It’s been quite a ride from the little boy who ran out to save his friend while being completely powerless to the powerful hero who saved the world from destruction. As a simple shonen anime about heroes and villains, My Hero Academia was a decent telling of a story about young heroes coming into their own. Where it failed however, was in an overarching premise it started building up early on in the story before mostly abandoning it. So today, with the story having finished, let’s talk about where it missed the mark. As the title suggests, of course this post will contain spoilers for the entirety of the manga, including the ending.
Let’s start by explaining what I believed to be the overarching premise of My Hero Academia. The story takes place in a world where people suddenly develop superpowers called ‘quirks’. This has been going on for a little while now and although it’s caused its fair share of issues, it seems to be relatively balanced. A villain appears, heroes come to the rescue and lock the villain in jail, things go back to normal. Sounds pretty solid, right? We have a whole ranking system among heroes with the most popular ones being at the top and those are often the more charismatic people with cool powers. But what happens to those who awaken to strong powers but don’t have the charisma or support system that these heroes have? That’s right, they can end up turning into villains. This is particularly visible amongst those whose powers have them look different from the average person. Think of characters like Spinner, Seto and Tokoyami. Of course being different doesn’t immediately mean that you’re alienated and turned into a recluse, but it’s definitely something that is more common among those who look out of place.
In this world, we get a fantastic villain like Stain, who has become disillusioned with the way these people consider themselves heroes, only to refuse to solve any actual problems. Sure, they beat up villains for money and popularity, and that’s not inherently a terrible thing to do, but they’re not doing it out of the goodness of their heart per se. They’re doing it as a job or as a way to get ahead in life. Although the series doesn’t dive into this aspect much, I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s some proper sadistic heroes around who see this as a chance to beat up some people without there being any negative repercussions. To make a long story short, Stain is disgusted by the state of heroism in the world and realizes that there’s a deep rot beneath all of it that creates more villains through it.
With Redestro’s arc about the liberation of power users we get even more of an insight in how alienated a large number of people with quirks feel. They don’t quite fit in the way that society has molded and this scares them. The promise of being able to freely use their abilities – which feel natural to them, mind you – is an attractive one for sure. Add to that the people like Spinner who want to tear down the racist system that looks down on anthropomorphised people like him and you’ve created a very clear narrative. These people are definitely villains and their actions are not good for society. But the goals they aim to strive for are valid. The world is faulty and is hurting many people in the way it doesn’t properly regulate quirks. It sort of feels like how in the real world the US sends cops to deal with a mental health crisis. The aim of the heroes isn’t to fix the underlying problems with society, but to just lock up anyone who doesn’t fit the mold. I think you can start to see where I’m going with this.
What I would have really liked from My Hero Academia was to come to a conclusion in which these sorts of points were properly addressed and we’d have a clear shift in the way hero society is being run. Earlier on in the manga we learned that newer generations tend to grow up with a bit more powerful quirks which means that if another villain shows up in the future, they can be much more powerful than Shigaraki was if we’re unlucky. We could have had social reforms. The heroes could create a branch that focus more on mental healths and helping those who seem to be struggling with their quirks. For the longest time I believed that the storylines around Nagant and Hawks having to do horrible things as well as all of Himiko Toga’s storyline were sending us in this direction. Break down the structures and build them up from scratch to be better.
Instead what we got was one old lady helping a child who’s hurting and the author patting himself on the back for solving society. Hero society still functions the exact same way as it did at the start of the series. Dabi isn’t an exception, he won’t be the last person to go through harsh training due to zealous parents. People like Himiko Toga – although probably a very complex problem to deal with – still don’t have the support they need to overcome their complex personality disorders. And to top it all off, Deku’s become a teacher at UA without a quirk or anything, just kind of there to be forgotten. I fully believe that he should have instead started an institution that deals with societal unrest. But no, why fix society when Todoroki and Bakugo can just lock up anyone who doesn’t step in line?
I wrote about this series and my hesitant worries a long time ago when I thought it wasn’t going to properly address some of these storylines it set up. And if it never bothered to set them up in the first place, I would not have been this negative about the ending. But it set up these problems and then didn’t deliver on them. I feel like Horikoshi was inspired by Oda’s writing – which makes sense as it’s known he is a fan of One Piece – but wasn’t quite able to replicate Oda’s talent for social commentary. Now I can’t tell you if this was a shortcoming on Horikoshi’s end or if Shonen Jump wasn’t interested in that part of the story, or even if it was editor interference. At the end of the day, My Hero Academia was a story written for teenage boys and never had to be much deeper than that. It just feels like a real shame that it didn’t become the powerhouse it was destined to be and will instead be remembered as an okay story that didn’t really stick the landing.
But that’s just me and my opinion. I look at these stories through a very skeptical lens so there’s a good chance that you have a different opinion than I do. If you do, please let me know in the comments down below, I’d love to hear it. But until then, thanks for reading!
Opal Kaharis 