Boku no Hero Academia Season 5 – 01

OP: “No.1” by DISH//

I reserve the right to change the numbering conventions, because it wouldn’t shock me to see Bones decide to call this “Episode 0.5” or some such. It’s not technically a recap episode though, so probably not. In fact there’s more new material here than actual recap, though it’s entirely anime-original to the best of my recollection. As such it plays more like an OVA episode than either a premiere or a recap – and the overall quality lands about where you’d project it to based on that.

The most important (and canon) part of this episode, in fact, is the bit after the ED (an excellent one, by The Peggies) so make sure you don’t skip it. It’s the only bit that really ties into what this season is actually going to be about, though if you pay attention to the OP you’ll have a pretty clear idea. The folks who’re going to be prominent in the first cour are all over it, though not the actual episode. The name of the arc pretty much tells you what you need to know anyway – Horikoshi-sensei took his lessons from Togashi in that regard.

The subplot hatched to launch the season was fine in that very OVA way, with the cast acting sort of like Cliffs Notes versions of themselves. It’s entertaining enough but nothing essential is added to the plot until that epilogue bit. In the meantime we did get the interesting news this week that Boku no Hero Academia is entering its “final arc” – though just exactly what that means was not elaborated on. It wouldn’t shock me, for example, to see the final arc be 100 chapters or something. I don’t remember exactly when Horikoshi said he thought the series was about half over, but it feels like around chapter 250.

In any event it’s certainly nice to have Boku no Hero back, and based on the two arcs it’s covering this should be a pretty solid season (and not a split-cour, as far as I know). To some extent HeroAca has been eclipsed in Japan by the youngbloods like Kimetsu and Jujutsu Kaisen, but it’s arguably the last of Weekly Shounen Jump’s “next gen” titans still standing, and it remains extremely popular. What’s more it remains bigger than the upstarts worldwide, and is easily the top-selling manga franchise in the U.S.. We’re not going to get to the end of the story this season by any means, but by the time it ends we may have a very good idea of Horikoshi’s plans for that ending.