Boku no Hero Academia Season 4 - Review

Introduction

The fourth season of Boku no Hero Academia is another solid entry into the Boku no Hero Academia franchise. It doesn’t consistently reach the same heights that the second and third seasons did, but the issue definitely lies mainly from a story perspective.

That being said, the season is still spectacular, and as I watched it, I slowly began to feel, more and more, that Boku no Hero Academia was starting to establish itself as a staple anime in the shounen sphere.

There’s still a long way to go before Boku no Hero Academia can stand in the same ring as anime like Naruto or One Piece, but if these same standards and this quality is held up for the next couple of seasons, it could very well do so.

Boku no Hero Academia’s fourth season first started airing in the Fall 2019 season and came to its conclusion in the Spring 2020 season. The season is a full twenty-five episode, just like the previous two seasons, and received, as of April 2020, a rating of 8.29 out of 10 on MyAnimeList.

This is a bit of a drop (0.22) from the previous season, but I think that both seasons performed quite similarly and should achieve the same rating.

Story and Plot

The plot of the fourth season is mainly focused on two arcs; the Shie Hassaikai and Rescuing Eri arc and the School Festival arc.

The superior arc was definitely the Hassaikai arc, although the School Festival arc was also quite enjoyable to watch. Specifically, the story starts with Midoriya applying for a long-term internship at the agency of All Might’s former sidekick, Sir Nighteye.

Through this agency, and working together with his senior, Mirio Togata, Midoriya discover a young girl, Eri, who is being abused and mistreated by the head of the designated villain group, the Shie Hassaikai.

According to Nighteye’s intelligence, the leader of the Hassaiakai, Chisaki, has a Quirk that allows him to break things down and reconstruct them, which lead to the idea that he would be breaking down Eri (whom Chisaki had identified as his daughter during a chance encounter) and rebuilding her to manufacture Quirk destroying bullets.

Both Mario and Midoriya are incredibly distraught that they failed to protect Eri when they ran into Chisaki in the street, and there’s a lot of build-ups before the invasion of the Hassaikai’s headquarters begins.

To be completely frank, I started watching this series when the it first started airing and held off on finishing it right as the invasion began.

I only went back to binge watch the series near the end of the season, where I was able to make sense of a lot of things I’d either missed or hadn’t paid too much attention to the first time.

A lot of time is spent on build up, with Midoriya working to impress Nighteye and characters like Kirishima getting time in the spotlight at their own work studies.

There’s also a bit of drama that appears with Nighteye having somehow predicted All Might’s death as part of his Quirk and disagreeing with Midorya’s inheritance of One for All, believing that the power should have been bestowed upon Mirio instead, whom he had taken in and was training in parallel to All Might’s training of Midoriya.

The show fails to communicate a lot of the emotion it claims that Midoriya is feeling in this stretch, leading to a lot of excessive narration.

A lot of the details and information that Nighteye and the other participating pro heroes contribute in the plan to find and invade the Hassaikai went over my head and the little dip into Amajiki’s backstory and confidence issue felt like a massive sidetrack to me.

However, when the invasion into the Hassaikai’s base kicks into gear and we begin to see some truly amazing fights, the season becomes undroppable.

The fight through the Hassaikai’s base to find Eri and put a stop to Chisaki’s scheming is incredibly tense and well-paced. Different heroes engage in battles with the “Eight Bullets” of the Hassaiaki clan, powerful warriors that stop at nothing to protect their master.

The fights are intense and creative, as is to be expected from Boku no Hero Academia and we see a lot of villainous Quirks that raise some interesting questions about the roles of performance enhancers and regulations in establishing a functioning society with nearly every individual possessing a Quirk of some kind.

Eventually, we reach the final battle where we witness Mirio fighting Chisaki and two of his warriors head on, all while trying to rescue Eri.

Personally, I wish I was a little more invested in Mirio’s fight, but, although the show did a better job of establishing a personal relationship with Mirio more than it did with the other members of the Big Three, I couldn’t get myself to care as much as I felt like I should have when Mirio finally fell.

It might have been Mirio himself and his lack of reaction; someone losing their Quirk for all time definitely should have had a stronger reaction.

Nighteye’s entrance into the fight was also quite strong, although I can’t for the life of me, understand how someone like Nighteye, with nothing in his Quirk to boost his combat ability, could ever go toe to toe with a Quirk-wielder like Overhaul. Still, Nighteye’s participation was much appreciated.

Generally, when I watch anime I maintain a very neutral expression. Not out of malice, or hate towards a specific genre or studio, I just find that very few shows get me invested enough in the action or drama within for the results to manifest on my face.

Boku no Hero Academia was one of those shows. For almost the first time ever, I actually laughed out loud. I felt air escape form my gullet as my mouth formed a smile and sound came out of my larynx because Boku no Hero Academia finally hit the meaning of shounen fight anime.

The fight between Midoriya and Chisaki was tremendous to behold. Most of the beginning of the fight was above average for Boku no Hero Academia, but it was when Midoriya finally voiced the meaning of Eri’s Quirk and what it would require for him to survive as he actively fought Chisaki that I actually laughed.

Seeing Midoriya fight Chisaki with a full powered One for All as he did everything he could to avoid being consumed by Eri’s Quirk was just incredible to watch. I remember thinking something along the lines of “Super Saiyan” Midoriya when I saw him flying at a hundred percent.

The aftermath of the invasion was also handled really well, with Midoriya and Mirio’s slow recovery, Nighteye and All Might’s reconcilement before Nighteye’s death, the idea of a future not set in stone, and the uncertainty in Eri’s fate.

I also want to comment on how pleased I was with the handling of the League of Villains. I wasn’t really a fan of the League in the previous seasons, but I definitely felt like Shigaraki Tomura was doing some actual guidance to his league in this season.

Cutting off Chisaki’s arms and killing the Sand Hero after Chisaki’s capture was a good touch to show how unhinged he still was, yet how he still would stop at nothing to reach his goal, including infiltrating the Hassakai and betraying them during the pro heroes’ invasion.

The League was definitely handled well this season, and was set up efficiently for a lot of growth to becoming a serious threat to the nation in the next season.

What came after the Hassakai arc was the School Festival arc, and while Boku no Hero Academia definitely remains a shounen fight anime, it definitely turned slightly towards the high school, slice-of-life anime genre with this arc.

While I didn’t feel like it was capable of carrying the show as well as the first arc had, I still enjoyed the arc and felt like it gave good relief to the tension developed in the Hassaikai arc.

I wasn’t a fan of Gentle Criminal, feeling like he was mainly a waste of time. In the end his message didn’t exactly mean very much and Midoriya was able to beat the bad guy and make it back to the school festival.

The clash in the pair’s ambitions was quite extreme and Gentle’s Quirk helped make an interesting fight, but the character wasn’t quite extreme enough for an intense fight scene.

Everything was resolved and went according to plan. The school festival also went normally, which doesn’t exactly wow in the way that Boku no Hero Academia usually does, so fans that don’t especially like high school, slice-of-life anime probably didn’t enjoy this arc in the slightest.

The season doesn’t actually end there but is resolved with a two-episode piece on Endeavor and the other top ten heroes of Japan, and how Endeavor is slowly changing his position from the envious number two to a slightly worthy number one hero.

While I have more to say on the character change here, the fight scene between Endeavor and the advanced Nomu was definitely entertaining to watch. Almost too entertaining.