Summary
- Vigilantes dropped from 5th to 7th in the Anime Corner Spring 2025 Week 10 poll.
- The spin-off differs from the main series in a few ways, possibly affecting viewer appeal.
The Vigilantes spin-off for My Hero Academia has seen a recent drop in popularity in the weekly fan poll from Anime Corner, while the series is still continuing to air. While My Hero Academia remains a popular anime overall, Vigilantes dropped from the 5th most popular anime to the 7th most popular anime in the Spring 2025 Week 10 anime rankings.
This poll was conducted among over 4,000 international anime fans and might speak to a waning enthusiasm for Vigilantes as the final season of My Hero Academia gets closer and closer to airing. Vigilantes experienced the most significant vote drop from among titles in the top ten, getting beaten out by To Be Hero X, Black Butler, and Fire Force, among others. Does this poll match the experience of the larger anime viewing public, and why would support for Vigilantes be waning if it is true?
Today Is A Great Day For My Hero Academia Fans
My Hero Academia: Vigilantes is set to return for a second season.
Vigilantes’ Popularity Over Time
Comparing the My Anime List Numbers
It’s possible that this weekly poll from Anime Corner is just measuring a temporary drop in popularity at a moment in time. A couple of weeks into the Vigilantes’ airing at the end of April, it had garnered an impressive 88,000 members on My Anime List, a number which has increased to over 112,000 at the time of this writing. Its user score, score ranking, and overall popularity ranking have also increased since it first started airing. This suggests that the show has only become more popular as it continues to release episodes, meaning, at the very least, the show is gaining momentum.
However, it’s also possible that the rate of popularity gain for Vigilantes is simply being outpaced by other shows near it, explaining the drop in the weekly popularity poll in relation to the other series. This makes sense, as the shows in the current top ten have reached somewhat of an equilibrium, with not many shows able to break in from the outside. Vigilantes managed to make the top 10 nearly every single week of the poll’s release so far, but 5th was the highest it had managed to achieve before falling again recently.
My Hero Academia Reaches New Heights With New Collab
The series is in a partnership with Japan's tallest building!
Why Hasn’t Vigilantes Reached Main Series Heights?
The Spin-off Has a Different Appeal
During its airing run, My Hero Academia Season 7 managed to reach #2 as a high in the top ten, though it came in 14th overall for the entire season’s popularity ratings from Anime Corner. Previous seasons of My Hero Academia have also enjoyed a high popularity that Vigilantes has so far not been able to replicate. Just why has Vigilantes not seemed to land with anime fans like the original series has?
One main reason might be that the spin-off show is not trying to be a copy of the main storyline. While it exists in the same world and acts as a bit of a prequel to the main series, it is a more focused, contained story with fewer characters. This departure from the traditional MHA fair may have turned off some viewers. Many My Hero Academia fans were excited to have Vigilantes available to tide them over until the final season of the main series airs later this year. However, Vigilantes seems to scratch a different itch. While Koichi and Midoriya are similar enough protagonists on the surface, Koichi has a Quirk that he learns to develop over time, while Deku is given the world’s most powerful Quirk and has to learn how to scale back his output. While Koichi and his companions are working towards uncovering a bigger plot, there is much less drama and stakes compared to the main series to keep viewers invested. Koichi and crew mostly deal with low-level crimes, occasionally stumbling into something bigger, but the dynamic of the show never really changes like MHA’s more epic story does.
“Wow, there he goes! Seeing him work in person is something else!” -Koichi watching All Might in Episode 1 of Vigilantes.
One strength of having fewer characters it that each one has an opportunity to get better development, and the story can accommodate them easily by always giving them something to do. However, with fewer characters, there are fewer opportunities to appeal to a wider audience, resulting in a narrower target viewer base for Vigilantes. The story for Vigilantes is a slow burn, so it will be interesting to see if its popularity picks up when some of the more MHA-like dramatic story beats get adapted to the anime.
My Hero Academia can be streamed on Crunchyroll and Hulu.
- Release Date
- 2016 - 2025-00-00
- Network
- TBS, MBS, Nippon TV
- Directors
- Shouji Ikeno, Tsuyoshi Tobita, Ikuro Sato, Takudai Kakuchi, Masashi Abe, Tetsuya Miyanishi, Kazuma Komatsu, Yoshifumi Sasahara, Masayuki Otsuki, Daisuke Tsukushi, Takayuki Yamamoto, Yohei Fukui, Takuro Tsukada, Masatoyo Takada, Naomi Nakayama, Sayaka Morikawa, Takanori Yano
Cast
-
Daiki YamashitaIzuku Midoriya (voice) -
Kaito IshikawaManga Fukidashi (voice)
WHERE TO WATCH
In My Hero Academia, some humans have superpowers called quirks. Izuku Midoriya, nicknamed Deku, is not one of them. Deku has always idolized heroes like the number one hero, All Might, and since he was a child, he has always wanted to be a hero. However, his lack of a quirk has always held him back, but a chance encounter with All Might after discovering a classmate in danger sets Deku on the path to becoming a true hero. My Hero Academia centers around Deku and a class of heroes-in-training at UA. This school shapes young quirk users into future heroes through fake rescue missions, combat training, and other hero-tempering tasks. With young Deku inheriting the "One-For-All" quirk, he will learn what it means to be a true hero while facing off with dastardly supervillains.
- Main Genre
- Anime
- Seasons
- 8
- Studio
- Bones
- Franchise
- My Hero Academia
- Producers
- Hayato Saga, Shingo Kunieda, Wakana Okamura, Kazutaka Yamanaka, Koji Nagai, Takayuki Oshima, Atsushi Higashiyama, Akihiro Sotokawa, Hiroya Nakata, Mirei Tsumura, Masahiko Minami, Keiji Ota, Hiroaki Sano, Yoshihiro Oyabu, Kohei Takenaka, Gen Fukunaga, Kazumasa Sanjouba, Hiroyuki Fujita, Akifumi Fujio, Yoshihisa Heishi, Soukichi Onoda, Soichiro Saito, Norihiro Miyamoto, Ryu Takahashi
- Characters By
- Kohei Horikoshi
- Japanese Title
- Boku no Hero Academia
- Based On
- Manga
- Creator
- Kōhei Horikoshi
- Distributor
- FUNimation Entertainment
- Main Characters
- Tsuyu Asui, Katsuki Bakugo, Ochaco Uraraka, Izuku Midoriya, Shoto Todoroki, All Might
- Production Company
- Bones
- Story By
- Kōhei Horikoshi, Yōsuke Kuroda
- Number of Episodes
- 159
- Streaming Service(s)
- Hulu, Crunchyroll
- MyAnimeList Score
- 7.85 (Season 1)
