# Contains some major spoilers

I think I have finally figured out why Vigilantes works so well for me, and it all comes down to how strong that slice-of-life core is beneath everything. Sure, the heroics and the saving people and the big action set pieces are all fun, and I genuinely enjoy them, but what really gets me going is the quieter, more personal stuff. Preparing for an idol performance, going out to a festival, preparing for a job interview - it is all these smaller, more human moments set inside this massive and wild MHA world that genuinely make me happy while watching. That contrast between the grand scale of the world and the very ordinary personal struggles of the characters is what makes Vigilantes feel special to me. And even as a massive MHA shill who will defend this franchise until my last breath, I have to be honest and admit that this season did fall a little short compared to season one, both visually and narratively. The grounded and personal energy that made the first season feel so intimate just was not as present here, and I think the Sky Tower arc is the biggest reason for that. The whole thing was basically out of our main characters' hands from the very beginning. Season one worked so well because the main villain had a very direct and personal connection to one of our leads, so everything that happened hit close to the heart and felt deeply personal to the characters we were following. This time around it was a massive citywide disaster that required an entire assembly of professional heroes and even All Might himself to resolve. It just did not carry that same emotional intimacy as wandering around Naruhata and taking down smaller street-level villains did. I do understand why they felt the need to escalate the stakes though, because as much as I love that grounded personal approach, doing it the exact same way every single arc would get stale fast and there does need to be some sense of progression and growth in the overall story.

The other thing that really bothered me this season was how little focus Koichi and Pop actually got in what is supposed to be their own story. They were essentially reduced to bystanders in their own show, which makes sense on a logical level because what are two unlicensed kids really going to contribute to something that was basically a version of 9/11 inside the show's universe, but it was still a little sad. The dynamic between Koichi and Pop is one of my favourite things about Vigilantes. They have a wonderfully fun and easy friendship, they are absolutely adorable to watch as they grow closer and start looking out for each other, and there is something really endearing about two ordinary people just trying to do the right thing in a world full of professional heroes. I really need more of them in whatever comes next because they deserve to be at the centre of the action again rather than watching from the sidelines. All that said though, the season was far from a disaster. The Aizawa flashback arc and the Tokyo Tower material were both genuinely enjoyable, and even if the Tokyo Tower arc ended up going in a very different direction from what I was expecting from this show, I think it was executed really well. Watching Captain Celebrity's full journey this season was honestly a great experience. Seeing him grow from a self-serving, kind of egotistical person he was at the start of the previous season, come to terms with himself and his family, and actually start embodying what it means to be a hero ended up being a really pleasant surprise

But without question, the absolute best part of this entire season was Aizawa. I love Aizawa, you love Aizawa, everyone loves Aizawa. He is everyone's favourite sleep-deprived homeroom teacher, and watching his backstory finally get the proper treatment it deserved was everything I wanted and more. In the mainline MHA we had been given scattered hints and glimpses at his past for years. We knew he had some kind of deep connection to Shirakumo, we knew he had lost him somehow, but the full picture was never really laid out for us. Why did that loss shape him so profoundly, and how exactly did it happen? This arc answered all of that and it did so beautifully. Watching young Aizawa open up to Yamada and Shirakumo, seeing him actually let people in and allow himself to dream, and then having all of that come crashing down in the way it did was genuinely devastating. The detail that he became a teacher specifically because Shirakumo once casually mentioned how good he would be with kids absolutely wrecked me. It is something that should have been in the mainline series a long time ago, and while it is a little unfortunate we had to come to a spin-off to get it, I am just really glad we finally have it. On the visual side of things, the season was also a step down overall compared to what came before. There were obvious highlights because this is My Hero Academia and the production always finds moments to shine, but the general direction, compositing quality and the consistency of the drawings were noticeably weaker throughout, and by around episode eleven, it genuinely felt like the production had caught up with the team, which is honestly just an extremely unfortunate reality of anime productions. Despite all of that though, I had a great time with this season. I am an MHA shill through and through and I will love anything set in this world, and this was still a very fun and incredibly easy watch. I always find MHA so effortlessly watchable no matter what form it takes. I really hope we get a season three, and more than anything, I hope the team gets the time and resources they need to get back to the level of quality we had in that first season, because this world and these characters absolutely deserve it.