Horikoushi Kouhei did something that hasn't been on the mainstream track for a hot minute: he wrote a work smack in the middle between anime and Western superhero comics. My Hero Academia is unapologetically multicultural, not at all weird for an anime work but certainly with a different feeling. Here is Japan, a Japan that publicly acknowledges superheroes and trains students from a young age to use their powers for good. The powers, called Quirks, are now found in eighty percent of the population and range from slowly pulling small objects nearby with telepathy to full-on summoning black holes, along with control over lightning, ice, fire, explosions, cement, and everything in between. In these thirteen episodes we only have enough time to be introduced to this world and not to see much actually happen, meaning that only meet the heroes and villains with the most distinctive and useful Quirks, and so perhaps it’s easy to forget that they are indeed super. As a wise man once said, “if everyone is super…no one is.”
Inevitably we are set up to contrast this image. Even if a full twenty percent of the human population doesn’t have Quirks, it’s pretty much a guarantee that we are only going to meet one, and he will be our protagonist. Besides visual design, the influence of Western comics and superheroes on Horikoushi’s work is clear in the icon of the “self-made man” at the center of our story; Deku lived his whole life idolizing and studying heroes fastidiously while living in the shadow of his classmates, blessed with Quirks that would lead them to enroll in hero courses across the country. And he is inevitably rewarded for his efforts in turn when the great superhero and symbol of peace All Might comes through town and is struck by Deku’s base of knowledge and heroic mentality. Deku receives All Might’s great power of super strength, and sets out training his body to handle it in preparation for applying to the country’s top hero school, UA High, where his newfound might and selfless mentality propel him to fame even as he struggles to keep up with the rest of the class.
Another divide in the way Quirks are handled so as to demarcate Deku as the protagonist is the difference between having a power and using a power. The rest of the UA students—and even the teachers—have Quirks that are incredibly powerful simply by way of having a large impact, regardless of the amount of thought or care put into their use. Ironically it is Deku who uses his bland power of super strength in a more cerebral way, both drawing on his experiences as a Quirkless hero fanboy and with the necessity of working around his Quirk’s backlash, namely of mangling whatever limb he uses it in. In the show’s final conflict we see the students and teachers using their powerful quirks haphazardly, and the villains they are facing punish them for it by turning the power back on them or rendering it useless. This is a clear signal to us: Deku has value as a hero both by way of his super strength and by way of using it well.
Deku himself is one of the few dynamic characters as well, although the purpose of this season is clearly to introduce the world and start us off on the journey into the world of My Hero Academia, and so the show’s lack of deeper characterization for the other class members is forgivable to a certain extent. He shows many different (and highly comical) facial expressions throughout the series, as well as many different attitudes, from utterly petrified to reverent to crestfallen to determined. To my mind the only other character with a similar level of characterization is All Might himself, whose power transforms him from being a frail old man with one foot in the grave into the incredibly buff superhero everyone knows and loves, only to run out after a few hours and turn him right back. His hero persona is always grinning, while in his true form he is always grimacing, but in both forms he can express a variety of emotions and concerns even as his face remains plastered. Add his comical use of English attack names like “Texas Smash” and “Detroit Smash”—if you’re seeing a trend here—and All Might is clearly one of the characters that Horikoushi set out to write from the start.
There are a few other characters I am looking forward to growth from in the future. Deku’s childhood friend Bakugou slowly morphed from being a leader figure to being outright oppressive and controlling, turning from the more confident friend that Deku admired as a child to a bully who picks on him for his lack of a Quirk. When Deku suddenly arrives at UA alongside him with an unfathomably powerful Quirk to boot, Bakugou goes into damage control, trying to subjugate him and put him back in his place. Bakugou’s obsessive anger and Quirk of generating explosions go hand in hand, and it’ll be interesting to see how they develop his dependence on being in control. There is also a love interest set up for Deku at the start of the UA entrance exam, a girl named Uraraka who can remove anything from gravity’s influence, but all we have seen of her so far is her resourcefulness, cheerfulness, and just in general how good of a person she is. This season underused her and I’d like to see what happens as the class continues to grow.
The show also has strong technical aspects that tend to go unnoticed behind the flashy Quirks. The wonderful Mima Masafumi has a firm grip on the emotions of each scene and directed the music to fit and emulsify accordingly, and in particular the battle sequences are made assertive and tense by his choices, making them feel distinctly Western as far as fight scenes go. The animation follows suit, with shading and accentuating lines being used well to up the focus on each individual character in turn. In terms of character design there’s a certain roundness to their heads and bodies that deviates away from the typical anime figure, again starting to push into the territory of a more Western style. The villain designs towards the end are especially well thought-out and imposing, from the armored black mist to the hunched man covered in disembodied hands. Even if they are inevitably beaten back by curtain call, they ended on a note that leaves me excited for what more creepy enemies lie in store.