BA3A Week 3

The Superheroes Journey in My Hero Academia


Things to talk about:
  • Protagonists that actively seek out the power to become a hero, rather than the typical superhero who is granted power, born with power, or acquires power by chance and only THEN feels obligated to use that power for good - Iron man, Batman, etc.
  • Grounded conflict - The art of the fight scene where the stakes, forces, tensions and powers at play are plain for all to see. The fight scenes of My Hero Academia exemplify this by not being about who's strongest, or even who's more skilled - sure, these aspects are acknowledged and used to an extent - but most of all it's about who uses the abilities and resources at their disposal the most creatively. There are no secret saviours who rush in for the rescue, there are no secret hidden powers, everyone just gets the one power - and each power is versatile enough to have many applications, but they also always have some kind of weakness, even if it's only psychological. What the opponents have in power and combat sense, our underdog protagonist makes up for with resourcefulness and strategic thinking.

Potential questions:




  • How to effectively create an underdogs journey character arc?
  • What makes a good character development driven fight scene?
  • How to make the best use of a large cast of characters?

To understand the show, we need a brief understanding of the world that the series takes place in. One day, with no known explanation of why or how, humanity begins to develop superhuman abilities that are completely random in nature, and the term 'quirk' has been coined to refer to these abilities. Each person only has one quirk, but each quirk is versatile enough to cover a broad range of applications when used creatively. 

The show takes place many years after the introduction of quirks, when they have been successfully incorporated into the norm of society. With the uprising of supervillains who use their quirks to harm and control others, superheroes have become a widely accepted and respected career path, the best of the best obtaining celebrity status. About 80% of the population develops a quirk early in their childhood, and the remaining 20% who never develop quirks are insultingly referred to as quirkless. 

Our protagonist, Izuku Midoriya, is a 14-year-old nerdy kid who has always dreamed of becoming a hero like his idol All-Might, the top hero in the world. It crushed him as a child to discover he was quirkless, but despite what anyone said, he never gave up on his ambition. 

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