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Description
On the second day of Reviewmas, Asia gave to me
Two cinnamon buns
And a show in need of another season

(Note: The 10th best episode is actually Game Start, not Game Over.)

Yeah, I've discontinued this. I have lost all interest in it, and what doesn't help is the fact that it got very little attention for a scorecard I put so much effort into. Maybe when the show finished, but for now, eh.

Ho ho ho, Merry Christmas to all! This is TheReviewer20 here, and first, I want to say that I hope your Christmas is going to be great, and if it isn’t, then I hope I could help at least a bit by writing this review for you to read. My Hero Academia, unlike the previous show, is one I’ve been interested in for a while, since at least May 2018. I didn’t watch it because I knew it had to be reviewed at a special time, and what better time than Christmas?

For the making of this scorecard, nothing majorly bad really happened. I’d say it was the first “routine” one I’ve made thus far. My new way of putting in title cards worked stunningly here. My only complaint with how it looks is that the peach kind of looks out of place, but it fits the two main values of the show: acceptance (green) and determination (orange). Acceptance because of how the quirks influence society and people’s reactions to them, and determination because seldom do characters give up in this show. Thus, the light orange becomes the background. The lone bad episode of this show probably shocks many fans of this show, doesn’t it? Don’t worry, not only will a Controchoice be released a bit later today (noonish, I think, depends on if I have something to do or not), but I’ll put in a bit of explanation as to why I’m not a big fan of the episode in the review. Not enough to not need a Controchoice, but enough to arouse interest. And yes, I fell into the popular opinion on the best episode, sue me. What can I say? When I’m impressed, I’m IMPRESSED. One For All turns a plot that could easily go wrong into something I would in my Top 10 Best Episodes I’ve Ever Reviewed list. Also, only one unrecommedable episode was shocking, because a lot of episodes got close to weak, such as Yeah, Just Do Your Best Iida and Save The World With Love!

Anyway, I wanna cut to the chase. IT’S MOTHERFUCKING REVIEWING TIME!

(For those who don’t celebrate Christmas, just remember, someone in the world hates you and you don’t even know them and vise versa...but don’t take it personally, for they are idiots. Happy holidays anyway!)
=========================================================================

My Hero Academia (or Boku No Hero Academia for my Japanese viewers using Google translate to read this). It’s finally time. While I haven’t per se hyped this up to be a super unpopular opinion, I’ve been very excited about reviewing this show since I finished it up in early November. As you can see, it was quite close to not being good, and the seasons slowly got better. But enough about that, let’s actually talk about how I feel about the show and why I think it deserves the rating it has.

I think it’s best to talk about the characters first, considering they are what the show pushes for than anything. It is a character-centric show first and foremost, and pretty much everything else is an afterthought. So, they should be good, right? Well...for the most part, yeah. I like almost every single student of Class 1-A (and no, the one I don’t like is not Mineta, I actually love him) because of how different their personalities are and their character interactions. It seems like characters such as Midoriya and Iida don’t have similar personalities, but they actually gel together quite well in terms of friendship and bonding, making their character interactions believable and funny. The tropes that these characters tend to be are well executed because the main characters get development, and the ones that don’t are, again, there for comedy, so it’s mildly excusable. Something I also like is that it doesn’t try to focus too much on one character or focusing on all of the characters; some of them aren’t there for development, but rather for comedy. And for the most part, they are good at that. Some do lie in the middle range it’s very clear the writers want to develop them, but don’t seem to know what to do, so they put them with other characters in hopes that the interactions will show more of their personality. This doesn’t really work because, again, some are more about comedy than development. I think my two favorite students, and by extension, my two favorite characters of the show (AND the two cinnamon buns), are Uraraka and Tokoyami. Tokoyami because not only is his quirk cool, he’s probably the most balanced of the students; he has a Quirk with clear weaknesses and strengths and he does a lot with it and tends to be the most creative out of the students. I also like his relatively calm attitude, how poised he is, and his tendency to sometimes overextend. That can lead to some really good moment and fight scenes from him, such as his battle against Bakugo. And Uraraka because let’s be honest, she’s fucking adorable. Just her mannerisms, the way she carries herself, her interactions with other characters, they all just scream adorable. And she does quite a surprising amount of stuff with a Quirk that may seem useless, coupled with a decent reason for becoming a superhero (even if it is a bit generic), makes her a personal favorite.

And what about the other heroes? Solid. All Might is another trope that could have been executed much worse, and he was bland for the first few episodes, being a hypocrite and all, but later on becomes decent. He didn’t have that much character development, which did hinder his character, but his personality and backstory were just enough to make me care about him and his goals. The teachers are where we see the characters start to falter a bit, but they still ended up being decent because how much they care for the students, even if they are kinda generic and their quirks weren’t developed well. Midnight probably is the most interesting out of them, as she has a, you know, personality, something the other teachers lack for the most part. I’m starting to get tired of talking about these characters, so let’s wrap it up with a lightning round of the supporting characters.

Midoriya's mom (don’t know the name, too lazy to learn)? Kinda bland, wish she had more screentime, but passable.

Class 1-B? Meh. Apathetic towards them, because they don’t really do anything.

The other groups of students in the Provisional License Test? Decent, not much to say. They at least have personality, so there’s that.

And...yeah. For such a character-centric show, they don’t have that many characters to actually talk about. A thing I forgot to mention is that the characterization is actually pretty consistent. None of them are majorly out-of-character, and when they are, it’s usually minor. Anyway, let’s move on from the characters and talk about something else: the quirks. The premise is a double-edged sword, as it could easily lead to genericness and cliches, but it also has room for creativity. I’ve already talked about why the tropes work here, so the creativity is something I have to praise about this show as well. The quirks are usually creative here with some notable ones being Harden, All For One, and Black Shadow, but there are some obvious ones like invisibility and super stretch, which kinda gets on my nerves for how they went for the low hanging fruit. But what they do with these quirks is an entirely different story, because their usage is MMMMMMM, as some of my watchers would say. I think that doing the most with what you have is a very good moral that this anime shows us with characters like Mineta and Bakugo. They could have been really generic usages such as blowing up things, but the stuff they do with their quirks are quite creative and help me enjoy the show a lot. Not only is there creativity in these quirks, but in the show itself. The ideas it uses and the premises it has seem generic and predictable at first, but they put in really good twists to subvert that and still make sense. That was my second biggest fear when first watching the show; serialization would become the show’s main focus. And the whole “arc” format, in general, is annoying, that doesn’t stop it from having self-contained stories, or stories with generally small stakes that still matter in a way. That’s what makes the story-driven episodes so good. Instead of just being introduced out of nowhere, they are set up by previous episodes so their inclusion feels less like trying to be flashy for the sake of it and more like the culmination of something grand.

And now, for the exposition. In the past, I used to be SUPER against exposition. I thought any and all exposition was bad. That was super close minded of me in retrospect. And yesterday, I stated that this show changed my thoughts on exposition. So, what are they now? While I’m still not a big fan of it...I think it can be executed correctly. Let’s face it, show-don’t-tell can be hella boring sometimes, especially when it’s just show-don’t-tell (coughHILDAcough). Exposition can provide a nice difference from that. And this show makes it works because it provides a nice balance between showing and telling. The exposition is also very interesting to listen to because the descriptions are quite informative about what they are talking about and it makes sure it doesn’t leave any plot holes. Not only that but when this show does use show-don’t-tell (such as with the backstories), they make that interesting as well with giving us the character’s reasons for becoming heroes. One thing I’m confused about is why they didn’t answer how they did discover their quirks, but that’s more of a nitpick than an actual complaint. Finally, the humor in the show is great. It mostly stems from the character interactions, which are already pretty good themselves, but how the characters interact give out some funny dialogue and pretty good humor overall. I also enjoy whenever these characters give off over-exaggerated facial expressions because they are really unique and unexpected, so they give me a laugh. And they aren’t so in-your-face about it where it becomes annoying.

The art style is a big pro for the anime because not only does it looks unique with the detailed backgrounds and the expressive animations of characters, but also with how the fight scenes are animated. Because after looking at so many style over substance fight scenes, I’ve finally found a show that can balance out both style and substance in its fight scenes! While some do focus more on single hits than actually flowing well, the majority do not. And the ones that end up focusing more on single hits end up making those super impactful, so they feel meaty. The character designs, while occasionally generic (they didn't even try with the invisible girl), do have something that makes them stand out, usually the hair. There’s not much else to say because the fight scenes are pretty good and the animation is solid.

And after all of that praise (more than a page on Google Docs), you’d expect me to absolutely love this show and call it great and all that jazz...but as you can see, it’s not. It has a few things holding it back from being amazing. Let’s start with arguably the biggest con of this series: the villains. The villains are extremely bland and lacking in really any personality. Sure, they provide a decent challenge for the protagonist, but they aren’t compelling enough for me to care if they succeed. One’s a creepy pervert out for blood, one’s basically a cultist, one’s got bipolar...the only one who actually had potential was the guy with the weird teeth. I mean, he was a fucking deranged killer! That’s extremely interesting. Unfortunately, he got shafted early on. The major villains of the series, Shigaraki, is the biggest offender of being bland, as we barely even know his motivation (something extremely generic...I think he’s an anarchist or something, but his motivation was so forgettable that I just don’t care), let alone literally anything else. He just hates the world because plot, and while that can be a decent motivation at times, it doesn’t fit the current situation that the show is putting the villains in. Which means many episodes lack meaningful stakes, bringing them down to solid. All For One manages to be the only villain who avoids this trap, as he is both a compelling villain thanks to his backstory and previous feats (although I do wonder why he gave his little brother a quirk) and intimidating for how on par he was with All Might. And what about Stain? Well, he at first seems interesting...but then you realize his motive is generic and it all goes down from there. He just becomes a massive pile of genericness from his motivations to his mannerisms to his speech about what real heroes are and shit I’ve already heard about and which seemed predictable for this show to do. AT least he’s a meaningful threat. But overall, the villains are quite weak.

I haven’t even gotten to the worst character of the show yet. Remember when I said I liked almost all of the students? The ones I didn't like were Sato (kinda useless), Hagakure (kinda bland, even if occasionally funny), and Todoroki, who is definitely the worst character on the show. Why? Well, he was pretty much Mr. Edgy McEdge Edge in his first few appearances that I automatically disliked him. By the time Season 2 rolled around, he was less bad, but still not tolerable. He just seemed so extremely boring and emo, by the time he looked like he was going to have development, I was happy to see really any character growth from this guy. But then the worst episode of the show comes and just destroys his chance at ever becoming a decent character. He remains the same edgy character, but worse because the only compelling thing about his character (his relationship with his father, the feces hero Endeavor) is almost never touched upon ever again. And any character growth concerning his quirk and how to develop it was sidelined because of Protagonist Syndrome. So he stands as wasted potential at best, and a downright horrid character at worst.

I’m starting to get tired of writing such a long review, so let’s close this up right now with a short summary: Is My Hero Academia the great show many people praise it as? No, because it is simply a solid show. While the characters are very good, nothing else stands out as above solid. The characters are obviously the best part of this character-centric show, even if they do contain some bumps in the road. This show does suffer from an overall con of focusing too much on its story which makes it become semi-bland, which is why I’m a big fan of the relaxed episodes as much as the plot-driving ones. But is it still good? Definitely. I do recommend this show because of the well-executed tropes, the art style, the animation, the humor, and some other factors, but I would advise to stay away from the villains and to watch out for the occasional plot convenience, which nearly made the show okay instead of good. But right now, I’m happy to say this show was satisfying to watch and something I would return to in the future.

Whew! And that’s over with. It was quite long, spanning a bit over 2,700 words and exactly 15,438 characters, but I hope you found this review nice to read. I know I enjoyed writing it. Tomorrow, we’ll be taking a look at another popular anime, Angel Beats, and seeing if it’s up to snuff. This is TheReviewer20 and thanks for reading!

Description
On the second day of Reviewmas, Asia gave to me
Two cinnamon buns
And a show in need of another season

(Note: The 10th best episode is actually Game Start, not Game Over.)

Yeah, I've discontinued this. I have lost all interest in it, and what doesn't help is the fact that it got very little attention for a scorecard I put so much effort into. Maybe when the show finished, but for now, eh.

Ho ho ho, Merry Christmas to all! This is TheReviewer20 here, and first, I want to say that I hope your Christmas is going to be great, and if it isn’t, then I hope I could help at least a bit by writing this review for you to read. My Hero Academia, unlike the previous show, is one I’ve been interested in for a while, since at least May 2018. I didn’t watch it because I knew it had to be reviewed at a special time, and what better time than Christmas?

For the making of this scorecard, nothing majorly bad really happened. I’d say it was the first “routine” one I’ve made thus far. My new way of putting in title cards worked stunningly here. My only complaint with how it looks is that the peach kind of looks out of place, but it fits the two main values of the show: acceptance (green) and determination (orange). Acceptance because of how the quirks influence society and people’s reactions to them, and determination because seldom do characters give up in this show. Thus, the light orange becomes the background. The lone bad episode of this show probably shocks many fans of this show, doesn’t it? Don’t worry, not only will a Controchoice be released a bit later today (noonish, I think, depends on if I have something to do or not), but I’ll put in a bit of explanation as to why I’m not a big fan of the episode in the review. Not enough to not need a Controchoice, but enough to arouse interest. And yes, I fell into the popular opinion on the best episode, sue me. What can I say? When I’m impressed, I’m IMPRESSED. One For All turns a plot that could easily go wrong into something I would in my Top 10 Best Episodes I’ve Ever Reviewed list. Also, only one unrecommedable episode was shocking, because a lot of episodes got close to weak, such as Yeah, Just Do Your Best Iida and Save The World With Love!

Anyway, I wanna cut to the chase. IT’S MOTHERFUCKING REVIEWING TIME!

(For those who don’t celebrate Christmas, just remember, someone in the world hates you and you don’t even know them and vise versa...but don’t take it personally, for they are idiots. Happy holidays anyway!)
=========================================================================

My Hero Academia (or Boku No Hero Academia for my Japanese viewers using Google translate to read this). It’s finally time. While I haven’t per se hyped this up to be a super unpopular opinion, I’ve been very excited about reviewing this show since I finished it up in early November. As you can see, it was quite close to not being good, and the seasons slowly got better. But enough about that, let’s actually talk about how I feel about the show and why I think it deserves the rating it has.

I think it’s best to talk about the characters first, considering they are what the show pushes for than anything. It is a character-centric show first and foremost, and pretty much everything else is an afterthought. So, they should be good, right? Well...for the most part, yeah. I like almost every single student of Class 1-A (and no, the one I don’t like is not Mineta, I actually love him) because of how different their personalities are and their character interactions. It seems like characters such as Midoriya and Iida don’t have similar personalities, but they actually gel together quite well in terms of friendship and bonding, making their character interactions believable and funny. The tropes that these characters tend to be are well executed because the main characters get development, and the ones that don’t are, again, there for comedy, so it’s mildly excusable. Something I also like is that it doesn’t try to focus too much on one character or focusing on all of the characters; some of them aren’t there for development, but rather for comedy. And for the most part, they are good at that. Some do lie in the middle range it’s very clear the writers want to develop them, but don’t seem to know what to do, so they put them with other characters in hopes that the interactions will show more of their personality. This doesn’t really work because, again, some are more about comedy than development. I think my two favorite students, and by extension, my two favorite characters of the show (AND the two cinnamon buns), are Uraraka and Tokoyami. Tokoyami because not only is his quirk cool, he’s probably the most balanced of the students; he has a Quirk with clear weaknesses and strengths and he does a lot with it and tends to be the most creative out of the students. I also like his relatively calm attitude, how poised he is, and his tendency to sometimes overextend. That can lead to some really good moment and fight scenes from him, such as his battle against Bakugo. And Uraraka because let’s be honest, she’s fucking adorable. Just her mannerisms, the way she carries herself, her interactions with other characters, they all just scream adorable. And she does quite a surprising amount of stuff with a Quirk that may seem useless, coupled with a decent reason for becoming a superhero (even if it is a bit generic), makes her a personal favorite.

And what about the other heroes? Solid. All Might is another trope that could have been executed much worse, and he was bland for the first few episodes, being a hypocrite and all, but later on becomes decent. He didn’t have that much character development, which did hinder his character, but his personality and backstory were just enough to make me care about him and his goals. The teachers are where we see the characters start to falter a bit, but they still ended up being decent because how much they care for the students, even if they are kinda generic and their quirks weren’t developed well. Midnight probably is the most interesting out of them, as she has a, you know, personality, something the other teachers lack for the most part. I’m starting to get tired of talking about these characters, so let’s wrap it up with a lightning round of the supporting characters.

Midoriya's mom (don’t know the name, too lazy to learn)? Kinda bland, wish she had more screentime, but passable.

Class 1-B? Meh. Apathetic towards them, because they don’t really do anything.

The other groups of students in the Provisional License Test? Decent, not much to say. They at least have personality, so there’s that.

And...yeah. For such a character-centric show, they don’t have that many characters to actually talk about. A thing I forgot to mention is that the characterization is actually pretty consistent. None of them are majorly out-of-character, and when they are, it’s usually minor. Anyway, let’s move on from the characters and talk about something else: the quirks. The premise is a double-edged sword, as it could easily lead to genericness and cliches, but it also has room for creativity. I’ve already talked about why the tropes work here, so the creativity is something I have to praise about this show as well. The quirks are usually creative here with some notable ones being Harden, All For One, and Black Shadow, but there are some obvious ones like invisibility and super stretch, which kinda gets on my nerves for how they went for the low hanging fruit. But what they do with these quirks is an entirely different story, because their usage is MMMMMMM, as some of my watchers would say. I think that doing the most with what you have is a very good moral that this anime shows us with characters like Mineta and Bakugo. They could have been really generic usages such as blowing up things, but the stuff they do with their quirks are quite creative and help me enjoy the show a lot. Not only is there creativity in these quirks, but in the show itself. The ideas it uses and the premises it has seem generic and predictable at first, but they put in really good twists to subvert that and still make sense. That was my second biggest fear when first watching the show; serialization would become the show’s main focus. And the whole “arc” format, in general, is annoying, that doesn’t stop it from having self-contained stories, or stories with generally small stakes that still matter in a way. That’s what makes the story-driven episodes so good. Instead of just being introduced out of nowhere, they are set up by previous episodes so their inclusion feels less like trying to be flashy for the sake of it and more like the culmination of something grand.

And now, for the exposition. In the past, I used to be SUPER against exposition. I thought any and all exposition was bad. That was super close minded of me in retrospect. And yesterday, I stated that this show changed my thoughts on exposition. So, what are they now? While I’m still not a big fan of it...I think it can be executed correctly. Let’s face it, show-don’t-tell can be hella boring sometimes, especially when it’s just show-don’t-tell (coughHILDAcough). Exposition can provide a nice difference from that. And this show makes it works because it provides a nice balance between showing and telling. The exposition is also very interesting to listen to because the descriptions are quite informative about what they are talking about and it makes sure it doesn’t leave any plot holes. Not only that but when this show does use show-don’t-tell (such as with the backstories), they make that interesting as well with giving us the character’s reasons for becoming heroes. One thing I’m confused about is why they didn’t answer how they did discover their quirks, but that’s more of a nitpick than an actual complaint. Finally, the humor in the show is great. It mostly stems from the character interactions, which are already pretty good themselves, but how the characters interact give out some funny dialogue and pretty good humor overall. I also enjoy whenever these characters give off over-exaggerated facial expressions because they are really unique and unexpected, so they give me a laugh. And they aren’t so in-your-face about it where it becomes annoying.

The art style is a big pro for the anime because not only does it looks unique with the detailed backgrounds and the expressive animations of characters, but also with how the fight scenes are animated. Because after looking at so many style over substance fight scenes, I’ve finally found a show that can balance out both style and substance in its fight scenes! While some do focus more on single hits than actually flowing well, the majority do not. And the ones that end up focusing more on single hits end up making those super impactful, so they feel meaty. The character designs, while occasionally generic (they didn't even try with the invisible girl), do have something that makes them stand out, usually the hair. There’s not much else to say because the fight scenes are pretty good and the animation is solid.

And after all of that praise (more than a page on Google Docs), you’d expect me to absolutely love this show and call it great and all that jazz...but as you can see, it’s not. It has a few things holding it back from being amazing. Let’s start with arguably the biggest con of this series: the villains. The villains are extremely bland and lacking in really any personality. Sure, they provide a decent challenge for the protagonist, but they aren’t compelling enough for me to care if they succeed. One’s a creepy pervert out for blood, one’s basically a cultist, one’s got bipolar...the only one who actually had potential was the guy with the weird teeth. I mean, he was a fucking deranged killer! That’s extremely interesting. Unfortunately, he got shafted early on. The major villains of the series, Shigaraki, is the biggest offender of being bland, as we barely even know his motivation (something extremely generic...I think he’s an anarchist or something, but his motivation was so forgettable that I just don’t care), let alone literally anything else. He just hates the world because plot, and while that can be a decent motivation at times, it doesn’t fit the current situation that the show is putting the villains in. Which means many episodes lack meaningful stakes, bringing them down to solid. All For One manages to be the only villain who avoids this trap, as he is both a compelling villain thanks to his backstory and previous feats (although I do wonder why he gave his little brother a quirk) and intimidating for how on par he was with All Might. And what about Stain? Well, he at first seems interesting...but then you realize his motive is generic and it all goes down from there. He just becomes a massive pile of genericness from his motivations to his mannerisms to his speech about what real heroes are and shit I’ve already heard about and which seemed predictable for this show to do. AT least he’s a meaningful threat. But overall, the villains are quite weak.

I haven’t even gotten to the worst character of the show yet. Remember when I said I liked almost all of the students? The ones I didn't like were Sato (kinda useless), Hagakure (kinda bland, even if occasionally funny), and Todoroki, who is definitely the worst character on the show. Why? Well, he was pretty much Mr. Edgy McEdge Edge in his first few appearances that I automatically disliked him. By the time Season 2 rolled around, he was less bad, but still not tolerable. He just seemed so extremely boring and emo, by the time he looked like he was going to have development, I was happy to see really any character growth from this guy. But then the worst episode of the show comes and just destroys his chance at ever becoming a decent character. He remains the same edgy character, but worse because the only compelling thing about his character (his relationship with his father, the feces hero Endeavor) is almost never touched upon ever again. And any character growth concerning his quirk and how to develop it was sidelined because of Protagonist Syndrome. So he stands as wasted potential at best, and a downright horrid character at worst.

I’m starting to get tired of writing such a long review, so let’s close this up right now with a short summary: Is My Hero Academia the great show many people praise it as? No, because it is simply a solid show. While the characters are very good, nothing else stands out as above solid. The characters are obviously the best part of this character-centric show, even if they do contain some bumps in the road. This show does suffer from an overall con of focusing too much on its story which makes it become semi-bland, which is why I’m a big fan of the relaxed episodes as much as the plot-driving ones. But is it still good? Definitely. I do recommend this show because of the well-executed tropes, the art style, the animation, the humor, and some other factors, but I would advise to stay away from the villains and to watch out for the occasional plot convenience, which nearly made the show okay instead of good. But right now, I’m happy to say this show was satisfying to watch and something I would return to in the future.

Whew! And that’s over with. It was quite long, spanning a bit over 2,700 words and exactly 15,438 characters, but I hope you found this review nice to read. I know I enjoyed writing it. Tomorrow, we’ll be taking a look at another popular anime, Angel Beats, and seeing if it’s up to snuff. This is TheReviewer20 and thanks for reading!