Boku no Hero Academia
My Hero Academia

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My overall feelings with this are as follow: this is a good shounen. Sounds simple, and that's because it is! I'd put this at the same level as something like Naruto, and that's because they both make the same mistakes, as well as have the same strong points. If you like shounens, read this. If you are looking for something to surprise you, this might just do the trick. I'm not a fan of shounens, and I enjoyed my time with this regardless, don't underestimate it!
If you care at all about any more of an in-depth take, here goes (beware for very minor spoilers).

Strong premise ... to start it off, well paced action, my only real complaint about the first half of the series is the bad quality comedy. Especially at around volume 15, the manga drops in quality a LOT. The Gentle Criminal arc and everything prior to that is quite bad.
But luckily, as the mangaka figures out how he wants to close things out, the quality SKYROCKETS for the final couple arcs.

The villain focused arc is where he manages to reignite that spark that drives the series, although I'm not a fan of the tsundere girl, Twice has got to be the best character in the entire manga. Not only does he bring a style of comedy that fits the theme (a la Deadpool), he has a SUPER dark backstory that also fits perfectly with the entire mood switch! This encompasses the entire villain arc and closure to it, as well as the Shigaraki family arc, focused on Endeavor and Hawkeye.

All I have left to mention is the art. This guy is a fucking GENIUS. I don't think it's quite as complex as something like Berserk or Vagabond, but the fact that he's managing to pull off some of these spreads in a WEEKLY SHONEN is completely nuts. It's hard to convey how surprised I was when turning pages and noticing how good and gritty the artwork is. Bravo! In fact, the mangaka uses this change of artstyle in a very deliberate way, and it elevates moments of tension as well as action focused shots.


Some more specific nitpicks:

- There's a couple "heat of the moment" plot points, but this is a shounen, so you have to take that for granted.

- The main cast is quite unlikeable. That is, apart from Todoroki, who is the only enigmatic guy that gets a very good development arc. Our protagonist, together with everyone else, feels very one-dimensional and static. It's kind of ironic how much better the manga becomes when it's NOT about the main cast of characters lol.

- Eri's power is like a wildcard that the mangaka can end up using however he wants to make the manga unpredictable in a cheap way. I'm kind of opposed to it, but he didnt overuse it so it's fine.

- As cool as Star and Stripes is, she comes outta nowhere and feels to me like a big ripple issue stemming from how underutilised the global worldview is. Setting your fantasy shounen manga in the real world presents some real diffculties that are rarely dealt with correctly. In fact, this exact same thing happens in JJK!

- Something interesting to mention is how the anime completely butchers the source material. I had a pretty bad opinion of MHA which I now realise originates from the anime.
It's all in the details. The anime loses all that makes the manga feel cool, such as gritty art or fucked up scenes, and even things like pacing feel slow and tedious. As an example, the small reminders the manga does with character names + quirks are small and painless, but in the anime they are intrusive and eye catching. The animation is also quite subpar, which I noticed is a very weird pattern in anime adaptations, that I'd like to touch upon some other time.

- There's some chapters around the end that feel very rushed and underworked, but it's a very small number in comparison with how long the manga is.
Compared to other mangas that commit this crime ALL throughout, this is not that bad IMO. I guess you really do get quality stuff when your team consists of 6 assistants huh...


Overall, this feels like manga made by a manga reader. This is the case with a lot of mangakas, but in this case it really feels like he knows what shounen readers like to see. Which yea, if you like shounens, this is just right for you.

With all that said, I'm REALLY looking forward to his next work, but I hope he decides on a change of genre. I think he's very proficient at making dark and gritty works, as those are the best parts to come out of this story, and he could definitely cook up something amazing if he decides to embrace that!

7.5

I loved this manga so so much while it was being published. It was an amazing distractor for the dark times of 2020 and 2021, all until Stars and Stripes showed up I think. And then the non time-skip happened (it was way to damn short to be called a time-skip imo) and the story lost me almost completely. Ever since the time-skip reading this story felt like a chore more than an enjoyable thing like before.

I have my gripes with this story, a bunch of them really. The way the author decided to progress the story truly disappointed me. At the beginning it ... seemed to be such an amazing story with mysteries and complicated relationships, I got so much hype on so many things; being hinted that maybe there was a weird reason why Deku was quirkless, All For One and One For All beginnings, Deku's father, his relationship with Uraraka, his friendship with Ida, the frenemies relationship with Bakugo... and so many more things I cannot remember rn, all went nowhere except for maybe his relationship with Bakugo; and by the end it was generic boring shonen bs full of ass-pulls. Man it was hard reading the last arch.

Still, the first half is an amazing read that I truly recommend and I bet some people may enjoy it 'till the very end even if I and many others didn't.

How can I start, it is a typical action-adventure shonen, that starts showing us a world that is not usually seen in animes, which I liked, however, the story is very childish and does not bring any emotion to the reader, though the artist tried to spicy it up on the last few volumes, it was not enough to make it a good story. But the worst part is the end, I do not wish to spoiler, but as someone who grew up watching BNH, I'm afraid to say that I'm more disappointed with this end than with Fairy Tail end, the character development is ... null, the story premise is not fulfilled, we got nothing to bring joy to the fans if you are someone who is watching the anime and is coming to the manga, my recommendation is for you to drop it, do not spend you time watching something that will finish leaving a bad taste on your mouth. There are many good shows out there, but this is not one of them.