The students and pro heroes of UA are back, but not necessarily better than ever. My Hero Academia: World Heroes’ Mission is a colourful expansion of the blockbuster anime that manages to pack in enough high-stakes action and over-the-top heroics to appease fans. A cut above Two Heroes but markedly less focused than Heroes Rising, World Heroes’ Mission is an earnest sequel that has great fun with its premise and makes no apologies for its half-baked storytelling. The result is a fun – but thin – adventure, elevated by (mostly) gorgeous action, fun new Quirks, and a reasonably diverting story that has no bearing on the main canon.
Where the previous film, Heroes Rising, furthered the Midoriya/Bakugo friendship, this outing showcases the power and prowess of Midoriya, Bakugo, and Todoroki as a butt-kicking unit. Sadly, there isn’t much going on around that group dynamic. Sure, there’s an anti-Quirk terrorist group wreaking havoc across the globe. And yes, Midoriya is framed for crimes he clearly didn’t commit. The story quickly sets the stage for an epic conflict.
But World Heroes’ Mission brims with concepts it never sufficiently explores. These movies have a habit of churning out paper-thin villains and one-off heroes who are so immediately forgettable that even keeping up with them throughout the story is a challenge. The idea of an organisation hell-bent on eliminating Quirks has potential, but we never see enough of it for it to be of any lingering interest. Flect Turn, the mysterious man at the head of this clandestine operation, emerges with tons of promise. Sadly, very little of that promise is realised. He shows up at the beginning and again for the final confrontation, but even a crammed-in sympathy play as he’s pummeling Midoriya isn’t enough to endear him.
As underwritten as this baddie is, though, it’s refreshing to spend time with a villain who isn’t an acolyte of All For One. It’s about time, honestly. Shigaraki and his League of Villains remain the most fleshed-out opponents for the pro heroes, and Flect Turn does little to change that.
The movie’s perfunctory storytelling is somewhat reflective of Horikoshi’s absence from the writing process. Yes, he designed new looks for the characters and came up with the plot, but he left the writing and directing to the team behind the anime series. Normally, that would be perfectly acceptable. The anime adaptation is consistently excellent, and it’s only getting better. But it definitely benefits from lifting Horikoshi’s plot and character development from the manga, cementing director Kenji Nagasaki and writer Yosuke Kuroda as capable book-to-screen translators. Nagasaki and Kuroda teamed up again for World Heroes’ Mission, but without Horikoshi’s material to guide them, they seem to flounder here.
Don’t mistake these gripes as signs of poor quality, though. World Heroes’ Mission nails its dynamics, and aside from some shoddy animation halfway through, the action is exciting, frenetic, and beautiful to behold. It’s an entertaining My Hero Academia movie that delivers on its promises and makes only one request of its audience: Just go with it.
MY HERO ACADEMIA: WORLD HEROES’ MISSION is in cinemas from October 29th
