My Hero Academia Season 3

My Hero Academia Season 3

My Hero Academia season 3 anime cover art
My Hero Academia Season 3 Cover Art

Overview

My Hero Academia season 3 covers roughly three arcs in its two-cour run. First there’s the training camp arc, then the Bakugo rescue mission arc, and finally the hero exam arc. If these arcs sound familiar, that’s because they’re basically the same as some arcs from Naruto, just in a different order.

But, make no mistake, MHA isn’t copying Naruto, this is simply a tried and true formula for shounen anime, which both of these fall into.

During the training camp arc, the students of Classes 1-A and 1-B are out in the woods developing their quirks over their Summer break. While the campsite is supposed to be a secret location, the League of Villains somehow finds out about it and launches an attack.

Although hurting as many of the future heroes as possible is a definite goal of this attack, the true goal of the villains is to capture Bakugo. Just like how Orochimaru believed (rightly so) that he could persuade Sasuke to come over to his side, the League of Villains believe they can do the same to Bakugo.

From what we know about Bakugo up to this point in the series, it appears that he’s the perfect candidate for the League of Villains due to his abrasive nature, but as it turns out, quite the opposite is true. Despite being antagonistic, Bakugo’s dream is to be like All Might, the best pro hero.

While Bakugo and Sasuke both desire power, they each desire it for different reasons. Sasuke wanted to kill his brother and nothing more, Bakugo, however, actually wants to use the power he desires for good. Due to this difference, how Bakugo gains power is important because he can’t be the best pro hero if he joins the League of Villains no matter how strong he gets.

The second arc is the Bakugo recovery mission, which as the name I’m giving it implies, is exactly like the Sasuke recovery mission. With their “friend” captured by the villains, our protagonists rush in to save him and bring him back to the village, I mean school.

The only issue here is that the students of U.A. aren’t actually allowed to rescue Bakugo because they aren’t officially heroes yet, unlike the genin of the Leaf Village who are considered full-fledged shinobi. Because of this, a sect of Class 1-A students led by Deku devise a plan.

The students aren’t allowed to fight villains, but there’s technically no rule against them grabbing Bakugo and fleeing without any confrontation. Unfortunately for them, the League of Villains have multiple hideouts, an army of Nomu, and their trump card: All for One.

This arc concludes with the successful rescue of Bakugo by his classmates, and a climactic fight between All Might and All for One. Although All Might defeats his arch-nemesis, he uses up the last bit of his power to do so, effectively leaving him quirkless and retired.

All Might from the anime My Hero Academia season 3
All Might, victorious

With the retirement of All Might, the landscape of heroes and villains has been altered forever. The second most popular hero, Endeavor, was nowhere near as liked or strong as All Might, and the villains, knowing this, have begun to come out of hiding.

This is the setup for the third and final arc of the season, the hero exam arc. While finding a hero to step into All Might’s shoes as the symbol of peace is nearly impossible, the next best thing is to “mass produce” enough heroes to overwhelm the villains with sheer numbers.

The provisional hero license exam is used to do exactly that. By passing this exam, students earn the right to work in the capacity of a hero and fight villains alongside the pros, however, this is typically reserved for second and third-year students, not first-years.

But, because of the increased need for heroes due to All Might’s retirement, the students of Class 1-A take the exam in order to accelerate their training. The first portion of the exam centers around team combat, and the second portion centers around a mass rescue effort while simultaneously fighting off villains.

In the end, all of the U.A. students pass the exam with the exception of Bakugo and Todoroki. It’s never explicitly stated why Bakugo fails the exam, although we can assume, but Todoroki fails due to an altercation he has with one of the other students taking the exam.

At the very end of the season, the students of Class 1-A are introduced to the three strongest third-years in the school, and learn about the next step in their hero training which makes full use of their new provisional hero licenses.

New Characters

There are a lot of new characters in this season of MHA, so I’ve picked out three of them which I thought were important this season, and who will hopefully be important again later on in the series. The first of these characters has a familiar name, but we didn’t actually meet him until this season, All for One.

As we should all know by now, All for One is the polar opposite of All Might. While All Might is the symbol of peace whose quirk is passed down through generations of heroes, All for One is the leader of the League of Villains whose quirk allows him to steal the quirks of others.

Unfortunately, we don’t actually know all that much about him. We know he has an abundance of stolen quirks, but he only seems to combine them in order to turn his arm into a giant air cannon, which isn’t very unique. We also know he’s evil and killed All Might’s mentor, but we don’t know why he’s evil.

Finally, there have been multiple hints pointing to All for One’s quirk, and All Might’s One for All being related. Could the relationship between these two quirks be the reason All for One became evil in the first place? Or was One for All created as a counter to All for One?

Now that he’s been defeated and imprisoned, we may never get the answers to those questions, but I’m hopeful that one day All for One will make a comeback and become relevant again. After all, he does seem to be fairly confident that he could break out of prison whenever he wants.

The next character I want to talk about is another villain, Muscular. Muscular is a member of the League of Villains’ Vanguard Action Squad, albeit one we hadn’t met previously. His quirk is another super-strength type, but his allows him to simply increase his muscle mass at will.

He’s defeated by Deku during the training camp arc, but I think he’ll be back at a later point in the series for one very specific reason: Bakugo. It’s true that the League of Villains were attempting to capture Bakugo in this arc, but Muscular appears to have more information on Bakugo than the others.

We can also see that he looks very similar to Bakugo, which leads me to believe that the two of them are actually related in some way. If this does turn out to be the case, defeating Muscular will likely be an important step in Bakugo’s character development later on.

The final new character who I think will play an important role going forward is Inasa Yoarashi, a first-year student at Shiketsu High. Inasa is the one who got into an altercation with Todoroki during the hero exam arc, resulting in both students failing to get their licenses.

Inasa’s reason for hating Todoroki is that his father, Endeavor, doesn’t act like a true hero. While this has nothing to do with Todoroki, Inasa comments that Todoroki has the same, cold eyes as his father. However, what Inasa doesn’t know is that Todoroki hates Endeavor as well and doesn’t see him as a good hero role model either.

Inasa’s quirk gives him control over wind, so he’s basically the same as if Gaara from Naruto controlled wind instead of sand. I find that elemental-type abilities like this are often some of the most powerful in shounen series simply because they’re so versatile.

Since Endeavor plays a larger role in the upcoming arcs of the series now that All Might has retired, I’m expecting Inasa to show up once again, but I’m not sure in what capacity. I’ve mentioned in other posts, though, that I’d like to see him and Todoroki either get trained or work together in the future.

Conclusion

Just like the previous two seasons of My Hero Academia, this third season is a 7/10. I enjoy the series and think it’s good, but I don’t think it’s really anything special. A lot of people praise it for being some unique series, but I see it simply as a good shounen anime, nothing more.

While many people had issues with this OP, here’s a link to the first OP of season 3, which is actually my favorite MHA OP.

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My review of the next season is available here.

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