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EP. REVIEW: My Hero Academia: Vigilantes

I'm not the biggest fan of the fact that he was willing to just walk away from a bunch of thugs potentially sexually assaulting a woman in an alley. That feels like a writing oversight or something that wasn't communicated clearly, but outside of that, he's a solid protagonist.

I'm not the biggest fan of the fact that he was willing to just walk away from a bunch of thugs potentially sexually assaulting a woman in an alley.

Oh, it was simple ... those same 3 thugs beat Koichi to a bloody pulp mere hours ago on a whim (which the show regrettably chose to let happen offscreen). They actually weren't angry with him so they only gave him a "light beating" for fun.

So intervening in their assault would have accomplished what, exactly? He would have been unable to rescue her. And the 3 thugs would have progressed from "light beating to a guy that we have nothing against just for fun" to "wanting to murder a guy that we are actually mad at now." And after killing Koichi, they would have had to kill Pop Step too because she's a witness. Running away to go get help instead of pretending you are Arnold Schwarzenegger (the movie version anyway, because the real life version would get pounded in a real 3 against 1 street fight against real thugs too) and trying to play hero would have actually been the right thing to do.

The former, which is not being willing to acknowledge and work within your own limitations, is 100% absolutely guaranteed to make things worse for you and the assault victim, so all you get to do is delude yourself with "at least I did my job as a man and tried" as they kill you both and dump your bodies in the river. If you swallow your masculine pride, suppress your testosterone acknowledge that you are NOT some cowboy ninja viking Roman soldier warrior on some "in this battle I will attain either glorious victory or a hero's death" macho trip and try to get away and get help you are at least giving yourself and Pop Step a chance: maybe there is a police officer or a pro hero nearby. Small chance? Yes. But way better than the absolutely zero chance which will 100% result in both you and her dead.

kaiju3 wrote:

Oh, it was simple ... those same 3 thugs beat Koichi to a bloody pulp mere hours ago on a whim (which the show regrettably chose to let happen offscreen). They actually weren't angry with him so they only gave him a "light beating" for fun. So intervening in their assault would have accomplished what, exactly? He would have been unable to rescue her. And the 3 thugs would have progressed from "light beating to a guy that we have nothing against just for fun" to "wanting to murder a guy that we are actually mad at now." And after killing Koichi, they would have had to kill Pop Step too because she's a witness. Running away to go get help instead of pretending you are Arnold Schwarzenegger (the movie version anyway, because the real life version would get pounded in a real 3 against 1 street fight against real thugs too) and trying to play hero would have actually been the right thing to do. The former, which is not being willing to acknowledge and work within your own limitations, is 100% absolutely guaranteed to make things worse for you and the assault victim, so all you get to do is delude yourself with "at least I did my job as a man and tried" as they kill you both and dump your bodies in the river. If you swallow your masculine pride, suppress your testosterone acknowledge that you are NOT some cowboy ninja viking Roman soldier warrior on some "in this battle I will attain either glorious victory or a hero's death" macho trip and try to get away and get help you are at least giving yourself and Pop Step a chance: maybe there is a police officer or a pro hero nearby. Small chance? Yes. But way better than the absolutely zero chance which will 100% result in both you and her dead.

So your suggestion is let a girl be r@ped while you run away to get help even though that by the time you coke back with said help the girl will be either alive but violated or violated and dead? It is amazing how one is able to throw their morality away just to make their "logic" happy? You happy now? With the thought that a girl is being assaulted while you just runaway? Hope you bloody sleep well tonight!

I quite frankly find Vigilantes a bad manga, not a bad spin off, its a bad manga.

The fact that it begins with the tired "MC sabes de girl from being raped" it's actually the first red flag, I freaking hate that trope and consider it peak lazy writing.

The second red flag the series has is that it tries too much to difference Deku from Koichi to the detriment of the former, as many has pointed out Koichi could have simply called the cops, tell the idiots and then run or distract the thugs while help arrived.

The problem is that this is something Deku would have done, so Koichi cannot do it, so Koichi ends up looking like an idiot and he and Pop are not dead because Knuckleduster appeared, KD would have saved Pop, so Koichi's intervention it's retroactively made pointless.

What really pieses me off is that there is an infinitely better scene later in the plot that could have been used to show how he has a hero soul (spoiler[Koichi saving the kid from drowning and missing the hero test as a result]) that should have been the very first scene in the manga.

I also question the fact that it has an underage girl running around in a succubus costume, but the Anime fixes that and I don't care enough to complain about it.

BaronViolet wrote:

kaiju3 wrote: Oh, it was simple ... those same 3 thugs beat Koichi to a bloody pulp mere hours ago on a whim (which the show regrettably chose to let happen offscreen). They actually weren't angry with him so they only gave him a "light beating" for fun. So intervening in their assault would have accomplished what, exactly? He would have been unable to rescue her. And the 3 thugs would have progressed from "light beating to a guy that we have nothing against just for fun" to "wanting to murder a guy that we are actually mad at now." And after killing Koichi, they would have had to kill Pop Step too because she's a witness. Running away to go get help instead of pretending you are Arnold Schwarzenegger (the movie version anyway, because the real life version would get pounded in a real 3 against 1 street fight against real thugs too) and trying to play hero would have actually been the right thing to do. The former, which is not being willing to acknowledge and work within your own limitations, is 100% absolutely guaranteed to make things worse for you and the assault victim, so all you get to do is delude yourself with "at least I did my job as a man and tried" as they kill you both and dump your bodies in the river. If you swallow your masculine pride, suppress your testosterone acknowledge that you are NOT some cowboy ninja viking Roman soldier warrior on some "in this battle I will attain either glorious victory or a hero's death" macho trip and try to get away and get help you are at least giving yourself and Pop Step a chance: maybe there is a police officer or a pro hero nearby. Small chance? Yes. But way better than the absolutely zero chance which will 100% result in both you and her dead. So your suggestion is let a girl be r@ped while you run away to get help even though that by the time you coke back with said help the girl will be either alive but violated or violated and dead? It is amazing how one is able to throw their morality away just to make their "logic" happy? You happy now? With the thought that a girl is being assaulted while you just runaway? Hope you bloody sleep well tonight!

Yes, I will sleep fine tonight. Your post is exactly what I am talking about. I guess you missed Koichi's internal monologue during the situation. Well it went like this:
1. These 3 guys just beat me up badly.
2. If I fight them AGAIN then I will have no chance at all.
How do we know this? Because this is what happened in the show that you just watched. You seem to forget something. Koichi didn't try my idea. Koichi actually went with your idea! Koichi tried to play the hero. Came up with a strategy and everything, and that strategy got him a couple of good licks in. Now if Koichi were up against regular people like himself, those couple of good licks would have been sufficient to prevail in that situation. But he wasn't. Koichi was fighting hardened street criminals who have tons of experience fighting other street criminals and surviving. So what do they do? They easily defeat the attacks by the one weaker guy and had both Koichi and Pop Step at their mercy in less than a minute. And they were about to kill them! It was only the timely intervention of Knuckleduster that kept them from dying. Had Knuckleduster gotten there 10 seconds later, Koichi at minimum would have been dead. And even WITH Knuckleduster AND Koichi working together the guys didn't go down easy. The first guy that Knuckleduster knocked out got up and got in position to try to kill one of them again. Did you not see this happen? Or did Koichi manifest some hidden power, like Ichigo's bankai or something, to save the day in the version that you watched? That it worked out for Koichi - only because had he brutally died in the first episode then the show would have been over - only makes it plot armor. It doesn't make it the right thing to do.

So you are illustrating exactly what I am talking about: you think that the proper thing to do would have been to get Pop Step and yourself killed in some useless gesture of moral outrage instead of doing something else that might actually work.

It just feels like a bunch of characters running around performing hero duties, except now they have to make sure they don't get caught by the cops.

Also I only just realized in comparing the two how Koichi is like comic book Spider-Man versus Deku who is more like MCU Spidey.