My Hero Academia: Training of the Dead
僕のヒーローアカデミア トレーニング・オブ・ザ・デッド (Boku no Hero Academia: Training of the Dead)
- Action
- School
- Super Power
- Episodes
- 1
- Duration
- 25 min
- Aired
- Jun 2, 2017
- Status
- Finished Airing
Synopsis
After returning from their internships, U.A. High’s Class 1-A barely has time to catch their breath before homeroom teacher Shouta Aizawa throws them into another exercise. They’re paired with four students from Isamu Academy High School for a survival-style training match: divided into teams of four, they’ll have to outlast their opponents by either taking them out or staying hidden until the time limit expires.
The session doubles as a small reunion for Tsuyu Asui, who meets her middle school friend Habuko Mongoose again, but tensions rise quickly among the visiting students. Katsuki Bakugou clashes with Romero Fujimi, and the confrontation escalates into a dangerous accident when Romero unleashes a gas-like Quirk that turns anyone it touches into zombies. With much of the area suddenly overrun, the remaining students are forced to adapt their strategy on the fly just to make it through the exercise.
Otaku Consensus
Training of the Dead lands as a crisp, fan-oriented OVA rather than an essential My Hero Academia chapter, with Kenji Nagasaki’s brisk direction and Bones’ polished action-comedy timing carrying the material. Critics and fans most often single out the Tsuyu-focused reunion beats, the zombie slapstick, and Bakugo’s unexpectedly revealing rescue-dummy moment as the special’s strongest character work. Its common knock is just as consistent: with MAL at 7.2 and AniList at 69/100, it is widely treated as enjoyable franchise extra material, not a rewatch-priority installment.
Why You Should Watch
Watch it if you want My Hero Academia in compact, arcade-mode form: school tactics, Quirk matchups, and character comedy without a heavy canon burden or tournament-bracket sprawl. This is for viewers who enjoy the training-episode pleasures of Naruto or the classroom mayhem of Assassination Classroom, but want Bones’ superhero timing and U.A.’s ensemble chemistry compressed into one brisk special. The hook is not world-building; it is seeing how familiar personalities behave when the rules stop being clean, especially Tsuyu getting rare emotional texture and Bakugo turning a gag-heavy setup into a surprisingly telling hero moment. If you are sampling the franchise, start elsewhere; if you already care about Class 1-A’s smaller dynamics, this is a low-commitment side dish with sharper comic beats than its bonus-episode reputation suggests.
Key Characters
- TTsuyu Asui(VA: Aoi Yuuki)
Tsuyu stands out here because the special gives her a personal connection outside Class 1-A, letting her calm, deadpan presence play as more than just battlefield reliability.
- IIzuku Midoriya(VA: Daiki Yamashita)
Izuku remains the franchise’s analysis-first anchor, the kind of hero student whose appeal comes from thinking through chaos before trying to overpower it.
What Makes It Stand Out
- 1
Bones produced the special with series director Kenji Nagasaki, and reviewers repeatedly note that the animation feels solid for an OVA, with a clean modern look and punchy comic timing.
- 2
The episode gives Tsuyu Asui a rare spotlight through her middle-school connection with Habuko Mongoose, adding a small but memorable social detail that the core cast-heavy TV arcs do not often pause for.
- 3
Its zombie-horror gag format lets the special remix My Hero Academia’s usual Quirk training language into slapstick crowd control, which is why fan reactions often remember the comedy as much as the action.
- 4
Rice Digital singled out Bakugo’s continued focus on saving the civilian training dummy while others treat the exercise as derailed, reading it as a compact hint of what could make him a better pro hero.
- 5
As a one-episode side story released on June 2, 2017, it is structurally closer to a self-contained franchise bonus than a mini-arc, which explains both its easy watchability and its reputation as nonessential.
Fun Facts & Trivia
- Fun fact 1
- The special is credited to original creator Kouhei Horikoshi, directed by Kenji Nagasaki, and features character designs by Yoshihiko Umakoshi, keeping the core early-My Hero Academia production identity intact.
- Fun fact 2
- Hitomi Odashima is credited for sub character design, while Takaaki Izumo handled prop design, a useful detail for an OVA that leans on training equipment and one-off school-exercise staging.
- Fun fact 3
- The art side lists Yukiko Maruyama and Shigemi Ikeda as art directors, with Ikeda also credited for art design alongside Kayoko Tomono and Shuuichi Ookubo.
- Fun fact 4
- AniList’s tags put both Super Power and Superhero at 73%, Shounen at 60%, and Ensemble Cast and School at 40%, neatly reflecting how the special balances franchise identity with classroom ensemble comedy.
- Fun fact 5
- Despite being only one finished episode, it has a large audience footprint: MAL lists 110,463 votes, a 7.2 score, rank #3724, and popularity #1329, while AniList records 315 favourites.
Studios
- Bones
