Movie Review: My Hero Academia - The Two Heroes

My Hero Academia: Two Heroes [2018]

I'm not sure at what point feature films that tie in to long-running anime series (or even cartoon series) ended up going from one-off random non-canon stuff with a higher animation budget into actually trying to be sort of like a side-chapter, a non-required-viewing tie-in to the main storyline that fits snugly as a filler chapter at some point in the main series. I guess One Piece: Strong World and Naruto: Road to Ninja would be the first ones that actually did this, before franchises like Dragon Ball Z and Naruto used movies as a way to do epilogues and sequels to the manga after it has long ended. 

Of course, My Hero Academia's manga and anime are still going strong, particularly in 2018 when the anime has just started to take off. And... yeah, this does admittedly mean that a lot of the times, I don't really get super-excited to watch tie-ins to ongoing anime. But practically everyone gives rave reviews to the first My Hero Academia movie, The Two Heroes. I didn't get the chance to catch it until around the end of 2019, borrowing the DVD from a friend but never having the motivation or time to write a review until, well, today, when I decided to boot the DVD up again for laughs. 

The first couple of seasons of My Hero Academia was highly successful, and for good reason, and like all successful shonen anime, it gets a tie-in summer movie back in 2018... Two Heroes. And, well, it certainly is an enjoyable watch, even if it does have shades of "Series First Movie" in that it doesn't really try and stray too much from the tropes that these tie-in movies have. The whole plot of the movie is mostly... inconsequential to the show, basically a little side-adventure on a random side-town that's far removed from most of the Japan portrayed in the main canon, with All Might, Midoriya and a small selection of the most popular characters of Class 1-A mucking around in the floating island and meeting one of All Might's old partners, before a supervillain takeover of the island happens. We get a pretty obvious "hey, if you just learned about our show/book from this movie" recap about the setting and about Midoriya and All Might's backstory, as well as a bunch of pretty glaring 'as you know' recaps about the cast and the secondary characters. Plus, as with all shonen anime tie-in movies, the guest star characters of the movie don't really get a whole ton of development. But... all that nitpicking aside, the movie's still pretty solid. And while I'm not going to mention it over and over, the action scenes are pretty cool, random giant metal CGI monster notwithstanding. The scenes of explosions and dynamic movement in particular are a neat delight to see. 

After a brief and very fast-paced prologue of a young All Might in his prime in America (seeing Prime All Might with actual eyes instead of the shadows is unsettling) with his buddy David "Dave" Shield and his wacky sci-fi flying car, we quickly cut to a moment in Midoriya's summer vacation, where All Might brings him as his plus-one to the man-made I-Island that serves as a combination of a Quirk research facility as well as a tourist resort. And this first act does take a bit of a time as Midoriya freaks out regarding just about everything, and as we meet with both Dave and his daughter Melissa, a person who, like Midoriya, is quirk-less but also wants to still try her best to be a hero. As the two of them wander around through I-Island, turns out that, hey, the movie-makers know that the other characters are also popular and we get to meet at least some of the most popular members of Class 1-A. Uraraka, Jiro, Yaoyorozu, Kaminari, Mineta, Iida, Todoroki, Bakugou and Kirishima show up at various parts of the facility, and they basically do what they do, y'know? It's pretty well-scripted and none of the characters are as flanderized as they would be in like, an old One Piece movie. The interactions aren't much and they don't add anything particularly new to long-time manga readers or anime watchers, but they're still pretty fun to see. It's a lot of slow set-up. Also, Midoriya gets introduced to his movie-exclusive power-up, the 'Full Gauntlet', which will allow him to unleash his 100% power at least three times. 

Meanwhile, slowly building up in the background is Dave's friendship with All Might. Showing him in the prologue working with All Might at his prime, and later being concerned and panicking over All Might losing his power and him being established as one of the secret-keepers of the true extent of All Might's injury is pretty well-done, and it does make the later twist work. 

Of course, during a party where all the heroes are attending, the 1-A students are late in arriving because of course they are, but this causes them to miss being restrained by a group of villains led by some metal-masked dude called Wolfram that takes over the island Die Hard style, and apparently I-Island is equipped with a lot of anti-Quirk robots and restraints normally used for superhuman prisons that causes the pro heroes to be completely immobilized. It's honestly kind of dumb when you stop to think about it, but since we need to get our young heroes to have the spotlight, of course they end up banding together to find a way to beat up the legions of robots and random super-powered goons as they fight their way to free All Might and stuff. 

And not to knock on the movie or anything, because all of the animation sequences are great, but at no point in this movie do I really feel that our heroes are really in danger, y'know? None of the villains, not even the main big bad Wolfram, have any sort of personality. All the thugs basically exist for cool action scenes, with the highlight, of course, being Todoroki and Bakugou teaming up against that one giant-muscle goon and the one that creates holes in stuff, but is actually 'ripping' things from space or whatever. But ultimately a lot of this second act is just causing the rest of the 1-A students to be a dwindling cast as they slowly, one by one, stop and 'hold the line' against the legions of robots to send Midoriya and Melissa (who's the only one there that can hack the system) to the control room. I'm not going to do a scene-by-scene description because it's mostly moving pretty quickly with characters moving from one point to the next, but you honestly get the idea, y'know? We get a bunch of those "do your best, protect people is the priority" themes that is so prevalent in My Hero Academia stories. S'cool.

And it's this part of the movie that I feel it shines the best -- the fast-paced action. None of them are honestly all that groundbreaking compared to what we see in the show, but that's not the point -- the point's just to enjoy a goddamn anime superhero movie with a higher animation budget than usual, and I certainly did.

And in the third act? We get a barrage of plot twists. The first is honestly not that hard to guess -- Dave Shield, who doesn't know that All Might is able to pass on his One For All superpower to a successor, wants to desperately restore his friend's status as the symbol of peace by all means necessary, and as such has arranged a fake attack on I-Island so he can steal a confiscated piece of quirk-boosting helmet. Which... I kinda wished there was some hint about the existence of the quirk-boosting device in the first place, but the rest of this twist work pretty well, and the idea of a tragically sacrificial friend of All Might's that would go to such lengths to help his friend is honestly well done. Of course, the next couple of twists is honestly kind of obvious -- Dave gets betrayed by the sinister butler, who hired actual villains to steal the device, and Wolfram is out for blood, using his Magneto powers to nearly kill Melissa and kidnap Dave. 

Midoriya, of course, is in full Determined Hero(tm) mode and inspires everyone around him, and we get a cool scene of him jumping around chasing a helicopter, as well as the awesome scene of All Might finally breaking free from his restraints and bursting up the side of the building. Turns out that even against All Might, Wolfram is able to access a bunch of extra Quirks courtesy of both All For One being his secret sponsor, and also due to him putting on the Quirk-boosting helmet, turning him into a final video game boss. Our heroes work together, with the other students blasting aside the other metal constructs to eventually allow Midoriya and All Might to do a double Detroit Smash to blow Wolfram up. It's simple, but the animation is pretty enough that I did enjoy this action sequence a lot. 

And honestly, that's about it -- Dave apologizes and realizes that All Might keeps his legacy by training his successors, and the very flat bad guys are just defeated and things can go on as normal. It's a fun, simple romp with a higher budget and pretty animation scenes, but... I do feel like the first act being so flashback-heavy and 'as you know' makes the movie a lot more clunky. Wolfram being kept as a generic villain with absolutely no motivation beyond 'rar me evil criminal' also hurts the movie somewhat. Still, though, can't be too hard on this one. It's pretty enjoyable, I do like it a fair bit. 

Random Notes:

• The movie takes place somewhere around between season 2 and season 3 in the anime. I'm pretty sure season two had a tie-in episode that serves as a prologue and promotion for the movie. 
• The rest of Class 1-A get brief cameos here and there, because they aren't invited to the party. They are around just hanging out in the town areas in "I" Island. Considering the point in the show that this movie would be conceptualized, I'm genuinely surprised that Tsuyu doesn't make it into the A-listers since she was relatively prominent in the early arcs of the manga. Conversely, as much as I like them, Kirishima, Jiro and Kaminari don't actually have a lot of prominence at this point in the manga, so I assume it's the popularity polls that end up causing them to have pretty huge roles. 
• All Might's costumes are named after the periods in superhero comic-book history, like Bronze Age, Silver Age and Golden Age... but his very first costume is called "Old Age", and... that's not the same usage of 'age', but it's so funny I don't mind. 
• As usual, the random background heroes and villains that make their appearances briefly (and none of them show up in canon, I believe?) are always fun. My favourite is the Godzilla dude with bancho regalia. 
• Another Shonen Movie trope? To sell merchandise, all the main characters have unique clothing that show up in this movie; in this case the formal wear they originally intended to bring to the dinner party. 
• All Might says "SHIT!" in English at one point, which is fun. He and Joseph Joestar need to hang out. 
• I do have a lot of opinions about the more recent couple of months of My Hero Academia -- and not all of it is positive. And while that doesn't mean I think the show is trash, I think it suffers the same trap that I feel that some of other shonen shows fell into in that it's sacrificing what initially made it appealing in favour of large-scale epic battles that end up just mostly feeling hollow. And while I do find the current state of the manga still pretty neat, it also does make it so that I don't find it enjoyable enough to follow weekly, and just wait until like five or ten chapters are out until I do a massive read-through... and even then I tend to feel so drained that I don't feel like really talking about the chapters afterwards.