And once the heroes gain the upper hand again, the shots get briefer and briefer, and exhibit progressively more dynamic movement. But once our heroes are being thoroughly trounced, the shots stop moving all together. As the fight starts, the shots pan slightly to one side or the other. This way of presenting the scene emphasizes the helplessness of the characters. Also, the shots last much longer than the last scene – some are longer than ten seconds (an eternity for an action sequence). As a result, the shots are all stationary. Our characters are trapped in the poisonous haze, unable to move. But the fight directly after this one takes place in a toxic fog. In the Bakugo fight, the shot move across the environment rapidly, zooming in and out and panning fast over scenery. But by using the same shot over again, the scene feels cohesive – the battle has its own distinct flavor.īut the flavor of each individual fight only truly stands out when you experience them side by side. There’s no reason we can’t have a still shot of Bakugo standing up. We are seeing the same type of shot recycled. His movement is highly exaggerated, and the shot’s movement perfectly mirrors his own. Then we get a shot of Bakugo standing up after an attack. Once the fight gets underway, the shot moves rapidly through the environment, as the villain swings around on the treetops with his elongated teeth. By recycling the type of shot, it gives the scene a great sense of continuity. These shots both serve different purposes – the one gives us a sense of how high up the villain is, and the other puts emphasis on Bakugo’s comically expressive vein (which flinches everytime he gets pissed). Then, when we see Bakugo talking, we get a upward panning shot of his face, going from his mouth up to a vein on his upper left temple. Since the villain is high above our heroes, he’s introduced using a panning shot that slowly goes upwards. For instance, one fight pits Bakugo and Todoroki against a villain with long, metallic teeth that he props himself up on.
Every battle has its own unique rhythm that mirrors the fighter’s combat style. I won’t go quite as obsessively in depth, but the presentation is what sells this episode. I enjoyed breaking down the shot composition for Tokyo Ghoul, so I wanted to to do something similar for My Hero, to show what good directing looks like.
Thankfully, season 3 offers us a genuinely great action set piece, similar in style to Hunter X Hunter (the best Shonen anime, in my humble opinion), and has me genuinely reinvested in the series. I went back and watched some of the major plot moments in anticipation for season 3, but I was still not feeling it. The second season was a definite improvement, but by then my patience was in short supply and I didn’t make it past the halfway point. Beat for beat, the first season feels eerily reminiscent of old school Naruto. I’ve always been confused by the explosive popularity of My Hero – it always felt like a fairly standard action Shounen with one note characters and devoting or plots.
0 kommentar(er)
