‘My Hero Academia Season 2 – Part 2’ DVD Review
There was a lot to love about the first half of season 2 of My Hero Academia. It was fun, had great character development and continued to balance great action, comedy and heart that has been seen since My Hero Academia started. I also mentioned in my last review that there was more story set up during the Sports Festival arc but does the things it promised deliver in its second half?
There are two parts to the last half of the season. The first half consists of class A doing internships with a hero agency. Izuku (Deku or Midoriya if you prefer calling him that) is uncertain of what agency to join but All Might tells him that his old teacher wants him as an intern and Izuku accepts it. However, the teacher (Gran Torino) is not what he expected to say the least but ultimately, Izuku ends up learning more about how to use his All for One quirk in very effective ways that show for the rest of the season.
The character who really gets the spotlight in this arc is Tenya Iida. During the Sports Festival, his brother was attacked and left paralysed so Iida goes looking for the Hero Killer known as Stain. He has a real struggle between being a hero and his own personal want for vengeance that has a very heartfelt conclusion. It also leads to one of the best fight scenes that has happened in the entirety of My Hero Academia so far. The fight scene involving Midoriya, Iida and Todoroki against Stain is amazingly handled with the performances from the voice actors, the action will leave you on the edge of your seat, the animation is fluid and the music is brilliant. Each one of these characters have a great moment in this fight scene that is emotional, intense and epic. I can’t praise it enough. I also hope that Stain will be seen more because he is a great villain as his motivations are understandable and he is intimidating through the way he carries himself and because of his quirk.
Next is the following arc which is the final exams. After their written exam, they have their practical which has predetermined pairs fight against one of the teachers. To pass, they either defeat the teacher or manage to escape the arena before time runs out. All of the fights are memorable but the ones that I personally enjoyed the most is Todoroki and Momo against Aizawa and Midoriya and Bakugo against All Might. The former because even though I really love Todoroki’s character, it’s Momo’s moment to shine as she regains her confidence after essentially being overshadowed by Todoroki in a lot of ways at the Sports Festival. I like how Todoroki recognises this himself and it’s a nice touch that he has a respect for her and he lets Momo be the one responsible for why they end up passing as they use her strategy to win.
The latter is another highlight because of the complicated relationship between Bakugo and Izuku. I didn’t talk about it in the previous review but to sum it up, it’s like Vegeta and Goku in Dragonball in some ways. They would be unstoppable together but because Bakugo is seriously hotheaded, things are always tense and volatile between them even though they were childhood friends at one point. Izuku and Bakugo have clashed a lot in the series so to see them being forced to work together is an interesting dynamic and obviously they want to win differently. Izuku wants to escape while Bakugo wants to fight head-on. At first, it’s frustrating because we’re on the side of Izuku. However, the episode does something clever and reveals why Bakugo acts the way he does and it’s actually pretty simple and relatable. Bakugo is more often than not quite comedic but because he’s always been shown to be a strong fighter (he won the Sports Festival although he wasn’t too happy with how he won) so it’s nice to finally understand the reason for this persistent confrontational nature of his.
I already mentioned the music in the Stain fight which by far contains some of my favourite tracks in the entire series because it has dramatic choirs, gentle piano ballads during those short but powerful emotional character displays and heavy drum beats that get the adrenaline pumping. Also, this half of the season has the first opening theme that I genuinely like with ‘Sora ni Utaeba’.
Overall, season 2 of My Hero Academia takes everything that was good about season 1 and takes it to a whole new level. I look forward to finding out if season 3 is even better.
My Hero Academia: Season 2 – Part 2 is out now on DVD and Blu-ray.
