My Hero Academia Season 7: Peak Fiction

Important takeaways

• My Hero Academia Season 7 is the biggest and best yet, despite being shorter than most of them.
• Season 7 showcases effective storytelling with a strong sense of pace and balance.
• The season reaches new heights, surpasses previous ones, and explores its themes seriously and emotionally.

The following contains minor spoilers for My Hero Academia Season 7, which is now streaming on Crunchyroll.

My Hero Academia Season 7 was four episodes shorter than every season since the first, but given the sheer amount of joy and heartache conveyed across its 21 episodes, you might not have noticed. It is without a doubt largest season yet, and after six months spent drinking in its beautiful artwork and serious, emotional script, it's by far best also.

Naomi Nakayama, who previously directed 2016's Orangetook on the role of series director alongside executive director Kenji Nagasaki, who helmed the show's first three seasons. She took the captain's chair at a critical juncture and, by all accounts, knocked it out of the park, showing an early eye for acting as she storyboarded the first two episodes.

A premiere with Barely Time to Waste

Last season, fans were left with a cliffhanger. Tomura Shigaraki would reach full strength within three days, and America's #1 Pro Hero, Star and Stripe, came to Japan to help out. It was an enticing hook, albeit one that feels like such a small part of the story in retrospect. By the end of the premiere, Star and Stripe have already been intercepted by Shigaraki, who is hell-bent on stealing her quirk. Season 7 has a strong sense of momentum – as expected from a story so close to the end.

It's a cleverly constructed fight, and an emotional one at that, leaving neither side necessarily a winner but buying the heroes enough time to prepare for their final attack. Before you can resign yourself to what feels like an inevitable training arc between battles, the revelation of a traitor at the UA shatters this preconceived notion and soars the tension once again. Soon after comes the war that the rest of the season – and the series for that matter – will chronicle.

The start of My Hero Academia's final war

The heroes split up across the country in a coordinated operation to apprehend the villains one by one. Shoto meets Toya in Kamino Ward, where All Might's career ended. Endeavor teams up with the Hawks against All For One in the sky above the wreckage of Gunga Villa. An all-star team has assembled to defeat Shigaraki at UA Academy, which has been converted into an air fortress designed to take him down. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

It feels like the good guys finally have the upper hand for once, and it feels great, even if it doesn't last long. It becomes a tug-of-war, with unforeseen complications emerging quickly and often, with ripple effects increasingly affecting battles that go on for miles. Season 7 is incredibly effective at balancing the larger purposes of its story with the individual roles the supporting cast plays in building to these milestones.

How season 7 rises above its flaws

Of course, the above is not exactly news. What stuck with many My Hero Academia for starters was Deku; his despair at being wayward, his bravery in spite of it, and his exultation when he learned it still become a hero. Since then, this series has consistently handled the backstories of its larger cast with writing and presentation of equal or even higher quality. So it's no surprise that viewers still fall in love with the characters this late in the game.

In that sense, it's business as usual for anime, but what's less flattering are the oft-cited complaints about the adaptation, which similarly persist here (at least early on). Even with strong narrative momentum, some exposition can feel redundant, and flashbacks, even more so. These aren't new problems so much as familiar ones that hamper genuinely strong storytelling.

All for one, “Extras” and the lack of Deku

For eight years and seven seasons, My Hero Academia has been a celebration and critique of superheroes in equal measure. Its society's flaws have been constantly exposed through increasingly empathetic villains, who challenge the heroes to question their complicity, rise above and be the heroes they claim to be. All the myriad themes that feed into that core take center stage, as the story wears its heart on its sleeve more proudly than ever.

This is a story of societal collapse, and how the mere fear of it robs people of their ability to think about a future. All For One explicitly states this as its goal; he wants to be the all-powerful terror living rent-free in everyone's heads – to literally steal the future. All the while, he dismisses Class 1A – the next generation, which represents the very future he wants to extinguish – labeling them as nothing more than “extras”.

Yet Season 7's core lesson is that there are no “extras,” something that is glaringly obvious as a result of Deku's relative absence. “Relative” is the key word – he's still around, still an active member of the conflict, and his eventual revenge against Shigaraki is excellent, but the story deliberately and skillfully sidelines him to emphasize everyone else. The idea that “anyone can be a hero” isn't new to the superhero genre, but this story delivers that message with so much more heart than most.

My Hero Academia reaches new heights

Something beautiful happens in the latter half of season 7 – probably around episode 154. The aforementioned flaws so often cited by this show's detractors seem to all but disappear as the pace picks up, the emotions increase, and the animation goes even harder than it already had. I found myself having to cheer and tear up more than any show has in a while.

From the joy of unexpected returning characters to long-awaited showdowns, this season didn't just match the heights of the previous ones—it surpassed them. As good as the first half is, it's a little shocking how much higher it climbed week by week. It consistently raised the bar, raising the stakes while shaking up the formula to avoid becoming exhaustive with such a long fight.

This show deserves praise more than ever

It's a phenomenal climax, built on eight years of excellent television that tried to adapt long-running shōnen without filler and without compromising too much on quality. Your mileage may vary depending on the anime's consistency, but there's no denying that what Studio Bones accomplished with this adaptation is impressive. At a time when the landscape of the shōnen genre is changing, it cannot be understated how much harder this season hits because it took eight years to get there.

My Hero Academia Season 7 is a masterpiece of TV anime, the construction and execution of which deserve as much attention as Jujutsu KaisenThe Shibuya incident. It's a testament to Kohei Horikoshi's writing, Studio Bone's artistry, and the shōnen's timeless appeal that such a serious story can stand up even when superheroes are more saturated than ever. In a year full of great shows, this season alone can warrant an Anime of the Year nomination.