Illegals continues to hum along at a very satisfying clip. The anime is developing a sense of its own style, distinct from the parent series, just as the manga has. The use of insert music this week was especially well-played. That and the more liberal use of comic book effects gives Vigilante a looser, cooler vibe than its big brother. The topics it deals with are serious, but as BnHA evolved towards effectively an end of the world scenario, Vigilante stayed grounded in its own reality. Leave the apocalypse to the guys with endorsement deals – there’s plenty else threatening society that someone has to deal with.
It doesn’t get much more mundane than the opening salvo this week, even by Illegals standards. A college freshman’s life is likely to be pretty unglamorous to begin with. But that feels like a dream to Kouichi, who’s done none of the partying and socializing he dreamed he’d indulge in. Instead he’s living in a shack, and comes home to find a smelly oji-san making himself at home in it. After an initial freakout Kouichi realizes that this is in fact Knuckleduster – arrived early after finishing his day job (no clues as to what that is are forthcoming), and helping himself to Kouichi’s meager provender.
Soon they’re joined by another unfamiliar face – a rather plain one, belonging to a high-school girl. You know where this is headed. And it seems Pop and Knuckle have effectively started squatting in Kouichi’s hovel, even subdividing it between them. Naturally enough he has issues with this given he’s living on a conbini part-timer’s salary. But he doesn’t mind the company, it seems, so lonely has his life been up to this point. Pop heads off to a street gig and Koucihi to Family Family, leaving the hut in Knuckleduster’s culpable hands.
Even for these humble folks, however, duty is always one crisis away. The crisis in this case being another instant villain courtesy of Trigger. This time is a meek little fellow named Teru (Kamiki Kouichi), desperate to shake Pop’s hand. Tired of being pushed around by the toughs in the crowd, Teru pops some Trigger. And apparently his quirk is something in the eel vein, because he turns into a giant one. This gets uncomfortable for Pop very quickly, but fortunately Koucihi is in the area and Knuckleduster soon follows. That’s not to say fighting a giant eel is easy – they’re slimy bastards. But after a handshake proves insufficient to satisfy this one, Knuckle and The Crawler have to resort to udon flour to make Teru a little less hard to handle.
Teru provides some useful info for to the cops – mainly that he was “tricked” into using Trigger, and got the drug for free. Tsukauchi’s colleague Detective Tanuma (Egawa Hisao) muses that in fact, drug dealers don’t generally go around giving away their wares maybe something else is going on here. What’s the goal, how wonders? Seeding the field for a bigger crop? Political dissent, or generally trying to destabilize society? These are themes we’ve heard before in this mythology. And when a group of insta-villains show up all at once, the heroes who arrive on the scene to subdue them constitute some familiar personages (including one especially interesting one).
Kouchi and the two middle-schoolers hatch a plan to see if Teru (released as a zaku by the cops) to tell her who his source is. They decide it’d be best not to bring “punch first, let the cops sort ’em out” Knuckleduster in on it. But the chaos prevents the plan from ever coming off, and Teru is seen in the company of another high school girl named Hachisuka Kuin (Senbongi Sayaka). We know a little about her – she’s a Pop fangirl, and describes herself (to herself) as a “part-time villain”. And she has an affinity for bees – bees intimately involved in the spread of Trigger, it seems.
