Anime Review: My Hero Academia Final Season

There’s a quote from Kurt Vonnegut where the end of it sticks in my brain, in a good way: “Goddamnit, you’ve got to be kind.” The final season of My Hero Academia (to a degree, also the previous season), I feel, builds up to that quote being the core message of the series. There will be spoilers.

Over the entirety of the anime and manga, Izuku Midorya has had the core defining traits of kindness and empathy. For a character as autistically coded as him, this is a wonderful breath of fresh air, as so many works across multiple continents, cultures, and languages will code their autistic characters as cold and without empathy. That also ties in to his approach to superheroing. Yes, Deku will gladly unleash a Detroit Smash when it’s called for, but for him, his defining moment with All Might was not his strength, but him being there to help those in trouble, with a smile of reassurance that “I am here.”

While there have been opponents Deku has fought in this franchise who Deku has ultimately come to the conclusion that, to quote Jack Burton, “Son of a bitch must pay” – they’re also characters who are marked by their repeated acts of unrepentant cruelty, like Overhaul. Otherwise, because talking is a free action in anime, Deku tries to talk characters down just as much, if not more, than he’s trying to K them TFO.

This all comes to a head with the final season of My Hero Academia. This franchise has established Tomura Shiguraki as a deeply tragic figure molded into a figure of villainy by All For One. Further, this franchise has marked All For One as a figure of immense, unrepentant cruelty. With Deku pledging that he would be there to save Shiguraki, the question becomes, can he, and at what cost?

Well, the answer is sort of. All For One won’t let Deku save Shiguraki’s life, but Deku can save his soul. We see this in everyone Deku has helped, ultimately chipping in, in small ways and large, over this series. We’d already seen Gentle Criminal and La Brava chip in earlier; we’d seen Uravity (a character just as strong in her kindness and empathy as Deku) talk down Himiko Toga (though this leads to Toga’s death at the end of last season). Here, we see Lady Nagant and even Stain join in against the League of Villains.

For all the Shonen Battle Punching that happens in these episodes, because ultimately this is a Shonen Battle Manga and Anime, the resolutions of the major fights (that aren’t against All For One) are dependent on talking, communication, and kindness.

Endeavour can’t beat Dabi because he’s a hero that operates from the idea that to be a Symbol of Peace, you must be a Symbol of Strength (because that’s what All Might had to be when the League of Villains was still dominant). Shoto Todoroki, his siblings, and his mother can stop him because they’re able to show the empathy he needs, which he’s always wanted, but Endeavour’s controlling influence (and his toxic masculinity) wouldn’t let them show.

Tenticool uses kindness and empathy to end the fight with Spinner and stop the efforts of Mr. Skeptic to perpetuate the violence. Ultimately, it’s Deku’s empathy for Shiguraki, particularly with his willingness to let go of One For All, and let those vestiges go into Shiguraki, and in turn to show kindness and empathy, is that defeats All For One. In a way, it conveys that in the world of My Hero Academia, what people need in a Symbol of Peace is not Peace Through Strength, but Peace Through Kindness.

Nothing emphasizes this better than what I’d consider to be the true bookend of Shiguraki’s story. After Shiguraki accidentally killed his family and destroyed his childhood home due to the faulty quirk that All For One put in him, he was ignored by an older woman. We see that old woman again later, when she sees an emotionally vulnerable person with a potentially destructive quirk, and reaches out to them.

Does My Hero Academia adequately examine and interrogate the inequities of the Superpowered Society the story exists in? Not quite. It recognizes the inequities are there, and that changes need to happen, but picks a more gradual route for changes to occur, which I can see as frustrating, considering the social upheavals that occur in the back half of the series. It’s not the only major Shonen Jump manga to have this problem – Monkey D. Luffy will recognize cruel, unjust, and inequitable forms of government, and will gladly smash them. He’s not that interested in rebuilding after.

It makes for a good conclusion to this story – not a great one, there’s still the epilogue ONA, but a good one.

My Hero Academia is available for streaming on: