By Dustin Cabeal

Unfortunately, My Hero Academia is become a story with cool moments, but not a cool story. At the start, this world felt like a very Japanese take on the modern American superhero stories. It’s quickly changed into a political story, which isn’t bad, but the politics always seem to be set up by attacking children.

I stopped and started this volume three different times; it was just that hard to get into. The place the last volume ended was awkward, making the start of this volume even more awkward. Ragey Pants McBomb Hands has been kidnapped along with two other people. One of them is an adult, and I forget who the other was… probably a nobody. Deku still tries to save him without his arms, but unlike when Asta in Black Clover had no arms, it sucks when Deku does it. Frankly, the “too much power, not enough body” side of his story is becoming a crutch for Kohei Horikoshi. At some point, it needs to change. It needs to tip one way or the other, but just having him get fucked up and half fixed is getting tedious to read. He’s not effective for 90% of the story and the other 10% he doesn’t need to be.

The villains get away, the school is forced to apologize and the public turns on the heroes a little bit. They mount an attack on the bad guy’s headquarters and All For One makes his first appearance in the story. It’s pretty anticlimactic. Horikoshi tries to sell All For One’s presence by having the students have intense fear, but it just feels hollow. Deku is the only one that kind of knows about him, but it doesn’t explain why the rest of them are so scared. What’s worse is that they’re just standing around doing nothing and Ragey Pants McBomb Hands gets saved, then recaptured all in the same volume. Tired of that fucker too. His development doesn’t make any sense. He is suited to be a villain, but he still wants to be the best hero. Well, then adjust your fucking attitude because no one views you as a hero. They even call him a rabid dog in this volume, and they’re not wrong.

The artwork looks decent in this volume. It seems as if Horikoshi has more fun illustrating the villains as their costumes seem to stand out more, and they’re a little more detailed. There is some improvement overall, but the kids are starting to look a bit too old, and they’re not even out of their first year of high school. The next volume’s artwork looks promising, and so there could be a leap forward in quality, but we’ll see. Deku cries a lot in this volume, and that shit is definitely old. That feels like a response to the excessive crying in the anime, which wasn’t always the case in the manga. Watery eyes and crying are two different things, but not in the anime and not here anymore either apparently.

The story is circling. The development is circling. Nothing is moving forward, but instead just somewhat expanding out like a spiral. It’s too slow and too boring. When you’re reading a good story, you can’t wait for the next volume. Those months in-between feel like years, but when it’s like this… the next volume always comes too soon. Maybe the story can be saved, but it seems like it’s settled into a comfortable place that makes most manga and subsequently anime fans, happy. Personally, it could be so much more. What’s worse is that Horikoshi even admits to the changes to the story from where it began at the start of this volume. What a shame, I wish he had kept making a manga he’d enjoy instead of one that sells and is easy to adapt to anime.

Score: 2/5

My Hero Academia vol. 10
Kohei Horikoshi
Viz Meida