My Hero Academia has been on quite a roll as of late. Not only is it one of the rare franchises to get continuous season orders every year, but every single one of those seasons has been a massive success with the fans. Whether it's the series' addictive intros or its fluid animation, My Hero Academia has yet to disappoint its fans.
While all of the story arcs have been far from duds, they leave behind an important question: Which one of them is truly the best? The Stain Arc for a while has been in strong contention for upping the stakes for U.A.'s young heroes, but the Shie Hassaikai Arc looks to dethrone it with its deeper look at the criminal underworld. This list will be looking at both arcs and breaking down why either is My Hero Academia's best arc.
10 Stain: Battle With Stain
The battle with Stain was the first time that the U.A. students had to directly confront a high-level villain. The USJ invasion was a decent introduction to the villain world, but it consisted mostly of low-level villains, and the students spent more of their time trying to defend against and evade the villains.
Stain, however, demanded that Deku, Iida, and Todoroki give him his full attention, as he threatened to either kill them or another Pro Hero. He was a major test of their biggest changes up until that point, and the focus on melee combat helped make the encounter feel much grittier and intense.
9 Shie Hassaikai: Battle With Overhaul
While the fight with Stain was rawer, the battle with Overhaul had significantly more spectacle. Overhaul already came off as a big deal after humiliating the League of Villains just earlier in the series, and he maintained that threatening stance into his battle. He has a variety of resources at his disposal and an overpowered Quirk, all of which were directed against a trying team of Pro Heroes.
The confrontations with Sir Nighteye and Lemillion had plenty of suspense, and Deku getting powered up by Eri to go up against a powered-up Overhaul was the very definition of over-the-top.
8 Stain: Complex Anti-Hero
Overhaul may have had plenty of power under the hood, but his personality was far from being the most memorable out of all of the My Hero Academia villains. Edgy and quiet has quite the success record in anime, but it's kind of played out at this point. Stain at the other hand carried plenty of attitude behind his dark demeanor.
He is an angry and disillusioned aspiring hero who dreamed of finding the next All Might or, at least, getting rid of everyone that wasn't going to be. His vindictive speech during his arrest more than inspired the League of Villains. It rang down the ears and hearts of all the fans watching, sending either electricity or cold chills down everyone's spines.
7 Shie Hassaikai: Organized Criminal Underground
Stain was clearly a more developed, individual villain. However, the Shie Hassaikai more than evened its record with quantity. While the series wasn't quite ready to pull the trigger with the League of Villains, it used the Shie Hassaikai to portray how terrifying organized crime can really be, padding out the group with a variety of colorful personalities with some dangerous Quirks.
Such serious evil was met with an equal charge from the Pro Heroes who got to show how competent and reliable the world outside of All Might and Endeavor looked.
6 Stain: Internship Montage
The Stain Arc didn't need all doom and gloom to become endearing to the fans. It also had plenty of heartwarming, comedic moments, namely within its internship montage. The series couldn't just let Deku steal the spotlight for the entire story.
My Hero Academia gave the fans a quick yet colorful look at some of the U.A. student's internship courses, including Kirishima's strict guidance under Fourth Kind, Momo trying to keep a straight face under Uwabami, and, of course, Bakugo's disillusioning time under one of the world's top-ranked heroes.
5 Shie Hassaikai: Higher Stakes
The Shie Hassaikai Arc may have been lacking in yucks, but that's primarily because it had substantially higher stakes than the Stain Arc. Stain may have threatened another Pro Hero and three of the top students at U.A., but the Shie Hassaikai looked to disperse despair across the entire city and possibly the entire world with their quirk-destroying drug.
With the ability to cancel out any Pro Hero's Quirk and that of any citizen, any villain, small or big-time, would become a major threat to peace. On top of that, Overhaul was abusing his own daughter to manufacture the drug. Small children getting hurt is always a big no-no and definitely garnered a lot of emotional stock from the fans.
4 Stain: Master Gran Torino
While All Might may have inspired Deku, he was far from being the Pro Hero master that could really mold the boy into the future's brightest. Every Shonen anime needs a Master Roshi-like character to help spread the wisdom of the past for the ambitious yet still incredibly lost youth.
And when the story really called for it, My Hero Academia brought just that: Gran Torino. Deku's training sequence under Gran Torino was a pivotal moment for the kid and a huge calling card for the entire series that things were going to get more serious.
3 Shie Hassaikai: Mirio's Ambition
Even though the Shie Hassaikai Arc didn't have an old fart give hard observations or wisdom to the Pro Heroes, it was able to replicate a similar kind of inspiration and confidence from a younger face. Mirio Togata was an intern under All Might's old sidekick, Sir Nighteye, who was apparently a top pick to inherit One for All before Deku came along.
While he never inherited the top hero's Quirk, he never seemed like he needed it. Throughout the Shie Hassaikai Arc, Mirio was a surprisingly reliable hero for his age who gave the villains and especially Overhaul a run for his money. It doesn't hurt that his natural optimism and classic, heroic deed also helped to constantly surprise and inspire the fans.
2 Stain: Iida's Character Arc
The Shie Hassaikai Arc called for plenty of heroes like Mirio: Confident and determined forces who carried very little ambiguity of which side they were on. While that may be comforting to an extent, this consistency lacks a level of suspense more becoming of a better arc. The Stain Arc was a much dirtier and morally complex arc that had fans questioning the current state of the hero world and the current mentality of current and aspiring heroes.
Iida, in particular, was a major mystery to the community given that he was developing a lot of Sasuke Uchiha vibes during this arc. On a path to avenge his brother, fans were on the edge of their seat to see if Iida's once rigid morals would change. While that didn't happen, the tension helped make the character more mature and infinitely more endearing than a character whose morals are never challenged.
1 Shie Hassaikai: Kirishima's Character Arc
With that being said, a good, hard-boiled clash of wills has rarely hurt a story. Iida's character arc may have been "Will he?/Won't he?," but Kirishima's arc got to excite fans with a heart-racing "Can he?" For years, Kirishima has been relegated to the sidelines with rarely a substantial line or two to really define his character or reveal where he's going in the story.
At most, he's just been the stereotypical tough guy that's friends with Bakugo. While that wasn't really fleshed out during his arc, it became much more endearing as fans got to look at his childhood motivations and his real-world test against a villain. Seeing him using Red Riot Unbreakable may have not been a deep character reveal, but it was a powerful and passionate declaration that got the fans' adrenaline running.