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