Spoilers coming up for anyone who hasnt watched this season or MHA in general. If you havent watched MHA what are you doing looking at a review for season 7? There will be no spoilers for animeonlies though dont worry. Series Composition: Yousuke Kuroda Chief Director: Kenji Nagasaki Director: Naomi Nakayama Assistant Director: Hyuuga Yamamura Length: 21 episodes My Hero Academia is back once again. Its a yearly tradition. However the MHA anime is in high gear pun intended due to the fact that we have almost reached the ending and are in the midst of the final allout war arc that will wrap this story up. The anime has big shoes to fill not only because expectations at this point are bound to rise with having edged us on with the possibilities of a final war encounter in the previous season but also because the source material itself set high expectations with both amazing art and wellexecuted climaxes. This review will look at this season through the lens of someone who read the manga past episode 11 so Im no stranger to having had my personal expectations for this season myself as I watched it week by week. So lets go through it shall we. Consistency is the key 70https://pbs.tw.com/media/GKLDsRiXYAAhOHA?format=jpgname=large Now when it comes to the production quality itself MHA more or less is very consistent. We have a new director with Naomi Nakayama who replaced Masahiro Mukai. Masahiro Mukai himself directed season 4 to 6 and replaced Kenji Nagasaki who directed the seasons before and is now positioned as the chief director from season 4 onwards. So what does that mean for MHA? I genuinely dont know. No idea. And thats because MHA is as I stated a very consistent show. Aesthetically it still looks the same and also productionwise its very similar to previous seasons particularly when it comes to being transformative with the source material or having to deal with severe time limitations. Though something must have changed even if just a little. Because this season is the most overall wellproduced season in a long time despite still being 2 cours as usual and a movie being produced on the side a limitation season 6 didnt have to deal with. While Nakayamas quirks as a director if there are any are subtle in showing themselves what we can say is that she did one hell of a job carrying this production from start to finish and ensuring an overall good product. Now there are some disappointments and the production still was limited as we could see for instance in an awkwardly put together gear shift episodehttps://anilist.co/forum/thread/76169 which is supposed to be a big highlight for the series or later episodes in the show like the fight against AFO in Gungahttps://anilist.co/forum/thread/76757 which relied more and more on still drawings. But the season still managed to do at least a serviceable job even in its lowest points while still providing a lot of highlights and remarkable scenes. That is impressive considering that the material consists of nonstop action and difficulttoadapt material. One of the contributing factors is for instance the clever and frankly welldone usage of CGI for Shigarakis hands Togas Sad Mans Legion All Mights Suit and Inasas tornados. CGI has been used in MHA ever since season 5 and working on that aspect of the production ever since has paid off big time. https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/e431f7a8fbf7c47b26f099fa408c323c.mp4 KA: Atsushi Hasebe Presumed What also helps MHAs production is that its team consists of experienced regulars who are very well aware of the limitations and the framework they operate in. Regulars like Tomo Ookubo Tsuyoshi Tobita or Shouji Ikeno not only handle the bulk of director/storyboard duties but also are very good at staying faithful to the manga and saving time by using techniques such as stills effectively. When it comes to the animation side the team has strong supervisors such as Yoshihiko Umakoshi Hitomi Odashima or Takashi Murai and a good assemblement of key animators such as Jason Yao Takahiro Komori Shun Shibata and more. Having so many regulars on a show like this who also have the specific experience of working on this type of show for multiple years is simply a strong backbone for a production. In the end its difficult to say why this season turned out so well the way it did considering all the limitations it might just be that the team truly has maximized their potential as a well oiled machine churning out a 25 episodes anime every year or so it might be that a new director brought in a bit of fresh air in a way which Masahiro Mukai wasnt able to do when he entered for season 4. Or maybe a bit of both. Side note: Its noteworthy as well that some of the backbone of this production is young talent like Jason Yao who have been growing alongside this series Finish off with a bang 70https://pbs.tw.com/media/GZrvBdaXUAAx27k?format=jpgname=large The most surprising thing about this season has to be however how they managed to deliver hardcore on nailing down the last three episodes of the season which coincidentally also happen to be huge narrative highlights. Particularly the climax to the Todoroki family was absolutely incredible boasting both great direction and emotional potency and raw animation powerhttps://anilist.co/forum/thread/77075. The final talk between Ochako and Uraraka was great as well breaking out the mold of adapting manga panels 1:1 with a great guest storyboarderhttps://anilist.co/forum/thread/77241/comment/2740197 Of course the other main highlight here is the appearance of Armored All Might or Iron Might to stop the advancement of AFO. As someone who loves Iron Man seeing All Might fight again in all his glory like this is just pure joy to witnesshttps://anilist.co/forum/thread/77409/comment/2744873. Arranging the production in a way that the final episodes still receive the time they need knowing that these are narrative peaks that need to be prioritized shows great foresight and management of the team and definitely helps to swallow weaker parts of this season. Finally lets talk about the story 70https://pbs.tw.com/media/GXbqrCVWQAA096s?format=jpgname=large This review has been focused on the production side of things as that is something I feel is a niche I can occupy well within the space of anime reviews on anilist but obviously there are things to discuss narratively as well. Allout war story arcs are common for battleshounen precisely because battleshounen tend to follow the formula of the main character and his foes becoming stronger and stronger ultimately requiring a grand actionheavy finale to satisfy readers and their growing expectations. However allout war arcs for my taste arent that good at least most of the time. And thats because they need to function as some kind of closure not only for the main narrative but also for all other subplots that may have been opened along the way. Thats difficult because the structure of Shonen Jump and its weekly ranking nature doesnt encourage making decisions for a story longterm but rather it encourages shortterm decisions which help the series maybe for the ranking next week. As such shonen authors can have the struggle of maintaining a clear vision of where their series is headed and how they want it to end and when the time has come to bring everything together in one circle it can be a struggle to connect all the loose ends. My Hero Academia however I would say manages its war arc relatively well so far. Naturally I very much enjoy how previous subplots such as the Todoroki family have been resolved and how there is payoff for many character moments which have been set up before such as Best Jeanist finally recognizing Bakugou as a hero with his hero name. Consistency has been the strong suit of the show in terms of writing as well and as someone who rewatched the entire series before season 7 its rewarding to see how the series keeps reminding you through flashbacks that the development currently happening has been alluded to for a long time. And thankfully that trademark remained strong for this climactic story event as well. https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/541698fb26fd833384112eb3821dcd65.mp4 KA: Momoka Miyagawa first cut otherwise unknown Now structurally MHA does seem to put up more of a struggle to come together as well as it used to probably because of the reasons I outlined before why allout war arcs generally can be difficult. For instance the climax to the Todoroki storyline was amazing but in order for it to happen Toya needed a fakeout following his fight against Shoto which felt a bit like a convenience when the series at first makes it look like he was finished right there. Now his tenacity throughout the entire arc feeds into the emotional highlight at the end as well but moments like these feel a bit forced and not as structurally sound. MHA still seems to roughly know where it wants to go in terms of narrative and what the big important events need to be but the connecting dots between these building blocks can sometimes test your suspense of disbelief. I will say that the anime makes that more obvious than the manga with its slower pacing though. Im also not too fond of the fakeout death of Bakugou even if I very much understand what Horikoshi tried to do. In general this season exposed for better or worse that MHAs narrative is hesitant to experiment much. Staying close to its foundation has its own strengths but it also can feel like that the story inherently limits itself by doing so. The example of Bakugous fakeout shows how very hesitant MHA is to kill notable characters off because it wants to maintain its optimistic nature and how heroes succeed despite the odds. Dekus characterization and how the show is roughly headed is also predictable because MHA is very upfront about its themes and ideas and how it intends to portray them. Now that sounds probably rather negative but I will say I still find that MHA manages well to make up for a lack of experimentation with strong execution. The strong emotional moments still hit you like a truck when they need to and MHA can come up with cool surprises even when the larger rough narrative is decided such as Monoma copying Warp and Erasure or the Coffin in the Sky. You can tell that Horikoshi loves superheroes and loves experimenting with various superpowers and how to combine them. It also results in clever and seamless ways to integrate cameos for characters who are not important enough to warrant more screentime. 70https://heroaca.com/wp/wpcontent/uploads/2024/06/09.jpg Where do we go from here? Overall I am very satisfied by this season of MHA. Both narratively and productionwise MHA manages to carry on a lot of the high points from previous seasons which we know and love and also the lower points which still are fine for what they are. Now the cliffhanger we ended off on is nasty no discussion there but there arent many better instances to stop. The final season at least will have better production circumstances with only 12/13 episodes and no movie announced so we maybe can expect an even better overall result than this season which would be great as a finisher to this series. In any case there is a lot to look forward to for both animeonlies and manga readers. The continuation of All Might vs AFO the ongoing battle between Deku and Shigaraki the possible involvement of characters like Stain? Well see each other next year I suppose Thank you for reading this review and if you have any feedback feel free to leave a message on my profile or below my completed activity :