With the success of the My Hero Academia anime series, it’s possible anime fans can be looking forward to a My Hero Academia: Vigilantes anime series. After all, Sword Art Online’s spin-off, SAO Alternative: Gun Gale Online, received an anime adaptation, so why not a Boku no Hero Academia spinoff?
Wait… there’s a BnHA spinoff? Considering the popularity of the main manga series by creator Kohei Horikoshi, it’s surprising that many anime-only fans in North America haven’t heard about Illegals Vijirante Boku no Hero Academia (Vigilantes: My Hero Academia Illegals). The MHA spin-off serialized by writer Hideyuki Furuhashi and illustrator Court Betten has been out for years.
Started in 2016, the MHA: Vigilantes series is up to Volume 7, and the English translation by VIZ Media is already up to Volume 6. That’s an important milestone since there are now more than enough manga chapters available for an animation studio to create a Vigilantes: My Hero Academia Illegals anime.
In fact, the bi-weekly manga already has enough chapters for a full two-cour season. A “cour” is a three-month TV broadcasting unit based on the physical seasons, and animes usually have between 10 to 13 episodes per cour.
The story is about Vigilantes, illegal heroes who have not received hero licenses from the government. The plot takes place several years before the events of the main My Hero Academia manga series, so it’s a prequel that features new characters in addition to regular cameos by heroes like Eraserhead.
Even the big names appear in the My Hero Academia: Vigilante manga. All Might shows up using his weak form to work secretly as his own manager. Even the villain Hero Killer Stain makes a showing as a masked Vigilante, Stendhal.
The manga introduces 19-year-old Kouichi Haimawari, a wannabe hero who missed his high school entrance exam because he stopped to save a drowning child. Not able to pursue official hero schooling, he’s been content to do small good deeds until he meets Knuckle Duster, a Quirkless hero who is literally “just a tough old man” in the words of Eraserhead. Knuckle Duster (real name Takeshi Kuroiwa) is always hoping for a new fight and is hunting down villains for the challenge.
Kouichi has a Quirk called Slide and Glide, which allows him to stick to and repel surfaces. In practice, he can slide over cement as fast as a vehicle and can even slide up the side of a building. The Quirk is also capable of providing limited flight abilities. When he was young, his mother punished him every time he started floating, so Kouichi did not remember he had that ability.
Knuckle Duster recruits Kouichi as a Vigilante, and the duo works together to stop minor crimes usually ignored by big-name heroes. They also begin investigating the rise of a drug called Trigger, which increases a Quirk’s abilities at the cost of a person’s reasoning. The usage of Trigger has been creating so-called instant villains, and tracking down the unknown mastermind has thus far been the overall plot of the manga series.
Let’s just hope the My Hero Academia: Vigilante anime becomes a reality. Stay tuned!