Finally finished MHA (anime)!
May. 13th, 2019 09:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sleepysaurI really liked it. Second half of this anime was far better than the first half, but by now I'm interested enough that I'm considering looking for the manga so I don't have to wait for the next season to continue the story.
Bakugo got way more interesting toward the end, even if some of it I was spoiled on. I think the thing I'm most interested in right now is "where does Bakugou go from here??"
And since I'm now through... it's time to discuss OPs!!
Since there's some good quality here, it's hard to pick the best OP, so let's start with the worst one instead: OP4, Odd Future. It's not bad or anything, and it did grow on me a bit, but it just feels kind of... off. Maybe someone more knowledgeable than me could explain what I'm picking up on there. I'm not sure myself.
The next-worst one is OP2, Peace Sign. I like the song a whole lot! I could listen to it for days at a time! Actually, I kind of did for a while after I finished the sports festival arc. So yeah, great song there. I just don't think the visuals are as good. It spends too much time on characters stretching, I think. There are a few little things I like about it though, like how it's dark and shadowed from the clouds when we first see Todoroki stretching but then they blow past and he's in the sun.
Next worst, right in the middle, is OP5, Make My Story. Which I want to have higher, except I like the other two so much as well. The song is a real bop, the whole sequence feels really dynamic, I love the shot of Yoarashi, and the shot of Aoyama's navel laser, and that shot of Endeavor that cuts to a shot of Todoroki, and the one with All Might that zooms out to show Bakugo and Midoriya... okay, why did I put this below the other two again? Oh, right, purely personal preferences. There are a couple things I dislike because I just don't like them even though there's nothing inherently wrong with them. For example, that close-up of Uraraka and her facial expression and body language. Blargh, that specific form of communicating "cutesy" you see a bunch in anime is something I don't like looking at, even if cute in general is fine with me. See? Stupid personal preference.
As for the last two... well, I'd put OP1 (The Day) over OP3 (Sora ni Utaeba), but I need to talk about them together because one of my favorite things about OP3 is in comparison to OP1. So in OP1, you have Midoriya looking at All Might's back in awe and reaching toward him. This is how he feels about the ideal All Might represents: he wants to be a great hero who saves people with a smile just like All Might, but it feels impossible. And that is all that All Might is to Midoriya before everything. A symbol of his dreams, something incredible and unreachable. To reach out to All Might is to reach for something you can't actually grasp. That All Might faces away from Midoriya, only slowly turning toward him, emphasizes that distance between what Midoriya dreams of and what he actually has. Of course, that All Might is turning toward Midoriya at all is huge: this means All Might isn't quite so unreachable after all. But to even be able to reach him is so incredible that you can't help but see it as a BIG DEAL.
But then in OP3, things are different. This time, All Might comes to Midoriya himself. This time they face each other. That's meaningful enough if you're still only looking at All Might as a symbol, but this time around, All Might is also a person. A person who acknowledges Midoriya, whose smile grows when he sees him. And Midoriya doesn't look at All Might in awe this time, but instead he familiarly smiles the way you would when a loved one drops by. And this time, instead of Midoriya reaching out for the impossible, he and All Might both extend their arms and take each others' hands in a gesture of strength and power, as Midoriya's arm shines with One For All. It's very appropriate for the growth Midoriya goes through at this stage of the story, and UGGHHHHH I could fangirl about the first fifteen seconds of this OP all day! Oh, I also really like the song choice. And the color blue. And there's a shot where Tsu drops in out of nowhere and something about that shot is very appealing to me... but those first fifteen seconds!! swoon
As for OP1? Yeah, there's a lot of good stuff in there. Great song of course, but I think my favorite part is the bit with the focus on the notebooks. The part where they're flashing on screen, yes, but also that quick moment right before we see young Bakugo and young Midoriya. That flash where you see the notebooks raining down, timed perfectly with the music... perfection! Actually, that's a lot of what works so well about this OP: the music and visuals match up so amazingly well, even compared to the other OPs. I am incapable of listening to this song without imagining this OP. The other songs I can listen to without imagining their accompanying visuals, but not this one! They're too closely linked. That's what gives OP1 the top spot, for me.
I may think about the EDs at some point too, but for now I'm just gonna stick with "ED1 and ED5 are the best EDs."
Stay tuned for more thoughts, this time more fandom-related! You wanna know how I feel about the SHIPS? Well I can tell you how I feel about the ships! But not until later.
Bakugo got way more interesting toward the end, even if some of it I was spoiled on. I think the thing I'm most interested in right now is "where does Bakugou go from here??"
And since I'm now through... it's time to discuss OPs!!
Since there's some good quality here, it's hard to pick the best OP, so let's start with the worst one instead: OP4, Odd Future. It's not bad or anything, and it did grow on me a bit, but it just feels kind of... off. Maybe someone more knowledgeable than me could explain what I'm picking up on there. I'm not sure myself.
The next-worst one is OP2, Peace Sign. I like the song a whole lot! I could listen to it for days at a time! Actually, I kind of did for a while after I finished the sports festival arc. So yeah, great song there. I just don't think the visuals are as good. It spends too much time on characters stretching, I think. There are a few little things I like about it though, like how it's dark and shadowed from the clouds when we first see Todoroki stretching but then they blow past and he's in the sun.
Next worst, right in the middle, is OP5, Make My Story. Which I want to have higher, except I like the other two so much as well. The song is a real bop, the whole sequence feels really dynamic, I love the shot of Yoarashi, and the shot of Aoyama's navel laser, and that shot of Endeavor that cuts to a shot of Todoroki, and the one with All Might that zooms out to show Bakugo and Midoriya... okay, why did I put this below the other two again? Oh, right, purely personal preferences. There are a couple things I dislike because I just don't like them even though there's nothing inherently wrong with them. For example, that close-up of Uraraka and her facial expression and body language. Blargh, that specific form of communicating "cutesy" you see a bunch in anime is something I don't like looking at, even if cute in general is fine with me. See? Stupid personal preference.
As for the last two... well, I'd put OP1 (The Day) over OP3 (Sora ni Utaeba), but I need to talk about them together because one of my favorite things about OP3 is in comparison to OP1. So in OP1, you have Midoriya looking at All Might's back in awe and reaching toward him. This is how he feels about the ideal All Might represents: he wants to be a great hero who saves people with a smile just like All Might, but it feels impossible. And that is all that All Might is to Midoriya before everything. A symbol of his dreams, something incredible and unreachable. To reach out to All Might is to reach for something you can't actually grasp. That All Might faces away from Midoriya, only slowly turning toward him, emphasizes that distance between what Midoriya dreams of and what he actually has. Of course, that All Might is turning toward Midoriya at all is huge: this means All Might isn't quite so unreachable after all. But to even be able to reach him is so incredible that you can't help but see it as a BIG DEAL.
But then in OP3, things are different. This time, All Might comes to Midoriya himself. This time they face each other. That's meaningful enough if you're still only looking at All Might as a symbol, but this time around, All Might is also a person. A person who acknowledges Midoriya, whose smile grows when he sees him. And Midoriya doesn't look at All Might in awe this time, but instead he familiarly smiles the way you would when a loved one drops by. And this time, instead of Midoriya reaching out for the impossible, he and All Might both extend their arms and take each others' hands in a gesture of strength and power, as Midoriya's arm shines with One For All. It's very appropriate for the growth Midoriya goes through at this stage of the story, and UGGHHHHH I could fangirl about the first fifteen seconds of this OP all day! Oh, I also really like the song choice. And the color blue. And there's a shot where Tsu drops in out of nowhere and something about that shot is very appealing to me... but those first fifteen seconds!! swoon
As for OP1? Yeah, there's a lot of good stuff in there. Great song of course, but I think my favorite part is the bit with the focus on the notebooks. The part where they're flashing on screen, yes, but also that quick moment right before we see young Bakugo and young Midoriya. That flash where you see the notebooks raining down, timed perfectly with the music... perfection! Actually, that's a lot of what works so well about this OP: the music and visuals match up so amazingly well, even compared to the other OPs. I am incapable of listening to this song without imagining this OP. The other songs I can listen to without imagining their accompanying visuals, but not this one! They're too closely linked. That's what gives OP1 the top spot, for me.
I may think about the EDs at some point too, but for now I'm just gonna stick with "ED1 and ED5 are the best EDs."
Stay tuned for more thoughts, this time more fandom-related! You wanna know how I feel about the SHIPS? Well I can tell you how I feel about the ships! But not until later.