My Hero Academia: Vigilantes – Episode 12 Recap & Review

The Review Geek

12 hours ago

Episode 12
With the power out, Midnight is contemplating canceling the event. When Makoto is having a hard time finding a way to get it to happen, Koichi arrives to save the day.
The boy brings Pop☆Step's microphone, so she can continue the show while Captain Celebrity returns with emergency generators. But that also means the girl will be responsible for conducting a great part of the show.
In the beginning, she's clearly overwhelmed, even saying embarrassing things about herself to the audience. But, as soon as she gets comfortable, she hypes them up with her song. Funnily enough, the song she sings is about the hoodie Koichi gave her when she was younger.
Meanwhile, Knuckleduster receives a call from the hospital while chasing Kuin Hachisuka. A nurse says there have been some changes in his wife's situation, to which he answers that the entire family is going there soon.
He ambushes Hachisuka, leading her to a dead end. Still, she has one last trick up her sleeve. Before that, she got a bit of the Trigger drug from Teruo's body. And now she's using it to inject herself, making her way stronger. That also makes the bee portion of her brain weaker, meaning Tamao, Knuckleduster's daughter, can come out to the surface. It's their first father-daughter talk in months.
Unfortunately, Hachisuka kidnapped Tamo right after the girl and her father had a little fight over her wanting to go to a concert. So, even if Tamao's persona is more 'awake' than before, she's angry at Knuckleduster.
However, he expected that. His surprise is seeing that Hachisuka has an electrifying bee as well. Then, the villain stabs Knuckle in his chest and leaves them to bleed in the alley. As she goes away, the man remembers ordering someone that his taser had a plug he could use to wake himself up.
At the same time, Pop and the others begin their actual show. She sings a brand-new song with the duo of sisters and the rest of the group, enchanting the audience. That angers Hachisuka, as she's trying her best to stop the show. But things are only getting worse and worse for her, as she sees that Knuckleduster is awake.
They start fighting again, but it's much more vicious than before. Hachisuka is utilizing every explosive bee and electrifying attack she can, disregarding the host's body. Despite how dangerous it is, that's what Knuckleduster wants.
He punches her gut with the taser with all his might, knocking the villain out. Then, she stops her from recovering, which forces all the bees to come out, including the queen. It's an enormous and disgusting insect that can barely fly. He instantly attracts them with a gas and explodes the bees.
The only thing left now is waking up his daughter. He tells the girl they'll see her mother together as he tries to make her heart beat again. You can see the desperation in his eyes and movements.
At the same time, the police arrive to arrest Teruo Unagisawa, and Eraser Head talks about the bee he saw. They still don't know much but are sure that everything is related. But it would be better if they learned the villain is closer than they think.
One of the officers is giddily talking to himself about gathering data being the best. He uses some kind of high-speed quirk to secretly catch something one of the bees is carrying and goes away. He even talks about 'all' being 'one,' a probable reference to All for One.
We're probably seeing the next villain or even the big bad behind it all.
The Episode Review
Knuckleduster has always been the best part of My Hero Academia: Vigilantes, and he proves that again here. After a flood of awful episodes, we get the first step in the right direction. He gets almost total focus, so we learn more about his relationship with his daughter and the lengths he would go to save her. He believes that if he's a great father, then he must do everything he can to help her. In return, we also learn a few things about Tamao and Hachisuka.
For the most part, it also shows how unimportant Koichi and Pop's plot is. Everything works out in the event, and they successfully sing two songs… and that's basically it for their participation in episode 12. If they were part of the show or not, things would be exactly the same.
It's ridiculous that the writer gave so much focus to a situation that only exists to serve as a distraction for the characters. As there's one more episode next week, things still could change. But that seems unlikely.
Again, Vigilantes shows that it doesn't know where it should be going. The problem isn't that its slice-of-life stuff is boring (although it mostly is), but that it doesn't commit to anything.
Even if Pop's concert were truly amazing, it would be hard to care about it. All of that is clearly a side-plot, and many times it focuses on the wrong elements, like when it explains everything about the venue where it'll happen.
The series puts itself in a troublesome situation. It needs to give the other characters more space and development, but if Knuckleduster isn't on screen, it barely has a story.
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