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Kaiju No.8 was promoted as the new big thing of spring 2024. Hailed as the new Attack on Titan, it was supposed to be backed up by the hype of its manga. Yet the very people reading the manga had zoned out by the time the anime came out, because they got fed up with the lack of any significant development. Furthermore, the character designs of the adaptation were far simpler compared to the manga, thus failing to attract many anime-onlys. On top of that, the anime got instantly overshadowed by the continuation of Mushoku Tensei, an established title with a huge following. In all, ... Kaiju No.8 was dead on arrival.

Even if the artwork was more detailed and this anime didn’t face any competition from other titles, it would still not fare much better. Its premise is by the numbers as far as shonen go. Monsters attack humanity, and a guy who can turn into a monster fights them. We’ve seen this countless of times and the execution is not attempting to move away from what everyone came to expect.

If there was an element everyone was qurious about, that would be the protagonist being in his 30s, but even that was quickly proven to be meaningless. As uncommon as it is to have an older main character, getting to fulfill his dream of becoming a monster hunter at a later part of his life, he does not act any differently from your average teenage shonen hero. Basically, his age is not reflective of his behavior and thus does not matter in the least. He is not even fulfilling his dream in a way that is inspiring. He did not work hard to get himself a well-built body for years, nor did he study hard. One day he just got superpowers and breezed through the exams. Including the written ones, which he was very bad at.

Toping it off, the protagonist is completely unfazed by his transformation into a monster. There is zero psychological pressure compared to something like Tokyo Ghoul, and instead jokes about it all the time, even in situations that demand maturity. Basically, he’s coming off as irritating instead of a reliable adult. Not even a master-level shonen like Full Metal Alchemist could escape being criticized for using comedy inappropriately, so it is understandable why this element made many viewers to drop the show early on.

Those who stayed, didn’t get much that was worth the fuss. Despite having good animation and being promoted as an action-heavy series, the battles are fairly short and simple. They don’t have tactics or choreography, and despite the monsters being huge they are not dealt any differently compared to your typical human-sized monsters. Their size matters as much as the age of the protagonist. Not at all. Those who declared this anime to be the new Attack on Titan seem to think the only similarity they need is huge enemies, and not if they are treated any differently.

Each battle almost always ends with a single shot or punch, making the monsters to come off as fodders. The heroes also go through the typical ‘I must believe in myself’ phase before they can one-shot the monster, thus coming off as not being battle-ready although they are supposed to be professional soldiers. Action fans will simply not be pleased with how superficial the action part is.

The minute details are also nothing to bat an eye, since the world building is just a copy of our world. There are no differences, despite the constant monster attacks. It doesn’t feel like the world reacts to the crisis as something like Pacific Rim did. The atmosphere is fairly light in general and you will never feel the monsters are scary.

The characters also joke too often despite being military officers tasked with the serious mission to protect humanity from complete annihilation. The premise would have you think it’s a serious military show, yet the character dynamics are so basic you can encounter them in any anime with some sort of school or academy. Aside from the crazy anime hair, there is absolutely nothing distinctive or memorable about them.

The final nail in the coffin is how nobody even hypes the manga, now that it’s over. The ending was lukewarm and none of the promises it made in its earlier arcs were kept. Meaning, it’s not like you have to power through this season so you can get to better things later on. There are no better things ahead; it remains lukewarm all the way to the end.

Conclusion: It’s nothing out of the ordinary, but if you like junk food you will get plenty of that here.

Sakamoto Days was constantly praised as the John Wick of anime, and the preairing hype of the first season would have you believe it would be the next instant masterpiece that everyone would be talking about. No such thing happened. In just a few episodes, most had dropped it or were watching it in silence since there was nothing really worth saying about it.

The only actual thing people liked about the manga was the cinematic fights, which didn’t translate well on screen. The animation was good but not as impressive as other anime airing at the time. During season 1, Solo Leveling stole the spotlight, ... and right now Dandadan does the same thing. The studio working on Sakamoto Days couldn’t craft the most breath-taking animation of all times and thus many viewers lost interest early on.

But even if the action scenes were amazing, the discussions about it would die out fast anyways, since there would still be nothing worth talking about the show. Nobody can ever say much about the battle choreography. It’s the themes surrounding the fights, and usually the aura farming of the main characters that generate discussions. No such thing exists in Sakamoto Days.
- It’s very light on plot continuity (most episodes are standalones).
- It’s not trying to have any themes worth exploring (it is fluff and feel good)
- It has no tension (despite having murderous assassins injuries and death are very rare).
- Its humorous premise doesn’t develop in any way (lel, aged assassin with family).
- It doesn’t have aura farming (fat old guy with mustache does not scream charismatic).
- Heck, it doesn’t even have meme-worthy material compared to the fairly similar Spy X Family (Anya had monopolized the interest of the community for weeks).

Thus, nothing remains for anyone to care about in the second season. The ratings aren’t looking good, there is no hype, and as much as some claim the plot gets tighter and the humor tones down, the momentum is completely gone. Sakamoto Days is now just another mid anime that got lost in the sea of airing shows.

Despite garnering a modest wave of anticipation from its existing manga readership, Gachiakuta found itself airing in unfortunate proximity to Dandadan season two, an anime juggernaut that swiftly captured the attention of the action genre’s entire demographic. With Dandadan monopolizing both viewer enthusiasm and critical discourse, Gachiakuta was struggling to carve out even a fleeting moment of relevance.

Even in the absence of such formidable competition, however, Gachiakuta would likely have encountered significant difficulty distinguishing itself. At its core, it is an unabashedly traditional shōnen series, reminiscent of Black Clover or Fairy Tail. It offers very little in terms of innovation and it’s certainly not refreshing ... when it smells like feces. The narrative is less a cohesive story than a chaotic string of combat sequences and shouted exposition, revolving teenagers doing silly emotes every few seconds. It is not crafted for viewers seeking narrative sophistication or thematic substance. Rather, it caters unabashedly to the action meatheads, who are content to be fed a steady diet of kinetic chaos and recycled tropes.

The above paragraph is just a polite way of saying the show is dumb. While its presentation attempts to evoke a darker, more mature atmosphere, its execution is clumsy. It has a city that is divided into the rich side and the poor side. If this was an attempt to have social commentary, it’s not supposed to stop at that, it needs to make some sort of in-story sense. How does the wealthy class sustain itself? Who supplies their goods and services? How do the poor acquire food or shelter in a system that denies them the means to labor, trade, or even scavenge? No answers are offered. It’s done with magic.

Gachiakuta further undermines itself through excessive exposition. In classic shōnen fashion, characters frequently explain aloud what is already plainly visible onscreen, just so you won’t have to actually look at the screen. It’s very awkward when you know the characters are talking about things they know about, just so the audience can get the basics in an artificial way. Why bother to show it when you can say it, right? It’s not like these characters who emote as if they are sitting on a bicycle without a seat are worth staring at.

The show’s carelessness with its own internal consistency is best exemplified by its treatment of the relationship between the city’s social classes. The wealthy elite inexplicably tolerate the physical proximity of the impoverished masses, whose squalor pollutes their environment, despite the rich having no apparent economic, social, or logistical need for them. The poor neither produce goods nor offer labor; they are not even permitted to collect refuse, despite the rich possessing an apparently inexhaustible supply of disposable resources. Even the most rudimentary solution, a waste-for-labor exchange system, wherein the poor are allowed to recycle refuse in return for basic sustenance, would have lent the setting a modicum of plausibility. No symbiosis exists, no plausible incentive justifies their cohabitation, and no explanation is provided as to why the affluent don’t simply exile the underclass entirely. Instead, the elite wait for crimes to occur in order to selectively punish a few. It’s ineffectual and collapses under the slightest scrutiny.

Another example is how the poor wear the same type of clothes as the rich. Logic suggests the rich should have opulent garments clothes, while the poor would walk around in tattered rags. So why are they all wearing the same fancy clothes? How do they even acquire those clothes? It’s certainly not from the trash of the rich, so where do they get them from? You never get an answer because the show is dumb.

The obvious meta- explanation is because the protagonist needs to look cool. Who would like a shonen hero who wears rags? It doesn’t matter if has no in-series logic, the same way ninjas in Naruto should not be wearing bright-colored overalls. It’s the spectacle that comes first. And even then Gachiakuta stumbles because its characters inhabit a world that reeks of filth. What kind of a shonentard could sympathize with or even tolerate a hero caked in grime, surrounded by stink, breathing in squalor? By extension, who would find any sort of appeal in a cast of characters who permanently smell like rotten eggs? The answer is nobody. Back to watching Dandadan!

Moreover, the show attempts to engender empathy for its vomit-smelling protagonist, by portraying him as falsely accused of murder. But even this narrative pivot is portrayed superficially. Why didn’t anyone see the killer running out from the front door of the house in broad daylight? Why did the police arrive instantly and immediately accused the protagonist without any motive or evidence? It’s all done to victimize him in a hurry and it falls flat on its face. The reason it worked so well in other anime such as The Rising of the Shield Hero or even Redo of Healer, is because the audience knows who the actual culprit is and sees them taunting the falsely accused. In Gachiakuta the assassin is masked, emotionally opaque, and devoid of motives or even emotions. In a dumb action show where everyone emotes as if they got a dozen suppositories up their butt, this means nothing and nobody will care.

The final nail in the coffin is what follows the exile of the protagonist into a trash hole. It’s like a dimensional portal that isekais anyone falling in, to a world of trash. Somehow falling 2 miles and crushing on the ground doesn’t kill you. Somehow the trash there is sentient and turns into ugly CGI that wants to eat you. Somehow you gain superpowers when you fight with trash. And somehow there is another society down there who recruits the discarded and together they form the Toxic Avengers (Garbage edition). Essentially, the anime jumps genres entirely, from a social drama to Alice in Garbageland.

Then the whole thing follows your typical Young Adult supernatural organization of smug magicians who are interested in the bland protagonist. Guess what other show airing alongside Gachiakuta did that. Why, yes, it’s the Lord of Mysteries, which happens to look far more polished and doesn’t have characters who emote like clowns with constipation.

So yes, as a whole Gachiakuta is not simply about trash. It’s actual trash, airing in a season with far better offerings.

The most critically acclaimed anime of the Summer 2025 season is Takopi, a title that, despite the overwhelming fanfare and near-universal praise, amounts to little more than your standard misery porn affair regarding torturing children. It is the Elfen Lied, Bokurano, or Erased of this season, for audiences eager to interpret agony as profundity.

While none of this is particularly novel, since shocking situations were always a defining characteristic of anime, setting them apart from Western cartoons, very often there is an obvious conflation of obscenity with thematic depth. Takopi is not a meditation on trauma; it is a maximalist simulation of despair. Its world is ... not simply harsh, it is unrelentingly and implausibly cruel to a degree that breaks immersion. The narrative doesn’t so much examine suffering as it manufactures the most exaggerated scenarios imaginable simply to evoke a visceral reaction.

Within the span of a few episodes, we are presented with parents whose behavior borders on cartoonish sadism, children who perpetuate violence with equal intensity, and a society composed of indifferent educators, negligent police, and absent institutions that enable abuse. Into this cruelty arrives an alien, naïve, ill-equipped, and inexplicably optimistic, who imagines it can bring happiness to children so thoroughly broken they defy narrative plausibility. The entire premise begins to feel less like a commentary on social dysfunction and more like a deliberate attempt to outdo itself in bleakness for shock value’s sake.

To those who insist, “But this reflects reality in Japan,” it is countered with the show not depicting reality, but the farthest imaginable extreme of a societal issue. It’s the narrative equivalent of locking a puppy with terminal cancer inside a burning building while indifferent cosplayers snack outside. Can such things happen? In the most abstract and tragic circumstances, yes. But Takopi is not interested in likelihood; it is interested in emotional manipulation masquerading as insight. It is sensationalism, pure and simple.

And then, of course, there is the titular character, an alien creature who understands the concept of happiness but lacks any awareness of sadness. This conceit, intended to be endearing or perhaps poignant, collapses under even the most basic philosophical scrutiny. One cannot understand light without shadow, joy without grief, gain without loss. To grasp happiness in a meaningful way necessitates an awareness of its absence. By denying this duality, the themes are left with the same gravity as when the alien travels from one planet to another. Practically zero.

Defenders of this approach often retreat to the argument “it’s fiction, it doesn’t need to make sense; it just needs to leave an impression.” That defense can be countered with “it is bad fiction, because it undermines whatever thematic integrity it aspires to.” The series consistently avoids engaging with the consequences of its own provocations. It introduces horror without resolution, violence without moral reckoning, and worst of all, stakes without permanence. Problems are not resolved but erased (literally) through time travel, memory loss, or magical resets of reality. This is not the emotional devastation of Grave of the Fireflies, where tragedy is tied to reality and choice. Takopi opts for narrative shortcuts, deus ex machinas if you will, to maintain the emotional maelstrom, revealing the hollowness at its core.

It is also necessary to highlight the glaring narrative absurdities, particularly the willful blindness of the adult characters, a device shamelessly employed to preserve the series’ manufactured sense of edginess. Consider the following:
- A child arrives at school, visibly bruised, the injuries plainly evident to classmates and staff alike. No one acknowledges it. No questions are asked. The silence serves to maintain the contrived atmosphere of tragic despair.
- That same child’s desk is repeatedly defaced with grotesque and degrading messages. Again, not a single adult intervenes, not because the world is cruel, but because the script demands continued emotional degradation at all costs.
- Later, a group of children undertakes a coordinated effort to conceal a serious crime, involving not just cunning but the use of sophisticated alien technology. Despite this, they are promptly discovered. Why? So they may spiral further into instability. Escalating their suffering is the narrative's only real currency.
- When alien technology, an event that in any rational world would change the course of civilization, is found by workers, how do the adults respond? By collectively pretending it does not exist. This deliberate ignorance ensures the plot remains narrowly focused on the children’s downward spiral, instead of expanding into the analysis or societal impact of the alien technology.
- In perhaps the most jarring example, police officers arrive at the home of a deeply traumatized girl. The residence is in utter disarray, the parents are conspicuously absent, and the child herself is filthy, visibly injured, and clearly exhibiting signs of psychological distress. By all logic, this should trigger immediate intervention. But it does not. Instead, everyone quietly ignores the obvious to ensure the tragedy can continue unimpeded.
This isn’t storytelling. It’s narrative puppeteering. Contorting events into grotesque shapes solely for the sake of eliciting shock and emotional exhaustion. Nothing unfolds with organic realism. There is no plausible chain of cause and consequence. Everything is structured around artificially disgusting the viewer.

And now a warning for viewers who are suffering from anxiety, depression, or intrusive thoughts related to self-harm or violence. This anime is not cathartic, nor is it a source of understanding or comfort. Engaging with it may actively worsen your mental state. It offers no wisdom, no hope, no meaningful insight. It amplifies distress for the sake of spectacle and sells suffering as depth.

And no, this is not an overreaction. You cannot dismiss all fictional media as harmless simply because it isn’t real. If fiction had no emotional or psychological impact, it would not move us to tears, nor stir debate, nor find itself at the top of seasonal rankings. People are affected by what they consume, especially the easily impressionable youths. The sheer number of viewers praising Takopi as “profound” or “realistic” is not evidence of its merit, but rather of its manipulation.

Let us be clear. Takopi did not ascend to one of the most talked-about anime of the year because of careful craftsmanship or bold truth-telling. It did so by taking the bleakest, most exaggerated approach to every conflict. It positions an innocent, clueless alien in a world where adults conveniently engage only when their intervention will make things worse. It is not a narrative about empathy, it is an exercise in engineered despair.

So no, I will not praise it. I will not pretend this show has something important to say when it doesn’t. It is not profound. It is not real. It is obscene, shallow, and harmful. And if you’re already struggling to make sense of the world around you, watching this will not provide answers. It may simply deepen your confusion.

In a fervent attempt to claim a cultural milestone similar to Korea’s Solo Leveling, Chinese animation enthusiasts have rallied behind this series, touting it as a contender for anime of the year. For that prophecy to fulfill itself, however, 2025 would need to be astonishingly barren in terms of compelling releases. And yet, the summer season that it aired in proved to have more than enough contenders. So much for that.

The Lord of Mysteries is supposed to be a mystery show, but it is not akin to Sherlock Holmes. There is no trail of evidence to follow, and no deductive process takes place in a ... closed meeting room. The series is concerned with deciphering arcane power systems than with investigating crimes. The world is constructed like a video game, replete with a class tree and spell lists that read like programming on C++. The protagonist is constantly bombarded with terms and names while having no prior knowledge, forcing a substantial portion of each episode to be devoted to terminology dumps.

This fascination with mechanical lore becomes a detriment to characterization. For those viewers who rely on empathetic connections to characters in order to engage with a narrative, the Lord of Infodumps will be an uphill battle. Its characters are not people in the traditional sense, but bundles of stats, defined by their class, level, and specialization. Personality, history, or emotional depth are treated as optional luxuries, if acknowledged at all. From the very first episode, the protagonist’s blank slate persona (he has amnesia and comes from a different world) serves as a narrative excuse for exposition rather than as a dramatic device. With no roots in this world and no memories, his only guiding impulse is curiosity than long-term plans that any denizen of that world would normally have.

This sense of alienation is only intensified by the show's visual language. With each new character introduction comes an onscreen status panel, complete with attributes and titles, hovering beside their face like a statistic screen. How does the protagonist, a clueless outsider, immediately perceive all this information? The answer, of course, is poor exposition. Rather than letting viewers discover the world through organic dialogue and emergent storytelling, the series defaults to blunt, mechanical info-delivery. The characters are not citizens of a living world; they are tutorial pop-ups, engineered solely to spoon-feed lore.

As for the world itself, calling it “living” would be a generous overstatement. Rather than presenting a breathing, dynamic setting, the environment functions more like a sandbox, devoid of the nuances that suggest a civilization with history or personality. Interactions with common townsfolk are minimal to nonexistent. The city, the central stage of the plot, feels less like a populated locale and more like a glorified hub, a waypoint from which the characters are teleported from one magic location to another, each one serving as a platform for further infodumps about arcane mechanics.

All the above are the result of the adaptation cutting out significant portions of scenery descriptions and internal thoughts from the source material. The animators didn’t care about creating a living setting that is populated by people. They instead focused on making everything being bombastic. And true to that, the production values are impressive on a surface level. The backgrounds shimmer with attention to a steampunk-Victorian setting, and the visual effects, from sigils to explosive magical bursts, are designed to dazzle. In that regard, it is very much in the vein of Solo Leveling from the year before. Eye-candy spectacle catering to a viewer that gets distracted by shiny visuals and complex terminologies, and has little concern for character depth. On a purely sensory level, it "pops."

However, the moment one peers beneath the glittering facade, the narrative scaffolding quickly collapses. The storytelling is shallow, the characters are hollow, and the worldbuilding is undercooked. Look around for opinions other than my own and most will be about how fast the pacing is or how the plot makes no sense. This becomes apparent almost immediately. The protagonist, having awakened in a borrowed body, attempts to access the memories of its former occupant. But instead of flashbacks or emotionally resonant visions, he receives dry data points. Lists of names, credentials, affiliations. It’s as if he's reading a résumé rather than reliving a life. The narrative offers no visual cues, no emotional context. You hear the name of a university, but you never see its architecture. You’re told he’s studied magic, but you’re shown nothing of how it’s taught. The world is a PowerPoint presentation, bullet points without embodiment.

When new characters are introduced, the pattern continues. Take the protagonist’s sister, for instance. Her arrival is marked not by emotional resonance, but by more exposition. She drones through paragraphs of worldbuilding infodumps, all while ignoring a gunshot that happened right next to her, a shattered mirror in the room, and the smell of blood. She offers no visible distress, no believable reaction, only mechanical narration. And when she suddenly smiles at the end of her monologue, it lands with all the warmth of a malfunctioning automaton.

Personally, I found the incessant exposition grating. There is hardly a moment of silence or subtext; every frame must be filled with someone delivering a lecture on spell hierarchies or alchemical theory, even in the middle of combat. Characters don’t fight; they annotate their abilities like YouTubers doing a frame-by-frame analysis of their own lives. The end result is a story that feels like it’s manufactured by a committee. It’s a world constructed to look interesting, but lacking the internal logic or emotional rhythm to be interesting. For viewers who require substance beneath the style, it quickly becomes a tiresome loop of lore dumps and vacant stares. Perfect for anyone easily mesmerized by jangling keys, and intolerable for anyone else.

Preface
Vigilante is five years too late. By the time it arrived, the cultural momentum behind My Hero Academia (MHA) had already begun to wane, and thus instantly lost most of its potential audience. Because, yes, Vigilante was never designed to thrive independently. It was tethered from inception to the popularity of its parent series. Once that tether slackened, its chances of success evaporated.

To make matters worse, Vigilante debuted in the season that had titles like Fire Force and Wind Breaker both of which offered more spectacle for the shonen audience. In contrast, Vigilante leaned heavily into slice-of-life and no-stakes street-level action, making it feel lethargic ... by comparison. It was, in a way, doomed from the outset.

Continuity
Though marketed as a prequel, Vigilante has no meaningful continuity with MHA. Based on what I heard about it, it was supposed to expand on the themes and deepen the worldbuilding of the main series. Watching it quickly made clear that its connections are superficial at best. Aside from a few hero cameos, the events of Vigilante are never referenced in the main story, nor do they appear to have any impact on it.

In fact, the internal logic between the two series is inconsistent. While Deku was harshly reprimanded for using his Quirk without a license, Vigilante casually features pro heroes training civilians and condoning illegal vigilante activities. Deku’s own narrative arc makes less sense in hindsight. Why did he never consider becoming a vigilante, especially while he had no Quirk or after he left the school? Why vigilantes are never mentioned in general? These inconsistencies make clear that Vigilante is a non-canonical spin-off, loosely tied to the franchise but lacking in thematic or narrative integration. The original creator made no effort to unify the storylines, and it shows.

Set up
While Vigilante is more grounded in the gritty realities of street-level crime, it does not offer a more compelling narrative compared to MHA. Deku may have been a pampered self-entitled brat who was handed the most powerful Quirk, and became a hero through nepotism, but he was still receiving constant glow-ups.

Koichi isn’t inherently more appealing just because he lacks such privileges. His battles are low-stakes, his Quirk is underwhelming, his efforts go largely unnoticed, and because he is never mentioned in the parent series we know he never becomes popular. There’s nothing inspirational in his journey. He isn’t offered greatness, nor does the narrative promise any. And while that might seem like a pivot toward realism, it clashes with the very DNA of MHA, which has always been more about bombastic hero worship than grounded social commentary.

At its core, MHA succeeded because it was unabashedly loud and energetic. It had teens with wild powers, dramatic rivalries, and the promise of glory. Vigilante, by comparison, offers none of that. It neither excites nor inspires. And while it may strive to be more introspective or thematically mature, it ultimately lands as a slow, disconnected echo.

Protagonist
At a glance, Koichi is a spiritual cousin to Deku, but where Deku gets constant glow-ups, Koichi remains stuck to the pavement. He is a background character who thinks he is a protagonist. Despite being portrayed as a ‘real’ underdog, someone who receives no miraculous power boost, no blessing from legendary heroes, and no adoring public, he is just an average guy you see on the street. Shonen protagonists are meant to feel larger than life, and Koichi is a featureless rock. He begins his journey where Deku ends: As a depressed wage slave in a world that barely notices him. Alone, unremarkable, living a life that most viewers are trying to escape. It’s uninspiring because it’s mundane. It’s not what shonens are for. MHA captured hearts precisely because it promised the extraordinary. Koichi isn’t even aiming for the middle.

Rival
There is none. This segment of the review is about something that doesn’t exist in Vigilante, and why that is a problem. I am not kidding. MHA had Bakugo, a psychotic counterpart, a bully who eventually became Deku’s gay boyfriend (in most doujins). Everybody loved Bakugo. He even motivated Deku to try harder. Where is someone like him in Vigilante, to push Koichi forward and to give all those poor hentai artists a source of income? Nowhere! There is no one who cares enough to challenge someone as unremarkable as Koichi! If there is nobody to be jealous about, you are not motivated to root for anyone.

Obligatory chick in the team
Pop Step is yet another iteration of what girls are supposed to be in shonen stories. Sexualized platonic girlfriends, existing to orbit the male protagonist and to never shape the story. She has no real agency, she is useless in battle, and she is only used as gooner bait. Like Mount Lady in early MHA, she’s just walking fan service, dressing provocatively and seeking attention through exhibitionism. Why do you think she’s twerking her teenage ass in front of thousands of men? Let me tip you, it isn’t some meaningful commentary on how society treats idols or young women.

She’s not inspirational the way characters like early Uraraka were, who at least began with a clear motivation and agency to support her family through her own strength, instead of becoming a man’s cheerleader. No, right from her earliest scenes, she gets sexually assaulted by thugs and immediately becomes dependent on male saviors. Her character never recovers from this portrayal. She is repeatedly used as sex bait by the other good guys and then just runs away until they save her again. Why would anyone root for her after that? She literally got what she deserved, and does nothing to change her situation.

The mentor
Knuckle Duster is everything All Might is not. He sleeps in trash. He smells like shit. He is always angry and hits people. And that’s exactly why he is the best thing in this show. He never holds back or is constantly weak because of some injury. He’s not here to sell figurines of himself like a corporate sellout, or to deliver sanitized lectures about justice, while himself is just a hypocrite who patronizes and places fame over the greater good. Don’t make me bring up Mirio again.

The guy is not just proactive; he literally carries on his back whatever is good about the show. He confronts the main villain of the season. He has a past connected with her. He still does not hesitate to kick the living daylights out of her. And then he casually saves her life. What a chad! An authentic, no-nonsense representation of what a vigilante should be. All other characters just stumble their way under his boots, where he doesn’t hesitate to stomp.

The plot
Or its lack of one. Although the conflict is about someone spreading Quirk enhancing drugs, most of the time you are just staring at the daily lives of the characters. When the action bits happen, it’s always about random thugs who have no real connection to each other and come off as filler material. It’s as if nobody really tries to find the quirk drug dealer, and spends most of the show running after the nobodies who bought some pot from him. What’s even worse is that nothing comes out of the skirmishes. No matter how many junkies they catch, the vigilantes are never any closer to finding out who is behind this mess.

As for the daily activities, they are as boring and inconsequential as those in MHA. This is a shonen series. We don’t watch it to see the characters having a tour of their rooms, or to go on stage and twerk their teenage asses before thousands of people for attention. Most of you will be skipping scenes, looking for the action.

The action
It’s terrible. MHA never had much of a battle choreography, it was just Deku and Almight going One Punch Man on every single enemy they faced. But it was making the meatheads jizz whenever they were yelling Texas Smash. There is no such thing in Vigilantes, everyone has very basic powers. And despite the attempt to have battle choreography, characters are constantly appearing exactly where they need to be, regardless of previously established limits on their speed or abilities. One moment we’re told someone is slower than a bicycle, and the next they’re breaking the sound barrier to catch a falling civilian. Even when some villains are introduced with some menace, their defeat is often anticlimactic. In many cases, Eraser Head simply arrives and disables their Quirk, robbing the viewer of any meaningful resolution. Battles end not with a dramatic climax, but with a switch being flipped off.

The villain
There is only one villain that matters, and she is a teen prostitute, luring men into using her drugs. There is nothing else worth writing about her. Just like with Pop Step her presentation prioritizes sexualization over personality, and the only difference is the camera constantly zooming on her teenage thighs instead of her teenage ass. Gotta give the gooners some variety, get it? She otherwise doesn’t even have agency, and ends up being some other villain’s henchman. As for the whole teen prostitution thing, yes it’s a bit too much, but at least it fits the setting. She is a villain and therefore she can do whatever the heck she wants at any age and place. You can’t say that for the girls in MHA, who are supposed to be heroes yet constantly objectify themselves, even inside the sanitized environment of the school.

In summary
Vigilante is, at best, crappy fan fiction of a show that lost its popularity many years ago, full of uninspiring characters, dull pacing, stupid action, and teenage girls whoring themselves because this is the only thing they are good for in shonen. If there is one good thing about it, that’s Knuckle Duster, and even he is a piss-smelling hobo, living in a trash bin.