Our favorite up-and-coming heroes are back in My Hero Academia: You’re Next to show off their Quirks and battle over the top enemies. This movie release comes on the heels of the manga by Kohei Horikoshi ending after a 10 year, 430 chapter run since its serialization began in 2014.
My Hero Academia: You’re Next takes place during the middle of the Paranormal Liberation War Arc, meaning our characters go into it with all of the knowledge, skills, and special moves they’ve gained up until that point. This movie was built upon solid foundations, but I think it ended up being one of the weaker, if not the weakest, of the My Hero Academia movies.
A Solid Premise
The premise and overarching structure to the story of My Hero Academia: You’re Next was initially quite exciting to me. In the aftermath of All Might’s fight against All For One during the Kamino Incident, he followed up his victory by pointing to the screen and declaring “Next, it’s your turn,” directed at Deku, who inherited his power, and the generation of heroes who inherited his mindset and broader legacy. This movie takes that premise of inspiration and flips it somewhat, with a villain deciding to take up the mantle of symbol of peace, going as far as imitating All Might’s looks (down to the weird hair), voice, and costume.
Anime, especially shonen anime, are no strangers to arcs where a main character is imitated or possessed by a villain to execute some evil plan (hell, Dragon Ball did it twice). But I felt like the setup for My Hero Academia: You’re Next went a bit further than arcs like that; tying things into the idea of legacy and having that be a constant theme in the film was nice.
It gave a reason for the villain choosing who he chose to imitate; it wasn’t merely a matter of picking someone strong or someone with a unique ability. Going into the film, I thought that there would be a unique perversion of the heroic order, some unique dilemmas to solve, and perhaps something that made the heroes step back and examine whether it’s good to valorize and worship someone the way the general public did All Might. I thought we would get a villain like Stain who would really challenge our core cast of characters and make them re-evaluate themselves.
Mixed Execution
Unfortunately, My Hero Academia: You’re Next, in my opinion, doesn’t deliver very strongly on what it set out to do. There are a couple reasons for this. One is Dark Might himself and what he didn’t become over the course of the movie. He, alongside the other villains that work with him in the movie, feel less like antagonists and more like convenient set pieces at times.
They don’t get much characterization and end up feeling like generic jobber bad guys, even by My Hero Academia standards. I don’t expect as much work to go into them in such a short time as goes into longer standing villains like Shigaraki, but I would have appreciated them having a few more layers to them. Without spoiling the finer details, the exact plot they enact involves abusing a particular person’s Quirk and feels quite similar to the Shie Hassaikai arc of the anime and manga.
Because it felt so reminiscent of another arc, I expected there to be some other unique wow factor that I hadn’t seen before, but that didn’t really happen. Dark Might ends up being just an overpowered bad guy without living up to the expectations I originally had from the premise of My Hero Academia: You’re Next.
The reason this is important is because, especially in a movie with a limited runtime, my suspension of disbelief hinges on the story not making me want to question it too much. If I find myself constantly wondering “why is this character doing things this way?” it makes it harder to buy into the narrative writ large and enjoy the story. Especially during the middle of the movie, I found myself questioning a lot of the behavior of the villains, which at times felt as though it was happening solely for the purpose of continuing the plot and adding stuff to do, almost like working down a checklist leading up to the climax of the film.
On the flip side, I felt that the movie did a great job showcasing a bunch of different characters, both from class 1-A and outside of it. As the trailers showed, the core trio of Deku, Bakugo, and Todoroki get the bulk of the attention when it comes to combat, but even that’s a welcome change in comparison to other movies where Todoroki didn’t have quite as much opportunity to shine.
Those combat scenes, as we’ve come to expect from My Hero Academia movies and from Bones, are quite spectacular. They’re choreographed well, the music suits them perfectly and swells at all the right moments, and they have some amazing animation sequences. Even the small bursts of combat before the movie’s climactic moments are done well, something that I appreciated.
Deku in particular shows off a lot of his new mixed application of the various Quirks of One for All which I always find enjoyable. When it comes to the two new non-villain characters in My Hero Academia: You’re Next, Anna and Guilio, Anna I felt fell prey to the same lack of characterization that the villains did while I actually came away quite impressed with Guilio. He’s a cool character both in terms of his appearance and his personality, and his fighting style, making use of support items and guns, was interesting to see in contrast to Deku’s Quirks.
Final Thoughts on My Hero Academia: You’re Next
On the whole, I don’t feel like My Hero Academia: You’re Next was quite on the level of the other My Hero Academia movies, especially compared to a standout like Heroes Rising. While others added unique plotlines, expanded the lore of the world, or just flat out delivered in terms of action, I felt like You’re Next was lagging behind a bit in each of the categories. It’s still a fine movie, but I comfortably put it toward the bottom of the four My Hero Academia movies thus far, either at the same rank as Two Heroes or below it.
©Kohei Horikoshi / Shueisha, My Hero Academia Project