[Destor]

My Hero Academia: World Heroes' Mission -7/10

The first 2 MHA films were generic and soulless. This marks the first good MHA film. The series is an easy 10 but the films have 5s at best. Its because of one central failure: the films have been typical shonen and MHA goes far far beyond Shonen.

Standard Shonen is most typically represented in franchises like Dragon Ball and One Piece. They portray heroism as power. Goku becomes a better hero, and saves the day, by finding new skills that allow him to overcome his adversaries by force.

MHA challenges the Shonen tropes at their core and instead says power is not what heroism is. It is instead more akin to reciprocity. Selflessness. Sacrifice. Determination. Compassion. Relentless desire to achieve a goal not for yourself or your loved ones but for all. Because. Simply because. Because right and wrong exist and so does good and evil and I've chosen a side.

This is illustrated in many ways throughout the run of the series but no more clearly than the iconic chracter All Might, the single best representation of a hero since Superman.

All Might is, like the name suggest, mighty. And beyond all. His powers are all brawn all the time. But that has nothing to do with what makes him the greatest Hero in over 7 decades. His herodom comes in the form of inspiration. Through his will and endless fighting spirit he inspires others to be better.

The previous films were Shonen. This film finally taps in the soul of what a MHA story is made of and for the first time delivers something that resembles the high notes of what is the best ongoing anime today and what will hopefully end up being the best "shonen" ever made.

Is it as good as the shows highs? No. Not at all. But it holds it's head high all the same.

The animation deserves criticism here though. Its an industry standard now by mapping traditionally animated 2D characters onto digital 3d background and it is excessively done here; several sequences are very ugly to look at. 2 scenes they digital camera work is particularly awful. The 2 in particular being some of the most difficult to follow sequences ive ever seen.

The action in these films always seems pointless because theyre noncanon and we know everyone established is safe leaving the fight scenes that arent integral to the climax feeling pointless at best.

All in all though i think this film has a ton of heart and the new character really had an outstanding arc, im very happy it finally released physically after nearly a year of waiting.

This feels like a perfect time to post my sig