Released 2018

3 stars (out of 4)

The recent North American theatrical run of the MY HERO ACADEMIA movie proved to be a resounding success. The original screenings in September were so popular, additional dates were added in early October, eventually earning more than $5.7 million US and ranking the film in the Top 10 of highest-grossing domestic anime films of all time!

So how was it? Well pretty good, actually. It was generally a lot of fun; familiar characters were true to their personalities without it feeling tired; the new girl was cool; and a nice plot twist kept the story from being as predictable and simplistic as it could have been.

The film might have had too much recap, though, enough to be a little tedious for someone who’s been following the anime series. But I can understand that they needed to make the movie accessible to uninitiated viewers, so that’s kind of unavoidable.

What did confound me was the totally unnecessary coincidence that practically all of Deku’s class was in attendance at I-Island for the I-Expo for various reasons and Deku didn’t know about it. It should have been common knowledge that the winner of the tournament was invited. And absolutely no one talked about their holiday plans? As far as I could tell, it had no bearing on the story whatsoever; if Deku had expected them, it would have all been the same. So I’m just scratching my head at that narrative choice.

I was also surprised at how the college-aged voice and middle-aged voice of All Might’s friend sounded completely different! It seems rather odd to hire 2 different seiyu to voice 2 adult versions of the same character. (The screening I attended was in Japanese with English subtitles. The English dub might not have this peculiarity.)