Hogan Reviews

While everyone is gearing up for the big final season of My Hero Academia in the autumn Toei decided to drop a new series in the meantime with Vigilantes, which was a spin-off prequel manga than ran alongside the main manga for a lot of its run so it’s not something they pulled out of nowhere, more odd that they chose now to start adapting it right before the main show ends. I wasn’t sure what to make of it at first, the humour was spot on as were some of the comic book caricatures / parodies, but a lot of its run time was very “of the week” which did affect the pace somewhat. Let’s take a closer look!

The series focuses on Koichi Haimawari, who sort of like Deku from the main show wanted to be a hero but instead of not being born with a Quirk his Quirk, “Slide and Glide” just wasn’t very useful as it allowed him to, well, slide and glide across the floor so long as at least three of his four limbs are touching the ground at about the speed of a bicycle. He’s currently a college student with a part time job at a local shop but he still finds time to glide around the place at night with an All Might hoodie on doing what little good he can. One day he sees local street idol “Pop Step” perform with the help of her “Leap” Quirk (she can jump quite high…) and then latter sees her get cornered in an alley by a set of thugs led by a teen called Soga who had assaulted him the previous day, and he tries to help her in his hoodie but doesn’t get very far. Thankfully a vigilante called “Knuckleduster” arrives and punches the thugs out cold with, well, knuckledusters (very straight-to-the-point with a lot of these names…)

Our future happy couple… I hope!

Knuckleduster is impressed with Koichi’s guts and takes him under his wing as a vigilante, despite the young man not initially wanting anything to do with this crazy unlicensed “hero” who just appeared before him. Soon though the three of them become a very fun unit, with Knuckleduster the cranky “old man” type while the other two have a “cares for him, he’s oblivious to it” relationship, brought about partially due to them having met when Koichi skipped his hero exam to save a young Pop from drowning, not that he knows that (yet!) There’s also a running gag where Koichi’s chosen name, “The Crawler” keeps getting mispronounced as the “The Cruller” which made me laugh… the first few times, kind of got old by the end…

Knuckleduster is searching for the origin of a dangerous street drug called “Trigger” that causes people’s Quirks to go out of control for reasons not revealed until later, but we the audience at least see that just one girl called Kuin who is behind it, using her Quirk to control bees that can inject the drug to do it. This sort of sets the status quo for the rest of the series, really, as Knuckleduster has a one-track mind that even leads to him butting heads with heroes like Eraser Head (who was surprised to find out that ‘Duster is Quirkless) while Koichi tries to juggle his various lives, including a visit from his mum who might be the worse “strict / pushy mother” stereotype ever, and Pop Step sees her career begin to take off but she’s actually cripplingly shy but manages to get over that a bit with Koichi’s support. The two are a sweet couple, I’ll grant you. There is one multi-episode arc that sees a vigilante who straight up kills all of his targets “for the sake of justice” called Stendhal who soon reveals himself to be MHA classic villain Stain in his early days. After he targets Koichi and co. he ends up KO’d by Knuckleduster and cutting up his own face before deciding that “false heroes” are worse that criminals, so in other words his origin story that was never shown in the original series (as far as I can remember anyway… it’s been a long time since I saw the Stain stuff…)

Knuckleduster shows off his… knuckleduster.

Throw in an older student called Makoto Tsukauchi adding herself to the group as she wishes to study vigilantes, and her “boss” the American superhero Captain Celebrity (yeah… there’s a name an actual English speaking person wouldn’t choose, but hey-ho…) having to change his image when his cheating on his wife multiple times comes to light and that’s your lot until the finale, which I’ll obviously get to in the Spoiler section. The rest are “monsters of the week” or even “slice of life story of the week” sometimes, which is fine as the main cast is fun and it did give us a better look at the more obscure heroes like the original Ingenium which was nice bonus, but I honestly checked out of the series a few episodes in and then binged it over a few days when it got towards the end, and that worked out much better. Seeing just one of these middle episodes where little to nothing happens and then having to wait a week was a bit much…

Overall Thoughts:

The original Ingenium gets to do something other than nearly die!

My Hero Academia: Vigilantes first season is certainly a change of pace compared to the main show. Focused just that little bit older and more willing to take a step back from the action, it feels different but also is very clearly in the same world, which is what you want from a spin-off really. The main trio are all fun to watch, as are a lot of the side characters. It may have slowed down a bit too much in the middle for my liking, but I can’t say I didn’t enjoy the series a lot by the end, and I’m looking forward to more.

The ending caught me by surprise really, as the culmination of the Trigger / Kuin plotline was handled entirely by Knuckleduster while Koichi and Pop Step performed at a concert, completely oblivious to it all. ‘Duster hired Soga, who was now more of a “bad ass” type than a villain, to track down Kuin and we find out that she is actually his daughter, and his wife is gravely ill to boot. I should say that the bee Quirk is actually one that can possess people’s bodies so Kuin isn’t actually his daughter, just a Quirk using her body. Knuckleduster confronts her about to ruin the concert and then follows her as tries to flee until stopping her heart, forcing the Queen bee to flee and then killing it with insecticide before restarting her daughter’s heart. Pretty nuts!

Kuin realises her “you won’t hurt me, I’m in your beloved daughter’s body” plan isn’t working…

Sadly for him his wife passes soon after but at least his now badly injured and no doubt confused daughter later wakes up in hospital back in control of her body. His goal complete Knuckleduster seemingly hangs up the hood and leaves Koichi and Pop Step to it. The final episode sees them speculating about where he went before more band / concert stuff plus the hint of a new villain in control of a more advanced form of Trigger for next time…