So ends what was undoubtedly the most eventful season of Boku no Hero Academia – offscreen, that is.  It was controversial with fans from start to finish – personnel changes due to the newest movie, re-ordering of arcs (due to the newest movie), and the shortening of “My Villain Academia”.  While I would probably rank this season last among the first five, that’s mostly due to the “Joint Training” arc being probably the manga’s weakest.  Mistakes were made – a couple of weak filler episodes, not giving MVA enough time to really shine its brightest – but I think this season got a lot of heat it didn’t deserve  And Bones even more so, as they had nothing to do with what most of the kvetching was about.

Make no mistake, BnHA fans love to complain – more than they love the series, seemingly.  It’s a problem with megahit shounen generally, though it seems to me that it’s worse with this series for some reason.  And make no mistake, this is a megahit.  The latest movie did huge box office business, and the manga continues to be a powerhouse.  And lest the rise of supernova like Jujutsu Kaisen and Kimetsu no Yaiba deceive you, HeroAca remains more popular than any of them internationally – and that matters.  All that is why a sixth season has already been announced for 2022 – one of the least surprising sequel announcements ever.  The only question was whether it would be official in real-time.

I don’t know why the anime decided to make “Meta Liberation Army” as short as it did – the one element of S5 I’d really call an unforced error.  Maybe the anime was never really comfortable with it, as it’s so tonally different from the rest of the series.  Yet in spite of that it worked splendidly, and really set the table for what’s to come.  Part of that is Garaki giving Shigaraki what he promised – an unspecified power-up after four months of hell.  Shigaraki is at the forefront – of the Paranormal Liberation front, of villainy in general – in a way he never has been before.

If Shigaraki is at the forefront, Hawks is caught in the middle.  He has in many ways the hardest job of anybody, playing the role of triple agent and trying to make hero society aware of and ready for what’s to come.  And this is a hero society still stumbling, its footing unsure in the aftermath of All Might’s forced retirement.  In a sense one could view the war to come as a test of which side adapts to this new reality more quickly and effectively, each of their leaders still around, but unable to lead as they once did.

For the students there’s still a measure of blissful ignorance – heck, not even the teachers officially know what’s going on.  But the sharper among them are definitely suspicious (especially when all of them are later assigned an “expeditionary” work training exercise in the spring).  They go through the motions of carefree student life – showing off their new moves, clumsily flirting, enjoying hotpot parties (Kacchan scolds Shouto for his poor knife skills) in the winter, musing about what it will be like to have kouhai at last.  But there’s a sense of false bravado to it, at least for the more tuned in among them.

All Might remains the tragic figure of the series more than any other.  He’s experiencing a kind of living death.  He “chose to live” as he tells Aizawa-sensei, rather than die young as all his One For All predecessors did.  He has a role to play, most obviously in guiding Midoriya-shounen, but he’s hurting deeply.  He can never again be the symbol of peace, the rock that the world looks to in dark times – and it’s killing him inside.  He’s deeply loved by almost everyone – Deku most keenly but most of the other students as well, his fellow heroes (most of them), the whole country.  Eraser tells him to kick his feet up, to take care of himself and leave it to others.  It’s said out of love, but it makes All Might feel worse.

The conversation between All Might, Izuku and Bakago is one of the highlights of the episode.  Kacchan is a sharp one – he flips through All Might’s OFA notebook and immediately grasps the key points.  Dare I say, is there a bit of concern for Deku’s welfare in Kacchan here as he notes the unifying trait of the previous users?  It seems to me that he’s warning All Might that whatever happens to Izuku is on his head.  All Might is guiding the boy the best he can – he tells him the next quirk he learns will be Shimura Nana’s “Float”.  And he muses that Deku is “no longer looking back” – the student is slowly growing beyond the master’s ability to teach him, as it ever was with students and masters.  But Deku will need all the help he can get in facing what’s to come.

As we look ahead to Season 6, it’s probably not unreasonable to expect the adaptation to be more straightforward.  There may or may not be another movie – or rather, there surely will be, but the timing may or not impact production.  But there are no big decisions to be made in terms of adaptation.  We have the big-ass story – “Paranormal Liberation War”, widely regarded as among the manga’s best arcs – that this cour has been meticulously setting up, and the next season will be given over to telling it.  I think that will be a positive change for Boku no Hero Academia, and the sixth season one that those fans who still have an open mind will regard as one of the best.