In Chapter 69 of My Hero Academia: Vigilantes, some beloved Final Fantasy characters make an unexpected appearance, although they aren’t quite the heroes fans might expect.

Cloud Strife from Final Fantasy VII, Squall Leonhart from VIII, and Zidane Tribal from IX show up as troublemakers, interrupting the Vigilante Pop Step as she tries to sing in the street. The three Final Fantasy protagonists are easily recognizable, even in manga form. Zidane sports his trademark hairstyle and bow tie. Squall is, as usual, wearing his jacket with the fur collar. And Cloud’s hair is always recognizable but, for those who might miss that cue, he’s also got a Buster Sword pendant around his neck.

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My Hero Academia has been known to give shoutouts or hide easter eggs of well-known franchises or pop culture icons. The spinoff series My Hero Academia: Vigilantes has done it far more often though, and the design of some primary and secondary characters has taken obvious inspiration from X-Men and Thomas the Tank Engine, to name a couple. The Final Fantasy trio will likely not have recurring roles in the series because they were just making a brief cameo as nameless thugs in Chapter 69.

My Hero Academia is a manga series written and illustrated by Kōhei Horikoshi that has appeared in serialized form in Weekly Shōnen Jump since July 2014 and birthed an anime series that began in 2016. In August of that same year, a spinoff manga series called My Hero Academia: Vigilantes was launched. Set in the same world as My Hero Academia, the new series is written by Hideyuki Furuhashi and illustrated by Betten Court.

final fantasy characters in my hero academia vigilantes

In the world created by Horikoshi, the extraordinary is ordinary and people possess superpowers called Quirks. In My Hero Academia: Vigilantes, heroes are trained and licensed to protect the public against evil, but there are some who choose to use their Quirks to help people without following the law. They are not necessarily bad guys and the motives of many of them are not truly understood, but because they work outside the law they are considered Vigilantes. The heroes of My Hero Academia: Vigilantes—Koichi, Pop Step, and Knuckleduster—are one such group of unlicensed defenders of the peace who have sworn to defend their neighborhood against the encroachment of supervillains.

Chapter 69 of My Hero Academia: Vigilantes came out on January 10, and publisher Viz Media makes the latest chapters of the manga available for free for a short time on their website. So interested fans can check out the Final Fantasy cameo themselves for the next few weeks.

My Hero Academia: Vigilantes was released in the US in July 2018.

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Source: Comicbook.com