So I somehow missed the fact that My Hero Academia was returning this spring season.
Actually, I know exactly how I didn’t notice. They began in April with four clip shows that recapped the highlights of the previous 6 seasons. I saw that something was happening with the series but they seemed like OVAs so I didn’t watch them. Until Season 7 began on May 4... So I caught up with the first two episodes.
I think this may be the final season of the anime, unless some commenters I’ve read are wrong. It wouldn’t surprise me. The storyline has gotten dark the past few seasons and since it’s a shounen story, I think we have our final or at least next-to-final boss in Shigaraki/All for One. (The only other villain who needs a resolution would be Dabi. Given his importance to the family of one of MHA’s heroes, I expect Dabi will be handled last.)
My Hero Academia had such a bright, sunny beginning. I have to say that once the story got dark, it stayed dark. I still enjoy the characters and of course I’ll watch it to the end, but I kind of wish it had taken a different route.
As for the rest of the spring season, Unnamed Memory and Spice and Wolf are still lovely and Bartender Glass of God is still an adult viewer’s delight. Tadaima Okaeri is proving to be a bath of emotions, which I more or less expected given the premise (gay omegaverse couple with cute baby).
Kaiju No. 8 is a blast, just a straight-up action ride with fun characters and a lot of humor. All in all, it’s a very good anime season.
Every now and then I feel compelled to highlight certain fan works. The term transformative works applies to fan fiction, fan art, and the like. It doesn’t really cover, however, just how complex and richly nuanced some of these works can be.
Hetalia: Axis Powers remains a fertile story universe for transformative fan works, especially given its huge cast of characters, historical setting, and large female following. The amount of fan art alone is staggering (just Google “Hetalia” and hit “Images” for a small sampling).
Since the story at least tangentially deals with World War II, some of its fan works are dead serious in tone. Lately I’ve been enamored with the following YouTube (or I should say NicoNico) video.
The context is Germany’s relationship with his older brother Prussia. Before you watch, look out for:
1) The enormous level of effort put into this video. This is a fan-created video with fan-drawn art, fan-composed new lyrics for the Vocaloid RIN song “Kokoro” (“Heart”), a fan singing those new lyrics, and a fan video editor to cut it all together.
2) The beautiful artwork. In particular, note the faces, bodies, hands. Whoever drew this is a professional-level artist (and is also completely in love with these characters, you can tell from the detail work).
From concept to completion, this video must have taken months to create. It’s one of countless fan-produced things out there, drawings and fan fiction and doujinshi and videos and dolls and cosplay outfits and everything else you can imagine. All made out of pure love with not a thought of money.
Enjoy. (And hit the CC for closed captions.)
Video Credits (video is below the credit picture):
