My Hero Academia released new art for the upcoming HeroFes event.
The new image shows the students of UA High's Class 1-A, including central protagonist Izuku "Deku" Midoriya and his rival, the fiery Katsuki Bakugo, alongside their pro-hero mentors, which includes their teacher Eraserhead and Japan's current top-ranked hero, Endeavor. A mechanized version of All Might is all seen in the background. The new art was released through the official Twitter account for the anime series and was created to promote HeroFes, which is an annual fan festival focused entirely on the My Hero Academia franchise. The event will be held on July 24 at Tokyo's Mushashino Forest Sport Plaza.
The in-person event will hold an exclusive premiere screening of the first episode of the anime's sixth season. While the fifth season was met with a notably mixed reaction from fans, the sixth season will adapt the eventful Paranormal Liberation War arc, which features an all-out war between the series' pro-heroes and the villains of the Paranormal Liberation Front, which was recently united under the leadership of the twisted Tomura Shigaraki. The majority of the promo materials for the new season have been focused on the long-awaited showdown between Deku and Shigaraki. The sixth season of the show is scheduled to begin its broadcast sometime this fall, so HeroFes attendees will get to see its first episode a few months before everyone else.
Fans will also be treated to appearances from 15 members of the series' Japanese voice cast, including Daiki Yamashita (Izuku Midoriya), Nobuhiko Okamoto (Katsuki Bakugo), Ayane Sakura (Ochaco Urakawa) and Yuki Kaji (Shoto Todoroki). Attendees will be able to watch the see the voice actors in a live dubbing event and act out an entirely brand new story that was created specifically for HeroFes.
My Hero Academia was created by Kohei Horikoshi and was first published in 2014. The manga has become one of Weekly Shonen Jump's most popular currently-running series, with 65 million copies in circulation worldwide. While the success of the series' third movie, 2021's World Heroes' Mission, proved that Horikoshi's superhero epic is just as popular as it ever was, the author announced late last year that he was planning on concluding the story sometime before the end of 2022. The manga is currently on the series' final story arc.
The first five seasons of My Hero Academiaare available for streaming on Crunchyroll, while the original manga is published in English by VIZ Media.