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troofless · 1 month ago

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*cracks knuckles* alright guys it's time for my 1k long manifesto that nobody wants to read lambasting a badly directed movie

So I just finished watching the fourth MHA movie (You're Next) and it was kinda underwhelming, so here are my thoughts on it. More under the cut.

The good parts:

The comedy parts hit well, my favourites being:

Bakugou telling his classmates to turn back the truck and drive into the apocalyptic-ass-looking Alchemy-growing area

Izuku commenting silently on how Giulio is politely insulting him,

Bakugou calling Giulio 'ikemob'

Izuku bumping into the fake wall and chute scene

Team Izuku taking down 3 jailbreakers, Bakugou chiming in that his team caught 4, and Todoroki chiming in a beat later to say that his team caught 6 in a throw back to Two Heroes

Bakugou calling Tokoyami and then Todoroki using the 'I'll hold them off here, you go on ahead' trope 'chuuni ka' and 'mata chuuni'

When Dark Might asks 'Anyone who wants to join me, raise your hands' and Bakugou raises his hand to ask if his looks are the only thing similar to All Might

Anyway Bakugou is just perfect comedy in the whole movie it's great

All of Giulio's fight scenes because his creative use of his eye, mecha arm and motorcycle are so creative and Ironman/Batman inspired

Dude Giulio even has this cool scene where he's asleep but because he's programmed his support items to shoot dream lady on sight he just stomps her like you cannot get more cool than that he is literally Iron Deku prototype I see the vision

The scene where Izuku and Giulio have a heart to heart while Izuku is tied to his motorcycle is hilarious.

Izuku is just cute in all scenes with Giulio. I love him.

Izuku shows how deserving he is to be the main character of MHA as a guy with compassion (stopping Giulio from shooting Anna), while showing how badass he can get with his intellect (Domain Expansion Nullification and Domain Expansion Decelerate fight), and the raw ability to fuck shit up.

The animation is gorgeous, every scene can be a screenshot on its own and look good (except for the final fight but I'll get to that)

Giulio and Anna are great characters and are precious, Giulio is so badass with a Edward-Elric-kinnie mech arm, leg, eye AND motorcycle. Bro was the Iron Deku before Iron Deku even existed.

The Gollini family all have amazing Quirks (that were sadly underutilised but we'll get there in a bit)

The dream sequences were nice fanservice bits, with Todoroki and Iida's ones being heartbreaking and Izuku's one being cute and somewhat heartbreaking as well (before the vestiges cuck him)

And now for the bad stuff, which is pretty much everything else. (Note that I'm not gonna talk about Two Heroes because I view that movie as the weakest out of all the movies because it's painful to see how much Izuku and Bakugou et al have improved since then.)

The opening scene:

World Heroes Mission (WHM) had a banger opening scene of an action-packed heist mission fight scene that segued right into another cops and robbers chase scene into yet another spiderDeku scene. Heroes Rising had a chill scene with everyone in Class 1-A showing their stuff and personalities. You're Next had... what...? Izuku soloing 3 guys in the most boringly choreographed fight ever. There's villain who can literally transform a car into a car from Cars and all Izuku does is spam Blackwhip to pull the car from running away in a zoomed out scene. 0 ingenuity in camera angles, movement, etc. The movie then cuts to the opening, which is pretty banger, but god You're Next had such a weak intro when you put it next to WHM.

The pacing:

The pacing is godawful in this movie. Every 10 minutes the movie switches to a different POV as if they're allergic to focusing on a single character. The problem is that throughout movie, they focus on FIVE different POVs: Team Izuku, Team Bakugou, Team Todoroki, Dark Might, and the Pro Heroes. So they're continuously juggling between giving everyone screen time, resulting in a lot of cuts of what could have been cool fight scenes.

An example would be Team Bakugou gets dropped into a cool video-game-esque dungeon where the Villain henchman sends wave after waves of monster mobs after them. Each of the peanut gallery in Team Bakugou gets to use their one signature move in a 2 second cut before the scene cuts away to another POV. POV switch back, oh hey, Team Bakugou have cleared out all the mobs, still stuck in the same dungeon room, mind you, and what does the Villain do? Send more trash mobs after them. This results in another 5 seconds of Bakugou saying 'Goddammit there's no end to them' and then cut away to another POV. POV swap back? Oh, Team Bakugou have cleared the dungeon already OFF SCREEN. And how did they do this, you ask? Bakugou literally blows up the wall leading to the boss room, the Villain yells that he's cheating, and then Bakugou silently uses his grenade bracer on the guy. Wtf. We could have had a cool moment of Team Bakugou teaming up to progress through a dungeon with traps and occasional monsters with swinging-axe comedic moments added in (think Danganronpa 3 Chiaki dungeon), but all this is only implied in a fade to black situation.

And let's not forget about Giulio and Anna. So let's just get this straight. This movie was written for them. This movie was not written with the rest of the MHA characters in mind. This plot was someone's OC fanfiction in a MHA universe that had Izuku and the others as side characters in their love drama. So the writer wants to get us invested in these two characters. To get us invested, we need to know their backstory, Quirks, etc. How does the writer do that? THEY MAKE GIULIO MONOLOGUE. He tells us his whole sob story in one whole sitting - Anna's Quirk, how Anna has been suffering because of said Quirk, how he was brought in to save her with his Quirk, how she tells him to kill her if she ever loses control, how he agrees, how she gets kidnapped, how he loses his arm that holds his Quirk factor in the process and thus can't save her... AND AS IF THAT WASN'T ENOUGH... Izuku has to talk-no-jutsu him out of his depression and say, 'No! You can save her! You want to save her! So don't give up!' in the most cookie cutter, shittiest emotional beat ever. And to make it even worse, the movie makes the whole peanut gallery of Class 1-A chime in after Izuku as well.

The directing:

'WHO DIRECTED THIS MOVIE????' is the question I found myself furiously thinking every time the POV swapped. I checked it up before the movie, and hey, I don't know this movie director, he hasn't directed shows I liked, and it's a different director from Heroes Rising and WHM. Well maybe his past works don't reflect his present triumphs, right? Yeah, no, this movie was just badly directed.

The POV swaps too often to get invested in any of them, the fight scenes were uninteresting, fight matchups uninspired, and they gave too much screentime to the less unimportant characters fighting trash mobs. WHM had trash mobs too, but at least they didn't pretend the side characters were important and hogged screentime. This movie abused trash mobs like they were handing out buy 1 get 100 free mobs at a supermarket sale. Every time the heroes defeat a wave of mobs, the bad guy immediately spawns more of them because 'Oh, his jacked up power can Just Do That I guess'.

Some of the choices in the movie make no sense. Why do Team Bakugou get thrown into amusement park in this one scene and that place is never seen again?

The choreography:

The fight choreographies were so inspired and lame I can't even.

In WHM we had Izuku doing sick Spiderman close-to-1st-POV camera angle spins off of a island bridge while carrying Rody. In this movie, what does Izuku do with Blackwhip? Izuku's first fight scene was just him doing tug of war with Blackwhip and a car. Izuku's next fight has him doing... a two-minute Blackwhip tug of war with another guy.

The next fight is pretty good though because it's a shootout scene between Giulio and these random henchmen. Giulio gets to show off all his cool gadgets, including his sick motorcycle that definitely should have a cool name like All Might's Hercules does.

Team Bakugou fight a bunch of monsters offscreen. Fucking disgusting robbing them of a perfectly good opportunity to show Bakugou leading a team and showing off that he can play in a team

Deku and Giulio fight the Quirk: Domain Expansion guy. This fight is dope because again, it's a shootout, and Izuku gets to show off what made him so good even before he had OFA i.e. his deduction skills as he figures out the Villains' Quirk and limitations and devises a plan to defeat them. Then the fight scene is ruined because once Izuku gets his Quirk back he just stomps them. I think the MHA-verse is just unsuited for fights or smth due to unbalanced Quirk matchups because it's insane how imo the best fight scene animated so far is still Deku vs Kacchan 2. (Part of this is attributed to Hori writing fights based more on emotion than actual choreography skill, hence the ton of flashbacks, but I digress.)

(There are no fight scenes for a good next hour or so because ha ha funny fan service dream sequence and Giulio traumadump, have fun watching exposition like nobodys business, then switch to pro hero POV, literally nobody cares)

Literally nobody cares about Tokoyami fighting waves of mobs after mobs after mobs in a colosseum all alone. Why did they have to add this in. What was the point. Can they not commit to having him team up with the origin trio or go back to Class 1-A. Who liked this part of the movie except when Bakugou makes the chuuni comment? Even Tokoyami's fight in Heroes Rising with Ashido was sicker. You couldn't even commit to a named Villain for him?? Fuck the writer and director. Tokoyami using Dark Shadow to break things/10 choreography.

The TodoBaku fight was the most disappointing shit ever. The fight is them spamming ice and explosions against a cool combo duo of Telekinesis and Teleportation, going 'Okay, I figured out his Quirk, let me say it out loud for the audience to hear' and then deciding to destroy everything in a five kilometre radius to bait the Villains into the air in the most telegraphed shit ever and finish in a OHKO. Where's the ingenuity? The tactics? The cool part about fighting a guy with teleportation is either you predict where he lands, or blitz before he can teleport. Sure, blasting everything to lure them into the sky is a tactic but it reeked of brute force. All the smarts Todoroki and Bakugou are known for, and this is the best they can do? Even Konan and Obito had a cooler execution with Konon attaching bombs to Obito to nullify teleportation and FLAT OUT TEN MINUTES CONSTANT BOMBING LIKE FUCK THATS COOL. The combination potential as Izuku suggested in A Piece of Cake short manga? I was so excited because people said there'd be a Todoroki and Bakugou team up, but all they did was spam their Quirks in a 1+1=2 thing, and not a 1+1=3 fight like Izuku and Bakugou had in Heroes Rising vs Nine 1.

Todoroki didn't even use a lot of his fire. He didn't combine his ice and fire sides. He just spammed the shit out of ice, but not even a mention of Flashfire Fist?? WHM had that AND Hell's Spider, what the hell is your excuse? Even Bakugou used (an unnamed) Howitzer Impact, jesus. All Todoroki can do is spam Heaven Piercing Ice Wall I guess. His most inspired ice scenes were the ones where he creates ice walls to try and block off Alchemy apocalpyse at the start of the movie (to no avail) and the one where he uses his ice to grow a tree-like structure to free Izuku. RIP Todoroki man.

Todoroki, Bakugou and Izuku team up against Dark Might is kinda bland despite the cool flashy animations and there's nothing much to say about it. It exists, I guess. Part of this is because there is no push-and-pull to the fight, but more about that later.

The second Todoroki, Bakugou and Izuku team up against Dark Might, Version 2 exists. Again, cool sakuga, couldn't see shit because Yutapon's animations make no sense, it exists again. Todoroki does a big move, then Bakugou does HIS big move, then it finishes with Izuku. Cool. Heroes Rising did this better, and that movie was nerfed by having Might+U play over some of the batshit crazy effects that would have benefited more from pow pow sfx than a calm singer track.

Izuku spamming all of his state-inspired moves (to Dark Might's idk 1 or 2 state-inspired moves) is not as cool as you think it is. United States of World Smash had a better execution.

Izuku doesn't use Gearshift, even against the Villain that spawns Domain Expansion that literally slows down all movement, which could have really helped IF ONLY IZUKU HAD A QUIRK THAT CAN SPEED UP THE MOVEMENT OF OBJECTS, JUST SAYING. But instead, noooooo, Fa Jin bullshit. I seriously believe that Fa Jin is the worst Quirk out of all the OFA, and that's counting Smokescreen, and that's because it's a cop out to giving Izuku free buffs faux 120% with no blowback like with Gearshift.

The writing and lack of suspension of disbelief:

The writing decisions make me want to slam my head in a wall. There were literally moments when I whispered 'What the fuck?' to myself in the theatre because of how badly some of the decisions the Villain makes were. There's this scene where after the Domain Expansion guy loses to Izuku, Dark Might shakes his head disappointingly and tells the guy 'All Might doesn't lose, so into the pit you go' and kills him via falling into a deep hole. This is the typical 'boss kills his henchmen to show how eeeeevil he is', but this falls so flat in so many areas and is horrendous in this particular instance. So let me lay it out to you.

Number one, this guy has probably one of the most overpowered Quirk in the MHA verse - HE HAS ERASURE. Yeah, you heard that. He can create a dome-shaped domain around him that nullifies all people's Quirks in the domain, and then exclude the immediate area around him so people in the immediate area around him get to keep their Quirks. The guy is the perfect support character. Literally if he was in the final battle in MHA he would have cooked AFO and Dabi, who have the power to level cities. The only reason Shigaraki isn't included in this list is because he cheats by having 'finger growth isn't a Quirk' bullshit plot powers.

So yeah. This guy is the number 1 support character you want on your side, with 0 attack but all the debuffing capabilities, and Dark Might sent him out to fight with 2 henchmen, and then when the henchmen get beaten up, blames the guy for not kicking Izuku's ass. My guy, Domain Expansion is a debuffing ability, not a combat ability, why are you blaming him for something out of his job scope?? AND THEN HE KILLS THE DOMAIN EXPANSION GUY. I... I can't. Dark Might would literally have won if he kept the Domain Expansion guy alive because with his Quirk Izuku, Bakugou and Todoroki just can't use their Quirks. They'd be useless. Absolute fodder. But nooooo, the script says to kill him.

And even more infuriating is that the narrative doesn't even try to justify this properly! Dark Might justifies it with 'we do not tolerate errors, goodbye' and also because he's clearly insane, but in a later sequence when the same thing happens to yet another henchman (the dream lady), what does he do? HE KEEPS HER ALIVE BECAUSE HER QUIRK IS STILL USEFUL TO HIM. I... I can't. What is this double standard? Why does he keep her alive and not the arguably also useful NULLIFYING QUIRK GUY except because THE NARRATION DEMANDS IT BECAUSE WITH IT THERE IS NO WAY FOR IZUKU AND CO. TO WIN???? The writers dug themselves into a hole by introducing a guy with such a busted Quirk and had no idea how to get out of this one other than 'yeah his boss kills him ig'. Jesus.

The large cast:

The insistence of giving everyone in the movie screentime backfired so much man. Heroes Rising had only three POVs in the final act, one for each boss: With Nine, Chimera, and Hair Lady. You're Next bites off more than they can chew with switching to five.

They did Endeavor sooooo dirty this movie man. Endeavor is arguably the guy with the most firepower (pun intended) in the MHA-verse, even outpowering the No1 Hero Star and Stripes in terms of pure energy blasts. There's this scene where he fires a Prominence Burn at the Alchemised ship. How much damage does he do? A small fraction of the ship chips off... and then it's instantly repaired. The ship isn't even pushed back or halt in its course or anything. Endeavor is useless as fuck. He keeps blasting anyway because he's a champ like that but man does the movie make him seem so weak in the face of this oh so might Villain just to hype him up and make it so 'attacks on the outside are useless, only the guys on the inside can defeat him'. Jesus. Endeavor does use a new move in Flare Circle though, which is dope as hell and I need to check the wiki for this later but basically he does precision blasting of a small area to carve out a chunk of the ship in a neat square without too much power because there are people standing directly behind where he's blasting.

Nobody gives a shit about Mirko blasting random mobs like bruh at least have her taking down a named villain or everything why did they have to dedicate more than 5 seconds to her kicking shit

The fights - the push and pulls:

What made Heroes Rising fights so tense and kept you on your seats were the push-and-pulls of the fights. The heroes have the upper hand, then the villains do, then it's back to the heroes, rinse and repeat. Nine gets the upper hand on Izuku, Izuku gets blown away - oh wait, Nine is suffering from cell degeneration, Izuku can do it, oh wait no Nine busts out a new Quirk shit Izuku is fucked, oh hell YES BAKUGOU, oh hell no, Nine has a new Quirk, oh we get bailed out for a round 2 in the future.

All the small (non-important) fights in You're Next basically have 2 acts. The first act, the set up of the villain where both sides spam their moves. The second act, where the villain obviously has the upper hand but then the heroes pull out their one big blast and win. Where's the drawn out sequences? The strategic battles of mind games? The second forms? Even Chimera in Heroes Rising had a beast mode, and Todoroki planning the ice finisher, and the blade twins in WHM had Trigger, and Bakugou rigging a explosive sequence to collapse a pillar on them.

Todoroki, Bakugou and Izuku weren't even badly hurt by Dark Might - it's the resulting whirlwind from Anna's Quirk going out of control that somehow takes them out of the fight. Dark Might isn't visibly 'injured' until Izuku does the final blow, and then he goes down for the count. And this happens in both fights. So there is effectively no push and pull, no 'breather' moment for the audience to gasp as the heroes are injured, no moment where the audience cheers for the heroes to get up and rally themselves, and then win with an all out attack.

And why does this happen, you may ask? Because the movie wants to save the climax for Anna and Giulio's scene. The climax is inarguably when Giulio finally reaches Anna and hugs her, activating her Quirk which boosts his Quirk to nullify hers forever in the most telegraphed shit ever since you know that 1. Quirk awakening/evolution exists and Bakugou who could once fire explosions from his palms can do it from all over his body now and 2. Anna's Quirk boosts and transforms Quirks.

Literally the moment Giulio prayed for his Quirk to work while touching her with his right hand, I thought, Oh, he's going to experience a Quirk Awakening and be able to nullify powers with his left hand or some deus ex bullshit because that's the only way the movie can end. And what happens? Giulio becomes compatible with Anna and now he can neutralise her Quirk just by touching her, and in fact he neutralises her Quirk forever Quirk-bullet style so both of them are effectively 'Quirkless'. And because the audience is too stupid to notice this via context clues, he has to say this out aloud in a tell-not-show fashion later on.

Izuku blitzes all his fights in one big smash and it's not even close. Alchemy guy wrapped Izuku up in a bunch of metal pipes to give Giulio and Anna their 'do it, stab Giulio' 'you thought it would be Anna resisting the dream Quirk by force of sheer love, but no, it was I, Endeavor, rocking this ship! (I hate the director)' moment. Izuku could have broken out of there no problem goddammit he has a goddamn strength Quirk backed up with Fa Jin he could use on his fingers since his hands are free.

Can we not rely on Yutapon?

Ever since Heroes Rising I've thought that Yutapon's sequences are too hard to decipher and are only touted as good because they make use of bright colours and flashy rocks to trick the viewer. The only sequences I really liked of his were his work on Deku vs Kacchan 2, Endeavor UFO into plank for the funny part (fight-choreography wise it took me out of the seriousness of the situation), Todoroki vs Deku in Sports Festival, Bakugou wave dashing across Kamino to grab Kirishima's hand, and the short cut in Heroes Rising where OFA!Bakugou dips his hand into rock and turns it into molten lava. (Idk whether he helped with the helicopter fight scene of WHM but that was pretty dope too though the sudden animation drop with Todoroki's entrance was too obvious.) The rest of his animated scenes kinda suck actually? I don't know why people praise it like he's the god or something. He's good, but not that good.

The MHA characters feel like side characters to the OCs

Class 1-A are side characters. The pro heroes are side characters. Todoroki and Bakugou are side characters. Izuku is a side character. Giulio is the main fucking protagonist of the movie and it's not even close.

Funnily enough, I believe the MHA-verse character who was the most well-utilised in this show in proportion to their screentime is actually Mirio. Guy turns up at a desperate situation, his presence immediately brightens the mood and brings hope to everyone, things start to look up. What a guy.

And also All Might, especially in the scene where he confronts Dark Might with a truly touching moment of 'You do not embody my ideals, and those who do not look like me and are weaker than you embody them more than you do, strength lies not in a single individual but in a generation of people working together, achieving where I failed society as a Symbol of Might', but I think if the movie somehow managed to screw up All Might of all people I'd drop it to a 5/10.

Overall, would not recommend others to watch. Would only rewatch for the Bakugou quips and maybe to see if the TodoBaku is better on rewatch. Alright, that's all for now, but if I have any other thoughts maybe I'll edit this post or put it in a different post. Peace.

*EDIT: I FORGOT TO MENTION. Bakugou never addresses Izuku by his name in this movie, only his hero name, which is a massive letdown. 0/10 movie for real :(

#troofless stuff #troofless watches anime #bnha mumblings #overall its like a 6-6.5 out of 10 #i need a rewatch to be sure but just rewatch heroes rising or whm my brother

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