Chapter 1 (Vigilantes)

Society licenses heroes to keep it safe, but a handful of people take that work into their own hands without permission. One of them starts the day as a face in a crowd. When a massive creature rampages downtown, All Might ends the threat in moments and departs once he confirms nobody is hurt, leaving nineteen-year-old Koichi Haimawari starstruck among the onlookers.

Koichi's Quirk, Slide and Glide, lets him skate along any surface he touches at roughly bicycle speed. A patrolling officer catches him at it and lectures him about the ban on public Quirk use, the rule that keeps people with wildly different powers living side by side. Koichi grumbles his way to his next stop, crashes into a knot of thugs, and knocks the drink out of Soga Kugisaki's hand. Ordered to grovel, Koichi instead escapes with a self-styled super move, Kowtow Evasion, sliding out backward while Soga gapes. Farther along he passes a small crowd watching Pop☆Step, an unpermitted freelance idol whose singing matters less to her fans than her ability to fly. Spotting an approaching police car, Koichi tips her off, and she cuts the show short and takes to the air.

His convenience store manager docks his pay for arriving late, and the same thugs walk in soon after. Soga hauls Koichi outside and works him over, Koichi unable to answer the Spike Quirk that pushes barbs out of Soga's knuckles, then forces him to buy a replacement juice. Sore and humiliated, Koichi pulls on a hooded jacket styled after All Might and a mouth mask, deciding to serve the public on his own terms. He returns dropped belongings, gives directions, helps travelers board trains, takes photos for strangers, and hauls off recycling. Grateful locals start calling him Nice Guy, and the work leaves him warm and unclenched.

Walking home, he is handed a drink by Pop☆Step, who tracked him down to repay the warning and then needles him for being useless in a fight, which he concedes. She calls the All Might hoodie ironic; he answers that it stands for being useful in whatever way he can. Their sparring is cut short when she backs into Soga's group, who recognize the online idol and start jeering. Koichi's protests are ignored, but her tears push him past hesitation. He runs the plan in his head, then slides at Moyuru Tochi to sweep his legs and fails, hitting the pavement instead. Soga rakes him across the cheek using the barbs on his heel and promises worse for him and for her.

A body drops into a trash pile and interrupts the strike. The muscular old man who climbs out drops Soga with a single punch, names himself Knuckleduster, and says hoodlums are his specialty. He demands Rapt Tokage show his tongue, gut-punches him before he can refuse, and checks the color for signs of a drug, then does the same to Moyuru. Turning to Koichi, he offers to make a real hero out of him. Koichi demurs and admits his Quirk would never carry him through the Pro Hero Exam, but Knuckleduster reads him instantly and dismisses power and paperwork as irrelevant to justice, which he defines as acting when something stands in front of you. Koichi grasps that the man has no license at all.

Soga rises with Pop☆Step in his grip, spikes at her face. Koichi charges and knocks him loose, letting her escape upward, and Knuckleduster puts Soga through a wall. Finding no drug on him, Knuckleduster copies his ID and declares Koichi his disciple, insisting the world's definition of a hero is too narrow and that punishing evildoers simply feels good. Koichi is not convinced. Battered and limping through an alley afterward, Soga swears revenge while Moyuru urges him to let it go, and a man in a suit steps out to offer them some splendid medicine.

Koichi Haimawari, Pop☆Step, Knuckleduster, Soga Kugisaki, Rapt Tokage, Moyuru Tochi, and Mario Kugutsu all debut.

Koichi's Slide and Glide Quirk and the legal ban on public Quirk use are established, along with his improvised move Kowtow Evasion.

Beaten by Soga's Spike Quirk, Koichi begins operating as Nice Guy, doing unlicensed good deeds in an All Might hoodie.

Knuckleduster intervenes against the thugs, revealing he is hunting for a drug by inspecting tongues, and declares his intent to take Koichi on as a disciple.

Koichi tackles Soga to free Pop☆Step, his first real act of vigilante intervention.

Mario Kugutsu approaches the defeated thugs and offers them Trigger.

The chapter launches My Hero Academia: Vigilantes by writer Hideyuki Furuhashi and artist Betten Court. It spans 48 pages, appeared in the August 2016 issue dated August 20, 2016, and opens both the first volume and the Vigilantes Beginnings arc.

Nice Guy, Pop☆Step, and Knuckleduster share the cover, and the installment includes a color page. It follows Chapter 0 and precedes Chapter 2.

The anime adapts this material as Episode 1. A stretch of fantasy imagery early on features a large roster of pros, among them Midnight, Ectoplasm, Best Jeanist, Cementoss, Thirteen, Present Mic, Death Arms, Eraser Head, Vlad King, Endeavor, and Manual, while Inko Midoriya also appears.