My Thoughts on My Hero Academia Season 1
Since season 8 aired last year, I figured it was time I gave this series another re-watch first. it's so surreal watching an entire battle shonen from start to finish, but I'll talk more about that in my discussion on the final season. I remember when this season came out. it was an instant hit. Unlike hte seaosns that followed it was only 13 episodes, basically as a taste of the story and what was to come, successfully adapting the first arc in the series. It feels like it was only yesterday when it came out. it was 10 years ago. And I could easily imagine an alternate universe where My Hero Academia didn't catch on by the masses nearly as much as it did and it became one of the many anime with a long manga but only one season of an anime and it didn't become a generation defining anime. Lots of anime fans in their late teens and early to mid 20s today has a massive amount of nostalgia for this show, and even though I didn't grow up with it in the same way, I like it quite a bit too. Season 1 isn't one of the best seasons, but it is quite good nevertheless. The first thing you'll notice about it is unlike the battle shonen anime of yesteryear, espeically the ones that I grew up with like Naruto, Bleach, and One Piece, there's no filler. That's because rather than airing continuously for 10 years, it instead used the seasonal format where one seaosn would air, (this time 13 episodes, but in most cases 25 episodes), they'd take a break, and then do some more. They were able to make sure some My Hero Academia would air every year since 2016, without risking the anime catching up to the manga.
My Hero Academia was kind of like a proof of concept in this regard. For a long time I've heard people in the anime community ask why the battle shonen anime of my generation didn't do that. While I can't definitively prove this, my theory has always been that the anime creators were afraid that if they stopped airing the anime for any length of time people would stop caring about it and forget about it. So they would just never stop airing it, and add loads of filler, which resulted in Naruto having a year and a half of straight filler at the end of Part 1, Shippuden having even more total filler, and Boruto having somehow even more yet, at least in terms of precentage of filler to canon content. Funnily enough, even though the average person's attention span has decreased in the modern age, My Hero Academia kind of proved this wrong, which led to other modern battle shonen like Jujutsu Kaisen and Demon Slayer, (especially that latter one), doing the same thing. Hell, even One Piece recently stopped being an ongoing anime and is going to seasonal, and not just the upcoming Wit Studio remake, but hte anime that's been going on for nearly 30 years. This not only prevents the series from having any filler, but it also allows the general production quality, like animation and art, to be consistently high. Even as early as seaosn 1 this is seen clearly such as in the final episode when All Might fights the Nomu, which is still one of the most famous and beloved fights in the series, and that's not even the most intense, emotional, or well animated fight to come.
The main character is Izuku Midoriya. He's nicknamed Deku by his childhood "friend" Bakugo because of not having a Quirk. it was meant to be an insult, but when he meets a girl named Ochako Uraraka in U.A. High School she takes a positive spin on it which convinces him to make it his hero name. Of course everyone knows that Deku has no Quirk, which puts him in the bottom 10 percent of all people. After he meets his his idol, All Might, the symbol of peace in Japan, at first All Might tells him that he can't be a hero, but when Izuku jumps in to save Bakugo from a villain despite having no powers, All Might changes his tune, and actually choses Izuku to inherit his own power, One For All. This first season is mainly setup for what's to come like I said before, but it does have great moments in it for sure. Like I said earlier hte best moment is when All Might is fighting the Nomu in the final episode. But other standout moments are the conclusion of Izuku's initial training with All Might, Izuku fighting Bakugou during the U.A. entrance exams battle, the moment at home with his mother after Izuku is told by his doctor that he will never have a Quirk and can't be a hero, and when All Might tells Izuku that he can become a hero. One aspects of many of these that continues to shock me to this day is how effectively emotional they can be. I've seen the beginning of this anime several times, and every single time it never fails to stir up my emotions, despite how conceptually simple it is. The voice acting in the dub definitely helps, and the soundtrack shouldn't be overlooked in these moments either.
If My Hero Academia never got anything after the first season it obviously would have never become as iconic and generation defining that it did. It has it's ups and downs, but it's highs are extremely high and does make this series, overall, one of my favorites of the past decade, and I'm excited to be going back thorugh it again, and to eventually watch the final season. Oh, one more thing, I really like how creative a lot of the abilities are in this series, which will become even more apparent in future seasons.
My Hero Academia was kind of like a proof of concept in this regard. For a long time I've heard people in the anime community ask why the battle shonen anime of my generation didn't do that. While I can't definitively prove this, my theory has always been that the anime creators were afraid that if they stopped airing the anime for any length of time people would stop caring about it and forget about it. So they would just never stop airing it, and add loads of filler, which resulted in Naruto having a year and a half of straight filler at the end of Part 1, Shippuden having even more total filler, and Boruto having somehow even more yet, at least in terms of precentage of filler to canon content. Funnily enough, even though the average person's attention span has decreased in the modern age, My Hero Academia kind of proved this wrong, which led to other modern battle shonen like Jujutsu Kaisen and Demon Slayer, (especially that latter one), doing the same thing. Hell, even One Piece recently stopped being an ongoing anime and is going to seasonal, and not just the upcoming Wit Studio remake, but hte anime that's been going on for nearly 30 years. This not only prevents the series from having any filler, but it also allows the general production quality, like animation and art, to be consistently high. Even as early as seaosn 1 this is seen clearly such as in the final episode when All Might fights the Nomu, which is still one of the most famous and beloved fights in the series, and that's not even the most intense, emotional, or well animated fight to come.
The main character is Izuku Midoriya. He's nicknamed Deku by his childhood "friend" Bakugo because of not having a Quirk. it was meant to be an insult, but when he meets a girl named Ochako Uraraka in U.A. High School she takes a positive spin on it which convinces him to make it his hero name. Of course everyone knows that Deku has no Quirk, which puts him in the bottom 10 percent of all people. After he meets his his idol, All Might, the symbol of peace in Japan, at first All Might tells him that he can't be a hero, but when Izuku jumps in to save Bakugo from a villain despite having no powers, All Might changes his tune, and actually choses Izuku to inherit his own power, One For All. This first season is mainly setup for what's to come like I said before, but it does have great moments in it for sure. Like I said earlier hte best moment is when All Might is fighting the Nomu in the final episode. But other standout moments are the conclusion of Izuku's initial training with All Might, Izuku fighting Bakugou during the U.A. entrance exams battle, the moment at home with his mother after Izuku is told by his doctor that he will never have a Quirk and can't be a hero, and when All Might tells Izuku that he can become a hero. One aspects of many of these that continues to shock me to this day is how effectively emotional they can be. I've seen the beginning of this anime several times, and every single time it never fails to stir up my emotions, despite how conceptually simple it is. The voice acting in the dub definitely helps, and the soundtrack shouldn't be overlooked in these moments either.
If My Hero Academia never got anything after the first season it obviously would have never become as iconic and generation defining that it did. It has it's ups and downs, but it's highs are extremely high and does make this series, overall, one of my favorites of the past decade, and I'm excited to be going back thorugh it again, and to eventually watch the final season. Oh, one more thing, I really like how creative a lot of the abilities are in this series, which will become even more apparent in future seasons.
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