While the final season of My Hero Academia is scheduled for release in Fall 2025, its spinoff series, Vigilantes, is currently airing. The show presents a narrative similar to the main story but with unique twists. As the title suggests, instead of following an aspiring hero, it centers on individuals who have taken it upon themselves to fight villains, without any official license to do so. The series features a protagonist similar in spirit to the original, Koichi Haimawari, a young man with a modest desire to make a difference through heroism.
Since Koichi doesn’t possess a powerful Quirk, his efforts mostly revolve around surveillance, especially of a crime syndicate distributing “Trigger,” a Quirk-enhancing drug. This drug amplifies a user’s Quirk by 100 times but causes them to lose all sense and reason. This darker element sets the spinoff apart from the main series, particularly in how it isn’t afraid to highlight the flaws within the hero society. In many ways, Vigilantes feels like an installment of the acclaimed American superhero drama The Boys, set within the My Hero Academia universe. These parallels work in its favor, as Vigilantes offers a more realistic portrayal of power scaling and its misuse, just as The Boys does.
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My Hero Academia: Vigilantes‘ Premise Highlights Flaws in Hero Society, Much Like The Boys
The first parallel that Vigilantes draws from The Boys is how both series center their main premise around superpowered enhancement drugs. While the former features “Trigger,” the latter uses “Compound V.” Although The Boys focuses on exposing a corrupted hero society built on Compound V, Vigilantes uses Trigger to highlight the underlying crime within society. The use of enhancements in both stories emphasizes how people will go to any length to feel superior to others. However, the core parallel lies in how both series portray a realistic depiction of heroes if they actually existed.
While The Boys takes this concept to an extreme with characters like Homelander and Soldier Boy, Vigilantes offers a more toned-down approach through Captain Celebrity, who is clearly just as self-centered as the “heroes” in The Boys. The fact that Captain Celebrity is portrayed as an American hero makes the parallel between the two series amusingly direct. Additionally, the main cast of The Boys are essentially vigilantes themselves, fighting against a crime syndicate that manufactures superheroes using drugs for personal gain. Therefore, for fans of The Boys seeking a lighter take on its premise, My Hero Academia: Vigilantes fits the bill. Likewise, fans of Vigilantes who want a more intense exploration of a flawed hero society will find The Boys more than satisfying.
My Hero Academia: Vigilantes can be streamed on Crunchyroll, with it also available on Netflix in select Southeast Asian regions.
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