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One of the things I enjoy about manga is the ability of a writer to imagine a completely unique and insane scenario that I couldn't have come up with on my own. The problem is, after reading a lot of them, patterns start to emerge, and that feeling of genuinely encountering a premise so insane you have to stop and appreciate the absurdity becomes harder to come across.
I'm glad to announce that each new page of Astro Baby genuinely had me going "What the hell am I reading?" in the best way.
The characters are a combination of human enough for you to empathize with and ... 'anime' enough for you to enjoy watching, the art is beautiful and the story sets up new hooks and questions you want answered as it goes on. There are only 9 chapters out as at the time of this review but I'm writing it to encourage people to give the manga a try. It may not end up being your cup of tea but it's a different enough flavor that it's worth at least trying.

I'm writing this review because I feel the other reviews are doing this manga a disservice. Yes it is an isekai manga and yes it is a baseball manga but I believe it's the best blend of the two possible.
Imagine a fantasy world where every game of baseball is a life and death struggle with everything on the line, where different races make use of their natural abilities to take everything from their enemies on the field: beastmen with overwhelming speed, demons with monstrous physical prowess and dragonkin with impossible visual acuity. If you were to summon a hero to this world you'd need ... the best of the best, and that's exactly who our protagonist is: a one in a million talent who has dedicated his life to baseball is dragged to this world by God with the goal of winning and returning home, he has to pit modern baseball techniques against the residents of his new world.
The art is top tier, the characters feel alive and if you let the story do its thing without prejudice you'll get a nice, entertaining read to keep you busy for a while. It's no Vagabond but it isn't trying to be, it's just a story about a guy who loves baseball sharing it with those around him.

Do not waste your time reading this manwha, everything you need to know is contained in the synopsis. Yes they kill the Demon King, all the hints of future tech in a fantasy world? They mean nothing. Every action they take after killing the Demon King means nothing, the MC undoes it all with time travel in the last two chapters and returns to a ruined earth. There are no cool fights, there's no feeling of progression, nobody develops, the interesting characters (the Hero and Saintess) get killed off less than halfway into the story.
Read something else, do something else, take a nap, this is ... not worth your precious time.

So picture this: You're Japan's greatest hero, your power is fading fast because of the terrible injuries you sustained while fighting your archnemesis while you were at full power. You know he's going to return and you need somebody to pass your powers on to so that they can stop him. Do you choose:

A) One of the top 3 best students in the best hero training school in the country with 17 years of practice handling a high difficulty ability that makes him nearly invincible, the attitude and drive of a professional and a recommendation and combat training from your trusted sidekick who can see ... the future
OR
B) A kid who threw his bag at a villain, ran into danger with no plan whatsoever that you met that day but he said he wanted to be a hero and cried about it despite not even putting in the effort to be physically fit.

If you answered B you have what it takes to be the number 1 hero in Japan according to this manga.

In case you were still unsure from that one example the characters in this are as flat as the paper they're drawn on and act in ways that are beyond my mere mortal understanding.

We have our main character Midoriya "Deku" Izuku a boy who was born without a quirk like around 10% of the total population in the HeroAca world. Instead of choosing to get a normal job he decided that because of a YouTube video he watched when he was like 5 he wanted to be a hero, not just any hero mind you considering all kinds of heroes exist in this world but a hero like All Might, the punchiest , liftiest hero in all of Japan. He plans to accomplish this through a strict regimen of doodling in notebooks while whispering to himself and crying until one of the strongest abilities in the story falls into his lap along with a free mentor character. The story also wants you to believe that Izuku is a very smart boy but it took him until much later in the story to realize that kicking was a thing. He moves the story along by doing nothing at all until the next arc finds him.
The rest of the cast are just as bad going from the background fodder who have like 1 character trait (read literally every U.A student that isn't a main character) to Endeavor the man who mentally scarred every single member of his family but it's cool now because he had an awesome fight scene.
The best character is Shigaraki Tomura the villain that is being built up as Deku's nemesis since he is the only person in the story who learns and develops as it goes on and has a clear motivation.

The setting of HeroAca is as baffling as its cast. Imagine if everyone in the world suddenly got superpowers, for good or bad society as we currently know it is done. Yet in this world the only difference is that there is a new job called "hero". That's it. No different infrastructure to accommodate the different kinds of people that have evolved, no tension from people with bird heads riding the bus with you, everybody is fine with needing a license to use their quirks except for the most extreme villains or unorganized street thugs.
The majority of the story takes place in U.A the hero school the main characters attend yet somehow we've only managed to see 3 senior students. Where the hell is Class 2A? Nobody knows.

The art is great and Horikoshi is a master of character design. The fight scenes are well drawn and if the characters had as much personality as their designs promised this manga would have been excellent.

The story is bland shonen fare and anybody that tells you " but it does shonen better" is wrong. If you like shonen you'll like this ( at least for a while till the inconsistencies and lack of depth get you). There are no surprises, no plot twists worth mentioning. The students go to school and do school stuff, villains do their thing, they fight, students win. Rinse and repeat with differing scale and a different person defeating the villain each arc and congratulations you have the story so far. I can't wait for the arc where the heroes lose, everyone acts sad for a bit and then they come back and win.

Overall it's a mediocre manga with great art, terrible characters with excellent designs and a world with as much depth as that generic fantasy world that every bad Isekai is set in.

I've watched quite a few harem anime in my time and I must say this is one of the most annoying,I'll try to leave spoilers out although since there is basically no story I'm not sure how I could spoil it.

ART:5
The art is pretty average,nothing memorable or different about it,it just gets the job done all the ecchi scenes are censored though so if you plan on watching for that sorry to disappoint you. The fight scenes were okay but nothing spectacular.

SOUND:5 The sound like the rest of the show is average at best,the endings and opening themes are what you would expect from this ... kind of show and none of the background music (honestly I can't even remember if there was any and I just finished it) stuck with me.

CHARACTER:4 When the most compelling character in a show is a horse figure you know there's a serious problem. Every girl in the show exists solely to fall in love with Yamato,their entire character revolves entirely around fighting for his attention,and while I understand that's how most harem anime works this show makes it painful to watch every girl does exactly the same thing,they have no defining traits in fact you could replace them all with stick figures with weapons and the show won't change,well except Miyako and Mayuchhi they at least added to the "story" a bit,side characters are forgettable apart from one or two and the MC himself....wow,just wow not since yuukiteru amano have I seen such concentrated uselessness in one place in a school where everyone is a martial artist he can't even beat the fodder,he says he's a strategist but never uses any I swear there is more strategy in Gurren Lagann than in anything this guy says or does,he doesn't improve in any way

STORY:5 This show had no idea what it wanted to be I've seen shows that delivered a solid viewing experience in less than 12 episodes this is not one of them it starts off as a high school battle anime,tries to be slice of life-ish for a few episodes,flips over to the MC who is just a high school student by the way going on about saving the country (yes the same guy who gets his ass kicked by unarmed fodder while holding an energy sword) and then back to the fighting,the whole thing feels like filler for something there is no seriousness,no conflict (unless you count the girls literally fighting each other while saying Yamato every 2 seconds) and the fact that for some reason highschoolers have powers that are never explained and are stronger than the entire army put together baffles me

ENJOYMENT:5 It had a few funny moments,fans of ecchi will be disapointed,fans of awesome fight scenes don't hold your breath and if you're a fan of ANY type of plot at all you'd get more of that in a bowl of alphabet soup than you will here,if you watch any episode watch the festival episode that was hilarious.

OVERALL:5 Mediocre show,annoying characters,non-existent story (or completely random filler-like story if you will) Don't waste your time on this

P.S That running gag with the darkskin character was offensive as hell.

Watching this anime was painful in so many different ways, it's not all bad though so I'll try my best not to bash it too much...

STORY: The story....this anime is one drawn out lesson of friendship conquers all, so basically expect the basic magical girl formula but with technology and aliens thrown in. The story is so irrelevant that if you watch the episodes where the girls join you could skip to the end and still be able to follow the story. Basically it's power rangers meets the powerpuff girls except less awesome than that sounds and more likely to make you hate your computer/ ... TV screen.
ART: The art is pretty good, the designs for the alone particularly the speaker's final form and the girls' docking transformations were awesome; it has that bright slice of life kind of feel the CG was amazing
SOUND: The sound was pretty much average the opening and ending themes are nothing memorable and the voice actors do their jobs, nothing more, nothing less the background music does a good job of staying in the background.
CHARACTER: I have never hated a group of characters as much as the ones in this anime,the girls are all pallete swaps of each other with one or two character quirks added that attempt to make friends with anything on two legs that they come across. Every single character is an underdeveloped cliché cardboard cutout. The most interesting character was the villain of the series who in my opinion was too good for such a weak show.
ENJOYMENT: There was no joy here only suffering, I fell asleep more times than I could count and developed a newfound respect for the deep characterization and story telling that is power rangers, this show finally made me question my commitment to finish whatever I start and when I found I still had 7 episodes to go I came as close to existential despair as I ever have.
OVERALL: I'm not exactly sure who this anime is for, the bright colors and non-existent story tell me it's for 10 year old girls maybe but the little girl swallowing, universe breaking entity at the end says otherwise, I'm sure somebody in some dark remote corner of the universe will watch this and like it but unless you want to keep being beaten over the head with "friendship conquers all" for 12 episodes watch something else, hell the bad guys are even called the alone so yeah it was pretty bad
P.S: The so called ass-centric ecchi scenes aren't worth it