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Hero Academia's poor character development has ruined an otherwise engaging story.

If you enjoyed the first 2 seasons in spite of a few absurd story arcs and silly character development, and you're willing to overlook poorly thought out character motivations for the sake of grand themes of heroism then you might be able to enjoy and even fully embrace season 3. I disliked the nonsensical villain motivations in Season 2 and I feel that their motivations seem to make even less sense in Season 3.

Since Season 2, we have seen that most of Hero Academia's villains want to kill All Might because he happens to ... be the so called "symbol of peace". Why would any villain want to kill the "symbol of peace"? According to Hero Academia, villains want to kill the symbol of peace because they want to deprive Japanese citizens of the hope that any hero can save them from any kind of danger at any moment in time. By the way, we don't really know if any country other than Japan actually exists in this fictional superhero and that just makes suspending one's disbelieve a little harder needs to be.

How exactly does a villain materially or emotionally benefit from depriving people of the hope that All Might or any other hero can save them at any point in time? How does killing All Might or any of the students of UA high satisfy a villain's emotional or physical needs? None of these important thematic questions are ever answered. The sad fact is that almost all of the villains have motives that conveniently push the plot forward and create some much needed suspense and tension. But in their attempt to kill All Might and UA students, the villains have sacrificed their physical well-being and their emotional needs. It makes no sense for villains to have motivations that don't personally benefit them in any imaginable way.

In real life or in stories that have realistic characters, villains have one of the following motivations; greed, curiosity, a lust for power, a desire for revenge, spiteful envy or a desire for dangerous fun. Is it possible to write villains who want to kill All Might or the students of UA High for realistic reasons? Of course it is, but it's generally easier to write villains who exist for the sole purpose of perpetuating a poorly conceived storyline. Made in Abyss and Kokkoku both have villains with interesting and unique motivations that actually make sense. You can check out my reviews for those two anime.

I recommend watching the first seasons of both of those anime rather than watching the 3rd season of Hero Academia, unless you like Hero Academia's world building and you want to find out how the story's going to end. You can watch this shipwreck to the very end, but I'm jumping ship with what's left of my sanity.

Now back to my review. The only one or two villains in Hero Academia have a somewhat realistic motivations and they're just minor characters who get as little screen time as possible. The villain I liked, fights for fun and his goals occasionally conflict with the goals of the Villain Vanguard. He's like a less interesting version of Bleach's Kenpachi. This is actually the least disappointing aspect of Season 3's storyline.

To get to the heart of the problem of villain motivations, we need to examine Hero Academia's most important villain: Stain. In Season 2, we were introduced to a villain called Stain. The extent to which you like Stain's character development will determine the extent to which you will enjoy watching Season 3. If you love Stain then you will love Season 3. If you hated Stain then you will hate Season 3. If you felt ambivalent about Stain's character then you will feel ambivalent about Season 3's storyline.

Villain motivations is just one of the fundamental problems that plague Hero Academia's storyline, but I think the single biggest problem: is Stain's character development. First of all, Stain has no backstory in the anime nor does he have a backstory in the manga. Why exactly Stain set out to kill licensed heroes he thought were fake heroes with ill motives remains a mystery. Season 3 expects us to believe that lots of villains were inspired by Stain's actions, which makes no sense because that implies that lots of villains actually care about the heroic qualities of Japan's heroes. By definition, the word "villain" implies that one has a selfish and self-centered worldview. To truly be worthy of the title of "villain" one's priority should be one's personal well-being not someone else' heroic qualities. You cannot be a "villain" if you selflessly want to better society by purging it of incompetent and ill intentioned heroes. If you had Stain's motivation, then you would feel deeply insulted by the idea of being called a "villain" and you would never associate yourself with someone called a villain. Anyone who claims to be motivated by Stain's ideology would never to call themselves a villain or even allow themselves to be within spitting distance of anyone who happens to have villainous intentions. Horikoshi, Hero Academia's creator, has never described Stain as a misunderstood vigilante and that makes the fact that he inspires individuals who openly describe themselves as villains even more confusing.

Horikoshi also does a piss poor job of convincing us, the viewers, that any so called villain who believes in Stain's incoherent ideology has an emotional makeup that makes even a lick of sense. Humans can have irrational motivations, but even irrational motives make some kind of sense to those who hold such motives. Terrorists and suicidal cult members, however bizarre their motivations may seem to the average person; can easily articulate or demonstrate the motives behind their actions. The same cannot be said for anyone of the villains in Hero Academia.

The other problems that plague Hero Academia's storyline and character development include; Deku's and other important heroes' increasingly powerful plot armor, the nonsensical rules that hero students are forced to abide by for the sake of maintaining some semblance of tension or drama in the story's overall plot, and the subtle but pernicious sexism that undermines some of the series best story arcs.

Since Deku mastered the One for All quirk in Season 2, he has not encountered a villain or obstacle he could not physically or emotionally overcome. Not only does this plot point suck away all the drama and tension we enjoyed at the beginning of series, it also makes the overall plot a bit too easy to follow.

And any hope we had for some dramatic tension later on in the story was crushed by the fact that Hero Academia's plot armor not only protects Deku from being killed, but also prevents him from experiencing any kind of emotional suffering. Since he mastered his quirk, he has not lost a single fight to a villain. If he lost a few fights to some villains once in a while, the story would be a lot more interesting and exciting. Deku's ever growing plot armor makes the story monotonous and predictable.

Now it's time to get into what might be the most controversial part of my review: Hero Academia's pervasive and pointless sexism. There are 3 main problems with the way women are portrayed in Hero Academia. The first of which is the fact that no matter how hard superheroines work, they never achieve as much as their male counterparts even when they have superior quirks. Momo is a great example of this. Her quirk is incredibly powerful and she should be the number 1 student at UA high based on her grades and her masterful control her of work. But Horikoshi never let's her unleash her true potential. There are so many so many things she do with her powers that series never even hints at. She could spawn grenades, heat seeking missiles, ultrasonic guns, tear gas and any number of incredibly useful tools from her flesh. But Horikoshi paints her as a surprisingly unremarkable superheroine with the emotional weaknesses of a stereotypical Japanese girl.

Since Season 2, Momo has not come any closer to being UA's best student despite her amazing potential. Like a lot of female characters in Hero Academia, she lacks self-confidence and believes that she cannot make important life decisions without the emotional support of a man. In Season 3, Momo is relegated to the role of a mildly interesting side character and it's up to the toughest male characters to almost singlehandedly save the day.

Secondly, women are consistently portrayed as being less motivated and less hard working than men for no other reason than the fact they are women. Even if we suppose that women in real-life Japan don't work as hard as men even when they are exceptionally talented, this series forces all it's female characters to never even attempt to push beyond the artificial physical and emotional limits they place upon themselves. It's fine if one female characters fits a certain gender stereotype, but a story in which all female characters suffer from the same female problems is not only less realistic, but also less fun to watch. The 1st episode of Season 3 portrays all the female characters as lazy fun lovers, but portrays men as hardworking and dedicated to their training as heroes. Someone will argue that female social pressure makes the ladies less motivated and a little more relaxed, but that makes no sense in the context of a dangerous and life-threatening school environment where students are attacked by powerful villains on a regular basis. The terrifying prospect of being killed by a villain should be enough motivation to keep any student on their toes regardless of their gender.

And lastly, too many female characters seem to lack self-confidence simply because their women. There are no men in Hero Academia who lack self-confidence and that's really suspicious. Even Mineta, one of the weakest quirk holders and arguably the least motivated male character, never experiences a crisis of confidence or a moment of doubt. He never even considers quitting UA High. In this series women are less self-confident, regardless of how powerful their quirk is, simply because they're women. There is a difference between revealing gender stereotypes and reinforcing them. Hero Academia wholeheartedly indulges in gender stereotypes that weaken the impact of the story. If any of the male heroes questioned their abilities as heroes or decision makers, the story would be more interesting and engaging. What if Deku experienced a crisis in self-confidence? Wouldn't that be fun to watch? Or are all men immune to the emotional suffering that plagues female characters? The fact that men never hesitate or falter in this series, makes Hero Academia feel like a silly power fantasy written by a man for men.

Whether or not you're convinced that Hero Academia's veneer of thematic depth makes it the greatest shonen anime ever written, at some point in Season 3 you're going to feel the crushing weight of all the story problems I've just described.

A SERIOUSLY UNDERRATED AND DEEPLY MISUNDERSTOOD ANIME.

I'm going to have to sucker punch you and give a simultaneously review of Stein's Gate and Kokkoku. Beware of the reviewer who said he was disappointed by Kokkoku, after watching Stein Gate. Stein Gate's characters are all 1-dimensional caricatures, unlike Kokkoku's characters, almost all of whom, act like real human beings and hold conflicting emotions and desires which make them feel like 3-dimensional people.

The family we see kidnapped by a religious cult in Kokkoku feels like a real-life Japanese family. If you prefer funny, unpredictable, and absurd characters rather than realistic human beings, then Kokkoku ... is not for you.

And if you want to laugh at how pathetic and silly the cast of characters are then Kokkoku is definitely not for you. Kokkoku's narrative psychologically compels you to empathize with all its characters no matter how villainous they are.

Another reviewer complained about the tonal shifts. Yes, Kokkoku has almost random tonal shifts that mostly stem from the behavior of one specific character: the pompous father who mistakenly believes in his own "heroics". Tonal shifts actually happen in real life, imagine you are drinking and laughing with your friends and all of a sudden you receive a phone call from a hospital saying that one of your relatives has been hospitalized. The tonal shifts in Kokkoku make the characters feel more realistic. I think any reviewer who complains about the tonal shifts, simply doesn't know what aspect of Kokkoku's story or characters that they really dislike and are just pointing out the show's most salient (obvious) qualities.

Complaining about any anime's tonal shifts is like watching the transformer movies and complaining about the excessive number of explosions or the occassional racist scene while ignoring the movie series' awful and somewhat boring story. Beware of superficial observations masquerading as meaningful critiques.

Kokkoku's 2 biggest weaknesses are how it develops the personality and motivation of its cult leader and all the other members of the religious cult. Kokkoku's writer, Seita Horio, has clearly made no effort to actually research the motivations of people who join cults, and he shows a half-assed job at showing the consequences of inherting the position of cult leader. That's why I gave Kokkoku 7 instead of 10 for its charachers. But I'm probably being generous since I like the show's premise.

Watch any documentary about religious cults, or read any book on the subject of religious cults, and you will see that people always join new cults for selfish reasons. The dymanics of Kokkoku's religious cult, "the Genuine Love Society" are absurd and simply impossible. The psychopathic behavior exhibited by the members of the Genuine Love Society toward the family harboring time control stones, contradicts their obviously benign goal of saving humanity. This contradiction is never explained and I think it should be explained because real human beings have real reasons, however illogical or irrational, for having conflicting motivations and desires. There is a logic to everything we do, even if that logic is impenetrable.

Throughout the first 11 episodes, there is just no reason at all for the Genuine Love Society to harbor any hatred toward the family they eventually attack. I haven't read the manga so I cannot say if it takes a different approach to developing the religious cult in the manga.

And the cult leader is just a hot mess of characterization. Unfortunately the writer, or maybe just the creators of the anime, genuinely believe the silly rationalizations the cult leader uses to justify his murderous and psythopathic tendencies. Religious cults are more than just a sexy storytelling tool... they are a serious social problem even in modern Japan.

I expect the following season to be far worse because of the cult leader's characterization and back story, but so far so good.

Story - 9 (NOT a children's story, but having children as its main characters makes lot of sense since the story is about wonder and curiosity, the kind of qualities every child possesses).

Art - 9 (original and eye-catching)

Sound - 7 (it blends well into the story without bringing attention to itself)

Character - 8 (the story's main villain is more interesting than every other character and I think he will have to carry the whole story's momentum in Season 2)

Enjoyment - 10 (the suspense and drama will glue you to the screen)

... Overal - 9

The Review: A Dark Tale about human curiosity and the will to live.

With intricate world-building and stunning animation, Made in Abyss takes you into a dark unforgiving world. Adventurers, called divers, travel deep into an enormous and mysterious hole that lies in the middle of a beautiful far reaching land. This gigantic, seemingly bottomless hole, is referred to as the 'abyss' by the residents of the city it has spawned on the edges of its outer rim.

Divers often bring back precious artifacts, the sales of which have led to the development of a small city called Orth that surrounds abyss' rim. The city's technology can be best described as "pre-modern". As the story develops, we learn more about the mysterious technologies developed within the abyss itself. This new technology is woven into the fabric of the narrative in an engaging and unexpected way.

The protagonists of the story, an amnesic 'robot' called Ren and an orphan called Riko, are easy to empathize with. At first, Riko's curiosity and ambition, seem like life-threatening qualities in a world as dangerous as the one she and the citizens of Orth inhabit. But we soon realize that Riko's emotional make-up reveals something profound about the human desire to explore.

The mysteries that lie within the abyss are both haunting and revealing. Made in Abyss explores aspects of the human condition most anime rarely touch upon. In Made in Abyss, human curiosity is a double edged sword that brings great happiness and great misery to those who dare to travel where no one has ever gone before.

The dangerous and life-altering powers of the abyss may or not be fully explored in Season 2 and that's why I think Season 2 will make or break this anime. If you're like me you will struggle to figure out whether or not the abyss' properties are entirely scientific or partly magical in nature. This might be important in season 2, because magic as portrayed in most anime or Japanese manga is something that can be tamed or controlled to some degree. Whereas biology, especially from a Japanese point of view (just look at Japanese race & gender theories), is set in stone.

Whether or not Reg is a pure robot made of nothing but steel and plastic or if he is a cyborg that was once a boy who had a life and family, will determine how good Season 2's story is going to be. If Reg is nothing but metal, then his creator will suddenly become an important aspect of the story and it will be a huge letdown, at least for some of us, if his creator's identity remains a mystery in Season 2. If Reg once had a family, then they will need a backstory like every other character in the series thus far.

Season 2 will make or break this anime and will determine whether or not it will reach the status of "all time classic".