My Hero Academia's April Fools gag reimagines the series as a sports anime.
The new "preview art" was posted to the official Japanese Twitter account for the series, and posts a faux-announcement of a new My Hero Academia series, in which Japan's pro-heroes and UA High students give up on the becoming superheroes and instead dedicate themselves to becoming professional baseball players. The heroes form four teams based around the series' pro-hero talent agencies: the Orcas, a team lead by Gang Orca, the Shishido Agency Lionels, Mt. Lady's Mountains and the Fat Gum Agency Fats. Several members of Class 1-A, including Kyoka Jiro and Denki Kaminari, are shown playing in the new league.
?球春到来?
— 僕のヒーローアカデミア "ヒロアカ"アニメ公式 (@heroaca_anime) March 31, 2022
野球好きプロヒーローたちにより設立された野球リーグ
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【#HLB ＜ヒーローリーグベースボール＞】
＼
いよいよ開幕！
ギャングオルカ事務所“オルカーズ”
シシド事務所“ライオネルズ”
Mt.レディ事務所“マウンテンズ”
ファットガム事務所“ファッツ”#ヒロアカ #heroaca_a #4月1日 pic.twitter.com/wvMtqm5L0V
This isn't the first time that My Hero Academia has put in some extra effort into its April Fools' Day pranks. In 2019, the series announced a new (fake) movie, The Giant Monster Bakugo, in which Deku's explosive rival, Katsuki Bakugo, gets transformed into a giant, Godzilla-like monster.
The gag adds some levity to the series, which is currently in the middle of its dramatic final story arc. The series has already wrapped up a number of long-running plot threads, including the reveal of the traitor within UA High, and is rapidly barreling towards the final confrontation between the supervillain mastermind All for One and the current holder of One for All, Izuku "Deku" Midoriya, that it has been setting up for almost a decade.
Series creator Kohei Horikoshi and Shonen Jump publisher Shueisha have been teasing the series' end for quite some time now, and while no definitive end date has been announced yet, Horikoshi stated at last December's Jump Festa event that he plans to conclude the super hero manga sometime before the end of 2022. The manga was first published in 2014, and has been a huge commercial success, with a global circulation of over 65 million copies.
The My Hero Academia anime, meanwhile, still has plenty of content left to adapt. The sixth season of the show, which will concentrate on the Paranormal Liberation War arc, will premiere next fall. The arc features an all-out war between Japan's pro-heroes and the Paranormal Liberation Army, which was united under the leadership of the twisted Tomura Shigaraki in Season 5.
The My Hero Academia manga is available in English from VIZ Media. The anime series is available for streaming on Crunchyroll, Netflix and Hulu.
Source: Twitter
