My Hero Academia review by Chandler Wang

My Hero Academia is a superhero anime based around a school that trains students to be heroes in a world where nearly everyone has some sort of superpower - a "Quirk." The show boasts a cast varied both in their powers and their personalities, an incredible soundtrack, and solid writing. The show makes sure that you care about each and every student, and sets up characters that are worth rooting for. Throughout the show, there are a lot of interesting ideas and nuances in the otherwise cliche setup - a world full of people with superpowers. For example, Quirks are treated as physical abilities. As one character says, if you overuse your muscles, they'll tear, and if you keep running, you'll run out of breath. Even laser eyes and telekinesis have their limits, but at the same time, Quirks being physical allows them to be trained. In My Hero Academia, you can work out your x-ray vision just like you can get stronger by lifting weights or faster by running. Besides the general strengths of My Hero Academia as a show, what makes it really stand out to me is its execution of the "hero moment." When the chips are down and the hero of the story is down and beaten, he always gets up with fire in his soul and strength in his heart, ready to fight despite the odds. In this moment, most shows just don't exactly impact me the way I feel they should. I don't feel the inspiration or the shock that the hero is standing up to face the odds. Out of every show I've watched, many which have an abundance of hero moments, almost none have even come close to how My Hero Academia executes this climax. The way the show does the hero moment is the ideal version of it that seems to never come together in other shows. The music swells, the hero clenches his fist, and, gritting his teeth and ignoring his wounds, leaps forward to face the evil. My Hero Academia's consistent brilliant execution of the hero moment is really what puts it over the top for me. 10/10.