My Review Academia S5 E1: Emergency Drill

It’s that time again! A new episode of My Hero Academia has finally arrived! Which means it’s time for a discussion!

Season five opens with a recap/filler episode. After briefly going over the climactic battle between Endeavor and the Nomu at the end of the last season, class 1-A is thrown into an emergency drill! Our heroes must defeat UA’s Big Three (or save, in Mirio’s case), who are acting as villains!

And… that’s it. That’s the plot of the episode. No fun twists or turns or anything dramatic. Just ‘the kids need to beat the older kids. Okay, they did it, we’re done now. Here’s a brief teaser for actual plot stuff right before we leave off.’

It’s not bad, thankfully. It does a half-decent job of reintroducing these characters and their powers. Plus, it’s got some pretty funny gags sprinkled in there to give it some flavor. Of all the filler episodes, this is among the least painful to watch. It’s a fun, albeit skippable, little fiasco for Deku and friends.

It does have it’s problems, however. One: the Big Three don’t really put up much of a fight. They show up, act menacing, and then immediately go down. They both only got one attack in before getting defeated. The only one who didn’t was Mirio, because he was playing helpless civilian (to hilarious effect, I’ll admit).

Two: Deku really should’ve been able to punch Amajiki. He knows from first-hand experience how tough he is and he’s learned how to hit people when he needs to. If he can bring himself to punch All Might, he can bring himself to punch his senior.

Three: the animation. It is incredibly up and down this episode. Some shots are very stiff and awkward, featuring characters running with only three drawings. Other shots look fantastic, giving us some badass action. The inconsistency of it can be jarring at times. Thankfully, it never looks as bad as something like Seven Deadly Sins season 3.

Also, did the art style change? It feels different. I could be wrong; it’s been a hot minute since I’ve re-watched the older seasons.

The OP and the ED are okay. I much prefer the ED; it’s cute, it’s simple, and it puts a smile on my face. The OP isn’t bad by any means, but it doesn’t have anything particularly impressive to note. It’s just all the characters gearing up for a fight. Thankfully, in both cases, the songs used are pretty good.

All in all, not a bad way to start off the season. It isn’t especially impressive or memorable on either a writing or visual front. But it is a nice little appetizer for what is to come.