80
From excellent team-ups between Deku and Bakugo to strategic standoffs featuring some of the more minor characters like Ashido and Tokoyami, the entirety of Class 1-A gets to shine in this new movie.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
80
Los Angeles Times by Charles Solomon
Director Kenji Nagasaki pulls out all the stops in the climactic battle, serving up a dazzling array of explosions, lightning, punches, kicks, storm clouds and more explosions. The brilliant palette infuses the sequence with a striking visual beauty, even if the result is a foregone conclusion.
60
Heroes Rising is an impressive piece of fan-service with beautiful character work and some of the most inventive and dazzling fight sequences that the series has ever seen. But a recycled plot and villain threaten to doom the film to the lower echelons of forgettable anime movies.
40
All the exertion – fleshed out in visuals that veer from Astro Boy-aping cutesiness to interestingly rough closeups, as if the animation itself is fraying in the heat of battle – pays diminishing dividends. The panoply of powers begin to seem interchangeable, the character arcs dim.
38
But as a movie, is the story or the animation worth a 104 minute investment in time? Maybe if you’re really young and time is something you’ve got a lot of. Yeah, you can pick up on (more or less) what’s happening within a few minutes. But I can’t say it’s really worth it.
60
Established “My Hero Academia” fans will probably enjoy Class 1-A’s typically endearing group dynamic, even if none of the jokes in the movie are that great. And their big fight with Nine is genuinely well-staged and climactic, thanks to some impressive computer graphics and director Kenji Nagasaki’s thoughtful staging and choreography.
90
The New York Times by Teo Bugbee
This is canny, passionate filmmaking, a reminder of the power of two-dimensional animation. First, it humanizes, then it astounds.
71
Paste Magazine by Toussaint Egan
Sure, the action is thrilling and the visual effects are stellar, but Heroes Rising as a whole only manages to graze the surface of what makes My Hero Academia the series itself so great.