The spring season was basically over this week, and preview week has already started its unholy charge, so this is gonna be a light and breezy week in anime. We’ve basically just got My Hero Academia and Megalo Box to cover, and that’s such a limited “group” that I can’t even waste a paragraph rambling about the overall tenor of my weekly viewing experience. My Hero Academia was bad, Megalo Box was good, and they are the only shows I have to talk about. Let’s see if we can stretch that summation into a little more substance, and start with the bad news as we RUN THIS WEEK DOWN!
This week’s My Hero Academia turned out to be a tragically ideal demonstration of one of the greatest stumbling blocks manga adaptations often run into: awkward translation of comedy material. In the manga, this week’s tour of all the students’ new dorms was actually a genuine strength; quick and endearing, demonstrating the diverse personalities and interests of the various classmates, and basically acting as the mood reset the characters themselves intended. But in anime form, a light diversion turned into a lengthy slog, with the show actually doubling down on the sequence’s slowness in order to presumably set up a more traditional season opening for next episode. While seeing the rooms themselves was still a charming insight into 1-A’s personalities, and the ways their powers reflect on their personal lives, everything related to the “Room King” was a tedious drag, and Mineta’s extreme prominence was as unwelcome as ever. I suppose they can’t all be winners, but it’s still a shame the anime turned a welcome diversion into a sort of punishment.
Megalo Box arrived at its grand conclusion this week, which was frankly a tad less grand than I expected, but still a satisfying enough ending. In retrospect, it feels like Megalo Box peaked with that Aragaki battle, and hasn’t really been able to approach that standard in its second half. That fight managed a union of tactical and emotional narrative that served as the series high point, and subsequent personal conflicts like “the Shirato brother likes his gear” or “Yuri DOESN’T like his gear” haven’t really been able to sell themselves with nearly as much emotional punch. On top of that, Joe and Yuri’s bout was almost guaranteed to be less ferocious and desperate than prior fights, given it was the dance both of them have been seeking all season.
Given those dramatic and tonal constraints, I suppose it made sense that this fight was less deeply felt than others, but it still managed to succeed well enough as spectacle. I also appreciated the show’s lengthy coda, which felt necessary, given how much of this episode was strictly dedicated to the fight. In the end, Megalo Box is probably not a show that’s going to stick with me, but it was an entertaining ride on the whole, and a show that will definitely slot into my future new anime fan recommendations. It’s not an altogether great action show, but it’s got a truly great style, and that’s certainly worth something.
