School Days Arc

The eighth story arc of My Hero Academia: Vigilantes runs from chapter 59 to chapter 65 and episodes 19 through 21, sitting between the Sky Egg Arc and the Final Performance Arc. The anime reorders it ahead of the Sky Egg Arc, shifting its present-day frame from early spring to late autumn.

Almost the whole arc is flashback. It is the origin of Eraser Head, told through the second and third years of a student who could not picture himself as a hero, and it introduces Oboro Shirakumo, whose name the main series would only whisper much later.

In the present, Nemuri Kayama calls Shota to press him about joining the U.A. faculty. Minutes later he watches Koichi Haimawari shield a girl and a kitten from a wolf-shaped villain, and he ends the fight in seconds. Rain drives the two under an awning, where Shota lists everything a cat requires and tells Koichi to put it back if he is not ready for the responsibility. Asked why he will not even look at the animal, he says he dislikes being swayed by feelings, and remembers being sixteen.

Walking to school in the rain, the young Shota leaves his umbrella over a soaked kitten and arrives drenched, convinced he is powerless. Hizashi Yamada tries to lift his mood; Oboro Shirakumo arrives through the window on a cloud, hands the umbrella back, and produces the same kitten from under his shirt. Their teacher reminds the three that none of them has secured a work study. Sensoji, from the neighboring class, calls Shota's Erasure worthless and his fights a waste of everyone's time, and Shota privately agrees. On the rooftop, Oboro argues that Erasure can force any villain onto even ground. Nemuri, a third-year, adopts the kitten, names it Sushi, and tells the two boys her agency will take anyone.

Working under His Purple Highness alongside Loud Cloud and Midnight, Eraser Head loses a robber to a smoke screen and gets scolded for wearing a gloomy face when a hero should inspire confidence. Oboro lends him his goggles, and at their rematch Shota walks through the smoke, cancels the Quirk, and calls in Loud Cloud to end it. Back at school, Sensoji accuses him of stealing the eye-protection idea, then challenges him in a two-on-two exercise and loses, smashing his own shades rather than take them back. On the roof afterward, Oboro floats the idea of the three of them opening an agency together someday.

Then Garvey arrives. His Quirk stockpiles the attacks thrown at him and returns them, and he flattens the Buster Union, then His Purple Highness, using Present Mic's voice and Sensoji's blasts as ammunition. Loud Cloud cushions a collapsing building to save a group of nursery children and is buried by the debris. Alone and terrified, Shota hears his partner's voice from a gourd-speaker on the ground, steadies himself, and works out a plan: bait the attacks upward and kick the unactivated lumps into the sky. He finishes Garvey by gathering the lumps with his Capture Weapon, feeding them to him, and blinking. Afterward Sensoji picks up the speaker and reports that it was destroyed, that no voice ever came out of it. Shota turns around and finds Oboro zipped into a body bag.

Shota spends his third year training alone, past exhaustion, indifferent to the Sports Festival meetings and worrying his teachers. He beats Sensoji cleanly and tells him where to improve, and the rivalry quietly dissolves into respect. Told to gain experience under a veteran agency first, he answers that he intends to go independent and underground the moment he graduates, and he leaves before the class photo, erasing Hizashi's Voice to escape the argument.

Back in the present, Shota follows Koichi to the Hotta brothers' shop, where Ikajiro Takobe and Kirihito Kamachi are planning a cafe funded by damage insurance and housing subsidies. The kitten finds a home and the cafe becomes a cat cafe, and the chatter about a shared dream pulls Shota back to the rooftop, where his answer to the same question had been a cat tower. He laughs, declines the seat they offer him because he is leaving town soon, and walks off as Nemuri texts him another picture of Sushi.