The Fall 2019 Anime Preview Guide

My Hero Academia Season 4

In the wake of All Might's retirement, Midoriya and his fellow students have been doing their best to carry on his legacy, and become professional heroes as quickly as possible. As training continues and villains lurk in the shadows, Class 1-A find themselves faced with an entirely new challenge: a major newspaper profile! Informed they'll be working together with freelance journalist Taneo Tokuda, Midoriya and his friends are given a chance to introduce themselves to the world, and truly make their presence known. But Tokuda has a secret plan of his own, and the “big scoop” he's planning might end up revealing far more than Midoriya would like! My Hero Academia Season 4 is available streaming on Crunchyroll, every Saturday at 7:15 am EDT.

Rating:

Given the show's been running for three seasons and over sixty episodes, I suppose it's understandable that My Hero Academia's fourth season would open with a catching-up episode, rather than diving directly into the story's next arc. Similarly to how season three opened with an anime-original expansion of an originally brief manga moment, season four opens debuts in the space between chapters, catching us up on the students of 1-A and the state of the world at large. It's a little awkward to essentially open your season with a recap episode, but as far as recaps go, this one is a perfectly watchable affair.

The genuinely new portions of this episode are focused on an anime-original character, Taneo Tokuda. Tokuda is a freelance journalist, and opens this episode by proposing a profile of Class 1-A with a secret mission: to discover All Might's true successor. The sequences focused on Tokuda's mission are unsurprisingly the most interesting portions of this episode, and I greatly enjoyed his final discussion of influence and heroism with Midoriya. Tokuda is a distinctive and sympathetic character, who manages to fill a theoretically antagonistic role in this episode without ever seeming like he has genuinely bad intentions. Additionally, Tokuda's visit allows My Hero Academia to indulge in one of its best styles of anime-original material: time spent simply hanging out with Class 1-A as friends, without the “distraction” of an active dramatic conflict.

That said, while this premiere's framing narrative gives it a strong excuse for its catch-up and exposition, it's still mostly occupied with catch-up and exposition. There are multiple sequences dedicated to reminding us of All Might's career, Midoriya's arc so far, and the state of the world so far. There's also a lengthy listing of each member of Class 1-A, where Tokuda runs through each of their names and powers as clips from prior seasons play in the background. Between its frequent stills and consistent use of prior season footage, this is definitely not a visually impressive episode of My Hero Academia.

And frankly, I'm thankful for that. This episode seems to mostly exist for people who actively need a refresher, and it'd be silly to squander the production's resources on an episode like that. My Hero Academia's premiere offers a fine enough reintroduction to Class 1-A, but is also perfectly skippable if you're ready for the real theatrics to begin. It's a fine enough prelude, but it seems like next week is when the action really starts.