As My Hero Academia continues to celebrate its fifth year running in Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump and Kohei Horikoshi’s manga has sparked a four long season anime and two feature length films. But one thing it’s also sparked is a cool spin-off set years before the events of the original series. Following its own set of original characters who occasionally cross paths with characters from the main series, My Hero Academia: Vigilantes is just as compelling of a read with each new chapter as the main series.
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But seeing how some recent developments revealed some major tie-ins with the main series (one of which was teased in the anime recently), the lack of an anime for Vigilantes is starting to stick out more. As Vigilantes continues through its final arc, there’s no better time than ever for an anime adaptation. Here’s why.
My Hero Academia: Vigilantes explores a part of the My Hero Academia‘s hero world that’s rarely seen in the main series. Because it’s set five or so years before the main series begins, Vigilantes sees a Japan that’s less protected and more vulnerable as a result. This drove its main character, Koichi Haimawari, to gradually help clean up his neighborhood. Like Izuku Midoriya, Koichi is a huge All Might fanboy, and he’s inspired to wear one of his All Might hoodie to travel around his neighborhood with all sorts of small chores or tasks.
He becomes “The Crawler” (which he names himself due to his cockroach like quick that lets him float a few inches off the ground), and steadily gets himself into vigilante hero duties as he begins to find himself wrapped up in bigger incidents. It’s here he becomes an ally to the pro hero Eraser Head (more on that later), and gradually works his way up to helping the pro heroes with major terrorist and villain threats.
All the while, Koichi learns to think better of himself like Izuku Midoriya. But since he’s a much older main character, fans get a different perspective on heroes overall. Koichi is just a vigilante because it’s the right thing to do, but it’s not like he has heroic aspirations or even meant to do all of this in the first place. It’s this exploration of the more human side of the hero world that shows that the heroic potential is in everyone. It’s another stamp on the themes in the main series.
My Hero Academia: Vigilantes has a set of its own compelling scenarios and great character designs (crafted by writer Hideyuki Furuhashi and illustrator Betten Court), but it truly shines in one major arc in particular. One major arc of the series actually explores a key part of Shota Aizawa’s past as a student in U.A. Academy.
While this was great in its own right as it told a story that fleshed out Aizawa’s personality in the main series, it was soon revealed in a later chapter of My Hero Academia that this spin-off arc was completely integral to one of the most emotional reveals in the entire series. This arc alone deserves to make it into the anime someday (and just might), so why not bring the rest of the series with it?
My Hero Academia: Vigilantes would be a great series to help fill in the gaps where there aren’t new episodes of the main series. You can hand the series to a different studio and staff from the main anime (much like how the spin-off is handled by a different creative team), and an adaptation brings the opportunity to see even more young versions of favorite pro heroes in action!
But what do you think? Should My Hero Academia: Vigilantes get its own anime? Let us know your thoughts in the comments or talk to me directly about all things anime and other cool things @Valdezology on Twitter!
