Vision, talent, timing and Horikoshi’s lack of experience.
To keep this short, Horikoshi’s talent as an artist only got better.

But his writing is garbage, he was just on the par of average when the plot was small scale,, the kinks in the craft were minute, less noticeable.
The plot was exactly what it was supposed to be, not some elaborate war drama, but a story about kids in school who want to be Gov. Sponsored Military Police Agents uhhh I mean “Heroes”.

The moment he started trying to writing above his means then things got dumber

and dumnber

and dumber

and dumber

and dumber

and dumber

and dumber

and dumber

Aaron Ehasz is a decent writer who is likely NOT as good an artist as Horikoshi, and Kohei Horikoshi is not as good an writer as Aaron Ehasz.
Just because you are the author, doesn’t mean you know what the fuck you’re doing. Just because a book, a show is popular doesn’t mean it’s good. It means it’s digestible.
It means its talked about.
Horikoshi needed help, he needed time, and he needed a plan.
- My Hero Academia is a failed storytelling venture (which I called yeears before it ended) that succeeded in numbers. Which means nothing if no one will regard it in 5–10 years
- It made money now, to be forgotten.
- Popularity is a measure of how many people will spend to digest garbage/product, it’s not a measure of how good a product is.
- Which is why everyone tried their best to push back on me & the other few people whenever we pointed out the same exact shit fanboys are complaining about now but only AFTER it ended & now everyone all of a sudden is a critic dropping videos about how My Hero failed. Bunch of no agency having drones.
Sheer incompetence to prioritize characters over plot, he often disrespects his characters as shonen authors tend to do

He wouldn’t have done that if she was a male character

(April 2024) This joker was really pretending like Horikoshi and BONES gave a single shit about the character of Momo for 10 years, you’re asking or hoping they STOP doing what they & the fandom has been doing which is relegating her to a piece of meat- and actually give her something to do?
Hence why the picture THEY chose was a shot of her provocatively posing with her chest being the center focus of the goddamn visual. But you’re asking Horikoshi to do better when you’re EMULATING how many fucks he has to give.
They themselves are subconsciously playing into exactly what the problem is lmfao, but at the same time hoping the author does better.
You can’t make this shit up

2023: Japan raises the Age of consent after 100 years because of an influx of sex assault cases again women and children in a society with mega-industry that is carried by dehumanizing women & children.
The biggest resources of anime & manga’s creative process being : Sexualized women & children through predatory lens.
Gee, must be a coincidence.

POV then: people that defended PDF coded anime culture: “You can’t judge it, because that’s their culture”
Now: I- i never said that.

And so, when the author doesn’t give a damn & treats them like meat, zero respect to his own craft. Thus the fandom doesn’t respect them either.
Like children copying a toxic parent.
Plot driven storytelling is often susceptible to more plot contrivances which is final arc in a nutshell.
Horikoshi is, and always will be a better artist than a writer. Mangaka need to start teaming up with better more qualified people who will give them push back and stop working themselves to death. It’s not even worth vomiting out a mid story with robbed characters just to meet a deadline.

I watched S1-S2 on a whim back when it first popped off, dropped it, and binged S5 backwards to S1 in 2023, saw the problems then. Painfully clear.
Read up to 355 in 2023, dropped it again & discovered LEGO Monkie Kid (effortlessly better show, formulaic but a better Shonen.)

AFO was being made into a joke, if Jiro could survive him then the story failed the villain. Zero stakes.
I didn’t have to “wait” until the story “was finished” to see a pattern. If garbage is the standard, if garbage is the fandom,, then garbage will be the legacy.
Meeting the deadlines at the expense of the best possible story, It wasn’t worth it.
Horikoshi had deadlines to meet than a vision to bring to life.
Or? Likely: He didn’t have a vision or a plan or didnt know what the hell he was doing even if he did have a plan.

It fell off because it strayed too far from the “Academia” in My Hero Academia, and sticking too close to it would’ve been boring as shit.. And when he teased interesting ideas outside the school, he backtracked right back to that school. He gets bored with School activies, doesn’t know how to keep it interesting in the school itself, then gets edgy, fight happens, back to school, then more edgy villain shit. Reads like a formula to keep himself engaged, than the audience.
I’m not some platinum writing master, all I did was pay attention than consume.
He didn’t know what he wanted to do. He didn’t have the restraint to manage his characters with respect, the female characters were pieces of meat to him and so they’re nothing but pieces of meat to the fandom as a whole. Especially the underage girls.

His plot = a mess, he betrayed his premise in the first three chapters, Deku would’ve accomplished nothing without Quirks and he didn’t get anything done before his miraculous chance meeting All Might. Deku was a golden boy from beginning to end.
He didn’t train for months then was surprised with the opportunity for the power, he was promised it as a reward. He was promised the keys to success.
edit: (AUG-5 2024) Finally ended.
why “finally”? Because he, Horikoshi can finally rest.
It’s easy to sit back and say “You’re doing your story wrong sir.”
If you’ve ever tried making continuity; You’ll know making a story+ art+history+lore = is not a cakewalk
There’s no one way to do it, but there’s things you don’t do if you want it to age worth a shit, or mean anything beyond the surface level aesthetic which is all people care about when it has the new car smell.
I can’t tell you how many fucking debates I’ve had with people, including homies, criticizing this story, and they just dont get it until I get serious and start mapping out exactly how Horikoshi-isms work.
Between watching, reading, and editing that requires looking at ALL the footage & episodes, OVA included, discovering all kinds of things of the show good and bad: I’m a My Hero Scholar at this point.
I see it as I see it because I’ve seen A LOT of it. More than I wanted to tbh.
Not a fan, but this isnt a story worth hate, its actually a tragedy.

My Hero had decent world building, horrible prioritization, colorful but weak characters, awesome artstyle/ I love how much he made this reminiscent of an actual comic book, but it’s infected with a terminal case of chronic bad writing & SHONEN-titis and chronic Anime-tisms.
That’s how it fell off, Japanese Mangaka had a hand in it & Shonen Jump was the overlord. Garbage writing that was always there since the beginning.
When did it happen? CHP2.
The “fall” specifically? The Moment AFO lost that fight in the Kamino Arc.

No villain could measure up since, the stakes dropped. Everything felt sterilized, ya’ll don’t realize how built-up AFO’s arrival was, even the 1st movie was gassing this man up: And he lost.
It’s not like he was pulling strings from behind bars or we got to see him running the prison in luxury or transfer his consciousness to a Nomu or something, or maybe because in reality: He had ties in the Gov. running the Hero Ind. which would be a “holy fuck” moment.
All Might was working for All For One this whole time?
Crowd: “WHAT THE FUCK!?

Could you imagine if AFO was that calculated but no, he was just doing shit.
It fell off years ago, most people only now decide to catch up and smell the shit-soup because they got bored and only when they get bored & their hormone thrill trip fizzles will they finally see reason.
The story fell off regardless if people realized it or not.
Because Horikoshi didn’t have the maturity, nor presumably the life experience (Stan Lee projecting life experience and not FETISHES is why Spider-Man is a staple icon across the globe/ Spiegel and Shuster with Superman), nor the writing experience to make this shit even 2% of what Avatar The Last Airbender was.
Or Teen Titans 2003, the superior My Hero.
Horikoshi created more work for himself when he kept jamming excessive characters (300+), juvenile antics, and an ever escalating plot that did not have to be that elaborate.

And now that it’s wrapped up (twice) we’ll see who the “fans” are when it gathers dust, and people are already 180-ing, frauds.
Now we’ll see who really gives shit.

Because it’s not even 1 year old post-end (2024), and already people are switching sides. When all we had to do was be honest to begin with and stop fighting the people who are fan enough to know the story could have long been better.