Fall 2020’s underdog hit Talentless Nana is a dark deconstruction of the superhero/magical school genre, particularly lasering its sights on My Hero Academia with its art style and worldbuilding. It takes place at a school on a secluded island, where teens with genetic superpowers called Talents are trained to fight against the mysterious “enemies of humanity” – little do they know, though, that they’ve actually been sent to the island to be covertly killed by an undercover agent named Nana Hiiragi before they can potentially wreak havoc on the Talentless masses.

When we had only seen a couple episodes of Talentless Nana near the beginning of the season, we were worried that it would fall into the all-too-common trap of trying to do a dark deconstruction of an anime genre without actually doing interesting with it. Puella Magi Madoka Magica and Neon Genesis Evangelion were brilliant, but shallow imitators are everywhere and pretty easy to spot. This anime seemed to be going in that direction with its setup as a dark parody of school superhero series like My Hero Academia, but it actually surprised us by turning into a surprisingly exciting thriller along the lines of The Promised Neverland or Death Note. Let’s take a deeper dive into why Talentless Nana is one of the best mystery anime of 2020!