I still remember Bakugo vs Uraraka, and wonder what happened there? Was it a fluke?
My Hero Academia II - A true Hero
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https://mangaplus.shueisha.co.jp/viewer/1007312
! Shigi's word must have hurt like a motherfucker to Gran Torino and Endy.
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As they should. We can discuss forever what can happen, but I have the feeling that with Shiggy going in this directon, and Dabi on route, the truth about Endeavor, and Hawks will both be revealed. With hero 1, 2 exposed, and 3 either dead or an accomplice Shiggy can retreat.
Honestly, If you wanted to give the slam dunk to Kirishima, should have given Ashido a better reason to falter, like "oh I either administer the poison or I save THESE non-mineta people!"
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I know AFO is the one that likes to give speeches to mess with his enemies, but I really hope Shiggy´s speech continues in the next chapter. Deku having more info on his background would be interesting, so far neither the main character and the main villain know a thing about each other.
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I've seen this topic getting bumped for a while because of the spoilers, only seeing that it had something to do with Mina. Now reading it, you should be happy! After years of being a side character with a unique look, she finally has a character moment that she can use to grow. In this series, a failure today can lead to development tomorrow. Not every great character moment is going to be a win. It's just a shame that she, like much of class 1A, hasn't had real exposure to villains until now.
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I've seen this topic getting bumped for a while because of the spoilers, only seeing that it had something to do with Mina. Now reading it, you should be happy! After years of being a side character with a unique look, she finally has a character moment that she can use to grow. In this series, a failure today can lead to development tomorrow. Not every great character moment is going to be a win. It's just a shame that she, like much of class 1A, hasn't had real exposure to villains until now.
completely agree. feared for the worst after reading the spoilers here, but personally, I liked how this was handled.
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Eh I have nothing against the handling of Ashido, I thought it felt pretty organic.
I mean, who else was supposed to come in besides Red Riot? This was a relevant plot thread.
Of course she's not going to get it in easy, that would undervalue Giga.Anyway, my only gripe with this chapter and what worries me is Shiggy down on the floor.
What the heck, even if it's for pandering and shock value that felt cheap.
This guy was manhandling everyone and suddenly he's back to pre powerup days?
It's like the entire narrative took a hard brake and a 180 manuever.
This better not be the Tenrou Island turning point for this manga, where the supposed direction is A but goes to B because the author wrote himself into a corner or for the sake of comfortability. -
Go, boyfriend, go! Mina and Kirishima need more focus.
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I haven't read the spoiler tags but when I saw Mina on the cover but the title was Red Riot I could guess what the conversation was about.
Anyway, great moment for Kirishima. A shame it had to be at the expense of Mina though. Yeah, he used her canister but it would've been better if she had passed it to him instead of being struck by fear. I don't know, it felt more like a regression of her character. More like the plot was driving the story instead of the character. But, I guess Giganto was just so terrifying in the flashback. Understandable, but I still don't like it.
The worse part is Mina's moment being a tease at the end of last chapter only for it not to happen now. I'm grateful the girls actually have things to do, but I'd personally love to see them get more of the spotlight instead of being relegated as constant backup.
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Man, I've been waiting for Mina to get some focus for years now. But instead we just get more boring Kirishima
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Its cool that Kirishima got a cool moment but I would have prefered the payoff to Mt lady keeping the mouth open while Acid girl drops it in. Mt Lady keeping that mouth open was one of the first time I respected her as a competent hero and not just nice sexy lady that happens to be big so Im sad her keeping the mouth open wasnt when the vial got in.
Seperately I also dont like Mina freezing and having to be thrown out of the way. Just have Kirishima be the one doing the throw because he cant burn and later Mina congratulate him or maybe he just blocks the blade that was going to break her vial and she throws it in. And its both of them together defeating a childhood monster. I dislike her freezing at a crucial time to be saved by Kirishima since one of the few thing we know about her was stepping up even when there was personal risk and danger. And I liked that little bit back then that it isnt just Deku that had that that drive. Her freezing is the equivalent of Mirio not being of All might's power to me. A narrative with the prop up the character you rooting for by pushing by making the other character they admire/feel inferior too be less good than they were presented. I dont like those. I was glad it was avoided with Mirio Im sad it wasnt avoided here.
They do not have time for talking. He has regeneration and strength compared to all might. And a lot of other bs powers waiting to come back. Flamebeard should turn him to ash now.
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If it were anybody but Kirishima I would be more annoyed, but to make things up this needs to be a catalyst for Miina's growth arc, even if she's already honed her powers more.
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Well, I can see why people were having heated discussions. Good for Kirishima, but I'm dissappointed.
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LOL, I was actually excited to see Ashido to have a defining moment but Kirishima just jumps in and steals it from her. Fucking whatever.
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sigh ….more fuel to the fire. I think folks can see where fans of Mina (and other non-Momo 1-A heroines) are coming from with this one.
I like many, many things about BNHA that I'm not in this thread talking about weekly. But this moment was especially disappointing.
If you've been waiting to see Mina to (finally, frankly) be given a chance to show her growth as a hero, this wasn't it.... And even with an opening color page, homegirl doesn't get to be the star of her own chapter, titled "Red Riot?" Fucking boo, dude.
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Not really invested in the whole Mina debate but that cover with that chapter title was borderline trolling.
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Yeah I like Kirishima well enough but outside of the main three in 1-A, he is definitely the one character that doesn’t need more spotlight right now. I’m hoping the fact that Machia isn’t actually down and out yet leaves open the possibility that Ashido could still have a part to play here.
If not this arc then maybe in the future she’ll have a real shining hero moment.
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I knew letting Momo make the plan was a terrible idea.
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Kirishima is the most boring fucking character in the series. There is literally nothing to his character, no personality, no quirks (heyyyyy), Tetsutetsu has the same quirk and he's more interesting. The fact that Horikoshi keeps giving him the spotlight while failing to give him any sort of depth is baffling. Oh he's insecure and he likes Bakugou for some reason, what an interesting character….
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@TLC:
The fact that Horikoshi keeps giving him the spotlight while failing to give him any sort of depth is baffling. Oh he's insecure and he likes Bakugou for some reason, what an interesting character….
He's consistently top five in the popularity polls. Mina has never made it higher than 29th place.
Same reason Jiro got that school festival arc and anime opening largely to herself, mind control boy Shinso got an entire arc about trying to find a place to put him in two different classes, and Toga is the villain most consistently shown aside from Shigaraki.
Horikoshi is pretty much a slave to the popularity polls. You can see best girl Tsuya go from having the emotional focus during the otherwise fluff move-in arc, and the only character to get dedicated anime filler episodes in the first seasons, fall off the face of the planet once she dropped in popularity. You'd think Iida and Urakaka would get more spotlight since they tend to rank well and were in theory some of the original mains, but…
You expect character popularities to fluctuate based on whatever arc a series is in at the time and who is getting cool moments (It never helped Choji in Naruto though...) but MHA is the other way around, the characters that get focus seem to follow the polling instead. Nothing wrong with giving a popular character more screen time but a large chunk of plot choices seem dictated by polling rather than the other way around....
They just started another popularity poll a chapter or two ago, so we should see new results in a few months. MHA is already on its sixth poll and its been running for 6 years... One Piece has had that many in 23 years.
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Are popularity polls an editorial decision or does the creator of the manga just request to start one every year or two?
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@Oga:
Are popularity polls an editorial decision or does the creator of the manga just request to start one every year or two?
Probably a little bit of both, but if it was purely editorial One Piece would have way more by now. It would have had them near annually at its peak.
Bleach had 9 polls in 15 years.
Naruto had 7 in 15 years.
One Piece has had 6 in 23 years.
Dragonball had 2 in 11 years, and one was at the end of Cell and one was 9 chapters before the end of the series.Most other series just don't run long enough to really use as measuring sticks and only get one or two polls during their entire runs, but six polls in six years is a LOT by any metric..
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It is quite strange that OP has had relatively few polls in its time. Maybe due to the structure of the story and that new plotlines/characters aren't added quite as often as other shorter series means that frequent popularity polls would be a tad redundant?
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I think its probably Oda just doesn't care much since, aside from Law, he never really seems to change things to reflect whats popular anyway. While other creators really want that input.
Notably, 5 of Naruto's 7 polls were before its timeskip, so not nearly as much in the second half.
Dragonball's complete lack of polls until the end of series I don't know what to make of, but that was so long ago maybe polls werent as much a thing then.
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There were better ways to go about it, like having Kirishima save her while giving up his vial and then have Mina achieving the task. Having them working together to achieve it would have been better too.
And Momo´s plan wasn´t bad and used everyone quirks correctly, but I doubt is gonna work on Machia.
Not really invested in the whole Mina debate but that cover with that chapter title was borderline trolling.
Pretty much, without that baiting I would have cared less.
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Horikoshi is pretty much a slave to the popularity polls. You can see Tsuya go from having the emotional focus during the otherwise fluff move-in arc, and the only character to get dedicated anime filler episodes in the first seasons, fall off the face of the planet once she dropped in popularity. You'd think Iida and Urakaka would get more spotlight since they tend to rank well and were in theory some of the original mains, but…
By now that's fucking weird, I mean given he said that the previous cancellations had a negative impact on him, pander to popularity on the first two years, could be reasonable. But we are 6 years in, 20+ volumes deep, selling high and always placing good on the TOC, the series ain't going to the axe (unless it delves into Bleach levels), and yet here we are.
Remember when Iida and Ochako were Deku's best friend instead of Todoroki and Bakugo? Was the last time Iida had any action towards Deku and he consoled him after the debriefing when Mirio and Deku learned what was happening to Eri? It's like what 100 chapter ago?
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At this point the issue is with JUMP itself. Canceling HeroAca without letting Horikoshi come to a satisfactory wrap-up would be on them, so having popularity polls dictate the story is really just stupid.
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By now that's fucking weird, I mean given he said that the previous cancellations had a negative impact on him, pander to popularity on the first two years, could be reasonable. But we are 6 years in, 20+ volumes deep, selling high and always placing good on the TOC, the series ain't going to the axe (unless it delves into Bleach levels), and yet here we are.
Remember when Iida and Ochako were Deku's best friend instead of Todoroki and Bakugo? Was the last time Iida had any action towards Deku and he consoled him after the debriefing when Mirio and Deku learned what was happening to Eri? It's like what 100 chapter ago?
Don't want to be that guy but maybe pandering is not to prevent getting axed but rather a desire to increase the series popularity and sales.
It could be editorial pressure and that he's likely the next big author after Oda in JUMP (In sales, anyway).
And the need to be able to reach OP heights could be a pivoting point in certain plot decisions -
Notably, 5 of Naruto's 7 polls were before its timeskip, so not nearly as much in the second half.
Really? How strange.
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Don't want to be that guy but maybe pandering is not to prevent getting axed but rather a desire to increase the series popularity and sales.
It could be editorial pressure and that he's likely the next big author after Oda in JUMP (In sales, anyway).
And the need to be able to reach OP heights could be a pivoting point in certain plot decisionsYes I could have expressed myself not exactly in the way I'm trying to convey. This is Jumps big seller now that KnY ended, actually it was a big seller before the KnY boom, but I think that having the story be molded in a non natural progression due to editorial pressure for it's constant popularity raise a bad decision, in a way that alienates readers that want to see other character have focus, even it's crumbs of development, but these moments are denied because only the top popular can do shit.
And also put strain on Hori to rewrite arcs, characters moments and chapters based in what is the perceived audience wants and not what they really want or not what the author want.I see this kind of scenario like the Star Wars sequel, it tried to hard to be popular in every demographic, that we ended with a mushy product that make sale solely based on the brand but barely delivered character arcs, a decent plot or likable new characters.
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I'm kinda in the camp that doesn't mind Mina freezing up. She rarely shows anything other than being the peppy athletic type. A reminder also that these are 15/16 year old kids.
I didn't care for Kirishima being the one to get the canister in though. He's had more experience than a lot of his classmates in live and death situations. But I would have preferred someone else pull it off.
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Yeah, except during Kirishima's flashback he was the one that froze when they encountered Machia and Mina was the one that stayed cool and composed long enough to talk to Machia and send him away before freaking out.
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Well she did break down and kinda cry right after he left. And that was before he was a mountain.
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For me, it's not that I necessarily mind Mina failing, but it stings so much that it happens to a character that barely gets moments to begin with. And I've seen some argue that this could lead to some good development for her, but I don't want it to be another Uraraka situation where I'm left waiting hundreds of chapters for her to have another big moment…
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It would've bothered me less if: in dissociation to her personality she struggle to actually deal with villains irl due to the trauma Machia caused in middle school (like showcase it during the USJ or the Camp raid), and if this was before the kids got their licenses and being interns for 3 freaking MONTHS.
It's ok to freeze if face of danger, but it's also part of being a hero overcome it. She went from being a middle school girl that told a lie to Machia to protect her friends, to a high school girl with a hero license that was ready to throw the vial into a behemoth before hearing his voice, that's character digression for me. Specially when it's on a secondary character that won't have many more times to shine.
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@TLC:
Kirishima is the most boring fucking character in the series. There is literally nothing to his character, no personality, no quirks (heyyyyy), Tetsutetsu has the same quirk and he's more interesting. The fact that Horikoshi keeps giving him the spotlight while failing to give him any sort of depth is baffling. Oh he's insecure and he likes Bakugou for some reason, what an interesting character….
I like him. He makes Bakugo less of a dick. Have a interesting failure as a hero that he legit fears death and danger and has to work on it. And is all around cheerful. Im not sure what makes you consider Tetsu more interesting.
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This may be a bit of wishful thinking, but this could start a story arc with her in the same way Momo struggles with decision making and Ida struggles with heroic morality. It's all set up now. From Kirishima's flashback we know that she's good at many of the qualities that make a hero. After all, she did get into a top hero school. and except for her grades you can say she's been doing well up until now. But, she fails when challenged with something unexpected. It happened at the final exams, and now it's happening again her. She's hit the wall with her own natural talent and from now on will need to figure out how to reach the next level. Hey, maybe Kirishima can help out with that?
Something like that. In a story where at least two or three of the student want to be the best, it's nice to give other students individual goals. Back to Kirishima, he doesn't want to be "the best" but rather a brave hero that stands on the front lines. He wins every time he blocks a hit for someone else. His success is defined differently, and maybe the same will happen with other characters later.
Of course, this is all for nothing if the character fall into the background. But, from the way things are playing out this arc will at the very least force class A1 to make some hard decisions going forward.
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I always took Hori's pressure to be mostly self inflicted from his previous cancellation. And it informed a lot for me of the early lack of the classic slow period to introduce the full cast and how quickly everything had to quickly turned into a cool fight to never lose reader attention.
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Well she did break down and kinda cry right after he left. And that was before he was a mountain.
That's the whole thing, though. She breaking down shows that she was dead scared. She only doing so after he left shows that being scared down to her core never stopped her from acting.
If she hadn't shown any sign of fear before, at least we could make a point saying that "she was too ignorant of the dangers of life before to feel danger, but now she knows it and is afraid". But that's not the case, she knew the fear back then and she was already strong enough to conquer it."Mina freezing out of fear now so Horikoshi can use this chance to show a flaw in her she will need to overcome" only makes sense in a vacuum. Even if she gets this said development (which is everything but guaranteed, being such a minor character), she will only be developing into the person she already was years before.
You can't develop a character by introducing a flaw you had already shown they didn't had (in fact, her behavior in that flashback was making a statement of how she was the opposite of that). If anything, this just shows how her character was completely overlooked and nothing in this scene was about her.
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I think that Hori´s main problem is his talent to come up with good character designs, because of that the series ended with too many kids and heroes, it´s difficult to handle that many characters properly, even less if you don´t have a clear protagonist group. Hoping that his next series has a smaller cast, though one of MHA´s strenghts is that by having so many characters with good designs is easy to get invested with one or various of them (hell, even Sero has his own very little fandom)
Alos, Hori´s talent with character design was something that he had back with Oumagadoki Zoo, the series didn´t sell or rank well, but it has tons of good quality fanart for a short series considered a failure by Jump standards.
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@.access:
"Mina freezing out of fear now so Horikoshi can use this chance to show a flaw in her she will need to overcome" only makes sense in a vacuum. Even if she gets this said development (which is everything but guaranteed, being such a minor character), she will only be developing into the person she already was years before.
You can't develop a character by introducing a flaw you had already shown they didn't had (in fact, her behavior in that flashback was making a statement of how she was the opposite of that). If anything, this just shows how her character was completely overlooked and nothing in this scene was about her.
Like I said earlier, I take that as character regression for the sake of setting up a "poetic parallel", like Kirishima couldn't have back upped Mina in other way.
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Like I said earlier, I take that as character regression for the sake of setting up a "poetic parallel", like Kirishima couldn't have back upped Mina in other way.
Yes. If Horikoshi point was really to show their development and refer that scene from their earlier years, he could simply have let Kirishima stood there with her, not in her place. This way we would see her not regressing while he would up his game to compensate for that day years ago when he just watched as she endangered herself, now he would be by her side. Seeing Mina flunk so Kirishima can shine as "their development" only shows how the scene and the readers are only perceiving it through Kirishima POV, Mina being reduced to device to set up him.
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I think that Hori´s main problem is his talent to come up with good character designs, because of that the series ended with too many kids and heroes, it´s difficult to handle that many characters properly, even less if you don´t have a clear protagonist group
This was ultimately the big problem Bleach ended up having. ANd Naruto. Even One Piece to a degree has difficulty balancing its main cast at this point, most of them never get fights and we have entire arcs with the crew split in half.
Hoping that his next series has a smaller cast,
This series still has years of juice in it. It'll be a long time before he has a next series, and if it follows the lead of most shonen, anything he does next won't be nearly as long running. Very few pull off the Toriyama or Takahashi trick of having multiple long running hits.
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To be fair this series started off with a rather big cast.
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The world trigger twitter account posted this drawing from Hori, wich reminds me that Ashihara also drawed characters from MHA
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@Robby:This series still has years of juice in it. It'll be a long time before he has a next series, and if it follows the lead of most shonen, anything he does next won't be nearly as long running. Very few pull off the Toriyama or Takahashi trick of having multiple long running hits.
Yeah, in Jump I can think of the authors of Nurarihyon and Beelzebub, who haven´t been able of getting a decent series after their first success. I hope Hori has better luck than them and can eventually try other things.
As for the big cast, it may be a coincidence, but I think Ashirara with World Trigger somehow manages it pretty well, though the format of the series may help.
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Yah, the fact that is mostly a sport series, of war exercises/video games as the sport, allows world trigger a kind of flexibility that allows for the cast to cycle and keep things varied. It could do with a recap of who is who at the beginning of the chapters, as “the sniper guy/gal” are like 4 people with annoyingly similar designs, each, and no matter if I forget his name, sugar guy or tail guy are obvious who they are.
Sato and Ojiro? I didn’t check, just stayed here for two minutes before posting.
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Yeah but Heroes are all about individualism. I mean sure they work together once or twice maybe but that's about it.
You can see how that glaring contradiction doesn't translate well into the setting.
I mean look at Naruto who doesn't even do a class but a 3 man team.
I thought the few dynamics the teams had for the limited time they showed up was pretty fun and memorable.
You have a few outliners like Tenten and Shino..who just disappears but other than that I would say most of them made their mark in their limited panel time.
I think it's something to do with personalities and most of 1A are pretty bland.
But hey it's a more peaceful setting so that could be a factor. -
The failure to focus on most of the class is weird in light of the expressed goal of creating a Justice League where the Pillar of Peace is more like the Lots of Pillars of Peace.
Literally no one cares about Sugar Man, Tentacle Man, or Invisigirl, and if not for his dumb speech no one would care about Tail Man.
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I don't know the names of any of the characters off the top of my head except Deku, Bakugo, and Tsuya. If I stop and think about it I can get Iida, Ochako, Kirashima, Tokoyami, and Shoto.
Notably I am mixing up first and last names randomly, and Deku is actually just a nickname, I have to reach for Midoriya.Gun to my head I could not tell you the names of any of the other 12 or 13 character without help. Like I can get Mineta or Momo if I see their picture and remember they exist, but… no chance at all of naming any of the rest.
If you listed Koda and Sato and Sho and Kodai and Ojiro and Yuki and Toru, I could probably say "it must be one of the ones I don't know the names of" but I wouldn't be able to match them up, or tell you which one of those was class B or which was just made up. I literally JUST looked at list with pictures to make that list and already I have no idea.
And I'm definitely not getting any of the B class or tertiary characters or most of the villains.
If we're counting hero names I can do ALl Might, Eraserhead, and Grand Turino, President Mic, Endeavor, Gang Orca, Hawks, and a few others, but I'd probably need to see pictures before I could think of Jeanist, Mirko, Wash, Mt. Lady, Fat Gum, etc.
For a series I've been following for six years there should be a stronger grasp and connection to at least some of them by now but there just isn't.
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If we're gonna judge via large casts set in school Negima did a far better job establishing and fleshing out its cast. Even if I can't remember the name, I can remember the face and pick a favorite moment from the character. It's the gold standard for me and why I judge Horikoshi's handling of his cast so harshly. That series ended 8 years ago and I can still remember most of the cast off the top of my head.