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The grand finale is finally here. After nearly a decade, four movies, and over 160 episodes, the final season of My Hero Academia is currently airing in Japan and streaming on Crunchyroll. It is the end of an era for anime fans, but I’ve had trouble keeping up my excitement going into this season of MHA. In fact, it has been a long time since I was heavily invested in the story or characters of My Hero Academia, and I think I’ve figured out why.

When I recount the biggest moments of My Hero Academia, usually it is a single name that is at the forefront, and it isn’t the main character, Deku. It is All Might who carried the show in its early seasons. From the moment he burst into the building – for the first time not smiling – to fight the Nomu at the end of season one, I knew that this was a character that I could obsess over. I’ve got All Might on t-shirts, posters, and figurines around my office. I’ve cosplayed as him and it became one of my all-time favorite convention stories. In my mind, Deku is mainly an interesting character, not because of what he does but because of his status as All Might's successor. 

Then season three happened and we saw the inevitable end of All Might’s career as a pro hero. That fight against All for One, with All Might burning the last embers of his power to deliver one final smash, was big, emotional, and memorable. This was peak Shonen anime for me and I was so excited that I was aching for more. It was the perfect end of the character’s story, but it wasn’t the end of My Hero Academia. We had to keep going, and that is when my problems with the series started.

Since season three, I’ve found myself in peaks and troughs when it comes to my interest in My Hero Academia. The problem wasn’t that Deku wasn’t an interesting character; it was that he wasn’t All Might. All the moments that I found myself excited by were the ones where I was reminded of All Might. Sure, the fight against Overhaul had an emotional weight to it, but it really just served to show how much more of One for All Deku had left to unlock to put him on All Might’s level. I loved the opening season seven because it gave us Star and Stripe, who, aside from being the Large Woman I’d been waiting for in the series for years, was so All Might coded it was baked into every part of her design and even her backstory. Heck, him showing up in Deadpool: Samurai was the only thing that made me pick up that comic in the first place, and that was only for like three pages.

Every time All Might isn’t the focus, I find myself losing interest and asking, “Where’s All Might?” like I’m a bit on The Simpsons. The reveal of Dabi’s true identity was great and well delivered, but it didn’t get me hyped. Watching Hawks infiltrate the ranks of the villains was tense but forgettable in the grand scheme of things. And don’t get me started on the My Villain Academia arc, which barely felt like it was part of the same story as the rest of the anime.

The thing is that I like superheroes who are just out there doing good in the world. The thing that made All Might a great character for me wasn’t the fact that he was the biggest and the strongest, but the fact that he approached everything with a smile on his face. No matter the weight he had to carry or the pain he had to endure or the sacrifice he had to make, he was there. It is why I love Superman and Spider-Man more than their gloomy or gritty counterparts in their respective universes. I want heroes who understand the power of a smile.

So I’m watching My Hero Academia season eight – the final season – which should be gripping me. For two episodes, we have All Might fighting in a kind of Iron Man suit to try to recapture his previous strength. This is a fun idea and shows the obligatory “it was the man and not the quirk” storyline that had been building for a while, but, like Star and Stripe in season seven, that is taken away suddenly to make room for Deku and Bakugo to be the next generation of heroes. And, once again, my interest plummets because it's not All Might in the spotlight.

Which led me to the almost startling realization that I might not be the My Hero Academia fan that I thought I was. Maybe I was just an All Might fan all along, and it has taken me eight seasons to figure that out. I’m still going to watch the rest of the season and finish off the story because I’m not a quitter, but it has been a struggle, and I sense it isn’t going to get better for All Might-obsessed fans like me.

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