My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising Shares Character Posters for Hawks

After becoming one of the biggest action anime and manga hits of the decade, Kohei Horikoshi’s My Hero Academia will be rounding out this decade with its second major feature film effort, My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising. But unlike the first film — which slotted in perfectly between the second and third seasons of the anime series — this sequel film will be set much later than where the anime currently is. This means that there will most likely be some mentions of manga adventures yet to be adapted for the anime, including those of pro hero Hawks.

Heroes Rising will feature the anime debut of pro hero Hawks, and the film recently showed off special character portraits for the favorite pro hero which gives us a much better look at his design for the anime.

Although Hawks was briefly teased in a recent episode of the anime’s fourth season, he actually doesn’t come into play until much later than where the fourth season will be when Heroes Rising debuts in Japan later this month. The new film will take place after several arcs of the manga, and will potentially spoil some major events of the series before they make their way to the anime properly.

But while that might sting, this also means a popular character like Hawks will be incorporated into the anime’s projects before his official canon debut. Preview screenings of Heroes Rising have made their way to Japan, and the first reactions to the film seem to indicated that this time jump for anime fans was a good decision. My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising is currently scheduled to officially release on December 20th in Japan, but there is currently no word on its release to other territories as of this writing.

The film is currently described as such, “A must-see story full of passion!! In this movie, Deku, Bakugo, Ochaco, Todoroki, and all the other members of Class A will make an appearance! Even though All Might was admired by [many] all around the world, it was with a sad heart that he had to give up his hero role as the Symbol of Peace. Because of this, a dark force who was moving behind the scenes, a villain named Nine who can be considered the greatest villain thus far.”

The film will be directed by Kenji Nagasaki, who has directed the four seasons of the anime and first movie, with character designs from Yoshihiko Umakoshi, Yosuke Kuroda will be providing the script, Yuki Hayashi will be composing the music for the new film, and like the first film, series creator Kohei Horikoshi will be contributing new character designs and acting as creative supervisor.