My Hero Academia Complete Series Retrospective

The Superhero Manga That Almost Was

My Hero Academia is a series of remarkable highs and frustrating lows. At its best, it produced some of the most emotionally powerful moments in modern shonen manga. At its worst, it buckled under the weight of its own ambitions. Now that it is complete, we can assess the full picture — and it is a complicated one.

What Horikoshi Got Right

The premise: A world where 80% of the population has superpowers, and the quirkless Izuku Midoriya inherits the greatest power from the greatest hero. This inverts the typical superhero origin — in a world of the extraordinary, being ordinary is the tragedy. For Japanese readers, this connects to the intense pressure of Japanese society to fit in, to have the right skills, to keep up with peers. Deku’s quirklessness is a metaphor for any form of social inadequacy in a society that demands conformity.

All Might: The Symbol of Peace is one of the great fictional characters of the past decade. His design — American superhero aesthetic filtered through Japanese sensibilities — is immediately iconic. But his significance runs deeper for Japanese readers.

All Might represents America as Japan sees it: overwhelming, bright, powerful, and fundamentally optimistic. His declining power throughout the series parallels Japanese anxieties about the weakening of the postwar order and the protective alliance with the United States. When All Might falls, Japanese readers feel it as something beyond a character moment — it is the loss of a comfortable certainty.

Emotional climaxes: Horikoshi excels at emotional payoff. All Might vs. All For One. Deku vs. Todoroki in the Sports Festival. Endeavor’s redemption arc. Twice’s final stand. These moments achieve a level of emotional intensity that few manga can match. Horikoshi’s greatest strength is his ability to make you care about characters and then put them through hell.

The Japanese Hero Culture

My Hero Academia is often compared to Western superhero comics, but this comparison obscures its Japanese roots. The hero society in MHA is fundamentally Japanese in its structure:

Heroes as public servants: In MHA, heroes are licensed professionals who rank on public leaderboards. This bureaucratization of heroism is deeply Japanese — it reflects the Japanese tendency to systematize and professionalize everything, from tea ceremony to martial arts to heroism.

The pressure to rank: The hero ranking system creates a competitive environment that mirrors Japanese society’s obsession with rankings — from school exam rankings to corporate hierarchies to the annual company evaluations. Heroes in MHA are not just fighting villains; they are competing for social status.

The concept of Plus Ultra: UA High School’s motto, “Plus Ultra” (Go beyond), resonates with the Japanese educational philosophy of constant self-improvement. Japanese students are taught from childhood that effort and perseverance (根性, konjou) can overcome any limitation. Deku embodies this philosophy — his power literally breaks his body because he pushes beyond human limits.

Where the Series Falters

The villain arc over-expansion: The final act of My Hero Academia tries to resolve too many villain backstories simultaneously. Shigaraki, Dabi, Toga, Spinner, and others all receive extended flashback sequences that, while individually compelling, collectively slow the narrative momentum to a crawl. The desire to humanize every villain is admirable but structurally harmful.

Class 1-A’s uneven development: With 20 students in the class, many never receive adequate development. Characters like Sato, Koda, and Ojiro remain essentially background characters despite hundreds of chapters of potential development time. This is particularly frustrating because the class dynamic is one of the series’ strengths, and underdeveloped members weaken the group’s emotional impact.

Power scaling issues: One For All’s escalating abilities — multiple quirks, predecessors’ powers, unlimited potential — make Deku increasingly difficult to challenge meaningfully. The final battle’s resolution, while emotionally satisfying, relies on power-ups that feel insufficiently established.

Pacing in the Final War: The Final War arc is simultaneously too long and too rushed. Individual battles stretch for dozens of chapters while the overall conflict compresses significant story beats into insufficient space. The ending feels hurried after an extended buildup.

The Art

Horikoshi’s art is consistently excellent. His character designs are among the most distinctive in modern manga — each hero and villain is immediately identifiable by silhouette alone. His action choreography, while not reaching the heights of Sakamoto Days or Dandadan, serves the story effectively.

His greatest artistic achievement is emotional expression. Horikoshi draws crying like no one else in manga. The tears, the anguished faces, the body language of despair and determination — these are what make MHA’s emotional moments land with such force.

The level of detail in his art did decline somewhat in the final arc, likely due to the punishing weekly serialization schedule. This is a common issue in long-running shonen manga and reflects systemic problems with the industry rather than individual artistic failure.

Legacy

My Hero Academia’s greatest achievement is accessibility. It brought new readers to manga — particularly international readers who connected with the superhero genre through Western comics and found a Japanese interpretation that offered something different. It proved that Japanese manga could take a distinctly Western genre and create something that resonated globally.

It also pushed the boundaries of what shonen manga could explore thematically. The examination of systemic failures in hero society, the cycle of abuse represented by the Todoroki family, the question of whether a society that creates villains can be saved by heroes — these are mature themes presented in an accessible format.

For Japanese readers specifically, MHA captured the anxiety of inheriting a broken system. The older generation of heroes created a society that looks functional but is rotting from within. The younger generation must fix it while still operating within its rules. This generational tension resonates with young Japanese people who feel they are inheriting economic stagnation, social rigidity, and institutional failures that they did not create.

Verdict

My Hero Academia is a good manga that occasionally achieves greatness. Its emotional peaks are among the best in the medium. Its world-building is creative and culturally rich. Its protagonist’s journey from powerless to powerful is genuinely inspiring.

But it is not the masterpiece it could have been. The bloated final arc, the uneven character development, and the rushed conclusion prevent it from joining the pantheon of all-time great shonen manga.

Rating: 7/10

Still absolutely worth reading. The journey has enough unforgettable moments to justify the frustrating ones. And Horikoshi’s passion for his characters shines through every page — even when the structure around them falters.