This fall, My Hero Academia will conclude with its eighth and final season. Fortunately for fans of the franchise, My Hero Academia: Vigilantes is an good anime based on a well received spinoff manga and there should be enough manga material to get four cours worth of episodes. Does this series live up to the legacy of its parent series, which many hold as one of the greatest anime franchises of all time? Let’s discuss.
We’ve got to acknowledge that the main My Hero Academia‘s legacy was not exactly built overnight. The first season was near universally positively received, but it wasn’t until seasons 2-4 from 2017-2019 that it became the biggest anime in the United States, only losing said title when Demon Slayer came to challenge its supremacy. Season one of Vigilantes kinda has that aura of a very good anime, but it may take until later seasons to reach any kind of legendary status. Being a spinoff of a beloved IP rather than a new IP at least got lots of people’s attention. This series was very much not what the edgy sounding title Vigilantes implies, being much lighter than expected, but still a series that succeeds at what it seeks out to do.
The premise is about a team of three unlicensed superheroes
fighting bad guys illegally. Our main hero, The Crawler, is a Spider-Man analog of sorts, with the ability to crawl on walls, and his civilian identity is that of an ordinary college student, which is also Spideyesque. He is similar to Midoriya from the main series in being a very standard kindhearted protagonist out to do good. In-universe, his superpower of gliding on the ground is portrayed as lame, but he learns how to use his powers for hero work. Also in the cast is superheroine/idol singer Pop Step, who is the love interest of the show. She’s got a bit of a temper compared to the sugary sweet Uraraka from the main series, but she has a caring heart nevertheless. She serves the purpose of being adorable very well and there will probably be lots of figurines and plushies made out of her soon enough. Unfortunately, she doesn’t really do much in combat, which is a major problem when you have a show based around fighting. Finally, you have Knuckleduster. If All Might is the My Hero Academia universe’s Superman, Knuckleduster is its Batman. He is the scene-stealer of this show as the mentor that’s twenty times cooler than the main character. I have not seen this phenomenon happen to this degree since Kakashi stole the show in the early parts of Naruto. Like Batman, Knuckleduster has no powers, but is able to go toe to toe with supervillains and kick lots of supervillain butt.
I would say that Knuckleduster alone is the highlight that makes the show worth watching as he gets the coolest fight scenes and is the MVP of the show. A major issue is that he overshadows our other heroes to the extent that they feel like incompetent sidekicks as neither of his protegees are all that competent at combat, with a running gag of The Crawler getting humiliated in pretty much every fight in the show. There are signs that he is starting to get better at his powers, but it is very rare that I’ve seen a season of a battle shonen go by where the main character fails to land a punch against a villain.
The plot structure is very different from the main My Hero Academia. It mainly follows a villain of the week format commonly seen in American superhero cartoons or the Power Rangers franchise. We do have a character in a Rita Repulsa-esque role of creating the villains of the week Kuin Hachisuka, who has the power to control bees that inject people with a drug that makes people mentally unstable and dangerous while giving the users superpowers. We also get an origin story two-parter for an iconic villain in the main My Hero Academia series. The fights are solid and fun, even if they don’t have the sheer visual splendor of top tier titles like Dan Da Dan, but the action is still well above average.
As alluded to before, despite the term “vigilantes” having edgy connotations, and this series having an origin story for one of the edgier villains from the main My Hero Academia, the tone of this series actually feels lighter and sillier than the main series. Knuckleduster’s tendency to solve problems with violence is played for laughs, with him often coming across as a Batman parody. There is also a comic relief character named Captain Celebrity who is very much a dufus. One episode has the sitcom cliche plot of “mom comes to visit.” The gags generally work well and make the show a fun action/comedy. Even if the show is mostly light and silly, there is a dramatic plot involving Knuckleduster’s wife and daughter, which is a very poignant story in a mostly silly show.
Overall, this series succeeds in being a fun superhero cartoon which contains a lot of fun cameos from the main My Hero Academia series. I would definitely recommend watching the main series first to understand the significance of all the cameos. The foundation is solid and we’ll see if season two of Vigilantes builds off from season one in a manner similar to the main series. We are given a tease that season two might deal with The Crawler and Pop Step having to make it on their own without their mentor, which seems like a good plot considering the fact that they seemed to use Knuckleduster as a crutch rather than hold their own. We’ll see if they grow and improve any as fighters as the next set of villains are bound to be stronger than the last, going by Shonen Jump plot conventions.
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