Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: My Hero Academia
|
Goto page Previous Next Note: this is the discussion thread for this article |
| Author | Message | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
TanyaTheEvil
 Posts: 332 |
|
|||
|
Episode 109 was so good, I absolutely loved it. I loved the little back story of Toga and finally we get to see what's going on with the league of villains
|
||||
|
||||
Cryten
 Posts: 1011 |
|
|||
|
As much as I liked the story and emotion of the latest episode I didn't really like the fight. Well the way they concluded. The evolution of the power is mostly passable but still raises questions on how she can use the powers without the repercussions of the users (and apparantly far better then the original user). But far more than that was the ignoring of the simple numbers advantage. She got beaten half to death based on the conclusion but she was also able to fight off being surrounded by tons of fighters in an instant (that is whats shown you could argue she took 5 mins but we saw she took 1 second). And none of them fight back or try to save themselves. It feels far too convenient to me. MHA has always had the spirit but its fight designs are detracting for me right now.
And thats reflected in the others fights as well. Where they can delete everyone around them without any consideration for thinking opponents. Because this is about demonstrating their power right now, not about thrilling fights design. Well those are my thoughts. Im prepared for them to not line up with many. I also had issues with how the pacing and choreography of the deku overhaul fight went but it was strong enough to keep going on regardless. |
||||
|
||||
|
ShadowAssailantX
Posts: 17 |
|
|||
|
This season has been a step down in production quality, but this episode was a new low. It was basically watching still picture slide Show. Not to mention this adaptation choosing to fast forward arguably the strongest material in ages so it can do what, go more class 1A filler? It's pathetic.
Its difficult to sperate story critique from actual anime production critique when I haven't read the source material, so Im just gonna call out everything. On paper this is easily the most ambitious story arc yet; A town with 100,00+ population where everyone's an enemy sounds like a decent premise. Yet no one acts like they live in this town. Everyone just rushes out onto the street to fight headfirst. An entire group of townspeople rush shigaraki in a clustered mob, instead of using strategy or the advantage of hometurf. This entire encounter is predicated on the Strategic bid of the League to hold out until Gigantomachia makes it to town. But aside from it mentioned in the beginning you don't get the feeling that these bad boy protagonists are actually concerned with the clock at all. The Breakneck pacing of the fights not only makes for terrible dramatic tension, but give me a washer no sense of how much time is actually passing when in a way that should be the focus. The actual fights themselves werent any better. Togas fight could have carried an entire episode easily, even if it wasn't of much substance. Having a protagonist when with a power up is nothing new, but it seems especially contrived here and I feared sitting the ark up to have all the villains do the same. Also, I know the material has been shuffled around than this was supposed to happen at the beginning of the cour, but a big gripe I had was killing main antagonists immediately after hyping them up for so long. Squeezing the fight into half an episode and the somewhat ambiguously demise itself left a bad taste in my mouth after that hype. Dabi also gets some setup for next episode, and I fear it's going to follow the same trend. Ice power guy is also hyped as one of the main five Army players and his design is easily the most forgettable, so he will probably die here as well. If you have a hundred thousand followers nearby why would you immediately go to the front lines to fight an enemy that has powers tailor made to defeat you? Not that Curious seemed all that strong either, being a self proclaimed user of bombs that "don't do that much damage". Right, perfect way to scuff up a protagonist before the knock you out. I think that while there's a lot of writing problems here if this adaptation was getting as much love and care as the first season did it would still be a very enjoyable watch. Unfortunately I think the best creative minds on this have moved on and Bones has shifted resources elsewhere. Really a shame. Final note, did anyone notice Twice opened the shed Toga was in from the opposite side of which she entered? I felt like it was a weird choice as the blood was leading to a door slightly ajar on the right, so the only reason you'd leave the left side open is for dramatic framing of her face and not her feet. |
||||
|
||||
|
John Thacker
Posts: 1006 |
|
|||
He is a villain because he's willing to sacrifice innocent people with no regrets. Loyalty by itself is a normal and sympathetic emotion, but it is completely capable of coexisting with doing evil. It's not surprising to me that people want to find the sympathetic aspects of the villains, despite their unreservedly evil actions. What I find incomprehensible, though sadly believable, is people who are sympathetic to the villains while being unsympathetic to Endeavor. Endeavor's terrible actions come from the same sort of human desire for loyalty and ambition as all of our heroes and villains in the show, but led him to some pretty horrible actions. The difference is that the villains have not only committed even more terrible actions, but are entirely without remorse. I can certainly understand not wanting to forgive Endeavor, not wanting to him to be let off in a way that feels too easy. But there's absolutely no doubt in my mind that however unsympathetic he is, the villains are more unsympathetic. And as disturbing as unreserved Endeavor fandom is online, the unreserved fandom for the villains is more morally unsound. I assume that for some people, this is because they can see their own hardships in the backstories of the villains and identify with them, but Endeavor is just the Other (or worse for some, identified with their own father.) Walking in someone's shoes is the essence of sympathy, after all. Sympathy then so often becomes the basis for moral judgments; those like me are judged by different rules than those who are not. My sins are forgivable, but things I have not or would not do are not. |
||||
|
||||
NeverConvex
 Subscriber Posts: 2333 |
|
|||
|
I think both the villains and Endeavor have sympathetic attributes. What they share is that MHA is trying to give them depth and complexity. In this, both Endeavor and the villains are sort of the opposite of the remainder of the heroic characters, who are all mostly written without any challenging nuance.
Endeavor is really MHA's greatest success in character writing so far, I think. The villains' backstories still feel kind of rushed and superficial, or ham-fisted and hard to distinguish from satire. The villains have a long way to go if they want to be as difficult a character to contend with emotionally as the muscular-butt fire man. In any case, I guess maybe some people have zero sympathy for Endeavor, but I don't think that's the primary response I've seen here. Mostly, people seem to have praised his character-writing as complicated and interesting, without focusing on whether the character's net moral calculus works out to + or -, i.e. whether he's an overall good guy or a bad guy (which .. I mean, who cares? It's not like he can hear you!). |
||||
|
||||
|
ANN_Lynzee
ANN Executive Editor
 Posts: 2954 Location: Email for assistance only |
|
|||
I think this part here is accurate but I also think you've glazed over some important nuance that speaks to why folks are more likely to sympathize with League of Villains characters instead of or opposed to Endeavor. Part of it is framing of the show itself; the story is actively trying to get viewers to relate to and garner sympathy for characters like Toga, Twice, and Shigaraki and the other aspect is society doesn't treat all crimes as the same, both from an emotional and legal standpoint. Twice is a guy coming from a place of bad luck before he ever joins the villains, he's basically a stand-in for any person who ended up with a misdemeanor or felony on their rap sheet through no fault but being in the wrong place at the wrong time and finding themselves unable to sustain a living. That already feels relatable to the audience because it's based in reality. He attempts to cheat the system that cheated him by creating copies of himself but loses control and basically suffers a major disassociative episode in which he never recovers and is unable to reintegrate into society. I think it's fair to say that there are many people who may feel that due their own mental health struggles, may relate to Twice's situation. Endeavor isn't given a backstory in the same way that the villains are and that is going to make the audience less sympathetic to his actions. Endeavor's mistakes and the hurt he caused towards his family is due to (as far as we know) nothing but his own hubris and people are less sympathetic to a man buckling under self-imposed pressure to "be the best" when it leads to him physically abusing his wife and children. Further, like I said above, crimes aren't treated the same and the show is framing these crimes in specifically intentional ways. Audiences are always going to have much stronger reactions to an adult who hurts/kills children and/or an innocent family member than a criminal who commits theft or destroy cities where the result of their actions isn't as emotionally charged on screen. Also much of the violence committed by the League is shown to be implied or committed against background characters we aren't familiar with. When the show wanted us to hate Stain, it showed us his cruelty towards Iida's brother and how that violence rippled out to affect the characters we care about. Now, unless I'm blanking heavily on past seasons, I don't think we've seen anything on that scale from Toga or Twice. With Toga we've seen flashbacks of her attack of her classmate alongside some implications that it involved some kind of break after she attempted to withhold and conform for many years. I honestly hope we get some more reflection on those events but her character is definitely messy in the "good/evil" department. Twice I am more comfortable agreeing with Nick here in that his situation lead him to where he is now but it didn't have to be this way for him, he's an example of a failure by the system. We will get more information about more characters later (both villains and heroes) that comment on the system as a whole. I find all of them tragic, honestly. Sorry for the huge wall of text, but tl;dr People are less likely to sympathize with Endeavor because his actions feel more a result of his own selfishness and hubris compared to the villains who have been victims of abusive upbringings, a callous system, and neglect. |
||||
|
||||
Hiroki not Takuya
 Posts: 2535 |
|
|||
|
Well, it's been 13 episodes/weeks but MHA is finally interesting to watch again. Thanks MVA!
Now, about Endevor...it was great writing that he decides to butt out and allow his victims to get better with him gone. Rarely happens IRL...I can be sympathetic toward victims but not toward perps, even if they victimize themselves. The League and MLA have been demonstrably victimized so they get my sympathy and hope for reform though not excused from thier deeds. Until Mr E actually gets fitting consequences, I have no sympathy... Ep111 preview says All for One changed Tengo but those who know, spoiler[know it was THE DOG~~] |
||||
|
||||
|
FilthyCasual
Posts: 2222 |
|
|||
|
Mon did nothing wrong.
This arc's been firing on all cylinders which is great to see. It's nice being able to say "Yeah I dug that episode" without any caveats of extended recaps or bloated flashbacks for padding. Really hoping the anime nails the spoiler[negative space of Shiggy's hair post-transformation] coming up soon. |
||||
|
||||
|
Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11416 |
|
|||
|
I have to wonder if, rather than being strictly psychosomatic, Shimura's "allergies" were in fact a sort of autoimmune disorder, where his weak and as yet undeveloped Quirk was destroying his own skin on a superficial scale. Once he crossed over to externalizing the destruction, his skin no longer itched because he wasn't attacking himself anymore.
|
||||
|
||||
|
NeverConvex
Subscriber Posts: 2333 |
|
|||
|
I've enjoyed/felt Shiguraki and Twice's backstories a lot more than Toga and Spinner's; although, I can't quite decide if I think it was a good or bad choice to have Shiguraki, apparently, have killed his family outright, without interference from AFO. I think I'm leaning towards good narrative choice, even if I'm a bit surprised that, so far, it doesn't sound like it was originally an AFO machination. Though, AFO was clearly aware of Nana's child and grandkids, so one wonders why they'd been left to their own devices, if he wasn't machinating around them. Doesn't really sound like him!
Also, really like the sort of parallel structure Nicholas points out between the consequences of Nana disappearing from Kotaro's life, and the consequences of All Might disappearing from society's. The theme of generational consequences really does run deep.
This is kind of how I read it initially as well, although maybe some kind of mixed reading is best, given that we're obviously meant to associate Shiguraki's severe anxiety & degrading mental state as a kid with his quirk's manifestation and use.
In the translation, he says "But meta abilities have a direct connection to personality." Unless the translation is wrong, even if you read that as a literal description of how MHA works, I don't think think it implies strong biological determinism; just that your inborn quirk has some effect on your personality. It's actually kind of hard to see how it could be otherwise, I think, and a complex gene-environment interaction is probably unavoidable, with significant quirks predisposing the person in question to particular kinds of social interactions, seeking out those specific social interactions reinforcing their effects, which in turns causes them to seek out the same kinds of social interactions again, etc, ultimately snowballing into a significant effect on personality. For example, someone might be born with a quirk for athleticism, and so find they do better than their peers in team sports, because of this initial difference seek out more team sports, because of that practice widen how much better they are at team sports and so enjoy them even more, and the cycle repeats. That kind of cycle would have a large effect on the social environment the person immerses themselves in, but be a more likely path because they had a particular quirk; not quirk-nature or nurture, but quirk-nature-predisposes-some-self-selection-for-nurture interacting. Or, I guess, you could have a quirk situation like Shiguraki's: sudden, unexpected manifestation of a deadly quirk kills several loved ones. This might make a Shiguraki a great deal more careful, make him especially withdrawn from people, cause some kind of serious psychological break, etc; which, in turn, will affect the kinds of social environments Shiguraki self-selects into, again giving the potential for long-term snowballing effects on personality -- with the quirk's role in Shiguraki's life playing an important, but far from exclusive and determining, role. Maybe a shorter way of putting this is: in the MHA universe, quirks (or lack thereof) can have such a massive influence on how a person chooses to interact with their (especially social) environment, and how their (social) environment reacts back, that it seems impossible to imagine them not causing large, important, complex interactions between quirks, (social) environment, and personality development. |
||||
|
||||
|
Cryten
Posts: 1011 |
|
|||
|
The bit I am struggling with is all the team villain characters getting sudden physical powerups to make them a threat to 20% deku again. That feels like a DBZ style escalation of power level that actually means nothing. I prefer when the show has characters learning tactics and flexible quirk use.
The alternative to trivialising these physical power ups is to treat most normal threats as unable to touch them just like toga was able to kill 25 ish people without them reacting. If that remains then it really will become like the Saiyins. Does anyone know why Sigaraki's decay didn't travel up Destros fingers and kill him? |
||||
|
||||
|
NeverConvex
Subscriber Posts: 2333 |
|
|||
I think this is in significant part related to the story waiting 80-some episodes to develop the main villains significantly. Their growth could have looked organic if they were a larger part of the show prior to this, but MHA just sort of had them hover quietly in the background for a long time, before suddenly realizing it needed to bring them back to threatening parity with the good guys, IMO. This is also why I think their backstories feel very rushed, too, although that seems to be a less popular opinion. |
||||
|
||||
|
Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11416 |
|
|||
I agree with that. Anxiety can cause rashes and other such manifestations even when people don't have Quirks. I just saw it as him subconsciously using his Quirk to punish himself for not being the son his father wanted and for rebelling by still longing to be a hero. In other words, yes, it was triggered by his mental state, but was actually his Quirk turned against himself rather than just a garden variety response to anxiety, in a way similar to how people's immune systems can attack their own body rather than outside invaders. |
||||
|
||||
|
NeverConvex
Subscriber Posts: 2333 |
|
|||
|
Ooh, I rather like that. That's a nice way of imagining its etiology. That could've been a pretty affecting way for the show to narrate it, even.
|
||||
|
||||
|
everydaygamer
|
|
|||
not sure what you mean, the only character who seems to have gotten a physical power-up is Shigaraki and that's been implied as being a result of his constant battles with Gigantomachia. The other characters have won their battles through discovering a new aspect of their Quirk (Toga) or overcoming a mental block that was holding them back (Twice).
Shigaraki's decay requires prolonged contact. Every time Re-Destro gets touched he quickly distances himself. |
||||
 |
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group