There’s going to be a lot of similarities between this review and the one for One Piece: Stampede, simply because the same rules apply, if you’re not a fan of the franchise already then just skip this film, this review will be written from the perspective of a fan as those are the ones the film is targeted at. Admittedly this isn’t entirely the case for My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising as the film does make the attempt to explain the world and the characters should any newbies be watching this film as their introduction, but even then it comes more to the film’s detriment than anything else. Even if you were to fully understand everything, that doesn’t mean you’ll care about everything, there’s a difference between explaining the story and experiencing the story.
Between this film and the prior instalment in the franchise My Hero Academia: Two Heroes the film’s have a clear goal, to fulfil audience desires by presenting what couldn’t be done in the main series. In the first film’s case that was showing Deku (Justin Briner) and All Might (Christopher Sabat) fighting side by side, though that was a moment that came at the end of the film leaving the rest rather forgettable and barren. This time round however, the film is more well-rounded, as we follow all of Class 1-A open their own hero agency on a small humble island, initially helping everyone with remedial tasks, but eventually when the villains show up they all have to fight to protect the citizens of the island. One of Kōhei Horikoshi’s strongest talents as a writer is getting the audience invested in characters within such a small amount of time, that being said he has chocked his story full of so many characters that some are yet to receive any kind of development or purpose, and that includes about half of Class 1-A, who are finally given their chance to shine and offer something of value, the highlights include Tokoyami (Josh Grelle), Sero (Christopher Bevins) & Aoyama (Joel McDonald) who are given more relevance and screentime here than they probably have in the main series as a whole. That being said this also highlights the uselessness of certain other characters, specifically Hagakure (Felecia Angelle) who is the only member to literally not contribute anything, whether it be through the simple tasks helping the townsfolk early on or in the climactic battle at the end of the film.
Speaking of said climactic battle, which is frustrating because there is very little that can be said without spoiling it, yet again it ends up being the highlight of the film, boasting the strongest animation in the franchise to date, beautiful music, great tension and acting on a higher scale than any other fight scene in the franchise can come even close to. Unlike the prior film it doesn’t overshadow the rest of the film by making it seem irrelevant, but instead building on top of what came before to give us the showdown we deserve. There are certainly more plot related issues with the final fight, mostly from a continuity breakdown in order to make it happen, and like every non-canon Shonen film, there’s always a fine line between experimenting in a non-canon story and full on breaking continuity so far that all tension or believability has been lost.
If you’re a fan and you don’t see Heroes Rising you’re not going to miss out on much, after all it’s a non-canon film meaning character development and major story beats are kept to a minimum. That being said, it is a film that offers fans the best kind of fanservice, stellar animation, creative fight scenes and characters being used in fresh and interesting ways.
-Danny
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