Manga Review: My Hero Academia, Vol. 2 by Kohei Horikoshi
I hope you all had a good Thanksgiving, or at least a nice Thursday! In keeping with the holiday spirit, let’s have a second helping.
Brief recap: Izuku Midoriya always wanted to be a superhero, but was born without a “quirk”, unlike 80% of the world’s population, and stuck with the nickname “Deku” (no good qualities). After he proves himself to All-Might, the world’s greatest superhero, Midoriya is given the chance to inherit One for All, a unique quirk passed from one hero to another. Midoriya is accepted to the prestigious superhero magnet school Yuuei High, and has changed the meaning of “Deku” to “never gives up.”
There are two main plot arcs in this volume. First up is battle training, with all the students in costume for the first time. Paired into teams and then set up as “heroes vs. villains”, Deku finds himself teamed with likable girl Ochako against his childhood bully Bakugou and the no-nonsense Iida. Bakugou’s grudge against Deku may cause all of them to fail the class if he doesn’t rein it in!
This is the climax of the bullying storyline, and while Bakugou doesn’t become a better person, the bullying stops.
Then the kids get to go to a remote location to learn about rescue work in various environments. But the Villain Alliance rears its ugly head for the first time, putting the students in danger to lure out All-Might. Yes, he’s the greatest superhero alive, but they’ve got Artificial Human Noumu, a being specifically designed to defeat All-Might. And since Deku has the same powers as his mentor…
In between is a chapter about the election for class president, which reveals some background on Iida, who turns out to come from an entire family of prestigious superheroes.
The writing and art continue to be impressive, and there are extra pages of artist’s notes on the various characters. (Perhaps the funniest is of Toru Hagakure, whose power is invisibility. The portrait is a blank page entitled “complete nude.”)
The Villain Alliance is filled with scary-looking characters, and feel like a real danger to the trainee heroes.
Recommended to teen superhero fans.
