You Can Become A Hero: My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising
There is a scene in this movie where a rock dude says to the fire/ice dude "you're up" and a big smile was on my face for the rest of the movie.
I was feeling lousy so I went to the movies. Despite looming concerns—red flag, stamped government file, absentee uncle birthday present—I only saw My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising as this racehorse. Chance curved to turn majestic in what could be witnessed when given over to raw probability. Without frills what movie going in earnest amounts to for anything else but for a sequel acting as a side story for a television series adapting a manga ensuring to be incoherent as I volunteered for rush hour in a femur of city worked around to be simultaneously exited and stalled into because that felt like the rational course of steps to escape an alternative that wasn’t subtle. In the same theatre months before flying down two subway stops to avoid having to sit through 1917 (Little Women was sold out) to see Ip Man 4: The Finale* and still feeling tremendously rewarded in the energies of that wager. Heroes Rising a similar bet even in a dub screening with the only loss the deprecated notion that came with seeing it a day later for other reasons besides saving five dollars off a ticket.
On the cusp of total nonsense I’m still able to soberly grasp. High school students with superpowers doing community service on an island isolating them to be responsible but vulnerable when having to fight a super villain who runs on stolen powers, a domino masked magician lady with knife hair, a guy who can mummify anything, and a wolf-man in a trench coat always seen smoking a cigar and—if I’m remembering right—breathes fire and had on dress pants tailored to support his alligator tail**. That kaleidoscope not tightening when focused on the heroes in a looser contrast. A student made out of arms who can switch around his appendages so his hands can be eyes or his hands can be ears. Another student who has white-out tape rolls in his elbows in a costume that didn’t necessitate. A cool girl who is also an amp with stereo jacks dangling from her ears so she can plug into the ground to sonically induct earthquakes. A girl who is mostly a frog. A nerd in a knight costume who has jet engines on his calves. Someone in my memory who was half fossilized dinosaur but actually just had the benefit of a harder skeleton. A girl who can control the gravity of objects that because of a lesser attitude I thought was love-based. A big shy guy who can talk to animals and a big loud guy who is really powerful for three minutes if he consumed a lot of sugar. A dude who just generates electricity and a guy who looks identical to him but in another knight costume who shoots lasers from his belt buckle which feels underdeveloped and too explicitly troubled. A girl (designated to be pretty who I thought was a TA with the nerd in the knight costume) with two belts over a swimsuit who can transmit intimate objects like cannons and blankets out of her skin. A guy in a karate gi with a too fat tail with fur only coming out of the end and a girl only visible and registered as alive by the gloves and boots she wears. An off model baby-like figure—maybe a pervert—who throws grapes that grow out of his head until his scalp bleeds. A crow man who magically controls his shadow (my favourite) and a bug girl who throws acid around. A guy whose mother was an ice lady and whose father was a fire-causing man tumbled out like an approximated original character from a Cool S embroidered notebook. The Goku in accordance with a Nu Metal reading that negates an open palm stupidity for severe toneful earnestness. The Vegeta ratcheted to a Danzig-Defcon as he keeps grenades around his hands casually.
An appraisal I would be flummoxing if I am in denial of a too long affection in this belaboured fantasy. Somehow enduring even as I appreciate it less as juvenile discovery ended up as untouched engineering. Those narratives becoming mildly travelled car rides and these abilities only rational as rare weapons enticing a draft***. Meant to be old enough to actually see where this all went. Comics—improvising sublimity, outwardly exposed as garish as taste settles, other feelings that had to be unquestionably genuine but weren’t lame as they’re brought down from a pharmacy spinner rack onto the edge of a school sick day bed—deciding right when I’m in high school (going into university) to act as if this was supposed to be on television earlier than everything else. Now dominant in the way it shucked recognition of what was once loved and possible for an industrial mannerism. No longer concentrated on the materials of story as that powders into a constant promo and whatever maturing genre used in the pitch tampered (“uh it’s like Threes Days In The Condor”) for the already assembled Starcraft cut scene where the hero and villain (or person they happen to be fighting) are the same template.
Heroes Rising might not be an exception as it also travels within the same acknowledged commerce but as reprised melancholy settled a New Year into becoming another, I felt lighter as this wave curled. Overwhelmed in watching a film without doubts cornering sacrifice as always meaningful. Characters drawn as resources for a collective necessity rather than mustering up artillery reverberating their zeal (Vegeta-Danzig being this red herring). This tactile pursuit where fulfillment in concert with spirited limit thaws figure and stage into a total bout as personality shifts to architecture. Effort becoming a completely viable aesthetic flung towards a climax of direct feats having to still be held within an interpretation and accomplished at the risk of collapsing within the abstracting body of a lit up void. Terrain in ripped apart musculature and reality concussed to encapsulate supernaturally wheezed heroism at such an ascended volume as it readies a martyred run. Possible without assured reason other than to sculpt the gesture and intention of helping someone. Not an aired out return to a remodelled past and the virtues that must be encased there but in what has kept up this bargain if the genre had any lasting durability in your memory. Precious in how it’s scuffed and worn. Estranged from but still known deeply. Honour-bound and stationary under stress and in depletion as this all comes back to unionize feelings I still have to reconcile as tears can’t help but fall for another cartoon.
The prize in an excuse maybe too considering as this glorified the only vice I had with the thrill and distress clear in motion. The guilt in that lifting. The opportunity maybe fleeting but always having to be willed for in a unique engagement outside the circumstance woken up and done in. Not needing familiarity to be comforted as that just makes clear what hasn’t moved on as I still recede putting too much in this as the exit. Being transitory and locked with looser feelings of purpose even in idyllic rests when I am not quieted from myself in the anonymity of a movie theatre. Allowing this as a private reward in a world that unassumes me from such agency and dimension and given pull for more selfish reasoning than trying to find the time to happen without inarticulate advertisement or the faults seen in my own symbolism. An erosive integrity now sped up and more scavenged. Now disappeared from an avenue of myself too early to be nostalgic for as it faded too easily. My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising becoming more than just this fluke in a loser year we’re still in but this ached example of what was believed in.
Next Week: The Snyder Cut
The Glossary
The Goku: I should say Shonen Protagonist but I still would have to define that for goobers reading this. Basically there was this thing mainly in my experience with anime where the protagonist would be incredibly dumb more than cool and that would drive me up the wall because I felt like there had to be a limit to that because there were rules in place with this stuff. Now you look back on it and Goku or Luffy or…..Columbo if that helps you being a little “dumb” is part of the joy in the fiction and apparently that’s a common critique with Deku. He’s too boring.
The Vegeta: The Shonen Rival who is not going to end up the villain but the real deal stuff you relate to if you’re cool. Look I know this is bad for my mental health but I watch this anime podcast on youtube in highlight clips and one of the guys on there was talking about this Vegeta and going like “have you ever met a jerk who was secretly nice they’re all psychos” and that has plagued me and I don’t know where to put my concerns about that. I don’t think that’s really accurate. Like you can be a jerk with a morality but….what is a secret nice guy doing? Who is that person? That’s just a jerk, dude. But anyway Vegeta is cool.
The End Notes
*Donnie Yen pummelling Racist Guile Scott Adkins in a fight that ended with the audience clapping. Also The Finale part is a little tacked on because it’s a stand alone story basically that just ends with “and he died later”. I also think Donnie Yen is supposed to be in his 70’s in that movie. And then you see 1917 eventually and just imagine how shitty that would’ve been if you didn’t see Ip Man. Weird O Level Drama exam.
**I know what a Chimera is.
***In re-routing Spider-man for the third time they have minimized the spider-powers to have this character act more like a gentifier and inheritor of a drone program. There isn’t an internal necessity there. All his enhancements come from what’s “given” to him. They don’t have to worry about “oh the powers were in you all along” because they’ve made all these things external. It’s all candidate based. It’s all “well they are smart for the job” shit.