Visualist X 100 Collaboration Introduction

You probably caught this news earlier in the week. After working with Weekend Otaku for the past two seasons with the 200 Word Anime reviews of The Ancient Magus’ Bride (and Black Clover for 13 weeks), I’m starting the Spring season with a new collaboration with Kapodaco from the Visualist’s Veranda. I really enjoy writing these reviews with others as it really does make me pay more attention to what I’m watching and writing and I was thrilled when Kapodaco asked me if I was interested in starting something for spring. Thrilled and a little panicked because I have a great deal of respect for Kapodaco’s opinion and ability to critique. Still, I am really looking forward to the next couple of months and I think this is going to be a great experience.

My Hero Academia is one of those odd anime that on paper looks like every other generic shounen ever. In fact, I didn’t start watching season one when it first started airing for the simple reason that I didn’t want to watch another super hero anything and I wasn’t really in the market for a shounen anime. Many positive reviews later and I started watching it and binged all five of the episodes that were out. I was instantly hooked by Midoriya and I loved how All Might was built up and then was revealed to be less than perfect and yet Midoriya didn’t instantly feel betrayed or let down by his hero. While there is nothing particularly new about the story here, there is a lot of love and attention given to the characters and the story that carries even the more average moments to fairly compelling heights.

With season two, once I realised we were going into a tournament arc, I again lowered my expectations of the show. I hate tournament arcs. I really do. They are dull, repetitive, and what little character development they offer probably could have been integrated more organically into a more interesting story line. And once again, My Hero Academia blew my expectations away. It delivered the most consistently interesting tournament arc I have ever watched and the character work for both main and support characters was fantastic. It immediately followed this up with Stain and the league of Villains and really the show has definitely managed to prove it isn’t a one trick pony and there’s some actual thought put into it.

That said, I’m going into season three anticipating excitement but not really wanting to directly consider what it might do. So far, My Hero Academia has demonstrated that even when it treads over old and familiar plot structures it will deliver something special so regardless of what season three chooses to do, I’m hoping it will do it well. About the only thing I’d really love is to see more Todoroki and that’s because he’s a fire and ice user and that is just fantastic no matter how I look at it.

Alright, I’ll be more serious about what I’d like from season three (keep in mind I have zero familiarity with the source material and do not want real spoilers).

I would like more from the villains. Other than Stain, the villains have been the weak link in an otherwise pretty amazing cast and yet they have some real potential to be pretty terrifying and threatening, and I’d like to see them do both in the new series and actually really put our main characters in peril.

While it might be too early, I’d like to see All Might taken out of the picture sometime during the next season. I kind of feel Midoriya needs a real push if he’s going to continue to grow as a character and a hero.

Finally, more Todoroki. I’d actually like to see Midoriya and Todoroki working together more because they are both pretty awesome characters and I think the combination of the two could be pretty amazing. But throw in some Uraraka as well because Midoriya and Uraraka as adorable.

I’m genuinely excited to start this project and I’ve been looking forward to the first episode of My Hero Academia. Hopefully you will all follow along with us and let me know below what you would like to see from season three (no spoilers from source material).

Thanks for reading.

Karandi James