Review: My Hero Academia: School Briefs Volume 2 by Anri Yoshi

Hey all, Dani here.

Is today’s review for a book that is in need of a signal boost? Well, no, not exactly. The “My Hero Academia” franchise is pretty darn popular overall, but I had already scheduled this series of reviews to go up on Saturdays, so I didn’t want to try and shove things around. But I know a lot of people connected to this series who are being affected by everything going on in the world. Like some of the voice actors from the show. They’ve had to delay the dub schedule for several anime so that the voice actors can record from home, which I think is super great of Funimation. And, of course, my friends at Colorworld Books are the only ones licensed for official metal art from some of your favorite anime–including “My Hero Academia,” so if you’re interested in checking out some of the cool art, you can head to their web-site.

All right, let’s jump into the review.

Book Details

Written by: Anri Yoshi

Original Story by: Kohei Horikoshi

Format: Paperback

Pages: 224

Publisher: VIZ Media LLC

Publication Date: July 2, 2019

ISBN: 1421582716 (ISBN13: 9781421582719)

Summary

Midoriya inherits the superpower of the world’s greatest hero, but greatness won’t come easy.

Prose short stories featuring the everyday school lives of My Hero Academia’s fan-favorite characters.

At U.A. High School, it’s tradition for students to attend a training camp in the woods. Though the kids are mostly there to improve their Quirks, it’s also an opportunity for the ever-chatty class A, and class B as well, to cut loose in a way they can’t during regular classes.

My Thoughts

Rating: 4 stars

It’s a bit of a misleading label to refer to these volumes as prose short stories. Yes, they are prose, but they technically fall into the category of light novels. Besides, a short story is not 200+ pages long–that would technically be a novella or a short novel. However, that’s all besides the point.

I enjoy these day-to-day glimpses at the lives of the students and teachers we’ve all gotten to know from either reading the manga or watching the anime (or both). Do you want to know why I rated this one lower than the first volume? It may seem stupid but I can’t help myself.

I think 20+ pages in the course of this volume were spent on Mineta trying to peep on the girls while they were bathing. Yes, I get it, Mineta is a pervert. Kohei Horikoshi has said several times in the bonus content of the manga volumes that he put this character in so he could indulge in his own pervy thoughts. Fine, whatever. I would be okay with that if we actually got some character development along with it. I mean in all the volumes of manga, the episodes of anime, the movies, and now this light novel series…Mineta is a perv. He’s obsessed with boobs and that’s about it.

I’ve been re-watching the anime, and towards the end of season two I thought we were going to get a little growth from Mineta, when he was thinking about his reasoning for training to be a Pro Hero, and his reasoning is that he wants to be a pro so that girls will think he’s cool.  Hey, here’s an idea…stop being so creepy and pervy!!!

Okay, sorry, this review has turned into a rant about the one character I absolutely can’t stand in the whole series.

But that’s why I didn’t enjoy this volume as much, because he was such a focus on the story.

I enjoyed seeing more antics from the 1-A kids as they were on the bus to the training camp, especially when everyone was trying to help a fellow classmate feel better. And I liked getting to see some of the interactions between Class 1-A and Class 1-B at the camp. It’s these little glimpses that help to expand on the characters and their relationships with each other, but it’s bits and pieces that wouldn’t work in the main story because it would slow down the narrative.

Anyway, this was another quick read, and I look forward to talking about the next volume soon.

Where to Get a Copy

You can grab your own copy of this book from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-million, Book Depository, or your local independent bookstore through IndieBound.

You can also check with your local library.