It seems to be a
pattern with me and Jump series - I try them out, don't get on with them at
first, then return to them after a while and end up loving them. Or at least
enjoying them quite a bit. It happened with One Piece, Bleach and in a way with
good ole Dragonball.
So this is the new hit
shounen action series. It's doing pretty well, with quite a lot of promotion, a
third season and movie recently announced and a video game in the works too.
I tried out the first
few manga chapters months ago, but couldn't get over the weird art, especially
of the true form of the #1 hero, and found the pacing very weird. That may have
been down to poor-quality translation, though. But I eventually tried the
anime, and found it to be a lot of fun.
The show's world has a
lot of echoes of Hunter x Hunter and One Punch Man (OPM itself being in many
ways a tribute to HxH in any case), with a little Tiger and Bunny thrown into
the mix, all of which could be said to be riffs based on a premise set up by
X-Men.
Boku no Hero Academia
shows us a world where 80% of kids born have a 'quirk'. A mutant power,
basically. This can be just about anything, from super strength to invisibility,
with some very weird and inventive ones in the mix too. Our hero, little
Midoriya Izuku, or 'Deku' as he gets called by the school bullies, is one of
the 20% who are quirkless. This is a shame because he loves heroes and could be
called a fanboy in the depth of his knowledge. The show actually uses the English
word ‘Nerd’ for him, rather than ‘otaku’. A chance encounter with a prominent
hero leads to him being bestowed great powers - so he enters a school for the
gifted and through a series of exams similar to those in Naruto (even being
interrupted by a more serious clash just like Naruto's) proves himself to his
heroes and his former bully.
There are a slew of
anime just like this. A school for the gifted where the sweet-natured,
unassuming one ends up the centre of attention and gains great power to use
against real bad guys can be seen in, for example, Gakuen Alice, Soul Eater and
Mahou Shoujotai Arusu. The basic idea is common in the west too, not only in
X-Men but Monsters' High, Miss Peregrine's, The Incredibles et al. It's all
basically riffing on superhero tropes and there will be thousands more
iterations of the same thing in years to come.
But while HeroAka
treads familiar ground, it does it well. Midoriya is an extremely likeable
protagonist, not only sweet and insecure (and adorable even if everyone keeps
describing him as 'plain') but generous, hard-working and ambitious. It's
interesting that at first he's given a power he can't really control and causes
him great pain, because that opens up dynamics about self-preservation and
sacrifice, though by the end of season 2 Midoriya has moved beyond that.
The supporting cast is
also great. The teachers remind me of Soul Eater's, unhinged and often goofy
but awesome to see in action. There are lots of interesting fellow students,
from major players with daddy issues or anger issues or abandonment issues to
very enteratining ensemble characters like the frog girl or the bird-headed kid
with a shadow beast living inside him.
Compared with other strong Shounen
series, the bad guys are currently a bit lacking. I like the main antagonist’s
design a lot but much of his story arc so far has been about finding his true
purpose, and a villain who lacks a clear purpose is not a very impressive one.
There are other villains here, too, the charismatic and interesting Hero Killer
who sadly pales beside One Punch Man’s treatment of a similar misguided
philosophy, and All For One who so far is just a shadowy figure pulling the
strings with a motive apparently rather like Orochimaru’s in Naruto. There’s a
lot of potential for the main villain to become very interesting, but so far it’s
only potential. Then again, HunterxHunter, Naruto and Soul Eater were slow in
revealing their primary antagonists, and D. Gray-Man waited a very long time to
add nuance to theirs so I can see him getting depth later. If mangaka Horikoshi
Kouhei fails to deliver on that front, though, it will be a major letdown.
Nothing here is
groundbreaking, but the best shounen series seldom are. We've had pirate stories
and ninja stories and stories about Son Goku before, but the best Jump series
make those familiar storytelling realms their own in quirky, inventive ways.
The same can be said for Boku no Hero Academia, and it's hard not to root for
lil' Midoriya-shounen, whether he's getting all determined, fighting down tears
or reaching out to someone in need.
As for that weird
character design that got me so hung up at the start, well, I guess in the
anime it just about works. Just about.
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