My Hero Academia: Vigilantes

Episode 9

This is probably the best episode of Vigilantes that we've gotten to date. In terms of story, this episode surprisingly covers a lot of ground despite initially appearing like it's going to be a filler episode. With Koichi's mom visiting, this creates a great opportunity to reveal and confirm a couple of things. Not only do we get to hear Pop and Knuckleduster's actual names, but we get to learn a little bit about the latter. I'm going to assume that his working for a nonprofit that helps out the community is actually true and that he didn't just prepare all of that stuff ahead of time. If it's the latter, then that is too convenient. I'd like to think that this guy has a background in community work because that would tie him and Koichi together, as it was revealed that Koichi has been doing community work ever since he was little.

Speaking of little, it's nice to hear that Koichi was actually always a bit of a community hero since he was little, and that he did always have a little bit of that heroic drive. It is implied that this drive was tempered over time due to his mom literally and metaphorically beating it out of him. I wish the episode had spent more time on that, because the mom doesn't contribute much to the overall story. For all the ground that this episode covers, it does still somewhat feel like a missed opportunity. Still, I like what we get.

This episode makes Koichi feel genuinely heroic. Until now, the show has either left a lot of the bigger moments to other characters or has severely downplayed Koichi's capabilities for a punchline. There isn't any of that here; he gets to show off his skills in a situation where his quirk is shown to be the most useful, he gets to work alongside a professional hero in a somewhat official capacity, and he gets to save the girl in the end. This is the episode that feels the most like an actual My Hero Academia episode, complete with pulls right from the original soundtrack. The animation was great, the hype was there, and the climax felt particularly strong.

It's enough to make me overlook the blatant convenience of the episode's finale. It's been established in the main series that people can have multiple quirks at once, or they could be born with a quirk that's a combination or mutation of the quirks of their parents. However, it's almost funny how convenient that this episode only tells us at the last minute that Koichi has always had an extra quirk or that his quirk was always capable of flight, so that he can perform a rescue in the eleventh hour. I wish something like that had been foreshadowed better in the series because it came out of nowhere.

It works thematically, and I love Knuckleduster's speech about being there for their kids. At the very least, it feels like this might come up again later. Speaking of later, it looks like next week is explicitly focusing on Knuckleduster. Such an episode is long overdue. It's been a while since an episode of the show has left me feeling genuinely excited.

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