Television series

My Hero Academia

Name: My Hero Academia
Genre: Comedy, Action, Adventure, Anime
Released: 2016
Cast: Daiki Yamashita, Nobuhiko Okamoto, Yûki Kaji, Ayane Sakura, Kaito Ishikawa

A gawky, powerless kid trains himself sick to earn a spot in a school for superhumans, and the show never lets its own sincerity embarrass it. Big, colourful, relentlessly kind-hearted shonen about effort outrunning talent, with fights that escalate from playground scuffles to genuinely inventive set pieces. Best for anyone who wants a underdog story played completely straight, tears and all.

TVMaze rating

7.5

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The original outcast-with-a-dream shonen, and the template Midoriya's whole arc is built on — a kid nobody believes in, screaming his way toward being taken seriously.

But It's enormous, badly padded in places, and the early seasons look their age.

Jujutsu Kaisen2020

Same school-for-gifted-teens structure but meaner and slicker, with fight choreography that's become the genre's new gold standard.

But Darker and gorier — the body horror is a real tonal jump from MHA's brightness.

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But The story is thinner and more linear — it's mostly there for the visuals and the feeling.

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Something you would not have found on your own.

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Same premise as My Hero Academia — a world where power is real and institutionalised — but asked with total seriousness instead of hope, exposing what the shonen version politely leaves out.

A masked-hero world played not as inspiration but as reckoning — what superhuman power actually does to a society, its police, its history.

But Slow, dense, and unflinching about race and violence — nothing like MHA's tone at all.

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A far stranger, more cerebral take on the power-system-and-training genre, with fights won by clever thinking as much as strength.

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One-Punch Man2015

Flips the whole premise on its head — a hero so overpowered nobody notices him — and it's very, very funny about it.

But The joke is one-note by design, and quality dips hard after the first season.

Mob Psycho 1002016

A quieter, weirder cousin about a kid suppressing his own terrifying power out of sheer decency — same warmth, different register.

But Deliberately anticlimactic action; if you're here for spectacle you'll be underwhelmed.

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood2009

Widely considered the shonen ceiling — same themes of sacrifice and what power costs you, executed with a tighter, more devastating plot.

But Heavier and sadder throughout; less classroom camaraderie, more war and grief.

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Corporate-sponsored superheroes doing PR for their powers — a funnier, more cynical mirror of MHA's hero-as-celebrity idea.

But Buddy-cop pacing and a smaller cast; it's a different, less epic kind of story.

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From the creator of Soul Eater — firefighters with pyrokinetic powers battling infernal cults, with the same rookie-finds-his-place energy.

But Uneven pacing and some genuinely baffling comic relief that undercuts tense moments.

The Incredibles2004

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A tight, gorgeously animated family film about a world where superpowers are banned and everyone's straining against being ordinary — same yearning, ninety fewer minutes.

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Live-action, low-budget, and decades older than anything on this list — the original transforming hero-in-training show that quietly invented half the genre's DNA.

But Cheap effects, monster-of-the-week repetition, and pacing built for kids watching weekly on 1970s TV.