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Review: My Hero Academia, Vol. 12

My Hero Academia, Vol. 12 My Hero Academia, Vol. 12 by Kohei Horikoshi
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The kids are now on the hunt for their provisional hero licenses, and have once again found themselves in a big insane competition against a bunch of other people (ala the UA entrance exam, but BIGGER). It seems pretty similar to that arc, but yenno I don't even mind because it's the same regular MHA goodness.

This arc reminded me of one of the really good things this series does. In books/series with shitty writing, whenever a character is introduced who is on an opposing side to the main character, they are written to be a black and white evil character, no questions asked. Since this arc is about a competition against other people, there's a TON of new characters who oppose our main cast. BUT! They are not blindly evil! Oh my god it feels like such an amazing breath of fresh air. Clearly I've been reading too many shit books.

This concept of differing views on "good/evil" is a huge theme in this series, and it's fantastic. From the whole Hero Killer debacle, and then again with the League of Villains attacking the kids at camp, this question of "What really makes a true hero?" acts as a heavy question that not only the characters but we as readers have to confront. I feel like it's presented pretty well, in that we can absolutely see where the villains are coming from. They're not evil and against the main cast just for the sake of being evil and against the main cast.

I really like how this theme is not confined to solely being applied to the League. Like I was saying, even the other future-license-seekers are not portrayed as being evil, something that I think many other authors would jump to do. Sure, they're trying to beat the main characters. But that doesn't mean they have to be assholes about it, and they're not! It's great.

As always, I love my moody son, and would love to see more of him, thanks.
Yooo!!! The boy figured out that Midoriya is in cahoots with All Miiiight!! Like, for sure for sure! Like, he knows about One For All for sure! Aaaa! And he's acting all casual about it, which is cool. He's so cool. Ack.

And... Did I see... An attempt at somewhat further developing some romance in this series!?
I think I've been paying too much attention to the fandom and not enough to the canon, because I was under the assumption that OchakoxBakugo was like, a thing. Or like, a future thing, in the same vein how I knew that Midoriya was going to start using his legs because I saw someone mention it online last year. Also, come on, doesn't everyone ship this ship??? Who actually ships OchakoxMidoriya? Anyone? Talk about boring and waay too easy and obvious. OchakoxBakugo is definitely where it's at. And I don't even actively ship them or anything, it's just obviously 10000 times better than OchakoxMidoriya, which is something I actively don't ship.

So, well, shit. It looks like Ochako likes Midoriya?????????????????? NOOOOOOO. I actually honestly thought that this shit was DROPPED, a MISTAKE that Horikoshi was going to casually NEVER MENTION AGAIN. She still seems like she hasn't actually admitted it to herself yet, so I still have hope that there's some kind of alternate explanation... Or that she likes Ida or something... Just anyone but Midoriya honestly, even if it's not Bakugo. It was also hinted in the very beginning of the series that Midoriya likes Ochako, but I hope he rejects her or something because we haven't been seeing any more of that either in a long while. Ekkk.
Adding some romance would be a great development to even further enhance the amazingness of this series, but plz Horikoshi, do it right.

*Edit* After some internet forum exploration, I've discovered that the opinion I expressed in the previous spoiler-tag (that OchakoxBakugo is a better ship than OchakoxMidoriya) is not as prevalent as I thought, and I'd like to discuss this.

A comic saying OchakoxMidoriya is right and OchakoxBakugo is a sin

I think the reason I thought that everyone was on board the OchakoxBakugo train is that my source for discussion (Reddit) never really talked about ships at all, whereas my source of fanart/memes (Tumblr) is very ship-oriented. Meaning: The only shipping information I got was from what the people on Tumblr were shipping. The picture above is from Reddit, and if you click on it you'll be taken to a thread that is very predominantly OchakoxMidoriya, which was a giant shock and eye opener for me to read because of how different it was than what I was used to seeing. There are many corners to the internet and each one is different, so I mustn't only source one corner and expect it to represent all corners or else I'll find myself terribly in the wrong. That being said, click here to read the article I wrote about Why it's Not Wrong to Ship Katsuki Bakugo.


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Read all of my My Hero Academia Reviews:
✪ Volumes 1-10
✪ Volumes 11-20: 11 | 12* | 13 | 14
✪ My Hero Academia: Vigilantes

*Current review


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