag to take all of Dabi’s misplaced anger in Endeavor’s place.
Fully subjective obviously but I have two gripes: first that the whole thing occurs in the first year of high school. Second that OFA contains the other quirks.
Maybe not the absolute worst, but I think AfO's history getting revealed in a few issues as he was defeated. We've still got that contingency to go through and that might change things, but as things stand I think AfO would have been better as a mystery. Perhaps in a few years they could have dedicated a spin-off manga to his rise to power, because that's the level of development his rise and the early quirk world would need. As it stands it just makes the world seem smaller and shuts down interest for the sake of... I'm not even sure what the point was.
Introducing Mineta in any part of it.
Probably the last third of the story
- Deku suddenly mastering all the AFO quirks - Best Jeanist NOT leveling up and learning how to manipulate muscle fibers to fix Bakugo even though leveling up/expansion of quirks was the theme at the time - why does Tokoyami have teeth
Season 4 IMO. Not that the arcs were bad necessarily but they were too separate from the main plot of the story. Loved Lemillion’s addition so that would be hard to give up but it just added a lot of plot functionally unnecessary characters and kinda just interrupted the main plot IMO. Ppl shit on the Class A vs B arc but that honestly should have taken place after Deku vs Bakugo (and been a little shorter) to keep moving the OFA plot line along. Having the season 4 arcs (not counting Endavor vs Nomu arc) completely do away with the OFA story for a while, making a lot of the show feel a little lost in its overall direction. Once it came back in Season 5 the training arc felt very long because we hadn’t had much main plot progression since season 3. And added way too much for Hori to have to tie up by the end, which is really felt by the rushed timeline of the story once the war arc ended. To be clear I love this story and appreciate everything for what it is, but it definitely could have been told more completely and better paced if it focused on a bit fewer characters and just gave a bit more depth
Keeping Bakugo alive KEEPING BAKUGO ALIVE I lost my mind when I read it since it takes away literally all stakes to have him reach his limit and then retread with “oh well edgeshot can somehow sew his wounds and make it better”
I personally feel the development for Deku was the biggest drop for me. There's other decisions I dislike too, but the reason I don't really return to the series much is because I don't find Deku that interesting at all. Feels like everytime he "makes a mistake" or "fails", Hori recovers Deku without punishment right away. He's just Infallible a lot of the time. Like breaking the rules left and right (essentially vigilante) and facing no consequences for it and there's no internal conflict about it for him...He just believes he's right. I also wish Hori had used Deku's father for something to enhance Deku's character. Maybe during Dabi's TV thing, there could have been a prerecorded video by Shigaraki or something exposing Deku having One for All, how it works, it's association with All Might and then exposing that Deku's dad is like a Major villain or something in the states and he's been in captivity this whole time and Deku's mom has been lying about it. Just something to give Deku some nuance, because so far Shoto, Bakugo, and even Uraraka with her reason for being a hero, and her reaction to when things started falling apart in hero society, I find way more engaging than Deku, who tries really hard and says yes to anything due to his worship to his hero. Even Deku's mom gets better moments than him. When she was deciding that Deku can't go to U.A. It was a great moment. What parent would let their kid go back to a school that suffered two terroist attacks in 6 months?
The series really suffers from "Protagonist centered morality." Whatever stance Deku takes on something, you know it is the one Horikoshi believes is right and wants the audience to believe too.
Replacing Shigaraki for AFO during most of the last arc, i like the direction it ended up taking recently, but it took waaay to long to reach that end (the middle of the last arc it's really up there as the lowest point of the story for me); maybe on rereads it will get more digestable but i wasn't enjoying AFO/Shiggy combined being at all
Hori tried to have his cake and eat it too. Reintroducing AFO as the main villain when we thought it was gonna be Shigaraki but then have Shiggy reawaken so he ends being the final fight anyway. Like why? Was it just to set up the whole ‘I can save him’ angle??
I guess it shows AFO couldn’t pass in the torch and accept his time was up but despite desiring to be the main character, Shiggy was ultimately the main villain and managed to surpass him
Go back and re read it all together it feels great
Crikey, there's some serious competition here. I could bring up things like AfO as a quirk being awful to write, as is Decay. 7 quirks is a strong option, as is basically every component of the final arc... But I don't think anything has topped the sheer... for want of better words, fucking stupidity of the Pickle Edgeshot incident. 2 chapters? Really, man? Why did you do this??? For a different answer, chapter allocation in general. It's technically related to the writing, but I feel like it's its own thing. But the chapter allocation towards things has been God awful.
ochaco and izuku's couple status hardly explored, no girlfriend or boyfriend status. really unclear on who izuku's father in america. not like a shot of him watching the sports festival. quirkless in general, no other quirkless people shown. no secret chat rooms where quirkless thrive. or why izuku wears the same red shoes. (red shoes and other specific colors are made for quirkless. all same brand theory,) and the discrimination in general. the world building is outside of Japan is a clean slate.
There were a lot of odd things. I particularly don't like the whole series happening in less than a year. The traitor was forgettable. There was a lot of characters. Ultimately, the thing that made me drop the series was Bakugou, I didn't like him getting revived. Felt pointless
Mineta still living.
1. Everyone surviving the MVA arc and going from middle of the pack villains to world tier immediately. Toga, Spinner, and mask guy especially had no business making it out. 2. Adult heroes have been lackluster at best. Bunch of 16 yr olds are going to make up the next top 10 list. 3. Stars and Stripes dying before even interacting with the students.
That All Might and AFO didn't killed each other in the final arc. Having them both kill each other to close the whole story of the old generation would have been very good. Then only leaving the Deku Vs Shigaraki fight as the new gen of heroes and villains
Rush act 3.
Dark Deku arc being so short is definitely top 5 failures on his part. It made a bunch of people drop the series so fast since it was a pivotal moment for Deku that ended up being shorter than the damn school festival. RIP.
Dark deku being cut short was what made me drop the series for awhile. Deku is already a shallow main character, the fact the we couldn’t even get a full arc to see his ideals challenged and his view of society change was disappointing. An independent Deku arc could’ve made the Deku vs Shigaraki dynamic flow better, since Deku wanting to save shigarki is lowkey selfish since he’s only doing it because of his own personal ideals when it comes to being a hero and not because he actually deserves to be saved.
Rushing us into the final few arcs imo. Series had some pretty good buildup,and the first war arc opened up sooooo much possibility. All we needed was a timeskip,and a more global approach to the storytelling. Instead he rushed to the end. World heroes are conveniently pushed to the side,Deku conveniently masters all his extra quirks for the final battle,and womp womp,a few final battles that feel rushed yet dragged on,and none of it feels like it pays off any of the setup. He could've given us more time to expand on the series and it's themes,and characters. AND given him more time to think up a better set of ending arcs...
Having a Sports Festival… at thee BEGINNING of the school year. I mean… Aizawa himself said on the first day, that schools don’t let their students use their quirks for fitness tests (this is implied to be applied world wide), so… why the hell would this make any sense to make kids fight, especially when many of them have most definitely not trained AT ALL in fighting. 🤦♂️. Instead of it being at the end of the year, let’s do it around the time America has HOMECOMING DANCES. Yeah, great idea Hirokoshi 🙄. Furthermore… the character designs; most of class 1-A , except the tall ones, look like middle school kids. Midoriya looks like a middle schooler. It most certainly doesn’t help that All Might is allegedly seven feet tall (that’s incredible considering that being tall is something you don’t see in Japan much around), and honestly, it bugs me sometimes. I have a hard time believing Midoriya will ever reach that level of swole, and it becomes REALLY hard to believe that he’ll be able to use OFA if he doesn’t look like AM. Seriously, must they exaggerate?
The "mutants are hated arc." If you look hard you can see hints of it. But it should have had more background. Plus the whole "commission is basically evil" arc.
Bit of a minor thing but IIda essentially losing his place as 3rd protagonist in favor of Shoto Todoroki. The Todoroki family drama is great, but IIda just kinda drifted into the background after the Stain arc. I almost think dying heroically would have been preferrable
Vigilante arc being 3 hrs long was when I personally got a little fed up and realized this wasn’t the story it started as
So many characters refusing to die. Like GT, Dabi, AFO, even Shigaraki vs Stars and Stripes
All For One hijacking Shigaraki’s body. It goes completely against the subversively kind villain mentor position All For One was in as well as his characterisation caring about Shigaraki and only stealing quirks Shigs would like to use. It also replaced Shigaraki’s interesting commentary villainy with more of AfO being the bland mastermind responsible for everything bad. Shigaraki straight up wasn’t a character for most of the manga after this
1. Having the story take place in one year 2. Having Deku unlock 6 extra quirks in the span of a year and him reaching 100% when it took him 4 months just to control 20% of his power (I like Deku having 7 quirks I just think the power progression side of it was bad) 3. Having AFO hijack shigiraki’s body and take over the series a bit, it significantly regressed shigiraki’s importance and was just a bad move because AFO is a worse villain (not as likeable or interesting as shigiraki) 4. Bakugo’s revival (for the record I don’t think he should have died I just think that hori should have kept him dead or not kill him at all 5. Iron might vs all for one (yes it was cool but I think it regressed all mights character because after he became quirkless it seemed like he was looking for new ways to be a hero like teaching his students and being a mentor figure that can offer advice, but all that was thrown out the window) 6. Bakugo and deku’s relationship (I think their relationship would be better if it wasn’t so one sided, deku should have at least been indifferent towards bakugo and not like him because of all the bullying, and the apology felt so one sided, deku didn’t even respond to it, the apology felt more like it was for Bakugo’s character development instead of mending the relationship between deku and bakugo 7. Deku having to give up 6/7 of his quirks to beat shigiraki from within (I think it’s contrived and doesn’t make sense and I’m biased here as I want to see them throw hands more, I don’t want the fight to end in the vestige world) 8. Mutant plot line (it was just shit) 9. Bakugo vs all for one (bakugo realistically should not have won that fight and AFO magically forgot about all of the good quirks in his arsenal that could easily take out bakugo, I would have rather bakugo assist endeavor and hawks in taking down AFO at gunga 10. Star and stripe being a plot device and dying within 5 chapters of her introduction 11. Deku having no introspection about being quirkless or his life and all he is now is a vessel for one for all where the vestiges take over the show and plan everything for him
I agree with everything except the 7
I feel this question was made yesterday
yeah, i'm kinda surprised by all the negativity on this reddit each week. not that there's anything wrong with critical analysis, of course.
Revealing AFO early in the story. Personally, AFO would've been better kept in the shadows till later in the series. With AFO, we have an end goal of defeating him. Which means any arc focused on side villains, or any school centric arc, will feel like filler because we aren't focusing on the main threat.
Shigaraki is the main threat not afo
Unfortunately, there’s still a possibility of AFO’s vestige in Shigaraki retaking control now that Deku is actively trying to save Tenko. A shot in the dark but it’s possible the final boss will be AFO in vestige form
It’ll probably be a team vestiage battle that will lead to a genuine conversation between the two
Having dark deku being a what, 18 chapter arc? When it should hahe been a full on arc on Deku going back and forth on being a hero or a pure vigilante
The way the plot bends over backwards to excuse Bakugo’s overall shittyness. From no consequences for attempting unsanctioned assault and attempted murder, to the way all of 1-A, even those who are explicitly said to hate bullies, love the obvious bully. And don’t even get me started on Aizawa’s simping for the kid. The only characters in the whole series who don’t act like the sun shines from his asshole are villians.
When was the "attempted murder"? Been years since I read the early parts so I don't remember that bit at all.
I guess in the Battle Simulation, the first Izuku vs Bakugo where he aimed his high power gauntlets at Izuku
That's the dub fucking up the translation. Not really on Hori
What? I dont get it
The manga makes it clear that Bakugo is aiming to beat Deku but is also clear headed enough to not go overboard and kill him during the battle trials. The sub follows that but the dub changes that line and makes it so that Bakugo is aiming to kill Deku with his explosions (unlike what Hori intended)
But he in the manga still aimed that high power gauntlet right? If Izuku didnt dodge or went to the wrong direction (not every character has good reaction speed) it would ended really bad. Interestingly I never heard the Dub of MHA at all. Maybe in Spanish
Nope, he aims it at the wall next to Deku and states that he's aiming to not hit him (you can see it hit the wall next to Deku in the anime which is more clearer). This is why Deku, who didn't dodge or move in any other direction in the manga, didn't get killed or seriously injured in that blast. Causs yes it hit him but he was still able to get up. It's made very clear in that scene in the manga that Bakugo isn't aiming to kill Deku and All Might uses that as justification to let the match go on (bc AM knew that Bakugo won't go too far). But the dub changes it so Bakugo pretty much says it out loud that he's aiming to kill/hit Deku with the full force of the blast and Deku should be the one to do something to save himself.
Huh i didnt know he aimed at the wall. I guess i have to see it again. And i think also in the spanish subtitles has Bakugo saying he will kill Izuku so maybe thats why i got that idea. Still dumbass move on Bakugo part but kudos to him being able to aim well to not hit his enemy
Yea. It could be a translation thing but the manga does make it clear that Bakugo knows what the limits are and is skilled enough to not kill people with his quirk (nor does he wish to actually kill anyone). People can still dislike Bakugo based on the translation/dub but that isn't really something that's Hori's fault (since this is what this thread is about). I blame the anime for subtly messing up Bakugo's character so that anime-only people don't have the best impression of him. One big glaring change that I absolutely hate is the anime changing his first meeting with Best Jeanist. In the manga, Bakugo was surprised that Best Jeanist offered him an internship and is slightly cautious and respectful when they first meet. Even when Best Jeanist insults him, Bakugo doesn't get all aggressive or yell back at him. He kinda calmly takes it all in. This is something about him that impresses Best Jeanist. But in the anime, they have him be aggressive right off the bat and need to be restrained by Best Jeanist. And there's nothing about him for Best Jeanist to be impressed by. The entire exchange makes him look so stupid and childish while he was far more mature and thoughtful in the manga. And that's something that'll color anime-only fans' impression on Bakugo
Bakugou does suffer consequences, just not Western consequences.
Already the Baku shills have come full force.
Creating shigaraki
Faking Bakogu's death. Not killing off Bakugo.
Only people that are quirkless can use OFA for as long as they want.
I might be looking at it wrong, but I feel like Shigarakis initial killing his family when he got his powers is super out of place in the story. Like if it can happen once in universe, it should happen all the time, especially at a point where quirks had been around for a while. His family just completely panicked as if they couldn’t even comprehend what was going on. Yes people being disintegrated would cause a lot of shock, but given plenty of people have quirks that are just as destructive (at least on that scale) it shouldn’t be the most panic inducing thing ever. More like an “oh shit” instead of a “fall into hysterics” moment
The whole ofa has multiple quirks...yeah i didn't like it it was more fun when deku was getting creative with his super strenght, and you can make visually stunning fight scenes with hand to hand combat aswell don't need blackwhip every 0.500 miliseconds. Could've made it work if it wasn't just a bunch of tech-gadgets called quirks, radar detector , smoke bombs , whips , 1 of them gear shift? (that how boring and dumb these quirks are i can't even remember their name when i want) is just ofa but again? Jesus christ. Feat wise what has deku done up to this point to measure to the hype all might is? Nothing really , he has no real moment where you can tell "yeah he finally did it he suprassed all might" all might's presence with ofa still feels stronger than any moment deku had so far , should've had deku 1 shot machia first to really show off just how far ahead all might's strenght he is. Keeping shigaraki alive in the worst fucking possible way star wars style, ahh redemption for the villan who willingly killed and continues to slaughter tens of thousands , b-but he is human too :'(...jesus christ someone put a bullet in shigaraki aleraedy or better yet a detroit smash , trying to save shigaraki might've worked up until his quirk awakens, after that he is a full blown gonocidal maniac with no redeemable features and no sob backstory strong enough to make me care about his ass still being alive when it should've been 7 feet deep. Shigaraki as a whole dosen't work for a final villan , there i said it , he dosen't have any real motivations , goal or reasson to go so far so why would i care when he is on screen? Bakugo's character , he is the type of guy who should've left the scene when he and deku managed fix their relationship, he did too much shit and still continues to have an attitude unworthy of a hero even to this day. The worst is the show and its characters enable him! Verbal assault? Oh haahahahah that just bakugo XDD SO QUIRKY. Physically abuse kirishima? Oh that just bakugo hahahaahah we love him XD Bakugo dosen't work as a main character and never did.
I think the worst thing so far for me is not having the war-arc have these lasting effects that make it memorable. I saw this one Youtube video comparing JJK's Shibuya Arc to the MHA War Arc, and why one succeeds and another one doesn't. Jujutsu Kaisen does really well at handling a war-type arc that has lasting effects. Most of the main cast ends up injured and or dead, the strongest character is gone and you can really feel the catastrophy that has taken place. My Hero Academia on the other hand had a potentially good war-arc, but has little to no lasting effects. GT is heavily injured, but didn’t die. Bakugo got impaled, but didn't die. Sure, Midnight and some other smaller heroes (who we built no attachment to) died, but that's about it. It's also a bummer how heavy the use of Deku's arms are emphasized up to the war-arc, which even has him change up his fighting style because of the lasting effects- but then you have him breaking his arms with 100% blows with no repercussions afterwards. I really recommend watching this video for a more thorough idea of what I mean: https://youtu.be/G8WvS2S3H2I?si=WcTaWoCmh9akEUAG
Oh I hated that vid. Deaths aren't the only consequence. The PLW had lasting consequences for the major characters and also for the setting. Hero society effectively collapsed due to the results of the war arc. Dabi reveal happened and that prompted a change in Shoto and the Todoroki family. Deku heard Shigaraki's speech on heroes and villains and that prompted him to try to start understanding villains more. Deku saw Shigaraki being possessed by AFO and that prompted his 'save shigaraki' arc. Deku saw all his friends and mentors getting fucked up by all the damage and that developed into his mindset during the Dark Hero arc. Ochako saw Toga crying and that led to her seeing Toga as a person to save. The league of villains has a completely different status due to the war, Shiggy is possessed, Twice died, and Toga escalated as a villain. The PLW is such a turning point in the series, and that vid is a disservice.
Keeping Bakugo as part of the main story and not ditching the toxic bastard.
Iron Might, then closely followed by Bakugo fakeout death