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The List - 5 Best Ladies of My Hero Academia

I always thought the issue with Naruto was how Sakura seemed to have Invincible Fist of the North Star when it was time to flip out on the knucklehead but reverted to Wuss Slaps of the Useless Punk when an actual adversary showed up.

Gray Lensman wrote:

I always thought the issue with Naruto was how Sakura seemed to have Invincible Fist of the North Star when it was time to flip out on the knucklehead but reverted to Wuss Slaps of the Useless Punk when an actual adversary showed up.

That's common tsundere power. Their powers only work on the idiot MC. But Sakura's deal was stated many times: she's a healer. Healer nin are supposed to keep out of danger. At least one time I remember she did want to fight but Kakashi scolded her and said if she went down then the rest of them would be in trouble after the fight when they needed healing so she needed to stay back. Same thing with most of the other female nin in the series who are more scouting/support roles. She's a great healer, it's just people who complain about female characters in shounen only value them based on how many opponents they defeated not how well they do their support roles.

Momo has one of the most potentially broken Quirks in MHA, but she's kinda stupid and doesn't use it very well. Or the mangaka can't because then the manga would be kinda boring and she could solo every villain they meet. If a villain had her Quirk, they'd easily be an endgame-tier villain of the series with a broken, OP moveset. But female heroes aren't really meant to be the focus of the series. There's no real reason for Horikoshi to focus on them because some westerners complainers. It's a shounen manga, and if it's not something that will appeal to boys then he probably won't do it. Which usually means fanservice while the guys do all the cool stuff.

Momo has one of the most potentially broken Quirks in MHA, but she's kinda stupid and doesn't use it very well. Or the mangaka can't because then the manga would be kinda boring and she could solo every villain they meet.

Gray Lensman wrote:

I always thought the issue with Naruto was how Sakura seemed to have Invincible Fist of the North Star when it was time to flip out on the knucklehead but reverted to Wuss Slaps of the Useless Punk when an actual adversary showed up.

That's common tsundere power. Their powers only work on the idiot MC. But Sakura's deal was stated many times: she's a healer. Healer nin are supposed to keep out of danger. At least one time I remember she did want to fight but Kakashi scolded her and said if she went down then the rest of them would be in trouble after the fight when they needed healing so she needed to stay back. Same thing with most of the other female nin in the series who are more scouting/support roles. She's a great healer, it's just people who complain about female characters in shounen only value them based on how many opponents they defeated not how well they do their support roles.


Momo has one of the most potentially broken Quirks in MHA, but she's kinda stupid and doesn't use it very well. Or the mangaka can't because then the manga would be kinda boring and she could solo every villain they meet. If a villain had her Quirk, they'd easily be an endgame-tier villain of the series with a broken, OP moveset. But female heroes aren't really meant to be the focus of the series. There's no real reason for Horikoshi to focus on them because some westerners complainers. It's a shounen manga, and if it's not something that will appeal to boys then he probably won't do it. Which usually means fanservice while the guys do all the cool stuff.

Maybe I didn't make myself completely clear, because I feel like you don't really get what I mean. I'm not saying the female characters have never done anything important in the entire series. What I'm saying is that they don't compare to the guys at all when it comes to important things done. Yes 90% of class 1-A is underutilized that's another problem with Horikoshi, he can't seem to balance his use of characters at all. But look at the characters of that 10% percent that actually get to do stuff. It's pretty much just the same 3 characters all of which are guys. And others that get to share the glory are usually guys to like Kirishima or Iida.

Finding the nomu factory for instance is important but it hardly takes any time at all, it barely qualifies imo.

And come on man the part you covered with a spoiler is exactly the type of thing I mean when I say poorly done. I would not use it as an example of the female characters being used well especially because of how they were handled in that whole arc in general. And as I said I don't consider training to be anywhere near as important as fighting villains because it's really not.

The Joint training arc is also still mostly focused on the guys anyway. I will give you Toga though she's been handled the best of the female characters so far. And yeah it's not as bad as Naruto but that isn't saying much.

Momo definitely isn't stupid. She may be naive when it comes to how middle and lower class people live since she's so rich, but she's the top student in her class and she can use her Quirk effectively. Her Quirk isn't as broken as all that, because she needs to know the exact molecular makeup of whatever she's making (hence why she always needs to carry around that encyclopedia with her), her power is limited by her food intake, and she needs time to make and use whatever she creates. Her Quirk is very versatile, but it does come with drawbacks and she's not a very physical fighter, either.

Momo is pretty much the biggest jobber in the whole manga. Everybody calls her brilliant and a genius but she genuinely never won a single fight. Her most relevant victory was during the paired fight against Eraserhead and that was him basically letting them win. Outside of that, she just keeps losing all the time and people act like she's some super impressive character.

A lot of that comes from the fact that Horikoshi is outright terrible at being creative with powers. 90% of the time abilities are used only to give strong punches or enhance baseline combat abilities.

In World Trigger everybody has about the same type of combat resources but they are so damn creative with them while in Boku no Hero Academia the powers are extremely varied but are used in completely boring ways.

You say that about Sakura yet her most iconic & beloved moment in the entire franchise is engaging the Akatsuki Sasori alongside Chiyo in a quite epic brawl as she punches the shit out of all his puppets with her bare hands while fighting off a deadly poison.

I really hope you aren't referring to people like me when you say western complainers. I would never want Horikoshi or any other author to change something in their series because of some complaint. I only said what I did because when it comes to female characters Horikoshi does a bad job. The female characters don't need to be soloing opponents they just need to be at least somewhat useful. Plenty of battle shonen handle their female characters better and some of them are even in the same magazine. I don't think a series needs to have useful female characters to be good but it sure isn't a plus when they fail to be.

You say that about Sakura yet her most iconic & beloved moment in the entire franchise is engaging the Akatsuki Sasori alongside Chiyo in a quite epic brawl as she punches the shit out of all his puppets with her bare hands while fighting off a deadly poison.

Suffice to say, that whole spiel that “she’s a healer, she shouldn’t be in direct combat” is complete & total horseshit.

Momo definitely isn't stupid. She may be naive when it comes to how middle and lower class people live since she's so rich, but she's the top student in her class and she can use her Quirk effectively. Her Quirk isn't as broken as all that, because she needs to know the exact molecular makeup of whatever she's making (hence why she always needs to carry around that encyclopedia with her), her power is limited by her food intake, and she needs time to make and use whatever she creates. Her Quirk is very versatile, but it does come with drawbacks and she's not a very physical fighter, either.

I really hope you aren't referring to people like me when you say western complainers. I would never want Horikoshi or any other author to change something in their series because of some complaint. I only said what I did because when it comes to female characters Horikoshi does a bad job. The female characters don't need to be soloing opponents they just need to be at least somewhat useful. Plenty of battle shonen handle their female characters better and some of them are even in the same magazine. I don't think a series needs to have useful female characters to be good but it sure isn't a plus when they fail to be.

I don't even think i should bother bringing up One Piece since its fanbase has admitted that Oda degraded Nami and Robin over the years to being just eye candy who don't even get fights anymore and outside that you have a womanchild and slew of other underused characters.

I don't even think i should bother bringing up One Piece since its fanbase has admitted that Oda degraded Nami and Robin over the years to being just eye candy who don't even get fights anymore and outside that you have a womanchild and slew of other underused characters.

To be fair literally everyone who isn't the Monster Trio is more or less sidelined. Brook, Usopp and Chopper are all on fodder duty just like Nami and Robin. Franky's probably at a very, very distant 4th in terms of relevant fights. Same thing happened in Dragonball and Naruto.

You say that about Sakura yet her most iconic & beloved moment in the entire franchise is engaging the Akatsuki Sasori alongside Chiyo in a quite epic brawl as she punches the shit out of all his puppets with her bare hands while fighting off a deadly poison.

Suffice to say, that whole spiel that “she’s a healer, she shouldn’t be in direct combat” is complete & total horseshit.