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Let me start off this review by saying, I LOVED episode 1 of this series, when I watched it I felt like I'd been sucked into a world of wonder and imagination and I was in love, I felt like I'd discovered a gem that had insane amounts of potential, I told everyone I knew to watch this series, I LOVED the unique art style and the depiction of passion and everything about it. When episode 2 finally came around however, I was met with disappointment.

I still liked episode 2, but it didn't have the same spark as episode 1, it felt more... dull somehow, ... and episode 3 was even worse, after the initial awe wore off, all I felt while switching on a new Eizouken episode was boredom, it felt like a chore. Episode 4 was an improvement, due to its tenser plot and pace, but episode 5 and 6 went back to being dull.

And that is the root of my problem with Eizouken, it's boring.

I loved the creative "losing reality and getting lost into imagination" scenes at first but eventually, they just got annoying and tiring and repetitive as well.

I think the reason I ended up finding Eizouken so boring is because the plot and characters are BOTH dull. The plot is fairly relaxed and slice of life-ish, and this would be fine and entertaining if the characters had any actual life, any personality, but the don't. The characters are one dimensional as hell and have a single personality trait, this combined with the relaxed, eventless plot is what made this boring in my opinion. There's just nothing entertaining there. It's also why episode 4 was good, it had actual stakes and a feel of tenseness regarding the plot, which made up for the bland characters.

As for why I enjoyed episode 1, everything was so new and fresh and unique then, but past episode 1, when the show didn't evolve, when the characters didn't show any new personality traits, it just become stale.

Keep in mind that I don't think Eizouken is a bad show, just mediocre and forgettable. There are good things about it, as I mentioned before, I like the exploration of passion through the characters of Asakusa and Mizusaki, I love the art and animation style, it's very unique, cool and memorable, and the opening is an absolute banger.

I'm just tired of forcing myself to watch every new episode however, because this series doesn't entertain me in the slightest. So I'm dropping it.

My Hero Academia is currently one of the most popular anime and manga out there for quite a few reasons; it's simple, it's rather black and white conflict, story and characters which we've seen a million times before is easy to understand and works somewhat like a popcorn flick - you open it up, stare blankly at the page, enjoy whatever flashy action sequence is going on, and say "Yeah, it was fun." Considering how westernized and inspired by western superhero comics it is, it also makes quite the perfect gateway into anime.

You can probably guess from my score that I'm not going to have ... very many positive words about this particular anime, but, I do want to preface this by say I understand My Hero Academia's appeal, the characters all have a quirky trait which makes them likable to people, flashy fight scenes, the classic story of the "underdog" achieving great things, it all makes up a safe and relatively enjoyable experience. Now, with that out of the way, let's get into the review.

One of the things fans of this series claim, is that it executes it's cliche premises and ideas well, that it takes these shounen tropes we've seen so many times in works such as Naruto, and polishes them, this is possibly the biggest "selling point" I've seen marketed by fans of the series, however, I have one problem with this argument.... in what way does it execute them any differently than every other shounen? Some may argue that Deku had to work hard to control his power, but so did every other shounen protagonist, Luffy trained hard to make his devil fruit ability strong, Naruto trained hard to control the nine tailed fox, Gon trained hard to utilize and polish his natural talent. All of these protagonist have something granted to them out of luck, for Izuku it's his extremely powerful quirk, for Luffy it's his devil fruit, for Naruto it's his nine tailed fox and for Gon it's his natural talent, and ALL of these characters train to utilize their abilites, this was never something unique to Izuku.

Besides this argument, to this day, I still haven't seen anyone provide a proper example on why MHA's execution of these cliches stands out in any way.

Overall, the story is just copypasted from every shounen ever, with absolutely nothing to set it apart. Hell, I'd argue that it's story is worse than your average shounen, it never deviates from it's formula of training arc -> tournament arc -> training arc -> tournament arc, with some failed attacks from villains sprinkled in. This sort of format is okay for sports manga, since training and tournaments are the entire point of the story, but for a battle shounen? There are many interesting ways to toy with the formula instead of recycling the same thing over and over because it sells.

Now, speaking of the villains, let's move onto the characters. The League of Villains are - again, worse villains than that of your average shounen, they genuinely have no motivation other than that they want to be more evil and villainous, the villains as characters are flat, one dimensional, and barely have any character traits to set them apart, some villains, like Gentle and even Stain were actually decent, but when it comes to the main villains? One for All and Shigaraki? They almost have nothing that even makes them characters, no motivation, no backstory, no personality, they're the embodiment of evil for the sake of evil. Evil for the sake of evil isn't even necessarily bad, Hisoka from Hunter x Hunter is a great villain despite being just that, and what makes Hisoka good unlike characters like Shigaraki and OFA? He has charisma and presence, he has tons of personality and is an enjoyable wild card, these are all things that the League of Villains lack, Shigaraki especially is absolutely pathetic.

As for the main characters, they aren't any better than the villains, Izuku follows the extremely overused and boring underdog to badass storyline with the execution just as cliche as the arc itself. This trope isn't even necessarily bad, to point to an example of it done right, Hajime Hinata from Danganronpa 2 went through the same arc, but what made his arc interesting is that he didn't receive a lucky quirk to set him on his journey to become a gary stu, he willingly gave himself up for human experimentation, his memories, personalities, thoughts, all of it was stripped away to due to his own unsatisfaction with himself. THIS is what I call good execution of a cliche character arc. Izuku's arc was played completely straight and by this point, he's just a gary stu. He has 7 quirks, has good control over All for One, we know he'll become the number 1 hero, everyone loves him, even the villains fixate on him or begrudingly respect him. He's a boring, badly developed character.

Side characters like Iida, Bakugou and Todoroki are poorly done as well. Bakugou has absolutely no reason to develop an inferiority complex when he did, he definitely has good reason now, but back when they were kids, Izuku was quirkless, weak, didn't even try to make up for his lack of a quirk, he had more reason to be insecure of his other lackeys than Deku. Bakugou is also annoying as hell, he's the complete opposite of entertaining. His relationship with Kirishima is half baked and the very example of telling and not showing, we got what? One interaction between them before Kirishima rescued him? But since Deku exposited how close they were despite the fact we were never shown them being close, we have to take his word for it.

Iida's "arc" in the Stain arc can't even be considered one, he tries to get revenge after almost losing his brother but this entire arc has no longterm effects on his character or psyche, it's almost like it never existed, he's also a bland, boring character who I forget is there half the time. Todoroki's abuse subplot was poorly handled and rushed, his reaction to Endeavor's abuse is unrealistic, and he gets over it like nothing happened, it has no longterm effects on his psyche just like the Stain arc didn't for Iida and gets along with the others just fine. Every other character is completely one dimensional with a single defining trait. Uraraka is the only character I even came close to liking in this entire manga.

MHA's battles are one of the worst parts of the series, a good fight must have two elements to make it... well, good. A) the fight itself - the mechanics, strategy, layout and everything technical about it and B) the emotional core. MHA attempts only one of these, and fails at both. All of MHA's fights lack any sort of competence in the technical aspects to the point you can see the author doesn't care about it, Deku vs Todoroki is a prime example of this, the fight itself is incredibly poor, it's just a reptitive and non stop barrage of Todoroki hitting Deku with ice attacks and Deku knocking him back, it's clearly bad. As for the emotional aspect, it feels extremely contrived, like it's trying way too hard to make you sad. MHA's thing is to jump from one hype emotional moment to the other, leaving empty spaces of nothingness in between. As for an example of a fight I'd say does both aspects of a good fight well - Gon vs Hisoka from Hunter x Hunter. It's a strategic, tight and well paced fight. It doesn't need contrived stuff to build an artifical emotional core like dramatic flashbacks, or angsty inner monologues like MHA to make it strong, the body language and fighting style of Gon and Hisoka conveys all the emotion it needs to, making the fight seem filled with personality.

Now, as for MHA's positive. The art is pretty good, the panelling is competent, the fight scenes are rather clear and the art looks detailed and good.

And that wraps up this review. I find MHA to be a below average shounen which is not worth it.

A great set up for the rest of the series, it starts off slow but slowly builds up momentum and becomes more and more intriguing, which leads to an amazing and quite terrifying climax.

Characters-

The characters are set up pretty well too, Battler is an entertaining and endearing protagonist right off the bat and you truly feel for him during certain moments in the story, he's just so fun and likable you can't help but root for him to survive against all odds and be excited to follow this journey with him. Maria is quite creepy yet sad, she can certainly be annoying but it's ... obvious after a while everything is just a coping mechanism to deal with the pain she has to go through, she's a very well written character.

Jessica is also likable but I can't say she was one of my favorites at all during episode 1, she was alright in this episode. George was instantly suspicious to me, I was pretty much convinced he was the killer and was manipulating and tricking Maria into murder, he just felt too perfect to the point he was shady, and it constantly being mentioned that he was good with kids heightened my suspicions of him.

Natsuhi's character was very well expanded upon, not too much, just enough to get us interested in her and leave space for her to be truly fleshed out in the excellent episode 5 - which just so happens to be my favorite episode. As for the rest, some highlights were how Eva was introduced as this total cunt but got a real nice humanizing moment with Hideyoshi which really made her likable and interesting, and just Shannon and Kanon in general and the mystery behind their identities as furniture and why and what furniture meant and why they had to be so? (This is a mystery I'm just starting to figure out actually)

Story and Atmosphere-

This is probably the weakest episode out of what I've read up to in terms of story, the beginning parts were truly sometimes frustrating to get through, but at the same time, they were effective and important, you really realize the amount of importance and foreshadowing it contains on a reread after you reach a certain level of the truth behind Beatrice.

However, I very much enjoyed the latter half of the episode and the way the tension was built up had me biting down on my lip in anticipation, it was incredibly compelling and well done, the ending didn't fail to give me chills and at the moment the ending credits rolled, I was fully invested in Umineko and beyond ready to go on the currently 6 month journey of reading I'm on.

Overall, I very much enjoyed this episode despite it being my least favorite, it was a great introduction and was effective at getting me hooked.