My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising - Digital Review

[Michael Scott]

My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising



Movie:
Video: N/A
Audio: N/A
Extras: N/A
Final Score:


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Movie
Coming as the second feature film of the long running Super hero anime, we get a change of pace from Marvel and DC’s live action and animated offerings, and instead get to indulge in some Japanese style fun. Just, well, with a lot more heart, soul and story telling than it’s western counterparts manage to scrounge up. ESPECIALLY when compared against the animated adventures of both comic book giants.

Class 1-A of the gigantic school for heroes is on a mission, which ends up almost being a vacation, when the school sends them on a remote island to go run a hero agency and help out the islanders. At first it seems like a walk in the park. Everything is calm as can be, and rather boring for the group. Nothing has really happened outside of rescuing a few cats from trees, finding lost luggage, and acting as a spare battery for a farmer’s tractor (I did get a kick out of Kaminara having to fulfill that role for most of the film). That is, until a mysterious villains comes into the picture. One with some mysterious powers that are a bit TOOO familiar.

This mysterious villain goes by the name of “9” (due to the fact that he has 9 separate “quirks”, or powers) given to him by the evil Dr. Daruma (we all know him all too well if you’ve been watching the series), and he happens to need to go to this remote island as well. However, he’s not really there to cause mischief on purpose, but rather to hunt down a specific child on the island who has a “quirk” that is needed to stabilize his every chaotic condition that is caused by blending all nine “quirks” into one body. His attack on the townsfolk causes Class 1-A to get out of the bored funk they’re in and act as super heroes once more in order to protect the children on the island.

The film actually takes place a little bit ahead of the anime (but not the manga of course), and is definitely in the near future when you start looking at credits. For example, Hawks is met in the movie, but he’s not in the anime at this point outside of a credits mark for “Baby Hawk”, and it serves as a standalone arc at the moment. Not a big deal as the show is very steadily chewing through the manga as we speak. Another comes in the form of Nine, as we find out that while he can steal powers, he can only replace powers in his arsenal of nine, and is limited to that nine. Something that gets explored a LOT more in the upcoming manga, so we can only assume this is a spoiler for the subsequent seasons of My Hero Academia to come.

The movie is a lot of fun, and has a great amount of heart. It’s light hearted, yet still has a tone of action in it and sets up quite a lot of plot points that are going to be revealed in later seasons. Some of which are HUGE plot events estimated to be out in the next couple of years. I liked that we FINALLY got to see Hawk introduced and his character arc fleshed out in preparation for him coming into the series soon. There was some typical Dragonball Z battles the show is plagued with, and the voice acting on the English dub is HORRIFIC (sadly there’s no subs on the digital screener I was given by FUNimation so I can’t evaluate it, but needless to say that after watching the series I can say without a doubt that it is light years better than the English Dub).




Rating:

Rated PG-13 for violence and language




Video: N/A

Being that FUNimation provided me with a digital screening copy to review, I will refrain on giving a technical audio and video score due to the fact that it was a press only screener, and not indicative of the official streaming quality or the physical disc













Audio: N/A

Same as the video, I will abstain from giving an analysis of the audio due to the streaming nature of the source


















Extras: N/A

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Final Score: ​

As a big fan of the TV series of the same name, Heroes Rising is a good compliment to the show, especially as it sets up and sets the groundwork for major plot points that will be revealed later on in the show. Heroes Rising gave us a chance to see a little into the future at how far the students have grown, and it does not disappoint. Sadly we didn’t get to review a physical copy so I couldn’t go into depth about the audio/video or extras, but the movie itself is still well worth picking up on home video for fans of the show.



Technical Specifications:

Starring: Daiki Yamashita, Nobuhiko Okamoto, Yuka Terasaki, Tomoyo Kurosawa, Yuki Kaji
Directed by: Kenji Nagasaki
Written by: Kohei Horikoshi (Creator), Yosuke Kuroda (Screenplay)
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
Audio: English
Subtitles: N/A
Studio: FUNimation
Rated: PG-14
Runtime: 104 Minutes
Digital Release Date: October 27th, 2020

Recommendation: Fun Watch

 

[tripplej]

Thanks for the review. I enjoyed seeing the TV series My Hero Academia. Will check it out.