Boku no Hero Academia 3rd Season (My Hero Academia 3rd Season)
With the amount of live action superhero movies and TV shows available, you would think the superhero genre would have imploded on itself long ago. Such a fandom cannot sustain itself forever. Yet Boku no Hero Academia has carved out a name for itself in this time of heroes. Its first season became a sensation in a matter of weeks, and several news outlets nominated its second season for 2017’s Anime of the Year.
It’s easy to see why. The show is a jack-of-all-trades. It never truly excels at any one thing, but does a really good job at everything. There’s some cute romance, action filled fight scenes, a well-structured hero’s journey, amusing jokes, well-written villains, and a great soundtrack. None of these elements are able to reach the levels of excellence seen in an anime that focuses all of its resources on capturing just one element, but Boku no Hero Academia does a good job with all of them. There’s not much about the anime that audiences can point to as a fault. Boku no Hero Academia also does a really good job writing a story around a supposedly unbeatable protagonist. Shows like this can sometimes make a character too powerful, like Saitama in One Punch Man, but Boku no Hero Academia does a good job of making characters who are unstoppable juggernauts with fatal flaws, like the ones in Kill la Kill.
The first season mostly focused on Izuku “Deku” Midoriya, a young boy who’s born without a superpower in a society that worships superheroes. However, his bravery and desire to be a hero attracts the attention of All Might, the world’s number one hero and Midoriya’s idol. All Might passes his powers to Midoriya, and begins training the young boy in how to use them so he can become the world’s next number one hero. The second season expands its focus to give added depth to some of Midoriya’s high school classmates, who must overcome their own hurdles on their path to becoming a hero. Although the first season plays out more as a superhero origin story, the second season analyzes much deeper themes, like what it even means to be a hero and how society would respond to the appearance of superpowered individuals.
Fans already have a pretty good idea of what the third season is going to cover based on the pattern of previous seasons. Each season ends with one of All Might’s great battles. The first season ended with All Might vs. Nomu, in which All Might was able to complete most of a difficult fight and Midoriya had to help at the end. The second season ended with All Might vs. Midoriya and Bokugō in a mock battle, in which Midoriya was able to find a way to surpass his weakened teacher. It stands to reason that the third season will end in the battle that causes All Might to fully pass on his mantle to his protégé. That battle is awesome, both in that it showcases All Might’s most powerful attack and that it directly follows a story arc that deals with villainous motivations and the relationships between heroes and criminals. The third season of Boku no Hero Academia can’t come soon enough.
