Judgment

Koichi Haimawari's attempt at campus friendship collapses. After drinks he offers classmates tea and snacks, then walks them toward his Penthouse, perched atop a derelict building in one of Naruhata's grimmer corners. Taking a woman's hands to guide her through an unlit doorway, he promises a good time upstairs and she screams. Word spreads and he is branded a creep hunting unsuspecting students. Later, watching Pop Step scold Knuckleduster for smoking indoors and get brushed off, he finds himself grateful that these two make his life less empty.

Months earlier, a newscast named a 27-year-old robber and killer, Iyaro Tenba, as heroes joined the hunt. The matter was already settled by airtime: in an alley the fugitive clutches a stomach wound with the light draining from his eyes, watched over by a masked, ponytailed man in crimson holding a chipped, bloodied katana.

In the present, Pop lets herself in, takes his pudding, and finds Koichi stitching the All Might hoodie he wears on vigilante nights, which he says fills him with courage. Criticized for settling so cheaply that he patches a battered jacket, he snaps that she can insult him but not the clothing, and throws open his drawers on a near-complete collection of the same rare brand. She asks about the gap. The Silver Age version, he says, went to someone years ago. In his last stretch of middle school, still chasing a license, he got lost heading to a hero course entrance exam and heard shouting from a bridge about a pink-haired child drowning below. He waded into freezing water shallow enough to stand in, carried the child out, wrapped them in that hoodie, and slid off toward his test. He arrived too late to sit it, and counts the day as the death of his ambition, though he still pictures the boy growing into a pro who credits the rescue on camera. Pop calls the fantasy stupid and leaves.

Alone, she admits her reasons: he is settling again, and he has never realized she was the child in the river, a shortcut Leap gone wrong. Being saved a second time years later as the Nice Guy left her without a right moment to confess. She Leaps back with fresh pudding, ready to tell him everything, but Knuckleduster lounging in the Penthouse kills the private moment. He eats the pudding, she snaps at Koichi not to ask about the bag holding the old hoodie, and she storms out again, leaving him baffled. At home she pulls it on for comfort, wishing the doing were as easy as the deciding.

Meanwhile Akira Iwako, released after questioning about his Trigger supplier, meets Kuin on an evening walk and takes a new formula called TR-D2C. He rampages with his Hardening while she watches through her bees from a fast-food restaurant, logging sharper aggression and stronger output, grumbling at the thin data, and telling curious classmates the notes are a work report for a side job.

The Crawler and Pop respond without Knuckleduster, who had other business. Told that several Quirk offenses are needed before charges as a villain stick, Koichi dodges a huge swing and delights that Akira remembered his codename. Outmatched, he draws the thug toward a parking lot while Pop calls the police through her microphone, and realizes his opponent is far faster than before. When the shattered pavement trips him, a masked stranger carrying a katana blocks the killing strike, catching Kuin's interest. The blade cannot cut a hardened body, but Akira cannot cope either, and he flees at word of the police. The newcomer names himself Stendhal, a fellow vigilante, promises a second meeting, and vanishes.

The next day, Ichimoku and Jube offer the vigilantes a legendary alum of their middle school as an ally. Koichi is eager; Knuckleduster is uneasy about how many people fight by their own private code, a warning that unsettles Koichi coming from him. The diner meeting turns out to be with Soga Kugisaki, the man Pop calls the Dox and Murder Man, who months earlier tried to degrade them and take their lives. They refuse to hear him out and he leaves annoyed.

Still transformed, Akira crawls through a quiet stretch of Naruhata when a thrown knife hits him and a second takes his left eye. More punch through a body his Quirk should protect. Stendhal explains the logic: the eyes are unreinforced, and the ability fails once pain and fear take over. He condemns wielding power without conviction, calls that a crime in itself, and brands whoever succumbs to crime a villain. One clean stroke ends the man and stains the swordsman red. Akira was one name on a list, and Stendhal leafs through his photographs to settle on Soga's crew. Above, Kuin watches with delight.

Koichi's failed attempt to socialize leaves him ostracized on campus. His history with the Silver Age All Might hoodie is revealed, and Pop Step is confirmed as the child he pulled from the river, a truth she twice fails to confess.

Kuin doses Akira Iwako with the new Trigger variant TR-D2C and studies the results remotely. Stendhal debuts, rescuing the Crawler and introducing himself as a vigilante. The promised ally from Ichimoku and Jube proves to be Soga Kugisaki, and the meeting collapses. Stendhal then hunts Akira down and kills him, exposing the weaknesses of a Hardening Quirk, and marks Soga's crew as his next targets.

The fifth episode of the My Hero Academia: Vigilantes anime, spanning the end of the Vigilantes Beginnings arc and the start of the Stendhal arc. It aired 5 May 2025 with a same-day dub, adapting part of chapter 4 plus chapters 8 and 9. The opening is Kekka Alright and the ending is Speed.

Structural changes: the Penthouse invitation and its fallout are a flashback on the page but play at an unspecified time here, the move into the Penthouse is dropped, campus gossip runs longer, and a new scene has Pop and Knuckleduster bickering while Koichi appreciates them. The Iyaro Tenba newscast and alley killing are original, as are Akira's interrogation, release, and meeting with Kuin. The hoodie collection and the imagined future for the rescued boy both expand, the memories Kazuho recalls while holding the hoodie differ, and she sings the line about courage rather than saying it.

In the manga Pop phones Knuckleduster mid-chase for advice; the adaptation drops the call, has Koichi decide to stall and call the police himself, and cuts the civilians cheering him on. Pop's epithet for Soga is softened, since the anime's harassment scene never included that threat. The second confrontation is altered throughout, from which objects Akira knocks over to which eye the knife takes and where the follow-up knives land, with added shots of him cowering and of his body afterward, and Kuin's reaction moved later.