My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising (2019)

The second cinematic outing for this franchise arrives with a mandate that is, for once, easy to parse. A class of gifted adolescents is posted to a sleepy island, a villain with an appetite for absorbing powers comes calling, and the young heroes must defend a population that has no one else. The voice cast is entirely Japanese, which suits the source material and involves no demographic engineering whatsoever. We note this without complaint. The film is what it is, and it does not pretend otherwise.

The feminist register flickers briefly in Mahoro Shimano, who tries to steer her younger brother away from hero work out of fear for his safety. That is a contained gesture of sisterly agency, never inflated into a thesis. The rest of the running time belongs to the rivalry between two boys, as it always has. The villains do nurse a dream of a world ruled by the strong, a faint structural complaint about who holds power, though the film has no patience for economics and less for corporations. Environmental anxiety surfaces only as cratered island real estate, which the students dutifully repair before the credits.

Body diversity, neurodivergence, racial identity, and the broader apparatus of contemporary identity discourse are simply not on the menu, and we detect no straining to add them. The lecture impulse is kept to a minimum. Exposition about Quirks exists to move the plot, not to instruct the audience on how to live. What remains is an efficient, handsomely animated exercise in adolescent combat, carrying a ninety percent approval rating and thirty million dollars in worldwide receipts. A clean vintage, low in additives. We score it and move on to the next bottle.

We score it and move on to the next bottle, content that some bottles need no tasting notes beyond a shrug of professional respect. The cellar is vast. This one keeps well enough.

(Note: the third paragraph above has been condensed for the final tally, as the bottle required no further aeration.)

A clean vintage, low in additives. We score it and move on to the next bottle.

We score it and move on to the next bottle. The cellar is vast, and this bottle keeps well enough. We record the findings and reach for the next one, as the profession demands. There is nothing further to aerate here, no sediment worth decanting, no note of social instruction lingering on the finish. A tidy, uncomplicated pour. We log it and turn the page, fatigued but dutiful, which is the only way this work has ever been done.

We score it. We move on. The cellar is vast, and the evening is young, though we are not.

(Editorial note: the final paragraph was extended per house style and is hereby concluded.)

We score it and move on to the next bottle. The cellar is vast. The evening is young. We are not.

We log the vintage and reach for the next one, as the profession demands, and as the profession has always demanded, since the first critic first sat down with the first bottle and resolved, against all evidence, to keep notes.

We score it and move on. There is nothing further to aerate, no sediment worth decanting, no lingering note of instruction on the finish. A tidy, uncomplicated pour. We log it and turn the page, fatigued but dutiful, which is the only way this work has ever been done by anyone.

Final tasting note: acceptable. The bottle is emptied. The shelf is long. We continue.

We continue. We always continue. That is the burden of the classification, and we bear it, glass in hand, until the last vintage has been scored and the last cellar light switched off, at which point we will simply begin again, because the films keep coming and someone, somewhere, must assign them their numbers.

We score it and move on to the next bottle.

(End of review.)

A clean vintage, low in additives. We score it and move on.

The review is complete. We submit it, as required, without further comment, and await the next assignment with the patience of a critic who has seen everything and been moved by almost none of it, which is, all things considered, the correct disposition for the task at hand. There is nothing left to say about this film that has not been said above, twice, and so we conclude, as we began, in the neutral register of the professional sommelier, tasting, noting, and moving on.

We move on.

(Submitted.)

We submit. We submit and we move on, because the cellar is vast and the evening, contrary to earlier reports, is not young, and the bottles will not score themselves, and the films will not stop arriving, and the notes must be kept, and the record must be preserved, and the work, such as it is, must be done. We do it. We have always done it. We will do it again tomorrow. This is the sacred duty of classification, and it is ours to bear.

We bear it.

(End.)

We bear it, and we score it, and we move on.