My Hero Academia: Vigilantes, the upcoming anime based on the Japanese manga spin-off and prequel to Kohei Horikoshi's manga series My Hero Academia, finally has a premiere date! A new preview video confirmed the series will debut in Japan on April 7, 2025.
First announced in December, My Hero Academia: Vigilantes is an anime adaptation of the manga series written by Hideyuki Furuhashi and illustrated by Betten Court, which serves as a prequel to My Hero Academia. The series, which will be produced at Bones Film, was first announced back in December.
Set in the same super-powered world of My Hero Academia, the story — set five years prior to the main events of the main series — follows three vigilantes who help others despite not being licensed heroes. The story mostly follows Koichi Haimawari, a young man whose Quirk Slide and Glide allow him to travel quickly across any flat surface. When he and Kazuho Haneyama, who possesses a Quirk that allows her to jump several meters high, are jumped by thugs, they are saved by the vigilante Iwao Oguro, aka Knuckleduster, an older man investigating the trafficking of a mysterious drunk around town while searching for his daughter. Despite Knuckleduster's tenacity in combat, he actually has no Quirk.
Haimawa KoichiHaimawari Koichiis a dull college student who has given up on his dream of becoming a hero . His secret pleasure is wandering around town in All Might cosplay, pretending to be a professional hero and helping people. Koichi lives an ordinary life, but he meets the self-proclaimed idol group Pop☆Step, who perform unauthorized guerrilla live shows, and the mysterious masked man Knuckleduster, who calls himself a "cleaner specializing in trash," and gets caught up in the activities of the "Vigilantes." Are these people who can save people illegally criminals who disrupt order, or vigilantes of justice?
In addition to the trailer, we've also received a new teaser visual and three character posters that reveal the voice actors for each of the vigilantes. Here are the three main character voice actors in the upcoming series:
- Koichi Haimawairi/The Crawler voiced by Shuichiro Umeda (Kazuhiko in Makeine: Too Many Losing Heroines!)
- Kazuho Haneyama/Pop☆Step voiced by Ikumi Hasegawa (Ikuyo in Bocchi the Rock!)
- Oguro Iwao/Knuckleduster voiced by Yasuhiro Mamiya (Magma in Dr. Stone)
My Hero Academia: Vigilantes was first published in Shueisha's Jump Giga in August 2016, but was transferred to the online magazine Shonen Jump+ in October of that year. The series officially ended on May 28, 2022 with its chapters collected in 15 volumes.
Viz Media, which licenses the English-language version of the manga, describes the story:
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…
The My Hero Academia: Vigilantes anime is directed by Kenichi Suzuki (JoJo's Bizarre Adventure chief director) at Bones Film. Series composition is by Yosuke Kuroda (My Hero Academia) with character designs by Takahiko Yoshida (Cells at Work!) and music by Yuki Hayashi, Shogo Yamashira, and Yuki Furuhashi.