Hey all, Dani here.
It’s Monday again, and that can only mean one thing. It is time for another manga review post. What is really amusing to me is the fact that I am getting so close to catching up on my manga review backlog…but right now is also round 5 of the Manga Madness Readathon, so I’m going to be reading quite a few volumes this week. It’ll set me back on my review backlog again. But hey, on the plus side, at least all of you know that there will be Manga Monday posts for probably at least the rest of this year. Woohoo.
Anyway, today’s manga is actually a spin-off of the rather popular My Hero Academia series. When I heard about it, I was intrigued but also a little cautious, as it features a new writer and artist…and by new, I mean neither of them is Kohei Horikoshi, the creator of MHA. Will this be a series I will follow with the same fervor as the original? Well, let’s jump into the review and find out.
Book Details
Story: Hideyuki Furuhashi
Art: Betten Court
Original Concept: Kohei Horikoshi
Summary
In the world of My Hero Academia, not everyone needs a license to fight for justice!
In a superpowered society, there is nothing ordinary about evil anymore. Heroes, trained and licensed to protect and defend the public against supervillains, stand above all the rest. However, not everyone can be an official hero, and there are those who would use their powers to serve the people without legal sanction. But do they fight for justice in the shadows or for reasons known only to themselves? Whatever they fight for, they are called…vigilantes.
Koichi Haimawari couldn’t make the cut to become an official hero, so he uses his modest Quirk to do good deeds in his spare time. Then one day, a fateful encounter with some local thugs leads him to team up with two other unlikely heroes. None of them really know what they’re doing, but they’ve got the courage—or foolishness—to try. But they soon discover fighting evil takes more than just being brave…
My Thoughts
Rating: 4 stars
I enjoyed this volume, but I feel like I didn’t connect with as many of the characters as I did at the beginning of the original series. But I really do like Knuckleduster, and I hope to see The Crawler and Pop Step develop more in the next installments. I also thought all of the random fandom references and cameos were amusing.
It feels like this takes place a little while before the original series starts. All Might is still out there, taking down the bad guys, but we see signs of him heading towards where he is at the start of MHA. But in many ways I like that this shows another side of the hero lifestyle: that of the people who don’t pass the hero exams and become proper heroes, the people who still want to do something to save the world and the people around them. The vigilante angle is an interesting one.
Compared to the first volume of My Hero Academia, this one falls a bit short, but I can see enough promise that I’m willing to give it another volume to improve before I give up on it. (Not really spoiler alert, but future alert…it does get better. Volumes 2 and 3 were great).
There is an interesting drug out in the market called Trigger which overstimulates Quirks, making spontaneous villains pop up all over the city. I’m curious to see what that’s all about, and also how some of the events in this series will tie in to the main series. They all take place in the same city, so it’s possible for some crossover that really helps to expand the MHA universe for those of us who are fans.
Where to Buy
You can pick up your own copy of this spin-off manga at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-million, Book Depository, or your local independent bookstore.
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