Gzerble

My Hero Academia isn't good, but thinks wishing hard enough to be good is close enough. Dear god, that's so wrong. Super hero school, yeah, been there, done that. The bullied loner wants to be the best ever, I mean, that's aiming right at being like everyone else. There is nothing special about this show. There is no redeeming quality. There's just a slow pace and mediocre copy-pasted characters in a generic sandbox that is executed worse than other shows.

At times I may have been slightly critical of shounen. And by that, slightly critical could be replaced as "with few exceptions, complete garbage". My Hero Academia is why. It goes through the motions without adding anything cool. Shounen can be good, even great. But as opposed to shows like that, here we don't have a sense of humor that's worth anything, there are no interesting characters, there's no real plot, there's no real development other than "hero trains, gets stronger", and the backstory makes me want to vomit.

All this could be forgiven if there was some style to it. After all, shows like Tengen Toppa Guren Lagan have proven that if you do things with style, then a silly plot and standard characters don't matter. But no, despite superpowers being the easiest thing in the world to add some razzle and dazzle to anything, we are treated to rather basic design with unconvincing fights. Oh yeah, characters explaining what is happening, flashbacks during fights, talking mid-fight, ridiculous names for "special moves" shouted out, screaming over a freeze frame with a cheap psychedelic background, and occasionally cheap narrations - every single one of the "make fights longer by force but without effort" tricks is used.

My Hero Academia is so stretched out it that it is painful. It could have easily been condensed to eight episodes without losing any plot, character development, bit of action, or idea. And even then, some proper editing would have done wonders for the pace. This is a generic action show, why the hell are they wasting my time during my waste of time?

Writing (story and characters):

As you may have noticed, I believe there are some issues with the writing of My Hero Academia. What annoys me greatly about it is that the flaws aren't really in the plot or the characters, but rather in how they combine. On a whole, all that was expected from a show like this is being a fun ride and some wow factor. Instead, it tries to make things dramatic when other shows already did exactly that and better.

That being said, the story isn't good. We have a slew of standard tropes in a superhero school, there is a school rivalry, a cute girl that likes the protagonist for some reason, some villains, bla bla bla. It's been done. The problem is that it was already done with better pacing and with a more interesting backdrop. There is absolutely nothing unique or well executed here.

This would have been fine had the characters had charisma. Instead, we have a cast of crappy cookie cutter characters. At least the whinging loser of a protaginst develops into a slightly less whinging slightly less of a loser... which is about the only positive thing I can say about it. Other than that, the cast is, and behaves, exactly like you'd expect. But without any surprises. Not even one.

So, when the sum of all the parts is actually worse than every factor that went into creating it, we get the trainwreck that is My Hero Academia. There isn't a single saving grace for this generic piece of garbage. The writing is just that bad.

Art (animation and sound):

The bread and butter of any series with fighting and/or superheroes is the art. People like to pretend that the writing is more important, but the writing just takes things up a notch - the artwork is what has to deliver. A show with spectacular art and crappy writing will absolutely work in this genre. There's no question about it. So, is My Hero Academia a show where the art savesno it doesn't. You don't have to wait for the conclusion for that point.

Some good character designs and moments where the animation has some wow factor are pretty important, and those do exist in some amount. That being said, the color palette is not particularly exciting, and while some of the backgrounds are gorgeous, most are absolutely forgetable. I mentioned a lot of the cheap tricks used to elongate fight scenes, and it's really painful that the reliance on still frames for that is so extreme. I really wish it could have been more awesome, but instead it's just somewhat above average.

My Hero Academia desperately needed some good art, and it got passable art. Had this show had better writing, that would be fine. Considering the horrible writing, it just isn't enough to make this show what it should be. It isn't bad or anything, but this isn't exactly another harem comedy which could get away with that.

Overall:

I don't like this show. I don't like it at all. My Hero Academia is more or less free money for the creators after Raildex and One Punch Man became such big hits... but it doesn't try to be more than that. Cannot recommend anything other than a hearty skip for this show.