Why My Hero Academia’s Great Art Actually Makes the Series Worse

Warning: SPOILERS for My Hero Academia #367As the action-packed battle between My Hero Academia‘s heroes and villains ramps up for its long-awaited conclusion, the excitement and emotion that fans would normally be expected to experience at finally learning the fate of Deku, Ochaco, Bakugo, and Shikaragi has been stunted by the series’ otherwise stellar artwork.

All For One’s last push to gain the power of the “One For All” quirk is presently playing out in My Hero Academia. It’s an epic battle between the forces of good and evil that has the manga’s biggest stars going toe-to-toe to gain that ultimate advantage over the other and finally impose their will on the world. The battles are taking place in multiple locations and have included some of fandom’s most anticipated battles such as Deku facing All For One in recent chapters of My Hero Academia, as well as contests that were not expected but have nevertheless proven wildly popular among fans such as Mirko versus Shigarki. Needless to say, it’s a smorgasbord of action that not only do diehard fans live to see, but also attracts the interest of casual fans who have been following the manga previously but stopped for some reason, and first-time readers who get caught up in the excitement.

This seems like a great time to fill the manga with page after page of fight action with the glorious artwork that My Hero Academia creator Kohei Horikoshi has shown he can produce. Unfortunately, this is not the case with the artwork actually having a negative effect on the actual story. Over the course of the last few chapters, Horikoshi’s artwork has been rather messy, so much so that it makes the story hard to understand. Messy, in this context, should not be interpreted as bad though. In fact, from a single panel perspective, the artwork retains Horikoshi’s classic dynamism. But in terms of telling what is happening in the story, the artwork fails.

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My Hero Academia’s Recent Artwork is Messy and Chaotic

The sequence of panels in My Hero Academia Chapter 365 showing Mirko and Shigaraki’s fight is a perfect illustration of the negative effect of Horikoshi’s artwork on the overall story. From reading the text, fans can understand that Mirko is going all out to beat Shigaraki on her own, but Horikoshi’s focus on facial close-ups and tilted perspectives makes it impossible to visualize the actual battle taking place. Instead of the artwork conveying the action, fans of a manga have to picture in their own minds what is happening.

The Mirko-Shigaraki fight is not an isolated incident, but rather a pattern is seen over the course of several chapters. Again, the artwork is fine from an isolated perspective, but when taken together to express the most epic fight in My Hero Academia, such as Deku versus One For All, the result is a rather confusing understanding of the story. Naturally, through the dialog, readers ultimately come to understand what is happening, but for this particular series of battles, how much more enjoyable would My Hero Academia be if readers didn’t have to put in extra effort to understand what exactly is happening?

My Hero Academia is available to read from Viz Media.

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