The Winter 2026 Anime Preview Guide

My Hero Academia: Vigilantes Season 2

Koichi Haimawari is a dull college student who aspires to be a hero but has given up on his dream. Although 80% of the world's population has superhuman powers called Quirks, few are chosen to become heroes and protect people. Everything changes for Koichi when he and Pop☆Step are saved by the vigilante Knuckleduster and get recruited to become vigilantes themselves!

My Hero Academia: Vigilantes Season 2 is based on the My Hero Academia: Vigilantes manga by writer Hideyuki Furuhashi and artist Betten Court within the world created by Kōhei Horikoshi. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Mondays.

There's a lot I liked about Vigilantes. I love the slightly different aesthetic that sets it apart from the main series, and I like that Koichi is clearly a very different main character from Deku. The show's focus on vigilantes, people who use their quirks in technically illegal ways for the sake of doing good, is a fascinating angle to approach a spinoff series because My Hero Academia takes place in a fully realized world that could have multiple stories told within it. However, I felt like the series fell a bit short by not having a clear idea of what kind of story it wanted to tell. Also, the vigilante angle didn't feel as strong or prominent throughout the series as the show pretended it was. Season two, unfortunately, starts similarly, making a big deal of what a vigilante is and then doing very little with that idea throughout the episode.

The cameos from Eraserhead and Fat Gum are nice, especially seeing them in this slightly different, more comic book aesthetic. Plus, the idea that there is an established drug ring that seems to be still distributing quick-enhancing drugs that were the main plot point of season one is also a fine angle. However, there isn't really a lot for our main characters to do, to the point where it almost feels like they are side characters in their own show. I like seeing Pop and Koichi together. As random as it is, it's cool that Koichi is exploring new aspects of his powers. But it really does feel like they're about to stumble into the plot rather than actually being strong contributors towards it. But maybe that's the point?

The only reason Pop and Koichi were involved in the plot in season one was Knuckleduster, who used them to find his daughter, who was also wrapped up in the whole situation. His story and character arc ended at the end of season one, which led to him leaving. Now that he's not there, these two don't really have a reason to get involved in anything outside of their own responsibilities, like all of these idol setups. I know it might be asking a lot of this new premiere, but as much as I enjoyed watching it, I also feel like I didn't walk away with much of an impact. I don't know how much longer this season will be compared to the first one, but I hope it doesn't take too long for the show to reestablish its drive and momentum.

The Cruller- I mean Crawler, and his friends are back for another season of crime fighting on the streets, and it feels like the show never left. I had a pretty good time with the first season of this show, and it was interesting to see how the world of My Hero Academia functions when pulling away from Class 1-A to zero in on how its hero-based society tackles street-level crimes. I'll admit I ended up being way more interested in how this show expanded our knowledge of Quirks and the significance of hero licenses than the whole Trigger drug ring plot. Still, I was just invested enough in our central trio of vigilantes to look forward to seeing how the rest of it played out.

So, how does all this translate to the start of the second season? Well, to be honest, this first episode was a bit underwhelming. When I said it felt like the show never left, I meant it, because this was less like a season premiere and more like a fairly incidental episode. The central plot centers on Koichi and Kazuho, with Koichi continuing to play the role of Pop Step's manager as they're out on a gig in Osaka. Aside from some interactions with an Osakan lady named Kaniko who poses as an idol and gets to run around in an appropriately crab-themed robot suit, there isn't too much here that's exciting, which doesn't really make for the best way to kick off a new season. There's also the matter of Trigger users wreaking havoc. Still, aside from Aizawa getting into a fight with a couple of grasshopper-themed villains who look like Kamen Riders (by far the highlight of the episode) and Kaniko turning out to be an undercover cop investigating the drug herself, there isn't too much advancement on that side of the story either.

On the bright side, the episode does at least provide a few lingering threads to dig into over the rest of the season. One is connected to Koichi's quirk, which is undergoing a sudden evolution: he can now stick to walls in addition to sliding across surfaces (which, at this point, makes the Spider-Man influences here even more blatant). While Koichi theorizes he might have been capable of doing this all along, I won't be surprised if this new ability leads to some unexpected consequences later on. The bigger thread here, though, is learning about a group called the Villain Society, who seem to be distributing a more dangerous variant of the Trigger drug and is using it to run human experiments. While I thought Hachisuka was a solid enough antagonist last season, she and her army of bees could only be so threatening by themselves, so I'm glad that they might be getting a proper group of bad guys for our trio of outlaws to fight. If you enjoyed the first season of the show, I don't think the slow start here will be a dealbreaker, and I'm still plenty down for checking out the rest of the season, but this was a really quiet way to kick off a new season, so I can only hope the next episode has more going on

My Hero Academia may finally have concluded after a run of almost ten years, but anime superhero fans needn't mourn – spin-off show Vigilantes has returned for its second season only a scant half year since its first ended. This introductory episode is light on the vigilantism, as Pop Step and Koichi travel to Osaka for a mascot idol event. Pop now has a regular monthly gig in Naruhata's local Marukane department store, and publicist Makoto has sent her, along with “manager” Koichi, to spread awareness of the store's brand. Perhaps it's not the most thrilling opener for a superhero show, but we get some nice interactions between our main duo.

Koichi's always been a bit of a scatterbrain, so it's not surprising to anyone when he misses boarding the Shinkansen railway because he was picking up bento boxes. What does surprise both him and Pop is how his quirk use has evolved to the point he can now cling onto things rather than merely skimming over them. Koichi subsequently hangs on for dear life to the outside of a damned bullet train the entire way from Tokyo to Osaka. A cursory Google search tells me that's an almost two-and-a-half-hour journey, over 320 miles! That's some grip strength.

In Osaka they have a brief encounter with professional hero Fat Gum, who it turns out is assisting Makoto's brother in a police investigation into an illicit drug smuggling ring that uses a specialty food market to smuggle its wares. Meanwhile, back in Naruhata, Eraser Head follows up his own related leads into an organization dubbed “The Villain Factory,” and we meet the Hotta brothers for the first time, who use Trigger to transform into goofy sentai show-style grasshopper people. They're very silly, but if the manga is anything to go by, they'll show up a whole lot more in future.

Pop meets a fellow idol in the crab-themed Osaka seafood mascot Kaniko, whom we later learn is an undercover cop when she fakes an attack of acute gastroenteritis to investigate some drug smuggling. As Pop is requested to fill in for the absent Kaniko by piloting her absurd crab mech suit, surely nothing can possibly go wrong with this situation…? Kaniko is a fun, if bizarre addition to the cast. It's clear from Koichi and Pop's reactions that her local humor doesn't transcend prefecture boundaries. It's even more difficult for her weird catchphrase and disturbing facial expressions to communicate her intentions to an international audience. Perhaps her seeming inability to understand others' lack of comprehension is deliberate… She seems to be entirely crab-themed, with her crab-shaped hairdo and crab-like mannerisms. I suppose in that regard she's a perfect choice for a crab company mascot.

Not a lot happens in this episode, so it's unlikely to attract new viewers, but a mix of old and new characters is entertaining for veterans. Hopefully the plot will kick off next episode.