Superhero anime My Hero Academia is escaping Fortnite skins into its own battle royale game next week

Hit manga and anime series My Hero Academia is the next pop-culture licence to take a shot at the battle royale crown, as the superhero series launches free-to-play online multiplayer game My Hero Ultra Rumble next week.

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For those unfamiliar, My Hero Academia takes place in a world inhabited by those with quirks – superhero-like powers that range from invisibility and super-strength to teleportation or, uh, doing everything a frog can do. The original manga has been running for close to a decade and has since been turned into a popular anime, with spin-off movies and video games to boot, as popular anime are wont to do.

My Hero’s characters – which include the initially ‘quirkless’ Deku, the explosive Bakugo and the legendary Superman-like figure of All Might – have already made their way into the likes of Fortnite as a series of skins and other cosmetics, along with dedicated quests and custom Creative mode variants.

My Hero Ultra Rumble will give the cast their own battle royale world to scrap in, with 18 of My Hero Academia’s characters – including both heroes and villains – forming eight teams of three before fighting to be the last team standing. Y’know, battle royale stuff.

In the familiar format set by PUBG and Fortnite, the arena will gradually shrink over time, while the characters use their unique quirks to try and eliminate their opponents. As well as Deku’s inherited powers, options include Todoroki’s hot-and-cold fire-and-ice throwing, Momo’s ability to create objects from her body and Kirishima’s rock-hard skin, there’ll be more than a dozen other characters with unique quirks to use to your advantage.

You’ll also just be able to punch people with your fists when it comes down to it, with the melee focus looking closer to something like the surprisingly good Rumbleverse (RIP) than the ranged gunplay of the genre’s big two.

The latest trailer features plenty of grunting and snippets of speech as the characters pop off shields, protectives, movement abilities and more. In other words: as a fan of My Hero, it looks totally serviceable, if maybe not the kind of thing you’ll be playing a year from now. It at least perhaps makes a bit more sense than the strange Dead by Daylight-esque asymmetrical multiplayer of fellow anime spin-off Dragon Ball: The Breakers.

Either way, you’ll be able to give My Hero Ultra Rumble a go for free when it launches in full on September 28th, following the end of its open beta test. If you’ve already been playing that beta, Kirishima, Momo and Shiozaki will be the new faces you can try out.