Common Name: My Hero Academia Season 3
Alternative Names: Boku no Hero Academia Season 3, HeroAca3
Score: 9/10, 5/5
Length: 25 Episodes
Genre: Action, Comedy, Drama, Shounen, Super Powers, Slice of Life, School Life
Summary: As Midoriya, Bakugou, Todoroki, and the rest of Class 1-A are steadily becoming more proficient with their quirks, The League of Villains is steadily amassing power. Now that Stain has served his purpose, Shigaraki Tomura has gained the allies he needs to do some real damage to the hero society he and his master, the enigmatic All for One, despise so much. So, the stakes are higher and exponentially more dangerous for UA's heroes-in-training, especially those like Midoriya who have been labeled as kill targets. Still, it's UA's moto to overcome all obstacles and go beyond. PLUS ULTRA!!!
Review: If the second verse is the same as the first, then the third should be far more terse. In other words, I'm just going to assume that anyone reading this has been following along with the series with the same religious fervor I am and will just get right into the review proper.
Yeah, I'm not really going to even try to hold anything back this time.
So, if you're not caught up, be prepared for some spoilers.
While it would be accurate to describe Season 3 of HeroAca as just more of the same, thanks to the show's repetitive but well-executed formula, it wouldn't be entirely accurate to leave it at that and be done. As repetitive as this show might be with its rising and falling drama and near-nonstop action where both the heroes and villains get something out of every interaction, this season exemplifies this fact while also constantly ramping things up in both directions as each conflict grows more and more deadly and dire. Yet, at the same time, this season offers some of the series' highest highs and lowest lows in terms of quality.
Case and point.
While I am, without any doubt, one of those people who enjoy the show's quieter moments and the anime's slice of life-esque filler episodes since they offer a glimpse into the personal lives of our heroes-in-training. I treasure these moments when we get to just revel in the innate comedy these characters have to offer, seeing the characters use their quirks in fun, imaginative, and mundane ways. Yet I don't think it can be denied that these episodes are some of the series' weakest moments in terms of both writing and overall purpose. Now, if this problem was isolated to a single episode like it was in previous seasons, I would have been more than happy to overlook it, but this season has roughly 3-4 episodes dedicated to this tolerable but lackluster filler content. Over the course of a season, we got a recap episode, color-coordinated ninjas, a female Sherlock Holmes, and a "love" story that were all anime-original content and ranged from being outright pointless to fun distractions from the main plot. Among these, only two had even a little significance to the main story since they offered a glimpse into what the rest of Class 1-A was up to during this season's big exam arc. Lame, pointless, or distracting as these episodes and segments might be, though, they do ultimately speak to a larger issue that I'm far more willing to take umbrage with than some cute and/or dumb segments dotted throughout the series. My primary issue with this season is its pacing.
As much as I love Mirio, why on Earth was his fight in this season?!
Episodes and the season as a whole start and stop at really weird points that generally undermine the show's intrigue and action. While this issue is virtually nonexistent in the front half of the season, the forest training camp arc, the first episode of this season is probably the first hint at this issue. I am, of course, referring to that recap episode that is loosely capped by the guys and girls of Class 1-A having fun at the pool. While this episode is funny in its effectively twisting Minetta's excuse to ogle the girls into a legitimate competition between the guys, I cannot think of anyone jumping into this show raw this late into the game, 39 episodes in. Especially when the show already spends so much time reminding us of who the rest of Class 1-A are and what their quirks are, just in case we forgot, this recap episode is clearly just meant to be padding to ensure the show has enough episodes to last two cours. Where this problem with pacing really makes itself known, however, is during the back half of the season, with the Provisional Hero License exam arc. During this exam arc, we get several episodes that end on a cliffhanger. Yet, within the first five minutes of the next episode, the drama of the cliffhanger is restated and then immediately resolved, leaving the rest of the episode to move on to a whole other character, perspective, or interaction that will result in yet another cliffhanger.
Christ, half the reason why some of the show's more tolerable bits of filler are so annoying
is because some of them are used to just exacerbate this problem further.
This is what I consider to be textbook bad pacing in a show. Episodes, as a format, are a fantastic means of offering encounters that have a clear and defined beginning and end, bookended by an opening and ending song. Rather than using this natural advantage, HeroAca ignores the benefits of this format to offer teasers that are just shown again in the next episodes, cliffhangers that have no real consequence, and yet more opportunities to pad out a series of arcs that was, for good reason, short on content in the manga. Yet, rather than trimming the fat in some spaces and adding those filler segments as bookends or starts to pad out a mini-arc, they're just thrown in haphazard, effectively butchering any kind of consistent tone, rising action, or building tension that was already part of the original material. To make the matter even worse, however, the entire last episode of the season was something clearly designed to be a start, not an ending, thus creating yet another cliffhanger for a threat and arc that hasn't even been properly established. Rather than giving us an introduction to the next threat and UA's "Big Three," the series as a whole would have been better served ending on the aftermath of Midoriya and Bakugou's battle (more on that later) and the rising threat evidenced in Twice's side story. That episode, paired with the minor introduction of Miro as he toys with Midoriya and leaving with a "see ya later," offers a satisfying bookend to the series that promises what's to come while also affirming just how far the characters have come at this point. Yet all of that satisfaction and exhibition of progress is immediately undone as Mirio proceeds to single-handedly annihilate Class 1-A, stealing the spotlight away from one this season's greatest moments.
Were it any other season, this would be THE fight the defined the season but it had to share
the spotlight with the All For One fight and that's just not even fair.
As much as I gripe about this season's missteps though, it cannot be ignored that this is, hands down, the best season this show has offered thus far. It is the culmination of everything the show had been building up to from the very beginning. More than that, though, it is both a beginning and an end to the established norms of this show. Within the span of a two-cour season, we got two of the biggest and most emotionally-charged fights that this show was always building up to: All Might vs. All For One and Deku vs. Bakugou. From the beginning, there was no denying that these fights would eventually happen, but they come far sooner than we might have expected--assuming we're still running on the standards set by Naruto. In so many other shows, these fight would have been the final confrontation. Yet, for HeroAca, they are a beginning of a new era. With the All Might vs. All For One fight, the old guard of the previous era of heroes and villains fall to make way for the successors these two rivals have been grooming. A power vacuum begins to develop that means all the norms need to be reevaluated as good and evil, order and chaos begin to war to take up the lion's share of that power. To make it all the more thrilling, though, All For One is not wrong in that the villains have the upper hand. Whether its through the solidification of The League of Villains or the general chaos born of All Might's fall, All For One wins simply because this society was not made to survive without the presence of a figure like All Might to hold it up--a presence that is, at least for now, nowhere close to being able to live up to that expectation. What's worse, the heroes of this society have fallen into petty squabbling over who is best/right, as evidenced by both the public bashing of Endeavor as the new #1 hero and the battle between Deku and Bakugou.
As this very fight proves, however, not all hope is lost. Rather than just bloodying each other and crumbling from this infighting, this fight between two extremes within the hero world offer is a fair representation of what society as a whole might see--a trial by fire and competition that only helps the heroes of this new era grow into the roles needed to keep or reinstate the old peace. While it would be easy for Bakugou to just become the next Endeavor, a belligerent second fiddle to All Might, he is instead raised up as the rival and equal to the fledgling Symbol of Peace, Midoriya. As Bakugou vents throughout this fight, it becomes clear that he is a hero of a sort. Though he might not be fully redeemed as a character, considering all the terrible shit he does at the show's start, his role as a hero cannot be argued. More importantly, though, it is revealed that Bakugou is a half of what made All Might the indomitable Symbol of Peace that Midoriya lacks. On the flip side of that coin, though, Midoriya is also acknowledged as the half that Bakugou is missing. Through this fight, their weakness and faults are laid bare for them to acknowledge and then learn from so that they might both grow into the heroes this new and chaotic era desperately needs. So, ideally, the hero society of this era might follow a similar trend of laying bear and mending the problems that need to be addressed within their own ranks to reinstate their dominance. Knowing how this show goes, however, that's probably never going to happen.