My Hero Academia: Vigilantes Season 2

Episode 21

This three-episode flashback distraction is finally done, and my final verdict is…this should've been an OVA. While there were definitely a lot of good moments in the finale to this mini arc, and the symbolism is not lost on me despite how incredibly on the nose it is, I have a lot of problems with this random side quest. My Hero Academia has always been very direct, so the weather being used as a metaphor to showcase Aizawa's state of mind was fine, and the end of the episode symbolizes that he's finally ready to take a step away from the tragedy that he dealt with before. The animation was also stellar, particularly during the kaiju fight. I have no idea if it's realistic to assume that Aizawa would be able to do half of the things he could during that fight as a high school student completely on his own, but at least it was a good spectacle.

I also need to give a lot of props to Christopher Wehkamp during these flashbacks, because not only does he remove the weathering from his voice to make Aizawa sound believably younger, but he hits those emotional beats spot on. The only genuine time I felt a little bit choked up during the flashback was when he started being openly in denial about whether or not he really heard Oboro's voice. This is another great example of how really good acting can elevate subpar material, but that doesn't change the fact that I did admittedly still find a lot of this material rather subpar. The biggest emotional plot point of this episode can act as a perfect metaphor for why I don't think this whole situation hits me as hard as I think the show wanted it to.

These flashbacks made it clear that Oboro was one of the key emotional cruxes of Aizawa's high school development. My Hero has played with this idea of some characters being so overwhelmingly positive and joyful that they end up becoming the sun in someone else's life. This plays not only into the weather metaphor that is shown throughout the flashback, but also in the fact that Oboro's hero costume is literally based on Sun Wukong. I'll give you points for being clever, My Hero, but that's about it. The whole idea of the radio being broken but Aizawa still feeling like he heard Oboro's voice spurring him on during an impossible situation highlights the fact that pushing Aizawa is literally the ONLY reason that Oboro exists as a character. I don't know anything about this guy outside of the fact that he is supportive of Aizawa and is a bit of a class clown. That's it, and even that first part wasn't done that well.

While I understand Aizawa being depressed over losing a friend, the fact that Aizawa did have other friends in his life that he planned on opening an agency with sort of dampens the emotional dependency that these two had on each other, and I think the show knows that. The original series makes such a big point that Present Mic and Aizawa are friends and that they have been together for a long time. But this flashback had to create reasons to keep the two of them separated to make it all about Aizawa and Oboro. Is the idea that if Mic was more… present (I'm not sorry), then maybe Aizawa wouldn't spiral as hard? Is the idea that they weren't really that close afterall? That would have been nice to explore.

I wanted to see more of Mic's reaction, considering how emotional he was over the twist in the mainline show. After all, the three of them were a trio, so the fact that there's not much talk from the two of them at all during this flashback AT ALL feels really weird and hollow. If the idea was that Aizawa wanted to go solo so that he wouldn't have to witness another friend get hurt, then I could understand that more, but that's not how the show is playing it up. It's playing with the idea that his actions are more self-destructive because he has lost his “sun.” So not only is the main relationship that needed to be showcased to justify all of this not that strongly developed, but it also ends up hurting how Aizawa's relationships with other people are portrayed.

Then there's the ending, which feels very weird because I'm not sure what it's trying to say. When the show cuts back to the present time, and Aizawa is looking at the delinquents that he's working with alongside Koichi, is the whole idea that he's finally ready to let things go? Why does watching them make him feel that way, though? Also, the episode doesn't make it clear if this is the moment where Aizawa decides to become a teacher, which is what I thought the show was building up to. If this is the point where he decides to stop being a loner and become a teacher, then it feels even more forced. But if it's not, then this whole flashback feels like an even bigger waste of time.

This is the first time in years that I've been genuinely disappointed in My Hero Academia franchise. There's nothing here that I didn't already know about. I feel like some character dynamics were nerfed to portray a point that didn't even need to be portrayed, and I feel like I should be watching something way more interesting that was put on pause to give me this flashback. Yes, it was very well animated, and the voice acting was spectacular, but it's hard not to feel like my time was wasted. I'm so glad we're going back to the main plot next week, but with only so many episodes left in this season, things better kick it into high gear soon.

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My Hero Academia: Vigilantes Season 2 is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.