Taken as a whole, this season of Vigilante has been incredibly consistent. And in more than one context, really. Every episode has been a winner, with a couple of standouts but not much in the way of extreme quality swings. It’s also presented a very cohesive tone, with a pretty similar mix of slice-of-life and hardcore action elements in every ep. This was one of the most serious episodes of the season but even here, that balance doesn’t feel out of whack. Balance is a key word to describe Illegals, because it exudes that quality. It’s confident and assured in what it is, and that happens to be a seriously good anime in its own right.
The Marukane Festival is not forgotten or glossed over by those heavier elements. The show must go on – or at least a lot of people are going to be disappointed if it doesn’t, not least Makoto. With the power out Present Mic and Midnight are officially on standby and he can’t distract the audience until the power comes back on. But Makoto turns to Pop here, and Kouichi gives her a bit of an assist. Makoto also turns to Captain Celebrity (who moans that he’s being worked to the bone) to fly off and fetch some emergency generators.
That leaves Kazuho on the hook for maybe half an hour. She musters the nerve to try because of Kouichi’s presence and belief, make no mistake. She’s nervous as hell (thus the extended riff about having to pee) but manages to get through it with the help of her loyal cheer squad. Then C.C. returns with the goods, and the show really can go on. And that proves to be a hit, with FeatherHATS and Pop putting a J-Pop spin on the depato’s Shouwa theme song. But before that we get a solo number from Kazuho which, if Kouichi was listening to, it’s hard to believe even his incredibly dense skull wasn’t breached with reality at least a little (that hoodie line, seriously).
That said, there really is no denying that the main stage here belongs to Knuckleduster and Hachisuka Kuin. Or more pointedly, Oguro-san and his daughter Tamao. And as we watch this drama play out, it becomes clear that this bee quirk is really a parasitic invader in Tamao’s body. Not that things weren’t pretty bad between father and daughter before the Bee User took up residence. Oguro seems to have accepted responsibility in a way Endeavor never did, or at least a lot faster. But things are seriously messed up now, and Oguro is not going to be able to save his daughter without taking some serious risks.
This is a mess, to be sure. It seems Knuckle is addicted to painkillers on top of everything else, but that’s not all he gets from his dealer. His plan to drive the Bee User out of Tamao is an electric attack – another example of his effectively using mundane methods to simulate the effect of a quirk. It so happens she’s chosen electricity as an attack too, and lands the first serious blow. But what she thought had ended the fight – and him – was counteracted by the same method he’d planned to use on Tamao. To wit, the AED he had built into the stun gun.
Oguro does drive the Bee User out, though he has to stop his daughter’s heart to do it. It seems TBU takes up residence elsewhere however, and whether or not Tamao indeed survived is unclear – as is the state of her mother, about whose condition the hospital had called Oguro earlier. Knuckleduster is a seriously hard-core guy, that’s for certain – in many ways one of the most impressive in the mythology when you consider his circumstances. But Todoroki Enji could give him some lessons about how difficult it is to make the sorts of things right that Oguro has made wrong, whether you have a powerful quirk or none at all.
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