My Hero Academia: Two Heroes

Two Heroes opened the film series in 2018. Weekly Shonen Jump broke the news in its combined second and third issue for that year, and a key visual followed at Jump Festa on December 16, 2017, revealing a design for a younger All Might. Kohei Horikoshi treated the project as a chance to depict the Symbol of Peace in his prime, material he no longer had anywhere to put in the manga. The title and date surfaced at an AnimeJapan stage event that March 25.

Bones animated and Toho distributed, with Kenji Nagasaki directing, Yosuke Kuroda writing, Yoshihiko Umakoshi designing characters, and Yuki Hayashi composing, all four carrying over their duties from the television series; Nagasaki stepped down as head director partway through the third season to concentrate on the 97-minute feature. Talks with the staff dated back to late 2015, and Kengo Monji, the manga's editor at the time, helped oversee the scripts. The team settled on an ending first, Izuku and All Might swinging at a foe side by side, then worked backwards from it. Horikoshi supplied the designs for Melissa and David Shield.

The picture bowed at Anime Expo in Los Angeles on July 5, 2018, hit Japan on August 3, and played American and Canadian theaters across late September. Masaki Suda sang the theme "Long Hope Philia". A special episode aired during season three as a direct lead-in, while Volume Origin, handed to Japanese premiere audiences, carried Horikoshi's prequel chapter All Might Rising, covering his decision to train in America after Nana Shimura's death; it later became an OVA.

Years before the present, a casino robbery in California ends with two villains menacing a family pinned inside their car until a young Toshinori Yagi punches the pair across the street. His classmate David Shield arrives in the Allmobile, and the pursuit through Los Angeles closes with an Ultimate Move christened for David's home state. Both are students, treating heroics as something squeezed between lectures they keep nearly missing.

In the present, All Might brings Izuku to I-Island, a drifting artificial city built for Quirk research and currently hosting the I-Expo. David's seventeen-year-old daughter Melissa guides Izuku around while classmates from U.A. surface at attractions across the island. She reveals she was born Quirkless, as Izuku once was, and has made peace with supporting heroes rather than being one; she hands him the Full Gauntlet, a support item she invented that can survive three punches at full power.

Wolfram's masked crew seizes the island's security network during the reception, pinning every pro hero in the hall and taking David and his assistant Sam. Barred from fighting villains legally, the students settle on climbing the tower to reset the system so All Might can act. They grind upward through shutters and swarms of security bots, shedding members to exhaustion and capture, until Izuku and Melissa reach the top floor and find David's secret: he built a Quirk Amplification Device, and Sam proposed hiring fake villains to steal it back from their sponsors, all so David could restore his friend. Wolfram, never fake, shoots Sam, takes David, and reveals the device now feeding his metal manipulation.

Melissa resets the system while Izuku chases the helicopter. All Might tears through it, saves David, and finds Wolfram standing in the wreckage with a second Quirk that All For One handed him, purely to turn his oldest friend toward villainy and break him with it. Izuku cracks the iron prison open in time, and a Double Detroit Smash splits the massive iron cube Wolfram forms as his last effort, the device and the Full Gauntlet disintegrating with it. Recovering afterward, David admits he had been clutching at a past that was ending, and says he can see in Izuku the same light he once saw in his friend.

The Japanese opening weekend took fourth on ¥500 million, about $4.49 million, over three days, dropping to seventh in week two and out of the top ten by week three. The millionth ticket sold during the fourth week, and by October 2018 the domestic run stood at ¥1.6 billion, roughly $14.10 million, from 1.296 million admissions, figures Shueisha publicized as a major hit.

North America proved unusually receptive for a limited engagement, peaking at third in the market and out-earning the rest of the top ten by roughly US$1,400 per screen, for a run total of $5,754,556. Australia and New Zealand contributed US$204,835, while Hong Kong opened on HK$870,000, near US$112,081. The worldwide tally stood at $19,531,472 in November 2018, with Box Office Mojo eventually recording $21,022,724.

Demand earned two extra North American dates in October, and select Japanese theaters ran a 4D version from January 11, 2019. The film ranks twenty-third among the best-selling anime movies in North America.