What is with all the inner monologues in My Hero Academia during fight scenes?

I'm watching through the final season and I swear this fight would be over with in 3-4 eps tops if they didn't stop every 5 seconds for the heroes and villains to have long inner monologues about their feelings, how strong their attacks are, how the other character can survive their attacks, or their backstories, etc.

I know most shonen anime do this but I feel like it really drags down the pacing and the fight scenes. I'm spending multiple eps listening to dialogue stating the obvious of what is happening rather than you know...seeing the fight scene at a good pace.

Do I really need 5+ episodes of the characters stating their beliefs and ideals over and over again, with flashbacks to past episodes or the characters backstories intertwined with this fight that has been going on for 20+ episodes now?

Voir le contenu lié

Commentaires

P-Two2025-12-26 03:36

Welcome to a tried and true shonen trope? Why do characters call out their ability names when it would end fights so much quicker if they didn't? Why have the power of friendship if it would be faster to forego all that silly stuff and just kill the bad guy?

ProxyDamage2025-12-26 03:50

Ironically valid questions all around which many shows could meaningfully improve from.

P-Two2025-12-26 03:56

But at some point changing these makes them...Not shonen?

If you don't like power of friendship powerups, inner monologues, and ability name callouts, why are you watching shonen in the first place?

ProxyDamage2025-12-26 04:06

I mostly don't because of garbage writing.

That said, all of those are tropes, not rules. I'd absolutely love a show about your typical shounen hero's journey without overexplaining everything*, stupid attack name call outs, that frames friendship as something powerful without flat out being magical, etc... i.e.: a well written shounen.

Note*: The problem isn't necessarily inner monologues. It's overexplaining and excessive exposition. It's often delivered via inner monologues, but not exclusively. HxH did a lot of "characters standing by overexplaining and endlessly repeating every little thing that happens talk-no-jutsu".

P-Two2025-12-26 04:11

If I sit down to watch a shonen battle anime it is explicitly with the want of seeing cool ass move call outs, power of friendship, etc. That is the genre by default.

This is like saying that romance sucks because most shows have will they won't they plots, its a staple, either learn to enjoy it or find something else to watch.

Some days I want to sit down and watch a deep introspective story like Orb or Vinland Saga to name some more recent shows. But other times I want to sit down, throw on Naruto or Inuyasha and watch some cool fights with some cheesy monologues, attack name callouts, and speed lines.

peter123yeah2025-12-26 04:22

This comment is funny to me because you're just saying no it's shonen therefore it has to have terrible storytelling. Hey more power to you I guess

peter123yeah2025-12-26 04:14

Man everything you said is so true. I remember once thinking what would the reaction be of a film professor if you showed them these bad shounen tropes. They'd likely kill themselves

0800872025-12-26 04:35

That's a bad professor.

A good one would see something unfamiliar from another culture and ask "why did they do it like this?". Then dig for answers.

Why are there so many repeated shots of a strong hit landing? Because it's a staple of Chinese martial arts movies - if someone gets a fight ending hit, they almost certainly show it 3 times from different angles.

That influenced people like Akira Toriyama with Dragon Ball, which then influenced all subsequent shonen.

Do this for everything and you can probably find explanations for all of it. Or hell, do it on whatever your favourite other media is.

peter123yeah2025-12-26 04:43

Because it's not a culture thing. Japanese Live Action doesn't do it even when also based on a Manga, hell the same manga as an anime. Watch rurouni kenshin live action the compare it to the anime. The film making of the live action version is just so far beyond.

It's clearly not culture when japanese directors are saying the same thing. "I've felt that lately, characters tend to say anything at all that's on their mind ... I don't think that's very entertaining to watch." [https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/interest/2022-01-20/sonny-boy-director-shingo-natsume-explains-why-the-anime-has-no-monologues/.181717](https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/interest/2022-01-20/sonny-boy-director-shingo-natsume-explains-why-the-anime-has-no-monologues/.181717)

VoidEmbracedWitch2025-12-26 07:59

From another perspective: someone might like action and battle shounen are the most commonly produced type of action in anime. *Someone* is of course me. So when copious amounts of ability explanations and flashbacks bring the pacing to a screeching halt, I end up disappointed.

Other forms of action do exist of course and I cherish for example Redline, Symphogear or (almost) all the Gainax or Trigger originals. Though they're sadly rather few and far between. So as a result I still end up trying a good amount of battle shounen and hope the usual pacing killers aren't too intrusive. And every once in a while I get a Kekkai Sensen or Chainsaw Man where I just have a good time.

goldeneye00802025-12-28 16:14

In general your problem is going to be that when shonen manga is adapted to anime, the studios are usually going for near 1:1 adaptations. All of the "superfluous" explanations during the fight sequences that you don't like, are pulled directly from the manga, probably there to help readers understand what's going on in the fight in case the feel lost when looking at the art and paneling. Demon Slayer, which I like, has this problem even worse than MHA during their fights, in spite of the animation and choreography being so good.

VoidEmbracedWitch2025-12-28 18:24

Yeah, it is what it is. Idk which circumstances led to the current hopelessly risk-averse status quo where any deviation from a manga or LN source is discouraged and heavily scrutinized if it happens, but it's definitely for the worse of the medium. This isn't exclusive to battle shounen (as discussed elsewhere in the thread), but that genre is where strict adherence to manga usually has the worst results for me.

And you're right about Demon Slayer having some especially egregious moments like this. I still remember a sequence in S1 where Tanjiro got a monologue to say he struggles to breathe, which was painfully redundant when that was front and center during the line.

goldeneye00802025-12-28 18:36

1:1 adaptations are part of the reason anime and manga as mediums are popular and synergistic with each other so I don't expect that to ever change.

VoidEmbracedWitch2025-12-28 19:12

I prefer the old style of media mix where the manga was more a suggestion or baseline to freestyle over (unsurprisingly, I think Cardcaptor Sakura slaps). But even in the context of more direct adaptations, I get the impression decades past were less stringent / limited than the current environment. Loosely basing this on vibes and many adaptations past being highly regarded while making some structural changes to fit the runtime of a season or two they were given better. See Baccano, the good version of Spice & Wolf or the aforementioned Kekkai Sensen for examples.

goldeneye00802025-12-28 20:20

I strongly disagree, I'll accept all the problems of modern adaptations if they are 1:1, and seasonal. There's nothing I hate more than filler, and the anime studio writing their own original endings to series. I'd rather watch an anime that isn't adapted at that point.

VoidEmbracedWitch2025-12-28 20:45

Okay, I have some counterpoints to this. First on "filler", the whining about it feels like it always goes back to people's experience with long-running battle shounen where it can often come off like a prolonged tangent away from the work. This however is not the same as... look, if you watched Oniisama E, I wouldn't even have to explain it.

Second, this is not a matter of "original endings". Let's use an example where I personally experienced both anime and manga, Aoi Hana. There is one scene around the middle where the anime omits an answer to a question, which through the ambiguity created completely shifts how the inner life of the protagonist in the back half of the season is perceived. This in turn allows the show one emotional payoff to conclude the single season run even as it ostensibly only covers 3 out of 8 manga volumes. I respect choices like that, which are on paper small changes, but have a lasting impact that creates a stronger incomplete adaptation than sticking to the manga's text 1:1 would have.

Similarly, Baccano interweaves plots from multiple light novel volumes together to culminate in one big payoff at the end. Or if you want a modern example, Monogatari Off & Monster Season does something funny where it pulls from different volumes to create a pattern where one short story acts as a primer for a bigger follow up (Tsukihi Undo -> Nadeko Draw and Shinobu Bon Appetit -> Shinobu Mustard).

> I'd rather watch an anime that isn't adapted at that point

I wish it was easier for anime staff to get funding for original projects. After all, almost half of my favorites are original works and a bunch more are very loosely based on something, like Perfect Blue.

Extreme-Sun-59932025-12-26 05:01

funny this is the ability name thing for mha in particular is actually explained

bomban2025-12-26 03:37

Yes, the fight basically doesnt matter. The motivations tend to be the draw and the character building. Also, yes, this is just how most shonen are.

blackmanlost2025-12-26 03:37

Let me guess you're a big fan of solo leveling?

mr_beanoz2025-12-26 03:39

why is this the case?

blackmanlost2025-12-26 03:48

As others have stated it's one of the most common things in anime. The people I've seen make comments like this, are the same people who love solo leveling, but also complained when Woo cried about waking his mother up in the anime and felt it slowed the show down.

I'm just curious if solo living is their measuring stick for anime, as the inner monologue is extremely common.

N7CombatWombat2025-12-26 03:48

There's inner monologues in Solo Leveling too? That's most of the dialogue in the show since he spends so much time alone.

MusubiKazesaru2025-12-26 03:38

It's a trope, but BnHA doesn't make up for it with particularly good fights. Outside of some occasionally interesting power usage, it's usually just a bunch of clashes. Don't get me wrong, it's well animated most of the time, but it's like it's HxH or something.

N7CombatWombat2025-12-26 03:42

As everyone else has said, it's trope common to 99% of all anime. That's just part of the Japanese process.

ProxyDamage2025-12-26 03:48

Yeah, it's pretty bad. It's unfortunately a common trope and how many shounen ruin their own fight scenes.

BnH always did that, but it gets way worse as it goes on... Or maybe it's more noticeable as the writing quality significantly degrades with each season. Whichever.

jacowab2025-12-26 03:50

Bro it's been like this for over 20 years how are you just noticing.

Icchan_2025-12-26 03:53

Clearly you haven't immersed yourself much in anime as an art form and a style as of yet. You'll get it.

VoidEmbracedWitch2025-12-26 07:42

Clearly I haven't either in the past 7 years then. Maybe battle shounen anime adaptations should just get good and *adapt* to the fact they're now in a time-dependent medium where restating context or overexplaining powers drags things out much more noticeably.

N7CombatWombat2025-12-26 22:05

Honestly, I can only think of one anime I've seen in the last 30 years that didn't have an internal monologue at some point (and I'm not 100% sure it didn't have at least one) and that was the 96 Ghost in the Shell movie, I'm sure there are others I don't remember, but the vast majority of the anime I've watched (and no, they weren't all battle shounen) had them. Slice of life, romance, psychological, thrillers, romcom, comedies that I've seen have all had them.

VoidEmbracedWitch2025-12-26 22:31

Where does that even come from? I don't take an issue with inner monologues categorically. I only take issue with battle shounen specific quirks like them creating an exposition overhead for themselves with how much they revel in the minutia of their powers or the effect attacks have. This is something that works decently enough on page (from the small sample size of 4 or so battle shounen I read). It gets a lot more tedious and flow-breaking in animation.

> the vast majority of the anime I've watched (and no, they weren't all battle shounen) had them

You don't have to spell out what's obvious. Same here of course. What should be equally obviously is that there's a drastic difference in context between an action-heavy sequence having to make room for a guy to rant about interpolation while explaining his 24fps cursed technique and a teenage girl overthinking if her crush will finally try to make a move on her when she lets him to stay at her place.

N7CombatWombat2025-12-26 22:33

It's a manga thing as I understand it, adding in the extra exposition that could be conveyed visually in an animated form. And now it's just one of those tropes that's expected to be there in anime.

VoidEmbracedWitch2025-12-27 00:05

Maybe to an extent. Although I would argue anime that don't adapt manga tend to have time flow more organically. For an anecdote, compare the races in Cingray to those in every other Uma Musume entry. Same franchise, but the former feels distinctly more stop-and-go with the timing of individual characters making their moves.

Further, both the information conveyed via monologue and the scenario matter. That's why I often struggle with battle shounen, as mentioned above, while I don't in other genres (or action anime not based on that type of manga).

Icchan_2025-12-27 16:21

What effin "time dependent" medium? What you're on about?
Anime still airs on TV one episode per week... what's the hurry?

VoidEmbracedWitch2025-12-27 16:41

Time passes linearly within an episode or movie. Time doesn't pass linearly on a page, it depends on your reading speed.

MegaMeteorite2025-12-26 03:56

Anime adaptations of shonen manga tend to be like this, in manga form you can read the words incredibly quickly and the pacing of the fights is still fast, but in anime form it takes a lot longer to deliver the lines. You also can't remove too much of the monologues otherwise you'd risk the emotional weight or complexity of the scenes.

peter123yeah2025-12-26 04:06

It's what you call terrible directing. While inner monologues have their place in stories. See Dexter, Death Note, and Code Geass, Anime uses them way too much. It's what you do when you're a bad director and can't convy the bloody obvious without it.

Historical_Sand74872025-12-26 04:13

I blame Naruto, one piece, dragon Ball z, and all the old shonen that valued quantity over quality. Great shows, but pretty hard to rewatch because of this. Some of the Naruto fights were much better, but still tends to exposition mid fight. Rock Lee v garra was perfect tho

what_that_thaaang_do2025-12-26 04:14

Do people actually like/justify this kind of writing? Every other thread I've read about this topic has condemned it

Can't say I'm a fan either

0800872025-12-26 04:22

You have the purpose of fight scenes backwards.

Fight scenes exist to drive character/plot moments forward. Character and plot aren't supposed to fill dead air until the next fight scene.

That's why all of the character stuff and emotions happens. It's doing its job.

All Might vs Nomu is a fight that ends because All Might just punched harder. But that encapsulates his entire philosophy, aka Plus Ultra

---

The same is pretty much true of sports anime. A classic example is Haikyuu - Battle of Concepts.

The entire match is just about whether Shiratorizawa's idea of a strong team (one prodigy is all you need) is better than Karasuno's idea (everyone can contribute to take down a giant). That's what the imagery, flashbacks and metaphors etc are about.

timpkmn892025-12-26 04:25

Because it's based off a book

abandoned_idol2025-12-26 04:58

Well, I mean, MHA **does** have 8 seasons, you didn't expect them to be full of nuanced writing, did you? I swear that 75% of the volumes are last-minute padding added to a successful serialization. MHA is likely not the mangaka's first draft/name, so he can't just storyboard dozens of long one-shots until one gets greenlit, he has to instead write brief ones, and when one gets greenlit, he has to improvise the writing last minute.

I lost interest in season 3 (before it even aired).

MHA had a fairly novel start in season 1 ("can someone without powers be a hero?" god knows, since our hero has like seven different superpowers) and only got milked as a formulaic Shounen-Jump flagship battle shounen since then. This is the best you could have hoped for.

If you want a battle shounen with less inner monologue density, try "World Trigger". It still has third-party battle "sports commentary", but usually only in retrospect for the sake of explaining why something works or didn't work to the audience (nuanced mechanics necessitate explanations). The combat in WT is much better (brief, squishier characters, meaningful, actual reasoning behind victories). Same publisher, much slower to update, and for some bizarre reason, the writing is non-generic **despite** being a battle shounen (feels more like a sports story). I should warn you that it has an awesome reboot on the way though.

Another battle shounen you could try is "Hunter x Hunter". It uses some tropes, purposely breaks other tropes (the author created the genre), and leans on subversion and out of place tropes for its appeal. This one has fairly handsome antagonists (as opposed to bland placeholders).

Most battle shounen are the same old formula, because it sells and it's easy to reuse the exact same story (you just need a good artist and a bit of re-skinning/theme).

I'd also recommend dipping your toes in sports anime if you like confrontations with more metagame/brains to them and less fluff.

Extreme-Sun-59932025-12-26 05:10

Because it helps further the characters development and the plot like the main character will monologue about why an attack didnt work so that they can piece together a solution (which does happen in mha s8)