Every My Hero Academia Movie in Order (The Best Way to Watch)
My Hero Academia
any of ‘s movies would then be considered part of the series canon, with characters or events from the films appearing in the manga.
Then, the movies deliver the fans what they deserve: exciting moments, awesome fights, and cool animation that their less-loyal brothers will still love to see.
While the various movies aren’t on a single streaming service, one can find them on BluRay or rent them digitally, I think it is worth the effort because fans should see these.
The My Hero Academia franchise is very popular, and the popularity has led to a handful of films. Unlike many other anime franchises, the My Hero Academia movies are canonical, with its characters showing up in the manga, though mostly in brief cameos. So it matters a little more than usual for My Hero Academia fans to keep up with the series’ movies – a feat which can be unusually difficult in the current, fragmented streaming marketplace.
So far, there have been three My Hero Academia movies, and a fourth My Hero Academia film has already been announced, all of which take place at different times in the canon, and typically pretty near where the anime was when they came out.
It’s a typical trait of My Hero Academia, then, that the films make amazing use of whatever big-screen time they do have with spectacularly choreographed fights and some fairly shocking moments that will shake close fans who haven’t seen the films to their core. The films have all performed very well during their theatrical runs and are definitely worth the time to watch for any fan of the series, casual or otherwise.
My Hero Academia: Two Heroes
My Hero Academia’s First Film Goes All-Out to Deliver Something Big
| Release Date: | August 3rd, 2018 |
| Available on: | Available to stream on Crunchyroll, Netflix, and Hulu |
| Runtime: | 97 minutes |
All Heroes Rise begins by showing a flashback to the days before All Might received his hero title; the tall blond worked with a scientist who developed support gear for him in the United States, a man named David Shield. In the present, All Might is invited to attend a hero exhibition at the artificial island resort named I-Island, and decides to take Midoriya with him. Several of his other classmates end up going as well.
A month after arriving, Midoriya is given a special gauntlet by David’s daughter Melissa Shield that will allow him to use One for All without then collapsing. Later that evening, the expo is attacked by a villain called Wolfram who takes the whole island hostage. The students have to fight off Wolfram and his henchmen, but can All Might, with his ever-dwindling powers, take down this foe?
The movie’s Japanese title is Two Heroes, from the hastag #二人のヒーロー – ‘Nitrin no hīrō’ – or ‘Deku [and] All Might together’. Mashiro’s art also appears on heroic banners and signs and stamps all over the city Originally, the movie climaxed with Deku and All Might taking on the villain All For One together. (Fans ended up role-playing this scenario in speculative fan art.) But in the final version of the movie, they never actually fight side-by-side.
Indeed, rather than thrilling us with any actual heroics, the movie concludes in the vain, boring way of every other entry in My Hero Academia (that is, with a rather anticlimactic humorous misunderstanding). Melissa Shield is a sweet girl whom fans began clamouring to have Deku fall in love with. She first appeared in the manga around the same time, and indeed exhibits some heroic characteristics. She also handcrafts him a second set of gauntlets later in the story.
Around the same time, the anime offered us a Special Episode: Save the World With Love!’ Tying into the new film, this is essentially an extra episode of the TV series that acts as the movie’s prologue, as of what one is to understand from the film’s opening title cards and the text in this panel, it takes place shortly before the events depicted in MHA Season 2, Episode 22.
My Hero Academia: Heroes: Rising
Heroes: Rising Offers Excellent Character Moments and an Incredible Twist
| Release Date: | December 20th, 2019 |
| Available on: | Available to stream on Hulu and Amazon Prime only with Starz Premium Subscription. |
| Runtime: | 104 minutes |
Rather than focus on one student’s experiences, Heroes: Rising follows the entirety of U.A‘s Class 1-A as they head to a small island called Nabu Island to serve as the island’s local heroes, as part of their winter semester safety programme. Relatively untouched by monster attacks, Nabu Island is a quiet place with very little danger for the kids to get up to, which allows them some time to get to know the islands’ residents while helping them with their everyday tasks.
Another member of the League of Villains, one of the titular Nine (who happens to have nine Quirks), arrives to find himself a certain child; the child’s blood would save his life. The kids of Class 1-A now find they are cut off from the mainland and unable to communicate with anyone there. It’s up to them to deal on their own with Nine and his friends.
Yin and yang of calm, loving moments, balanced by the frenetic action that makes the bulk of the back half of the movie, Heroes Rising is set between events of the Meta Liberation Army arc of the manga – an arc that was not adapted for the anime when the film was released, so some characters like Hawks first appeared in the film before the anime for that arc was released. Fans know that the ending to Heroes: Rising features something that would have been unpredictable to the most hard-core fans.
My Hero Academia: World Heroes’ Mission
World Heroes’ Mission expands the series’ world around the globe
| Release Date: | August 6th, 2021 |
| Available on: | Available to stream on Hulu and Amazon Prime only with Starz Premium Subscription. |
| Runtime: | 105 minutes |
World Heroes’ Mission sends the Class 1-A kids across the globe and brings overseas heroes into the picture, not just Japanese ones. Humarise, a terrorist organisation bent on purging the world of people with Quirks, calls for the help of all heroes, and so Bakugo, Todoroki, and Midoriya are deployed to Otheon, a foreign country where Humarise is said to be based.
Midoriya meets with a local boy named Rody, similarly poor as he is and raising two younger siblings, who’s come in to personally deliver a package for the villagers. Soon enough, Humarise places the poor boy on their hit list as well, and he and Midoriya must find the group’s omnicidal leader, Flect Turn, and bring an end to his supremacists before it’s too late.
The most often-praised aspect of World Heroes’ Mission was the character of Rody and his relationship with Midoriya; naturally, that means that Rody and his family’s characterisation in the film was very important. The anime tie-in for this film had a far longer prequel manga episode named ‘Long Time, No See, Selkie’ (very appropriate, given his last name). Rody and siblings made a cameo in the manga, as did a large number of the other international heroes created for the film.
My Hero Academia: You’re Next
Class 1-A Faces All Might’s Villainous Doppelganger
| Release Date: | August 2nd, 2024 |
My Hero Academia: You’re Next, the next movie in the series, is set to premiere in Japan on 2 August. Though there’s not much to say so far about My Hero Academia movie 4 – in it, All Might gets a wicked red makeover, and now he’s called Dark Might – the fact that he’s on a towering floating fortress and all seems to be taking place in the wake of the Paranormal Liberation arc might indicate that he plans to exploit the mass chaos that was caused by that massive conflict. The rest is still a mystery (basically a spoiler if My Hero Academia fans want to avoid any guesswork), but even with that little bit of information, fans are already on the edge of their seats to see Deku go head to head with someone who looks like his hero.
You’re Next is the first My Hero Academia movie not directed by series director Kenji Nagasaki and instead will be helmed by veteran animator Tensai Okamura.
Whatever Dark Might ends up being or looking like – and whether he absorbs the power of the aforementioned ‘symbol of peace’, or whether he simply turns out to be All Might, like Dabi hypothesises – it’s this mystery, to me, that the new film is leaking the most intriguing exhilarations. You’re Next marks only the halfway point of the story, with the manga of My Hero Academia hurtling towards its end; when it does, You’ be the last My Hero Academia movie. If so, it makes sense that Studio Bones would want to go out with a bang by taking such an intriguing premise, and making the most of it.
Will There Be More My Hero Academia Movies After You’re Next?
With My Hero Academia’s manga and anime quite close to winding down, most fans think that the franchise will make at least one more movie (it would be nothing short of bizarre if it hasn’t) but will call it quits there, with You’re Next being the franchise’s swan song, cinematically speaking at least, for the foreseeable future. Obviously, nothing official has been announced, but there is reason to be hopeful that this won’t be the last time we see Deku and members of Class 1-A on the big screen.
Bones, MHA’s anime studio, has previously made anime movies out of franchises whose main storylines had already concluded, twice with the two Fullmetal Alchemist movies. Conquerors of Shambala (2005) was a sort of epilogue to 2003’s Fullmetal Alchemist, which wrapped up a few loose plot threads that still needed to be tied up after the conclusion of that show’s story. But 2011’s The Sacred Star of Milos was an interquel, set during Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood’s middle arc between the defeat of one big bad and the ascendance of the next.
Even so, most fans will probably scoff at the idea that My Hero Academia could possibly get a Conquerors of Shambala-style epilogue since, after all, the latter film was only able to make sense because Fullmetal Alchemist’s 2003 series had gone so far off the rails from the movie that no one could seriously accuse them of it being a legitimate adaptation. And seriously, why would Bones bother to adapt a manga that ended in late June with a movie if the series was just going to start up again in a few months?
If nothing else, the Monkey Punch-like general principles mean that anime/manga creators might hand off their properties to other creators, but they never end powers destructives. With that, there are a number of reasons to believe that an epilogue (or endings) film is likely. In fact, Naruto’s anime studio Pierrot released two such epilogue films:
The Last: Naruto the Movie (2014) and Boruto: Naruto the Movie (2015). Of course, if any manga put My Hero Academia, Naruto is it. My Hero Academia’s mangaka, Kohei Horikoshi, has openly state that he took Naruto as his primary inspiration. Given how successful My Hero Academia has been, and the fact that Naruto is tailor-made to continue into even bigger success, I can’t imagine Horikoshi objecting to Bones being allowed to wrap up the story once My Hero Academia’s manga ends.
What is the Best Way to Watch My Hero Academia’s Movies?
Unfortunately, My Hero Academia’s films are spread out across multiple services. There’s no ‘one stream away to eat right now’; this unfortunately means there’s no easy way to view all three. Beyond streaming, all three are easy to find on BluRay, which do feature some special features.
All three of the My Hero Academia films are also available to digitally rent in marketplaces like Youtube, Google Play and Amazon. My Hero Academia: Two Heroes’ listing on Crunchyroll is called ‘My Hero Academia Movies’. This implies that the other two films might someday be available to stream there, but at the moment the first film is the only one available.
At What Point In The Anime Should My Hero Academia Fans Watch The Movies
While it may be difficult to track down all four movies on a streaming service, officially, it is pretty easy to figure which movies are where in the series’ timeline at large. As explained above, My Hero Academia: Two Heroes has an extra episode that doubles as a prologue of sorts to season 3: special episode save the world with love! (farewell tour) episode 20 or season 3, episode 20 (previously episode 58 in the series at large). Therefore, if fans could never log into MyAnimeList or BibleBlack to see where the movies’ timelines place them, it would only make sense for fans to watch the series’ first movie Two Heroes directly after episode 58.
The great news is that My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising doesn’t miss one of my pet peeves about anime movies: it lacks a prologue anime episode that’s really a necessary prelude to the movie. That means it is pretty easy to pin it in the series wider timeline. It is set in December, and My Hero Academia has Class 1-A’s Christmas party in season 5, episode 13 (episode 101 overall). So, for the serious viewers in the know, the definite answer is to watch Heroes Rising after episode 100, The New Power and All For One.
Unfortunately for fans who need a breather before watching Heroes Rising, World Heroes Mission occurs in-story shortly after Heroes Rising. World Heroes Mission’s prologue episode, episode 16 of season 5 (episode 104 overall), is called Long Time No See, Selkie. Anyone who wants to watch the series and movies in chronological order must thus watch World Heroes Mission after episode 104.
Now, that only leaves My Hero Academia: You’re Next, which is the easiest one to place, at least in the series’ chronology. We can tell from the city destruction shots in the trailers of You’re Next that the movie will immediately follow the series’ finale, the Paranormal Liberation War, and will take place before the Final War begins. At this juncture, it remains to be seen whether this movie will be given a prologue episode, like Two Heroes and World Heroes Mission, or if it will have to work with what it is given since the series will be so focused on adapting the manga that they couldn’t spare time to promote the movie.
Are My Hero Academia‘s Movies Worth Watching?
For My Hero Academia fans, the films are well worth watching – especially since characters from the flicks have appeared in both the manga and TV series – even if the films are now, to a certain extent, non-canonical. In a way, this benefits them since the movies become part of the anime in a way that a great many purely non-canonical anime movies to their series can’t. The trickiest question about the films is precisely this issue of where the films ‘fit’ into the anime, but the anime dance around it a lot anyway because they often reference the films very generically.
My Hero Academia movies are big-budget anime films, with a healthy amount of fantastically animated action that sometimes makes it worth the price of admission to sit in a theatre and watch the characters go all out (especially for hardcore fans). The films are also accessible to those not up to date on the series. Part of that clarity of purpose comes from the anime’s titular hero Deku, whose take-all-comers optimism makes those movies eminently watchable.
I’m happy to report all three of the films to date have been above average, with rampant expectation for the fourth (another full-length feature, reportedly set during the Dark Hero arc). While it’s not as easy as if they were all on one streaming service, fans owe it to themselves to track down and see these movies. A show already so obviously ripe for expansion into movies scores big with the world of book-ended epic battles, character moments – and everything between them. Featuring surprising twists, huge battles, new backstory you won’t find in the manga, and above all a wonderful spotlight on the main characters, the My Hero Academia films are some of the best out there, offering fans anything and everything they could want from an anime movie.
