#last week: wah wah where's my big trinity feels

[mysterylover123]

Thoughts on the New OP

Never have I been so disappointed to get exactly what I wanted...

OK so as many have pointed out, Bones is clearly not prioritizing the MVA arc in the OPs or the marketing of season 5. For some reason it feels like a minor B plot instead of the actual main plot it was for 21 chapters.

So we start with Class 1-A:

The Trinity and OchaTsu being the last 5 to appear is not bad. Also I’m just realizing that the only two characters who have permanently changed their costumes as of 318 (not just winter changes) to match this arc are Bakugou and Ochako. Of course the two who have the coolest costumes in the bunch are the only ones who changed em.

Now we get some long, moody shots of the Big OT3 in wreckage. Wreckage of hero society maybe?

“hey brother listen” subtle for the shot of Shoto being here, Bones. Not foreshadowing anything at all there. All they needed was to cut to Dabi right away and this would’ve been a walking spoiler.

More Origin Trio. At this point this feels kinda gratuitous. Like, proportionately, the Internship arc here is less than ten chapters, to the MVA arc’s 20+, but the MVA arc takes up like 5% of the OP, the internship stuff like 90%. We BARELY see the League at all, you could blink and miss them:

Like boom. This (which is just ripped from the Volume 24 cover anyway) is all. A few disconnected shots of individual members later, and that’s it. I was expecting an all out League only opening for this arc! Dissolving the title like Chapter 220, each individual villain getting their own moment, a chance to really play with some Dabi foreshadowing and maybe some cool Toga/Ocha parallels? But nope, nothing.

Yes, I love KiriMina and OchaTSuyu, but they have like two pages of footage in this arc. WHY does every member of Class A get more footage in this OP than the League do?! 

Like, Toga and Shigaraki in a few disconnected shots that summarize nothing are not enough! This was the League’s arc, top to bottom, and now not only have they been postponed, but demoted to extras in their own OP!

More gratuitous OT3 shots. 

OK this shot is pretty good. Endeav replacing All Might. I’m sure Endeav Antis love that.

Deku meets impressionism apparently.

So I’m of two minds about this OP. On the one hand, I do love the trinity, the Winter Internship arc is maybe my third/fourth fave in the entire series (Camino, Sports Fest, and possibly PLF via for the top), and only last week I was whining really loudly about Class 1-A’s lack of screentime in the manga and being really grateful to bones for spoiling us with them. Maybe since the manga has finally decided to put out I’ve been mollified, lol.

But on the other hand, I also love the League, and the MVA arc. That storyline was one of the best put together and most unique in all of MHA. The entire idea behind it - shown so eloquently with Shigaraki destroying the logo in 220 - was to jump into the point of view of the  villains, leaving behind the heroes. The idea was to humanize the villains, explore their motivations and what made them the way they are. This was important, because one of the main thrusts of the PLF arc -the thing that we reached at the climax, the key to the Toga vs Ochako, Dabi backstory ,and Deku realizations - was the idea that the villains were tragically created by the flaws in the hero society that made them, and that some of them maybe worth saving. And we achieved that by letting hte audience jump into their point of view.

The MVA arc framed the villains as protagonists. It let us, the audience, genuinely come to care about them. They were the heroes for the better part of 2019. And that was important. Yes, Bones will still adapt the same material, but look at how they’re framing it in this OP. Rather than giving us the villains as our protagonists, they’re delivering them the exact same way they did in every OP before this: A quick shot or two of the group, framed to make them look sinister, and maybe a few extra shots of Shigaraki walking around (like Odd Future). That’s it. Nothing to put us into their heads.

So combine this OP with both the pacing of this season (taking the joint training arc slowly and leapfrogging over the arc entirely) and the marketing (ignoring the villains almost completely) and it’s clear that Bones does not consider the MVA arc a priority at all. They just don’t seem interested in adapting it. It’s clear that they much prefer TDBKDK at the Internship. Hell, they’re making an entire movie around that. Big clue. 

And I don’t know how to feel about that. Again, I love the trinity. I love their little arc together. The most popular post I ever made was about Chapter 249. I’m excited for their movie. But...I don’t think that Bones should compromise the storytelling to indulge in that. We need the MVA arc. For manga fans, even though 295 was a bit of a mess, the line from Deku about saving Shigaraki - chapter 300′s realization from Shoto about saving his brother - 289′s bit where Ochako sees Toga crying - really hit hard, because of the MVA arc. But how’s that gonna play in the anime if Bones turns this arc into an after thought?

I guess I’ll have to wait and see how Bones actually adapts the arc. I mean, they’ve still got 11 episodes left this season. They could pull it off really well. But man, I’m starting to have some doubts.