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Warning: Contains spoilers for My Hero Academia: Vigilantes.At long last,My Hero Academia’s official prequel story,My Hero Academia: Vigilantes, is getting an anime adaptation. Despite being nowhere near as popular as the main series,Vigilanteshas always held a notable cult following for giving fans something new out of the setting, and hopefully, the anime will help more people see what it has to offer.
It took a long time forVigilantesto get an anime, with the manga being finished since 2022, but the main series has already laid the groundwork for its story. While both stories took place in the same universe,My Hero Academianever referencedVigilantesthat much, with the most prominent of them all beingKoichi’s cameo in the final arc. That’s as far as explicit references went, of course, but conversely,My Hero Academiaset up its prequel story years ago, albeit indirectly, and that says a lot about how things should have played out withVigilantes’ anime.
How My Hero Academia’s Main Series Secretly Set Up Its Spinoff’s Story
The Origin Of My Hero Academia’s Trigger Explained
The main narrative ofMy Hero Academia: Vigilantesrevolves around the Naruhata Vigilantes trying to stop the distribution of Trigger, an illegal drug that enhances a person’s Quirk at the risk of making them go berserk, but that’s not the first time Trigger appeared in the series. In the Shie Hassaikai arc ofMy Hero Academiaseason 4, the yakuza often used Quirk-enhancing drugs, and while it wasn’t explicitly called Trigger, it still means thatMy Hero Academialaid the groundwork forMy Hero Academia: Vigilantes’ story years ago by making Trigger a key part of season 4’s story.
That connection was made even more explicit in the third movie,My Hero Academia: World Heroes’ Mission. The main villains, Humarise, wanted to turn the world into a paradise for Quirkless people by using bombs filled with Trigger to make people all around the world lose control of their Quirks and destroy each other, and while season 4 didn’t call it Trigger, the movie flat-out calls the bombs Trigger Bombs. That makes theVigilantesconnection impossible to deny, and overall, it shows thatMy Hero Academiawas setting upMy Hero Academia: Vigilantes’ story years before the anime came out.
My Hero Academia: Vigilantes Is Being Hurt By Its Timeline
As great as it is forMy Hero AcademiaandMy Hero Academia: Vigilantesto share a connection, it does have some tragic implications forVigilantes’ story.My Hero Academia: Vigilantesis a prequel storyset several years beforeMy Hero Academia, so if Trigger is still a problem in the main story, that means the cast ofVigilantesultimately fails to put a stop to Trigger. Because of that,My Hero Academia: Vigilantes’ story has an element of pointlessness to it because its problems still exist inMy Hero Academia, and overall, that’s hard to argue with.
Even if the characters don’t get rid of Trigger in its entirety, it can be assumed that things would be far worse if they hadn’ gotten involved, and in a larger sense, one could argue thatVigilantesis entirely pointless by virtue of being a prequel, but that doesn’t make it any less fun a story to go through. Overall,how much impact the cast ofMy Hero Academia: Vigilanteshas on the overarching story should detract from how much enjoyment a person gets from it, and that should remain true even for the anime.
My Hero Academia’s Trigger Story Proves Vigilantes Needed An Anime Years Ago
It Shouldn’t Have Taken So Long For Vigilantes To Get An Anime
It’s impossible to deny the connection betweenMy Hero AcademiaandMy Hero Academia: Vigilantes, and that makes it even more apparent thatVigilantesshould have gotten an anime years ago. Trigger showing up in theMy Hero Academiamanga was a big deal because it went a long way to show that there was a shared universe at play, but that doesn’t work when it took so long forVigilantesto get an anime, however, soMy Hero Academia: Vigilantestaking so long to get an anime is a problem for how much it undermines the franchise’s shared universe.
None of that wasVigilantes’ fault, of course; manga spinoffs rarely ever get anime adaptations, so it probably would have been stranger if theVigilantesanime had come out when the manga was still relevant. More importantly, with how the series is structured and the overall strength of its writing,My Hero Academia: Vigilantesstill has plenty of merit as a story, even if the anime can’t sell the shared universe aspect as best as it could, and with theMy Hero Academia: Vigilantesanime in full swing, it hopefully won’t be long before more people notice that, as well.
My Hero Academia: Vigilantes
Cast
My Hero Academia: Vigilantes, released in 2025, follows Koichi Haimawari, an aspiring hero using his modest Quirk for good deeds. Teaming up with two unlikely allies after a chance encounter with local thugs, they navigate the challenges of combating evil without formal superhero training.
