My Hero Academia

[Spark Of Spirit]

I'm guessing this was announced so early for a reason. It'll probably be back in time for the Fall season.

I think the second season would have been announced around the same time as Bungo Stray Dogs' second season if it was coming in the fall.  It's more likely that it will premiere in the winter or spring of next year.

Very possible. Though Food Wars season 2 was announced just before the Spring season and is coming out in the Summer season. Jump could be doing the same thing here.

Though, now that I think about it, the next 13 episodes covering two arcs makes sense.

Spoiler

The Sports Festival starts Todoroki's arc off, and plants the seeds for Ida's doubt in himself. It is also where Midoriya begins understanding how to control One For All. All this comes to a head in the Stain arc. For a season long arc, this would be a smart way to do it.

It's the same as a third season starting with the end of term test and ending where the manga currently is. It starts off with Midoriya, Bakugo, and All Might clashing in the test, where Midoriya and Bakugo finally begin to trust one another, and All Might shows how great he still is. By the end of the arc, Bakugo and Midoriya have been tested, and All Might passes the torch to the very students he started the season teaching. Ending at the opposite place the characters and season started off with.

I could see Kuroda structuring future seasons this way.

All this depends on how the pacing is handled. But I'm pretty confident in this team. I actually wouldn't mind some filler from them.

[close]

[gunswordfist]

So David doesn't just work on Jojo? lol That's kind of a meme these days.

[gunswordfist]

Meruem voices Shigaraki.

He sounds different to me. I'll see if I can hear any similarities next episode.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Well, of course. Voice actors do often change their voices for different roles. Meruem and Shigaraki, despite both being villains, are two vastly different characters in both personality and motives, so it wouldn't make sense for someone as calm, cold, and collected as Meruem to sound the same as someone as mentally unstable and borderline psychotic as Shigraki.

If you can't recognize either voice as sounding similar, then doesn't that just reflect the talent of the person doing the voice for both of them?

[gunswordfist]

True. I expected him to sound at least a bit the same due to hearing him in One Punch Man though.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Well, that was season one, and it's everything that I hoped for in an anime adaptation of my favorite currently running Shonen Jump series. It took good source material and made it even better.

This is definitely one of my favorite anime of the year so far, and the second best of this season right behind Ushio and Tora. And yes, it could very well become a contender for my top 10, but first I need to see how they handle the second season. If they can make it just as good or even better than this season, then this will definitely crack its way into my favorites list, and I have a lot of confidence that they can nail it.

Also, it looks like the director of this anime has been watching his share of Marvel after-credits scenes. I was expecting that scene to be a lead-in to the Sports Festival arc, but instead, we got....

Spoiler

....STAIN!!!!

[close]

[VLordGTZ]

Yeah, based on the after credits scene, I'd say the likelihood of MHA Season 2 either being split-cour or having faster pacing is pretty high now.  Overall, the MHA anime was a pretty solid adaption, and I'm looking forward to seeing the next few arcs adapted since I enjoy them even more than the early story arcs.

[Spark Of Spirit]

I liked how they ended season one off. There was much more of a sense of finality, weight, and change here, than there was in the manga. It was one of the early arcs that suffered a bit due to the high speed pacing, but here it felt right.

Spoiler

Also, the tease at the end went right to Stain meaning the second cour really will be both the Sports Festival and the Stain arc. That's great with me, because we're about to get into high gear. I really hope season 2 isn't too far off. I can't wait to see that Midoriya/Ida/Todoroki Vs. Stain battle animated. Should be awesome!

[close]

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Honestly, now that I think about it, I could totally see them making it through both of those arcs in just one cour. The Sports Festival arc is 23 chapters in length, and while this season only covered the first 21 chapters of the manga in 13 episodes, it's important to remember how densely packed some of those earlier chapters were. The Sports Festival arc has a lot more action in it so I could really see the anime breezing through it in just 7 or 8 episodes. The Stain arc is actually rather short at only 16 chapters, so that could seamlessly be adapted into 5 or 6 episodes. If anything, like Desensitized said, the early material actually suffered a bit from being rather rushed in nature. It felt like Horikoshi was trying to get a lot of the early set-up out of the way so that he could get to the good stuff sooner, which as a result made those early chapters feel both dense and a bit too fast-paced for the story's own good. The direction of this anime made the wise decision of taking its time to flesh out that material and even out the pacing. With the next two story arcs there's really no need to slow down the pacing since by that point Horikoshi had fallen into his groove and was able to balance out his story-telling per chapter quota much better.

And yes, I know that what I call the Stain arc is technically called the Field Training arc, but fuck it, Stain sounds way cooler and he's who I ultimately remember the most from that arc, so that's what I'm calling it.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Yeah, really, it's the Stain arc. He's the final test for the main characters and the first real challenge to them philosophically and morally. I think they could probably do the arc in 4 or 5 episodes, but it'll really depend on the pacing for the Sports Festival.

Let's think about it this way:

Spoiler

Introduction to season and Sports Festival: 1 episode
Round One ~ The Race: 1 episode
Round Two ~ Cavalry battle: 1 episode (It takes 15 minutes, so I'm actually being generous here)
Round Three ~ Beginning of the tourney / Todoroki's past: 1 episode
Midoriya Vs. Shinsou / Todoroki Vs. Sero / other fights: 1 episode
Ida Vs. Mai / lead up to Uraraka Vs. Bakugo: 1 episode
Uraraka Vs. Bakugo conclusion / Todoroki Vs. Midoriya: 1 episode
Ida Vs. Todoroki / Tokoyami Vs. Bakugo: 1 episode
Stain introduction / Todoroki Vs. Bakugo / End of the Sports Festival: 1 episode

[close]

I get 9 episodes. That's me just packing it in. The pace is going to have to be as snappy as Horikoshi's is now to fit both arcs into one season. They could probably get it down to 8 if they pack it in, but still, it should be interesting to see how they deal with it.

[gunswordfist]

My 2nd favorite anime of this year as well. I can't wait until Season 2 comes out!

[Spark Of Spirit]

Interview with the staff of the anime!

Some highlights:

I had previously worked with Studio Bones on Blood Blockade Battlefront. That show targets an older audience, but I saw the potential in Bones to create shonen anime with such quality that it can have a wider reach internationally and domestically as well. So that's one of the reasons why I chose Bones for this project, and also why I ordered that from the director as well.

Blood Blockade Battlefront is part of the reason BONES got MHA and probably why we got Nagasaki to direct and Kuroda to write it.

However, the story in My Hero Academia is not necessarily just a traditional hero story, which is to save the world. With including all these different characters, it's more of a journey for each character to become their own hero, so in that sense it's very Japanese shonen. The mashing together creates something special for this anime and manga. In a sense, it does have American comic book heroes, but with the Japanese flavor.

Glad to see that Nagasaki sees the appeal MHA has for a global audience. It contains the best of Western Comics with the best of Japanese Manga. That's why it has been so surprisingly successful so fast.

Everybody that works on this show is a big fan of the manga, especially the character designer, Umakoshi-san, is a huge fan of the original. He even asked for an autograph from the original author when he met him! The original author is a big fan of the anime version too. He usually watches before it airs, and he'll draw an original illustration just to promote the anime and tweet about it and things like that. So it's great working with him.

Horikoshi is a huge fan of the anime, and was very enthusiastic about it. No surprise there.

Chris Sabat on playing All Might:

A lot of thought was put into this, honestly. Colleen Clinkenbeard and I spent so much time debating as to how this voice should sound. First of all, we believe that the All Might voice is put on entirely. That's his production voice. That's the voice he puts on to make everyone happy, to make everyone feel like he's larger than life. His Izuku voice is probably closer to what his real voice would be. The hard part for me is, after playing characters like Zoro and Vegeta and Kurogane, all these other characters who are part of the group but have this sort of apathetic view of the world—"oh whatever, I guess I'm sort of with you," the reluctant hero type—we have to work very hard to make sure that No Might's voice doesn't sound like he's bored or doesn't care. He needs to sound enthusiastic, just tired. That mix of enthusiasm—he is a hero still in every form, it's just that he's so tired in No Might form that he can't really play it out. I'd love to know more about his backstory, because at this point we really don't know any of it. Who gave him his power? I don't know these things.

All Might really is a different sort of character than Sabat's usual.

There are some very good questions and answers there. Hard to believe it came from ANN.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

If Sabat kept up with the manga, he would know who gave All Might his power.

In all seriousness, though, I'm glad to see that he genuinely likes and understands the character. If it were a less caring voice director or VA, they would probably just play All Might and No Might the same way except with slightly different tones for each form. The people at FUNimation actually care about character nuances though, and understand how to portray that in their performances.

[gunswordfist]

My word, that was the best anime interview snippet I've read in some time. Got to give veteran voice actors a lot of credit. I am impressive and surprised by the level of thought Sabat put into this.

Also, I thought No Might was a typo at first. The dub needs to get here fast!

[Spark Of Spirit]

They're almost done with the broadcast dub, actually.

A lot of Funi VAs are in this one. For instance, Justin Cook is Kirishima, Sonny Strait is Present Mic, Eric Vale is Shigaraki, Chuck Huber is Kurogiri, and Monica Rial is Tsuyu. It's really well done.

The question is who do they have left to play Stain in season 2. Most of my picks for him have already been cast as other characters.