My Hero Academia and Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure are two very different series that have huge, overlapping fan bases. While My Hero Academia has only been around for a few years, Jojo has been a franchise for decades.
But, while they’re both pretty different, they have a lot of similarities, too, since they’re both anime about young people fighting bad guys, using very specific superpowers to do so. But, which of them is better? Here are five reasons it’s My Hero Academia, and five reasons it’s Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure.
10 My Hero Academia: Great Characters
Like most shonen anime, My Hero Academia has a million characters. Deku and all of his friends are learning how to be superheroes in a high school specifically designed to teach kids how to use their quirks. Each of the characters has their own backstory and reason for being there, and they all bring something different to the table.
9 Jojo: Great Characters
Jojo has a lot going for it by way of continuity. While the main character tends to change from season to season, each being a descendant of one of the characters that have already been seen in the Joestar family, this line of characters is a really fun way to change up the feel of each saga.
All of the Joestars are cool and unique, and, because they all come from different time periods, they each have a different group of supporting characters that are unique to their season of the series.
8 My Hero Academia: World-building
My Hero Academia has done a great job of setting up its universe and creating as believable of a superpowered society as we could imagine. It’s a fun idea that not everyone’s Quirks would specifically be used for superheroism, and the effort taken to show how else people with quirks might use them to make money or just to get by day to day is very well executed.
7 Jojo: Mythology
As previously mentioned, Jojo takes place over lots of years and generations, with a different main character and a different setting for each part.
But the mythology is so carefully put together that, even though some seasons take place in Egypt, others in South America, and others still in the U.S., all of the seasons of the series feel like they take place in the same universe, which can be a very difficult thing to accomplish.
6 My Hero Academia: Fight Scenes
My Hero Academia really reaches its peak when the characters participate in battles. Everyone’s quirks are on display, and there’s a lot of emotional drama and general peril for all of the characters. Plus, the animation is great, really driving home how modern the series is and using all of its technology to make sure the fight scenes between heroes and villains look as dramatic and devastating as possible.
5 Jojo: Jokes
Jojo is a very tongue-in-cheek series. There are a lot of really cool things that happen in it all the time, lots of battles between people with various abilities, and awesome character designs.
But it’s also got a lot going for it by way of comedy, so many of the things that happen in it are played for jokes. Even the Stands that the characters use to fight each other are pretty ridiculous a lot of the time. The fact that the series doesn’t take itself too seriously really works in its favor.
4 My Hero Academia: Good Villains
The villains in My Hero Academia are impressive. They all have particular look,s and the quirks that each of them have developed work so well for villains. The carefulness with which the characters pair up villains and heroes in standoffs is a great thing for the series. For example, All For One and One For All are perfectly set up to work against each other, since the quirk of one cancels out the quirk of the other.
3 Jojo: Character Designs
Jojo is known for its very specific aesthetic. All of the characters look like they were created to be extra-attractive in a very elegant way, with full lips and giant eyes rimmed with long, luxurious eyelashes.
The outfits and hair are all dramatic and colorful and over-the-top. They really take the anime penchant for amazing costumes and push it to the next level, making a Jojo character recognizable to just about anyone, regardless of whether they’ve watched the series.
2 My Hero Academia: Quirks
Quirks are essentially superpowers, and, as mentioned above, almost everyone has them. There are very few people in the world who are born without them, but not everyone wants to or is able to use their quirks in order to become heroes.
The fact that there are so many different kinds of quirks, and so many different ways to use them, is a really interesting set-up, and all of the heroes have very particular quirks that they can use to generate effects specific to them. The fact that Deku doesn’t naturally have his own quirk is also a great plot point since it means he has to work even harder to use One For All.
1 Jojo: Stands
Where My Hero Academia has Quirks, Jojo has Stands. These aren’t powers, per se, but they are a spiritual presence that a lot of people in the universe have access to. Stands manifest in different ways to different people. Some of them are stronger than others, giving the user the ability to fight in battles, while others have more benign abilities that can be used in myriad ways, like being able to turn invisible.
The different Stands offer a variety of ways that a battle might happen between two people in the universe, as well as a variety of other kinds of stand-offs people can have.