So had planned this to be my review of both My Hero Academia season 3 and My Hero Academia: Two Heroes.
The timing of the movie is weird, it’s obviously set just before Season 3 begins, but there’s an episode in Season 3 that’s basically just an advertisement for the movie.
So I’m not sure which I should do first…
Let’s talk about the “Special” episode that leads into the movie, then the movie.
But because I have a lot to discuss, I’m going to make this just the review of the special and the movie, and tomorrow I’ll discuss Season 3.
I’ll start with the less spoilery versions.
The “Special” episode is pretty light hearted, with an outrageous premise and ended, but it does lead into the beginning of the movie, so it’s worth a watch.
At the point it’s in the anime, it’s gotten kind of intense, so it’s a little out of place, but I still enjoyed the episode.
It definitely plays up some of the tropes it’s built up with the characters.
The movie is also awesome!
It’s a little out of place, with All Might being a little stronger than he should be.
It’s one of those things where you don’t have to watch it if you don’t have access to it, but it’s a nice contained story.
You get more of All Mights’ backstory in the movie than you do in the show up to that point, so that’s fun.
There’s an animation style that MHA tends to fall into for its epic set pieces, but only rarely.
I don’t know if it’s a specific animator, or just the directors choice.
But there’s plenty of times in the final fight that fall into it.
The animation just gets a lot more… fluid…
Like they’ve upped the frame rate for these epic pieces.
It just makes it look fast and intense, and it’s just awesome.
They also got some great talent in to voice the new characters.
So all in all, it is 110% worth the watch, though as I said, not 100% necessary.
NOW ON TO THE SPOLERS!!!
When we last left our heroes, they had just finished their finals where they were put in teams to fight the teachers.
Summer break is about to happen, and the class is going to be doing a special summer camp training course over the break.
The “Special” episode takes place a little before this, but obviously after the events of Hero Killer Stain.
It involves the class being split up into teams to do a special training exercise.
The other teachers are going to be doing something, but we don’t know what.
Of course our main team is put together, that being: Deku, Ochaco, Iida, Todoroki, Backugo, and Froppy.
They’re tasked with stopping an armed robbery of a jewellery store!
The setup is that they’ve been called in to stop a villain who has taken hostages because the police have blocked him in.
It’s a pretty silly episode.
All Might is dressed up as the villain, and the hostages are Cemetoss, Midnight, and Present Mic, all dressed in character.
Deku does his “Thinking Lady” meme and figures out a plan.
Ochaco then scouts out the scene.
As they plan Bakugo does what Bakugo does and flies off on his own.
He explodes open the doors as everyone charges in.
But what’s this?!
All Might has a knife sticking out of his chest with blood everywhere!
How did this happen?!
That’s the real task set to the team.
They question everyone to get the full story, and Deku beautiful minds the answer exactly.
It turns out it’s a love story between Midnight and All Might.
She just wants to save him from his life of crime, and he couldn’t let the world know that she was involved, and so takes his own life!
How romantic…?
Except, while the team is so wrapped up with Deku’s story, they fail the test.
Because All Might wasn’t just “playing dead” like they assumed, he was faking dead… and has escaped.
…lol…
Overall it’s not a terrible episode, but it is over the top ridiculous.
It’s quite obvious that it’s just an advert for the movie, as they literally tell you once the story is over.
Because at the end All Might gets an email from an old friend, asking him to come to a special place, and he decides to take Deku with him!
Which leads us into the movie!
Now, Anime tie-in movies aren’t a new thing, Shonen anime have a tradition of doing them.
They’re usually not cannon to the show and some are just impossible to put into the story timeline because of that.
Usually it’s because characters are involved who shouldn’t be, or they have powers they only have at the time the movie is released, as opposed to when it’s meant to be set.
Or they take place in a time where the characters literally don’t have time to be doing this huge epic adventure.
For the most part, Two Heroes fits pretty well.
But it’s an obvious closed loop, with things that would really help the characters in the show being given out, where you know full well they don’t have that in the show, so you know it’s going to break by the end of the movie.
All Might is also a lot stronger than he should be at this point in time, it seems like he’s midway through season 1 in strength because he can keep his muscle form for a long time!
We learn he can only keep it for 2 hours when he starts at UA and by the end of Season 1 he can only keep it for 50 minutes.
When they get to the main location of the movie, I-Island, he gets swamped by people, and it seems like hours pass before he is rid of everyone.
But apart from that, everyone else lines up correctly.
So let’s get to the actual movie!
The movie starts with us in the past, you can tell because the sound of the music isn’t as good.
We’re in America and a bank has been robbed by 2 villains!
The American police along with 2 heroes get beaten by them easily.
But just as one of the heroes is about to be killed we get a SMASH!
A much younger All Might explodes onto the scene, we know he’s younger because he has actual EYES!
It turns out All Might spent some time learning over in America either when he was close to finishing High School, or as a College thing.
The Villains get away though, and it’s up to All Mights friend, David, to help him track them and catch up.
This is obviously a young All Might, and Sabat does a good job portraying that in his voice.
He’s a lot lighter, without years of regret built up to weigh him down.
With the help of David and his fancy car/jet they catch up and SMASH the villains!
Which leads us into the intro, and the usual spiel about the world of MHA, we then get a brief recap of Deku getting his powers from All Might, what UA is, and the movie continues on.
As I said previously, All Might received an email from a friend, Melissa Shield, who wants him to come see her dad, David, who is one of All Mights best friends, at “I-Island”, as a surprise.
Yes, the same David we were introduced to in the opening!
“I-Island” is a super fancy man-made island that can move wherever it wants.
It’s made like that because all of the super smart scientists live and work there.
And it’s much easier to protect a self contained island that keeps moving so you can’t pin it down than just a normal regular attached to the sea floor island.
“I-Island” is also hosting a big fancy expo to show off all the awesome stuff they’ve been doing, called “I-Expo.”
Original name, I know…
So All Might brings Deku along because he’s got One for All… yet he’s told that David and Melissa don’t know about the quirk… so it’s a little vague as to why Deku is there… But who cares?!
They eventually meet up with Melissa and head over to David’s lab.
Where David just happens to be having a flash back to All Might saving him from a laboratory fire at the school campus.
This, we learn, is their first meeting.
After introductions are made Deku flips out because he knows all about David Shield, he’s super famous and smart and has made all of All Mights costumes.
The then lists them all by “Age” using the reverse of Comic Book ages.
Which is amusing if you know what they’re doing.
But All Might is starting to smoke, which means his time in muscle form is running out.
David catches on and gets everyone to leave, with Melissa taking Deku on a sight seeing tour.
We follow Deku who gets shown some awesome gear that’s been created on the Island, and run into Ochaco!
And then more and more UA students.
We just keep running into more of them and learn that just about everyone is there.
We ended up counting them and only 3 people weren’t included from the class, which made us feel bad for them.
There’s some funny scenes here and we get to see Deku use his Full Cowling ability, helping us to know for sure where he’s up to in his power.
Eventually the kids all come together to chat.
They all decide to go to the gala dinner being put on to showcase some things before “I-Expo” officially opens the next day, and the group splits up.
Melissa than takes Deku to her lab at the school on the island, and gives him his cheat glove.
She noticed that Dekus power was like Uncle All Might’s and the glove is made to support the wearers arm from any recoil damage.
So that means Deku can use 100% of One for All without shattering his arm!
But Melissa says it should be able to withstand 3 of All Mights full power SMASHes before breaking.
That’s so handy…
Deku then realises he’s going to be late to meet up with everyone for the gala, so rushes off.
He’s one of the first ones there and looks a lot of Ron Weasley from Harry Potter in his horrible suit.
We then get to see some of the girls all dressed up and swap over to the gala.
There All Might is made to give a speech.
But as he begins the bad guys we’ve been seeing small scenes of finally take over the islands security.
The system binds all of the heroes at the dinner, and warns everyone else on the island to head back to their rooms, and locks everything down.
No phones, no internet, no TV, everyone is trapped.
The kids then realise they’re the ones who can help stop this, and try to get to the dinner to find out what’s going on.
In the mean time, David and his assistant Sam are taken away by the bad guys and told they’re needed to do something.
After this the kids signal to All Might, whose Muscle timer is running short, that they’re going to help.
This is where some telepathy takes place.
A power that everyone seems to get throughout this movie!
The kids make a plan to climb up to 200 story tower and take back the control room!
They’re blocked off at the 80th level and have to continue into the tower, where some kool fights happen at different points.
Which, as they point out several times, means the kids are breaking the law, like with Hero Killer Stain.
No one really cares by this point in the movie, and we eventually get down to just Deku and Melissa.
They’ve reached the top floor and head into a vault where David and Sam are working on something.
They unlock a vault and Sam rushes up to get it.
It’s here the very obvious twist is revealed.
David and Sam set this whole thing up!
Their super fancy new support gear can increase the quirk of anyone who wears it without side effects!
But the higher ups of the island and world leaders demanded they stop working on it and confiscated it.
It turns out that David, who earlier scanned All Might and found out most of his quirk was gone, wanted to give it to All Might so he could continue being the “Symbol of Peace.”
Melissa is crushed that her Dad would do such a thing, as the villains enter the room and, surprise surprise, turn out to be real bad guys instead of fake ones like the Scientists thought.
We learn the main bad guy Wolfram, has metal powers, and locks Deku up.
He then tries to shoot Sam, but David jumps in the way!
Wolfram then kidnaps David and the device and they head up to a helicopter.
Deku finally gets free and rushes up there after telling Melissa to get the system back on line.
Wolfram is hammering on Deku and gets on the helicopter.
Melissa unlocks the system in a matter of seconds, cause she’s super smart, and everyone is free.
As the helicopter takes off Deku leaps and lands on it, but is shot off and crashes down.
Just then All Might flies up the side of the tower past the helicopter, and SMASHes his way straight through it, obviously killing two of the bad guys on it, but saving David.
Too bad Wolfram survived and puts the Quirk amplifier on.
We then get the usual fight, where All Might is doing better than Deku did, but just can’t win.
Then we learn that Wolfram has more than 1 quirk, because All for One was involved!
Hope seems lost when all of the other UA students show up.
But as usually happens in movies like this, it all boils down to Deku and All Might.
We have some crazy 3D objects, that looks totally out of place, and the aforementioned crazy animations.
And a super full power double punch from All Might and Deku, and the villain is defeated!
But in the process the power glove got destroyed…oh no…
We then get a closing scene of David realising he was just trying to hold on to the past by saving All Might, and that Deku and Melissa are the future.
All in all it was a pretty intense movie, with a lot of the side characters getting time to shine, which is rare in movies like this.
It’s also a full length feature compared to the usual ones which are either 45 to 60 minutes, this was a little over 90, so it had time to breathe.
So it’s basically 4 episodes worth of story in one go, whereas most movies are 2 or 3.
I thoroughly enjoyed it and if you’re watching MHA, you should give it a watch too!
Tomorrow, we move on to Season 3, which is amazing, so stay tuned!