My Hero Academia – Season 4 Part 2 Review

My Hero Academia – Season 4 Part 2 contains Episodes 14 to 25 of the season, or Episodes 77 to 88 if you count the series as a whole, and begins with the final episode of the arc that began in the previous set. Although I’m probably sure most people reading this have at least watched Part 1 by now, I won’t go into too much detail as to what Episode 14/77 contains, but it’s an emotional ride and a satisfying conclusion. While some pro heroes try to deal with the League of Villains we see a two-and-a-bit episode story focusing on the two moody or edgy members of the core MHA cast in Bakugo and Shoto, who were absent from the previous arc after failing to gain their Pro Hero license due to their… well, moody and edgy-ness.

The main part of the challenge is to “win the hearts” of a bunch of delinquent children who have given up on the idea of heroes, something they obviously struggle with. Alongside them are some of the other characters from the Pro Hero exam story in the previous season, and overall it does a good job of adding a bit of character development to two members of the cast who are clearly going to play a big role in the future. This leads into the longest story arc of the season that’s based around the UA school running a “School Festival” and the 1-A class that the series focuses on deciding to hold a concert. Our lead protagonist Deku gets more focus here as he not only desperately wants the festival to go on uninterrupted for a rather sweet reason that I won’t spoil (as once again the final episode of the previous arc kicks this set off…) but he ends up having to deal with a pair of criminals known as … “Gentle Criminal” and his sidekick La Brava. They’re fun characters who aren’t villains as such but still commit smaller crimes and broadcast them on the MHA equivalent of YouTube.

There are some fun and sometimes quite emotional moments here and it all ends on a rather pleasant note as the class sing their song. It has to be mentioned that the song, titled “Hero Too”, is currently sitting at 74 million views on Toho’s YouTube channel, with Crunchyroll’s upload of it clocking 3.8  million so, if nothing else, the culmination of the story certainly worked for a lot of people! Then we get the final two episodes of the season, which focus on Shoto’s father Endeavour as he officially becomes classed as the “Number 1 Hero” on the Hero Billboard after All Might’s retirement, and we see how insecure he is in the position. He’s helped along by the newly debuting character (unless you watched the second MHA movie before these episodes aired like I did!) Hawks, who comes in at Number 2. It’s a short but entertaining mini-arc and ends the series on a well-animated and adrenaline-pumping fight. On that note, as should be obvious by now, the animation is still spot-on, and Yuki Hayashi’s soundtrack still packs a wallop both in heartfelt scenes and the more action-heavy moments.

To get across just how much the first episode of this set is the final episode of the previous arc, Episode 14/77 still has “Polaris” by Blue Encount and “Kokai no Uta” by Sayuri as its opening and ending respectively, then the rest of the set has “Starmarker” by Kana-Boon as its opening, and “Shout Baby” by Ryokuōshoku Shakai as its ending. The on-disc extras are a couple of Expo panels (in this case from Anime Expo 2019, FanExpo 2019 and “Funimation Con”) that range from plain interviews to a “game show” with the English dub voice actors, and of course a couple of “Inside the Episode” dub interviews and the usual clean opening and ending. There is a limited edition version up for grabs as well, and in an odd reversal of the regular order of things it comes with a rigid case you can store Part 1 in, rather than the other way round. It also has an 80-page hardcover art book, some art cards, stickers, a keychain and rather appropriately, three guitar picks. That’s a lot of extra gubbins for the relatively minor increase in price, and certainly a lot more than you normally get with long-running series.

The second half of My Hero Academia may be less consistent than the first, but it still hits some great highs and moves several of the characters on a bit. The show (and therefore the manga it’s based on) does seem to go through a pattern of a rather heavy story arc followed by some more “downtime”, and in this case the downtime is varied, enjoyable and still worth your time.