Anime Spotlight #77: My Hero Academia - Vigilantes (Season 2)
a.k.a. the Quirky Animeister
As of last year (and since I don't really get out to watch MCU movies theatrically anymore), I've devoted the AniMonday portion of my birth month to Superhero Ani-May, covering series like SSSS.Gridman, SHY, ZENSHU, and The Red Ranger Becomes An Adventurer In Another World. And since I'm behind the ball on catching up with the recently concluded My Hero Academia (the focus of my fiftieth Anime Spotlight) and it's an anime about superheroes, I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to do that.
My Hero Academia: Vigilantes is a prequel and spinoff to the main series, based on a finished manga approved by Kōhei Horikoshi but written by Hideyuki Furuhashi and drawn by Betten Court, so there's a clear difference in character models and a lack of variety and...Quirkiness to the new character designs. Narrated by Deku (or at least, by Justin Briner in the dub) and featuring a banger OP ("Kekka Orai" by Kocchi no Kento), the first season of Vigilantes follows the lives and unsanctioned Heroics of Mr. Nice Guy, a.k.a. The Crawler (the series-requisite All-Might fan, whose Quirk lets him slide along any surface in any direction, and whom the public think is a donut because they hear his name wrong), Pop☆Step (a guerilla idol with a bouncing Quirk who probably has a lot of fans because she dresses like a succubus and inadvertently allows crowds of people to look up her short skirt when she performs above them), and Knuckle Duster (a mysterious old man who's basically Batfleck and acts as Crawler's combat mentor; he has no Quirk, but trained himself to have superhuman strength and durability and fights with brass knuckles, so I spent the whole season calling him "The Punch-isher") as they investigate "Instant Villain" incidents caused by the Ideo Trigger drug (the intended weapon of the Humarise cult in World Heroes Mission) and its mysterious, bee-Quirked distributor (who is using the sudden Villain attacks to gather data on the drug for...All-For-One!). Supporting characters include Captain Celebrity (a.k.a. if Donald Trump was a bootleg Superman, including the hair, the need for media attention, and the history of alleged sex crimes that he settled out of court), his lie-detector publicist Makoto Tsukauchi (whose Quirk is literally Robin Hill's handshake Semblance from RWBY), and a couple of bickering Pop☆Step fans who are definitely not Cyclops and Wolverine. As you watch, you'll no doubt notice a severe lack of heteromorphic characters compared to the main series, which can be attributed to the different creative team but also works as some subtle world-building (the attribution of the Villain label to the different-looking, which gets a bit more mileage in Season Two, and the strengthening of Quirks as time passes). Other prequel bits include a few brief appearances by peak All-Might, Crawler's complicated friendship with Iida's older brother (the original Enginium), and a one-off origin episode for Hero Killer Stain. Eraserhead, Mount Lady, Miss Midnight, and a few other main series ranked Heroes also have varying levels of involvement in the season. It may not have the recognizable visual style and spectacle of the main series, but Vigilantes still has Bones bringing it with the fight animation, all three main characters are likable and deep enough to want to engage with their individual stories, and the writing has moments of brilliance.
I'll cover the entire franchise so far next week, including the eighth and final season and the epilogue special. But today, I'm talking about the spinoff prequel, Vigilantes (a.k.a. Illegals, because calling undocumented people who perform a public service without compensation "illegals" is totally a culturally sensitive word choice in the 2020s).
Narrated by The Crawler this time (Jack Broadbent, Tarragon: Key Keeper), the second season is a mess of unfinished plot threads and agonizing plummets in pacing.
As Crawler discovers new applications for his Quirk (aside from the pseudo-flight he used last season because air particles are surfaces, too, this season, he learns to anchor himself to surfaces and fire his directional energy like a natural repulsor blast), Pop☆Step pursues new heights to her idol career (which brings her and Crawler to the attention of Fat Gum, Eraser, Miss Midnight, and Makoto's police detective brother—yet to awaken the precognition Quirk he has in the main series that is frequently used as foreshadowing for All-Might's possible death—when a Villain with a stolen speed Quirk and a glowing scar similar to Knuckle Duster's begins a convoluted scheme on behalf of All-For-One that involves various formulations of Ideo Trigger and prototype Nomu—that seem cooler and more effective than the creatures they would lead to). Meanwhile, the pace is dragged down by the Rain/Sky flashback arc ("Rain & Clouds," "Glass Sky," and "Sky With No Rain Left," which follow the school lives of a younger Eraser, Present Mike, Miss Midnight, and a Goku homage named Loud Cloud—whom I knew almost immediately what was going to happen to him because the Grey Terminal arc of One Piece exists, the quartet are inspired by a stray cat to open their own Hero Agency together, and Loud Cloud is the blue one) and the subsequent arc's uncomfortable efforts to spin Captain Celebrity from a horny philanderer with a fame complex into a well-meaning softie with the bad luck of your average harem protagonist. The interesting plots (the ongoing Instant Villain investigation, the treatment of All-Might as a famous but new force for good with a secret identity, the twisted rival/mentor dynamic between Knuckle Duster and Six O'Clock—the aforementioned speed Villain—Knuckle-Duster's relationship with his daughter and the Bee-Quirked Villain, and Crawler's growth as a Heroic character) seem to take a distant backseat and jockey for secondary importance with each other in favor of recurring jokes (all of the Instant Villains that Crawler helps to subdue throughout the series band together to open a cat café, and the staff just keeps getting weirder) and other pace-assassinating antics. And it treats the season finale like a series finale even though the anime only covers through half of the manga's ninth Volume out of fifteen. I'll probably watch a third season if it comes out because Bones Film still dishes good animation and I like what the first season promised. But with this big of a drop in story-driven advertising quality, I'm the guy who'd rather eat a cruller than read the manga, and I'm sticking to it.
Stay Tuned for my thoughts on a Zenescope story arc about a psychologically unstable sun god, and the Goj-Year-ra debut of Mechagodzilla, coming up this week.
Until then, I will keep trying to pass ten thousand views a month (you all gave me over 1,400 on Saturday and I didn't even post anything new; WHAT‽, and thank you...), so please remember to Become A Ticketholder if you haven't already, comment something at the bottom of this post, help out my ad revenue as you read, and follow me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and LinkedIn to like what you see, receive the latest news on my Quirky content, and get me closer to that goal.
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Animeister,
Out.
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