The Complete FAILURE of My Hero Academia's War Arc 

I forgot midnight died

gran torino surviving, midnight dying to nameless bums, but afo taking over shigaraki after peak character development was asinine

It's funny that now that Shigaraki's gotten super powerful with his decay Quirk, the story is decaying right alongside him.

I'm not surprised that Horikoshi fumbled so hard in that arc, I was fully aware of their writting issue the moment I realized that Overhaul was a much more compelling antagonist than Shigaraki and that they realized it as well so they litterally took away his arms so he could never come back into the story despite his philosophy and woes of the world being much more interesting to explore than whatever hand boy ever had.

Exactly... gran Torino deserved to die and his last words should have been "some people can only be saved by killing them." That would have organically pushed Deku into the dark Deku arc with so many pro heroes dead as well as a mentor's death.

Y'know, sometimes I wish stories like MHA and RWBY just stayed in that simple era, where there was danger and villains to fight, but it's still just a story about teenagers in high school or something. I have no problems with darker storylines or favorite characters dying, but when it's not handled well, it just sours the whole experience.

MHA is the living embodiment of the old writers saying, "If you find yourself constantly thinking about what your characters should do rather than their roles being obvious you probably have too damn many of them..."

And the biggest sin of them all: replacing Chainsaw Man with Handsaw Lad.

MHA went through several changes in themes. Horikoshi's vision changed somewhere in the middle. Tge whole point Shigaraki being finally liberated is just...pointless(?). Hori made us so invested in Shigaraki only to pull the rug under from us.

it always feels like some of the best stories get totally ruined because they cant afford having characters with brains or common sense :l

I will always take solid writing and predictable twists that make sense over the "shock twist" that comes out of nowhere that destroys the reality the author built. I will also forever be salty about how EVEN IN DEATH SCENES the ladies of MHA are sidelined and used as props for other characters. In this case, Midnight isn't even a prop since everyone forgets she even existed in the first place. C'mon, man. Do better.

man, it seems like so many superhero story authors these days forget that pure shock value impacts a reader once, while a well written plot point an attentive reader could even see coming will impact them for a LONG time.

The fact midnight was effectively fridged bothers me so much, I wasn't particularly fond of her she made me uncomfortable when she was on screen but she did NOT deserve the fridging treatment

I agree, midnights death would have been fine if the show actually ever killed other characters, but now it’s just weird

It feels like author is rushing the story. Introducing many characters then killing them off immediately, or characters we've known for too long but no real character development. I think it would be good if the author emphasize on "academia" more. Like we get to see the gang when they are 3rd year or at least graduated to the MHA and become pro before the final war.

One thing that annoyed me about this arc is the ridiculous ass-pulls when it comes to Shigaraki's power. His quirk is decay, so when he uses it, the town starts to crumble cuz he's grown in power. That makes sense to a degree. But then the show tries to tell us that while his quirks are being erased by Aizawa, he can fly through the air, take Endever's strongest attacks directly with little damage, and eventually morph his body like Akira? BULL. FUCKING. SHIT. Every time they make any progress the story gives Shigaraki some new random bullshit advantage and it's frustrating.

6:20 this was one of the many plot points or world building elements that Horikoshi introduced at some point but just decided that it didn't really matter. He's the anti-oda at this point. Instead of introducing a lot of elements to give us the sensation that the world is massive, he just throw shit around the arcs to make it appear that the bnha world is more interesting that it actually is.

one thing that really set me off abt the future of this series was giving deku multiple quirks. it could probably be made decent but how is anyone expected to keep up with deku who can use over 100% and like 6 other quirks. i wish it was more about everyone having to work together with how long they had spent together as friends/classmastes.

Not every story needs a war arc. More authors should find creative ways to end their stories.

MHA for its whole entirety never had the balls to kill characters who actually matter, so thats why the ones who do die, get treated like garbage anyway

Yeah i completely dropped mha due to the war arc. Specifically the all for one twist. Horikoshi shit the bed in regards to that arc and it basically ruined all the most interesting parts of the story for me. All for one by himself is a boring as hell villain the most interesting thing about him was the dark inversion of all mights relationship with deku. How he was legitimately shigaraki's all might. Except it turns out he just wanted to take shigaraki's body like orochimaru. Honestly i feel like a lot of mha's concepts are half baked. The hero association breeding complacency in society, people with quirks like Toga who are put in a position to be villains due to societies inability to accommodate them, quirk marriages, etc etc. All of these flaws of the hero society are barely fleshed out and judging how shigaraki's story devolved into the most standard version of itself i have zero faith in horikoshi to do them justice.

So hilarious how all the manga readers were hella hyping this arc up for years and then it happened and they all went into hiding.

I AGREE! Midnight's death scene was BULLSHIT! Besides, she could have put them all to sleep to by time or when Vlad King should have stormed in to help her out and show us viewers his badass Blood Control Quirk moves. This could lead into a new potential ship and more.

Oh brother this final arc in the manga would literally kill you 😭

I was a pretty big fan of the series up until the end of this arc while still liking some elements and characters so I’ll go over each segments Kurogiri: i agree on pretty much every point, just wanna point out that Shirakumo had a crush on Midnight but they were never on a relationship, still pretty weird to leave her out completely, specially since there’s a 3 month timeskip between the hospital meetint and the war arc and her character never shows signs of knowing about the Kurogiri ordeal

Not only was midenight killed off screen by grunts but they didnt even show her go out with a fight . I get it , in writting Sometimes you want to kill off a character suprsingly fast which would give a shock effect yet the thing is is that Midnight had fallen and taken some damage yet she didnt die . She told the kids instructions as grunts ran towards her . It'll be cool if she stood up and started to fight against maybe four or five villains and come out on top only to faint after the battle is over . As he see her on the ground , we can get a first person POV as she is laying on the ground yet still hears more villains coming . Meanwhile we can focus on a hero who gathers maybe two more other heroes to go and rescue Midnight . Its possible they heard that the teacher had fallen from gigantomachia since she was the biggest key to knocking the Giant out . Maybe they heard from kamui or maybe a hero saw her fall off yet a small extraction team of heroes would be a cool episode to see . Especially considering that most MHA heroes arent really " Avenger " levels . I dont always like to compare the two but I cant help but see so many heroes struggle against no name indivisuals . Also the plan that the detective had made wasn't necessarily bad but when he had said " lets take them out in one swoop " me and ny brother looked at each other and smirked simply because the plan was good yet the ingredients to make it work was lacking . Interesting Arc and I loved Uraraka vs Toga , Twice Death , Dabi dance and some more yet overall I saw some flaws .

With the Kurogiri twist, Horikoshi did fail as while I for one, knew about Shirakumo/Kurogiri twist, that was because I watched a youtube video talking about it, and even then, I didn't read vigilantes so most of the impact was gone. What he should have done is have more of a presence for Shirakumo in the series, with Mic and Midnight dropping hints here and there, Aizawa having quiet movements where he thinks of his friend, maybe even having the show compare something that Mirio, Kirishima or Izuku said to something that Oboro said. Horikoshi is a Big Naruto fan, so he could have borrowed more of the dynamic of Naruto and Obito for Izuku and Oboro, espeicallty since Aizawa already pays Izuku more attention then the other students, so he'll be in a prime positiion to see how selfless Izuku can be and unknowingly compare that to his old friend who saved a little kitten when he refused to. And yeah, Midnight should have been present, or at the very least, been told as as far as we know, she was never informed of this. I can get the two not wishing to tell Oboro's parents of their son's fate, but Midnight is a fellow hero, she can handle it. The Mr. Compress twist feels like it was supposed to come out of nowhere, a means to distract the heroes while the rest of the heroes get away, but at the same time, Mr. Compress should have told the rest of the league about it beforehand, after all, they're serving under the successor to All for One, and during the My Villain Academia arc, were fighting the successor to Destro so surely he would have revealed that he too is descendent from villain royalty. The issue of Midnight's death could have been solved with one thing...time. While it's just poor writing that she dies off screen to nameless grunts while Gran Torino gets the Rengoku treatment and somehow survives, if the story had given the characters and audience time to sit and think about her death, it would have lessen that fault as we don't get to see any of them really react other then the students first finding her corpse, Mic being upset, and Aizawa being a douche about it. They could have easily used the time when Deku was out to show us how the rest of the class and their teachers reacted to it, how they mourned her passing and tried to pick up the pieces to keep fighting...but we didn't get that. With the whole thing with Jeanist, it was stupid, there is no ways about it. Hawks was being watched 24/7 by Skeptic, and he knew it so the idea that he managed to sneak into where Jeanist's body was being kept, and sneak out with said body WITHOUT help is insane and requires too much a suspension of disbelief. Jeanist being kept back till the 11th hour makes sense from a dramatic POV, but that's it, in universe, it makes as much sense as keeping eggs on a cold stove as the heroes planned the date and time of the attack, and considering that Jeanist had the means to get both the jet and the industrial sized fibers, he was very much part of the plan, so WHY hold him back? Even if his health was the reason, considering what he managed to do in his state, holding down the PLF leadership with their cloths would have been much easier. I get that it would end the series faster, or lead to a dissatisfying war arc but then your best option is to simply not include him and either have been be left out the battle as perhaps Hawks signaled to the pros where he was being kept just before the battle, so he was still being recovered...or have it that Hawks really did kill him as while Hawks would hate that he would be forced to do it, considering the stuff the HPSC had Nagant do, it wouldn't be out of character for them to decide that Jeanist life was worth the sacrifice and ordered Hawks to carry through with the League's demands to cement his place among them. It would certainly have been more interesting to hear and see how Tokoyami reacts to this as it would be one thing for his master to kill a fleeing villain to ultimately defeat the PLF, it's quite another for him to kill a fellow top pro to cement himself as thier spy within the PLF, even though without that death, he wouldn't have been able to earn their trust and enough leg room to pass on the crucial information they needed. Tokoyami, and the rest if the cast, might start to think about HOW they value life as how does Jeanist life measure more then Twice's? Why do they draw the line at one and not the other? Were the means justified by the ends? What are they willing to do to maintain order, an order they now know is very much broken? These are all very good questions which...are never addressed. Worst part is that even if Hawks did what you suspected, and faked killing him in front of a PLF grunt who could report back, considering Dabi didn't think he actually killed Jeanist when he had a body to show for it, not having one would only heighten that disbelief, so Dabi would most likely leave it out of his public announcement and used something Hawks did for the commission to dirty his name, as you know he DID if he was Nagant replacement and considering he tracked down Hawks' mom without him or the commission ever knowing, he can probably tie his name to some other bad actions which Hawks and the pros can't immediately disprove. With the whole thing with AFO and the council of OFA, it all comes down to another issue: time. Horikoshi wants the series to end this year, so he had to dumb things down and make the fight much less complicated as which one would take more time to meaningly resolve? The issue of how Shigaraki represents the decay of hero society as a whole and its many faults much like the rest of the League OR All for One just being a evil dude that wants to be an honest to God Demon Lord? With the council of OFA, same thing as I was totally expecting the 2nd and 3rd users to be reluctant to sign on for a long while, with Deku unable to use their quirks for a while...but that would take time and Horikoshi didn't feel like writing something similar to Naruto's struggle with befriend Kurama, even with shortened version, so he speed-ran it off screen. Same thing with how Deku's body suffered no blowback from overusing OFA despite the repeated reminders of its consequences. This review is long enough as is, so I'll end things here.

That's one of the biggest problems with Horikoshi's story: NOBODY DIES no matter how hard they get hit, and it makes readers feel that we are just stuck and not getting anywhere.

MHA has always been incomplete. It feels like someone came up with a basic concept, immediately started winging it, then went to trope bootcamp and learned how to create climactic moments but missed half the lessons on how to set them up. In a war arc, this is going to be especially painful as you really need to earn those climaxes due to the gravity that character death holds. Especially if, up to this point, you've killed almost no one off.

Midnight's death reminds me of GOT deaths, but executed poorly. GOT deaths work, not only because of the shock, but because character's death have a lot of impact on others characters development (I.e: Tyrion's character development in the books) and world in general (starting and ending a war). Midnight's dead could've worked if Horikoshi wasn't such an incompetent writer.

I dropped this series two chapters before midnight died because there was just nothing that made me want to read the next chapter. it's a very important factor to me when reading manga, that I want to read the next chapter immediately otherwise I just drop it. the same happened with demon slayer, it's why I stay away from over hyped series. but I remember feeling nothing for midnight when she died, in all honesty I felt worse for Aizawa having lost another friend then I did for her. I don't even remember anything about anyone else that died either. I swear shonens just don't know how to write war arcs cuz this certainly wasn't the first time this has happened and I know it won't be the last, even a girls dress up game wrote a better war than this. it's such a shame cuz this story seemed so cool at first, at least the art looks good. I feel like if midnight hadn't died the arc would have still been just as impactful as it was, the kids still could have been traumatized from finding another heros body so besides the shock value it doesn't feel all that important. interestingly they wouldn't even need to kill off any important characters to make this arc an effective war it just needs better writing, I've been reading a phenomenal war manga recently that hasn't killed off any of the important characters on the protagonist's side whatsoever but it steel reads as a very brutal war cuz the mangaka makes any chance at survival feel completely hopeless. this was a really good video btw so keep up the good work🥰❤

The major problems I hate about the MHA story is that despite having the money and technology to build all kinds of robots and weapon, they choose to send "child soldiers" to the war zones instead of robots or adult soldiers. Another big issue is the lack of lethal weapons used by heroes. Though some villains are bulletproof, most of the villains are just human with superpower. Heroes with guns will definitely be more useful than just bare hands.

I don't think Aizawa was dismissing midnight's Existence i think he just didn't want to know about it, after everything that happened daring that arc he probably just didn't want to know that he couldn't save another person That was his close friend.

You keep talking about brainwashing when they literally have a student with a brainwashing quirk. That makes your criticism even more funny. Great vid

It is kind of impressive that War Arc gone from having some really great stuff and pay offs devolved into hype cycle story which destroys own themes as creator wants to end it while suffering from over exhaustion. Most things after it is truly abyss fiction. The mutant plot line is not just offensively bad, it contradicts themes which were the pillars of the main story from the start and even the Vigilante Deku arc.

Your little montage of people failing to die should've included Mirko. Girl was all sorts of fucked up but still pulled through lol. Also how could Hawks have gotten Jeanist out of the facility? They put trackers in his wings so they could ensure he would be loyal. He had to talk to Endeavor using highlighted words in a book. They literally knew where he was at all times!

Midnights death low-key felt like fridging. I mean she was loved by the fandom but overall she wasn't super important, didn't do much for the plot like ever, and literally only two other minor characters died so her death was just there to be impactful to the audience and then literally nothing else.

Funfact: Geten, aka the evil ice guy in the coat, didnt get a bonus page with like a fullbody. I am angry because a random aizawa backstory character got one. This is irrelevant but im angry about that

my predictions: the villains will die, i dont know about endeavour. Eri will be the plot device that will restore everyone's quirks. Hori will make one last a$$ pull with eri. he has created her for this sole purpose

Good video! I feel like Horikoshi is burnt out like a teen writing a fanfic and not updating it for so many years. It shows in his writing and I know once BNHA is done it will be used as an example of how NOT to write a shonen, especially when it comes to handling characters. My biggest gripe is Deku. He never has any character growth. I've been told that he is more confident, but I don't see it at all. I wanted his way of thinking to be challenged. I wanted him to actually experience serious consequences for the damage he puts himself through, I want to see him actially be selfish for once because a normal 16 year old does not act like him 24/7. He basically has become a husk of the hero society that exists today in his world. But I guess thats what Horikoshi gets for making the first words his main protagonist says is being the #1 hero in the world. 😅

Just to point out something, Bakugo was going to die, but a few people actually killed them selves over it

Going to argue against one of your points: "Deku having a vigilante arc to protect his classmates" I see this arc as another "ploy" to have the audience think Deku is a cool character, as opposed too what his character would actually do after a war arc. My opinion: Imagine going through a war. Yes, you've seen many civilian casualties and so many people die (Even though off screen), BUT, literally everyone you know that went through that exact same war did NOT die. The average person would be screaming for joy and be reuniting with everyone. Eraser-Head only lost his legs (Get some prosthetics), Bakugo literally got pierced through his body but lived AND have a life-changing revelation?! All your class is still alive(EVEN MINETA)?! And this is under the pre-text of a WAR. Vigilante would be the last thing I imagine ANY sane person doing. And the adults are just as stupid for letting this all happen! I hate to say this, but Deku's "Vigilante" arc is just a poor excuse of a "cash grab" to make the main character "edgy". If more people died in the war arc (Erasure-Head, Gran Tarino, Bakugo, Class 1A members), then, yes, I can see Deku's vigilante arc being more justified. But, given what was shown, it's just childish and too cartoonish for me to follow along with lol.

When i first heard about the arc years ago before i got back into mha i heard that Gran Torino died and then i saw Deku with his scarf and i thought that was Deku holding Torino close to him and having something to remember him by. The fact he survived was kinda crazy

15:22 not finished watching the video yet, but the funny thing is, horikoshi knew jeanist should have arrived early to take care of machia, but held him back on purpose. even jeanist points out that he meant to arrive sooner. i'm happy you made this video bc the war arc is not only so abrupt imo but it's also just that bad lol. i hate seeing people praise it. people overhype the series for no good reason.

I think on a fundamental level Horikoshi just can't do serious stories. He's at his best when the story was more slice of life and Deku is learning lessons in how to be a hero and control OFA. Him going to classes and doing training missions with his classmates and his interactions with characters like Ochako and Iida were the absolute peak of MHA. The low stakes stories where the plots are more light with a heavier focus on comedy and Deku's character development were better than any serious story. Whenever the story would start to get more serious I found myself snoozing because I felt no investment in the plot. Stain, for any potential he had, came in and left in a whirlwind without his hypocrisy being properly explored, All Might meeting him and expressing disdain for his evil which would absolutely change Stain, and there's no real development given for that subplot before Stain is defeated and carted off. Hell he needed to face the reality that even someone as awful as Endeavor was still saving people even if it was self interested, which is more than Stain ever did. Heck even from the beginning the entire situation with Bakugo bullying Deku and telling him to kys is never treated as seriously as it should have showing Horikoshi didn't realize just how awful he made Bakugo. Bakugo does get development later but it took numerous years for him to even get a slight bit of development from being a psychopathic bully. Most of it was treated as him being a joke but even the pro heroes would go "Wow he's so strong" and ignore how he's a nasty bully who has the behavior of a villain. It was super offputting that someone as awful as Bakugo wasn't treated seriously like it's just a silly comedy then the story would turn around and beg us to take the villains seriously as they want to kill All Might. The whiplash was unreal. I found all of the villains from the very start to be extremely dull and boring and did not care for a single one of them. I stopped reading the manga during the forest arc because the villains showed up and I could not muster even a slight care. It was just impossible for me to care about the villains and they had quickly taken over the plot as really important which made me want to just not read it. I had to take a long time to think about why I had such a repulsed reaction to the villains and I think I figured it out. Unlike in comic books or comic shows like Batman The Animated Series, we don't get proper set up or development of villains. When Poison Ivy, Riddler, or Mr. Freeze are introduced in BTAS they each get a whole episode dedicated to their introduction, motivations, abilities, and their dynamic with Batman. MHA lacks that entirely. Sure we have AFO acting as the man behind the man orchestrating everything and he's clearly set up as All Might's nemesis, but what about the other villains? It would have helped so much more if the story took longer to establish these antagonists. Let each of them get a chapter or two to show who they are and what they're about before they're all called in for the MHA equivalent of the Injustice League. Have at least some of them get set up as antagonists for the pro heroes where we can see that they've been around for a while and have a particular beef with a certain hero, or give them a proper introduction where the main characters witness a pro hero fight them to establish their threat level. Wait until much later for them to actually team up under AFO's machinations. It's rushing to get a point where I honestly don't think it ever needed to be at. The stakes never needed to be so high that main characters are killed off. I honestly told myself years ago when I picked up chapter 1 that the story felt like if any of the notable characters actually died that everything would be ruined, and I stand by that. MHA didn't need to be all that serious of a story and should have stuck to the more light hearted low stakes stories, and maybe ended the series on a slightly more serious story where AFO is finally defeated by Deku ending the main conflict between him and the line of heroes using OFA. The story should have gone MUCH slower. Others are comparing it to RWBY and that is an apt comparison. RWBY started off fine, if a bit rough, but tried to rocket past the lower stakes stories of the first two seasons into massive world ending threats in the third killing off numerous major characters and it goes off the rails from there. Now the story flops around from location to location trying to string together a paper thin plot while artificially boosting the threats by destroying cities and killing main characters. They upturned the status quo before there was even a status quo to upturn. MHA tried to dive headfirst into major stories but in order to do that it had to spam the story with a massive amount of characters, which certainly hurt the ability for people like me to stay invested. Why should I care about the villains when a dozen of them are shoved in within a small time frame, and we have 50 good guys introduced so fast I can barely remember most of them and Deku still needs to get the main focus for his development. It would have been better if we got to see Deku and the other students go through the entirety of school before graduating and then later getting as strong as some of the pro heroes. This is a problem with RWBY as well where professionals and upper classmen are not really factored in and only our protagonists seem to really matter. Hell the entire conflict of Volume 3 of RWBY should never have been a big deal with hundreds of students training at Beacon as well as a solid dozen of professionals who are there that should have taken everything down relatively easily. But they get nerfed so only our heroes must fight. If anything I think Horikoshi should have started off with a more firm outline to plan this out, and used classic superhero comics and comic adaptations that showed how you can introduce villains (and in the case of Mr. Freeze in BTAS completely reinvent the character so he's basically brand new) in a more natural manner that would make the set up for bigger stories feel more natural.

The peak of the series imo was the tournament arc. The rest of it was alright (until the plf war arc), but the tournament arc is where the writing and characters really shine.

I dont get the hard-on the author has for killing and crippling fan favorite characters. killing off midnight, making so that mirko loses a limb every fight, eraser as well losing a body part every fight, endeavors arm, hawks getting his wings burned off(even tho they grow again, why???) while doing fakeout deaths for other characters like gran torino and bakugo. these cheap pulls at the heartstrings honestly just makes me not care for the characters anymore, also "oh its to show the weight of the war on the characters blah blah" but the students cementoss and present mic are all lokking like they just stayed in a resort. the only one who doesnt is deku while hes on his black swordsman arc. On a separate note it would be really cool if one of the one for all predecessor had a really powerful quirk and wanted nothing more than to kill all for one, trying to take over and all that, kinda like a deku beast of darkness. but i guess it would be taking too much from berserk, even thought it would fit perfectly.

bro after america girl showed up for 2 seconds after not being in the entire series i dropped it bro i caaant

Wow… if you’re going to kill off an important side character we knew from S1 like Midnight, at least give the kill to an established Villain we care about, not some nameless grunt. Imagine if Midnight was killed after a hard-fought battle with Dabi for example. Would’ve been leagues more impactful. And it would’ve made Dabi way more threatening.

When Mr. Compress suddenly whipped out his backstory I was like "Cool, I DON'T give a shit. Shut up. Move on."

I think the shigaraki twist is even worse than you think because I believe what they're doing there is building up to his eventual redemption arc. Its so dumb but I think they're really hinting at something like shigaraki teaming up with MC to fight AFO later.

You forgot to talk about the downfall of the Nomu Remember the Usj nomu was strong enough to give All might a run for his money. The high end Nomus were said to be stronger and at the end of the day normal heros were fighting them like it was nothing.

I would seriously yall consider reading or watching iruma kun, the series is fantastic. The characters feel their age and its about a human surviving in a demon world. The series has a measure of growth for all characters and it doesnt collapse under its own weight.😊

Honestly I was never sure someone would more or less have the same thoughts I had: That in isolation there are a lot of cool moments it’s just in a plot with a lot of head scratching decisions by the characters like todoroki can freeze football stadiums, why did no one think of having him freeze the mansion giving a massive advantage in the long run and plenty of other why did this happen other than the plot demanded it, that’s all fine in isolation but it does kind undermine the theme of the series: Revolutionize Heroism (or in shigirakis case) villainy through succession everyone just kinda bumbles around like action figures more than real humans leading to the near apocalypse, it just kinda feels like all might was right, that the world did need him to continually be a demi god because this clearly proves the world is thoroughly screwed without him and then the 2nd war arc is even worse, undermining more elements from the series and retroactively makes this first war feel increasingly pointless…sigh

I'm putting anime on punishment: no more war arcs for 5 years. I hope you learned your lesson. 😤

With all these revivals and weird survivings. I can't help but acknowledge how weird the series still is with it's selective damage output. Bakugou for example by all means should be done, no matter what at this point. When we go off of what Hori tried to establish as the healing limitations, to where Izuku even had his combat style turned around unless he wanted to be paralyzed for the rest of his life. The circumstances of how easily avoidable death was for Midnight compared to the characters that DID somehow survive really broke my investment for the series. Especially as someone who was actually reading Vigilantes, invested in how they'd maybe start weaving together the teachers' relationships from it at least. Though from all the really weird larger world building stuff I also heard about earlier in the series, I just genuinely feel glad I did.

i will never forgive horikoshi for what he did to my girl midnight

My main problem is that this arc has been going on for WAAAAAAAAAAAY too long.

Midnight was killed just so someone could say "See! The war did have stakes!" and Gran Torino living is just a spit in the face to us. Things only got worse later on with Bakugo which made me drop the manga

Me personally I enjoyed the story but I will say I was annoyed that Midnights death wasn't more of a spectacle I know she was wounded but she was an experienced warrior she can handle nameless goons and I will say this arc does have a lot of flaws and I don't blame anyone for disliking or hating it but me personally I loved the arc despite it's flaws it made me excited and sad in moments I think Gran Torino should have died would have made Deku wearing his cape more symbolic and impactful still love the arc but man we we're robbed Edit: I have always hated Best Jeanist ....don't know why but I always have so I just tune him out With that that was my opinion whoever read this thank you and goodbye

The way I rationalize Aizawa’s reaction is basically that it’s the point that he’s being so cold. Aizawa basically had this reaction because he feels obligated to be the cook head to snap everyone out of emotional reactions. His reaction to Shirakumo was a moment of pure weakness when his guard was not only down but his hopes were up, while after the war he’s acting purely on his objective mind to get the job done so that he can help get everyone back on their feet

I've said it before and I'll say it again. My Hero Academia really does seem to be one of those manga that the following statement is BRUTALLY accurate: "The Fanfiction will outlive the story." Not only because of how it's even easier than usual for an OC to be made in this universe with how prevalent random Quirk powers are, but Fanfiction can be boiled down to one simple concept BESIDES the never-ending shipping stories. "What if X, Y, and Z happened instead of what happened in the main story?" With how My Hero Academia has fumbled a LOT of stuff in the main storyline and ignored so much potential for interesting character development moments, this feels accurate. So yeah. "The Fanfiction will outlive the story."

idk if it was technically during the war arc, or later, but I'm still salty about Stars & Stripes [spoilers] appearing and dying so near instantaneously. It was like the goofy 'The Guy' player from Spy Kids 3, it's downright parodic. To pull a character out of nowhere to come in and cripple your antag just because you power creeped too far, and kill her off once she's done just feels bad to me. [tho, I still wonder if it's also stress/pressure on the mangakas at times....I know we expect the same quality on and on, but the workloads are still crazy for these creators to me...]

This was well worth the wait. You made a lot of good points on the arc. The arc had a great start, but fumbled in a lot of other areas.

To be honest, this critical review isn't even overly unfair. This is spot on.

sometimes I want to explain why the second half of my hero is so bad, I cant even figure out how to explain it, theres so many little things that come together to make it bad

Honestly you can very obviously tell that the author didn't really have a clear vision for the story anymore after the Yakuza arc. Everything past that point felt so disjointed. The School Festival and Meta Liberation Army arcs especially felt like intentional filler arcs so the author could give himself time to figure out how to actually continue the story, but after the latter it really seems like he just gave up and decided to sprint to the finish line as fast as possible.

I genuinely believe MHA started to fall off after All Might's fight with AFO. Deku's growth felt rushed afterwards, and a lot of the really good villains (Overhaul, Shigaraki, even Gentle Criminal) were just tossed out. Midnight's death was just cheap shock value, meanwhile Gran Torino was old as balls and he survived a lethal attack from Shigaraki. Like where is the show even going anymore

I’m so glad I’m not the only one who thought how bad midnights death was

Yeah, I dropped the series at this arc, now I am just waiting for the series to end so I can go read the last chapter for time investment closure.

Hey, hey, hey! It was a little thought out. The killer was given a gas mask to explain why she didn’t just knock him the hell out with her sleep pheromones… or however her power was suppose to work. …but yeah, she should have at least been found surrounded by the knocked out bodies of the rest of those idiots without chemical warfare defenses at the absolute least.

this video hits even harder now since we are watching the final arc implode and collapse like a dying star. I'll mourn for Tomura, he was my favorite character but was totally ruined by AfO taking over for reasons, which lets remember we still don't know his end goal or motivation.

Horikoshi should just stick to what he does best: drawing 10/10 women on the daily basis

Honestly so many deaths happened and so much destruction happened all because they didn’t wanna kill him when they had the chance. Even if Best Jeanist wasn’t there during the mansion raid, Shiggy was unconscious on the floor for a moment and they just say there and watched. They could’ve clocked him out of life early right there, but they CHOSE not to. “Well, we wanted to bring him into police custody and take him to tar-“ NOOOOO

if you could rewrite this arc what would you change

I'm just gonna go through stuff WHILE watching. So I'm on the first part... This doesn't effect anything. The idea of Shirokumo being Kurogiri ISN'T something that needed to be explained or shown to us anymore than we see in the anime because it doesn't actually matter. All it does is give more backstory to Kurogiri and more backstory to Mic and Aizawa. We don't need to look through other media to see WHY this matters. All we need to see is that Kurogiri was apart of their life and it scarred Eraserhead seeing him die. This isn't the biggest plotpoint honestly, all it does is give an explaination for Mic and Aizawa as characters. Mic is happy go lucky to hide from the pain of losing a friend and to drive students to be stronger simply by being a good teacher while Aizawa, the one hurt more by the situation, actively cuts students he doesn't see potential in, ALWAYS puts the blame on students for issues they have with their quirks or their issues in class and why he generally sleeps through or isn't there for most normal student activities. Like the festival or even sleeping through picking a class president. We don't need to know Shirokuma as a person to see WHY Aizawa became like this. We just need to see the connection he has with him. Which is PERFECTLY show by how desperately Mic and Aizawa yell to break their friend from being a Nomu but also how DESTROYED they are when they fail. Giving a good reason as to why Aizawa was willing to rip his own leg off just to make sure no one else died because of him again. The first part of this video and already the point is mute because nothing about Shirokuma as a person actually plays into the story OR matters. All we needed to know, which is shown, is Shirokuma was their friend and it hurt them when he died and pushed them to be the people they are today. I'll do any other comments under this one (if you even read this)

Truthfully, this arc was actually my favorite for quite a bit of time, as it was going on and on. All my real issues with it came suddenly, one after the other - how they just brought Mirio back with literally no subtelty, how Gran Torino survived 30% of his body being punctured by Shiggy, how they "resolved" the masked homie's storyline... I consider Tartaros a next arc (well, mini-arc), but if I didn't, I'd also be devastated by how Horikoshi tried to take the wheel away from developed and much more interesting Shigaraki too. I don't know, some of these decisions just literally don't make sense when compared to writing of previous arcs. Don't get me wrong, Hori never was a top-tier storyteller, but he goes on to undermine what was already set up and just ready to serve and I just CAN NOT understand what happened. My man's crumbling - either his editors' doing, his fans' constant nagging or his own immaturity or insecurities as an author seem to be the issue here. I don't want nor like to just gang up on MHA like this. I still appreciate a lot of things about it, but I just hope Horikoshi can learn from this and come back stronger, more focused with a new manga.

I’d almost respect Mr. Compress doing that if it’d been done as a distraction. You say he should focus on the fight, but if he could draw all eyes on him with such revelations and let everyone get away, well. That’d be one thing. Wouldn’t even mind if it turned out he was lying the whole time immediately afterwards somehow. But yeah. Kind of felt like nobody cared. From what I recall. Why was he shouting about that anyway? I don’t remember what prompted him…

I do think that there are some similarities between MHA's War Arc and Naruto's (filler excluded) war arc , the death of a character that doesn't get explored enough (Neji-Midnight) , the main villain getting controlled by another villain (Madara & Kaguya- Shigaraki & AFO), the fact that two final stands get their importance compketeky nullified (Might Guy's 8 gates - All Might's US smash), strategic plot holes (Black Zetsu not waiting for Madara to kill or at least weaken Team 7 - the best jeanist stuff). The reason I make these parallels is because, while both arcs are riddled with mistakes and are considered not to be very good, I believe they both serve their purpose well, they are a big battle arc and mostly that is their purpose. There are meant to be deaths (which in both cases get handled from very bad to really well) and cool moments. Essentially, they are two arcs that could have been executed way better but they do what they are meant to do which is be a huge show off of fights and characters' abilities, so I would give MHA's war arc more of a 5.5-6/10

This made me realize how good the voice acting is in mha

Shigaraki went from being a mid-tier villain to being an awesome fucking character to now he needs to be saved by Izuku???????

I find it so strange that it escalated to this so quickly. MHA really felt like it would be a slow cook, similar to other longgoing shonens. How is it that we are in the end game? The stuff tackled here feels like it should have happened way down the line (in my opinion anyway). Now, I have no idea what happens after this (only watched the anime). But do they ever revive All Might, or does he stay the same after this? We have introduced Eri, which should be able to reverse he bodly state (unless I misunderstood something about her quirk). The short of it, this ark felt severely undercooked and shouldn't have happened yet.

After watching the full video, here are some things I want to point out. The biggest thing I agree with wholeheartedly the most in this video is how Midnight’s death was handled, not just because they killed off a waifu I simped for, off screen by nameless grunts no less, but also because the characters completely forgot she existed and the story did nothing to develop them and was done purely for shock value and characters like Grand Torino should’ve definitely died. The fact that Hori thought it was a good idea to kill off Midnight this way is something I’ll never know the answer to. One thing I will disagree with you on is All for One breaking out of prison and taking over Shigraki’s body. Does it suck that it takes agency from Shigaraki and undoes All Might defeating him? Yeah but I’m willing to go easy on it because I feel it does well enough with Deku’s development and makes Villain Hunt as good as it is. You’re free to disagree with me on that but I still appreciate what was done. The other points I won’t bring up cuz I more or less agree with your points there and don’t have any deflections for them, all I can say is I can take ‘em or leave ‘em. This one though is an issue with how you come off in the video itself though. To be as nice and polite as possible, I feel a lot of your counterpoints to defenses made on the writing issues came off as a bit too, well…. Douchey. Now criticizing the writing issues the way you do I feel is perfectly fine. It’s done to criticize how these moments are fucked over by the execution of the writing and that’s perfectly fine. However, it’s when you use straw man arguments and crap on people for liking the arc feels rather…. Contradictory. You state at the beginning of the video that this isn’t meant to shit on people who like the arc…. Yet that’s kinda exactly what you do, especially making the goal of the video to hopefully change people’s minds about the arc telling them that the arc is actually crap. So, it’s ok for people to like the arc but they’re also wrong for liking it and you’re not here to shit on people for liking it, except yeah that’s totally kinda what you’re doing?…. Huh?… I can understand being annoyed at people for not seeing the issues that you see, but something many of us have to realize is that, character and story writing is completely subjective. I recommend Godzillamendoza’s video on the rest of the Nick Spencer run of the Amazing Spider-Man book, at least the beginning of it, for more detail in my point, but to some up, Mendoza got into some hot water with Dan Slott, one of the writers for many of the Spider-Man comics, as he actually responded to his initial first impressions video on the first ten issues giving many counterpoints, many that Mendoza agreed with, and it was a moment of growth for him for two reasons. 1. Character and story writing is incredibly subjective and both parties can make arguments about what counts as “in character” and both can be right from a certain perspective. And 2. The creators we talk about are REAL people, they’re not far off celebrities who exist on a different plain of reality like fictional characters. They can and probably WILL see the things that we say about them that can have a personal effect on them. Again, check out that part of the video for more and maybe the rest of you wanna see his thoughts in the current books. I don’t want to come off as someone who’s bashing you and using someone else’s words to make my points, you seem like a nice guy and the last thing I want to do is give you any trouble. These were just some things with the video that stuck out to me and felt like pointing out. You’re free to disagree with me and make your own points on why you felt your tone towards fans of this arc may or may not have been necessary and I’ll gladly concede to them. That’s the only real issue with the video I have though. Beyond that everything else was pretty sound. My overall thoughts on the arc are that I’m overall apathetic towards it, but I still it does enough well to still be a stepping stone for some of the best moments to come afterwards. I apologize for this long essay of a comment, this was just something I wanted to get off my chest after watching the video.

So pissed that Curious and Star and Stripe are dead.

If they write a bad arc, it doesnt mean they are a bad person, it means they are a bad writer and didnt have the ending planned which is something a good writer does

All the issues mha went through is the same thing Game Of Thrones did

Horikoshi's vision changed in the middle of the story... Yeah, no shit. It's like he got inspired by Jujutsu Kaisen which killing its characters left and right without even realizing his fatal mistake on the whole world-building by using narrow minded perspective of 'This World is Completely Black and White, Villains are Bad, Heroes are Good'... F*** U... Characters are people in your story, JJK done it better with making its characters normal and even made it work with their somewhat crazy personalities... 😑😑😑

Togata getting his quirk back this early is a waste of both his and Eri's character development. My issue isn't that Eri gave him back is power (although I also feel like leaving him quirkless would've been a more interesting choice), but that it happened so soon. Either the war arc should've been delayed by about a year, or that particular story beat should've been saved for the final arc.

guys i think he likes BB and BCS

Horikoshi forgot one of the most important rules of writing: Never fridge your characters.

Its a terrible arc, I've gone from reading the manga to waiting for RU-vid vids to let me know what happens

I want to say that concerning his different reactions from finding what happened to Shirakumo to Midnight dying, there's all the trauma from watching Shirakumo seemingly die only to find him instead as a human experiment. In comparison, he wasn't there to watch Midnight die. That, him seemingly prioritizing his students, and the writing seems to imply they used to go to school together, similar to "My friend's girlfriend" rather than "another of my close friends".

Love all the Star Wars and bb clips great editing!

The MHA quirk universe went downhill when author decided not to have any drawbacks for quirks anymore. Ultra mega infinite regeneration by the villain against everyone's faces - poor writing.

I mean yeah there were some dumb plot points but your making it seem a heck of a lot worse than it was when you say stuff like “Worst writing I’ve ever seen” and “gold mine of terrible writing”. That’s a bit over exaggerated. There are plenty of very popular animes that fall into the same tropes that you listed. For example About 80% of the deaths in AOT are shock value, so much so that I couldn’t get past the second season. And I could list about 20 different animes that give stupid last minute twists that mean absolutely nothing to the reader/watcher but people still enjoy them. The war arc wasn’t perfect but it wasn’t bad. I think your expectations might have been set too high because all of the hype it got. I enjoyed the war arc because I wasn’t expecting it to be a masterpiece, I was just trying to have a good time reading about Japanese superheroes. It’s a shonen, not a narrative masterpiece. If you’re expecting everything to be perfect you’ll almost always be disappointed.

Honestly if Shigi was ‘killed’ off and had a better last few moments before his ego death it could have been a great villain moment for All For One. It could have also bookended Shigi’s arc thematically by having a flashback to killing his father while he tries to murder his former mentor. But the execution was poorly thrown together. Also there wasn’t a particular reason to do it right then from what I remember. At least wait until the back is turned to drive in the knife, you know? Plus there were better paths to it available. Like; if he was actively bleeding out, tried to take over Shigi to escape death, mental battle, sort of fails so now the two are kind of merged and Shigi has moments of fighting his own actions and behaviors from then on. Or maybe Shigi brought a hero’s body to jump to, but they get interrupted and the transfer quirk can’t be stopped? I’m not as offended as you are by the timing because after all his growth you could make an argument that Shigi’s story was over. He achieved a peak and threw it all away for a singular goal that ultimately killed him. But the how ruins that. Honestly it is a pretty bad use of Hi-Jacked By Ganon. All For One felt like a played out remnant of an older time, he had his shot and he blew it twice. He isn’t as threatening, narratively speaking, as even Stain or Overhaul because those characters hadn’t lost before when they showed up. Part of your anger might simply be that in the story, All For One has failed repeatedly, which makes him less of a threat, while we’ve seen Shigi build and develop into a larger and larger one. And now, even if he is stronger technically, in the narrative he’s less threatening because he’s suddenly the guy who loses and fails in each of his plots going on decades now.

The thing with me is that the people who killed Midnight don't even need to be known, if there was just good build up to the death showing her work hard to make sure that the students don't die giving the students a reason to be alive and for her to actually die and giving a legit reason as to why she couldn't beat the grunts

the midnight death in the manga is even worse if i remember they dont even show a hint of it they just show all the heros who died in the war with midnight being in there

I enjoyed your perspective on the war arc and even agree in a lot of places but it would make the video a lot easier to watch if you added in subtitles as well since some things you say either get muddled behind sounds or quick speaking. Just an idea as a fellow quick talker

Tbh I clicked on your video because it’s 30 minutes and even tho I don’t care about my hero I like anime and long videos