My Hero Academia Reveals Pop Step’s Vixen Makeover

My Hero Academia: Vigilantes is now making major headway into its final arc, and it’s been a much more somber affair than what has been seen in the past. As Koichi prepares to give up his time as The Crawler once he graduates from school and enters the working world, his partner in crime, Kazuho (otherwise known by her vigilante moniker “Pop Step”), has been contending with her own feelings about this imminent end. Now suddenly realizing she’s losing time with Koichi fast, she has to somehow convey her romantic feelings for him.

This would be enough on its own, but she’s recently been embroiled in a much more dangerous situation. After being tricked by the heinous villain Number 6, the last chapter of the series saw her suddenly thrown into a dark room filled with corpses. And as we see in the cliffhanger from the latest chapter, Pop Step has suddenly gotten a much more vivacious makeover.

Chapter 72 of the series sees Koichi caught up in a few bomb attacks by explosive insects, and we see how one of the insects soon flies into the hands of Pop Step, who has gotten a whole new suit as well as a seemingly villainous personality. But if we think back on the events of the series so far, there could be a reasonable (but tragic) explanation for this.

Fans were previously introduced to Kuin, an insect that held the “Queen Bee” quirk. It was revealed that Kuin’s real body was a parasitic larvae that buries itself into a human host, and takes over their body — allowing Kuin to continue using her explosive bee powers. It appears that she’s taken over Kazuho this time (which can be further confirmed by the fact that one of her eyes is covered, much like the eye patch we saw on Tamao Oguro before).

This means that Kazuho is still very much in immediate danger, but at least it’s a semi confirmation that she’s still alive. There could be wool pulled over our eyes here, but this cliffhanger certainly paints a much more disturbing final battle for Koichi as he’s forced to face off against the possessed body of someone he cares about this much.

Are you reading through My Hero Academia: Vigilantes? 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).