2hero2academia

[2hero2academia]

Season 1 Episode 5- “What I Can Do For Now” (part 2)

is this hazing? anyways. the first thing tenya does after being introduced to the concept of his theoretical imminent expulsion is to whip out a bottle of… water? honestly, this could be alcohol and we’d never know. he takes a sip despite there being no flashbacks in sight

and we start getting the character intro cards, now narrated by present mic! i’m not going to show all of them because that would be a lot, but i would like to say that i love them so. i love the sudden style and color change, the whole thing just feels so comic book it’s crazy. tenya speeds through the 50 meter dash like a legend and tsuyu hops along behind him!

ignore aoyama falling over here. or don’t, it is pretty funny. a thing i didn’t ever really notice, ashido takes off her shoes here so she can use her acid to slide along at a quicker pace. it’s no wonder she eventually gets custom shoes made so she can do the same but without needing to take off her shoes, because that shit’s hazardous.

while everyone’s getting all excited about using their quirks in the tests, izuku’s over here panicking about what the fuck he’s even going to do. like what the fuck? what the fuck. he’s really going through it right now. aizawa knows this and he doesn’t care because he’s cruel and mean and he think’s izuku’s a stupid little bone-breaking twerp

izuku thinks back to what all might taught him earlier off camera. but now it’s on camera and it’s new content, so no sips are needed here. once again, all might proves himself to be terrible at giving advice on using one for all. i’ll bet that back when he was a scrawny little middle schooler, nana gave him one for all and she was so ready to teach him all the things it took forever for her to learn about the quirk, but toshinori just starts using it and nana’s like “how. the fuck.?” and toshinori’s just smiling like a stupid little puppy like “what is it master? oh by the way look at how hard i can punch things now!!!!” and nana just throws her hands in the air and calls it quits. that’s the real reason she got torino to be toshi’s teacher, because she was not prepared to teach a prodigy all by herself

izuku tries to explain how using one for all felt first with onomatopoeias and then with the much more down to earth “an egg about to explode in a microwave.” this is a very interesting metaphor, because why the fuck would you put an egg in a microwave? anyways, my two pieces of advice would probably have been “maybe take the egg?? out of the microwave????” or “your egg is going to explode if you put it in a microwave. poke a hole in it first so it doesn’t explode”. we used to make microwave hot dogs when i was a kid, and the whole thing about microwaving a hot dog is if you just put a hot dog into a microwave they’ll fucking explode, so you have to stab it with a fork first and then it’ll be okay in the microwave. all might tells izuku some vague shit about lowering the wattage or decreasing the cooking time, which in all honesty might have gotten izuku to something resembling full cowl eventually. lowering the wattage could be seen as “hey maybe don’t shove 100% of your power into your arm, just use like half power. or 1%.”

do you think in the distant future, people make those shaggy ultra instinct jokes about izuku only using 5 percent of his power

well, i can certainly say that izuku gives it his all. but when faced with nineteen other super powered teenagers, sometimes your all isn’t really enough. izuku has no idea how to not blow up the egg, and he’s really going through it right now

meanwhile, ochako throws a ball out of the fucking atmosphere. how does it register as infinity?? isn’t the ball still just some number of meters away? just in space now? is that ball still up there, after all this time?

new crack theory for how mha ends: uraraka’s ball comes crashing back into earth and lands directly on top of all for one, killing him instantly

tenya says that if izuku doesn’t do anything soon he’ll be the one in last place. katsuki says “no shit, he’s quirkless.” i think about this interaction so much. what must tenya have been thinking here? i don’t think he knows at this point that izuku and katsuki went to school together, so he probably assumes that katsuki assumed that izuku was quirkless just because he hasn’t done anything yet. but what about after he knows? do you think tenya even remembers this conversation? if so, how do you think he rationalizes it in his brain? why did katsuki think izuku was quirkless when he so very obviously is not? tenya comes to the conclusion that izuku never once used his quirk in front of katsuki in all the years they spent together and also never disputed the claims that he was quirkless because he has social anxiety. yes, this makes the most sense

bro this literally happened earlier in the episode i’m losing my mind and taking a sip

izuku goes to throw the ball-

and- wh- hUh??????

… thank you, measuring device 5a.

aizawa reveals that he has a telekinesis quirk! ah, no, wait, he has a quirk that erases other people’s quirks! hey, anybody know if it’s ever explained why aizawa does… all that whenever he uses his quirk?? is it just for the aesthetic, or is there a real reason? i mean i dig it. makes him look very eldritch horror adjacent

izuku outs himself as a nerd of the highest degree because he recognizes mr underground over here even though he probably shouldn’t in all honesty. izuku is kind of a stalker

you know this is a lot of talk coming from a guy who just kind of threw himself at a sea of villains without any backup whatsoever. i guess aizawa’s more of a “do as i say, not as i do,” type of guy. i feel that. anyways, he bullies izuku for having a dumb bone breaking quirk

man. nobody’s ever on izuku’s side. he finally gets a quirk and then his hero teacher tells him “your quirk is stupid and you’re stupid for thinking a quirk like that will let you be a hero”

unfortunately for aizawa, izuku has heard those words a million times before and they mean nothing to him now that someone he cares about has told him the opposite

i forgot this happened! aoyama tries to comfort ochako and she’s like “??? i literally don’t even know you”

oh how you’ll be eating those words, aizawa

izuku has a little inner monologue about he has to try harder than everyone else and comes up with a little loophole to not break all of his bones

good golly gee, the Emotions katsuki must have felt the moment he saw izuku use a quirk. it’s like you’ve grown up alongside a person and they seemed like a normal boring person and then one day you see their arm turn into a gun and you’re like “????????? ayo wtf?????? how long have you had a gun for an arm????? and why didn’t you tell me????? ??????”

alternate universe where one for all is just a really cool gun that the users have passed on for generations and to use it you have to cut off your arm and replace it with said gun. i’d read it. maybe i should write it. hm. gun for all au, anybody?

owo what’s this? that number… 705.3 meters… why, approximately ten centimeters further than katsuki’s throw! guess he’s really not number one no more. i wonder how far izuku could’ve thrown the ball if he had used his entire arm…

anyways, the loophole to not breaking his bones was to break… less of them but still to break his bones.

in the manga, he’s also crying a bit. izuku of the not so distant future is going to have crazy pain tolerance, but izuku of the right here right now can’t even break his finger bones without his eyes getting watery. interesting character development right there. fun things to think about. kinda sad, but whatever

aizawa is intrigued by this strange little bone breaking hero wannabe who has apparently never trained his quirk a day in his life and yet is also weirdly receptive to criticism??? i wonder what aizawa’s thinking about izuku. mostly “what the hell,” i’d guess, but like (fond), you know?

oh also all might’s been hiding behind a wall and watching events unfold. did he also skip orientation or is orientation already over?

canon things: all might thinking izuku is metal as hell

anyways, that’s all for episode 5!! we’ve made it to ua! and already we’re tossed right into the thick of it!! izuku’s struggling to keep his place in class and it’s only day one!! will our heroes remain in 1-a and begin their tutelage under ua’s staff, or is this the end of the road already? find out next time on dragon- er wait- on my hero academia!!!

refill count: 1

[2hero2academia]

Season 1 Episode 5- “What I Can Do For Now” (part 1)

so begins episode 5! last time there was an exam! here are the results! a bunch of the class a and b kids. or, future class a and b kids. the school year hasn’t actually started yet. it’s close enough to being even, but considering that all of the top 3 go to class 1-a, i think you can tell which class is supposed to be the “better” one. poor monoma, doomed from the start

i read a fic recently (very recently, just last night as of me writing this) where katsuki was barred from entering ua because he didn’t get a single rescue point. and, in all honesty, it would have been a very sensible thing to do. yes, katsuki took down a million and one robots, but just saying “bakugou got (#) villain points and no hero points” sounds… bad. in all honesty, out of many of mha’s quirks, katsuki’s has always been one to strike me as perhaps more villainous than others. his quirk is nitroglycerin explosions. he’s destruction in its most fantastic form. it just so happens that because his quirk looks cool, he’s labeled as a future hero instead of a destructive monster. luck of the draw, and all that

hey look, a hobo man! bet he won’t be important. in this scene, a bunch of offscreen teachers that i don’t yet recognize discuss the two most important kids in this anime— the one with only villain points (katsuki) and the one with only hero points (izuku). y’know, i wonder how the divvying up of the kids to each class actually went. did eraser and vlad fight over who got who? or maybe who didn’t get who? does nedzu do the entire thing? or is it a group discussion? does eraser always teach class 1-a or is it only sometimes? what does he do for the rest of the year if he expels an entire class?

izuku goes to chat with all might about his acceptance to ua and nearly blows his cover. y’know, the kid’s your successor now, toshinori, the least you could do is tell him your actual name

i did not remember that they high fived here that’s kinda cute

anyways they talk about how all might’s working in ua this year. izuku nerds out about it because he’s lowkey a stalker. minato ward in tokyo is in fact a real place that i know nothing about :) but apparently all might usually works around there. it’s where might tower (mighty tower??) is located, but we’ll never see that in the anime, that’s vigilantes stuff

anyways what was i talking about? right izuku getting into ua. all might reportedly didn’t tell anyone that he was training izuku which i’m pretty sure is at least a little bit of a lie because i’m pretty sure both nedzu and recovery girl already know, but i’ll have to get there and see i suppose. he also mentions that he wasn’t actually one of the judges deciding how many points izuku got because he figured izuku would probably want to get in on his own merits. izuku seems thankful, but it’s one of those things where i feel like if all might had stepped in and helped izuku get a spot at ua, izuku would’ve been like “aw man :/ kinda wanted to get in by myself” but if all might didn’t do anything, izuku would internally be like “i mean. you could’ve helped some. would’ve eased my anxiety at least.” you can never be truly satisfied in a situation like this

all might explains via flashback that the reason he actually agreed to teach at ua was because he wanted to pick out a successor at ua. take a sip

also: i wonder what would’ve happened if all might hadn’t chosen izuku. a lot of people say that if izuku wasn’t there, all might would have chosen mirio at nighteye’s request, but i don’t know. he might’ve chosen one of the first years if only to have the most possible time training them. also, in canon, he spends most of his time with the first year classes— 1-a in particular. i don’t know how much of that is because he wants to be izuku’s teacher, how much of that is us just not seeing his other classes, or if that was always his intention, but i feel like if all might was going to pick a successor from the pool of third years, he’d have a lot more classes with said third years. i dunno, maybe i’m thinking into this too much

oh also, one for all breaks izuku’s bones when he uses it! that’s worrying, izuku thinks, and then maybe he thinks it’s more worrying that all might knew and didn’t say anything. to be fair, if i was given a gun and told that if i shot it, the recoil would break my bones, i probably wouldn’t really want to use it, even in emergencies. izuku will be perfectly fine with breaking his bones in no time at all, but he’s still a weenie right now. i wonder if izuku had broken any bones prior to one for all? you’d be surprised. i’ve only broken a bone once and it was when i was three and one of the kids in my daycare crushed my finger with a brick

also, all might just straight up transforms in front of these random civilians and they somehow don’t see him. everyone in mha is fucking stupid

all might teaches izuku a valuable lesson in protecting your image: when to run away. y’know, for a guy who’s notoriously pretty clumsy with keeping secrets, all might is surprisingly good at keeping his privacy. i’m shocked this man hasn’t accidentally blurted out his home address on live television yet. izuku won’t blurt out his home address, but only because he’ll be too paralyzed by fear. he will accidentally blurt out all might’s home address in a fit of fanboying and then fall to the ground in shame once he realizes what he’s done

this is the episode where mha actually starts. everything before this moment was a preamble, a prologue, a foreword. this right here, this is the start of all that comes next. this is where a huge chunk of the cast first appears and it’s the start of izuku’s hero academia! this might be my favorite episode from season 1, in all honesty. that or episode 6

it’s time for izuku to head off to school! once again, i really love mamadoriya.

it’s actually really cool of ua to have accommodations for people with mutant quirks. even if the only ones we really see are the big ass doors, this is still really neat. makes me think that someone with a quirk that made them huge actually worked at ua back in the day

before izuku can enter the classroom, though, he must face the hardest trial of them all— overcoming your social anxiety

oof, both the guys you’re afraid of in one class? tough luck, izuku

we finally get a name for tenya! he’s a rich kid who went to a fancy private school, but we don’t know that yet actually.

this is the first time we see a lot of the 1-a kids! ojiro seems to have a receding hairline at the moment

tenya approaches izuku and the two introduce themselves to each other. tenya laments that he couldn’t figure out the secret behind the practical when izuku apparently could. izuku is just kind of bewildered that mean guy from the exams is actually kind of polite

then ochako shows up and calls izuku falling boy, which is. such a name

ah, an essential flashback. do not take a sip. this guy talking to izuku and katsuki is the same teacher from episode 1 which means i think he’s either their homeroom teacher or possibly some kind of guidance counselor? and he was in their class that one time to talk about their future careers. not sure. what was he even actually talking to izuku and katsuki about here? coaching them on not badmouthing their junior high school, as they totally should? there’s no real reason to pull them specifically aside if not for some reason to single them out. i bet aldera has both katsuki and izuku’s names in the hall of fame after they graduate. a plaque for both of them, saying “hey !!! look !!!!! we made these two heroes!!!!!!” like yeah, you for sure made them. jeez.

after school (?) katsuki drags izuku into this little nook with not one but two whole ass windows right fucking there. if you were going for privacy, katsuki, you’re an idiot. oh, and a douchebag, for doing this. katsuki tries to interrogate izuku and figure out how the actual fuck izuku got into ua without a quirk

but for possibly the first time in his life, izuku stands up for himself against katsuki. i wonder what happened after this. after this shot, it immediately cuts back to katsuki’s grumpy face, but i wonder if katsuki let izuku go or if he tried to tear him a new one. i guess we’ll never know. it kills me

look who it is, my favorite of mha’s father figures! y’know, maybe the reason this guy resonates with me so much is because he’s very similar to my own dad— emotionally distant and generally hands off but also deeply caring and kind underneath his gruff and tired exterior. i… don’t actually want to examine that any further. moving on.

i don’t think any of the students were prepared for caterpillar-sensei. he tells them they’re stupid for wasting time and making friends because aizawa is punctual to a fault and hates social interaction more than i do. also look at aoyama over here. he’s not doing anything, i just want to point him out

after aizawa tells the kids to put on their gym uniforms and head outside, we cut to all might, who’s reading the teacher directory that has a huge fucking SECRET label on it. why even do this, honestly? what purpose does it serve? all i know is that if i see a book with a huge ass SECRET stamped across the front, i’m reading the fuck out of it. is this nedzu’s burn book?

you know i wonder what ua’s orientation is actually like. like what did they talk about. was all might there? did he do a whole speech? 1-b was probably there. were people confused by 1-a not showing up, or was it just a “same shit different year” sort of thing. again, does aizawa always teach class 1-a or is it like a random thing??? it’s killing me, not knowing

aizawa reveals that instead of going to orientation like normal boring schools, they’re going to be doing some of those dumb p.e. tests except the kids are allowed to use their quirks. turns out he thinks it’s pretty lame that these sorts of tests don’t already include quirks in their baseline. y’know i love dadzawa as much as the next guy, but all those people pretending like he’d be amazing about quirkless people seem to have forgotten this one part of episode 5 where he literally says that it’s stupid that normal schools are trying to keep these tests quirkless. aizawa, like horikoshi i guess, also forgets that quirkless people exist

i’m probably going to bring this up again at some point, but i’d like to draw your attention to the fact that despite japan being so quirk-centered and making everything they can about a person’s quirk, the fact that schools don’t let you use your quirk in physical aptitude tests is very interesting. you see a lot of things like this here and there— laws against public quirk usage, using your quirk to save someone or fight villains is a crime if you don’t have a license, that one time in episode 1 where the teacher mentioned that it was against the rules to use your quirk in class. i think that all these things and more are holdovers from when the quirked were the minority, because they make so much sense in that context. of course the government would make laws to restrict quirked people back in the day, it just turned out that even when quirked people came into the majority, those laws never went away. i think quirked people from the dawn of quirks era would initially look at the future of quirked society and be really happy and hopeful, but once they take a second glance, they start to realize “oh shit wait, how the fuck did the oppression not go away???” for the record, i absolutely think that the jobification of heroes was done purely in an attempt to wrangle the “villainous” quirked people back under control. it’s all proper gander, i’m telling you

i don’t know where else to put it, so i’m going to take a moment here to talk about aizawa’s english voice actor. i think the guy’s doing a fine job, but my one gripe with his performance is that he gives aizawa way too much energy. he’s doing a lot of projecting his voice, but aizawa’s just a tired grumbly guy who doesn’t often enunciate and does a lot of tired mumbling because he’s an insomniac or whatever. i want my aizawa to sound like he’s dead inside, not like he’s a normal ass teacher

also, for those of us who don’t speak japanese, the tests listed are:

- ball throw

- standing long jump

- 50 meter dash

- endurance running

- grip strength

- repetitive side jump

- sit ups

- sitting toe touch

67 meters is fucking far. that’s over 200 feet. do you know how fucking strong you have to be to be able to throw a softball over 200 feet? i couldn’t throw a softball even fifty feet, let alone two fucking hundred!! katsuki is cracked

705.2 meters!? that’s nearly a kilometer! i can’t even throw a softball 15 meters!!!! also, hold onto that number right there.

you know that post about teenagers in animated media sounding like adults? that’s kaminari. he opened his mouth and i was briefly shocked by how much of an adult he sounded like

everyone gets excited about getting to use their quirks in the test but aizawa’s the fun police so he has to bring the mood down a bunch and he says that whoever comes in last is getting expelled. you know, a lot of people talk about how aizawa expels a bunch of kids on the reg, but i’m pretty sure canon kind of ret-conned that by saying “aw he doesn’t actually expel his students, he just expels them for a bit and then they can try again later” but that’s lame and boring. i like mean and cruel sensei man

everyone panics, but no one panics as hard as izuku, because izuku would really like to not get expelled but he’d also really like to make it out of this class with all his bones intact. that’s right, izuku’s still afraid of breaking his bones at this point. it’s funny looking back on moments like these, because izuku is so okay with breaking his bones in the future, he does it willy nilly all the time these days (well, not so much anymore, because he kind of doesn’t want to lose his arms yikes) but there was a time when izuku didn’t have a martyr complex. or at least, there was a time when he didn’t have as big of a martyr complex

i could psychoanalyze the hell out of izuku. think about the fact that his martyr shtick and savior complex both come from the fact that he never had anyone growing up and was taught that he had no worth. how even now that he has a quirk— or even in the not so distant future of later seasons when he’s really started to make that quirk his— he still thinks that he has no inherent value as a person and has to gain value by being the best hero he can possibly be.

i’m thinking too much about this. where were we? right, bones.

stop the presses, we’ve discovered the first instance of mineta being a creep. i hope you guys are ready because it’s all downhill from here

[2hero2academia]

Season 1 Episode 4- “Start Line” (part 2)

hey, remember that one time where izuku just embodied the spirit of a hero? yeah, i bet you don’t. take a goddamned sip. i need a refill.

anyways, back to the present. izuku just leapt several stories into the air and he’s coming back down hard. what’s worse? there’s only a minute left in the exam, and izuku still has zero points

oh, and also— three of his limbs are broken

luckily, nice girl’s here to slap him out of his fall!

i’m gonna take a moment to talk about ochako’s quirk. see, her quirk lets her nullify gravity for an object, but the thing is if that were just the case, her hitting izuku here wouldn’t actually have done much of anything. even without gravity pulling him down, izuku was still moving extremely fast. he would have kept that speed going down and smacked right into the pavement. but that’s not what happens. izuku comes to an abrupt halt and then drifts gently towards the ground. why? i have a headcanon that i’ve held onto for literal actual years that i’ve never been able to tell anyone or put anywhere, but basically it goes like this:

i think that ochako’s quirk deals with more than just gravity. it deals with the laws of motion and gravity. when ochako activates her quirk on an object it removes all of the effects of gravity and motion. a moving object will stop moving if she uses her quirk on it, any and all momentum ceasing to exist. when she uses her quirk on something, she creates a blank slate of an object that she can then move as she pleases

i think it’s very funny that while mha is fine with depicting blood and izuku’s mangled limbs, the show draws the line at drawing vomit. it routinely goes out of its way to either avoid drawing any actual upchucking or stylizing it in such a way that it’s less gross. take ochako randomly puking up rainbows. what’s up with that?

izuku tries to crawl towards just one robot— if he can just get one point-! but it’s already too late. the exam ends, izuku still hasn’t a single point to his name, and the combination of shock and excruciating pain that he’s probably in cause him to pass out

after the exam, a bunch of students gather around izuku’s corpse and gossip about him, but tenya’s in the background realizing the secret behind the exam— that there’s more to it than just fighting villains.

then best girl recovery girl arrives on the scene to tell everyone they did a great job and to hand out gummies. i love recovery girl, actually, she’s so real

see, recovery girl’s a healer! one of the few we ever meet in this series, and she heals people by kissing them. she heals up izuku and tenya wonders more about theoretical secret parameters because he’s a nerd guy

anyways, it’s been one week since you looked at me

izuku is… coping

izuku figures that not only did he fucking bomb the practical part of the exam, but he also barely scraped by on the written side as well. no confidence in himself, this one.

moments like these are why i really love inko. she’s just telling izuku that win or lose, she’s proud of him and she thinks he’s cool. moments like these really make you think about how she just really fuckin loves her son. inko scenes always make me think about my mom

another one of izuku’s non-quirk quirks and purely a result of his ten months of hell, izuku is always fucking training. it’s just an idle thing to him at this point. sitting around doing nothing? pick up one of those grip exercisers or a dumbbell! wake up early! go out on a run! he is almost always exercising, it’s just a part of him at this point. it’s so neat and i love using it in stories so people can look at him and go “wtf why do you work out so much you’re a nerd”

after izuku does some lamenting over disappointing all might, inko shows up to prove that anxiety runs in the family because izuku’s letter from ua came and izuku is not the only one freaking out over it

to be fair, a lot of izuku’s freaking out is internal because he’s kind of dead inside

izuku retreats to his room to stare at the letter in what looks like a strange combination of trepidation and irritation

eventually, he bites the bullet and tears the letter open. you see the hologram thing that lights up a moment later, but there’s also an actual physical letter in the envelope, so it’s not just the weird hologram disc

and who should show up on that hologram projection but all might himself! wait what? all might, what are you doing in my letter from ua?

for the record, by the way, i think this is the first ever appearance of all might’s dumbass looking bright yellow pinstripe suit that i love with all of my heart. anyways, all might is apparently going to be teaching at ua this coming year! that’s neat, right? he wants to talk to izuku specifically some more because the school year hasn’t even started but by god does all might have a favorite, but he’s told to just wrap it up and tell the boy his score

all might tells izuku that he sucks and he didn’t get a single point in the practical exam

but wait! there’s a twist coming! look here! that nice girl with the gravity powers that izuku saved during the exam shows up at ua to try and give some of her points to izuku because she heard that he didn’t get a single one

one of the funniest early mha moments: when ochako’s trying to describe izuku and she’s like “yeah he just has a really plain face??” and without hesitation, izuku’s like “oh, she means me!” like. honey.

but there isn’t a thing to worry about apparently, because the practical wasn’t graded on just combat points and izuku’s apparently done well even without them!

there are rescue points! a panel of judges watch the practicals and award points to those who commit heroics acts to help or save their fellow hero hopefuls

and while izuku may not have gotten a single combat point, he wound up with 60 rescue points, skyrocketing him into the top ten participants in the practical just above such a legend as tetsutetsu tetsutetsu

actually, i’d like to emphasize how fucking bonkers tetsutetsu’s name is real quick. this is a guy named fucking tetsutetsu tetsutetsu, but all four of the kanji in his name— every single tetsu— is a different kanji. imagine being this guy’s parents with the already bonkers surname “tetsutetsu” and then you’re like, “hey, you know what would be such a move? naming our kid tetsutetsu.” i wonder if he’s tetsutetsu tetsutetsu jr. that would be crazy

and finally, all might welcomes izuku, and the audience through him, to his hero academia. to your hero academia

and so ends episode 4, the final episode of the preamble…

… but wait, there’s more!

not a whole lot more, but this episode does have a post credits scene.

we are finally finally finally at the starting line! we are at our hero academia! the school year begins and we’re about to get tossed in along with it. the opening has closed and what comes next will be the real beginning of this story.

refill count: 1

[2hero2academia]

Season 1 Episode 4- “Start Line” (part 1)

episode 4 also begins with an exposition dump, but again, it’s actually our first time hearing this particular exposition dump.

here, izuku’s explaining to us the top heroes who are alumni of ua, his point being that ua produces top heroes

three of the top four heroes are all former ua students and the third is a kid groomed by the hpsc, so who’s really winning here? it’s ua

who gave ua the budget to make a million fake cities? i just wanna talk.

in case you forgot the rules of this exam, the show has you covered with a nice little flashback about them. it’s not like this literally happened an episode ago. take a sip

izuku spots the nice girl and goes to thank her for stopping him from tripping earlier, but tenya’s here too and we don’t know that he’s actually a nice guy yet, so he just seems scary and mean. he yells at izuku a bit who nearly dies on the spot because of it

present mic calls for the start! there is no countdown, because there aren’t any countdowns in real life! it’s time to go go go!

or, if you’re izuku, to get left behind

the moment has come, we’ve finally arrived, we’re at the starting line…! except, not really. we might be at the starting line, but the race hasn’t started quite yet! the story still hasn’t quite begun, we’ve still got a couple more breaths before the shot rings out and we’re off to the races. but now it’s time to see if we even qualify for that race

before that, though, we have a flashback! now wait, before you ready your glasses, this isn’t that kind of flashback. this is a useful one that shows us things that we haven’t already seen! no sips here. well, i bet izuku might want a sip, something to help wash that hair down, eugh

izuku doesn’t feel any different and all might explains that’s because izuku has to digest the hair before he can absorb the power. izuku will be getting one for all in about two or three hours, which is coincidentally about the time of the exam. i prefer the more metal way of transferring one for all, which is to let your blood mix into another person’s bloodstream. it revolves open wounds and angst and i’m a sucker for both of those things

izuku will have no time to even test out one for all before he heads to the exam, so all might leaves him with the parting advice on how to activate one for all— clenching your buttcheeks and yelling smash as loud as you can. great advice, toshinori, great advice.

a one pointer strays into izuku’s path but he freezes up and finds he can’t move. before anything else happens, though, this french asshole swoops in.

aoyama definitely scored some rescue points off of izuku here. ah, wait, i’m not supposed to know about those yet. aoyama bids izuku adieu and leaves with the parting message that they probably won’t be seeing each other in the future. oh, what a fool.

and oh, what fools we were, too.

izuku’s off to a rough start and he only has 6 minutes left. honestly, how bakugou scored seventy something points in the span of, what, ten minutes? is baffling to me.

izuku finds the nice girl again and she uses her cool anti gravity quirk to send a bunch of robots up into the air and then right back down to earth. apparently, she already has tw.

twenty eight points!?

and she’s not the only one. tenya over here has somehow amassed a whopping 45 points!! izuku is being left in the dust with his measly score of zero

for this next bit, nedzu narrates to us the various strategies that students employ to take down as many robots as possible. using reconnaissance, speed, levelheadedness, and brute strength among other things, students find one way or another to gain as many villain points as they can.

also nedzu’s voice is… so much. i was not expecting his english voice to sound like that

then they press this big red button. i wonder whose hand this is. it does not look familiar. what this button does is release the monstrous obstacle and true test of the exam…

… the zero pointer.

izuku… is really going through it right now.

i don’t remember this scene from godzilla vs kong 2021. anyways, the zero pointer punches the ground really hard and sends students running for the hills. here, we’re told why the zero pointer actually exists— it acts as a sort of measure of moral caliber. when faced with an overwhelming threat, a person’s true character is revealed in times of crisis. for these not quite high schoolers, this is quite the crisis and most of them react accordingly— by trying to get the hell out of dodge

ships pass in the night and tenya runs on by. whether he’s too afraid for himself to pull izuku out of the way, whether he believes izuku should be the one to pick himself up, or whether he thinks that izuku’s in no real danger here at ua doesn’t matter. this was a test of character, and unfortunately, tenya failed in this moment.

but izuku…

izuku still has that moment.

and of course, before taking that leap, we need to reminisce about all the things that led up to this point in episode 4. take a sip.

i think it’s often forgotten that izuku’s first use of one for all isn’t actually to SMASH the zero pointer into pieces. no, it’s a heartbeat earlier in this moment. the first thing izuku ever does with one for all isn’t to hit, isn’t to hurt. it’s to jump.

and then, of course,

to punch.

and there is perhaps no one more surprised by this development than izuku himself

[2hero2academia]

Season 1 Episode 3- “Roaring Muscles” (part 2)

sometimes working out feels great. it gives you a high like no other and makes you feel like you could do anything

sometimes working out makes you feel so shit you puke your guts up mid workout

question: is this all might’s truck? does all might own a truck? does all might have a driver’s license? these are all important questions that i need to know but never get answered. i’m losing my mind

izuku’s extra training finally catches up to him some six or so months after he starts training with all might, and he conks out in the middle of a run.

all might initially tells him “hey it’s not healthy to overwork yourself” despite being the person to give him a workout plan where he only sleeps four hours every weekday, but then izuku gives a little speech about wanting to be the best hero there is and not just scraping by. you know, in a lot of harry potter aus (obligatory fuck jkr), people make izuku a gryffindor because he’s a brave little boy with a heart of gold, but honestly i think he’d make a better slytherin. he has ambition for days, he’s a weird little fanboy creep, and he’s known for having a sharp mind. anyways, what were we talking about? overworking yourself and how it’s actually totally healthy and cool?

all might remembers episode 2, when izuku told him the type of hero he wants to be. take a sip.

all might is once again inspired by izuku’s tenacity and picks him up by his scruff like a wily kitten, promising to make him a better plan for the next uh (checks watch) four months? all might calls himself an old man because he’s at least fifty and probably feels seventy, but izuku is quick to say “you’re not old, all might” which proves that they actually aren’t related because everyone knows that children will always take any opportunity to call their parents old as dirt

ua’s entrance exam happens on february 26th which is very interesting because from what my limited research has shown me, most japanese high schools hold their exams in january. ua’s a little bit late, which is weird considering it gets literally thousands of applicants that it then has to go through in less than 2 months. crazy. go beyond, i guess

in preparation for the exam, izuku’s piled up all of the trash dumped on the beach and is screaming on top of it. that feels like it must be a great way to destress. i wish i had a mountain of trash to scream on top of when i had to go in for finals week at my high school

all might is super proud of izuku because he went above and beyond (plus ultra and all that) and cleaned up all of the beach and not just the area that all might told him to. izuku’s kind of out of it because i assume he just didn’t sleep at all last night so he could work on cleaning the beach instead

the ten months have passed, izuku’s cleaned the beach, the time is at hand. izuku is finally ready to inherit one for all.

… and the mechanism by which he gets it is by eating all might’s hair.

as all might encourages izuku to eat his hair (offscreen so the viewers aren’t traumatized), we get a nice shot of izuku’s sick ass kicks. why the hell wasn’t he wearing shoes while cleaning up the trash. all it would take is one cut from a shitty piece of garbage and izuku would have every disease ever in a heartbeat. i don’t trust this beach and izuku shouldn’t either. i don’t go to beaches barefoot even when i know they’re probably clean. to be fair, i kind of just hate beaches in general, so that might be a part of it. i’m like anakin skywalker, i hate sand. what were we talking about? eating all might’s hair?

is the exam location not just the main building? why are there three doors? school’s still in session at this point, so i wonder if the entrance exam is sort of like a break week for the students. that would be neat, i think.

i’ve been learning japanese lately, and while i can barely even recognize all of the hiragana, i’ve started learning a couple of kanji! one of the words i learned was 学生 (gakusei) which means student. i don’t know what the first kanji means by itself or what it means in this, but i got really excited when i recognized a kanji

izuku’s still traumatized because he had to eat all might’s hair, but he’s also worried that he hasn’t actually inherited the power because he doesn’t feel any different, which is funny because he should be getting super senses any second now. more on that when we get to the third movie. sorry.

katsuki’s here too. izuku kind of freaks out at the sight of him because he assumes katsuki’s going to end his entire bloodline for daring to take the exam, but katsuki just growls at izuku and walks on by. izuku is as baffled as the audience. apparently, ever since the sludge villain incident, katsuki’s stopped being a bully. he’s still a huge douchebag, just not a bully

izuku proves to be the most relatable person on the planet by tripping and deciding that this is what kills him

luckily for him, a nice girl stops him from falling flat on his face and accepting the cold concrete embrace of death.

thanks nice girl, i hope we see you again

this is perhaps one of my favorite izukus. i love when he looks like a scrawny noodle boy because at this point in time he is canonically ripped. he canonically has a six pack, but he just looks like a soft and squishy little noodle boy

he’s also super lame! and i love him for that

if there was ever a voice i wasn’t prepared for in the english dub, it’s presentation michael’s. oh my god that voice hit me like a freight train and not in a good way. i feel winded. is… is that sonny strait?

anyways, it’s time to learn about the exam that the hero kids are going to be participating in! telling everyone about it is the voice hero: present mic. izuku fanboys over him because he’s a nerd guy. katsuki calls him a nerd guy.

present mic begins explaining the exam right as the episode suddenly starts displaying captions out of nowhere. the way it works is that you have to beat up some robots to earn points. the more points you get, the better you do. also, people who apply from the same school are sent to different fake cities so they don’t help each other out during the exam, which is lame. katsuki also thinks it’s lame, but because he was looking forward to crushing izuku… in the exam. how many fake cities does ua have? stupid question, i know, but also the answers kill me.

tenya has a question

tenya asks about the fourth robot shown on the handout and also tells izuku to shut the fuck up. kind of mean, tenya. some of us have social anxiety

present mic goes on to explain that the fourth kind of robot is worth zero points. it’s functionally an obstacle and little else and there’s one in each of the cities.

is the implication here that there’s a battle center a-z? or is it some arbitrary amount, like a-f? it’s killing me. i need to know how many fake cities are on ua’s campus

izuku psyches himself up for the battle to come and the credits roll

episode 3 is perhaps a quieter moment in between the high points of the sludge villain incident in episode 2 and the meat of the entrance exam in episode 4. it’s funny that this episode has so little going on in it, because it has one of the most important things in the story contained within it— izuku receiving one for all. either way, the preamble is almost done, we’re just about at the starting line, just about ready to leap into the story proper. we just have one more episode to go.

refill count: 0

[2hero2academia]

Season 1 Episode 3- “Roaring Muscles” (part 1)

this episode we open not with a recap, but with exposition central. i nearly took a sip, before remembering that this is episode 3 and we haven’t been exposited to about this particular topic yet. my glass is set aside, but still ready for the next flashback

this graph is very interesting because it isn’t labeled! i’m pretty sure that it’s saying the crime rate went from 20% to 6% because i’m pretty sure someone says that somewhere, but it could just as easily be a jump from 20 to 15, just zoomed in a bunch. label your graphs, kids, and also don’t take graphs at face value, there are a lot of ways to exaggerate graphs

we pick up right were we left off, with all might telling izuku he can be a hero and izuku having a breakdown over it. sometimes when things go your way after being awful for a while, you just need a good cry

and then all might drops the bomb of “i deem you worthy to inherit my quirk.” the fuck does that mean?

it turns out, all might’s super secret quirk that nobody knows anything about is one that wasn’t originally his and one that can be passed on to another

izuku’s entire worldview is kind of rocked by this and he starts thinking really hard about it. were i him, i’d probably start thinking really hard about it too. this is the first time we ever really see izuku’s little mutter storms and they are maybe one of my favorite things about him. i love my boy and all his little non-quirk quirks

all might, who has never had a thought in his life, tells izuku to stop overthinking things. i bet when nana explained one for all to him, toshinori was just like “sick, free quirk!”

all might reels the conversation back to his original point— his quirk is named one for all, it can be passed down to another person, and all might wants that person to be izuku

while all might explains one for all to izuku, we get these laser shots that are going to be recycled a million times over despite the fact that i’m pretty sure they’re not in the manga. still, it looks cool, and it makes me think about color coding the holders of one for all

all might admits that izuku may be quirkless, but he has the spirit of a hero. this is still a flashback shot, take a sip

izuku agrees to be all mights successor so he can prove himself as the greatest all might fanboy of all time- i mean, so that he can become a hero.

the ultimate hero merchandise: the hero’s quirk. i should write a fanfiction with that idea where izuku has all for one. hm.

episode 3!!! not all episodes are created equal. some are training montage episodes. what more is there to say?

welcome to dagoba beach! for those of you who don’t know, dagobah is the swamp planet where luke trains with yoda in star wars. it’s also called takoba beach by the wiki??? for some reason??????

the implication is that all might was like “okay, i’ll talk to you tomorrow about what we’re gonna do” and then tomorrow came and he was like “okay so at dawn tomorrow, you’re going to go to this beach and i’m going to meet you there.” this isn’t particularly important, i just thought i’d note it down for my timeline i’m working on

anyways, what are we doing here? pulling trash?

izuku reveals he’s a super fanboy by bringing up the fact that he knows (or knew, at least) all might’s exact body weight. all might somehow doesn’t find this creepy

izuku wants to know why all might has him up at the crack of dawn at this garbage beach dragging around garbage. i do too, i think. there are probably better ways to do muscle training.

all might tells him that he’s kind of not shit and isn’t worthy yet. izuku doesn’t hear the yet and has a bit of a cry over all might calling him a scrawny noodle boy with scrawny noodle limbs.

all might explains that one for all is an extremely powerful quirk that’s had generations to build up power. if izuku’s scrawny noodle body inherited it, his scrawny noodle arms and legs would burst clean off. i know that it doesn’t make any sense to actually include this anywhere, but a part of me kind of wants to see what that would actually look like. even after ten months of training for one for all, izuku’s arms and legs still shattered when he used it at full power. if he used it now, would it cause his muscles to explode? his blood to boil out of his skin? his bones to turn to dust? messed up, but oh so intriguing.

izuku is suitably terrified by this, but reasons that yeah, working out a bunch sounds like a good idea. i also just noticed that izuku’s wearing an all might t-shirt. he really went to meet the guy wearing his merch. nerd boy if i’ve ever met one.

apparently the buildup of trash on dagoba beach is a sort of recent thing, only starting in the last few years. if i may headcanon real quick, i have an idea about something. so we know that the ocean currents cause things dropped in the ocean to wind up on dagoba beach and we know that a lot of the trash came from people illegally dumping their shit here because, i mean, there’s already a bunch of trash here, no one will notice if i add to it. so the idea of what really kicked this off was that there was a cargo spill out in the pacific and a bunch of random items ended up washing ashore on dagoba, but on a scale never seen before, making the beach look like a dump. the city was preoccupied at the time and didn’t bother with immediate cleanup, and then people also started dumping their shit on the beach. before anyone knew it, the beach was absolutely covered in trash and there would be no cleaning it for a while

until today! all might thinks that the greatest heroes are those who put in community service hours, so he’s having izuku clean up a section of the beach! for training, and to help the environment! what a cool dude

izuku’s a little bit daunted by this task, especially considering he only has ten months to prepare for one for all before the ua entrance exam, because he’s a little nerd fanboy who wants to go to the hero school that all might went to. luckily, all might is the man with a plan to ready izuku for the exam!

according to this plan (helpfully translated by this reddit user, thank you kind stranger), izuku wakes up a 4am every weekday and proceeds to go to school and work out until midnight when he goes to sleep. for ten months, izuku was getting at max four hours of sleep every night. how he’s not dead is a mystery to us all

so begins izuku’s ten months of hell! not a lot to say here, the training montage has begun

izuku’s still kind of nervous about not making it in time, so he starts thinking about doing even more training that he already is and sleeping less than he already is. problem is, he starts theorizing in class, and izuku apparently tends to think aloud

he gets bopped on the head for this

izuku is about as mortified as anyone with anxiety is when being singled out by a teacher all of his classmates laugh and poke fun at him and his teacher kind of implies that getting caught in a villain attack made izuku go crazy

curiously enough, katsuki doesn’t join in on the teasing

anyways, who cares about school, let’s push around some more trash! this tire is fucking huge, it’s like the size of izuku’s entire body what the hell

it is 2:25 in the morning, izuku should have gone to bed 2 hours ago considering he’s supposed to be waking up in 2 hours, and instead he’s studying. do people still know how to read an analog clock?

[2hero2academia]

Season 1 Episode 2- “What It Takes to Be a Hero” (part 2)

i am shocked that this notebook is as alright as it is. blown up and tossed in a koi pond? my sketchbooks would be literally deceased.

izuku’s kind of going through it right now. while he walks a lonely road, he thinks about how his dream was actually always stupid, and how he was stupid for believing that a stupid quirkless person could ever have such a stupid dream as his. izuku really just needs one person on his side to tell him that he can be a hero. and no, not that one, i mean someone who would tell izuku that he could be a hero, quirk or no quirk.

oh hey smoke. izuku wanders over to the scene of the crime while thinking sad self-deprecating thoughts

only to realize that the villain at the scene of the crime is the same one who attacked him earlier!!!

izuku flashes back to remember what the hell happened to the sludge villain. take a sip

he puts two and two together and comes to the conclusion that this is all his fault, actually.

izuku learns there’s a hostage and thinks back to an episode ago where he nearly died after just a few seconds of suffocation. how long must that poor hostage have been in that sludge!? take a sip.

love me a good crowd shot. someone mentions that all might was fighting this sludge guy earlier, but for some reason he’s not around right now? kinda wack. guess our number one’s not as infallible as he looks. izuku spirals into another hole of self-deprecation and shame

all might does too!

surely a real hero will come soon to save the day?

or maybe…

… one’s already here.

there is perhaps no one more surprised by this development than izuku himself

in this moment, not only is izuku the only one to actually get up and do something, he’s also the only one to succeed at doing something. not with super strength or telekinesis or firebreath, but with an all might pencil case

while thematically speaking, these flashbacks have a place here, this is still Episode Two. you do not need a fucking flashback montage in episode two. take a sip.

izuku got suicide baited by this kid maybe an hour ago, and now he’s risking his life to save him. i get so angry when people make izuku just this cold and angry and unfeeling person. he feels so fucking much!!! he is forgiving beyond measure!!! and he is, at his heart, a hero!!!!!!!!!

izuku’s good vibes and genuine love and care for humanity reminds all might that people are worth saving and inspires him to jump in against the villain despite the fact that he’s out of time for today. but he doesn’t care, because for the first time in a long time, he’s been brought down to earth and reminded of what really makes a hero

all might detroit smashes this villain so hard he dematerializes. nah, he probably just turns into a pair of eyeballs and a set of teeth somewhere. oh, and his punch was strong enough to essentially vacuum in a bunch of clouds together to cause it to rain

oh so when all might defeats the sludge villain, he can be shoved into two liter bottles but when all might defeats the sludge villain (second try) he has to be gathered up into at least twelve trash bags? guess our number one’s not as infallible as he looks

while izuku gets chewed out for rushing in like an idjit, katsuki is praised for his bravery and fantastic quirk— the same quirk which, moments ago, was causing a shit ton of damage to the area around him— and offered future jobs as a sidekick. also, notice how the cameras are only pointed towards katsuki. while he definitely ended up on the news, i’ve no doubt that izuku’s involvement was quickly shuffled to the side.

as izuku wanders home, he’s stopped and confronted by katsuki

who apparently ran after him??? and either ran from a while away or has shit stamina

katsuki yells at izuku to not look down on him, that he had the whole thing handled, that he didn’t need help from a quirkless loser like izuku. then, katsuki storms off. izuku, alongside the audience, is baffled by him and his words.

literally, like, maybe ten seconds later, all might shows up and between his and izuku’s screaming, katsuki (who mind you is maybe like ten meters away) can DEFINITELY FUCKING HEAR THEM. they never address this.

all might tries to showboat, but he’s still old and crippled and so he hacks up blood instead. anyways.

all might tells izuku that it was because of him that he decided to step in. without izuku’s story or his actions, all might would have wound up just another hapless bystander. izuku tries to argue that actually he kind of caused this whole thing anyways, so it’s sort of all his fault and what he did was bad and stupid, but all might is having none of that

do you remember how you felt in that moment? i do, because it was literally five minutes ago. all might tells izuku that many heroes have a uniting story about the start of their journey towards heroics— that their bodies moved to save a life without them thinking. it may be inspiring, but it’s still a sip.

as all might builds up to his thesis statement— that izuku can be a hero, that in a way he already is one— izuku has a little bit of a breakdown because literally nobody has ever even gotten close to so much as implying that izuku could be a hero. this is… a very big moment for him

he’s reminded of that time in episode 1 when his mom hugged him and apologized for the fact that he was quirkless. god, how long ago was that? an episode ago? take a sip.

but all might isn’t inko. he sees a kid who happens to be quirkless? not for long! wait, uh, we’re not there yet, uhhhhh

oh by the way, izuku forgot to mention something! what did you forget to tell us, izuku? this is the story of how you became the greatest hero? wow! those are some hardcore spoilers for how this show ends, izuku!

episode two. the second of the sort of prologue episodes (aka everything before izuku’s first year at ua) and perhaps one of the most important. while midoriya izuku: origin introduces you to the world of mha, it’s ironically this episode that really introduces us to izuku. who he is, who he’s going to be. the story still hasn’t quite started yet, but it’s settling in by the starting line. very soon, we’ll be taking that first step into the rest of izuku’s life and into his journey towards becoming a hero

refill count: 0

[2hero2academia]

Season 1 Episode 2- “What It Takes to Be a Hero” (part 1)

if there’s one thing i hate about my hero academia, it’s the recaps. i’m not against recapping things in your episodes, but the extent to which mha does it alongside its truly atrocious amount of flashbacks is actually criminal. so let’s make a drinking game out of this

for the love of all that is holy, don’t actually use alcohol for this. it’ll be a hydration game, not a “kill your liver” game. basically, every time mha shows you something you didn’t need to be reminded of, take a sip from whatever beverage you’ve brought along with you. you’ll probably need several refills before the season’s even over. you’re allowed to exercise freedom in deciding what counts as necessary information, but basically if you think you could’ve gone through a scene without seeing that flashback and understood what was happening just fine, take a sip. recaps only count for one sip because they’re easily skippable, but if you get the rare “flashback within a flashback” take several sips

anyways. we pick up right were we left off with izuku asking all might if he could be a hero without a quirk. i feel so sad for him in these first two ish episodes. he’s really going through it right now :(

izuku looks to all might for an answer, but he’s been magically replaced by this skeleton man! horrifying!!!

hey it’s another tatooin place! so it’s probably an area within musutafu and not just the name of that one station

hey! look who made it out of there alive! hey, if the slime villain was in two bottles, whatever happened to the other half of him? is that part just gone? does he reconnect at some point? what the fuck is the sludge villain even made of anyways?

that’s a flashback! take a sip

katsuki and his two goons show up in this random ass alleyway. what are they even doing here? is this supposed to be a shortcut to the shopping district? out of it?

katsuki makes a little blunder by kicking the bottle with the sludge villain in it. why was the cap screwed on so loosely? bottle caps don’t come off that easy on their own. i guess maybe the sludge villain was working on unscrewing it? i dunno man

oof, two in one scene. take a sip!

katsuki blows up this can and then proceeds to throw it on the ground. littering isn’t cool, katsuki, don’t be a douchebag

oh my god, is that fingers kid??? he survives!! that’s more than can be said for tsubasa lol. in this shot, katsuki’s goons talk about going to a bar to pick up chicks. how they think a couple of middle schoolers could get allowed in is. crazy. but katsuki shoots them down because while he might be a huge douchebag, he’s also kind of a square

in a moment of instant karma, the sludge villain somehow rapidly expands in size and grows teeth just in time to punish katsuki for littering. also this shot’s pretty cool

and so we arrive at episode 2, the second part of the preamble, so to speak. the fact that nearly a third of the episodes in season one are basically just a glorified prologue can be off putting to some, but we’re taking our time here and languishing in the slower pace.

ah, that reminds me,

skeleton man.

the izumi curtis of it all. i’d also like to point out that several seconds ago, izuku called all might an imposter. skinny might sus?

all might likens his strange and definitely quirk based transformations to sucking in your gut at the pool

nows a good a time as any to talk about it, so let’s discuss more english castings! i actually love christopher sabat as all might. i grew up on a lot of anime dubbed by funimation, and his was a voice that appeared very often throughout many. it might just be nostalgia, but i think that he does a great job with all might. he’s pretty good at mimicking miyake’s all might laugh. in his muscle form he reads a little more major armstrong, but in his skinny form he is full on piccolo from dbz, which really just tugs at my nostalgia strings

izuku is generally shocked and so all might decides to just. sit down and explain. five years ago, he got into a fight that took out most of his respiratory system and all of his stomach. not actually sure how that works out. his wound here is gruesome and also… kind of confusing. what exactly did that to him? i’d guess he probably got impaled to some degree, but it sort of looks like whatever caused that scar was twisting him. like a fucked up skin whirlpool

also, fun fact, the anime actually put the scar a little too low on all might’s body. it’s supposed to be a little further up, less stomach and more chest

all might’s entire situation is kind of tragic. that’s definitely the intent here, but it’s a very sad thing that all might accidentally (or maybe on purpose) built up around himself. he made himself into a symbol of peace so that japan would have someone to look to in times of crisis, but by taking on that burden all by himself, he only ever really plugged up a dam. eventually, all might is going to fall, and japan won’t have anything like him to look to afterwards. and we all know how that goes.

all might tells izuku that he doesn’t think izuku can be a hero without a quirk. and i think that a lot of that comes from all might’s more cynical view of the world in recent years, but i think a part of it comes from the fact that all might was once quirkless and thought he couldn’t do anything on his own. nana may have raised him up and given him purpose, but she also reinforced the idea in his mind that quirkless means powerless. it doesn’t, but that’s not a story we’ll ever see explored.

all might says that police officers are kind of bullied because heroes tend to be the ones bringing in villains. i am happy about this because i hate cops. unfortunately for me, heroes are basically all cops in this show as well, except somehow even worse. i wonder what japan thinks of their pigs. i know that cops aren’t as shitty in other countries, but as an american it’s hard for me to even conceptualize a world where cops are monstrous individuals. what was i talking about? right, heroes

after literally shattering this middle schooler’s dreams, all might proceeds to leave him on a roof with a fairly low fence around it. my guy does not ever think.

in a moment of instant karma, the sludge villain disappears from all might’s pockets right after he breaks a middle schooler’s spirit

woah an explosion in the distance! izuku gets kind of excited for a second because he wonders what hero will show…

… only to flash back to, i shit you not, not even five minutes ago. this is mha’s most egregious kind of flashback— the ones that take place in the same fucking episode. it’s actually insanity. do you think i have the memory of a goldfish? take a sip.

izuku immediately loses steam, but even still, he wanders in the direction of the villain attack all the same. also, the track “rampaging evil” starts playing, and it’s here that i’d like to draw attention to the fact that mha actually has kind of a bangin soundtrack? i’ll probably remember to mention it here and there, but mha has a lot of musical bits that i don’t see discussed a lot that are actually kind of fucking cool as hell. anyways

the sludge villain has taken control of katsuki and is either somehow puppeteering his body to make explosions, or redirecting katsuki’s panicked involuntary explosions where he wants them. he? i don’t actually know the sludge villain’s pronouns, i just assumed.

meanwhile, katsuki is going through what is probably the most traumatizing moment of his life. so far, anyways.

and here we see another flaw of the hyper competitive heroics industry: the fact that while everyone wants to jump in and be the one to stop the villain, none of them are willing to work together to formulate a plan of attack.

they’re all just off doing their own things saying “someone else will handle the villain” without bothering to make sure that that “someone else” is actually there

they come to the conclusion that “our quirks aren’t suited for this” and so they decide to stand around and wait until someone with a fitting power steps in to do something

all might arrives on the scene, but he’s still kind of crippled, so he can’t do jack shit. so he joins the other heroes in standing around and waiting for some other hero to come along.

… oh, hi izuku.

[2hero2academia]

Season 1 Episode 1- “Midoriya Izuku: Origin” (part 2)

i really like mha’s commercial break screens. i like the ones that give the character profiles more, certainly, but it’s nice to just have a little two second cue that it’s commercial break time. it’s no fullmetal alchemist, but it’ll do

izuku is so dang happy about writing some notes on mt lady after school. it’s like the shitshow that happened earlier is just out of his brain. he’s such an optimistic pessimist. i see a lot of people write stories where izuku’s this jaded and tired kid who’s all bitter about the shit that’s happened in his life, and these days they just sort of make me cringe. because izuku’s whole thing is that no matter how hard the world tries to bring him down, he always gets right back up. he might be skittish and self-loathing, but he always tries to see the best in people and situations, and i think a lot of people tend to forget that while they look at the bigger picture. izuku’s just a little guy puttering through life. he’s not bitter or jaded. he’s sad, certainly, but he’s still moving forward. or trying to, at least

and then katsuki shows up to remind izuku that, as the main character, he’s obligated to go through trials and tribulations.

i also like the various changes of brand names. anyone got a campos notebook on ya?

ah, i haven’t mentioned it yet, but katsuki’s kind of a huge douchebag.

katsuki may not be actually using his quirk on izuku in this shot, but the threat is there and it’s very real. there is no doubt in my mind that katsuki has maliciously used his quirk on izuku in the past— and not just when they were brats who didn’t know any better.

so uh. there aren’t any captions, but this is the moment where katsuki tells izuku to kill himself. and this is the lowest point of katsuki’s character. for a lot of people, this is the moment where they have to decide whether they’re going to be open-minded about katsuki going forward, or if that was the breaking point. as someone who has faced bullying of this particular variety, i know how serious shit like this is. but as the years go by and as i get older, i’ve started to have more complicated thoughts about this particular moment. see, in this scene, katsuki is fourteen. do you know how much shit fourteen year olds say without meaning or even understanding what they’re saying? yes, what katsuki said was very bad, and i don’t fault people for finding this sin unforgivable, but as someone who was fourteen pretty recently (in the grand scheme of things, at least) i know that there were things i said at fourteen that i didn’t mean and there were things said to me that i doubt other people meant. again, this is the make it or break it moment for most people when it comes to katsuki’s character, but for me personally— i chose to give katsuki the benefit of the doubt.

i would still like to emphasize, however, that katsuki is still a huge douchebag

unfortunately, we’re going to have to wait until season 3 for things to start getting better

it’s very sad that some of the first things we hear izuku think after literally getting told to kill himself are “you can’t go around telling people to kill themselves, think of your record!” it’s a sad thing, but one of the things that suicidal people often do to stop themselves from committing suicide is thinking of the small things. this may not be a super correct interpretation (i don’t know if izuku’s suicidal or not, but i wouldn’t be surprised), but izuku might be thinking something like, “i can’t kill myself because if i do, it might get kacchan in trouble”

this notebook is probably intensely messed up after the ordeal it went through. water damage is no joke. that entire thing is illegible.

anyways, it’s baby time!!

i used to think that inko was a lot taller in these prologue scenes, but seeing her next to four year old izuku really puts into perspective how short she is.

also, you can see the bottoms of some really tall cabinets in this shot, which is one step closer to tall hisashi being canon. why does that matter? well you see, you know who else in mha is really tall? a whopping 225 centimeters, in fact (or 7’2” for those of you more familiar with the imperial system)? that’s right, all for one. dad for one canon?

you know, izuku should not have been watching these videos as a four year old. i can see at least two people bleeding (real blood!! in universe, anyways) and i know for a fact that it’s probably a lot more gruesome than the anime’s depicting for us. inko should not have been letting him watch this on loop as a kid

i hadn’t much thought of it until recently, but this video is of all might’s debut. i’m pretty sure it was stated somewhere (genuinely i don’t know where, this might be made up) that he had one for all for something like 4 decades. ignoring the fact that this would make him, like, 54 at the youngest, it’s also interesting to note that all might didn’t spend all of those four decades in japan. we know he started out as an american hero and only returned to japan when he was confident that he could face all for one and win. what i want to know is how long all might was in america before he came back to japan. he went to college in america (??? i think) which means he spent at least four years there after graduating from ua, but i don’t know how much more. he was already a pretty prominent figure when endeavor was in high school (???? i think?????) so does that mean he came back to japan, like. really early? punches the wall, i need to know!!!!

is this… not all for one’s doctor? the wiki lists them as different people, with this guy being named dr. tsubasa (though he doesn’t have a FUCKING page so i don’t really know), but like… i’m pretty sure this is just garaki/ujiko??? how are there two guys who look identical to each other but are ??? different people??????? note to self: look at the cast list for episode 1 and figure out if both doctors are voiced by the same people

what counts as a small object? can inko pull them faster towards each other if she tries? or is it always at that sort of languid speed? could she pull out a person’s eye? a handful of blood? does her quirk work with liquid at all or just solids? could she tug on a small part of a person’s brain and cause irreparable damage? does izuku count as a small object? is it a purely size thing or does weight matter too? if she were given an object the size of a pinhead with the weight of a black hole, would her quirk work on it? if it is weight and not size, then what about extremely large but extremely light objects? would her quirk work on those, then?

i’d like to point out that this scene contains the only canonical mention of izuku’s father. he’s not even mentioned by name, he isn’t midoriya hisashi, he’s just “my husband with a fire breathing quirk”. and this is the only time he’s mentioned in mha. it’s been eight years. who is midoriya hisashi. you know who i think it is? all for one. dad for one canon when

question: i know quirkless people have a second pinkie toe joint, but does that mean quirked people’s pinkie toes have a fused joint or are they straight up missing a bone in their feet? do you think chisaki kai paid quirkless people to send him feet pics?

this whole sequence is. also kind of fucked. i love mamadoriya as much as the next person, but she makes some… blunders while parenting. izuku loves her, but i know well that even when your parents are kind of shitty and neglectful, it’s really hard to hate them for it. do i think inko’s a bad parent? mh. probably not. do i think she’s an exemplary one? haha! no! i might be projecting.

my guy just got his notebook destroyed, got suicide baited by his former best friend, and even still he’s trying his best to be as optimistic as he can. i’ll say it again, i’ve never understood how you can watch this show and interpret izuku as some edgy and hopeless kid. he has so much hope!!! even when thing’s aren’t going his way, he tries so hard to just keep his head up. that’s what’s always made him a hero

haha funney shot. if the sludge villain was wearing pants earlier, does that mean he’s naked right now? does he have genitalia in there somewhere? does this count as sexual assault?

ugh, it should. how did izuku not get, like, ten million diseases from this moment alone? the sludge villain was literally just in the sewers!

y’know how did the sludge villain manage to avoid all might for that long? i thought all might was supposed to be the best? guess our number one’s not as infallible as he looks

izuku looks very small here which is pretty cute. also what happened to the parts of the sludge villain that were already inside of him? just not even gonna address that? alright

after momentarily conking out, i like the implication that all might picked izuku up, laid him down on the road, looked through his notebook for a blank page to sign, and then tried to wake izuku up by patting his cheek a couple times. this scene is also funnier in the japanese version, for the record

get bottled idiot. how on earth did all the sludge of the sludge villain fit inside two liter bottles? also, anyone know what “torrent” is referencing? i have no clue

one of the sad things about moving to the english format is that you don’t get all might’s random english swearing. i like to headcanon that he picked it up from david shield

a lot of people talk about how izuku cries easily, but he also flushes pretty easily too! oh also “can i be a hero even if i don’t have a quirk,” yadda yadda

watching this episode again for the first time in four years was weird! mostly because i remember so much of it. i suppose it’s just because i’ve seen people retread these opening scenes so many times, they’re just sort of burnt into my brain at this point.

you know what i didn’t remember? this ending. i’ve never been one to pay much attention to anime endings the same way i might for openings. very rarely do they stand out to me much and their habit of being mostly PMVs make it so they’re not all that visually engaging either. there will usually be some cute sequences here and there, but most anime endings are pretty skippable for me. the only anime where i routinely tuned in for the ending was brand new animal, where not only does the ending have a sick ass song but it also has weirdly smooth and beautiful animation, and i’m kind of a sucker for pretty animation

every story has to start somewhere. not all introductions are bombastic or done in a trial by fire. one of the biggest issues i hear people have with season one of mha is that it’s slow as hell. and, in all honesty, i completely agree. but sometimes we need to take our time with content and really just absorb it at our own pace. yes, season 1 is kind of mediocre, yes, season 2 is when mha actually starts in a more spiritual sense, but i think there’s an importance to these first thirteen (thirteen? is it thirteen?) episodes. not a one of them is particularly memorable by itself, but season 1 is just the one that we kind of have to get through to get to the really good stuff. have patience, the story has only just begun.

[2hero2academia]

Season 1 Episode 1- “Midoriya Izuku: Origin” (part 1)

it’s hard to imagine a time when my hero academia wasn’t popular. it’s reached a level of mainstream where you can find merchandise of it in any old target and not just hot topic. it’s the modern shonen anime, but it wasn’t always. on the first page of the first volume of mha, horikoshi leaves his readers with a note telling them that he tends to draw things that he enjoys, and that he hopes that people find it as fun as he does. i wonder how the horikoshi who wrote that note would feel about his story the way it stands right now? but this isn’t about the manga, this is about the loud, the lively, and the animated anime! every story has to start somewhere, and we’re starting with episode one of season one of MY HERO ACADEMIA!

so everyone who’s anyone knows about wing kid and how he was heavily implied to be the winged noumu in hosu. he’s called tsubasa by the fandom, and even the wiki calls him that, but to be real with you i don’t know if they ever say his name anywhere??? kinda wack, if you ask me. why doesn’t anybody talk about fingers over here? what a guy he is. i think i named him oshiro in a fic from a million years ago, but for the life of me i cannot remember why

aaand here’s our good green boy! protagonist of my hero academia, future greatest hero, midoriya izuku! yeah i know he’s going to be called izuku midoriya in this, but i’m used to calling that so i’m not changing it lol. one of the funny things about watching the english version of mha is hearing izuku being voice acted by justin briner. the first couple of times i heard him in the dub were incredibly jarring, because i knew briner from one thing before mha and that was teamfourstar’s final fantasy 7 machinabridged where he plays a kind of douchey cloud strife and swears a lot. the shift from that to this will never not be bewildering

the funny thing about this opening is i’m pretty sure i’ve haven’t heard the full thing since i watched season 1 with my brother nearly 4 years ago. it’s wild seeing it again. season 1 has been out of my brain for ages.

i really like that izuku has colored lineart in this part, it looks so fun and festive

good lord i forgot shouto’s costume looked like that. 0/10, wouldn’t recommend. the white isn’t actually that bad though, it’d be interesting to see his modern costume with his original costume’s color palette

oh also, get used to me spelling bakugo like bakugou and shoto like shouto. i’ve been on ao3 too long to use anything else

all in all, this opening’s pretty neat! i don’t think it’s super standout in any particular way, but i also don’t think it really has to be. it’s a nice quick way of showing off mha’s huge cast and while it doesn’t dive super deep into any of the characters, we won’t be diving super deep into any of them for this season anyways so it’s not a huge deal. this opening feels shorter than i remember.

because of how much the lore of mha is constantly thrown our way, it’s easy to forget that there was an episode where people didn’t already know the story of how quirks came to be. this shot feels very much like it’s supposed to be humorous, but that father also just looks kind of terrified. we know in mha that quirks were not always as well loved as they are now, so it makes you think. i wonder what happened to this baby? if they faced extreme oppression for their newly mutant powers? if they were cursed for being the start of the quirk plague? if they were revered for bringing about the dawn of a new era? i hope they had a happy life. i don’t think they did, but i hope. it’s also interesting that this baby was born with a quirk— something that i think isn’t seen as much in the modern day.

i’ve seen a lot of people headcanon that during the dawn of quirks, the age that people came into their quirks often skewed much later (with people finding their quirks in their teenage or even young adult years) but i wonder if maybe it’s the opposite. that, maybe, back during the dawn of quirks, quirk users were always born with their quirks? and maybe it was only after several generations that quirks began coming in later? maybe i’m thinking too hard about this

so around this time they drop the population of the planet that’s quirked— which, if you don’t know, is 80%. people have poked this number a lot because of the other part of it. the fact that 20% of the population is quirkless means that, on average, one in five people you meet should be quirkless. but, the thing is, besides izuku, melissa, and some manga spoilers, we never meet any other naturally quirkless people. and that makes those numbers seem a little sketchy. people have come up with their own explanations, the popular few being that most of that 20% are from older generations or that 20% is just the global population of quirkless people, in japan it’s way lower. a part of me wonders what counts as a quirkless person?

take tokoyami and ashido for example— both of them have their own primary quirks that we see them using in combat, but if you take those away, they also have their non-quirk mutations. if ashido didn’t have acid and if tokoyami didn’t have dark shadow, would they be labeled as quirkless? or would these mutations be considered their primary quirks instead of secondary quirk characteristics? or even just look at izuku! his hair’s green for goodness’ sake! if he were born a century ago, he’d probably be called quirked, even without something flashy like firebreath or telekinesis! the classification of quirks confuses me to this day.

do they ever say what death arms’ quirk is? hold on let me check the wiki. no. they do not. i heard some electricity sounds earlier, so i wonder if his strength comes from electricity or something? this nerd doesn’t even have a name, but i suppose even without a name he still has a page on the wiki, which is more than what can be said for some others (looks pointedly at the lack of a page for the second and third users of one for all)

i’ve always wondered— is that supposed to be a mask, or is that just what backdraft’s face looks like? it seems like it’d be a weird addition to what otherwise looks like a pretty basic firefighter costume. i wonder if he’s made of water under there and that’s what he’s using. new headcanon?

despite seeming to be sort of new on the scene, kamui woods already has a pretty avid fanbase. izuku knows his super move before he even uses it and he’s got some fangirls in the crowd. he also makes it to the got danged number 7 spot on the hero rankings!! despite this, he also just has this sort of smalltime feel? i feel like he’s the sort of hero where you’d bring him up to your non-hero-nerd friend, and they’d be like, “sorry, who?” and you’d have to say, “kamui woods! he’s, like, the latest up and comer!” and you’d have to explain his entire history but your friend would be like “i thought hawks was the latest up and comer. is this kamui guy younger than hawks?” and you’d have to explain to your friend that, no, kamui woods is actually a good six years older than hawks, but he’s an up and comer in a different way-! and then your friend would get kind of bored so you’d start talking about something else like the fact that all might’s been spotted more often around musutafu lately. kamui woods is once again left forgotten

this is mt lady’s debut as a pro hero, but she’s already 22. did she work as a sidekick behind the scenes for the past 4 years after graduating hero school, or (gasp) did she go to hero college!? i’ve always found it sort of weird (and kind of messed up, child soldiers and what have you) that people start training to be heroes in high school. while it makes a certain amount of sense that you’d want to start training as soon as possible to get the most out of your quirk as quick as possible, it also just feels kind of fucked up? it makes a lot more sense to me, at least, that if a person wants to maybe be a hero when they grow up, they might not want to commit to that right out of middle school. it makes sense that people might want to wait until they’re a little bit older and knowledgeable about the world to make the leap into heroics. hero college just makes so much sense to me! in retrospect, the idea that the best hero school in the country raises fledgling heroes from puny little fifteen year olds just feels kind of predatory. maybe wait until they’re legal adults to send them to the wolves. good on mt lady for waiting to go to finish high school before committing to a life of heroics. you weren’t made a child soldier :)

honestly everything we hear about how heroics function in the modern day is kind of fucked. the fact that heroics has been monetized to the extent that it has, making it so that heroes are more likely to chase fame and glory so they’ll get the biggest paycheck is dumb as all hell. it means that rural areas aren’t going to get many or potentially even any heroes, and it means that even just most urban heroes are going to stick to well trafficked areas. there aren’t going to be a lot of heroes out at night, and there aren’t going to be a lot of heroes in the communities that really need them. the heroics industry being an industry is the worst thing to ever happen to the justice system, but it makes for a fascinating thing to dissect

and finally, over a third of the way into the episode, we get our title card! i actually really like the “origin” episodes, and i like that a lot of the episodes (and, i guess, the manga chapter names, since that’s what most of the episode names are based on) have callbacks and theming. it’s nice when creators do that. i once wrote a story where all of the chapter titles were sentences in a poem i wrote, so if you read through the chapter list, you’d get a poem that vaguely summarized the story. i never finished that story, funny enough, but i’d like to do a similar thing someday. it was fun to write a story hidden inside a story. i’m getting off track, what was i talking about again? right, origins.

oh speaking of naming themes, i love horikoshi’s place names. if you don’t know, most of the fictional places in mha are named after star wars planets! aldera high school comes from alderaan, the planet the leia was a princess of before the death star blew it up. i didn’t take a screenshot of it, but the place where that first villain was at was called tatooin station, named after tatooine, the skywalker homeworld. musutafu itself comes from mustafar, the planet were jedi go to die (i think). i’ll try to keep an eye out for these and explain them whenever possible. i think it’s a neat little naming joke that horikoshi snuck in there!

i love seeing crowd shots in mha, because it’s clear that horikoshi always puts a lot of effort into making all these one-off characters that will never be seen again.

it’s a little sad seeing izuku back here. he always has his head down and he’s trying to look as small as possible. it looks like he’s always avoiding eye contact for the most part, and he puts more of his attention into writing in his notebooks than on the teachers speaking to him. we know he’s pretty dang smart, but i wonder just how smart he is. he doesn’t do better than katsuki in ua’s midterms, but it’s a near thing. i suppose he’d have to be a straight a student to get into ua

once again, i love me a good crowd shot, especially when i get to see all of those people’s quirks. some of these quirks actually look sort of interesting, and i like that we have all four elements in the class— earth, water, fire, and wind. i like that one kid in the very back second from the left who isn’t cheering or anything but he is glowing as hard as he can

on a more serious note: once again, it feels very weird that this teacher is just like “i’d hand out some career aptitude tests, but i know you’re all just going to try to be heroes!” i don’t know if this is an aldera thing (because in all honesty it might) or if this is what it’s like in other junior high schools as well, but the idea that you’re not going to even encourage these fourteen year olds to think of anything but heroics is just bad. especially when we know that most of them aren’t going to make it into hero schools. of course izuku and katsuki are the only two to get into ua, but i doubt that many of the other students even make it into minor hero schools. what’s more likely is they all apply to a handful of hero schools, fail the entrance exams, and get shuffled into whatever high school will take them because they didn’t think to apply to any non hero schools. the whole thing is just fucked and the teachers shouldn’t be encouraging this. also who’s that kid on the right? i love their head

and so we’re introduced to one bakugou katsuki, one of the more… contentious characters in my hero academia. i have a lot of thoughts and opinions about this kid, but i’m sure we’ll get to him later. i’m probably going to flip flop a lot between calling him katsuki and bakugou, so sorry if things get confusing.

two things to note here: number one is that katsuki’s classmates specifically call him “katsuki”. i’m pretty sure this is because these kids have all known each other since grade school, but it’s still interesting regardless. second thing is that katsuki’s classmates don’t actually seem to particularly like him— which, in all honesty, is not that big of a surprise. i see a lot of people call katsuki the “top dog” back at aldera, but while katsuki might be the “best” student, i don’t actually think he was all that popular with his peers. he might’ve had some lackeys who trailed after him, but i don’t think it was out of love for the guy

it’s very interesting to note that even among these hero hopefuls, the idea that katsuki (katsuki, best in their class, katsuki, with the strongest quirk, katsuki) is trying out for ua is far-fetched. none of the other students had the courage to dare to try out for the national hero school.

… well, except for one.

honestly the fact that izuku so much as wrote down that he wanted to apply for ua is a pretty ballsy move, especially when one considers that he’s, y’know, quirkless. he took a dive that nobody else in his class (besides katsuki obv) even had the courage to do. he may not have gotten in without one for all, but he would have tried, and that’s more than any of his other classmates (besides katsuki) can say.

also, izuku looks so panicked here. you can tell he hates being singled out. i’m sure he’d much prefer being ignored to being belittled. izuku’s whole situation pre-ua is just really sad in retrospect :( izuku’s so clearly not okay

izuku tries to explain to his classmates that ua got rid of the rule that bars the quirkless from trying out. which is. mmh. super fucked up actually? the fact that it was a rule that had to be “gotten rid of” is so intensely messed up, i don’t even know what to say. that’s, like, full on discrimination. until probably very recently, quirkless people weren’t even allowed to apply to ua, much less be allowed in. poor izuku really was doomed from the start

temporarily pushing aside the fact that when katsuki hears izuku’s applying for ua as well he immediately assumes that it’s going to be a him-or-izuku situation, this stylized shot is a very interesting peek into izuku’s psyche. he’s terrified of his classmates, even the ones who aren’t bearing down on him and threatening him with physical violence like katsuki is. this kind of fear is very learned, and i wonder what the other student’s of izuku’s junior high class did to him to make him so wary of him. y’know, beyond the obvious discrimination

i’m pretty sure in the dub, the nickname “deku” is supposed to be a portmanteau of “defenseless izuku” which is. kind of weird. but it means that in this scene we get katsuki calling izuku by his actual name, which is funny because he never does that in canon

after the sludge villain runs out of this store, we get a shot of this lady who’s activated a barrier in a panic. is the barrier always on or was it a fear response? does this count as illegal public quirk usage, or would it be shuffled aside as self-defense? what are the laws on public quirk usage? i need to know. it kills me.

oh wack i don’t remember the sludge villain wearing pants. i guess he probably wore normal clothes before his descent into villainy, y’know to look like a normal member of society. or as normal as he can be. as the sludge villain flees the scene of the crime, the shop owner(? employee?) calls him a monster, which i’m pretty sure is just a dub-ism, but that’s still super fucked up? he’s just a guy. he’s human, same as you and me, just with some sort of mutation quirk. i just know that all of the mutants in mha get so much shit for not looking perfectly human. people love quirks until they stop looking so pretty. then those people aren’t people anymore. just monsters. it’s no wonder the sludge villain stooped to villainy. i bet he couldn’t even get access to anything else

this is actually going to be a really common gripe from me that you’ll start hearing more often once we get a little further in, but i’m sometimes kind of a manga supremacist when it comes to anime. which is funny because i don’t think i’ve ever read a manga before i watched it’s corresponding anime. but one thing about mha is that horikoshi is actually an amazing artist and he’s so good at illustrating motion. this panel from the manga is the exact same moment as the one above from the anime, but something about the panel just hits so hard in a way that the anime’s portrayal just doesn’t. you’ll also see this gripe with certain shots when it comes to shading. horikoshi’s use of shading in the manga can be so striking, and to get to the anime and see all of that weight just stripped away with lower contrast colored shading is just kind of… meh. so, you might see me pull some panels from the manga here and there. if you haven’t read the mha manga, i’d certainly recommend it, even if you still just want to watch the anime as it comes out.

honestly, the fact that all might can just transform in this crowded ass street and not get spotted is fucking hilarious. missed opportunity: all might having to transform in phone booths. i guess it’s just canonical that japan is bad at noticing things in this universe

it was around here that i realized this post was kind of getting absurdly long, so the rest of episode 1 will be posted separately. i have... a lot of things to say.

[2hero2academia]

2022 MHA Watch!

i recently got back into mha after not being into it for nearly 3 years. i haven’t seen most of the show in 3 or 4 years but i decided to rewatch the entire thing in english this time as sort of a lead up to season 6′s release! i don’t expect a lot of people to see these, they’re sort of more for me than anyone else, but i figured why not, y’know?

this isn’t really as much of a liveblog as it is the random notes i jot down while watching mha, so it might be sort of hard to follow if you don’t remember a lot of what happens in the series lol

link to about

link to episode masterlist

start reading here!