Plus Ultra Season!: My Hero Academia (Season 2)
Greetings, ladies and
gentlemen! I’m back this week with a
brand new review in what has probably been one of the roughest and busiest
weeks in a while! Part of it is because
I’ve had a lot going on at work, but also because I’ve been binge watching this
show like a mad woman. It’s admittedly
been a year or so since I saw this show, so I had some serious catching up to
do. And given this show’s second season
was one of the most talked about shows of 2017, I expected great things. What I got was…good…but just had a lot to
improve on. And what was it from this
action-packed series that needed improvement?
Well, to find out, let’s get started on this week’s review on the second
season of My Hero Academia!
Following the attack of the League
of Villains at the season one finale, everyone at USJ is on edge. But further investigation into the matter
gets put on hold with the upcoming USJ Sports Festival. This brutal tournament challenges all USJ
students to strengthen the quirks and themselves in a series of obstacle
courses, group games, and one on one battles.
All of season one’s favorite characters- Izuku, Iida, Uraraka, Bakugo,
and everyone else in Class A- get put to the test to see just how far they’ve
come. But there’s more trouble that
awaits them after the Sports Festival as a new villain, the hero killer Stain,
makes a scene. What will come of this
encounter with the infamous Hero Killer Stain?
How will Class A do in the USJ Sports Festival? Well you have to watch the second season to
find out, but chances are I’m probably going to spoil some of it anyway.
Given that season one was
absolutely wonderful in every way possible, I expected nothing less out of
season two. And for the most part, yeah,
it was pretty good. But there was a
pretty major flaw or two that really kept it from outshining its predecessor. So overall, I give season two of My Hero Academia a 7.5 out of ten. Surprisingly enough for me, one of the
biggest advantages to this show was the character development. Everyone from the previous season gets there
chance to shine and actually get some decent development. Well, to be fair, the major characters get
most of the good development, but there were some other characters that had their
time; by far my favorite character in the second season-maybe even the entire
series-who actually didn’t get that much development from the first season was
Shoto Todoroki. Good Lord, I have never
felt so much sympathy for a kid with such a horrible upbringing, and what an
experience it was to watch him overcome it in such an epic and fiery way (see
what I did there!). But Todoroki was not
the only character who got a chance to shine.
Izuku-or Deku- definitely grows up not only in what he learns from the Sports
Festival, but also the fact that we finally get to see him get a grasp on his
quirk One for All! And finally, there’s
Bakugo, my least favorite character. It
seems strange to focus on him, but I particularly like what season two tried to
do with this fiery, raging, psychotic butthole.
Bakugo doesn’t necessarily develop him any further than what he was in
season one (you know, a fiery, raging, psychotic butthole). But what I like was how the world around him
changed and seemed to be constantly reminding him that he can’t act the way
that he does if he wants to be a true hero, so now Bakugo’s death threats and
temper are treated as comic relief. So
in other words, the theme for Bakugo’s backstory is “calm the heck-o
down.” There are tons of other bits of
development that I could go on about, but I don’t have all day to talk about
them. So let’s move onto what I didn’t
like.
If there’s one thing, just one
thing, I had to complain about with season two, it’s the USJ Sports Festival
arc. I know that some of the season’s
best moments come from this arc, but when you get down to it, its complete fluff;
it’s something cool to watch your favorite characters get involved in, but
hinders in the overall plot. And I know
that some of you are already thinking that the arc is necessary and that it was
probably in the manga that inspired the series in the first place. Disregarding what’s cannon to the manga,
there are so many reasons why the arc doesn’t work aesthetically or in relation
to the plot. And to shorten this blog up
a bit, here’s a list of reasons why it doesn’t work:
1.
One of the reasons for having the Sports
Festival as a means to heighten security isn’t all that well justified. It’s a minor plot hole in the grand scheme of
things, but I felt like the the plot seemed to put such a priority on it. At the end of the day, this tournament was
just to boost morale and reassure the public that the school is doing fine, but
that seems obvious enough.
2.
There are several new characters that are
exclusive to this arc. While having new
characters being introduced in this arc is not a bad thing, what is is the fact
that only two of the characters from the arc ever make an appearance
afterwards. Plus, they weren’t the most
interesting characters to begin with.
Why not bring some of the more popular and more interesting of these
“tournament characters” back or, better yet, have them introduced outside the
arc itself?
3.
Speaking of development of “tournament
characters,” why does Todoroki’s backstory have to take place during the Sports
Festival? There’s no reason it should! It would have been much more efficient to
give us this backstory outside the festival, or even in the first season. We don’t need some flashy angsty tournament
fight to watch Todoroki grow as a character.
4.
We learn about a good bit more about the lead
characters in this arc, particularly what their weaknesses are. Once again, much like Todoroki’s backstory,
we don’t need a tournament arc to address those weaknesses. This could have been done in other ways, like
during a class sparring session or something brought up in passing.
5.
Iida’s brother being attacked by Stain is one
argument that could justify keeping the Sports Festival arc in that it bridges
into the next arc involving Stain, but once again, you don’t need a tournament
arc to introduce this issue. More on
Stain’s arc later.
6.
This arc takes up half the season at eleven
episodes. You could definitely take this
as a lighter complaint, but here’s thing.
I spent the entire week catching up on this season. With a full time job and a number of other
personal things going on, binge watching is not something that can be easily
done. Even with all I had to do to watch
this series, by Thursday, I realized I spent much of the week still focused on
the festival arc.
7.
And finally, why does this festival take a
priority over investigating the League of Villains?! The first season gave us a teaser of Stain
and the second season starts off with the staff discussing the League of
Villains attack. Yet immediately
afterwards all the plot focuses on is the Sports Festival! You’d think with how season one ended that
this would be the focus, but no, apparently watching teens fight in gladiator
style matches takes priority over the impending threat of villains
collaborating with each other for some grand scheme.
So yeah, to summarize these points up, this arc took away
from the real problems at hand and there was so much that went on during this
arc that could have very been explained without the arc in the first place.
This aside, I admittedly thought
the arc with Stain was very rushed and anti-climatic. This is especially given that Stain was first
introduced in the cliffhanger ending of season one, putting a major emphasis on
how important he is. But what we end up
getting is about five episodes of him being featured only to have the arc end
on an anti-climatic note and we never hear from him again. Compared to the all too important, all too
necessary Sports Festival arc that takes up eleven episodes, the hero killing
villain who quite frankly no one gives a crap about gets a measly five episode
arc. I’m not saying that Stain’s story
arc should have covered the entire season, I just would have liked to have seen
more build up for the character. Granted,
the aftermath of this arc does build up to a new and improved League of
Villains, so Stain’s arc was not entirely wasted in the end. So yeah, my complaints are pretty long-winded,
but the compliments are just as so. Much
like season one, the second season is definitely a must watch!
At the end of the day (or week
rather), the second season of My Hero
Academia wasn’t as spectacular as it seemed in spite of the hype it got. But if you like heroes and awesome fight
scenes, this season is sure to save your day!
The second season is available now on Crunchyroll, Hulu, Amazon Video,
and Funimation Now for online streaming.
Also be sure to check out season three, which is currently airing! And that wraps up this week’s review! With my upcoming trip to MechaCon this year,
July will be a short month as usual, so next week I’ll be revealing Character
of the Month! Also expect a new and long
overdue Talkative Thursday very soon!
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