Vigilante: Boku no Hero Academia Illegals Episode 12 Discussion

The Marukane Department Store's blackout caused by Queen Bee aside, Captain Celebrity and the pro heroes have to do their utmost duties, with Pop Step's 30-minute timeframe to keep the audience engaged while Kunckleduster chased Tamao down. However, Teruo, that had himself have Eraser Head arrest him for being injected with the Bee, as Kunckleduster is one of those father figures who went too harsh on their own children, of which Tamao certainly had her hidden trump card Quirk to electrocute her father to death.

The festival goes on as planned, though Kunckleduster somehow survived from his defenses for the daughter to retaliate back at him after tolerating much of his rejections that robbed her of her freedom. The Vigilantes moment of this is pretty death-defyingly chilling as he gets rid of the Bee Host within Tamao and attempts to resuscitate her at the same time, this kind of justice is just uncalled for.

At least Teruo got his wish of seeing the festival right to the end, though his "villain" fashion didn't quite suit him at all as an ardent Pop Step fan.
The main threat is still to come, though locating Kunckleduster is important as of now...

This episode was pure chaos and catharsis. Knuckleduster didn’t just win a fight: he reclaimed his place as a father, a mentor, and an absolute unit. That alley surgery scene?? Wild. Pop☆Step holding it together on stage while her whole world is crumbling? ICONIC. Also, the emotional layering here is unreal. Hachisuka losing her grip, the hospital call, and the Bee user STILL being around?? It’s like every time you breathe, the show hits harder. MHA: Vigilantes really said ‘character development, trauma, and boss fights all in one.’ This might just be the best episode so far.

@Niwaka-Samurai Yeah, I thought it was toast. But I guess it's harder to kill than he thought. The swarm obviously found a new host. Glad Knuckleduster may be getting a somewhat good ending though.

Even in a tense situation like this, the show must go on, so it makes me happy that Kazuho stepped up on stage to entertain the crowd to the best of her abilities until the power was restored. Her solo performance was very good and upbeat, which got better once the power came back on and all of the other performers got on stage and played together. The animation here was also used really well, which helped to liven up the performance.

While that part was upbeat, the battle between Kunckleduster and his daughter, Tamao, got even more intense. I must pay respect to the anime staff for how well this fight was animated. Knuckle took a risk and it did pay off as he was able to extracted the queen bee from his daughter and blew it up in a "Cool guys don't look at explosions" sort of way. I just hope that he's able to help restart his daughter's heart, though.

Sadly, looks like the origin user of the bee is still operating without anyone being none the wiser. He does give off the vibe of someone you don't want to mess with. Overall, this is the best episode of Vigilantes so far.

What a heater of an episode on all fronts. I loved Pop Step’s moment in the limelight as she entertained the audience while the power was out, I’m sure that was a career defining moment for her, not to mention the collaborative performance itself that turned out to be pretty epic, how can a remix of a company’s theme song be so awesome lol, I guess that would be because of the artists and crew involved.

But as good as the performances were, the real meat of this episode was Knuckleduster versus Hachisuka/Tamao, and boy did that fight look amazing, it’s safe to say bones cooked hard here. And it looked bad for Knuckleduster when he went down the first time, but he really did think of everything to save his daughter and defeat the bees within, he masterfully made a comeback and exterminated the bees that took control of Tamao once and for all, now I just hope he managed to save her there at the end because we didn’t get to see the outcome of his efforts yet, it would be a real shame if he can’t after all the backstory that was revealed. But that fella at the end with the cops, is that the one behind the bees? I’m guessing yes but damn I was really hoping the bees were done lol, but the most important thing for now is that the main villain of the season, Hachisuka, is done, hopefully the finale next week will be a good place to end on!

I’ve read the manga so it wasn’t surprising, but without context of their relationship, we just got a middle aged dude that people call “freaky fist grandpa” beating the crap out of a young girl.

I know he wants to be the one to handle this, but a passerby would have some questions

I've been binge-watching a lot of Fascinating Horror videos lately. When they said they were gonna continue with the concert despite the blackout caused by the villain instead of evacuating all I could think was wtf were they doing. Even if they had all the heroes shit could've gone wrong in so many different ways. Thankfully, it wasn't in the real world. If I were there in such a situation, I'd leave immediately. Fuck the concert. My life is more important.

Other than that, Pop's singing was so good. She has come such a long way. The main event song being a remix of a department store song is kinda funny to me. But at least people got to make some memories from it or something. The animation was excellent.

Knuckleduster vs Hachisuka was absolute cinema once again. I don't care what anyone says but I enjoyed this fight way more than anything from the main series in a very long time. The stakes felt real and I actually felt attached to the characters.

Knuckleduster proved why he is basically homeless Batman by doing so much insane prep in advance. I'm a bit worried that they didn't show Tamao waking up. Like what if that shoddy stun gun he got from some black market seller fails? I hope he won't lose his wife and daughter... I feel bad for him. He was probably just trying to protect his daughter but he was too strict and it ended up just backfiring on him big time. Even tho we don't know the fate of Tamao that mofo Hachisuka still managed to escape somehow. Because of course she did.

The next episode is the last. I really hope they're gonna announce Season 2 fast...

Knuckleduster finally getting his daughter back! After the investigation he's done behind the scenes up until now, and the confrontation last episode. He's reached her again. We now get the full picture of how his daughter is Bee. She's just the host, not some disgruntled daughter turned sour. The Bee jumps from host to host as often as it pleases. Tamao storming out that night changed everything, got her caught up in Bee schemes and got her mom in the hospital. Knuckleduster did great, forcing the Bee to abandon his daughter's body. Pushing it to the brink so he could easily kill it. The animation on their final blows looked incredible! We got some amazing impact frames and lighting effects. Knuckleduster going through hell to get his babygirl back but he did it! I'm glad to see that, and that the neighborhood festival could still go on even after the power surge. Everything ended up working out! With a little tease of some scarred man at the end

Well now we know how Queen Bee works. The bees take over one’s body and combine with their mind to form a composite personality. However, when injected with Trigger, the host personality starts to take over, which is why Kuin/Tamao was able to use an Electricity Quirk to almost kill Knuckleduster.

I wonder what kind of painkillers that Knuckleduster gets from Giran, nor did I expect Giran to even be apart of this. I’m guessing the painkillers prevent him from the after effects of particularly strong villains, and it’s a good thing he came prepared for this fight. He made sure his new stun gun was able to restart the heart so that when he drove the bees out of Tamao’s body, he was able to then save Tamao (at least that’s what we hope).

On the other sides of things, it seems that Pop Step was able to keep the crowd engaged while everybody else helped to get the power back on. I don’t know why she mentioned having to use the restroom because that did not come out well. The performance overall was a beauty and I’m glad we got to see it, and the conclusion of Knuckleduster’s conflict with his daughter. It seems all of it started with him not approving of her musical endeavors, which sewed seeds of hatred between him and her (that include her mother as well).

However, this may not be the end for Queen Bee, as it seems one particular police officer has taken the last surviving bee. Is he a villain? Does he work for All For One?

And from the preview, it seems that Knuckleduster may be done with his vigilante work, meaning it’s now up to The Crawler to take care of things (since Pop Step up to this point hasn’t fought a single villain this series).

I’m curious as to how all of this concludes…

Great ep

While I can never get behind Koichi's cringeyness, he always does the best he can to help.

Pop and the gang are able to make the concert a hit, which was good.

The finale of the fight with Knuckle and his daughter Tamao (infested by the og bee user) was nothing short of amazing. Hopefully, Knuckle saves her and gets to the mother in time.

So is possibly the of bee user (lighting strike across his face) and his quirky cool asf (lightning fast).

10/10

@KingBaller06 There's a villain Batman deals with called Killer Moth that, from what I read in an article, is kind of the Batman of villains, but when I hear Killer Moth, I'm thinking of the villain featured in a TEen Titans episode, not sure it's the same guy, maybe the same title, but different focus

@KingBaller06 He mean personal stakes. Not "oh, they would take rule over the world!" kind of stakes

@holdingnothing Does Killer Moth have a similar power to Hachisuka, like being able to take over other people's bodies with moths or something?

@Sheol01 Not a new host per se, but it is hard to kill unless you make sure every bee is killed, very difficult when they can fly in any direction

Probably the best episode in my opinion, Knuckleduster's punch was absolutely epic to stop Queen Bee's heart and extract her from his daughter's body and then he can try to revive her with the defibrillator... hopefully it worked, we don't know yet :S

@rasterman7 The translation I saw in subs treated it like she was going to a concert when I'm pretty sure she was in a band, so it was more a generation gap thing where he thinks she should do something more practical with her life as a job and she lashed out

@TheColonel76 He's involved with Trigger, I believe, but given his Flash speedster abilities we saw implied, I doubt he'd be the bee user, though the explanation about the Queen Bee Quirk we get briefly from Knuckleduster feels like they truncated a bit of it, but it's one of the more bizarre and confusing Quirks if we consider the origin as explained in extras, supposedly, since it makes Nezu just seem like Chopper when he ate the Human Human Fruit. Queen Bee is...like Horikoshi was watching some creepy SyFy Channel movie

@holdingnothing but he got rid of the Queen bee, right!? So that must mean any other bee can become the Queen if the original Queen bee dies.

Great fight scene. Ripping the bee out was nasty lmao

@holdingnothing Ohhh I see, that makes sense. I wasn't sure why he was getting so defensive about attending a concert. I hope by next episode she survives enough to see her mom.

I wasn’t talking about money. I was talking about human life. No concert is worth risking your life over for any reason. Of course, this is a fictional superhero story. So nothing will ever go wrong unless the plot needs it.