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My Hero Academia: Vigilanteshas finally been animated and it is absolutely gorgeous. The series follows the less glamorous side of the superpowered society shown in the franchise, with those who still have a keen sense of right and wrong taking to the streets in a way that’s reminiscent of so many heroes from Western comics, likeBatmanorSpider-Man, despite not being licensed pro heroes.
One such protector of the streets is none other than Koichi Haimawari(Alias: The Crawler | Quirk: Slide’n’Glide). Just like the main series, Vigilantes has a similartaste in punnery when it comes to character namesand abilities, and Koichi Haimawari is no different.
First Of All, Who’s Koichi Haimawari?
Streets Will Remember The Name
19-year-old Koichi Haimawari is a university student by day, andan aspiring hero who looks up to All Might. Too bad for him, though, becoming a professional hero is impossible for someone with a Quirk like his. Koichi’s Slide’n’Glide creates ring-shaped projections from his hands and feet that enable him to literally slide across the ground at high speeds. This Quirk is how Koichi came up with his alter ego, “The Crawler”, a costumed do-gooder whose main effort is to simply help the people around him and keep the streets clean (in a literal sense, he picks up litter and sorts trash for recycling).
Koichi’s work as The Crawler is appreciated by the public, who call him “Nice Man”, and upon hearing his alias, they hilariously refer to him as “The Cruller”. Issues with converging pronunciations of “crawler” and “cruller” when spoken by native Japanese speakers could potentially give rise to the misunderstanding(‘ku-ro~ra’ vs ‘ku-ra-ra’), but also the ring-like forms that emerge from Koichi’s extremities, which look like crullers, a kind of fried dough dish that comes in various forms depending on where you’re getting one, but in Koichi’s case, the reference is the French style. Like always, it’s important to pull up the Japanese written form of the name in order to pick it apart character by character.
How “Koichi Haimawari” Plays On Words
“Crawler” Indeed
“Haimawari Koichi” is written「灰廻航一」, with four characters in total. 灰 is the “Hai-”, which translates to “ash”, and is the operative kanji in “hai-iro” – grey, while the second kanji, “-mawari” may be familiar to some anime fans, particularly those who have watchedMawaru Penguindrum. “Mawaru” is “turning”, “revolution” or more relevant to Koichi, “neighbourhood” or “surroundings”. Koichi is a common masculine Japanese name, which you’re likely familiar with because ofKoichi Hirose fromJoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 4.
What’s very interesting about Koichi Haimawari is the fact that his first name is written with a kanji uncommonly used for “Koichi”. 航 is the “Kou-”, while the kanji that follows is simply the number 1. The “Kou-” in this case refers to navigation and comes up in terms referring to different kinds of the aforementioned. For example,koukuuis aviation as it combines the kanji for navigation with the kanji for “sky”, while adding the kanji for machine to the end of that gives youkoukuuki,as in a plane, but generally, the word “hikouki” is used for plane instead (lit. “machine that flies”).
Alan Moore’s Watchmen and Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight from DC certainly influenced the setting of Vigilantes. Our protagonist, on the other hand, is obviously inspired by Spider-Man.
– Hideyuki Furuhashi inan interview with MangaForeverat Naples Comic Con 2019
All of this is to illustrate the concept of journey, navigation and dirt that comes up in Koichi’s name, which altogether can be understood as “The Number 1 Navigator of the Neighbourhood’s Ashes”, which aligns with his Quirk that has him placing palms to the ground (where ash and other debris will fall). There’s also an Easter Egg here, as Koichi’s crawling often gets compared to the scuttering of bugs, which brings up some of his similarities to Peter Parker, Marvel Universe 616’s Spider-Man.
Hideyuki Furuhashi, co-creator ofMy Hero Academia: Vigilantes, admitted in aninterview at Naples Comic Con 2019that Koichi Haimawari is based onSpider-Man, while the greaterVigilantesseries was inspired by titles like Watchmen and Batman. Beyond the fact that both Koichi and Spider-Man are crawlers, the former is constantly referred to as “Nice Man”/“Kind Man” and things to that effect. In Japanese, the word used is"shinsetsu",which means kind, and if we extrapolate from kind, “friendly” isn’t far off. Add that to the fact that the"-mawari"in “Haimawari” can be read as “neighbourhood” or “surroundings”, and we get a situation in which a crawling hero is referred to as something along the lines of friendly, a reference to Peter Parker’s “friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man” catchphrase.
My Hero Academia: Vigilantes is available to stream onCrunchyroll, while the manga can be read on VIZ Media’swebsite.
