My Hero Academia Reveals Pop Step’s Big Decision

Kohei Horikoshi’s My Hero Academia may be a story about how Izuku Midoriya becomes the number one hero, but its spin-off Vigilantes has a far less grand goal. The main series has heroes seeking out glory or a great desire to save the entire world, but the heroes in Vigilantes just want to protect their neighborhood and potentially better their own lives. We’ve seen Koichi Haimawari grow as a person through his work as the vigilante hero, The Crawler, and the final arc of the series teases his desire to move on now that he’s become a much more mature person.

But while Koichi has grown over the course of his unofficial hero adventures in the series, it’s been a much different case for his partner in crime, Kazuho Haneyama. But now that Pop Step finds herself in the middle of a surprising new love triangle competing with Makoto Tsukauchi for Koichi’s love, Kazuho has gone and made a decision for her life going forward with the latest chapter of the series.

Wanting to confess her feelings to Koichi, but not feeling confident in herself in comparison to Makoto, Kazuho instead decides to channel this energy into something of her own. She wants to perform a new song, so spends the majority of Chapter 69 of the series writing and performing a new song in the hopes that she’ll get it just right.

She nearly gets in trouble with a couple of rough looking folks from the Final Fantasy franchise, but thankfully her manager (who’s also revealed to be a pro hero) comes along to help her. It’s here she lays out her goal in full as she explains that although she’s had some vocal training and song writing practice in the past, she wants to go solo with a project herself in full.

Kazuho started out the series as Pop Step the street performer before she ends up involved in Koichi’s vigilante ways, and now seeing everyone else grow around her, she’s trying to get something concrete from all of the years they have spent together. Should Koichi instead choose Makoto and leave Kazuho behind, at least she’ll have a more fully realized version of herself to lean on.

Are you reading My Hero Academia: Vigilantes? Rooting for Pop Step? Let us know your thoughts in the comments or talk to me directly about all things anime and other cool things @Valdezology on Twitter! The series is written by Hideyuki Furuhashi and illustrated by Betten Court, and you can currently read new chapters of the series at Viz Media for free at the link here (along with the entire back catalog with a Shonen Jump subscription).

My Hero Academia: Vigilantes is officially described as such, “My Hero Academia: Vigilantes is set in a superpowered society, where there is nothing ordinary about evil anymore. Heroes, trained and licensed to protect and defend the public against supervillains, stand above all the rest. Not everyone can be a hero, however, and there are those who would use their powers to serve the people without legal sanction. But do they fight for justice in the shadows, or for reasons known only to themselves? Whatever they fight for, they are called… vigilantes.”