Boku no Hero Academia – Manga Review
Superheros are awesome!
I don’t know if anyone else is reading Boku no Hero Academia, but I LOVEEEE it so much and I wanted to share my thoughts and reasons why you should pick it up and start reading it right away because it’s a ton of fun! I hope this post convinces you to give it a shot.
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What is Boku no Hero Academia?
I love the character designs!
Before you get too worried I will keep this somewhat spoiler free! So where did it come from? For starters the manga was written and illustrated by Kōhei Horikoshi and it is published in Weekly Shonen Jump and the first chapter was published on July 7, 2014 and as of this post there are only 39 chapters. So what is this series even about? To give you a quick run down basically the world is filled with super heroes and super villains! So think Tiger and Bunny or any live action superhero movie, but instead just a small handful of people having super powers you have the entire world population being born with some kind of unique super power which they call “quirks”sounds cool huh? While the world is fairly straightforward the main story of Hero Academia follows our main character named Izuku Midoriya who has huge hopes and dreams to become a hero like All-Might! Think Captain America with hulk like strength, but sadly Midoriya was born without any special powers, oh and he was constantly picked on in school because he still wants to become a hero despite not having any powers so he goes through that whole Naruto phase with having no friends and I also know the whole “born without powers” isn’t all that original and I would say that it sounds a bit like Touma from the Index, I mean technically in that world he is considered a level zero.
So what does Midoriya do without having any super powers while everyone else has them? Well after a chance meeting with All-might who saves him on the way home from school, but in doing so Midoriya discovers a shocking secret that his childhood hero doesn’t want him to reveal to the world! I just won’t tell you what that is because you have to find out for yourself because it’s a very important side plot of Hero Academia and that also introduces the “Academia” part with all the characters going to a special school that teaches them how to become a hero and boy does this This series has a LOT of interesting characters, but instead of talking about every single character I will just tell you my top five guys and top five girls of this series along with what kind of powers they have, also I think most of the powers and abilities used in Hero Academia are obviously inspired by American comic books along with inspiration taken from various anime and manga! Oh and as a side note I will also pick fake voice actors that I would cast in this if it ever gets the anime treatment in the future.
Top Five Guys
These are some cool dudes!
5) Minoru Mineta – Easily one of the shortest characters of the series and his quirk allows him to create sticky balls from his afro like hair which he calls “sticky grapes” because his hair is also purple! I guess it’s like super sticky tar in the form of a ball? Also he can stick to things or people and I think he is the resident pervert character because his power lands him in yes pun intended sticky situations. So who would I cast in this role? My mind instantly thought about Yuuki Kaji since Minoru Mineta screams a lot and I can totally picture Yuuki Kaji having fun with the perverted side of that character!
4) Tenya Iida – This character is the token by the books guy who plays by the rules and is super serious about becoming a hero and I think he is the only guy who wears glasses and his special quirk is called “Engine” which allows him to transform his legs into engines that give him super speed and he can change the speed by shifting into one of three gears sorta like Luffy from One Piece. So who would I cast as Tenya Iida? Probably Daisuke Hirakawa aka Rei Ryuugazaki from Free! I just remember him being a generally serious character and that would fit quite well! Also the whole glasses thing…
3) Shouto Todoroki – This character is the cold-as-ice-and-I-rather-fight-on-my-own type of dude who has quite the messed up childhood, but I won’t talk about that! His special quirk is called “half cold half hot” which is fairly simple to explain! Basically each each half of his body creates ice and fire; however he refuses to use the fire half of powers due to some family issues. Who would I cast in the role of Shouto Todoroki? Probably Ryouhei Kimura because of his role as L-ELF from Valvrave who was quite sneaky and always several steps ahead of everyone.
2) Katsuki Bakugou – I think most people will either hate this character or like him because he has a VERY aggressive personality and I would say if given the option to team up he would rather fly solo! It took a while for me to like him especially his attitude towards Izuku Midoriya who he just so happens to really hate and his special quirk is called “Explosion” allows him to excrete sweat similar to nitroglycerin from their body and ignite it to create various explosions at will and he can allow use that power to propel himself and the more he sweats the more powerful the explosions are! Yeah it sounds CRAZY powerful, but who would I cast as Katsuki Bakugou? This one was easy! None other than Nobuhiko Okamoto because this character makes me think of Accelerator from Index.
1) Izuku Midoriya – Yeah since this is the main character’s story it was easy to place him at number one on my list because we get to see his side of things and how he has to work at becoming a hero dispite being born without a quirk; however after months and months of training with All-Might eventually Midoriya gains a quirk in a very unusual way and it’s called “All for one” which grants him a brief burst of superhuman strength at destructive levels along with increased agility and superhuman speed! Fun fact though he has yet to fully master this power which is great because it keeps him from being too overpowered. So who would I cast as Izuku Midorya? Probably Daisuke Sakaguchi who is currently in Kekkai Sensen as Leonardo and a Shinpachi in Gintama! I think he could pull off the coward turned hero quite easily.
Top Five Girls
Cheerleaders are great!
5) Momo Yaoyorozu – The natural born leader who can lead her friends into any fight without overly explaining anything! She is also quite tall, but I haven’t really seen much with her outside of her leadership role and her quirk is called “Creation” which allows her to create weapons from any part of her exposed body which you will see later because her hero outfit is almost as revealing as the nudest beach outfits from Kill la Kill? I guess you can also say that her power is basically the same as Kotoha Isone from Yozakura Quartet and just like Kotoha, Momo also needs to understand the object’s atomic configuration in order to create it which is kind of cool! So who would I cast as Momo Yaoyorozu? Probably Miyuki Sawashiro because she could do something similar to her role in Quartet as Kotoha.
4) Tooru Hagakure – Now this girl is quite a mystery because her quirk is always on? So what do I mean by this? Well she is basically always invisible minus the clothing which is the only thing you can see on her, but she has a very happy go lucky personality and is quite cheerful! Also when she is in hero mode I guess she is practically naked with only gloves and boots? Yeah that is a bit crazy; however I guess it plays into the whole imagination thing so who knows what she really looks like. As for her quirk nobody knows what else she can do so it remains a mystery! So who would I cast as Tooru Hagakure? Probably Hanazawa Kana because we all know she can play the happy go lucky role quite nicely.
3) Mina Ashido – This is another girl who I would say is kind of like Tooru Hagakure in terms of similar personality with the added bonus of being easily excited over anything so I guess kind of hyper? Also I can’t ignore the fact that she has a very strange appearance that makes her look more like a demon character than an actual human because she has purplish skin, messy light pink hair black eyes with yellow irises and two yellow antennae on her forehead! So think in terms of some marvel characters like Nightcrawler and Mystique from X-men? Now her quirk is kind of interesting because currently it has no real name, but she is able to spray acid from her body. So who would I cast as Mina Ashido? Probably Rina Satou cause her role as Misaka in Railgun often allowed her to be crazy with her powers and she also had lots of cute moments.
2) Tsuyu Asui – This girl is easily a fan favorite based off her strange appearance! I guess technically you could say frog like? Speaking of frogs she also has a really long tongue! Besides that bit of detail personality wise she is very straight forward and easy going and always says what’s on her mind and is not afraid to tell you what she thinks about others and she been proven to be very observant, but what about her actual quirk? Hers is called “Frog form” Frog-Form allows her to do anything a frog can, including being able to leap fairly high, extending her tongue up to 20 meters, and swimming. Shes also said to be able to inflate her stomach which is lined with an irritating poison which she can secrete! So maybe a genderbent/moe-fied version of Toad from X-men? So who would I cast as this goofy character? Probably Hisako Kanemoto who I feel would do a similar thing she did with squid-girl end sentence things but frog type sounds? Who knows it might be funny.
1) Ochako Uraraka – If there was ever the token moe girl this girl would win that price right off the bat! I think I saw her design on tumblr and leaned that she was in this strange new manga called Boku no Hero Academia and the rest is histoy! So why do I like her? I think it’s due to her being so lively and outgoing and she is always thinking positively and she gets excited over little things very easily and has a habit of doing a spit take on those occasions. Those kinds of characters seem to always stand out to me versus the super serious types and what about her quirk? I think she has one of the coolest powers in the series and hers is called “Zero Gravity” which I think only comes from her finger tips? Whenever they make contact with something she can remove its gravitational pull. Anything with its gravitational pull removed relative to the Earth will simply float in air, effectively weightless. Her upper limit seems to be 3 tons and continued strain will cause her to feel sick and woozy and eventually vomit. She can also make herself float but it’ll make her reach vomiting point much quicker! Yeah that is kind of a crazy power. So who would I cast as this fun character? I would probably go with Ari Ozawa who is fairly new, but she is getting a lot of lead roles like Chiyo Sakura from Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun and Nozomi Moritomo from The Rolling girls! So yeah I think she would make a great addition to this series.
Extra Heroes
Dat Uraraka face
Preparing for a fight~
More fanarts!
Gotta love Tsuyu’s hero costume.
Uraraka is so cute.
Gotta love these reaction faces <3
A funny moment between friends…
Some unique costumes.
End thoughts
Soooo there you have it my manga recommendation for Boku no Hero Academia, but what else can I say about this series? I hope you at least plan to read it sometime in the future or I will have to cross my fingers that whenever this series gets at least 100 chapters that some anime studio picks this up! Ohhh yeah who would I even want to produce this anime? Maybe someone like Wit Studios, Bones or David Productions? All three studios can pull off amazing actions scenes or do you have a better idea of a studio? Also let me know your choices for actors if you have any ideas! Thanks for reading and I hope this gets you kind of curious about this manga.
About Foshizzel
Is huge anime fan from Florida! who loves to watch anime and also enjoys drawing and collecting pictures, my favorite genre of anime has to be Mecha, there is just something awesome about giant robots beating the crap out of each other! Other than that type of show, I love a good comedy or action series :D
POWUH: Meta Resident and LN Informant with 1529 comments
Academia’s currently one of the top-rated series in Shonen Jump. I suspect they’d make an anime too, but can’t yet due to the how new the series is.
Also, what would you consider the worst, most useless quirk to have? I’ll start with “Super Back-Hair Growth” and “Reading your Own Mind”.
POWUH: Meta Team and PreCure Mastah with 9203 comments
Yeah there are a lot of Shounen Jump series out like Assassination Classroom right? I think that is from Jump since they have Koro sensei in that Jstars video game.
The worst quirk? I think Replicant Arms and Tape are the worst! I did see in one of the latest chapters a girl had vines for hair? Yeah kinda crazy…
POWUH: 600-699 and LN Enthusiast with 623 comments
Replicant Arms is decent. Did you see his grip strength in their quirk test? And it’s useful to have additional eyes or ears to cover your blindspots.
And Tape is awesome. He’s like Spiderman, only that he shoots tape from his elbows.
POWUH: Meta Team and PreCure Mastah with 9203 comments
True his power reminds me of Parasyte with the extra eyes LOL
Yeah I guess it just looks kinda silly, but I suppose it could come in handy xD
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10998 comments
I love characters with Stupid-Powers, any one of them can be a hundred times more interesting than Superman. I guess I’ll give this series a shot? You never know, they may introduce a character that can “Summon Ten Ounces of Mashed Potatoes”!or “Create Parking Tickets”!
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10998 comments
…or even Bicycle Repairman!
POWUH: Meta Team and PreCure Mastah with 9203 comments
Oooooh there are q lot of interesting and unique powers in this and that is probably why I like it so much instead of pulling every power from Marvel or DC the team behind Acadmia gets creative, but of course sometimes you can’t help yourself to pull from the popular heroes.
LOL that power mashed potatoes an parking tickets LOL
POWUH: 600-699 and LN Enthusiast with 623 comments
Pretty much looking forward to this manga every week aside from Nanatsu no Taizai. So much that I wait for the text spoilers of the chapter, look at the Chinese scans when they come out first, read it when scanlations come out and read it again when official translations from Viz come out.
If One-Punch Man is the deconstruction of superheros, BnHA is like a love letter to it. It’s taking well-known elements like superpowers and heroes and does it so well each chapter. It showed promise early on but it skyrocketed when the Show ▼
attacked. I still get goosebumps on that fight of All Might against that villain monster. You can tell how much the author loves western comics.
The characters are also pretty likeable, especially our main character. Deku’s an amazing character. He may look weak but he has guts and a heart that wants to save people. His development throughout the series is remarkable. By the latest chapter, everyone is gay for Deku.
The plot is as typical as it can get but it does it in a way that’s pretty refreshing to see. It’s consistent and leaves you wanting more each week. Deku has a long way to go before becoming a full fledged hero but the way we’re heading there is more important that it doesn’t really need to rush it. Latest chapters are in the middle of an arc, the longest the series has so far but it’s so great that I don’t mind it. It’s also nice to predict what will happen next because it’s predictable and not at the same time.
There was actually a VOMIC released months ago that covered the first chapter. Here’s the cast list for it:Show ▼
Watch it here, with the rest on the sidebar.
Aside from Bakugou, both All Might and Midoriya’s voice are perfect already and I hope they get recasted when the inevitable anime adaptation comes. There’s not enough chapters yet so far as it hasn’t been a year since it’s published. But it’s doing so well in terms of volume sales and internet popularity that it’s only a matter of time. Producers must be itching to offer the chance to adapt this.
tl;dr Plus Ultra!
POWUH: Meta Team and PreCure Mastah with 9203 comments
I really should start reading Nanatsu no Taizai! I planned to read it after finishing the anime series and yes! I get so hyped for Academia every week <3
I've heard great things about One Punch man and I heard it was getting an anime in the summer as well? I think I've read like a few pages and was amazed by the artwork and of course the MC is funny.
Indeed! I can see where he is inspired from with the villains and boy are they cREEEEPY!
Deku is the prime example of how you write a main character! You have them struggle a bunch and WORK to get powerful unlike the recent Tatsuya and Kirito types who are just naturally talented...also the fact that Deku has still not mastered his power after 30+ chapters is also a great sign that one day he will master it but it will take a while.
Interesting! I forgot to even talk about All-Might maybe Tomokazu Sugita from Gintama? I think he would work or Rikiya Koyama from Fate/Stay Night UBW?
Sweet thanks for sharing ill check it out.
POWUH: 800-899 and Self-proclaimed Manga Queen with 874 comments
Fosh!! One Punch Man is like a MUST READ. I’ve been gushing about it to everyone who hasn’t read it because it’s just all sorts of amazing.
POWUH: Meta Team and PreCure Mastah with 9203 comments
Yessss I will start reading it soon! Maybe we can do a recommendation post sometime in the future xD
POWUH: Meta Team and Ringleader Extraordinaire~ with 6433 comments
Artist is same as Eyeshield21 and we know how awesome the art was for that. I haven’t started One Punch man yet but will soon!
POWUH: 900-999 with 915 comments
Well, it does look awesome. And I would love it if Wit Studios did the anime. I’m just hoping it won’t end up in Toei’s hands…
POWUH: Meta Team and PreCure Mastah with 9203 comments
It is really awesome!
True Wit Studio would give this series the best action scenes. but I would fear for them messing up the story even though that is the problem every fan of the original manga fears.
POWUH: 900-999 with 915 comments
Yeah, that’s something that could happen to any anime, it goes more along the director’s line of thought.
POWUH: 800-899 and Self-proclaimed Manga Queen with 874 comments
~I started reading this because my tumblr dash just blew up with fanart and reactions to it, and I love it. I still need to catch up though; I believe I’m barely at chapter 10, gah.
Normally I don’t like superhero stuff because the stories are usually so tiring and overdone (to me), but the characters in this series are really fun! And I like how the art is similar to a more Western/comic book style. Overall I’m just excited to continue reading this~.
POWUH: Meta Team and PreCure Mastah with 9203 comments
Aaahh! Nice yea I found it the same way through Tumblr and decided to check into it and now I am so addicted! Hopefully you can find some time to catch up because it is a lot of fun so far.
Right I can feel you on that especially with all these live action movies coming out every other month it’s hard to get away from superheros and YESSSS the characters are so cool I can’t find any I hate even the villains are creative and interesting.
POWUH: Meta Team and Ringleader Extraordinaire~ with 6433 comments
Good review, Fosh!
This has been on my radar for a while. Most probably will get to it once I’m done with catching up with Gintama. The art looks amazing and everyone has been raving about this for a while being the next Naruto. Let’s hope it remains constant and not fall for the usual long-running manga trap of the vicious circle of either power-ups or a long line of villains.
POWUH: Meta Team and PreCure Mastah with 9203 comments
Thanks!
Yeah I have heard that Boku no hero academia could become the next Naruto in terms of popularity! I certainly hope so.
POWUH: Meta Resident with 1557 comments
Thanks for the rec Fosh! It seems pretty interesting so far, but the faces are so over the top lol! Unfortunately its a bit too shounen for me, and my level isn’t high enough to handle all the faces.
All Might’s transformation is great though! He’s just missing the comb in hand brushing through his hair action after he does power-up ^^
POWUH: Meta Team and PreCure Mastah with 9203 comments
Thanks! Yeah I guess it does have a lot of shounen elements that would turn people away from it, but I think it has some great characters.
Lol yeah All-Might is certainly interesting.
POWUH: Beginner (20-35) with 33 comments
This manga is awesome, every week I’m hyped for it almost as much as I am for AssClass. xD
POWUH: Meta Team and PreCure Mastah with 9203 comments
Same here! I love it xDD