Author: Redgeek

My Hero Academia: Vigilantes isn’t the greatest thing since Bluetooth headphones, but it gets the job done.

Vigilantes is a more slice-of-life version of My Hero Academia taking place before the beginning of the main series. We follow Koichi AKA The Crawler and his friends, Pop Step and Knuckleduster, as they battle evil, but mostly do other stuff too.

The manga’s pacing is slow and the action doesn’t exactly draw you in. If you’re expecting bad-ass fights galore, this is not your manga. What it does is expand on the MHA universe. Koichi became a vigilante as a release to from the pressures of the world. Pop Step is a masked idol illegally using her quirk. And, Knuckleduster is DC’s Wildcat, basically. He’s an older guy on a mission who takes Koichi under his wing (whether he wants to or not).

La Brava and Gentle. Gentle and La Brava. My Hero Academia’s villainous power couple. This week’s chapter we saw the two’s detailed plan for infiltrating UA Academy. They look so happy together.

…Gentle’s gonna die, isn’t he?

First thing’s first, their plan will probably go in the crapper because they explained it and you NEVER explain your plan in detail first. RIP Plan. I’d say there’s a good chance our Dynamic Duo will run into Momo or some other student from UA at the tea shop. Well, I’m sure they’ll figure something out and make it to the academy, albeit with more setbacks than first thought.

There’s a bigger issue concerning Gentle and La Brava. Chances are one or both of them is getting captured at the end of the arc. I just don’t see him escaping the academy.  At this point, I’m unsure if Gentle himself planned an escape. Attacking a superhero school is basically villain suicide, Gentle must know that. So why?

Kohei Hirokoshi, creator of My Hero Academia, loves superheroes. So, it’s no surprise he used the X-Men as a template for his superhero series. Swap mutant power with quirk, Prof. X’s school with UA. My Hero Academia is manga X-Men, big surprise, right? No? Okay, how about this:

My Hero Academia is a bad future.

Yep. We’re watching the events of a world gone to hell. Let’s start with what we know. Quirks first developed in MHA’s universe during our present. Quirk users were the minority and “normal” people hated and feared them. Sounds familiar, right?

Generations have passed since and it’s said the advent of quirks stunted technological advancement, which is why technology in that universe seems mostly like ours with the exception of robots and other things. But was it simply the world getting used to quirks? I don’t think so. Knowing human nature, I believe “normal” humans fought quirk users in the past. That’s right, My Hero Academia takes place in an X-Men world where Magneto won!

People discriminated against quirk users but over time they accepted them with open arms.

Yeah, right. Here’s a more realistic version:

Congratulations, Eri! You’re officially no longer a basic bitch.

One manga pet-peeve of mine is little girls wearing basic dresses. Like, totally basic. Pillowcase basic. It’s so lazy. Hey, mangaka? You can’t go to one clothing store website and research girls fashion?
What’s even worse are girls wearing pink frilly monstrosities littered with hearts. Every girl doesn’t have to dress like Card Captor Sakura. Are jeans too hard to draw? Eri’s new outfit is great. Not overly frilly or covered with hearts. It’s simple, not basic.  Certainly not…