My Hero Academia: Vigilantes’ first episode takes a different route than the original anime, and it’s a welcome change.
My Hero Academia: Vigilantes is the anime adaptation to the prequel manga spin-off of Kohei Horikoshi’s smash hit series My Hero Academia, which was written by Hideyuki Furuhashi and illustrated by Betten Court. The anime tells the story of quirks, heroes, and justice through a different lens, with a darker tone that is evident in the very first episode. It immediately brings viewers into a grittier, darker view of Horikoshi’s alternate-reality world.
The first episode streamed on Crunchyroll on 7 April, 2025, with a surprise English dub simulcast.
Warning: Spoilers ahead!
So how does Vigilantes differentiate itself from the main My Hero Academia title?
The art takes a different approach to the world established by Horikoshi, but retains much of the charm with its character design. What truly pops out is the use of comic book sound effects, which were peppered throughout the scenes to emphasise certain actions, taken from the superhero comic books the aesthetic is obviously inspired by.
Truth be told, watching the first episode might remind you of American comicbook titles like DC Comics’ Batman. And it doesn’t hold your hand like the first few episodes of My Hero Academia. There’s no hopeful swell or a brighter view of things; there is no inspirational, sprightly young boy who monologues about his dreams. What we get is an incredibly relatable character: one who cowers when the going gets real and tough.
Koichi Haimawari is a coward with conviction
Compared to MHA’s Izuku Midoriya, Vigilantes’s protagonist, Koichi Haimawari, is for all intents and purposes a massive coward. As a college-aged student living alone with barely any money to scrape by, Koichi witnesses the ups and downs of society and the prevalence of crime through the eyes of a civilian. Thanks to his idolatry of the number one hero All Might, he pushes through his cowardice to portray himself as what can be described as the Walmart version of your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.
Taking on the moniker “Nice Guy”, Koichi does a number of good deeds around his city as a self-appointed everyman–ranging from giving directions to lost citizens, to sorting out the trash in their proper disposal units. That’s all he believes that he is capable of doing.
And it’s not like Koichi is unsatisfied with his work; he sees it as rewarding, as it means he could contribute to a better society even through his small deeds. But to me, it’s more like Koichi is being taken advantage of due to his naivety; a random character even asks him to throw out their trash for him, a task that he doesn’t say no to.
Unlike Izuku, Koichi is resigned to his fate as someone who isn't capable of being a hero, as he looks down on his own quirk, the “Slide and Glide”, as something that’s weak and useless. Our first look at his ability can prove it too: his pace is slow and can rival that of a casually cruising bicycle, with people commenting how it reminds them of how a cockroach flitters across a path.
Koichi’s reserved nature doesn’t really do him any good either. A trio of stereotypical thugs have their way with him, even beating him up in a dark alleyway just because he accidentally bumped into their head honcho earlier in the episode.
This scene is incredibly important in showing the tonal direction the show is shifting towards: sure the heroes in MHA’s world are fighting evil supervillains day in and day out, but who’s there to save the little guys from the bullies? Who’s there to help out the random person from being exploited by society’s entry-level criminals? The series poses a very important question:
Why do you need to be a hero to do good things?
Even with Koichi’s blatant cowardice, there’s a heart of gold shown somewhere in there that needs to be highlighted.
Sure, he’s terrified, but it’s evident that he does what he knows is right even though he doesn’t want to. Emphasis on the ‘doesn’t want to’. That’s a quality right there that needs to be given importance to, too. Even if you feel like you can’t do anything to stop someone from making bad decisions, you do something about it anyway because that’s the right thing to do.
When Koichi steps in to try and save Pop Step from the thugs, even though his effort is an abysmal failure, it’s incredibly noble and points toward his more selfless quality. Koichi may have presented himself as cowardly and selfish in the first few minutes of the anime, but his bravery at the face of trouble immediately shines through. He’s the only one who is capable of doing something-anything-and he doesn’t turn tail and run away.
As opposed to Izuku, whose single desire to become a hero is not marred by sparks of indecisiveness, Koichi’s back-and-forth with himself brings him to a more humanistic level. You can sit there and say “huh, I can totally see myself in that guy.”
Even Koichi’s reaction to the appearance of the vigilante hero Knuckleduster is more realistic compared to Izuku’s encounter with All Might. Koichi balks at Knuckleduster’s offer of apprenticeship, even though it opens an avenue for him to contribute to the betterment of society in an albeit illegal way. Koichi is all about semantics; he’s driven by what he knows is the right and proper way, but given that he does end up following Knuckleduster, the desire to become a do-gooder prevails over his self-preserving tendencies.
Knuckleduster himself even highlights his perceived absurdity of licenses and hero work: why do you need a license to fight for justice? Why do you need papers to bring down the baddies? This observation is steeped in complexity, and Vigilantes has an avenue to do this ideology justice.
I’m excited to see how the show can dissect these sentiments further, because by the looks of it, Vigilantes is shaping up to be an antithesis to what My Hero Academia is as a series. There are no grandiose hero fights here, nor is there an A-lister hero stepping in to save the day. In My Hero Academia: Vigilantes, it’s time for the little guys to shine!
If you're looking to catch missed details, dive deeper into the story, or simply read our thoughts on each episode, we've put together a My Hero Academia: Vigilantes review collection just for you!
