Anime Review: My Hero Academia: Two Heroes

My Hero Academia: Two Heroes

Studio: Bones

Genre: Action, Superhero

In Select Theaters Sept. 25 – Oct. 2

It’s fine now.

Why?

Because my review is here!

My Hero Academia has been an incredibly popular series since its manga debuted in 2014, and with the anime premiering in 2016 its popularity has only continued to explode across the globe. So, it was no surprise when My Hero Academia: Two Heroes was announced back in December of 2017. Anime movies based off shonen series are typically pretty simple, featuring movie-only characters and items or abilities that will never appear again in the franchise but still tend to give audiences enjoyable moments for our favorite characters to shine. The big draw for Two Heroes was the fact that we would finally get to see a younger All Might in action. And now to answer the big question: does this movie deliver on My Hero fans’ lofty expectations?

Set between seasons two and three of the anime, Two Heroes follows Izuku “Deku” Midoriya and All Might as they travel to the man-made I-Island, where the world’s top scientists reside, for a special celebration. All Might meets up with his old American friend David Shield and his daughter Melissa (who is my new favorite movie-only character in an anime), and because a shonen anime movie wouldn’t be the same without all your favorite characters eventually all of Class-A makes an appearance at some point (although some are reduced to small cameos rather than being part of the main story). While things start off fun and games, eventually the movie villain reveals himself and thus our heroes set out to resolve the conflict.

In general, at least in my opinion, anime movies from shonen series (like Naruto or One Piece) are typically shallow and boring. Most characters created just for the movie are shameless clones of other main characters or stereotypical archetypes, and usually, the villains aren’t very interesting at all or don’t make much sense within the universe’s canon. Two Heroes does a pretty decent job of circumventing the typical and giving us something that, while not perfect, is still a pretty enjoyable ride nonetheless.

Melissa Shield is a Quirkless character like Midoriya was prior to the start of the series. However, rather than make her a Deku clone she is given her own bright and bubbly personality and while sometimes in the movie she feels like more of a device to advance the plot or give the hero his super-special limited-edition movie tool she does have characteristics that make her endearing to the audience. David’s character on his own isn’t too interesting, but his relationship with All Might fleshes out both of their characters and I enjoyed their interactions as well as David’s motivations. Wolfram, the villain of the movie… Well, you can’t say he isn’t a villain since he kills someone in cold blood. He has a Quirk that looks more like a Fullmetal Alchemist technique than anything else, but the dude also carries a gun, so you must give him props for coming prepared. But beyond that, there isn’t too much to his character. In fact, I don’t think his name is ever actually said in the movie. Beyond the movie-only characters, there isn’t much to say about the main cast. Everyone acts within the bounds of their established characters and we do get to enjoy some fight scenes with Bakugo, Todoroki, and Midoriya primarily leading the charge. Almost everyone gets a moment to shine in some way, although like I mentioned earlier not all of Class-A is part of the main story and some only make very brief cameos.

The voice work, as always, is stellar. I saw the Japanese-voiced screening so I can only comment on that, but the voices of all the movie-original characters were very good. My biggest gripe with the movie comes with the animation. Typically, even with shonen series movies, the animation quality is higher than with the shows because the team has more time to work on them. However, the animation quality of this movie felt more like just a long episode of the show rather than a feature-length film, with lots of blurry action scenes and minimally-detailed character models in the background. It wasn’t like this the whole time, and the final fight scene in the climax is one of the most hype moments in the series period, but I couldn’t help but find myself disappointed for the most part.

Overall, this was a fun experience and a great first movie in the My Hero series. With how widely loved the series is, I very much doubt this will be the last one. Hopefully in the future, we can see them improve on the negatives to make something truly worthy of being called “Plus Ultra.”