Democracy is alive and well.

Quite a few elections are slated for this year and pretty much all of them have been dreadful affairs for everyone involved it seems. Perhaps we should all take a break from this political doom and gloom and take part in an election that’s more uplifting.

Since 5 August, voting has been open for the World Best Hero poll, the first of its kind from the wildly popular manga and anime series My Hero Academia in honor of the final installment having just been published. And since this series is set in a world where the vast majority of people are super-powered, there are quite a few candidates in the running – 287 to be exact since villains and peripheral characters are also included.

Voting will take place over the next two months, and in this election you can vote a lot more than once. After all, that just shows how badly you want your favorite to win. Anyone can vote once every 24 hours until 30 September. After that, the top three choices will be announced and crowned World Best Hero at a special event on Shonen Jump’s official YouTube channel at 7 p.m. (Japan Time) on 2 December.

These three heroes will have commemorative movies made in their honor and will advance to the Ultra Plus Stage. This is a lightning round election from 8 p.m. on 2 December for the next 24 hours, during which votes can be cast by the same person once every hour up to 12 times. The winner of this showdown will earn the title The MHA and have a bronze statue made of them based on a new original drawing by creator Kohei Horikoshi.

In addition to this high-stakes affair, there are also down-ballot votes taking place throughout the World Best Hero polling. From 5 to 11 August, the Hero Name Ranking will be compiled, followed by the Quirk Ranking from 12 to 19 August. Votes for the Best Chapter Ranking will be accepted from 20 to 25 August and, finally, there will be votes cast for the Manga Volume’s Inside Covers Ranking from 26 August to 1 September.

The winner for all of these rankings will be highlighted in the final My Hero Academia fan book that will come out in January 2025 in Japan. Also, during this voting period, anyone can submit questions for Horikoshi, some of which will be answered in the same fan book.

There’s even more going on in this election! Also from 5 August to 1 September, anyone can submit fan art on Twitter using the hashtag #WBH_FANART or #頑張れって感じのファンアート (“do your best” fan art). The 10 winning selections will be posted on the official World’s Best Hero website on 15 September and receive “digital data with a personalized signature from Kohei Horikoshi-sensei.”

Even if you’re not artistically inclined, you can still win the same prize simply by sharing the poll results viewed on the website on social media and following @myheroacademia on Twitter. You can share as many times as you want and each time counts as an entry with three lucky winners announced sometime next October.

And of course it wouldn’t be an election if members of the media didn’t try to sway your vote to fit their own agenda. On that note, here are the five characters you should be putting your weight behind if you want to save or doom the world. Quite frankly, I think we can all agree that Mon was a good boy that got a raw deal and he probably deserves to win this more than anyone.

I generated this montage on the World Best Hero website and so can you. It’s just one more thing that makes voting in this election far more fun and satisfying than those boring ones that affect the fate of the real world, so get involved and let your voice be heard!

Source: World Best Hero
Images: ©Kohei Horikoshi / Shueisha
● Want to hear about SoraNews24’s latest articles as soon as they’re published? Follow us on Facebook and Twitter!