Welcome to This Week in Shonen Jump, our weekly check in on Viz’s various Shonen Jump series. Viz has recently changed their release format, but our format will mostly remain the same. We will still review the newest chapters of one title a week, now with even more options at our disposal. The big change for our readers is that, even without a Shonen Jump subscription, you can read these most recent chapters for free at Viz.com or using their app.
This week, Vince checks in with “My Hero Academia.” If you have thoughts on this or any other current Shonen Jump titles, please let us know in the comments!
My Hero Academia – Chapter 336: Villain
Written & Illustrated by Kohei Horikoshi
Review by Vince J Ostrowski
When it comes to engaging critically with the art of storytelling, it is easy to fall into a trap where you begin to judge things based on how amenable you yourself are to the mechanics of the plot. Sometimes it feels like we elevate art because something you specifically guessed was going to happen happened, or because a particular plot twist knocked you off your feet. There’s a sort of alchemy that happens when you connect with something you read because it genuinely surprised you or paid off on threads that you were tying together, but that should not always be mistaken for good execution. And sometimes, you just gotta hand it to the Kohei Horikoshi’s of the world for being able to pull one over on you and craft a heartbreaking, layered story around it.
Chapter 336 is subtitled “Villain”, which is a title that only becomes clear on the last page of the chapter, and one that I think I can discuss without resorting to spoilers. Our chapter picks up with the students of the U.A. Academy practicing with their quirks, learning new aspects of them and pushing their boundaries. Here, Horikoshi continues to show the ability to apply neat bits of pseudo-science to the quirks to expand their fiction. For example, Katsuki uses their sweat to generate power, so wearing a full outdoor winter outfit helps create more sweat and can boost the system. Throughout this sequence, the reader is lulled into thinking this will merely be some downtime for the protagonists as they prepare for another looming confrontation with All For One, the villain du jour. Instead, Midoriya quite literally stumbles into a reveal of which ally has been working with the League of Villains and affording them the ability to surprise attack the students of U.A.
Dancing around the spoilers here, what follows is a really well-written and somewhat tragic story about hubris and overstepping, but also desperation and wanting to belong. The story does a good job of showing how someone could fall in with a villain, and end up indebted to them in ways that they can’t easily get out of. This is a story that is told in good vs. evil narratives all the time, but not always as expertly as seen here. If I have any criticism of the chapter, it is that it’s a little talky and doesn’t let the art shine enough, but the trade off is that all of the effort made to get you to sympathize with the plight of the traitor is done over the course of a few pages; concise and effective. On top of all that, readers that have been paying close attention (or if not, go back and read the last few prior chapters) might have noticed hints at who the traitor was, but also red herrings in equal measure. 7+ years is a long time for any ongoing story to run. The fact that Horikoshi is not content to just phone it in at this point is something to be lauded. Instead of a lazy twist that comes and goes, here the writer puts in the work and the reader gets to really sink their teeth into the payoff.
Final Verdict: 8.5 – “My Hero Academia” continues to fire on pretty nearly all cylinders, delivering little pockets of truly affecting storytelling within an increasingly large Shonen cast.
