Review of High School DxD Hero
tl;dr: A new DxD season that’s a pretty major shift from the previous seasons for better or worse, but is still overall really solid. High School DxD Hero is the fourth season of High School DxD, though there are some pretty dramatic changes this time around. Unlike the first three seasons that were done by TNK, this season is by Passione. The reason for this is presumably that TNK took too many liberties with their adaptation to the point it became kind of hard to follow the source material, which ended up pissing off the original author. Thus, this season is by a new studio whowere instructed to follow the new source material more closely.
As such, the first major difference is in terms of story telling. What is essentially the zeroth episode of this season actually picks up the story at the climax of the third season and straight up retcons the episodes after that because it would be incredibly difficult if not impossible to continue following the light novels while keeping them. Following that, this season has two arcs, the first in which they face off against the Hero Faction in Kyoto, and the second in which they compete in a rating game against the powerful Sairaorg. There were some instances where they basically force fixed issues in previous seasons, such as in important events being revealed through flashbacks or just kind of sort of info dumped in passing that were conveyed better in the light novels I believe. Still, overall it seemed to flow decently enough and if the roughness in this season is enough to get things back on track in following the light novels then these issues are trivial.
The bigger issue, and one that isn’t really something that can be fixed per se, is that following the light novels more closely has issues of it’s own, mainly pacing. The only area that is paced as well as previous seasons, maybe even a bit better, is the action, where Issei and the rest of the cast continue growing just as well and the action overall is just as cool as the previous seasons. On the other hand the plot moves very little in this season compared to previous ones and it doesn’t feel like all that much happened. There’s also very little progress in character arcs and relationship arcs, wherein only Issei and Rias progress and only about as much as in the TNK original arc that got retconned out of the previous season. The previous seasons adapted the core light novels at a similar pace at a rate of two volumes per season, but TNK rearranged things, brought back side stories and even important events from later volumes, came up with their own mini filler type scenes, and skipped over things.
The end result is that the pacing in previous seasons is just far better than the pacing on this season which felt noticeably slow by comparison. This season may be following the light novels more closely, but the anime and light novels are very different mediums that are consumed very differently, and thus what works for one doesn’t work for the other. Still, at the the end of the day, it is important to follow the source material as close as possible, so I don’t blame Passione for not having things like the plot or character arcs progressing faster than they did in the light novel like TNK did. Still, I think the anime would have benefited from having the pacing on the original source material overall being faster but adding in more filler type scenes just for it to feel like there was more stuff happening. The comedy and such is still really solid this season, but adding more would have definitely helped. The action too has always felt like it needed to be fleshed out more so that too would have helped.
The second major difference is the art style. The quality is similar, but with different strengths and weaknesses so it’s somewhat of a mixed bag. After getting used to it, I like the color pallet and character designs more than previous seasons, though it did take a bit of getting used to. In terms of quality though, it felt like it had a harder time pulling things off. When it looks good I think it looks better than anything in previous seasons, but at the same time when it doesn’t hit that mark it has a lot more potential for looking kind of off, which happens quite a bit more than in previous seasons. I think part of that may be due to the animation, which felt a lot more fluid but also more prone to just looking kind of strange. Still, all in all, if I had to pick between the two, I’d pick this style over that used in previous seasons, though it would be somewhat of a difficult choice.
In terms of other production values, this season continues the trend of having decent enough OPs in terms of visuals and songs, but with the EDs being what truly shine in both regards, so it’s nice to see that that hasn’t changed. The soundtrack felt like a noticeable boost over previous seasons though. This season also brings back eye catches which look great and really highlight how amazing the new art style can look.