English Dub Review: My Hero Academia “Make It! Do-or-Die Survival Training, Part 1”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS?)

Just before the Provisional Hero Exam, Aizawa has Class 1-A do a training course on rescuing a civilian from a damaged area, splitting the class into two teams. In this part, we follow Team A.

OUR TAKE

It’s been a couple months since Funimation finally wrapped dubbing on My Hero Academia’s fourth season. Back when the pandemic hit, they were scrambling to just get the last five episodes done and out into the public. Now we have a pair of new OVAs out and they’re coming out relatively quickly after the subtitles. So I guess it goes to show that Funimation is adjusting to the dubbing from home pretty well in the months since things got weird. That’s good to see at least, though it’s unfortunately small consolation considering how long these conditions have had to go on. But I suppose we should be thankful this isn’t like live action acting, which means we wouldn’t be getting more of it for awhile later.

You’ll notice I’m not saying a whole lot about the actual episode. That’s because, simply put, there’s not a lot to talk about. My Hero has had specials before, even having a couple filler episodes in each of its seasons, though even those that have come before would probably be better examples of how to do an OVA. The plot of these two parts is just seeing the characters do training for an exam we’ve already seen them finish. Yeah, this takes place during the third season, right after All Might’s retirement and before the exam that Bakugo and Todoroki failed. But besides that specific placement in the timeline, there isn’t much to it. The objective doesn’t really have any stakes to it since this isn’t part of the main plot and none of the characters can be impacted by it, while the characters have been basically reduced to their base personalities and powersets.

I’m honestly surprised this has been split up into two parts, since the story seems like it could very easily scrunched down into one. The animation is certainly not bad, but that’s only part of what I look for in this show anyway. It’s not a BAD special by any means but it’s also nothing more than just okay. I’m glad to check in with Class 1-A and give their actors more work, but I can’t really look at this very critically when there’s not really anything to think critically about. Perhaps the second half will provide some more apparent talking points, hopefully with something in regards to some character work that only placing the story here could accomplish. Or even a Season 5 tease?