Ace Academy

***Shonen Imagination: Ace Academy***, also simply known as ***Ace Academy*** (エースアカデミー), is a shonen manga written and illustrated by Marie Acre, and is published by Imaginate's Shonen Imagination. With the association of Kiddosoft for owning the rights of the title, the *Ace Academy* manga serves as a re-teller of the original story of the 2016 superhero role-playing video game of the same name, developed and published by Kiddosoft of Japan.

The first volume was released on February 12th, 2022, with the final volume ending on November 6th, 2022. Upon release, it received favorable feedback, praising for its colorful aesthetic, the premise of the world of the *Ace Academy* universe, its characters, engaging story, and the action. A remake of the *Ace Academy* game was going to happen, but was ultimately cancelled due to the manga already telling the story again, as well as preventing anymore retelling of the game, hence that it will get "repetitive".

## Story

*Ace Academy* revolves around a inspirable and spirited teenage high school superheroine student Nikki Sweeterson, a girl who wants to become the new Mayor of New York City due to meeting her idol Spirette when she was so young and becoming an inspiration of her ever since. To do so, she attends to Ace Academy and receives her force (another name for superpower) that could be powerful enough to be acceptable of being the Mayor. Unfortunately, Nikki was granted with the force Blossom, making everyone viewing her as a low-tier hero to even be the next Mayor of New York City.

But that's about to change. During the first week of the student's training, Nikki trained really hard to maintain her force, which results in enhancing her strength, speed, defense, power and agility. Nikki even learned martial arts and super moves, which also results in getting her own shield, granted from the power itself.

With Nikki being more powerful than ever and spawning many friends and a rival, will she ever be the Mayor of New York City with that kind of force?

## Characters

* **Nikki Sweeterson** - The main protagonist. She is a 13 year old girl who has a massive obsession with her idol Spirette, as well as becoming the Mayor of New York City due to her idol being one. Granted with a weak force called Blossom, Nikki maintains it by training extremely hard, to the point where she learned martial arts and new super moves that could make her and her power useful to anyone during combat. Her most iconic super move is Blooming Riot, which is a very powerful move that consist a series of punches. Nikki can do 50 to 100 punches. Doing more punches above 100 will drain her energy and fighting spirit, even if it means doing the impossible.
* **Spirette** - One of the deuteragonists. She is a 30 year old young alien woman who is the most popular superhero of the United States of America, as well as the most popular hero in New York. She wields 8 forces which are fire, ice, water, lightning, armor, smoke, wind, and earth, in which Spirette crams all forces up called Multi. Spirette is very nice, heartwarming and headstrong, as she inspires good people to have spirit in keeping the world being poisoned from many supervillains. She is also Nikki's teacher and guidance of being her successor.
* **Angel** - One of the deuteragonists. She is a 13 year old girl who serves as Nikki's only rival. Angel despises Nikki for being influenced by her idol Spirette, whom Angel was inspired by as well. She views Nikki's force pretty weak, and somewhat obscure of how Nikki managed to be more powerful with a weak force. This impacted Angel as she grew more and more jealous of Nikki's progress of her force, getting more attention of her idol, and her classmates praising her to eventually become the next Mayor. In Ace Academy's 16th Academic Brawl in a final matchup, Nikki and Angel finally confronts each other, with Angel finally expressing her toxic feelings towards Nikki and her force. The match ends with a tie. Angel eventually apologizes but Nikki already found out about Angel's feeling after Recon told her. Angel's force is Baki. She can turn her arms black and can do really brutal melee attacks. She tries to defeat Nikki with her big attacks but some of them were blocked by her shield.
* **Recon** - One of the tritagonists. He is one of Nikki's best friends and love interest. Recon wanted to become a secretary of the Mayor's City Hall when a new mayor gets elected. Recon was inspired by Spirette as well, in which he made a hero outfit that has 3 of the most popular colors of Spirette's appearance which are red, aqua and white. He is very loyal and positive, and doesn't want to feel embarrassed when he messes up, otherwise it's not going to make him look any cool (as he describes it). Recon's force is aura...
* **Fichal** - One of the tritagonists. She is one of Nikki's best friends. Fichal is always into plays and loves acting. When she was young, she performs in acting all by herself, learning the language of Germany. Most people doesn't comprehend her alternate speech but finds it fascinating and can dumbfound anyone. Fichal's force is Telekinesis. She can use her hands to forcibly pick up items and/or a living being in the air, as well as throwing them. She can't carry heavy items because it would cost her force's energy quickly.
* **Lustrous** - The main antagonist. Real name **Jarold**, he is a young adult at the age of 23, who was kidnapped by a scientist and made him a force-stealing killer during his youth as a kid. He was found by Wendy, who gave him a home. He originally liked ace-tier heroes but ever since he was kidnapped with no hero to rescue him, he grew hostile and began to hate ace-tier heroes greatly. After finding out about Spirette's presence on Earth as a alien and with having 8 forces in her body, Lustrous sought to try to find and kill her, as well as taking all of her 8 forces to become human again after being told about a prophecy by a villainous prophet. However, since her forces are crazy strong, Lustrous decided to wait for a few years and gain more forces to potentially match Spirette's.
* **Ace Terrorists** - The main antagonistic faction. They are a group of sinister vigilantes who are on the verge of tearing Ace Academy down and rule the state of New York as their own battleground. Most members of Ace Terrorists lacks any forces, except that they use specialized weapons that could potentially harm a force user.
* **Wendy Daredevil** - The secondary antagonist. She is a woman who is tricky, sly, and is a challenge to the main heroes and the Prodigy Paragon. She developed this tricky behavior after watching too much crime movies when she was young, as well as being a victim of bullying. Wendy has the force of Nullify; she can use her umbrella (as a gun) to shoot any force against her, which can cancel out for a brief time.

## Development

*Ace Academy* was made by Marie Acre, as she and her work was inspired by iconic RPG games and superhero comics. She wanted to make a RPG game that was inspired by JRPGs and mix it with the superhero genre.

To make Ace Academy much important and alive than a simple RPG game with superhero elements, Marie decided to make the game take place in New York City, which is the most popular setting in some superhero comics, mostly with Peter Parker/Spider-Man and Tony Stark/Iron Man. Marie made a character named Spirette, which is an portmanteau of the words 'spirit' and '-ette'. She was originally going to be the protagonist as a teenager who goes in the titular Ace Academy. However, Marie decided to change Spirette's role as a mentor to another new character she drew, which is Nikki Sweeterson.

## Reception

Like the game, it received positive feedback from fans. They praised the manga for following the game's story but complains about the short-length pages.

## Trivia

* It is one of Kiddosoft's most beloved games that never got a sequel, alongside *Royal Scarlette*.
* Kiddosoft confirmed many times that *Ace Academy* is NOT related to *My Hero Academia* or the *Heroes* series. Sure, there are similarities, but nonetheless, it is a completely original idea by the game/manga's creator, Marie Acre, who never knew about *My Hero Academia* or *Heroes* before and while making *Ace Academy*.