My Hero Academia: Vigilantes

 My Hero Academia: Vigilantes (ヴィジランテ -僕のヒーローアカデミア ILLEGALS-) is a 13 episode super hero series based on the manga of the same name by Furuhashi Hideyuki.  The first season aired during the Spring of 2025.

    Himawari Koichi is a college student in the city of Naruhata who wishes his quirk was good enough to be selected to be a hero.  His ability allows him to glide across surfaces when making three points of contact.  Due to his own internal limitations, he is only able to do the speed of a brisk walk while using his quirk.  Not willing to let his dream of helping others go to waste, he moonlights some nights as Nice Guy, going around the neighborhood being helpful.  Giving people directions, picking up trash, taking photos for tourists, etc.  One night he encounters a girl who performs as a street idol being harassed by three delinquents.  Koichi tries to intervene but the boys relentlessly beat him.  Before they assault the girl, Pop Step, a man falls from a building into a pile of garbage and begins to beat the delinquents.  The man...a masked and muscle bound bruiser, calling himself Knuckle Duster, acts as a vigilante.  He sees promise in Koichi and makes him his apprentice.

     Knuckleduster begins to give the young man lessons on fighting and street smarts, all the while scoffing as the hero association and their lack of attention to the crimes that happen all of the place.  Knuckleduster is the rare person who doesn't gave a quirk, instead he uses brute force and tenacity to enact his own brand of justice.  Pop Step, intrigued by the two vigilantes, begins to participate and hang out as well.  The three of them get dragged into a conspiracy by unknown villains to spread a drug that rapidly enhances the users quirk as well as enhancing any latent rage, leading to instant villains with devastating effect.  

    I have never been a fan of the original My Hero Academia, from the character design to the fact it is 'just' another massive shonen action series that's probably way to long for its own good.  But that's unfair as I have never watched it and understand very little of its world.  Something about the trailer for Vigilantes spoke to me in a way that MHA never did.  It made me think of the comic books of my adolescence, the early 90's 'golden' age of American super hero comics.   These days calling me a fan of super heroes would be a blatant lie.  Its just not my thing.  I did X-Men back in the early 90's due to the cartoon.  That lead me into the underbelly that was Image comics.  Beyond that...I could really care less for super heroes.  Never liked Batman, but I have watched almost all of the movies.  Ive watched all of the MCU out of...curiosity...a desire to be informed when hating on it?  So with that entrenched negative reaction to super heroes, I really did enjoy this first season and am happy to see it get a second one.

    This story works really well isolated from any knowledge of MHA in general.  The small cast is well developed to be the thing that carries the story.  There is a story, largely a lose association of events that not all of the cast is aware of.  Out of the new characters for the story, Knuckle Duster is the only one that knows the full extent of how everything is connecting.  The story is well put together, with nothing really being pointless, all culminating into a climax as the season reaches its head...a climax that two of the three characters had no idea was even occurring.  The series was fantastic, but in no way has convinced me to dive into the original.  I do eagerly await the second season in 2026!!

The series is available on  Crunchyroll.