So, I’ve somehow still never made a single post entirely about My Hero Academia. I find that really odd because the series has been airing for six seasons now over about five years, and I’ve been watching it basically since the beginning. I know I’ve talked about it a bit here and there on Twitter and may have even brought it up in a post briefly, but I never talked about only MHA, so I wanted to fix that, and now’s a great time.

I have a very mixed view of the series as a whole. I’ve gone from loving it, to being bored, to thinking it’s fine, to loving it again. It’s been a wild range of emotions. I don’t think the entire series is amazing, but I strongly believe some parts are. It largely comes down to the arc because the anime adaptation as a whole has been very consistent, very well-animated, and just good for the entire thing. The arcs are what often make it.

When My Hero is at its best, it’s outstanding and makes me cry every episode. At its worst, I want to fall asleep.  The biggest issue and plus (ultra) that MHA has is its pacing. It is horridly slow. I hope you enjoy conversations because they will take up entire episodes at times. Likewise, epic fights can take multiple. It’s such a big double-edged sword.

Typically, it just makes the slow arcs a bore and helps the good arcs, but there was one time during season four where that wasn’t the case. The whole Overhaul and Eri arc was hyped up quite a lot, but the pacing just killed the entire thing for me. It was a season of stakes, where everyone had to hurry to save this one girl because that’s what heroes do, only to have several episodes running through hallways.

The biggest point of this post is to say that, through all of that, I still love MHA because I’ve always believed in its ability to tell a really amazing story, it just needs the proper arc and stakes, and vibe to do that. And after what I feel were two pretty lackluster seasons, MHA has finally hit its peak again. A peak that I don’t think they’ve managed to capture since the very beginning of the series, and I couldn’t be happier.

I could and will make an entire post on how much I love Deku. I think he’s the most unapologetic, outstanding shonen protagonist we’ve seen in a long time. He is Mr. Shonen, in my mind. And the times the series focuses on him and not the 100 other side characters in the series is when it’s at its best. It’s why the beginning is great. Why season 3 was great, and why these last few arcs have been amazing.

MHA isn’t a story about how Deku became the greatest hero entirely. It’s also about hero society in general and how that will have to change and evolve, and I understand that all of these characters and the lengthy school segments help hammer that point home, but it’s a lot. Honestly, I think you could have like 20-30 fewer episodes of MHA, and it would be a better series for it. It often feels like a series with lots of filler, despite having none. The story has built-in filler.

This latest arc, which is the supposed last arc, is the most intense yet, focused literally on nothing but Deku and the crumbling hero society. For the sake of spoilers, I won’t say why this recent arc is so great other than the fact that it’s fixing the one thing that MHA has had a big problem with. It’s showing us all this crazy stuff happening rather than just talking about it for 20 minutes. And it’s putting Deku into the forefront and making him a huge badass to boot. It’s great, really.

If you had any hesitance to watch the series before, I think now is a great time. And if you dropped it because of season five, you stepped away at the wrong time. Things are finally picking up, and I highly doubt they’re going to slow down soon. I don’t think even MHA could find a way to do that.

Thank you very much for reading

I realize I cry a lot during anime, huh?