I really like My Hero Academy.
The first season was really pretty great! Reading ahead in the manga, I know that the villains get more and more enjoyable- at least by my standards.
But watching My Hero Academy‘s second season I’ve begun to realize my problems with it. They aren’t enough to make the show unwatchable, but I think they explain why it’s taken me so long to get back around to this series.
The cast –
Have you ever seen Assassination Classroom? It was supposed to be about a classroom of assassins trying to kill a tentacle monster thing… And it acted as if the cast was generally supposed to be distinct and memorable- but they were not. Instead of focusing on the entire class, the show compromises by honing in and developing just a few characters. Instead of spreading the wealth of development, Nagisa Shiota is given a lot of screentime and all events seem to unnaturally revolve around him.
My Hero Academy does not fail at this.
Instead, it actually succeeds at having a fairly even cast. While a few characters are clearly standouts from the class, we understand nearly all of them thanks to small details in design and writing. But for me, there’s too much understanding.
There’s no internal intrigue! There’s no deep internal struggle that threatens to derail the plot in an entirely different direction for several hundred episodes…
And while many like My Hero Aca for not repeating the mistakes of Naruto, it just feels so safe…
None of the characters are distant, following halfway through the second season. As soon as any conflict arises, the kids properly sort it out. And that’s great and it’s admirable-
But it bores me. They’re all designed to fit someone’s niche, and they succeed…
But the default mode for every character is an unwavering drive to become a hero. Good-natured simplicity on such a scale is kind of disgusting…
And while that makes the occasional adult character all the more exciting as the story continues- the fights between the student pairs and the teachers was rather boring. The unclear stakes, boring action, and mind-numbingly simple plots portrayed as being ‘creative’, all combine to make a majority of the fights very boring.
Hype –
Hyping fights, tying them to character struggles, and making them have impact-
That’s always been My Hero Academy‘s strength!
The Yaoyorozo vs Eraserhead fight was pretty bad…
And if it weren’t for Mineta’s fight containing desperately needed character development, his would be straight unwatchable. If I were to ever rewatch My Hero Aca, I would almost certainly skip over most of the second half of the second season. There’s only so many actually creative fights you can have for a scenario-
And by showing all the different fights, roughly 10 of them, there’s little time to develop all of the fights and show off MHA‘s strength! This ties back to the humanizing of its cast, but by not focusing more strictly on just a few, the fights begin to feel monotone.
A little bit of selectivity and streamlining to combine the two episodes leading to the All-Might fight would have done wonders for me.
Conclusion
I could state the obvious here- that this is all my opinion.
But that’s probably an understatement.
I’m not pointing out a flaw, so much as I’m pointing out a feature that doesn’t exactly appeal to my edgy sensibilities.
My expertise isn’t really battle shounen… so the only thing I really can compare it to are my old memories of Naruto. The cast there was once much more interesting to me, because they were often antagonistic to the small Team 7-
But when the classroom alone is like 20 characters, as compared with 3…
There’s so much time that must be spent building synergy and environment, that I really can’t reconcile it to my view of school and adolescence as a Westerner!
…
Maybe that’s the source of my discomfort with this series.
Edgy Anime Teen 
I fully agree with the assassination classroom comment. I found that the characters were really focused on but they we’re anything special or interesting
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