This series deserved a better ending

I understand the ideas behind it, but I feel like Horikoshi cheated to get there.

"This is is the story of how I became the greatest hero" but that never happened.

What we got instead was the "greatest hero" as a metaphor of how society doesn't need a symbol anymore because everyone helps each other so everyone is kinda the greatest hero. And if everyone is the greatest hero, nobody is the greatest hero.

So the whole series ends up feeling like a build-up to a glorious moment that never comes to fruition. I felt like I wasted 10 years only to get "the greatest hero was the friends we made along the way". And since the whole series was so dependant on thar build up, it ended up ruining the whole story for me. It's just not the story I thought it was anymore. The story I fell in love and connected with.

A shame really because I think that up until the final battle, most character arcs wrapped up nicely, but Deku was the biggest dissapointment.

But what enrages me the most is how I defended this series staunchly almost until the end from its haters, only to get the most dissapointing ending possible. So maybe they were right all the time.

Hori didn't need to subvert expectations, he needed to play it straight.