Vision, talent, timing and Horikoshi’s lack of experience.
To keep this short (lol), Horikoshi’s talent as an artist only got better.
But his writing was & is garbage, I still watch this show every now and then, mainly season 1 & maybe 2. I even checked out some of Season 5. Garbage. My peer whom I watch the show with (a woman) she herself can’t stand the writing decisions, namely Deku’s overly-emotional nature.
KH 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 dumber
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 or even Joe Kelly or Donny Cates.
Just because you are the author, doesn’t mean you know what the fuck you’re doing.
Just because the “theme” was this, because Author-sensei said so, doesn’t mean it’s good. If the vision is true to his vision, but his vision was garbage, then the vision was garbage.
Just because a book, a show is popular doesn’t mean it’s good. It means it’s digestible. Easy to process, it has good iconography which My Hero Academia absolutely DOMINATED in. This franchise had an excellent aesthetic.
Popularity means its talked about, what were people talking about? Writing quality or how it made them feel? How cool it was ? Or it’s nothing like they’ve ever seen before? (lies)
It means it happened,
It means what he wanted to do he did, it doesn’t mean what he/she did— worked or meant anything worth a damn.
Horikoshi needed help, he needed time, and he needed a plan. And a better one.
- My Hero Academia is a failed storytelling venture (which I called yeeeeeeeeeeears before it ended) that succeeded in numbers. Which means nothing if no one will regard it in 5–10 years, and people started doom posting not long after the manga ended.
- It made money now, to be forgotten, dropped, taken for granted.
- 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. ie. IRL Fast Food but it’s a visual medium.
- 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.
Because the doomposting now, wasn’t anything close to what ThatAnimeSnob called out.
Sheer incompetence to prioritize characters over plot, he often disrespects his characters as shonen authors tend to do:
(2026) He wouldn’t have done that if she was a male character, and if that’s to be expected because “shonen”, the genre is obsolete. Fix it. Cause that’s a problem. Not “problematic”, fuck that, it’s a PROBLEM, if Avatar The Last Airbender didn’t need to do that in only 3 season. Why does this need to do with 300+ chapters, 4movies, 8 ova, 8 seasons+++ just quantity over quality.
Garbage.
(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 himself 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. Hence the excuses, can’t even blame them entirely when the author doesn’t give a damn either.
- Like children copying a toxic parent.
- Plot driven storytelling is often susceptible to more plot contrivances & laziness which is final arc in a nutshell.
- My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising is just the prototype to Final War Arc, been said this for years.
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.
We can make the “comic continuity” memes all day, about how different people clash with canon of other authors on the same character. But those people don’t work themselves to an early grave. Why? Because they have editorial infrastructure, the person drawing isn’t always the person writing it.
That means less burnout, and more jobs for other people.
Do better Japan. Because if one person wrote a shite Superman story ala Horikoshi, a rotation means the next Superman story won’t be written by the same Horikoshi but instead a Joe Kelly.
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 after that Jiro “Made my friends cry” bullshit & discovered LEGO Monkie Kid (effortlessly better show, formulaic but a better Shonen.)
I was outside, read that panel, and dropped it. And that same day, I found LG:MK
AFO was being made into a joke, if Jiro could survive him, then the story failed the villain. Zero stakes. I saw it coming from a lightyear away.
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 partly because it strayed too far from the “Academia” in My Hero Academia, and sticking too close to it would’ve been boring as shit.
It fell off because the concept wasn’t built to last this last long and stay true to itself.
And when he teased interesting ideas outside the school, he backtracked right back to that school.
He gets bored with School activities, doesn’t know how to keep it interesting in the school itself, then he turns it edgy, fight happens, back to school, then more edgy villain shit.
- Reads like a formula to keep himself engaged, than tell a good story to the audience.
- I’m not some platinum writing master, I’m not media literate or whateverthefuck, all I did was pay attention than just 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 aka 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 nepo-baby from beginning to end.
“You earned this power, fair and square-” That I’m yet again handing to you.
“You earned this power, fair and square-” as I hand this super suit to you because you’re a special boy.
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 not a MHA fan, but an unintentional My Hero Scholar at this point, not a brag, trust me, the story ain’t even all that.
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 semi-decent world building, horrible prioritization, colorful but weaklyy written characters (TOO MANY characters, too soon & at once), awesome artstyle/ I love how much he made this reminiscent of an actual comic book.
The problem is 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, including AFO himself.
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. Maybe you cats need to watch Season 2 again.
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.
Think about it:
This guy took on prime all migt & handicapped him. How did he kill no one of note during all this?
in a meta sense all might walked away broken because he fought alone vs everyone actually beating AFO because they fought together- it works as a theme, not as a story because AFO is too strong to lose and not even kill at least 20 people of notice.
If AFO was so old he was senile and actually wanted to lose but lose on a grand stage, thats different it'd be lame but it'd make sense that he wouldn’t literally want to be the villain but he wanted to emulate the attention a super villain gets from being a menace:
- thus being noticed by everyone & fulfilling that villain role, the role of pushing complete strangers to be their strongest because he was in reality the strongest.
If that was his goal as a narcissist since day 1 vs being a “demon lord” whatever that means, and everyone coming together in the end vs him was his dream, that'd make leagues more sense as to him allowing himself to lose so pathetically as opposed to him actually losing like that because he was that incompetent.
After making him LOOK cooler than he actually was, why would you write a villain as pathetic as the heroes?
I won’t sit here & pretend I saw it coming since Season 2 or something, nah, I was a casual then fell off for a minute.
I didn’t start following this series really until 2023, watched it backwards from Season 5, then read the manga & Chapter 355 was what broke me. I had to stop again.
It was Kamino arc that showed AFO’s belly (keep in mind, Jeanist survived him after getting a hole in his stomach and he couldn’t even kill some random woman in the debris, didn’t kill a nerfed All Might)
Nothing matters.
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, or they choose to admit when they think it’s safe to be honest. Which doesn’t work because then it’s not about honesty, you’re likely not going to give the show it’s credit it’s due because you went from one extreme to the next.
This is why being a “fan” isn’t what it used to be.
- The story fell off regardless if people realized it or not.
- The people who knew what we were talking about didn’t need your permission for My Hero to be confirmed to be trash, it was always trash regardless of any of us.
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.
He worked against his own best interest, & more importantly as consequence: he worked against the best interest of My Hero Academia. If he kept the main cast to Deku, Iida, Ochako, Bakugou & Todoroki.
- He would’ve had more time, more panels, more authorship resources to cook to the best version of My Hero and AFTER the work was done fleshing out those five, then in season 2 the others can get more to do
- Or? Since the manga had Omake’s & the series had like Eight OVA’s, I repeat approximately over 7 Original Video Animations, use that to explore the other students on a deeper level or wait until Season 2 or 3.
- That’s just common sense. Twenty students? Not one is transferred, or dies & their death brings the class even closer together like a family, no nothing. It’s just everyone CRAMMED into the frame.
It was logistically moronic from the get go.
And now that it’s wrapped up (multiple times) 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. I a “hater” is still reading, still using early volume artwork as reference, still watching some episodes of that garbage anime.
Why? Because it had potential. I swear my homie (who hates MHA) sometimes asks me “Why?” in the tone of “Why watch that trash.” even if it’s just one episode every 5 months.
Because it could’ve been great, that’s why.
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.
