My Hero Academia and the importance of Stain

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZbHVQw4B-M - 9:48

https://ww1.gogoanimes.org/watch/boku-no-hero-academia-2nd-season-episode-17 - 17:38 to 18:58

     Since I teach my anime classes to adolescent males, I guess I can expect that anime that has

fighting in it would be more popular than anime with little to no fighting at all (battle - focused series

vs. anime that focus on things other than fighting).  In the school, not just these classes, based on

what I see, the more popular anime are the Dragonball series, especially Super (which is pretty much

all about fighting - why I don't like it) and the Naruto series, both of which are series I focus on in my

Summer classes (not Super - everything before it except GT: I like GT, but I don't know if I would

have time for it in these classes).  This is because there is more to them than fighting contrary to what

these adolescents, and most likely others, may believe.

      This is where the anime My Hero Academia comes in.  Besides the series of Dragonball and

Naruto, My Hero Academia seems to be the next big thing for the same reason.   The student that I let

present My Hero Academia to his section of the Summer class last year focused on the fighting

aspect.  Based on this presentation, and hearing, and seeing, more about this anime myself, I decided

to look more into this anime and see what I could get from it besides the fighting, especially since the

only fight in this presentation was from Season 3 (Midoriya vs. Muscular fight:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ct8In_FAvZE).  It's not exactly

wrong, but there is more to this fight than just the fight (what I like doing is seeing what kids

can get out of an anime they want to present after giving examples myself).

      As I saw in this anime, which is summed up in the first video, this anime gets really interesting in

its second season due to the character Stain.  Also because the concept of quirk marriages is

explained, like in the first video, with the characters Todoroki and Endeavor, but I think this can

relate to what Stain wants (the first season is good, interesting, and necessary because it's basically a

season of introductions).  The presence of the character Stain is an example of something I like to see

in anime, which is the villain with justifiable motives.  In this anime, heroes aren't a bad thing, as

well as teaching heroes what to do in terms of using their abilities and how to act, but what is bad is

taking this further by making it a profession.  In other words, in this anime, being a hero could easily

be more of a privilege than a right, which is what Stain was against.  He didn't hate heroes

themselves, but what the idea of being a hero in the world of this anime means, or has become.

        This is an idea that Stain literally tried to challenge.  Stain figured the only way he could fix this

problem was to kill heroes.  Besides killing heroes, which could obviously make people think you are

a villain, Stain's other problem is that he thought only he could fix this problem.  While he did do

some interesting things on his own, examples of which are seen in the first and second video, he

could have gotten people to help him create change in more positive ways.  He mostly created

immediate change by influencing the League of Villains led by the villain Shigaraki, which he didn't

want to do since Stain only wanted to kill heroes in order to create better ones, not just kill heroes

and end them permanently like Shigaraki (Shigaraki and the other villains he leads in this anime are

essentially the average anime villains, meaning that they villains for the sake of being villains).

      This idea of creating positive change is something that I would like to see as this series continues,

especially since it still has an emphasis on how to be a professional hero, including the fact that only

professional heroes are allowed to use their quirks without permission (one of the issues in the fight

seen in the beginning of this reflection).  If Stain really did have an influence on characters in this

series, wouldn't it (or shouldn't it) influence creating the change he wanted to see? How did it exactly

influence these characters?

     I know I already answered these questions myself before asking them (the manga has too - I should

consider that in these writings, and my classes, too I guess), but it's something I like thinking about it in

terms of this series and what I get out of it.  This is also something I like doing, as well as what I think

other people should do, with anything, not just anime, including ones that focus on fighting, like the

series My Hero Academia.

   

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