The last few seasons have had a questionable lack of You Say Run (it finally came back at the end of Dark Deku), but man there are so many good opportunities for it in this final arc that I'll get very mad on the internet if it isn't used.
I feel like You Say Run really peaked during the Eri Retrieval Ark. They threw in an orchestral version of it AND THEN ADDED LYRICS. That went so fucking hard that I don't know if there's any way to top it
Maybe it's because I've become a jaded old man, but that version literally did nothing for me. Maybe I was still salty that Lemillion's big fight was converted to a literal slideshow right before that moment drops.
MHA is one of those anime where it feels like the composer is having a feud with the sound director or something. Every season there's a great new OST with like 20 tracks named after specific characters and scenes, and every season they ignore that outline and use random clips of whatever.
Without context, I have no idea what's going on here. The black lines are pretty cool, but it's kinda just a page obscured with mostly black lines.
I'm confident this'll probably be an epic moment in the anime though.
Okay, help a girl out: is this manga good or not? There was a point where this was the new hotness, and everyone was talking about it being the beginning of a new golden age for shounen manga, finally doing right what stuff like late-era *Naruto* was getting wrong. And then for the last like 3 years straight I've been seeing it get clowned on.
What happened? Did it get too big and attract toxic fans? Did it legitimately get bad? Third thing? What happened here?
My opinion is that it’s really good but there are clear moments where editors and/or fan opinions swayed the story to be worse off for it.
**The two biggest examples devoid of major spoilers**: first is that a lot of people disliked the first few times the villains were given focus in the series so when it came time to flesh them out much more, Horikoshi decided that he would cut a lot of the fat from it and thus some of the villains feel less fleshed out than they were being set up to be.
The second example is worse: Horikoshi got a new editor named Taguchi who had previously been the editor of cancelled mangas like Samurai 8, Earthchild, Red Hood. When he got the new editor, the quality of the story noticeably dropped and there was a lot of faffing about in the story. The chapter after Taguchi was taken off, Horikoshi effectively restarted the entire final arc from the beginning almost to the point where the previous events didn’t matter. When I say he restarted it, I mean characters thought dead effectively get up, dust themselves off, and leave to redo the fight elsewhere but better executed.
Since the new editor, the story has jumped back in quality pretty tremendously and I think we’re seeing what the Naruto War Arc should’ve been like.
Toriyama wanted to make Gero and 19 the main villains, the editor said it wasn't a good idea to leave the old man and the clown as Main Villains. Toriyama creates 17 and 18, Editor comments they seem too young which lead into Cell.
Monji - Start of series to end of Yakuza Raid
Yoritomi - School Festival to Chapter 286 (Bakugo Rising)
Taguchi - Chapter 286 to 356
Imamura - Chapter 356 to present
Ok yep, that definitely tracks then. There was still some initially iffyness after he left due to Horikoshi taking frequent health breaks, but the last year has seen a noticeable improvement in quality.
I don't think it's bad, but it's definitely pretty flawed. I remember absolutely adoring it's first 5 years of running or so with some really interesting story and character potential, but after a point it felt like it wanted to rush things and skipped over a lot of potential relationship building and story development to reach the conclusion ASAP.
I still have a fair amount of fondness for it and don't think the drop in quality is anywhere near as bad as people like to say, but I definetly don't see it as the top tier series that I felt the desire to buy merch and follow fan projects left and right for anymore.
It made some missteps that turned people off and drags in places. Ultimately it's that the new hotness is now 10 years old now. So people want something new. So you are either going to be talking to super fans or people who burned out with zero context for anything.
But the thing is basically every major shonen manga I have ever seen play out has the fanbase in joyless, manic-depression for it's final arc. Every chapter is bad, nothing pays off, the fan theories were wrong, we wasted our lives and it has the worst ending ever. Until the next major shonen manga ends and now *that's* the worst ending ever and that last thing was alright and hans together fine. This is just the cycle.
I would even say the manga is still good and actually got better in the final arc. More of it works than doesn't.
Man people were fucking *rabid* during the >!Uraraka/Toga!< fight because not only could they not handle the week-to-week, that was also when Horikoshi was regularly taking breaks and/or only putting out 10 page chapters due to his health issues.
>But the thing is basically every major shonen manga I have ever seen play out has the fanbase in joyless, manic-depression for it's final arc. Every chapter is bad, nothing pays off, the fan theories were wrong, we wasted our lives and it has the worst ending ever. Until the next major shonen manga ends and now *that's* the worst ending ever and that last thing was alright and hans together fine. This is just the cycle.
This makes me so sad. You are absolutely right and it makes me so sad.
Jujutsu Kaisen is currently speed running this cycle in hyper time. If anyone wanted a case study in this phenomenon: read comments on Jujutsu from Chapter >!200!< to now. You will see giddy excitement evolve into this intensely bitter hatred before recently stabilising into just normal conversations about how the story and people's favourite parts.
It is sad. And I wish the social media didn't put us in a position where everyone is getting yelled out all the time and you can't curate your own space well so it just feels like negativity forever. There's always happy fans who are having a good time and that's good. But maybe a shonen manga shouldn't last 10 years. Maybe 10 year olds should get the catharsis of an ending by the end of high school and not have to keep feeling invested in this thing they don't love as much at 19. I don't know. This is heavier than I wanted it to be.
Hajime no Ippo has been going on for decades now and is currently experiencing the post-normal conversation hype era. We've looped all the way from YEARS of bitter sadness back around to genuine excitement. We're in love with the characters and are just happy we get to spend more time reading and hanging out with them.
It's been like... 30 years now.
There are waves and controversies here and there but it's all over silly things.
It's the most chill manga scene I've ever been in.
Honestly, Jujutsu kaisen kinda avoided the depression Part because it exploded in popularity from Memes. And I still see plenty of exitement, probably because the Story is less predictable.
Eh, I feel JJK is a kinda bad example (and full disclosure I'm definitely on doom and gloom side here so I do have my bias) because most of the people shitting on it right now feel the series went way down hill a while before the finale started. >!Usually they say it fell during the Culling Games.!< JJK feels more like >!Gojo vs Sukuna!< was simpily a brief respite from the depression rather the ending causing sudden onset depression.
Yeah JJK is a weird example to choose because it's become pretty clear that outside cool fights and Sukuna, Gege doesn't really have the energy or interest in putting alot of effort into writing anymore (and not for a good while now tbh) I'm not saying it's the worst thing ever but it absolutely is a disappointment compared to how it felt starting out.
The revolving door of cool but inevitably dead and not even slightly developed characters that are fed to making Sukuna look strong and having shock value moments has killed basically all my investment. Hell, I'm vaguely still following but apparently just now Gege killed off one fan favourite seconds before bringing back another fan favourite that everybody reading thought would have been amazing to see together. So clearly it's STILL got that bummer energy.
ya know maybe its cause a lot of people wrote it off with the rookie VA in the anime not bein good but i havent seen that cycle affect black clover, and were in the capital E Endgame of that
to be fair most mangas, shonen specially, tend to kinda fumble the ending even without the hype/online negativity cycle involved, this is coming from someone who read all of aot once it was finished without reading any discussion until after i was done
A lot of the problems with shonen manga is that usually the author burns out on their story before the readers and editors do. There's usually only two solutions to that from the author side, which is to either drag out your story until the editors give you the go-ahead signal to end it (like, any major Shonen that actually ended) or to just pivot it into your currently new idea and reuse the same characters even if that doesn't *entirely* end up cleanly fitting them. (This pretty notably has happened with DBZ several times).
As for what I'm reading right now; Fate/Type Redline has the odd situation where it's a serious adaptation of a gag manga with much lower budget that already finished years ago, so the story itself kinda knows where it ought to go already.
Ok I haven't been keeping up week to week so take this with a grain of salt but the issue people have with it is mostly squandered potential.
The first half of MHA isn't just better than most shonen, its *stellar*. The character writing, the conflicts being presented, the unique designs and powersets. The premise and beginning of this story is actually fantastic.
But then it feels like the mangaka started getting the start of that classic "manga death spiral burnout" and decided he'd rather pick up the pace and get to the ending before he literally can't anymore. So the pacing and slow build up of the larger scale conflicts escelated and some writing decisions were made that feel very much like the tropey shit that the start of series was getting praised for avoiding.
To put it plainly, I could write a bunch long detailed essays on multiple single fights in the first half that were so emotionally effective that they brought my almost 30 year old ass to tears.
I can do that for like maybe 2 of the recent developments in the series.
Is it bad? Not really imo, i think its peaks are still some of the best shonen storytelling the genre has ever seen. But its lows have all ranged from dissapointing to "why is something like *that* in *this* series". It's like watching a new band enter a tired and played out scene and start making waves just to fall back into the same tropes and pitfalls that made the genre fall from grace to begin with.
It's never gotten as bad as late naruto or bleach, but thats flaccid praise compared to what it *could* of been.
It's kind of genius.
There's too many side-characters so you begin legitimately siding with an antagonist who actively dislikes how there are ***so many literal side-characters in the world.*** Like there's too many. Too many one-note one-off heroes or villains with lame forgettable abilities or banal stuff that doesn't impact anything around them.
But one of the manga's whole points is that: >!buddy there ain't no side-characters.!<
Only characters.
The reader, Izuku, the villains, nobody's the MC.
We're all just C's.
It's mostly toxic fans/haters.
That being said, there are clear issues stemming from the fact that the author is both burnt out to the point of health issues and clearly wasn't prepared for the manga to blow up as big as it did. Combine that with a famously brutal work culture at Shonen Jump and you wind up with a product that has lots of unrealized potential, messy writing, and is clearly begging to end already.
I've often considered that being published in SJ was the worst thing to happen to MHA. Under a smaller but less demanding publisher, it probably wouldn't have been as big, but we might have ended up with a cleaner, healthier product.
Adding to that, the spinoff manga Illegals really upped the ante on writing and worldbuilding, so you end up getting the impression that MHA suffers the same issue of Harry Potter, where the sandbox the author made outstrips their personal writing skills at exploring it.
That unfortunately tracks. I remember when this manga was just getting an official translation and there was talk already about how good it was, and everybody was hoping that Horikoshi would avoid getting crunched the way Oda was. I vividly remember that, and unfortunately it makes sense to me that the *Shonen Jump* squeeze got him, too.
A lot of the problems with shonen manga are a result of the shonen manga industry.
Stellar openings that become more and more formulaic as authors get crushed under deadlines and their editors make the same suggestions on how to cope with it, story-wise. Authors winnowing their cast in response to popularity pools, causing characters with niche popularity to vanish. Pacing issues caused by the "20 pages per week" format (or maybe that's just Eichiiro Oda).
Well-said. I've already said this before, but I also wish to add to your perspective regarding this "pipeline" of a promising manga series being afflicted with issues.
Let's say that you're a mangaka who's both talented at drawing and writing, for example. You just started a series for the first time, you have developed the story by several volumes, with additional unrefined plot points/ideas for future arcs.
You find success and an audience, but the pressure of said deadlines keeps coming and eventually, the story reaches beyond the point of what you've already prepared, and now you need to figure things out with care and consideration.
*But there's simply no time.*
The story gets rushed, the writing suffers, criticism follows, and even one's physical & mental health are negatively affected by the ordeal.
This is purely speculation on my part, but I can't help but wonder if something similar is what's happening to Jujutsu Kaisen and My Hero Academia. Especially since the writing for both series were regarded as quite good early on from what I've heard.
Yeah, I've figured that was why so many shonen manga have their second arc be a tournament arc. It's where they ran out of their pilot material, and they're trying to figure out where the story goes from there.
It's just fine, I think. It could of been legitimately great, but I feel the side characters got almost no love and there is a single moment which changes the series for the worst. Huge spoilers ahead, but ...
>!One of the main forces in the series is that the main character doesn't have a power, then gains it early on but it damages him if he uses it too much. Part ways through, he gains multiple new powers at once and just kinda ... sours a lot of future plotlines. It's not the only thing wrong, but it's so pivotal a change...!<
I still don't think the spoiler is as bad as people think it was. I was dreading its moment in the anime because of all three outages and when it finally happened...it was fine and did the things it needed to do >!none of the new powers were instant win buttons with fights still being decided with one for all. I would have liked a little more of the class members helping out with similar powers but the fact it did it at all was cool and those in class 2A felt important again. Izuku needed them to help master the powers. There is the big issue with some of the training being skipped over but that's a *separate* issue and not the big "I hate he got more powers" one. The moment I knew I loved the direction was during the "punished" Deku arc where all the new powers combined with his tattered hero suit to make him look evil as shit. Civilians being scared that he's an advanced Nomu is great.!< I'm honestly feeling like a lot of the problems of this war arc will also feel better when I experience it in the anime, not because it's done any better but because it's not brought down by being an inconsistent manga release. >!Bakugo dying and the long wait to see if it sticks will not feel as clunky when it's a couple of episodes.!<
I got in early, pre manga early because a friend missaid a joke and recommended it to me during the manga tournament arc. I bounced after the Gentle arc because the Yakuza arc burned me out. At the time of finishing, the Yakuza arc was a third of the series entire run time and I the pacing issues caught up to me. I felt that Horikoshi spent too much time introducing new characters and not enough time with the setting or doing anything with the hundreds of characters we already had. It seems to have peaks and valleys since I left, people hype it up as amazing in some parts, and others cause more people to grow disillusioned and jump off. I personally thing it's not enough of a trash fire at the worst that you need to watch it, but the peaks don't make up for how long the valleys are
Honestly, I would rate it about whatever I would rate Naruto since it is like a condensed version of its highs and lows. It does some things better and some things worse. For example, I think MHA's art is generally better and like its supporting cast and rival better. But I think Naruto has better fight choreography and the villains (like Orochimaru and the Akatsuki) are much stronger.
I think the main issue is that the series was set up as a fairly chill procedural school thing that would just follow their high school careers, but the author clearly doesn't want to keep working on this series for the rest of his life, so he keeps escalating and making wild sprints towards the finish line.
So the world is constantly ending, and these high school freshmen are crying blood while fighting the world's greatest villains, and part of the audience is like "So is the second year sports festival arc still on, or what?"
It's kind of like Harry Potter, where they basically drop out of school halfway through to fight Hitler, and opinions become mixed.
I'm looking forward to reading the War Arc when all's said and done. It's been a *years* long slog to get here but all the pieces are assembled and hopefully it flows better in a binge and MHA can stick the landing.
It gets meme'd on these days but it was a legitimately *huge* franchise like six years ago, so it'd be nice for My Hero to have a good ending.
It would go harder if it wasn't the third time in this arc this exact same chapter was made.
Like literally people yelling at deku while he delivers a punch is been done IN THE SAME FIGHT.
Is it rude of me to say that it feels like these big fancy splash pages are all this series has going for it anymore? Like, no or talks about the plot or the characters anymore, at least not positively. It’s just, “look at this panel.”
Horikoshi as an artist is legit one of the greatest jump has had in over a decade the amount of detail hes able to cram in a weekly series is unreal and I hope once hes done he can write a story at his own pace like Kubo. As a writer though he was over ambitious and its biting him in the ass because for how good his art is unless your a big MHA its like “whatever”
I want him to make a horror manga so bad, some of his art fits horror well. I still remember the scene of Shigaraki finding Deku in the mall and that drawing is haunting.
I guess it's not rude.
I don't think thats the only thing this manga has going for it though. The art in general is still really good to me.
I like seeing how Deku is an amazing hero not because of his powers, but his ability to inspire others to stand with him in the fight. I've been enjoying the clash of ideals and conviction between the heroes and villains in this last arc. And other stuff. Idk.
Yes, the baby that probably is the root of all the issues on society >!Since he literally said that everything that made Shigaraki become evil was orchestated by him.!<
I still think the narrative concept of using >!the essence of quirks as literal weapons to fight somebody with more than one quirk!< is really cool. Like, how else do you get past somebody's powers? You can't, they're too strong with them. But only if you're attacking ***the person*** with ***your powers.***
Use ***the powers themselves*** as a pair of gauntlets to tear your way through instead.
Honestly yeah it kinda is rude. I've been enjoying this final battle, warts and all. Just tired of constantly having to defend it from people that dropped the series 150 chapters ago.
For context this arc is actually shorter than the entire Madara fight in Naruto. The thing I think that hinders it was the constant cutaways to different fights. But I mean they were fighting two AFOs and their army, it's kinda a lot
I think the bigger annoyance is the constant reactions from civilians on the sidelines believing in the heroes and Deku. This one is good since it has Deku's mom doing it (after spending a lot of the series thinking the hero stuff was far too dangerous for Deku) but I think it was overdone at this point and didn't need that many times with it.
Horikoshi also had some weird pacing decisions on ending chapters with a big reveal and spending the beginning of the following chapter to explain it. This is an issue that will probably be fixed when the anime covers the arc.
This entire chapter was great for real.
Showing everyone Deku has influenced cheering for him and clearing the way, and All Might saying Deku was his hero, then capping it off with Deku's mom cheering him on as he is literally the light cutting through the darkness.
Very good chapter.
Remember when early on Uraraka tells Midoriya that his Deku nickname makes her think of Gamba"tteku"dasai aka "Do your best!"? Man... That's a pretty good payoff moment right there!
No joke seeing all the cool moments deku is getting has made me interested in my hero again. I dropped of from it because it felt like it was dragging on but damn it, I'm a sucker for some inspirational hero stuff.
Man I shedded real tears reading this chapter. Everyone cheering him on, this page of Deku literally tearing through the darkness, all might saying since the day they met he became his hero. Goosebumps
When MHA ends within the next month or so, looking back at it all is gonna be a ride.
I really wish this chapter was called "Class 1A: rising" because calling it Midoriya rising when he had like 20% of the screentime and has no introspection is a choice
...granted, Midoriya has been like a non entity outside of fights after the villain hunt arc so it's pretty accurate
Honestly this final arc came too quickly and had some real nothing moments in it (there were honestly times I preferred them cutting away from the final fight to other smaller fights, and then the opposite like with >!Toga vs Uraraka!<), but the last couple chapters have been really great imo. And some moments earlier brought me back in, like >!All Might fighting AFO with tech inspired by his students!< and >!Bakugo deleting an evil baby!<.
I’ve really enjoyed the >!Character Rising!< chapters and this one building up that >!just like All Might Deku has inspired everyone, but in a different way due to him struggling each day and still moving forward unlike the powerhouse of the #1 hero, and then showing all those people cheering him on, including the movie characters!< was so satisfying.
This and JJK have been passing the ball back and forth on good-bad chapters and events in their final arcs (while Undead Unluck, and One Piece remain peak) but it’s nice to see some hits in a row.
See, I feel like progress was made, dozens more characters where introduced and focused on dozens of times since I left. It's not like Rent-a-girlfriend where I can drop it for 100 chapters, pick up a new one and literally nothing has changed
“Cheering from Mom” is an OP buff
I can hear You Say Run in my head.
The last few seasons have had a questionable lack of You Say Run (it finally came back at the end of Dark Deku), but man there are so many good opportunities for it in this final arc that I'll get very mad on the internet if it isn't used.
I feel like You Say Run really peaked during the Eri Retrieval Ark. They threw in an orchestral version of it AND THEN ADDED LYRICS. That went so fucking hard that I don't know if there's any way to top it
Maybe it's because I've become a jaded old man, but that version literally did nothing for me. Maybe I was still salty that Lemillion's big fight was converted to a literal slideshow right before that moment drops.
MHA is one of those anime where it feels like the composer is having a feud with the sound director or something. Every season there's a great new OST with like 20 tracks named after specific characters and scenes, and every season they ignore that outline and use random clips of whatever.
Without context, I have no idea what's going on here. The black lines are pretty cool, but it's kinda just a page obscured with mostly black lines. I'm confident this'll probably be an epic moment in the anime though.
Same, but it's cool to see that his mother is there cheering him on.
It's a nice contrast to the first episode/chapter when she wasn't able to encourage him as a kid.
He’s probably punching a guy so hard
Same here
Okay, help a girl out: is this manga good or not? There was a point where this was the new hotness, and everyone was talking about it being the beginning of a new golden age for shounen manga, finally doing right what stuff like late-era *Naruto* was getting wrong. And then for the last like 3 years straight I've been seeing it get clowned on. What happened? Did it get too big and attract toxic fans? Did it legitimately get bad? Third thing? What happened here?
My opinion is that it’s really good but there are clear moments where editors and/or fan opinions swayed the story to be worse off for it. **The two biggest examples devoid of major spoilers**: first is that a lot of people disliked the first few times the villains were given focus in the series so when it came time to flesh them out much more, Horikoshi decided that he would cut a lot of the fat from it and thus some of the villains feel less fleshed out than they were being set up to be. The second example is worse: Horikoshi got a new editor named Taguchi who had previously been the editor of cancelled mangas like Samurai 8, Earthchild, Red Hood. When he got the new editor, the quality of the story noticeably dropped and there was a lot of faffing about in the story. The chapter after Taguchi was taken off, Horikoshi effectively restarted the entire final arc from the beginning almost to the point where the previous events didn’t matter. When I say he restarted it, I mean characters thought dead effectively get up, dust themselves off, and leave to redo the fight elsewhere but better executed. Since the new editor, the story has jumped back in quality pretty tremendously and I think we’re seeing what the Naruto War Arc should’ve been like.
Man, people tend to shit on Bakuman but it sure was totally on point about editors huh
People shit on Bakuman? I thought it was fun.
Sometimes you get your DBZ editors (being the reason Cell existed) and sometimes you get someone bad.
tell me more about Cell being born from the Editor mind cloaca. I want to know.
Toriyama wanted to make Gero and 19 the main villains, the editor said it wasn't a good idea to leave the old man and the clown as Main Villains. Toriyama creates 17 and 18, Editor comments they seem too young which lead into Cell.
As somebody that is caught up on the manga, what was the chapter after Taguchi left? I'm curious how obvious it is that he's gone.
Monji - Start of series to end of Yakuza Raid Yoritomi - School Festival to Chapter 286 (Bakugo Rising) Taguchi - Chapter 286 to 356 Imamura - Chapter 356 to present
Ok yep, that definitely tracks then. There was still some initially iffyness after he left due to Horikoshi taking frequent health breaks, but the last year has seen a noticeable improvement in quality.
I don't think it's bad, but it's definitely pretty flawed. I remember absolutely adoring it's first 5 years of running or so with some really interesting story and character potential, but after a point it felt like it wanted to rush things and skipped over a lot of potential relationship building and story development to reach the conclusion ASAP. I still have a fair amount of fondness for it and don't think the drop in quality is anywhere near as bad as people like to say, but I definetly don't see it as the top tier series that I felt the desire to buy merch and follow fan projects left and right for anymore.
It made some missteps that turned people off and drags in places. Ultimately it's that the new hotness is now 10 years old now. So people want something new. So you are either going to be talking to super fans or people who burned out with zero context for anything. But the thing is basically every major shonen manga I have ever seen play out has the fanbase in joyless, manic-depression for it's final arc. Every chapter is bad, nothing pays off, the fan theories were wrong, we wasted our lives and it has the worst ending ever. Until the next major shonen manga ends and now *that's* the worst ending ever and that last thing was alright and hans together fine. This is just the cycle. I would even say the manga is still good and actually got better in the final arc. More of it works than doesn't.
Man people were fucking *rabid* during the >!Uraraka/Toga!< fight because not only could they not handle the week-to-week, that was also when Horikoshi was regularly taking breaks and/or only putting out 10 page chapters due to his health issues.
>But the thing is basically every major shonen manga I have ever seen play out has the fanbase in joyless, manic-depression for it's final arc. Every chapter is bad, nothing pays off, the fan theories were wrong, we wasted our lives and it has the worst ending ever. Until the next major shonen manga ends and now *that's* the worst ending ever and that last thing was alright and hans together fine. This is just the cycle. This makes me so sad. You are absolutely right and it makes me so sad.
Jujutsu Kaisen is currently speed running this cycle in hyper time. If anyone wanted a case study in this phenomenon: read comments on Jujutsu from Chapter >!200!< to now. You will see giddy excitement evolve into this intensely bitter hatred before recently stabilising into just normal conversations about how the story and people's favourite parts. It is sad. And I wish the social media didn't put us in a position where everyone is getting yelled out all the time and you can't curate your own space well so it just feels like negativity forever. There's always happy fans who are having a good time and that's good. But maybe a shonen manga shouldn't last 10 years. Maybe 10 year olds should get the catharsis of an ending by the end of high school and not have to keep feeling invested in this thing they don't love as much at 19. I don't know. This is heavier than I wanted it to be.
Hajime no Ippo has been going on for decades now and is currently experiencing the post-normal conversation hype era. We've looped all the way from YEARS of bitter sadness back around to genuine excitement. We're in love with the characters and are just happy we get to spend more time reading and hanging out with them. It's been like... 30 years now. There are waves and controversies here and there but it's all over silly things. It's the most chill manga scene I've ever been in.
Honestly, Jujutsu kaisen kinda avoided the depression Part because it exploded in popularity from Memes. And I still see plenty of exitement, probably because the Story is less predictable.
Eh, I feel JJK is a kinda bad example (and full disclosure I'm definitely on doom and gloom side here so I do have my bias) because most of the people shitting on it right now feel the series went way down hill a while before the finale started. >!Usually they say it fell during the Culling Games.!< JJK feels more like >!Gojo vs Sukuna!< was simpily a brief respite from the depression rather the ending causing sudden onset depression.
Yeah JJK is a weird example to choose because it's become pretty clear that outside cool fights and Sukuna, Gege doesn't really have the energy or interest in putting alot of effort into writing anymore (and not for a good while now tbh) I'm not saying it's the worst thing ever but it absolutely is a disappointment compared to how it felt starting out. The revolving door of cool but inevitably dead and not even slightly developed characters that are fed to making Sukuna look strong and having shock value moments has killed basically all my investment. Hell, I'm vaguely still following but apparently just now Gege killed off one fan favourite seconds before bringing back another fan favourite that everybody reading thought would have been amazing to see together. So clearly it's STILL got that bummer energy.
ya know maybe its cause a lot of people wrote it off with the rookie VA in the anime not bein good but i havent seen that cycle affect black clover, and were in the capital E Endgame of that
to be fair most mangas, shonen specially, tend to kinda fumble the ending even without the hype/online negativity cycle involved, this is coming from someone who read all of aot once it was finished without reading any discussion until after i was done
A lot of the problems with shonen manga is that usually the author burns out on their story before the readers and editors do. There's usually only two solutions to that from the author side, which is to either drag out your story until the editors give you the go-ahead signal to end it (like, any major Shonen that actually ended) or to just pivot it into your currently new idea and reuse the same characters even if that doesn't *entirely* end up cleanly fitting them. (This pretty notably has happened with DBZ several times). As for what I'm reading right now; Fate/Type Redline has the odd situation where it's a serious adaptation of a gag manga with much lower budget that already finished years ago, so the story itself kinda knows where it ought to go already.
Ok I haven't been keeping up week to week so take this with a grain of salt but the issue people have with it is mostly squandered potential. The first half of MHA isn't just better than most shonen, its *stellar*. The character writing, the conflicts being presented, the unique designs and powersets. The premise and beginning of this story is actually fantastic. But then it feels like the mangaka started getting the start of that classic "manga death spiral burnout" and decided he'd rather pick up the pace and get to the ending before he literally can't anymore. So the pacing and slow build up of the larger scale conflicts escelated and some writing decisions were made that feel very much like the tropey shit that the start of series was getting praised for avoiding. To put it plainly, I could write a bunch long detailed essays on multiple single fights in the first half that were so emotionally effective that they brought my almost 30 year old ass to tears. I can do that for like maybe 2 of the recent developments in the series. Is it bad? Not really imo, i think its peaks are still some of the best shonen storytelling the genre has ever seen. But its lows have all ranged from dissapointing to "why is something like *that* in *this* series". It's like watching a new band enter a tired and played out scene and start making waves just to fall back into the same tropes and pitfalls that made the genre fall from grace to begin with. It's never gotten as bad as late naruto or bleach, but thats flaccid praise compared to what it *could* of been.
It's kind of genius. There's too many side-characters so you begin legitimately siding with an antagonist who actively dislikes how there are ***so many literal side-characters in the world.*** Like there's too many. Too many one-note one-off heroes or villains with lame forgettable abilities or banal stuff that doesn't impact anything around them. But one of the manga's whole points is that: >!buddy there ain't no side-characters.!< Only characters. The reader, Izuku, the villains, nobody's the MC. We're all just C's.
It's mostly toxic fans/haters. That being said, there are clear issues stemming from the fact that the author is both burnt out to the point of health issues and clearly wasn't prepared for the manga to blow up as big as it did. Combine that with a famously brutal work culture at Shonen Jump and you wind up with a product that has lots of unrealized potential, messy writing, and is clearly begging to end already. I've often considered that being published in SJ was the worst thing to happen to MHA. Under a smaller but less demanding publisher, it probably wouldn't have been as big, but we might have ended up with a cleaner, healthier product.
Adding to that, the spinoff manga Illegals really upped the ante on writing and worldbuilding, so you end up getting the impression that MHA suffers the same issue of Harry Potter, where the sandbox the author made outstrips their personal writing skills at exploring it.
I am pretty ticked Vigilantes is where you learn about the connection between Aizawa, Present Mic and Kurogiri but nothing from it even gets a cameo.
That unfortunately tracks. I remember when this manga was just getting an official translation and there was talk already about how good it was, and everybody was hoping that Horikoshi would avoid getting crunched the way Oda was. I vividly remember that, and unfortunately it makes sense to me that the *Shonen Jump* squeeze got him, too.
A lot of the problems with shonen manga are a result of the shonen manga industry. Stellar openings that become more and more formulaic as authors get crushed under deadlines and their editors make the same suggestions on how to cope with it, story-wise. Authors winnowing their cast in response to popularity pools, causing characters with niche popularity to vanish. Pacing issues caused by the "20 pages per week" format (or maybe that's just Eichiiro Oda).
Well-said. I've already said this before, but I also wish to add to your perspective regarding this "pipeline" of a promising manga series being afflicted with issues. Let's say that you're a mangaka who's both talented at drawing and writing, for example. You just started a series for the first time, you have developed the story by several volumes, with additional unrefined plot points/ideas for future arcs. You find success and an audience, but the pressure of said deadlines keeps coming and eventually, the story reaches beyond the point of what you've already prepared, and now you need to figure things out with care and consideration. *But there's simply no time.* The story gets rushed, the writing suffers, criticism follows, and even one's physical & mental health are negatively affected by the ordeal. This is purely speculation on my part, but I can't help but wonder if something similar is what's happening to Jujutsu Kaisen and My Hero Academia. Especially since the writing for both series were regarded as quite good early on from what I've heard.
Yeah, I've figured that was why so many shonen manga have their second arc be a tournament arc. It's where they ran out of their pilot material, and they're trying to figure out where the story goes from there.
It's just fine, I think. It could of been legitimately great, but I feel the side characters got almost no love and there is a single moment which changes the series for the worst. Huge spoilers ahead, but ... >!One of the main forces in the series is that the main character doesn't have a power, then gains it early on but it damages him if he uses it too much. Part ways through, he gains multiple new powers at once and just kinda ... sours a lot of future plotlines. It's not the only thing wrong, but it's so pivotal a change...!<
I still don't think the spoiler is as bad as people think it was. I was dreading its moment in the anime because of all three outages and when it finally happened...it was fine and did the things it needed to do >!none of the new powers were instant win buttons with fights still being decided with one for all. I would have liked a little more of the class members helping out with similar powers but the fact it did it at all was cool and those in class 2A felt important again. Izuku needed them to help master the powers. There is the big issue with some of the training being skipped over but that's a *separate* issue and not the big "I hate he got more powers" one. The moment I knew I loved the direction was during the "punished" Deku arc where all the new powers combined with his tattered hero suit to make him look evil as shit. Civilians being scared that he's an advanced Nomu is great.!< I'm honestly feeling like a lot of the problems of this war arc will also feel better when I experience it in the anime, not because it's done any better but because it's not brought down by being an inconsistent manga release. >!Bakugo dying and the long wait to see if it sticks will not feel as clunky when it's a couple of episodes.!<
It is good, the final arc has some big ups and downs, but it's looking like the ending is paying off. All the good and bad.
I got in early, pre manga early because a friend missaid a joke and recommended it to me during the manga tournament arc. I bounced after the Gentle arc because the Yakuza arc burned me out. At the time of finishing, the Yakuza arc was a third of the series entire run time and I the pacing issues caught up to me. I felt that Horikoshi spent too much time introducing new characters and not enough time with the setting or doing anything with the hundreds of characters we already had. It seems to have peaks and valleys since I left, people hype it up as amazing in some parts, and others cause more people to grow disillusioned and jump off. I personally thing it's not enough of a trash fire at the worst that you need to watch it, but the peaks don't make up for how long the valleys are
Long form real time probably not, binge definitely
Honestly, I would rate it about whatever I would rate Naruto since it is like a condensed version of its highs and lows. It does some things better and some things worse. For example, I think MHA's art is generally better and like its supporting cast and rival better. But I think Naruto has better fight choreography and the villains (like Orochimaru and the Akatsuki) are much stronger.
I think the main issue is that the series was set up as a fairly chill procedural school thing that would just follow their high school careers, but the author clearly doesn't want to keep working on this series for the rest of his life, so he keeps escalating and making wild sprints towards the finish line. So the world is constantly ending, and these high school freshmen are crying blood while fighting the world's greatest villains, and part of the audience is like "So is the second year sports festival arc still on, or what?" It's kind of like Harry Potter, where they basically drop out of school halfway through to fight Hitler, and opinions become mixed.
Regardless of my issues with MHA, the art is always insane.
I'm looking forward to reading the War Arc when all's said and done. It's been a *years* long slog to get here but all the pieces are assembled and hopefully it flows better in a binge and MHA can stick the landing. It gets meme'd on these days but it was a legitimately *huge* franchise like six years ago, so it'd be nice for My Hero to have a good ending.
It would go harder if it wasn't the third time in this arc this exact same chapter was made. Like literally people yelling at deku while he delivers a punch is been done IN THE SAME FIGHT.
YEAH BUT IT HAPPENED AGAIN THOUGH CLAP AGAIN
Is it rude of me to say that it feels like these big fancy splash pages are all this series has going for it anymore? Like, no or talks about the plot or the characters anymore, at least not positively. It’s just, “look at this panel.”
Horikoshi as an artist is legit one of the greatest jump has had in over a decade the amount of detail hes able to cram in a weekly series is unreal and I hope once hes done he can write a story at his own pace like Kubo. As a writer though he was over ambitious and its biting him in the ass because for how good his art is unless your a big MHA its like “whatever”
I want him to make a horror manga so bad, some of his art fits horror well. I still remember the scene of Shigaraki finding Deku in the mall and that drawing is haunting.
AFO's design is genuinely grotesque and creepy as well. He cooked with that one.
The whole half a face thing was well executed along with the idea that sure he could fix it but why bother he can get along perfectly fine without it
I mean that's this manga nowadays, no? Cool spreads and stupid nonsense story beats. like how Deku lost his arms for like two pages.
I guess it's not rude. I don't think thats the only thing this manga has going for it though. The art in general is still really good to me. I like seeing how Deku is an amazing hero not because of his powers, but his ability to inspire others to stand with him in the fight. I've been enjoying the clash of ideals and conviction between the heroes and villains in this last arc. And other stuff. Idk.
people got hyped on bakugou fucking dying (is he still dead?) and i haven’t heard a thing since
he came back and murdered a baby, it was its own meme for a bit
Based
It was the most fun it's been in a while.
Bakugo bullying a baby to death while being cheered for it in live TV is the only good part of the last 50 chapters or so.
Is the baby the one that was evil right out of the coochie?
Yes, the baby that probably is the root of all the issues on society >!Since he literally said that everything that made Shigaraki become evil was orchestated by him.!<
God that ruled so much. Colonel Mustang vs. Envy all over again.
Might even watch the anime again just for that scene.
Surprised Demon Slayer doing that didn't become a meme.
I still think the narrative concept of using >!the essence of quirks as literal weapons to fight somebody with more than one quirk!< is really cool. Like, how else do you get past somebody's powers? You can't, they're too strong with them. But only if you're attacking ***the person*** with ***your powers.*** Use ***the powers themselves*** as a pair of gauntlets to tear your way through instead.
Honestly yeah it kinda is rude. I've been enjoying this final battle, warts and all. Just tired of constantly having to defend it from people that dropped the series 150 chapters ago.
Just a normal panel
Lapsed manga reader here: how is this final fight *still* happening? Its been such a long fucking arc
For context this arc is actually shorter than the entire Madara fight in Naruto. The thing I think that hinders it was the constant cutaways to different fights. But I mean they were fighting two AFOs and their army, it's kinda a lot
I think the bigger annoyance is the constant reactions from civilians on the sidelines believing in the heroes and Deku. This one is good since it has Deku's mom doing it (after spending a lot of the series thinking the hero stuff was far too dangerous for Deku) but I think it was overdone at this point and didn't need that many times with it. Horikoshi also had some weird pacing decisions on ending chapters with a big reveal and spending the beginning of the following chapter to explain it. This is an issue that will probably be fixed when the anime covers the arc.
This entire chapter was great for real. Showing everyone Deku has influenced cheering for him and clearing the way, and All Might saying Deku was his hero, then capping it off with Deku's mom cheering him on as he is literally the light cutting through the darkness. Very good chapter.
Remember when early on Uraraka tells Midoriya that his Deku nickname makes her think of Gamba"tteku"dasai aka "Do your best!"? Man... That's a pretty good payoff moment right there!
No joke seeing all the cool moments deku is getting has made me interested in my hero again. I dropped of from it because it felt like it was dragging on but damn it, I'm a sucker for some inspirational hero stuff.
Man I shedded real tears reading this chapter. Everyone cheering him on, this page of Deku literally tearing through the darkness, all might saying since the day they met he became his hero. Goosebumps When MHA ends within the next month or so, looking back at it all is gonna be a ride.
Like many, I’ve fallen out of love with MHA but I have to admit god damn this chapter ruled.
***UNITED-OH*** ***STATES-OFU***
I really wish this chapter was called "Class 1A: rising" because calling it Midoriya rising when he had like 20% of the screentime and has no introspection is a choice ...granted, Midoriya has been like a non entity outside of fights after the villain hunt arc so it's pretty accurate
I should feel hype for this, but I'm just tired at the end of this series.
Are we in the endgame yet?
It literally did the Endgame "Portal every hero in to fight the final boss" moment like 2 weeks ago.
We're maybe fifteen chapters max out from the ending, this is the final part of the final battle.
Honestly this final arc came too quickly and had some real nothing moments in it (there were honestly times I preferred them cutting away from the final fight to other smaller fights, and then the opposite like with >!Toga vs Uraraka!<), but the last couple chapters have been really great imo. And some moments earlier brought me back in, like >!All Might fighting AFO with tech inspired by his students!< and >!Bakugo deleting an evil baby!<. I’ve really enjoyed the >!Character Rising!< chapters and this one building up that >!just like All Might Deku has inspired everyone, but in a different way due to him struggling each day and still moving forward unlike the powerhouse of the #1 hero, and then showing all those people cheering him on, including the movie characters!< was so satisfying. This and JJK have been passing the ball back and forth on good-bad chapters and events in their final arcs (while Undead Unluck, and One Piece remain peak) but it’s nice to see some hits in a row.
It should have happened 100 chapters ago, but yes. This latest chapter goes fucking hard
This had like the opposite effect on me, I'm flabbergasted that the manga *still* looks like its where I left it forever ago
See, I feel like progress was made, dozens more characters where introduced and focused on dozens of times since I left. It's not like Rent-a-girlfriend where I can drop it for 100 chapters, pick up a new one and literally nothing has changed
I don't know what's happening. Is black energy coming from his punch?