YMMV / My Hero Academia: Vigilantes

• Adorkable:
  • Koichi by being a Nice Guy who still has quite a lot to learn as a hero.
  • Pop☆Step for being a bit angsty but actually quite shy girl.
• Captain Obvious Reveal: The reveal of Greater-Scope Villain, The Trigger Mastermind being All For One, Big Bad of the main series. Naturally, Vigilantes had to have a bit more than few connections to main series and the true identity of such a mysterious character had to be All Might's Arch-Nemesis, pulling the strings behind many things happening in the story.
• Complete Monster: Queen Bee, aka Kuin Hachisuka, is a Quirk-using queen bee and a dealer for the dangerous drug Trigger. Having critically wounded the wife of the hero Knuckleduster and possessed his daughter Tamao, Queen Bee proceeds to infect innocent civilians with Trigger, causing painful rampages. Queen Bee then convinces the vigilante Stendahl to murder delinquents; causes a passenger-filled bus to crash; and infects one of her friends. Queen Bee then attempts to infect an entire concert with Trigger and tries to detonate explosive-filled bees when cornered and kill Tamao out of spite for her father. Upon barely surviving, the remaining Queen Bee infects and possesses the hero Kazuho Haneyama, driving her mad and causing her to become "Bee Pop" and go on a bombing rampage with full intent to murder as many civilians as she possibly can to get the attention of the heroic Koichi. Aiming to kill countless civilians and be remembered while also ruining the lives of Koichi and Kazuho, Queen Bee proves her deadly influence exists even long after her supposed "death".
• Crazy Is Cool: Knuckleduster. A Blood Knight '90s Anti-Hero who follows a very specific "punch first, ask questions later" mindset and is so strong he can literally knock out giants, even though he's quirk-less. He's basically what would happen if you put Batman into the My Hero Academia universe.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Tensei Iida is loved by the fandom after his Day in the Limelight for being a Reasonable Authority Figure and an overall Nice Guy. Not to mention that he's quite a bit of a Hunk. It makes the injuries he sustains at the hands of Stain in the main series a far bigger gut punch.
• Evil Is Cool: Number 6 is often viewed as one of the highlights of the series thanks to his interesting characterization, being an Evil Counterpart to Koichi, and having several cool quirks. Even those who didn't care much for the series found him compelling to read about.
• Fanon Discontinuity:
  • Some fans prefer to not acknowledge the spin-off as canon to the main series, particularly in regards to the inclusion of mainline characters. Common reasons are that the backstories given in the series are disappointing,^note Such as Tsukauchi learning All Might's secret due to a slip up, as well as not being involved in the conflict with All for One. and characters seemingly acting Out of Character.^note Such as Endeavor attacking a bomb-person with flames, making him seem oddly incompetent for the No. 2 hero, or Midnight's over-sexuality, and while the latter is more debatable (she's pretty in-your-face about her sexuality in the main series too), the former is especially jarring since Endeavor is established to be one of the most intelligent characters in the main series. He's already been a pro hero for at least 20 years, so it's not like it can be excused as a rookie mistake.
  • Within the series itself, some fans have decided to disregard the initial appearances of Soga, Moyuru and Rapt where, on top of attempting to murder Koichi, they nearly sexually assault Pop before being foiled by Knuckleduster. Even considering their later Heel–Face Turn, the fact that the narrative treats them as Loveable Rogues (they later become Koichi's True Companions, Soga plays a Supporting Leader role to Koichi in the last arc, and Knuckleduster goes so far as to give the trio the responsibility of protecting his hospitalized daughter) has major issues unless their first appearance is ignored outright.
• Growing the Beard: For many, the series gets noticeably better within the first big arc of the story the "Vs. Queen Bee Arc" and/or mid-halfway with the "Sky Egg Arc". Some consider this even earlier around the first Ingenium chapter and introducing Stendhal.
• It Was His Sled:
  • It's nearly impossible to talk about Stendhal, the mysterious masked swordsman who appears in a few early chapters, without mentioning that he's Stain.
  • Kuin Hachisuka being the possessed daughter of Knuckleduster, and Knuckleduster himself being a former Pro-Hero who lost his quirk both became quickly known after they were revealed, meaning non-readers looking to pick up the series are often already aware of it.
• Jerkass Woobie: Soga might be a bit of a jerk, but considering his backstory which details how he was laughed off as a monster due to his Face of a Thug and his rather violent and dangerous quirk - which effectively led to him becoming the kind of monster people believed him to be - it’s not hard to understand why he turned out the way he did. While it does not excuse his actions in the opening chapters of the series, it's also hard not to feel sorry for him.
• My Real Daddy:
  • Vigilantes is seen by many as the reason to even care about Tensei Iida. In the main series, his role was largely limited to being the motivation for his younger brother Tenya, as it was Tensei's confrontation with and crippling by Stain that serves as the impetus behind Tenya's actions in the Hosu arc, after which the most Tensei comes up is in a flashback regarding Tenya upgrading his Quirk. Vigilantes meanwhile establishes Tensei as a major character by striking up a rapport with Koichi, focusing on his time as "Ingenium" and leading his agency as A Father to His Men, and just being a nice person overall, to the point he became an Ensemble Dark Horse. This in turn gave many readers a reason to share Tenya's dismay when they see him in the hospital gravely injured.
  • Many readers consider Furuhashi to be the writer who made Midnight shine as a character, fleshing her out beyond the standard Ms. Fanservice Sadist she was in the main series, namely via her relationships with Aizawa and Kazuho, and exploring her motivations behind being a teacher being she wants to steer victimized teenagers away from the path of villainy. While the main series already saw criticism for barely nodding to the series outside of Shirakumo despite the claims of it being canon, it faced a lot of criticism for its treatment of Midnight, who was excised from her role in Aizawa's past with Shirakumo, and had little exploration of her character outside of a motherly aspect to her students right before her death, which isn't even focused on for long due to the sheer scale of the incident, upon which her only relevancy is serving as motivation for Mina in the final arc, leading to many thinking the series wasted her after all Vigilantes did to flesh her out.
• Nausea Fuel: Stain paralyzing people by licking their blood from discarded curatives is as ingenious as it is disgusting, though just like in the main series can be seen as Crazy Is Cool.
• Squick: Queen Bee's victims are pretty much corpses who have had all their blood sucked by bees.
• Tear Jerker:
  • The Aizawa flashback arc. Along with Present Mic and Midnight, his best friend while he studied at UA was Shirakumo, who inspired him with his positive attitude and energy. Aizawa, Present Mic and Shirakumo were making serious plans to start their own hero agency on graduation so that they wouldn't have to go their separate ways like new heroes usually do. Tragically, during an internship Shirakumo was caught in a building collapse caused by a villain to save a group of kindergartners; Aizawa fought and beat the villain but in the aftermath, he found out Shirakumo had died. He decided he'd become an underground hero, growing increasingly distant from his peers during their last year before graduation. It's implied he lost contact with Present Mic and Midnight for several years.
  • Becomes especially tragic as, shortly after that arc wrapped up, the main series has dropped the revelation that the villain Kurogiri is a revived Shirakumo or, at the very least, was created using his quirk and his corpse as a base. Worse, the attack was orchestrated by All For One and the Doctor, all so they could get their hands on "Erasure". In the end, Shirakumo not only died protecting innocent civilians, he died protecting his best friend.
  • Pop Step being declared a villain. The media widely publicize the news about her crimes, ruining her reputation in the process, and even her parents believe that she was willingly responsible for those crimes. Her friends are heartbroken to know that she'll be arrested and charged as an adult, assuming she doesn't end up being killed.
  • Chapter 81 opens with Pop imagining how a life with Koichi, complete with kids, could have been, constantly punctuated with "This could've been our future". At the end of the same chapter, just as Koichi has managed to reach out to her real feelings, and not the love turned into hate by the parasite wasp, Six shoots her.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: While not outright wasted, there are some fans who wished that Knuckleduster would be more apparent later in the series, instead of being Put on the Bus several times, especially during Naruhata Fest stuff which some consider the low-point of the series and where Knuckleduster becomes more of a Hero of Another Story. It's especially jarring, since he's pretty much the third most important in the story.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The reveal that All For One is behind the events of the series can feel like this, as it muscles in on the exploration of the societal impact of quirks and what makes a hero/villain/vigilante and takes over entirely by the final arc; by presenting All For One as the key villain of the parent series and the Greater-Scope Villain of Vigilantes, it can feel like he is the only real problem the world faces.
• Unexpected Character: The second flashback arc, starting with Chapter 86, features a younger Kendo Rappa before he was "recruited" by Overhaul. Even less fans expected the following chapter to get hero student Rumi Usagiyama, the future Mirko, involved.
• The Woobie: Koichi is a Nice Guy who lost his opportunity to become an official hero because he stopped to save a child from drowning. By the beginning of the story, he is having a pitiful college life and has difficulties with the authorities just from doing the most mundane forms of heroism (read: self-imposed public services), as he is technically not allowed to utilize his Quirk.

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