The My Hero Academia Movie Could Be Exactly What The Superhero Genre Needs
Looking at superheroes through a new perspective might be a breath of fresh air for a stale landscape.
Over the last 20 years of mass entertainment, there’s been an interesting synergy between the rise of superhero films and the popularity of shōnen anime in the United States. Since the ‘90s opened the floodgates for the migration of anime and manga from Japan to America, both mediums have been synonymous with shōnen storytelling (predominantly action-adventure tales aimed at adolescent boys) despite the fact that there’s immense diversity to be found in each. At pretty much the same time U.S. audiences began engaging with shōnen en masse as a result of works like Dragon Ball Z and Naruto, the cultural domination of the superhero movie slowly began, and it’s easy to see the parallels between the two — both are frequently high-concept, spectacle-heavy genres about good overcoming evil, and both have transcended the label of “teenage boy entertainment” to encompass massive, diverse fanbases.
Ironically enough, the similarities between superhero fiction and shōnen have been directly engaged with in works from both genres. Marvel Comics have consistently dabbled in anime adaptations of characters as well as a short-lived Mangaverse (which is making a return later this year), and on the flip side, one of the most popular animes and mangas of the last decade was My Hero Academia, a sprawling love-letter to superheroes as an archetype. Now, only a year after the anime officially ended its run, it’s being revived in live-action, which might breathe some new life into superhero movies as a whole.
The success of My Hero Academia in the U.S. makes total sense considering anime and superhero films were growing in popularity roughly around the same time.
A live-action film based on MHA was announced as far back as October of 2018 from Legendary Entertainment; in 2021, director Shinsuke Sato (a filmmaker with several anime adaptations under his belt) joined the project, and just a year later Netflix picked up the distribution rights. Initially Joby Harold was announced as the screenwriter, but just last year The Hollywood Reporter revealed that Jason Fuchs (a story writer on 2017’s Wonder Woman and the co-creator of It: Welcome to Derry) would be rewriting the script from the ground up.
Set in a world where most of the population are born with superpowers known as “Quirks,” My Hero Academia is a fascinating story amidst our current superhero-obsessed landscape considering the sheer ubiquity of superpowers in-universe. The main character, Izuku Midoriya, is born without powers of his own, but is bestowed the abilities of Earth’s champion All-Might and is eventually enrolled in U.A. High School, an institution designed to train students to become superheroes. So much Western superhero media focuses on the idea of a special individual who uses their abilities for the good of a society that largely lacks powers of their own, but MHA reverses that trope entirely, which would make a live-action film stand out in comparison.
The fact that Midoriya starts out the series as Quirkless only to gain one of the most powerful Quirks on Earth feels reminiscient of the humble origins of Spider-Man.
Instead of the lone-wolf approach that defines so many of the superheroes we’ve grown accustomed to seeing on the big-screen, My Hero Academia emphasizes the importance of collectivist teamwork in a society where everyone is special in their own unique way. Several characters in the series aspire to take All-Might’s spot as the Number One Hero but Izuku and his friends discover that they’re much greater heroes together than they are alone — there’s an almost X-Men quality to the idea of a group of superpowered teenagers working alongside each other to fight the series’ main antagonist, a ruthless and power-hungry metahuman supremacist known as One-For-All. Depending on when the movie is set to release, it might even beat the MCU’s reboot of the X-Men to the punch.
There have been coming-of-age stories before that supplement the experience of high school by adding superpowers, most notably the 2005 Disney cult classic Sky High. Even though fans have been clamoring for a sequel for years now, it doesn’t seem like a concept Disney ever plans to revisit — which leaves the door wide open for Netflix’s adaptation of MHA to capitalize on the inherent charm of a superpowered high school. Naturally the focus of the show is predominantly fighting the League of Villains that pop-up in opposition to My Hero's heroic society, but there's also a significant amount of teenage angst and drama and rivalry at the heart of the story.
Just like the varied cast of heroes at U.A. High School, My Hero Academia also has an incredibly eclectic cast of villains.
Of course, as an adaptation of a beloved anime, My Hero Academia has an uphill battle ahead of it. From Dragon Ball Evolution to Cowboy Bebop, live-action adaptations of popular anime have never exactly been great, and a lot of it owes to the fact that it’s practically impossible to replicate the hyper-specific visuals and unreality of an anime using actors and sets in the real world. However, superhero movies have proven their formula years ago, and as a result they’ve become deeply entrenched in the cinematic landscape — whenever the live-action My Hero Academia adaptation lands, it does have the benefit of being both within a genre that has already proven its viability as well as having something to offer outside of what fans of said genre have become used to.
