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Ever since its first episode, My Hero Academia: Vigilantes has included characters that are completely familiar to fans of the franchise. Since the spin-off series takes place just a few years before the events of My Hero Academia, it's not surprising that characters pop up sporadically, while some of them participate in entire episodes. This week, the show brought two familiar faces to take part in an event that might end badly.

Since the focus of the show was Narufest — a city-stopping event in which Pop☆Step (voiced by Ikumi Hasegawa in the original Japanese and by Macy Anne Johnsonin the English dub) is slated to headline a musical presentation along with other two acts — it made perfect sense to bring back two characters that are known as My Hero Academia showstoppers: Present Mic (Hiroyuki Yoshino/Dave Trosko) and Nemuri Kayama (Akeno Watanabe/Elizabeth Maxwell), mostly known as Midnight. In...

Ever since My Hero Academia: Vigilantes has been streaming, the opinion of fans about the spin-offs has changed in a major way. Many also believe that My Hero Academia: Vigilantes has the power to surpass the original series because of the elements embedded within the story.

From creating a more ground-level tone to focusing on different aspects of a superhero world, My Hero Academia: Vigilantes does a brilliant job everywhere. However, there is one place where the series is lacking, and it is one of the most classic Shonen elements.

This element is the flashiness of a superhero society, which makes them stand out. My Hero Academia: Vigilantes is lacking the flashiness of its characters, and it has slowly become noticeable, which might not be good.

The dark tone in Vigilantes is heavier than My Hero Academia

When My Hero Academia: Vigilantes started, it was automatically established that the series...

Alright, My Hero Academia: Vigilantes has me hooked. This spin-off takes a dive into the messier, street-level side of Hero Society with Koichi’s underdog hustle and Knuckleduster’s brutal smackdowns. It’s gritty, it’s realistic, and it gives us a good look at the cracks in the hero system long before Deku’s time.

And Stain’s rant about how “fake heroes”? It was thought-provoking in Episode 6, and then the Episode 8? Wow! It was like Hideyuki Furuhashi wrote it to show us that Stain was right, as he introduced a new character.

Captain Celebrity, the top-ranked Pro Hero in America, comes to Japan with a huge ego that just annoys me. His pretentious behaviour, his over-the-top behavior, and his entire “oh no I will save everyone” thing are so irritating. I mean, if he epitomized what it means to be a hero, I’m starting to agree with Stain’s point of view.

In a game packed with party synergy and tactical team compositions, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 pulls a sneaky trick on players who dare to play it safe: it hides raw power behind solitude. One character that thrives in the absence of allies is Maelle, especially when you lean into her Solo Void build.

While it might feel counterintuitive to bench your other party members, this setup turns Maelle into an elegant wrecking ball before the game even gets serious. The catch? You’ve got to embrace the silence and the shadow, both literally and figuratively.

Maelle embraces the void in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

In the early game, Maelle can go from solid support to total solo menace if you build her right, and that build starts with embracing her Virtuose Stance, a damage-boosting mode that requires a bit of setup but pays off in big, fiery ways.

The centerpiece of...

My Hero Academia: Vigilantes is getting a lot of fame and popularity since the anime came out, and the main reason behind it is the theme that the story follows. Just like the original My Hero Academia series, the spin-off prequel also deals with the complexity of being a hero, but the only difference is that My Hero Academia: Vigilantes focuses on Vigilantes.

The journey of a Vigilante is much more difficult and challenging, which makes it even more thrilling for fans. My Hero Academia: Vigilantes makes sure that it portrays this journey in the best way possible. However, the series also has a habit of countering this time by exploring the complexity of the villains that are introduced within the narrative.

The perfect example of this is Soga Kugisaki, one of the instant villains who used the quirk trigger to launch an attack on the Naruhata Vigilantes. However, episode...

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 features an impressively beautiful world that’s a sight to behold. The developers at Sandfall Interactive have also made sure that exploring it feels rewarding and satisfying, as there lie many secrets and bosses that one might miss if they stick to just the narrative.

Speaking of secrets, a fourth hidden Axon exists within the game’s world. Axons are basically powerful beings that players hunt and defeat throughout the narrative, and you’ll face two within the story, while the third one lies dead under Old Lumiere.

So where’s the fourth one? That’s what we’re here for, and the revelation of this Axon is directly connected to a secret boss fight that can only be activated once players reach Relationship Level 5 with Maelle in Expedition 33.

First things first, find Alicia in Expedition 33 Alicia waits for you at the top of The Reacher | Image...

One of the main reasons why My Hero Academia: Vigilantes has become such a big deal with the fans of the franchise is the story’s nature to focus on the different side of the superhero world. The entire narrative is based around unlicensed heroes who are still willing to put themselves in the middle of danger by dealing with some dangerous villains.

Thus, the dark tone is a little more observant in My Hero Academia: Vigilantes than it was in the original series. The perfect example of this is episode 6 of My Hero Academia: Vigilantes, which took a dark turn with Stendhal’s character, who is actually Stain from the original My Hero Academia series.

However, instead of leaping into action to control the darkness, My Hero Academia: Vigilantes gives the fans and the story a little more room to breathe by exploring other aspects of the story. This way,...

Compared to My Hero Academia, the world of Vigilantes feels more alive. That’s simply because the focus isn’t limited to Koichi and his journey. The world doesn’t revolve around him, but he tries his best to contribute to the purpose he believes in. Vigilantes episode 7 is just around the corner, and the preview reveals a new character.

Now, when does the episode come out? Who is this new character — another hero? A villain? Someone from the original series? If you’re intrigued about the new character or just need to align your thoughts on the story so far, here’s everything you need to know.

Release date, time, and where to watch Vigilantes episode 7 A still from the preview of Vigilantes episode 7 | Credits: Studio Bones

My Hero Academia: Vigilantes episode 7 is scheduled to release on Crunchyroll on May 19, 2025. The episode will drop at exactly 8:15 Am...

Spoiler Alert !!!Mha: Vigilantes manga spoilers ahead!

I have loved Mha: Vigilantes due to its unique take on the hero society. The fresh perspective drew me in, especially since it is no longer a happy-go-lucky world. The darker side of society gets more focus in the series, while also delving into the lives of some prime My Hero Academia characters.

The difference is even visible in the animation style, a detail that I loved. It might not be as grand as the main series and takes place on a much smaller scale, but that is exactly why I got hooked on the series so easily. Well, now that the season is almost halfway done, it’s time to discuss its finale.

Mha: Vigilantes season 1 is gearing towards a father-daughter bonding

So far, season 1 of the anime is in full swing, and I love the alternate take on the world of the classic My Hero Academia.

In the entertainment industry, spin-offs usually get a bad reputation, accused of milking and being an unnecessary addition to the original series. This is the fear My Hero Academia fans felt with its spin-off and prequel titled My Hero Academia: Vigilantes. After the underwhelming ending Kohei Horikoshi wrote for the original, fans are hesitant to give it a chance.

The release of the anime adaptation for My Hero Academia: Vigilantes has quickly made them realize just how wrong they were about that. Despite the manga being out for almost 10 years as a manga, the anime has given it a much-deserved spotlight.

So why does My Hero Academia: Vigilantes work, while other spin-offs struggle to deliver? Most of them rely a little too much on the original to work, rather than being an independent story. However, Vigilantes under Hideyuki Furuhashi weren’t treated as a continuation but a complement.

My Hero Academia: Vigilantes...

The legacy of Kohei Horikoshi’s My Hero Academia is being carried forward by the recently released My Hero Academia: Vigilantes anime adaptation. It is a spin-off prequel written by Hideyuki Furuhashi, which follows the adventure of Koichi Haimawari, who is also based in the same universe, and goes through a different kind of struggle to become a hero.

While the Vigilantes story might feel a little different than the original My Hero Academia narrative, the creators have tried their best to embed the original theme. In fact, they have used a similar inspiration that motivated Horikoshi in the first place to create the My Hero Academia storyline.

The inspiration in the discussion here is the Marvel comics that are known for their superhero stories. These Marvel references and inspirations are also reflected within the recent episodes of My Hero Academia: Vigilantes, proving that the ongoing anime is staying close to the original roots.

Kohei Horikoshi’s My Hero Academia: Vigilantes has carved a niche for itself by choosing to show a new kind of heroism by focusing on the vigilante side of My Hero Academia’s society. The licensed heroes! gone; because this story is set 5 years before the main series. While most of the story is focused on the unlicensed heroics of Koichi, his mentor, Knuckleduster plays the most influential role.

His role as mentor and as a former Pro-Hero becomes the catalyst for the character development of both new and old faces, like Stendhal, known to us as Stain the Hero Killer. He ensures that Vigilantes ties in to the main series while not leaning too much into it, thus becoming a linchpin for the success of Vigilantes as a prequel.

Knuckleduster is My Hero Academia: Vigilantes’ narrative catalyst Knuckleduster asks Koichi to become his disciple | Credits: Bones Film

The quirkless,...

The recent talk of the anime town, My Hero Academia: Vigilantes, has been receiving great reception from fans as the series continues to live up to the legacy of the My Hero Academia franchise. With just six episodes under its belt, the story has managed to grab the attention of My Hero Academia fans who were initially doubtful about the series.

My Hero Academia: Vigilantes is a prequel story, and thus, fans can expect some characters from the original series to make an appearance in the story. One such character that fans got excited to see was Stendhal, or as he was known in My Hero Academia, Stain, the main villain of the vs. Hero arc.

Stain was one of the most popular characters in My Hero Academia, solely because of his god complex. His god complex and his ideology in the story reminded fans of the wildly popular character Light Yagami,...

When My Hero Academia: Vigilantes started, the new spin-off made it clear that the connections with the flagship anime series would be numerous and direct. The very first episode kicks off with All Might (voiced by Kenta Miyake in the original Japanese and by Christopher Sabat in the English dub), just as an example of it. However, fans didn't expect the new show to provide some deeper connections so soon, and this happened in the latest episode. From the looks of it, the show has just revealed the origin story of a high-profile villain — Stain, the Hero Killer.

Even though he goes by a different name (Stendhal) and sports a different look in My Hero Academia: Vigilantes, there are some connections with the My Hero Academia villain. They start with the use of red in his outfit and the character's preference for katanas — a trademark of Stain in the original show.

The ‘My Hero Academia’ universe has grown into something massive, with its main series capturing hearts worldwide. Alongside it, there’s a spin-off called ‘My Hero Academia: Vigilantes’ that’s been making noise since it first hit the scene in 2016. Written by Hideyuki Furuhashi and drawn by Betten Court, this manga dives into a different corner of the same world, set five years before Deku’s journey kicks off. With an anime adaptation now airing, produced by Bones Film, it’s got people talking again about how it fits into the bigger picture.

This spin-off follows Koichi Haimawari, a college kid who didn’t make it as a pro hero but still uses his Quirk to help out around town. He teams up with a tough vigilante named Knuckleduster and a street performer, Kazuho Haneyama, to tackle crime outside the law. It’s a grittier take on heroism, showing what...

Above: Italian 4-foglio for Purple Noon. Artist uncredited.In April of this year, on the occasion of a retrospective tribute to French movie star Alain Delon at New York’s Film Forum, Anthony Lane wrote an article in the New Yorker titled “Can a Film Star Be Too Good-Looking?” In the article Lane talks of Delon’s limitations as an actor but says “if we watch him greedily, asking for more, it is for a reason so obvious, and so elemental, that stating it plainly seems almost indecent, but here goes. Alain Delon, in his prime, was the most beautiful man in the history of the movies.”Lane doesn’t really describe Delon’s beauty as much as he examines the concept of beauty with the help of Kant and Stendhal, but the one thing he does focus on is his eyes: those blue eyes that Delon demurred to cover...

We’re on the verge of the Twinkling Watermelon finale, and the tension is at its maximum strength. This series has become an integral part of our lives, and we wait for Mondays just to watch a new episode (wishing the blues away). As we approach the last episode, the suspense surrounding Eun-Gyeol’s future intensifies. However, the conclusion of episode 15 is nothing short of surprising. Just as it seemed like everything was falling into place for Eun-Gyeol and his family in 1995, a shocking twist of fate is revealed. Let’s quickly dive into the episode.

Spoilers Ahead

What Happens In The Episode?

In a flashback (for the lack of a better word) from before Eun-Gyeol’s time-traveling expedition, we see Yi-Chan record an original song to participate in the youth competition. Ma-Joo reminds him that they don’t have a band any more thanks to the big fight with...

Warning: Spoilers for My Hero Academia Season 6, Episode 25The villains of My Hero Academia have been running rampant ever since All for One broke out of Tartarus, but as it turns out, not every villain he's freed is on board with his plan. Fans may be a bit surprised to find out that the Hero Killer, Stain, is actually siding with the heroes.

Stain had been shown a few times since the jailbreak, secretly following All Might towards unknown ends. While the appearance of Stain stalking anyone is pretty intimidating, Stain has always respected All Might in My Hero Academia as the one "true" hero, so there wasn't much reason to think he was planning to attack. The season finale of My Hero Academia saw Stain reveal himself, and while he took a moment to bolster All Might's spirits (rather unexpectedly), he also revealed his true purpose: to deliver sensitive...

Seeing a Woody Allen movie in 2022 is, it seems fair to say, a curious experience. Those who believe you can’t separate the art from the artist will find copious proof in his latest movie, “Rifkin’s Festival.” But, of course, they’re unlikely to watch it. Those who still celebrate the artist might watch it, but they won’t find much in the way of art.

For his 49th feature film, Allen returns to a well that is not so much dry as desiccated. The movie opens with Wallace Shawn as our Allen doppelgänger, Mort Rifkin. Mort, an anxious former professor, is also a dedicated cinephile and self-defined intellectual who spends the next hour-and-a-half complaining vociferously to his analyst.

He’s reminiscing about a troubled trip to Spain’s San Sebastián Film Festival, which he recently took with his publicist wife, Sue (Gina Gershon). “Film festivals are no longer what they were,...

Italian actress Elsa Martinelli, known to U.S. audiences her breakout role in 1955’s The Indian Fighter opposite Kirk Douglas, died Saturday in Rome at the age of 82, according to Italian media.

Born in Tuscany, Martinelli began her career as a model — appearing in the pages of Vogue and on the cover of Life. She then began taking on smaller roles in films, becoming one of the first models to make the crossover into film and paving the way for stars like Cameron Diaz, Sofia Vergara, and Charlize Theron.

A role in 1954’s Le Rouge et le Noir — the French...

The bloodless Cahiers du cinéma wars induced a vague but hugely influential criterion for what was to be considered good and bad in film. Elaborate sets, one of French cinema’s major traits that, in certain genres, could compete with Hollywood, were deemed stifling and were rejected in favor of urban spaces and real locations.

The infamy that Cahiers du cinéma’s critical bombardment brought to certain filmmakers, at least among a small circle of cinephiles, took years to reverse. While Cahiers du cinéma happened to be more generous to American cinema, fewer French directors were allowed to enter their cannon. If, for instance, one Robert Bresson did, otherwise many Jean Delannoys did not. While the art of some great filmmakers was acknowledged and they were given the throne, many others, who were less stylistically consistent, fell into oblivion.

Today, more than half a century after the Cahiers wars, and regardless of their accomplishments,...

Most of us regular folks would only know Mathieu Amalric as “that Roman Polanski-looking* fellow in Quantum of Solace,” but the French multi-hyphenate proved himself behind the camera when, in 2010, he took home Cannes’ Best Director prize for On Tour. In making his feature film follow-up, Variety informs us he’s decided to adapt Stendhal‘s 1830 novel The Red and the Black — which was translated to film in 1954 — a (oddly untitled) project that producer Laetitia Gonzalez claims will be Amalric‘s “most ambitious directorial effort” to date.

The original book revolved around Julien Sorel, an energetic teacher whose attempt to step outside societal lines — an attempt instigated with an affair — causes a stir and threatens to bring everything crashing down. Dramatic meat: it’s here in spades. Now, I’m obviously speaking out of turn, making predictions on a project that’s still in the early days, but it’s probable that Amalric,...

Carrying on the Gallic theme of the Cannes Film Festival, we now have news from two major French talents in the form of Charlotte Gainsbourg and Mathieu Amalric who have both lined up their next projects. We also have the first trailer for Pawel Pawlikowski's Paris-set "The Woman In The Fifth," starring Ethan Hawke and Kristin Scott-Thomas.

Gainsbourg will star in comic book artist-turned-filmmaker Riad Sattouf's satirical comedy "Jacky au royaume des filles," roughly translated as "Jacky In Woman's Kingdom." Sattouf latest film is the Cesar-winning "French Kissers," while Gainsbourg is fresh off a starring role opposite former Libertines/Babyshambles frontman Pete Doherty in "Confession of A Child Of The Century," which just screened on the Croisette. 'Jacky' will tackle the story of a young man who falls in love with an attractive colonel (Gainsbourg) and dreams of marrying her, even though she's completely out of his league.

French actor Mathieu Amalric ("The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," "Quantum of Solace") is set to direct a film adaptation of Stendhal's classic 1830 novel "The Red and the Black" for Les Films du Poisson reports Variety.

The story follows an ambitious young teacher whose passionate affair with a wealthy married woman leads to his downfall. Claude Autant-Lara previously adapted the book in 1954.

Amalric is presently writing the script for the as-yet-untitled project which Yael Fogiel and Laetitia Gonzalez will produce this likely international co-production.

Mathieu Amalric is set to take the helm of the big screen adaptation of The Red and the Black written by Stendhal. Variety reports that Amalric is reteaming with Les Films du Poisson's Yael Fogiel and Laetitia Gonzalez for the film which tells of an ambitious young teacher whose liaison with a married, wealthy woman, ends up leading to his downfall. This is the second time The Red and the Black has been made into a movie; the last was 1954's Claude Autant-Lara pic Rouge et noir, starring Gérard Philipe, Daniellle Darrieux, Antonella Lauldi and Jean Mercure. Amalric is busy on the script at this point. The actor and director has an abundance of acting credits since 1985 including more recently David Cronenberg's upcoming Cosmopolis starring Robert Pattinson, and prior to that James Bond pic Quantum of Solace...

Mathieu Amalric is set to take the helm of the big screen adaptation of The Red and the Black written by Stendhal. Variety reports that Amalric is reteaming with Les Films du Poisson's Yael Fogiel and Laetitia Gonzalez for the film which tells of an ambitious young teacher whose liaison with a married, wealthy woman, ends up leading to his downfall. This is the second time The Red and the Black has been made into a movie; the last was 1954's Claude Autant-Lara pic Rouge et noir, starring Gérard Philipe, Daniellle Darrieux, Antonella Lauldi and Jean Mercure. Amalric is busy on the script at this point. The actor and director has an abundance of acting credits since 1985 including more recently David Cronenberg's upcoming Cosmopolis starring Robert Pattinson, and prior to that James Bond pic Quantum of Solace...

Above: Andrzej Żuławski on the set of Boris Godounov (1989).

The first American retrospective of Andrzej Żuławski offers the chance to discover an auteur whose idiosyncratic vision is as radical, overwhelming and instantly recognizable—it may take no longer than a few shots—as those of canonized masters like Robert Bresson and Andrej Tarkovskij. But maybe Paul Verhoeven would serve as a better comparison, since Żuławski has remained similarly polarizing due to a punchy sensibility that had the French coin the term "Zulawskienne," meaning "over the top." Consider the opening of his first feature The Third Part of the Night (1971): A woman reads out the apocalyptic passage containing the title from the Book of Revelation, only to be struck down minutes later by one of the soldiers on horseback suddenly intruding in her house. Clearly, this is a world where anything can happen, and Żuławski makes sure it does. Then again,...

The 22-year-old Bertolucci made an impressive debut in 1962 with The Grim Reaper, a Rashomon-style thriller about the murder of a prostitute scripted by his mentor, Pier Paolo Pasolini. But it was his second film, Before the Revolution (1964), now rereleased to accompany a well-deserved retrospective at London's BFI Southbank, that made his name. Semi-autobiographical, partly inspired by Stendhal's The Charterhouse of Parma, and set in 1962 in his native Parma, the film is deeply indebted to the French new wave and centres on Fabrizio, a 20-year-old introspective haut bourgeois student both attracted to and repelled by middle-class conformity and revolutionary Marxism. He has an incestuous affair with his attractive young aunt (a recurrent theme in Bertolucci's work), and it is altogether a dazzling film, both continually vital and something of a time capsule. I think, however, that his best movies are The Conformist, The Spider's Stratagem, the first part of 1900, and,...

Is it possible to be addicted to a movie? I've watched I Am Love by Luca Guadagnino three times, once in a theater, twice on a Vcr, and I can feel an urge coming on for a fourth fix. Emma Recchi (Tilda Swinton), a Milanese matron from the mega-rich Recchi family, becomes involved with her grown son's best friend, a chef. A commoner, this guy -- which brings to mind the gamekeeper in Lady Chatterley's Lover and Julien Sorel in Stendhal's The Red and the Black. The damage sustained by the Recchi family and business also references Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks. The film's melodramatic tone, with love presented as an absolute, a religion or calling that must be honored, even as it wrecks lives, suggests director Douglas Sirk, along with opera giants Verdi and Puccini. ...

But Not Me Baby, I'm Too Precious, I Hadda...: Oscar blogger and World's Biggest Sunrise Fan Tom O'Neil is perturbed that Precious (Full title: Precious Based On The Novel "The Charterhouse Of Parma" By Stendhal, oh sorry, Precious Based On The Novel "Push" By Sapphire) didn't get nominated for a Gotham award this year. And he knows who's to blame: "is this just one of those ridiculous, irrelevant side shows we should all just ignore because it's a fluke — a case of huffy film critics acting stubbornly against a popular trend when permitted to decide the nominees of an awards group?"

I know, right? Effing film critics and their huffiness and their effing refusal to go along with a popular trend. What's up with that? For more of O'Neil's critic-hating, check here. As a Snob and a Bad Person, I have to admit: part of me is hoping that...