Skip to main content

Click "Archive" or "Labels" in the sidebar to browse reviews, or use the search bar to look for a specific title.


Review: My Hero Academia, Vol. 14

My Hero Academia, Vol. 14 My Hero Academia, Vol. 14 by Kohei Horikoshi
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A .gif of principal Nezu hysterically drinking tea

I feel like I'm getting Stockholm syndrome, because every single volume has been ending in a mind-destroying cliffhanger and at this point I've started to become numb to it. It happens and I'm just like, "Oh," and continue on to the bonus content at the back of the book while I calmly contemplate the meaning of existence. (view spoiler)

Ahem.
Recap section:
Katsuki and Midoriya have their second ever fight since joining the academy (view spoiler), the second semester of school starts up and they learn about work studies, Mirio and the other top 3 UA students are introduced (view spoiler), and the bird-mask man (Chisaki) has a meeting with the League of Villains (view spoiler).

I always love it when books not only show us the "good guys"'s perspective, but also the "bad guys"'s. I've enjoyed this technique used in Stephen King's Mr. Mercedes, and recently in Marissa Meyer's Renegades, however I don't think I've ever seen it used in a shonen series. Shonen, as a genre, is very much always extremely focused on the hero and his journey to accomplish some sort of epic and heroic goal, and as such tends to always remain very tied to his perspective. The villains are always kept distant which inevitably makes for boring, one-dimensional characters, since we know not much more about them other than that they oppose the protagonist's epic and heroic goal and therefore are "evil".

With My Hero Academia, Horikoshi has been breaking this mold from the beginning by not following the "villain of the arc" formula and instead focusing on developing a single group of villains by including intimate insights into their doings, thereby creating more real and compelling characters than any one-off villain ever could be. Thus the entirety of the series has had a lot more depth to it than most every other shonen out there.

I love how Horikoshi shows us that there is strife between different groups of villains, and that there is not one big identity that is "villains", but rather, many different identities, each with their own goals and ideals, strengths and weaknesses. This seems so obvious: They are inherently violent, moral-less, deranged, and rebellious people. Of course trying to get them to work together would prove to be an abundantly difficult task. Yet why do so many series fail to grasp this concept? At least MHA is not one of them, and not only that, it is also done so very well.

And also, come on, I've got to talk about some of these designs, I haven't gushed about the art in a while.

Chapter 125 cover
(Mouse-over images to view sources)

Ooooohhh boy do I love that bird mask!!! Such a cool design. Also, I love literally any design that includes feathers or fur. That's one of the huge pluses in this series: Basically every design is super fricken sick, along with the art in general (ofc), which makes for an extremely enjoyable visual experience.

Second popularity poll illustration
Case and point.


Please consider giving this review a "Like" if you've made it this far, it helps me out a lot! And follow me if you want more!
Read all of my My Hero Academia Reviews:
✪ Volumes 1-10
✪ Volumes 11-20: 11 | 12 | 13 | 14*
✪ My Hero Academia: Vigilantes

*Current review


View all my reviews
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

Review: 寄宿学校のジュリエット（３）

寄宿学校のジュリエット（３） by 金田陽介 My rating: 5 of 5 stars Brb, crying. Not actually, though. Like, I didn’t shed any actual tears or even get close to it, it’s just that this series… is so good . The romance between Romeo and Juliet is still weirdly innocent, but the actual story is so engrossing and entertaining. It also seems like almost literally every single character is complex and interesting and multi-layered. (Only the background characters like Maru’s lackeys are undeveloped, but honestly they really don’t need any development anyway.) The relationships between characters keep getting more and more complex, and the situations that the characters have to deal with are also super juicy. This is such an addicting series. My initial problem with Romeo and Juliet’s relationship was that it seemed pretty unhealthy and one-sided to me. Later, I found it very weird how sexually immature they both are, and how un-intimate their relationship is. What is interest...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: Bitter Witness: Otto Dix and the Great War

Bitter Witness: Otto Dix and the Great War by Linda F. McGreevy My rating: 0 of 5 stars This is a very unique and interesting academic text. There are no other examinations of the German artist Otto Dix, his war experience, and his war-related art that are quite as in-depth as this one, while also covering a wide range of different aspects and angles of not only the artist's story, but also the Great War's. I used this as a source for a University research essay I wrote on the effects of Dix's war experience on the creation and effects of his painting Skat Players (1920). I was very late in starting my research so I unfortunately had to stick to only reading the information I could use for my own examination, rather than being able to devour this book in its entirety. However, the library requires this book be returned at the end of January of next year, so I have some time now to actually finish this book since the semester has finished...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: Spells & Sleeping Bags

Spells & Sleeping Bags by Sarah Mlynowski My rating: 3 of 5 stars This book was infuriating. Miri was super annoying during book 2, but she started this book off with some funny burns toward Rachel which made me think maybe she would be better in this book. Ha. No. She wasn’t. Miri. Oh Miri Miri Miri. So dumb. And it was annoying how it seemed like she didn’t even learn anything from the last book. She’s still all about saving the world and whatnot and being a dumbass. And she talked about poofing up money to help her help people, which is extremely illogical because she knows that poofing up money means she’s stealing money from somewhere else. Way to “help” out the world you fucking idiot. For the majority of this book I reckon she was under some kind of “emotion amplifying” spell but honestly that’s no excuse since she’s still her dumbass self. (view spoiler) [Her figuring out that Fake Rachel wasn’t real Rachel was nice and all but felt a bit...
Post a Comment
Read more