English Dub Review: My Hero Academia “More”
OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)
The former Class 1-A continue to blaze a trail as heroes, and Deku is back in action thanks to his new suit, but there remains unfinished business between him and Ururaka
OUR TAKE
Four months since the eighth and final season ended, a second series finale has hit the My Hero Academia, adapting the extra chapter released in the final collected volume of the manga that wasn’t part of the original weekly run. I don’t know if it was made necessarily because the initial final chapter was seen as leaving a considerable amount of dangling plot threads, or if the author, Kohei Horikoshi, felt like giving a little extra bit of story and time with these characters for longtime fans who might have missed them in the time between the last official chapter and this extra one. Incidentally, the time between the final and extra chapters was just about the same time between the end of the eighth season and this extra episode, a little over four months. As expected, this follows up on the eight year time skip shown in that final episode and one month after Deku received his new hero suit, which All Might and his classmates all pitched in on to get made so he could rejoin hero work despite being quirkless once again. Naturally, he’s happy to be back to saving people, but keeps his teaching job at UA. Everyone can tell that he’s doing a lot of great things for tons of people, after previously saving the whole world, but his friends press him on whether or not he’s actually doing what he really wants.
This isn’t to say that Deku doesn’t want to be a hero anymore, far from it. But to help others, especially others who you care about and care about you, you need to help yourself sometimes too. What this leads to in the episode is him finally deciding to actually start pursuing a romantic relationship with Uraraka, something that’s been built up since near the start of the series, though did get some minor backlash by avid shippers who paired Deku with Bakugou and Uraraka with Toga…who died. But while this all just leading to romance seems a little small in the grand scheme, I like to think that this step forward between the two is just the first sign that both Deku and Uraraka, who grew up thinking they needed to put aside their own true desires for the sake of their careers and the world, will now start living their lives to the fullest alongside the one they love the most.
That said, I would love to see what leads to in the future for these characters, but I might just be getting a bit greedy asking for yet another follow up. But the good news on that is that this seemingly closed ended denouement isn’t even the last episode of My Hero Academia that we’re going to get this year. Yes, we’ve got at least one more coming, with “I am a hero too”, which will presumably focus on Eri as a teenager and come out this summer, which isn’t that far away. And after that…who knows? Personally, while I don’t know if I want a full “Shippuden Z Next Generation” sequel series, I would definitely want to see at least one more movie about Class 1A as adult heroes, and maybe have some characters from Vigilantes involved since franchise crossovers are a staple of superheroes that My Hero has somehow avoided. But also, considering how straining making this series has probably been for its author, much like it has for many other shows and their authors, I wouldn’t mind a big break before possibly diving back in with a fresh idea of where these characters should go next. Anyway, I’ve watched this and fully recommended it, and in the words of All Might, “you’re next”.
