© 古橋秀之・別天荒人・堀越耕平／集英社・ヴィジランテ製作委員会
Oh boy, after last week’s episode I was finally re-introduced to one of my favorite characters in the entire show and the anime actually showed signs of advancing the plot forward! You know what would make this even better? Taking an unexpected detour into Aizawa’s backstory of course! Look, I like Aizawa and he is probably one of my top five favorite characters in the franchise. I’m not even against the idea of this flashback happening in Vigilantes when it arguably made more sense for it to be in the main series. The main series already hinted at a lot of the things going on with Aizawa’s that are covered in this episode from his relationship to Present Mic to the fact that you could see where the impetus for him being hard on class 1A comes from after looking at his training here. I even like the fact that there’s a bit of a parallel between him and Deku because Aizawa’s quirk isn’t very flashy or over the top, even if it can be very useful specifically when it comes to taking down villains. Compared to everyone else, he looks and feels out of place.
Vigilantes justifies the use of the flashback by making it very clear that he is not a teacher yet and I guess the idea is that by confronting the trauma of his backstory, that is supposed to be what inspires him to go be a teacher at UA Academy so that he could take his role in the main series. But even with all of that, why did I have to get this NOW? It’s such a random place and it’s so jarring that it is genuinely hard for me to just accept it on its face even though I do like a lot of what the flashback showcases.
It’s nice seeing Aizawa be a bit more laid-back even if he never really grew out of that melancholy disposition. I’m glad that this flashback marked the return of Oboro who was that friend Aizawa lost. I’m assuming the climax of this flashback will be the moment of his “death?” It’s been a while since their time in high school but I didn’t know that Oboro’s hero outfit was inspired by the monkey king because he can summon clouds and ride on one. That’s genuinely really cool but I wonder how attached I’ll get to this character despite knowing so much of his fate.
Midnight continues to steal the show and I’m not just saying that because she’s partially naked for most of her screen time. I like the chemistry between all of these characters and how all of their distinct personalities do tie into little elements of hero work. Seeing the teachers discuss how having a cool quirk doesn’t automatically make you a hero was interesting because they establish that you need to be good at public relations, you need to get good grades and you need to be able to stand out in a very flashy way, which doesn’t match Aizawa at all. There is a lot of cool stuff here that I’m sure is just going to get a follow up next week, but I really hope the show doesn’t spend too much time here. This whole season has already been a bit of a mixed bag in terms of how it executes a lot of its plot points and introductions. I think it’s a perfect case of good material that gets bogged down by how you present that material to an audience.
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Bolts also streams regularly on Twitch as the indie Vtuber Bolts The Mechanic where they talk about and play retro media!
My Hero Academia: Vigilantes Season 2 is currently streaming on
Crunchyroll.
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