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Maybe I'm just in a bad mood
Show's predictability is only likeable for 2 and a half episodes. Then I stopped binging
Watch 1 and a half more. Didn't like it more
The "no music allowed because vampires have superhearing" is kind of dumb.
I get authoritarian figures aren't usually logical but Idk... it didn't go anywhere interesting.
Entertainment/art/culture good I guess?
Also why are vampires not making more friends from the warms?
In the first 5 minutes we learned that when warms get bitten they become vampires.
And then we have like 5 seconds of plot where a warm becomes a traitor and serves vampires. And it was cartoony like ... he just want to serve them but not want to/actually become one of them.

This show could use more fun if it doesn't want to be intelligent.

I will go straight to the point and talk about the ending and the latter part of the show. Skip this if you don't want any spoilers.

It feels completely different from anime like eyeshield 21 where it ends earlier than the manga but at where it pays off the major build-up of the story. MC wants to surpass his rival the whole show. He did it. Then it ends. So the ending has a finality to it.

For space brothers, it does resolve hibito's struggles. But it has this kind of lukewarm of an ending where the person who is going to space isn't someone the ... story has been building up to. Vince has no relation with any of the main characters. He barely knows mutta. His astronaut days hadn't been explored. We don't know what happened and what he did during the hard years of waiting. (What about the pain and dedication from people who waited for 10 years to become an astronaut. That has to resonate with Kenji and Nitta, and Eddie right?) And we have to pretend to be excited about watching just another nasa's rocket going to space just because it's an rocket launch (honestly it definitely almost feels like daily life like what eddie's wife thinks) or mutta is in the backup crew.

This could probably have been fixed. (or not) Like showing where Hibito is now, what everyone is striving towards. The launch is not important, but the show failed to recognize it. It felt like stubbornness from the showrunner who envisions a launching scene for an ending. But the main character isn't allowed to be on it due to where the story is at.

This is a slow burned show. It is just as good as its payoffs and its characters. All you want to see is how people can overcome those struggles. But the show in the end focused on an rocket launch that has nothing to do with anything, losing an opportunity to make the final "cue the first opening song" moment inspiring

Why the launch has nothing to do with anything?
I know. Mutta is one of the backup crewmates. But he didn't do anything to make that happen in the last few episodes. It's a result of sprinting through the training arc. Mutta and Vince are supposed to have learned about each other but we don't know what they've learned from each other. Then, here's a launching scene and the song of the first opening. And it ends. It really wasn't that goosebumps inducing.

Mutta didn't do anything to stay a crewmate. He just got back to normal by Hibito's message. It doesn't pay off for his promise to Sharon and Hibito.

Maybe the ending should put the brothers in parallel, showing what Hibito will do. But still, I don't know how the show could've ended in another way. It simply suffered from having to end abruptly because of commercial reasons.

And Eddie's resolve, Sarika's dream, promise to Sharon? all left on an rather unsatisfying note. The last one would've been fine if Mutta's inaction didn't stick out to me like an eyesore.

All in all, the ending/last few episodes struggled to make being an astronaut look inspiring (by showing the pain and dedication of everybody, the wonders of space and wholesomeness of teamwork) like the majority of the show.


The show almost feels like it ends at the scene "Nanba Mutta is the one who has been to moon the most" in the "building a moonbase underwater" arc, or at the "Spacesuit is not our enemy" scene.

If I'm not being fair enough, maybe it's because I knew this is not the ending of the og story. But anyway, I can't unthink that
Still giving this show an eight. Just forgive the last arc

The techniques/tricks/story structure they used were much more interesting before they get old. I can't pinpoint at anything. But maybe the use of flashbacks (things that happened in the past happens again, things said in the past and is said again) parallel frames, or simply the overused original soundtrack. Maybe the lack of interesting use of "camerawork"
The latter part of the show felt carried by writing and staying true to its heart.

(This review only included the first 95 chapters since I decided to drop this manga due the the problems that will be mentioned in this review)

Personally, I have no problems with shonen manga having very common themes like rivalry, friendship and dreams etc. or having sort of childish humor. (If the gag talks more about the character I'll like it anyway.)
Some people like to despise shonen manga, saying something like kiddies shonen blah blah blah but I think there's potential for shonen manga. I love one piece, first part of naruto, dragon ball and hunter x hunter. I think if you tell a story ... well, even when the themes of the story may seem generic, it still can be a great story.
However Hero Academia isn't one of them.

Hero Aca has really good character designs. All characters look unique and match their own personality even when some of them are just background characters.
There is a wide range of characters in the main cast and all of them have interesting supernatural abilities (quirks). Quirks always match one's personality. That makes the characters feel more grounded.
And most of them have likeable and unique personalities that make you side with the characters when shit hits the fan.

However, the greatness of Hero Academia ends right there. (at least for me)

It's just way too spread out on its characters.
It's trying to talk about too many characters without going in depth with any of them except for a few. (Deku, Todoroki and All Might). A lot of the characters(like Ochaco, Eraserhead) can be interesting but none of them had their backstories explained or took a major lead in any of the arcs.

This simplistic characterisation for the main characters can be a great thing for long running shonen series. Main characters don't get fully developed in the early stage of the story so don't end up being static due to the length of the manga and ultimately harm the longevity and the quality of the manga.

Well it works for Hunter X Hunter.
Hunter x Hunter has a similar case before chimera ant arc. It has amazing villains like Hisoka, Phantom Troupe while the main characters have very little backstories but just interesting enough to get you root for them. In Chimera ant arc, Gon took a huge turn with his character and we can still see he's changing and learning more in the future. It isn't like One Piece where the bond between the crew is already so huge after timeskip. It doesn't show anymore about them when they sacrifice for their friends. And the story has been becoming more and more stale. (This can be controversial but hey, that's just my opinion.)

But that doesn't work for Hero Academia.
Villains aren't very well developed in this manga.
Like, their ideals(what exactly they hate about the heroes except they are smiling and can't save everyone), how they come up with their ideals (backstories), what's the relationship among them, those things don't seem very well told.

Main characters aren't as well developed than that in HxH either. In HxH, we've seen a main character went on a big revenge arc. We learned about Kurapika's goal and his way to achieve his goal, and how Gon and his friends react to that. While Gon, Killua and Leorio weren't getting a whole lot of character development. We still have something to think about the characters.
In Hero Aca, we just got a really short revenge arc for Tenya which is way more underwhelming than that in HxH.

You can go for a simplistic characterisation. But you gotta have good villains and one to two good main characters.

Not many shonen manga has truly great villains, but without even well developed main characters, the story just ends up feeling empty.

I don't understand why people hate Naruto with a passion but end up loving this manga. Naruto's part 2 (shippuden) had gone downhill and ninja war arc was shit. But its exam arc was actually good with a range of well defined characters like (nenji, hinata, lee, shikamaru, sakura and naruto himself), and a big interesting overarching plotline.

While some people may claim that Hero Academia's main weakness is its generic story, I tend to disagree. You can have a very generic structured tournament arc but still have a very good story by making the characters interesting. Just having characters with different/opposite personalities clashing each other, seeing them learning from each other and becoming stronger in terms of skills and mentality can be fun as hell like what I've mentioned about Naruto.

Up until chapter 92 in Hero Academia, I still don't see there are many memorable character moments for the characters except Todoroki and All Might. I still hate that the author tried to make the main cast saving the most unlikeable and annoying character in the manga which doesn't build up the emotion at all.

With a lot of similar traits with Naruto's, I just don't see Hero Academia have come close to its predecessor, not to mention having surpassed it. I'm passionate about shonen manga. Maybe I'm just a jaded old man who can't appreciate new shonen. Feel free to discuss with me by leaving comments in my profile if you think I'm wrong.

A rather mature story that's trapped into a juvenile love story between two teenagers.

Characterization is solid. Every character serves their purpose.
Plot is about the main character travel in his past lives and every life is an entirely different arc. So it provides a way to have different kinds of narratives in a same story while it's not jarring. The manga artist managed to make almost every story (except the transsexual one which is fairly simple) emotional and memorable.

However the main storyline doesn't appeal to me a lot as it traps other pretty good individual stories into an abusive relationship between two middle schoolers. It ... feels like I was reading two different manga with those individual stories being the relatively mature shonen/seinen story while the main story being a shojo love story.
This contradiction is frequently a turnoff and makes it hard to enjoy the story fully.

This review will focus on the strengths in One Piece over other shonen manga and provide examples to support them, but less so on weaknesses in One Piece since they seem to be pretty obvious among the experienced manga readers.

First of all, characters. One Piece provides a strong cast of main protagonists with emotional backstories and unique characteristics. Each member in the crew doesn't overlap each other in terms of personality, appearance and abilities. Now you may think that is a common trait in all popular shonen manga but there's something different about One Piece.

There's consistency with the characters. Oda doesn't randomly make punchlines ... with his characters. The punchline is usually related to one's backstory. Usopp tells lies because he wanted his mother and people in the village to be happy; Nami loves money because she once had to steal money to save her people; Chopper loves when people praise him and he can't hide the pleasure when he try to because he has very low self esteem and refuses to befriend with others due to his trauma. He believes in everything Usopp says because he lacks life experience; Brook keeps cracking jokes because he had to keep lightening himself before he went insane when everyone in his crew died.......etc. It offers so much nuance to the characters when Oda put these comedic moments here and there.

Don't get me wrong. None of these character traits is exceptionally subtle. But when it comes to One Piece, it works incredibly well.

It is a manga with more or less the same main cast the cast only adds people but generally doesn't drop people. (If you don't count Vivi or Jinbei who didn't officially join.) This provides One Piece with a strong advantage. Oda can give a lot of nuance to the characters. While they go through different adventures, they react a wide range of different ways. Whether it be a escort mission of a ordinary, warm-hearted princess to her own country, a fantastic journey to the sky island or a slump of the crew where people leave for the greater good or for a small quarrel, strawhats seem don't run out of ways to interact with each other and with their adventures. This makes the cast incredibly fun to read. Also, Oda adds new members to the crew to keep the character dynamics among the crew fresh and fun. His wacky way to portray the characters fit perfectly with the vibe of the story.

Though One Piece suffers from a formulaic way to characterize new members by having everyone a tragic backstory in a flashback, the character development in the main story is interesting enough and their flashbacks are effective enough to make the characters work.

Next, let's talk about the story. It's obvious that the main protagonists are supposed to be unstoppable. Every arc it's very clear that strawhats would beat the villains and the conflicts are going to be resolved at the end of the arc because the story is progressed by having strawhats travelling to different places and meet new people and opposing forces. The same villain won't stick around for a long time. But One Piece is less about who's gonna win and rather focuses more on how they inspire people they encounter to fight for their lives and dreams. Though every arc follows a formula of strawhats meeting new people, knowing their lives suffer, then fighting for them. Lots of arcs tell a different story with a different theme with alasbasta being an escort mission, Jaya being how should men fight for their dreams, skypiea being a romantic story between two men, Water Seven being a romantic story between comrades by the disobedience of the tyranny etc.

The story does repeat itself after time skip. All in all Oda is still a human being, he runs out of ideas.

The art is probably the weakest aspect for One Piece. While the fight scenes feel powerful, the way Oda design the panels lacks fluency. From time to time when there is too much stuff in the panel, the drawing feels messy. The color covers are really good but they aren't related to the story.

Overall One Piece is a really exceptional manga for romantist who is looking for a story about friendship.