Post — Aaron Ngo

Major Spoilers are included in this manga review. Please read with caution.

I have officially caught up with all the volume books released so far. The link to my manga reviews on the first six volumes is here.

On July 15, 2020, I started and finished reading Vigilantes’ Volume 7: “Defend the Tower!” Written by Hideyuki Furuhashi and drawn by Betten Court, this prequel spin-off series offers a different perspective—the Batman perspective is what I’ll call it—on My Hero Academia’s superpowered society. While Deku and his friends are working hard to become official heroes at school and in real-life hero situations, Koichi “The Crawler”, Pop Step, and Knuckleduster instead choose to moonlight as unlicensed vigilantes.

Before I dive into this particular volume’s story events, I’m going to discuss my thoughts on My Hero Academia: Vigilantes as a whole. Since this is the latest volume printed and released, I have reached the “end”. Of course, there are more chapters online that are continuing the story weekly, but I don’t think I’ll dive into them right away or even at all. Reading physical manga books had become a good habit of mine, and waiting for Volume 8 to come out in November 2020 doesn’t seem like too long of a wait. Four months will fly before I know it. Anyway, I kind of got off-topic there, so let me get back on track and tell you what I think about the spin-off series:

Vigilantes is darker and more mature than the main series My Hero Academia. The themes of inequality, vigilantism, and how the Pro Heroes—like Eraser Head—tended to become detached from the world they’re trying to save are explored more in this spin-off than the main series. Eraser Head’s character story is the most compelling, as he’s a major player in the main series, and this prequel explores his hero career before he became Deku’s homeroom teacher. Vigilantes is also more violent and gorier compared to the main series.

Think about it this way: Vigilantes is a dark manga series with occasional bright spots while the main series is a bright series with occasional dark spots. For me personally, I favored reading Vigilantes over watching My Hero Academia due to my natural affiliation for dark-themed superhero stuff like Arrow, Daredevil, and The Boys.

Over the past six volumes, we followed Koichi become a better vigilante hero by training his quirk to become stronger while making “friends” with other Pro Heroes like Eraser Head and Captain Celebrity.

Captain Celebrity, a shameful American Pro Hero, took center stage in this latest volume. The story in Volume 7 is set around Koichi and Pop Step getting ready for Captain Celebrity’s final event in Japan at the Sky Egg Stadium. Now that Captain Celebrity had fixed his reputation, he was preparing to make his way back to the United States. However, the scarred speedster had other plans and sent bomber villains to sabotage the event. While most of the heroes were working to save everyone—over 50,000 people—from the inside, Captain Celebrity and Koichi were pushed to their limits on the outside to keep the building from falling down. “Defend the Tower!”

While Knuckleduster made a grand return in the volume’s beginning episodes, Captain Celebrity’s growth and development was the emotional core of Volume 7. In the beginning, Captain Celebrity was a toxic male hero who only cared about saving people when the cameras were on him. Captain Celebrity was the opposite of All-Might—The Symbol of Peace—and he also represented what Pro Heroes shouldn’t be like. Luckily, this volume shows us Captain Celebrity’s backstory in addition to putting him in a situation where he pushed his limits for the sake of others. In shorter words, Captain Celebrity Plus Ultra!

Betten Court’s artwork shined brightly through Captain Celebrity, showing us the different sides of him in flashback and present day. I’ve read Court’s artwork is different from main series My Hero Academia, so I can’t wait to compare the two different art styles once I read the main series’ manga books next. Generally, the art for this series is beautiful and outstanding. Knuckleduster was my favorite art early on, but I grew to love the other characters like Captain Celebrity and Eraser Head.

Overall, My Hero Academia: Vigilantes is an amazing spin-off series that is well on its way to matching the main series’ popularity and quality. This volume smacked harder—literally—than the last two volumes. I hope this manga will get an anime adaptation someday. Thanks for reading my reviews, everyone! I’ll see you when the next volume comes out in November 2020!

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