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Underrated Skins, Part 3: Battle Academia

ADC Yuumi·9/22/2019, 11:38:58 PM·8 votes·7,778 views

#How is a skinline which just came out underrated? #Why are you not 1:1 with every single thing? #***Downvote, toxic comment. **

Okay, with those people addressed, let's go back to this.

Battle Academia. Yes, this time it's a whole skinline.

Lore: Battle Academia as a whole is a skinline poking at shonen battle academy anime, and a few others. Most noticeable bites are World Break, My Hero Academia, Baka & Test and DBZ.

Splash: Comical school trope splash arts.

Summary: Ezreal is in play as a protagonist, in love with Lux; whom is overpowered and is to become next class president. ( Prestige ) Jayce is a class president and show-off, rival. Katarina is allowed to kill on campus. Yuumi is an overpowered principal, filling in for a missing principal. And Graves is a soldier turned professor, but he hates everything about it.

Classic Battle Anime trope.

My thoughts:

Let me explain key details as to why this is an underrated skinline.

First off, this was dropped during the Trials event. More people cared for the event than the skins. Login was rushed ( which alongside Yuumi's release, must have been hell to even do. ), there was no music or theme people were drawn to.

Second, nothing perked interest into the skinline besides Yuumi, sadly. Unlike Kindred, who got her own set-separate skin ( to be put into scorched earth ) on release; Yuumi had to be the main selling point for a whole skinline besides Prestige Lux. Not to say Ezreal's Legendary skin didn't stand out, but people wouldn't buy it if they had PF Ezreal already. Katarina, Graves and Jayce, though pleased a lot of those players; only pleased a handful out of the dozens who play Ezreal and Lux. Yuumi's release skin is in this line, and without that; some people might have forgot there even was skins like these.

Third, It's forgettable. I can hear the Graves / Kata / Jayce mains ripping the comments apart with their teeth. Usually new skinlines try to make themselves part of other, bigger or smaller skinlines to broaden the universe. iBlitzcrank now counts as a Program skin, in the PROJECT universe. Odyssey is a GotG-inspired mini-skin series part of Dark Star and Cosmic skinlines. K/DA is part of DJ Sona and Pentakill's music universe, and loosely connected to Star Guardian and Odyssey.

And where's Battle Academia? It's it own universe, still yet to be traverse. It wasn't even combined with Academy skins. If there's no plans to expand on this skinline, even indirectly like Galaxy Slayer Zed to Odyssey, then I have bad news.

I fxxking adore this skinline, and even splurged for Ezreal. But without attention, this is going to become Steel Legion. ( <--- Psst that's part 4 )

8 Comments

EdgeLady9/22/2019, 11:56:02 PM6 votes

Honestly, I don't think anyone dislikes Battle Academia in it of itself; people were just rolling their eyes at who got the skins, especially Ezreal getting a second legendary that wasn't even for a Versus event, which requires them.

But Battle Academia itself just got screwed over by being overshadowed by MSI in Riot's eyes, so it was sort of thrown out there while most of the effort went into the MSI event. Here's to hoping it'll get its own spotlight in the future.

Sukishoo9/23/2019, 12:11:24 AM3 votes

And where's Battle Academia? It's it own universe, still yet to be traverse. It wasn't even combined with Academy skins.

Well it was mentioned that it wasn't combined with Academy because the Battle Academia is more of the Anime style school and Academy they were trying to do more of a real life school. Which is why the 750 tier worked well for the last ground of those, just giving them new models and no effects (where BA goes full on anime explosions and such).

GreenLore9/24/2019, 1:49:52 PM2 votes

Honestly I feel like this skinline wouldn't have been that successful eitherway. Its pretty blatant how riot wanted this to be the next star guardian-hit, with them focusing on a battle-shounen theme instead of a more girly one.

However magical girl-animes have a lot more in common in terms of designs than battle-shounen. I mean just look at One Piece and Dragonball and try to point out the similarities in the designs of the characters, because you won't find a lot. As a result you can compare star guardian with basically every other magical-girl anime, but battle academia is far more niche, as it only really references a single anime with "my hero academia"(there are surely other "supernatural school"-animes, but that theme isn't particular common and My hero academia is pretty much the only well known example). Heck I honestly feel like there isn't even a clear visual style among the academy-students, making it hard for the skinline to stand out.

And the whole school-thing didn't even feel very fresh since we already had the regular academy-skins.

I also feel like it might finally backfire for riot to always release skins for the popular champs, as a lot of people seem to be simply fed up with it and even the people who main these champs might simply buy other skins since there is just such a huge amount of choices for these champs.

What could have saved the skinline were the 4 clubs, but those received not enough focus and were a bit too straightforward in my opinion( I mean of course assassin-champs will be in the assassin-club), if they were more about the ideals of the champs, then I guess they could have let to a lot of theorycrafting about which champ would join which club.

Jeddy0179/24/2019, 12:47:49 AM1 votes

I agree with the general consensus that my lack of interest for the skinline is based on who was picked. I don't really play Ezreal Graves Katarina Yuumi or Jayce. The only one I do play regularly Lux, I don't need or want her BA skin. I already got Star Guardian & Elementalist. I just don't feel this skinline. And I am an anime fan who enjoy battle shounen series. If anything, I would be it's targeted audience. But Riot just dulled the skinline for me. Especially considering they built the skinline around Ezreal & made him the main character. Ez doesn't interest me at all.

Don't get me wrong, I think the BA skins look good. I believe the line have plenty of potential. Expanding the line by adding other students, teachers, rival schools & even an antagonistic force. The skinline have a chance to grow & become more interesting, for me at least.

I also agree in terms of "events", BA got the short end of the stick. Honestly a lot of the events this year (so far) were weak.

FSRER9/24/2019, 8:49:18 AM1 votes

Agree but i think there is one more reason why they are forgettable. It is the champions that are used in the skinline. Lux and Ezreal, the entire community goes "ugh another skin for ezreal and lux, who cares they got like 15 already". Graves Katarina and Jayce skins are underrated tho because none of them has gotten any recent skin (I know Graves got praetorian graves skin which was a **huge **failure) and they became underrated just because Ezreal and Lux were the protagonists (Ezreal the main protagonist and Lux his crush). I think that was another reason the skinline failed