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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.


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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


View all my reviews
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