I can’t remember the last season when so many series had 13 episodes. It used to be the standard of course. In fact it was cours that usually had 13, not series – 26 was the most common episode count. Not now, though – 12 is far more common, and single (or split) cour series more than multi. As for Vigilante, by the time this season ends it will have used a bit more than half the manga’s chapters. With the parent series a continuation would obviously never be in question. Here? Hard to say. I still tend to think Illegals will get a complete adaptation – four cours ideally, but if you really hammered it three. But I’ll still be waiting anxiously on a potential announcement after next week’s finale.

We’ve definitely seen an exponential increase in spectacle – and sakuga – these last two episodes. Intimate is usually more Vigilante’s M.O., but this is finale arc time and bigger just works for that. When it comes to “bigger” it doesn’t get more bigger than All Might of course. I think it was pretty obvious Toshinori would be involved here, with effectively a massive terrorist attack going on. The reason is Tsukauchi-kun, who abandons his impartiality and desperately pleads with the big man to save his little sister. One imagines Toshinori was only too happy to stare down a villain rather than a PowerPoint anyway.

The long-awaited meeting between All Might and Captain Celebrity – never mind The Crawler – finally happens, with an English(ish) “Nice to meet you”. Of course All Might is going to hog the headlines here – he’s All Might. He truly is superhuman, as a certain someone refers to him. He defines the hero persona. It’s a shame Kouichi couldn’t muster the composure to introduce himself as The Crawler, but at least he got his autographed hoodie. The scarred bomber – who we now know as “Number 6” – is irritated of course. But also thrilled that someone like All Might exists in the world.

All Might is the greatest hero ever, obviously. And given where things stand in the present timeline, it’s very bittersweet to see him in all his glory like this. But this is Vigilante. It wouldn’t be right for him to just soar in and save the day. This story is humbler, scruffier, uglier. And no one says those things more than Knuckleduster. You can call him Oguro, but don’t call him “O’clock”. For him, that name died when his quirk was stolen from him. Which it very clearly was, and we only know one man who can do that. And pass it along to whomsoever he chooses. Which he did with “Overclock”, giving it to Number 6.

It’s perfect, really. All Might swoops in on waves of glory and performs miracles to save lives. Knuckleduster skulks on a rooftop and tries to kill his enemy with a sniper shot. Nothing could be more fitting. Number 6 fancies himself as the new O’clock, and he certainly knows who this man is. That shot fails, thanks to a (not so?) random avian intervention. And now the current and former O’clock face each other. The new one legit admires the old, worships even. And gives a fine account of why he dreamed of being him rather than All Might. But Knuckleduster is not about to sanction a passing of the torch to a guy who’s clearly nuts, if not abjectly evil.

Oguro is full of self-loathing – it’s what drives his character. And he views himself as having been less than heroic even when he was a hero. But he still has a sense of responsibility. He longs to protect – he just does it in ways a hero would never stoop too. And he’s come to consider Kouichi and Kazuho his surrogate kids – maybe they even kept him from totally falling into the darkness. I think he really would prefer not to kill Number 6, and he’s devised a very clever backup plan using a speeded-up (300x) message explaining “Overclock’. But the not-protege has one more trick up his sleeve (and I do mean that literally).

I think when one steps back and looks at Illegals as a whole, it’s pretty damn impressive how elegantly it shifts the parameters and tone of a massively huge series and makes it something both totally different and totally consistent. Does it “need” to exist? Maybe not – the parent story wouldn’t change if it didn’t. But it’s still essential. And it makes the entire mythology tangibly better and more interesting because it’s here. If that’s not a description of a brilliantly successful spinoff, I don’t know what is.