My Hero Academia: Vigilantes has a very unique structure as both a spinoff and a prequel story. Naturally, it’s a spinoff for telling a story far removed from Izuku’s story, but it’s also a prequel for being set years before the main story and showing things people never got to see before, most notably Ingenium working as a hero and Aizawa from before he became a teacher.

While My Hero Academia: Vigilantes is firmly a prequel to My Hero Academia, to what extent is a little unclear; the story never explicitly says how many years before the main story it takes place in, and the elements that firmly establish it as a prequel were typically vague even in the main series, so seeing them doesn’t necessarily help establish a timeline. Fortunately, though, certain events in My Hero Academia: Vigilantes’ final arc can be used to calculate its exact place in My Hero Academia’s timeline, and the result is pretty fascinating.

My Hero Academia: Vigilantes Full Timeline Explained

Where In The Timeline Does My Hero Academia: Vigilantes Take Place?

In My Hero Academia: Vigilantes, Koichi was on the cusp of graduation in the final arc, meaning that the story encomes about three years of in-universe time. Not only that, but All Might has already been injured by All For One, and in the final arc, there’s a flashback to an event that involved Mirko from when she was in high school. At that time, Mirko could only be 16-17, so working backward from that, My Hero Academia: Vigilantes, by taking into All Might’s injury and Mirko’s age, can only start 5-6 years before Izuku started attending U.A.

Mirko can't be 15 in the flashback because that would make her 22 in the final arc, which is impossible because she was 20 when All Might fought All For One, and at least three years have gone by since then. At the same time, while the math would still work out if Mirko was 18, her birthday is in March, meaning she didn't turn 18 until after the flashback arc, which took place in the summer.

Vigilantes taking place 5-6 years before Izuku goes to U.A. is plenty easy to justify. All Might still being injured is one thing, but things like Aizawa not being a teacher and Endeavor still being a terrible person also work to firmly establish that sort of timeline, and the anime even had Inko in a brief cameo where she was still skinny, making it clear that Izuku is still a child at this point. Overall, My Hero Academia: Vigilantes perfectly justifies its timeline, even if it never outright says it, and that’s great for anyone curious about it all.

Why Did My Hero Academia: Vigilantes Never Fully Explain Its Timeline?

Is My Hero Academia: Vigilantes' Timeline A Problem?

It would have been easy for My Hero Academia: Vigilantes to explicitly lay out its timeline as opposed to forcing people to figure it out themselves, but at the same time, Vigilantes, despite being a prequel, is much more of a spinoff than anything, as its story very rarely impacts or informs the main story in any significant way. Because of that, My Hero Academia: Vigilantes likely never explicitly laid out its timeline because it wasn’t relevant to the overarching franchise, and that idea is more than understandable.

As much as people might want a firm timeline, it does play into its strengths as a story. A major part of Vigilantes’ appeal is that it can be enjoyed both as an extension of My Hero Academia and as a separate, standalone story, so My Hero Academia: Vigilantes never explicitly establishing its timeline works to play into how it’s a story that can work without needing to rely on prior knowledge of My Hero Academia. How effective that is will depend on the person, but hopefully, it won’t detract from My Hero Academia: Vigilantes’ overall quality, in the slightest.

My Hero Academia: Vigilantes releases new episodes Mondays on Crunchyroll.