It’s no secret that the women of My Hero Academia aren’t afforded the same opportunities in terms of screentime, significance, or development as their male counterparts. This is a trend that extends into a lot of shonen anime. From Sakura in Naruto to Asuna from Sword Art Online, anime fans have long since become accustomed to female characters not being given the narrative chance to reach their full potential. This problem extends to every single female character in My Hero Academia, while they are present we don’t get much of a chance to watch them grow and develop alongside their male classmates. Ochako Uraraka is the most egregious example of this squandered potential in the entirety of My Hero Academia.

Uraraka is introduced within the first few episodes, another competitor at the admission exams for UA alongside Midoriya. After they both help to save each other during the practical portion of the exam the two become friends. Uraraka is thus set up as Midoriya’s first friend at UA as well as a potential love interest. From this set up she seems poised to be an extremely important character and an integral part of Midoriya’s inner circle. And the show seems to think this is accurate but in practice Uraraka’s character stagnates more and more as Midoriya’s story progresses.

Like many of the characters in this series, Uraraka gets her first real chance to reveal her talents and motivations during the Sports Festival. In this arc we learn that she comes from a poor family and that her reason for becoming a hero is in the hopes that she can support her family in the future. It’s a solid motivation and about on par with the amount of background we get on other characters like Iida at this point in the story. The problem, however, is that after this we don’t learn much about Uraraka at all. And while other characters get to come to grips with their family situations like Iida with his brother or Todoroki with his father, Uraraka doesn’t get such a luxury.

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Instead, Uraraka’s motivations are never addressed again. We see her training and fighting alongside her classmates. She makes small improvements and builds friendships with the other girls in the class. She interns for a hero that makes her learn fighting techniques and physical defense yet we never see her implement that into her training. Uraraka experiences things along with everyone else but they never seem to lead to anything more for her. She never gets a big moment. Iida gets to fight Stain, Todoroki confronts his father, Bakugou gets put in his place and sent to remedial classes, but Uraraka who’s given nearly the same amount of narrative gravitas by her introduction as these boys, does not get to have a fulfilling arc of her own. She participates but never at the forefront.

You can see her on nearly every ensemble piece of merchandise. Her voice actress is on most of the group panels for the main characters. She’s undoubtedly the definitive female character in My Hero Academia. And yet, she hasn’t had any major impact on the main plot since Season 2. Uraraka has been there, in the background, but our lack of internal knowledge about how she feels about the current state of whatever arc she’s a part of diminishes her to little more than window dressing. She’s present for the fight against Overhaul but only to help subdue a minor villain and offer a deus ex machina at the climax. Heading into the sixth season of this show, we know little more about her character than we did four years ago.

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Uraraka is constantly sprinkled into the corner of a narrative but never allowed to fully engage with it. She is especially not welcome to use it to fuel an arc of her own. In Season 5, we see her again aspiring to be like Midoriya as class 1A faces off against class 1B in a classic shonen training arc. For all of the characters, this marks as a place to show both their internal and external growth. We get to see this especially in Bakugou who not only showcases his refined control of his quirk but also how he’s grown better at communicating with and working alongside others. In only one episode, he displays a newfound trust in his classmates and a growing sense of humility that’s been in the works since his brawl with Deku two seasons earlier. Uraraka, by contrast, again spends the majority of the arc enthralled by Midoriya’s skills and her moment of triumph in this arc has nothing to do with her own growth. Instead, it’s her helping Deku overcome an out-of-control power he just unlocked. Not by using her quirk or skills she’s acquired through their internships, but by clinging to him and yelling encouragement at him. As a scene taken by itself, it’s fine and even cute in terms of how it adds to their romance. But when looking at it simply from the perspective of Uraraka’s character trajectory for the past five seasons it’s a major let down. Rather than getting to see Uraraka think on the fly as a hero we instead see her only as the love interest. None of her personal growth has any bearing on this moment, it’s all about Deku.

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Control over gravity seems like a power with a lot of potential and if we look to other shows like Bungo Stray Dogs, these powers can creatively be implemented to great ends. Chuuya Nakahara has a similar ability to manipulate gravity and he, by contrast, is one of the strongest characters in the show. Perhaps the intent with Uraraka is not to show the strongest and most powerful hero. That’s not what she said she set out to be in Season 2, after all. The problem is we don’t know enough about Uraraka to judge anything at all. She’s heading into the final stretch of this show with the same limitations, motivations, and lack of definition that she had in her very first episode. And with well executed character arcs abound for other characters, it’s time Uraraka got her day in the sun. If there were other notable female characters in the series this would perhaps feel less egregious. However, with her being the poster girl for the show it’s disappointing how little we get to learn about her and see her grow. Why can’t we devote as much attention to her special moves as we do to Iida’s? Why is Eri, a character who is really only in one arc, the most developed female character on the show when there are six girls in class 1A we barely know anything about? Uraraka has the proper groundwork to be just as dynamic and interesting as her male counterparts but her potential was squandered by making her so much of a background character. By making her so fixated on Deku and his growth, her character lacks the room for much internal development and it leaves her one of the show’s weak points.

Uraraka has so much potential. Her power starts off weak but conceptually could make her one of the strongest heroes in her class. She’s close to Midoriya and could serve as a crucial support or confidant if she was allowed to do more than just idolize him. She could serve as a strong foil to Todoroki; one hero from a prestigious family forced down this path from birth, the other from a lower rank but by her own choice. She could demonstrate the disconnect between heroes and civilians through her devotion to helping her parents. Or even just to showcase a female perspective on being a hero (something that is only done once, in jest, throughout the series when discussing the sexualization of costumes). Uraraka is a sweet but strong girl who wants to be a hero for just about the same reasons as Deku but with none of the “chosen one” narrative thrust upon her. If she was only given the chance, she could be one of the strongest and most complex characters in the series.

Uraraka’s character suffers for having a lot of promise with no delivery. Her establishment early on as a core character creates a sense of anticipation for the audience as we wait for her to prove herself relevant, interesting, and subversive in the plot the way many of her male classmates do. But that anticipation will be left unresolved. Uraraka’s constant sidelining by the plot leaves her in a weird state of limbo, where to develop her now would seem unnatural, but to leave her as she is is just as unfulfilling. Had she been allowed to grow and develop as much as characters like Iida and Kirishima (both more minor characters in their own right) she could have been one of the more fascinating and engaging characters from class 1A.The show’s lack of investment in giving her depth and a real stake in the plot leaves her in a strange position. Too relevant to be cut, but too irrelevant to be at the center of the plot. Uraraka is doomed to be squandered. Just another interesting concept that My Hero Academia couldn’t deliver on but one we sorely wish it did.