My Hero Academia’s spinoff Vigilantes has plenty of similarities to other superhero comics, but two characters stick out more than the others if you happen to be a fan of the X-Men.
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In chapter 3 the Vigilantes meet two students who bear a very close resemblance to two longtime X-Men. The first is named Ichimoku Samatsu, and all it takes is one glance of that slick looking visor to see he was based on Cyclops. It doesn’t hurt that his actual Quirk is also eye blasts.
The second character is named Jube Namimaru, who is of a shorter and stockier build and even sports a wild-type of haircut. His Quirk involves long wooden swords that spur out from his hands, and if that sounds like Wolverine to you then you’rd be quite right.
Your eyes don’t deceive you either, as writer Hideyuki Furuhashi breaks down the thinking behind their creation, and it indeed started as a parody of the famous Marvel characters.
“Two certain someones from X-Men, yes,” Furuhashi writes. “At first I was just going to use them for the start of chapter 3, thinking, “I’ll barely get away with this level of parody, so this time only…” But then they kept showing up in chapters 4 and 5, so my editor said, “These guys again huh? (ha ha)” They’ll probably end up as regulars in the bonus pages of the volumes. (ha ha) I like them, because they’re just so easy to employ however I want.”
Artist Betten Court also admitted the likeness, as well as the fact that Namimaru keeps inching closer and closer to Wolverine as they go along.
“Furuhashi instructed me to make them look like delinquents,” Court wrote. “Samatsu’s visor was inspired by a certain Marvel superhero. Namimaru (whose name comes from a certain group) just gets rounder and rounder the more I draw him. (heh heh).”
The two even bicker a bit like Cyclops and Wolverine, and we’re glad they will continue to be a part of the book. They actually like the Vigilantes too, well, besides not getting Koichi’s name right. To be fair, Cruller does around a lot like Crawler.
You can find out more about My Hero’s version of Batman right here.
My Hero Academia: Vigilantes tells the story of man named Koichi Haimawari, a would-be hero who uses his Quirk to help others. When he and a girl named Kazuho Haneyama find themselves accosted by thugs, a vigilante known as Knuckleduster comes to save them. The down-low hero shows Koichi what being a vigilante is all about, and he decides to become one himself. However, the gig is much more dangerous than he could have imagined, and authorities do not take kindly to all the vigilantes running around Tokyo unsupervised.
My Hero Academia: Vigilantes is available to read right here for free, with 32 chapters released so far.
