Boku no Hero Academia the Movie 4: You're Next

Recommended - with caveats.

The 4th, and possibly final My Hero Academia film asks an interesting question - what if someone with twisted ideals felt the calling to fill the void All Might left behind? A man who mysteriously looks like All Might appears in Japan with an entourage of powerful sidekicks and a fancy flying ship, declares to the world he will take up his mantle, and things kick off from there.

What follows is what we've come to expect from MHA movies - Class 1A & company taking on a villain with world-ending calamitous powers not seen before. We also get two new movie-only allies ... - Anna, our damsel in distress, and Giulio, her loyal butler and protector, on a mission to save her, for better or worse.

This film is almost two hours long but has a lot going for it if you're a fan of classic MHA character dynamics and action. Taking place in the throes of season 6, Japan is already a disaster zone, so any more destruction might as well be a drop in the bucket. Despite that, the film does a good job balancing bombastic fight sequences with a meaningful story - as meaningful as a story that can't affect the anime timeline can be, anyway.

Where the 2nd and 3rd films struggled to find this zen, "You're Next" feels more akin to "Two Heroes", the 1st film that came at what was likely the peak of MHA fandom, and is still arguably the best of the four.

While there is certainly exhaustion and weariness over MHA as its manga has ended with mixed opinions, if you still like the characters and the universe of MHA, there's enough here for fans - and possibly former fans - to entertain for its nearly 2 hour runtime. Otherwise, I don't think there is much here for anyone else, as the film isn't deep or nuanced enough to stand on its own. Not that it had to, but it does accomplish what it set out to do and land on its two feet in the end on an emotional high.

A shounen movie that has to exist between the pages of its parent story can only accomplish so much. There is certainly some missed potential here, but only for those reasons. The film plays to its strengths and has fun with its premise. For that, it deserves credit.

I don't think this review has spoilers, but I do mention why I think the plot was dumb in various ways. I don't specify any events or characters, so I don't think you'll be spoiled, but read with that In mind.

Frankly I dropped MHA after finishing the 5th season, so a lot was new to me when watching this movie. However, I don't think that affects my evaluation very much.

The only good thing about the movie was the animation, which was really good and why I gave this movie a 7 overall. The story was pretty garbage in my opinion. The idea of a new ... All Might was quite interesting, which is why I decided to give the movie a watch. This new "All Might" had an insane quirk that could quite literally control the whole world, but just chose to not use it other than to mess around for fun. I can't say too much without spoiling a lot, but essentially the entire plot would not have even been able to happen had one character used their brain. This character basically resolved the conflict by doing something that they had the ability to do since over (what I perceive to have been, the exact time wasn't specified) a decade ago and prevented everything. Yes, this character quite literally had that entire time to do something that would have taken less than a minute, and none of this would have happened. It really was so stupid and if you watch the movie, you'll definitely know what I mean.

It's MHA, so we don't really expect a mind blowing story, but this really was just a classic "villain gains world-ending strength but trolls, then heroes come and fight and win because someone realises they had the solution the entire time and everyone cheers even though the city is in ruins". The ending was also gone through very quickly relative to the rest of the movie.

This is the worst of the MHA movies released to date... because it lacks the core component that makes MHA so enjoyable, HEART. The villain has a (semi) solid foundation to build upon and is a cool story trope, but they fail to develop him in any meaningful way. "You're Next" is one of those strange movies where there is no protagonist or really a main character. If the story were well-crafted and split the "main character energy" elegantly among the large cast then it wouldn't be an issue. But it isn't well-crafted and there isn't any heart, soul swelling, or ... even minorly impactful emotional moments.

Fact is the writers changed nothing, taught nothing, reused everything, conveyed no emotion, overused heartstring tropes, and it was so *mid* or low'ish tier that people in the theater were laughing at the movie. That's NOT good but was appropriate. This isn't a terrible movie, it's just well below average and a failure of writing. When your "best" OH HELL YES moments have the theater occupants shaking their heads and chuckling instead of being teary eyed or wanting to roar there is a problem.

Animation was solid with a few sub-par moments but mostly high quality to expectations, music was good, dubbed voice acting was great, costume design was good, settings / backgrounds were varied and detailed, bad guys with average --> good quirks explored decently, it was a movie made well and written poorly.

To give it a fair assessment my next viewing will be subbed, but I don't have any hope really of it being worth the experience...

Should you see it? Sure if you have been excited for it (I sure was). Go in thinking the movie will be terrible, just completely bad, and then maybe you'll leave saying "Hey I liked that, not terrible!".