Review: Episode 3 takes a step back, while also taking care to explore the intricacies of its characters.
My Hero Academia: Vigilantes Episode 3 shifts the tone to a more relaxed feel in the first half, showing us Koichi’s day-to-day life before he masquerades as the vigilante hero The Crawler. However, there seems to be a difference with how Koichi views his daily life now that he’s involved with Knuckleduster and Pop Step, and I’m not sure if it’s a good thing.
Warning: Spoilers ahead
Episode 2, titled “Takeoff” gave us a firsthand look into how Koichi has adjusted to his new vigilante lifestyle, and he’s definitely enjoying it. So at the beginning of Episode 3, titled “Bee”, you get whiplash at how different Koichi looks when he’s living his ordinary, day-to-day life. Some people may think that the first half is a little boring with this exploration, but it adds more nuance to his characterisation, while also giving us more context about the mysterious idol Pop Step.
From resignation to discontentment, will Koichi ever be satisfied?
It’s an obvious fact that before meeting Knuckleduster and Pop Step, Koichi was resigned to living on the sidelines. But after finally joining the two in vigilanteism, a marked change became evident with Koichi: a fire is burning once again, and there’s no way he’s letting it go out.
In the first episode, Koichi looked like he was resigned to living an ordinary life–I went on a tangent about how his ambitions were basically dashed when he failed the Hero Exam, and how he decided to simply do community service thinking it was all he could do.
But when Knuckleduster came in to shake things up, Koichi’s resignation has clearly turned into discontentment. We see him attending college classes with an extremely bored look on his face, as if to say to viewers that he’d rather be somewhere else than return to the banality of his mundane reality.
Truth be told, although the prior episodes of Vigilantes have touched on the gray philosophy of vigilanteism, it’s more prominently painted as a reawakening for Koichi; it’s his one chance to finally do what he wanted to do in life. Although this observation marks the beginning of what I hope can be an incredibly well-written character arc (as I’ve never read the manga the anime is based on), I can’t help but ask: with Koichi finally having a taste of the thrill and enjoyment of hero work, will he ever realise just how heavy this burden might be once real threats come to the surface?
Because when you think about it, if Koichi had been a little more different, if he had been swayed by the seedy figures behind the Trigger drug epidemic before even meeting Knuckleduster, then we could have gotten an entirely different story altogether.
Which begs the question: though Koichi may look like he’s enjoying what he’s doing now, will he find this purpose permanent, or will he become unsatisfied later on? We know what Knuckleduster thinks about his work, but we can’t say for sure that Koichi shares the same sentiments.
Another contrasting element that establishes just how Koichi’s dissatisfied with his personal life is his fellow vigilante Pop Step. After returning home to find Knuckleduster and Pop basically using his place as their base operations, he finds out that Pop is getting ready for a big performance, which makes him think about how his life is compared to his perceived thrill and joy of Pop’s.
It’s incredibly evident how different Pop Step and Koichi are when it comes to their personalities; Pop is incredibly charismatic, popular, and is making waves as an underground idol, while Koichi has no friends and has to go to a job he hates. There’s a layer of jealousy in there, and shows us how flawed he is as a person. Koichi doesn’t know Pop beyond what he already knows about her, so his assumptions regarding her character are steeped in personal bias.
This factor opens up a lot of discussion regarding the writing of his character, which I enjoy picking apart. It’s certainly rare to see a deeply human character like Koichi, and the direction of his character writing has been superbly engaging.
Pop Step leaves a lot to be desired
I have no stellar opinions when it comes to the female characters of My Hero Academia, who suffered from lacklustre writing from the series author Kohei Horikoshi. And although Vigilantes isn’t written by him, considering how Pop Step is being fleshed out in the first 3 episodes, I have a fear that she may get the same treatment.
My Hero Academia has some potential with female characters, don’t get me wrong, but these characters often get thrown to the sidelines, essentially acting as props to further establish the other male characters they’re tied to. We’ve seen it happen with Mina and Kirishima, Momo and Shota, and even in the UA’s Big Three: Mirio, Tamaki, and Nejire.
With how Pop Step is being featured in Vigilantes, her direction has a glaring chance of going that route, and I find it incredibly dissatisfying.
One of the major fights in Episode 3 concerns a fan who takes Trigger to get to Pop, and for all intents and purposes, this could have been a moment for her to shine or show her potential. However, she ends up becoming the typical damsel-in-distress who can only support Koichi and Knuckleduster as they do the brunt of the work.
I’m not saying that Pop should have absolutely bodied her fan, but a little more proactiveness could have worked better. In the end, she’s basically an echo trailing behind the good deed that Koichi and Knuckleduster did.
But I can’t deny that Vigilantes has done something that MHA never did: it shows in full detail just how dangerous life can be when you’re a person, especially a woman, with such a strong public presence. The dilemma Pop faces with her fan’s entitlement, and later on the critique of his actions, is a step that MHA never did take, and I appreciate that Vigilantes tried to break the series norm.
The villains are stepping up
The latter half of the episode introduces a new character in Kuin Hachisuka, a red-haired girl who claims to be Pop’s fan, but is actually a part-time villain in disguise. Her appearance sparks a lot of questions about the purpose of Trigger, and leads viewers to wonder just who exactly is behind this scheme.
The mystery is every bit intriguing, so much so that even the Police Force don’t have many clues to unravel it. However, one observation makes a whole lot of sense: Trigger is part of a bigger plan, but as to what it is, well, we’ll have to find out in the next episodes.
Kuin plays a major role in bringing about chaos, her Quirk, which allows her to control bees that inject Trigger into unsuspecting victims, causes 10 bystanders to transform into formidable Super Villains. This move clues in Knuckleduster about her identity, so I’m sure we’ll get more of this in the next episode.
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!
