My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising Debuts First Poster

If you thought last year was a big year for Kohei Horikoshi’s My Hero Academia, 2019 is arguing against that as the series prepares for both the return of its anime series with the fourth season and a new movie coming toward the end of the year. There’s currently very little known about the plot of the upcoming film, but it’s certainly going to be interesting to see how it all plays out after the major status quo shake ups of the third season.

Officially titled My Hero Academia The Movie: Heroes: Rising, the new film is currently scheduled for a December 20th release in Japan. The official Twitter account for the film shared the first poster, and you can check it out below.

Though there currently aren’t many details as to the plot of the new film, the poster and title for it definitely has a few clues. At the end of Season 3, Midoriya and Bakugo reached a new phase of their rivalry as they begrudgingly came to respect one another after fighting it out. Bakugo learned of Midoriya’s secret with All Might, and the three of them now venture forward all bearing the knowledge that Midoriya has become One For All’s successor.

So the poster sees the two of them breaking out of the image of All Might, and the “Heroes Rising” seems to tease that it will focus on the two of them as they become heroes in their very own right. This serendipitously will also be one of the major threads of the upcoming fourth season of the anime in October, so while we currently don’t know when in the series this film will take place there’s a good chance Midoriya and Bakugo will be further toward adulthood than ever by the end of the year.

My Hero Academia was created by Kohei Horikoshi and has been running in Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump since July 2014. The story follows Izuku Midoriya, who lives in a world where everyone has powers, even though he was born without them. Dreaming to become a superhero anyway, he’s eventually scouted by the world’s best hero All Might and enrolls in a school for professional heroes. The series has been licensed by Viz Media for an English language release since 2015. My Hero Academia is gearing up for an even bigger end of 2019 with a new film in theaters later this year too.