And now for some downtime, punctuated by lots and lots of crying.

My Hero Academia (Boku no Hero Academia)
Studio(s): BONES
Genre(s): Action, Comedy, School, Shounen, Super Power

I joke, but I actually really love the little emotional scenes like this in My Hero Academia. It’s an element that a lot of Shonen series either go through the motions with or just plain don’t have. As if they know there should be an emotional reaction to something that happens, but they couldn’t really care less about execution or the complex thought about where the core of those emotions lies. This is a series where the heavier emotional scenes always feel relevant, warranted, and genuine. And the show does a good job, in general, with portraying characters as capable of a vast array of complex emotions, even if they have a “schtick” like Bakugo.

Asui, for example, had a surprisingly emotional scene that I really appreciated seeing. She’s usually rather unexpressive and such. So the scene towards the end of episode 51 brought a lot more to her character. And it built on an earlier scene that I kind of dismissed. It really goes to show that, aside from the scenes that exist to be dumb fun, no scene is wasted. They’re all pretty carefully thought out and revisited in one way or another.

As to the rest of these two episodes, I was really into the reunion of Deku and All-Might. It was both amusing and heartfelt. But I think one of the things I most enjoyed was seeing the teachers going around to the various students’ homes to talk to the parents about the whole dorm thing. Granted, the only parents to take into account were Bakugo’s and Deku’s. Because of course they were.

Baku-Mom is amazing.

I pretty much knew how Deku’s situation would pan out and yet it still struck a chord with me. I’m always interested in seeing the parents of a character. Seeing the relationships between parent and child and the methods of parenting are fascinating to me. And it’s not uncommon for some of my favorite characters in any series to be parents. Deku’s mother is a great element for this series. And it was great seeing her voice her concerns and also seeing All-Might interacting with her. His praise of Deku really shows how far he’s come. Bakugo’s parents were mostly a gag. He’s remarkably like his mother, but I liked that, actually. They speak the same language so she can keep him in line and still obviously worries and cares about him, as any good parent would. Especially when that is their son.

The dorm stuff was cute fun and generally entertaining. I maintain that I’d love to see less of Mineta. When he’s not being used for his “comedic” value, he’s fine. But he’s otherwise just an unfunny and overly predictable gag that got old ages ago. The dorm competition, itself, was cool. And remarkably avoided being eye-roll inducing by not indulging in anything especially perverse (aside from a very brief Mineta shot, but whatever). So yeah. Nice bit of fun, that.

Overall, a pair of solidly Super Effective episodes, though a bit uneventful. But they’re cooldowns. If every episode were especially heavy or thrilling, the show’s pacing would be in jeopardy. On the contrary, the show knows exactly when to slow down. It may take a little time to pick back up, but it’s awesome when it does fire on all cylinders. Could you skip these without really missing anything? Probably. But I’m cool with what we’ve got here.

My Hero Academia is Simulcast on Crunchyroll, Saturdays at 5:30am EST. And both Seasons 1 and 2 are also available to stream. That’s all for this time, guys. Thanks for reading, as always. Keep up the Awesome.

Take care,
C. Voyage