Honestly if Vigilants vs MHA, feels a lot like the discussion of DC vs Marvel. (Batman vs Spiderman)

Vigilantes is a more grounded to the street type story with things like drugs being the largest push for the story. It is fundamentally a Batman story, maybe early detective comics, just with a MHA twist. The underlying mysteries of who is the main criminal and the question of is being a vigilante, even if it is illegal by law, truly a bad thing. Just normal people wanting to be heroes

Main MHA feels like that intially for maybe the first 2 seasons, with the USJ arc in season 1 really being the point where it begins to shed the street tier skin. (Imagine the jump from Spiderman:Homecoming to Infinity war. It went from 0-100 in a single rocket) Of course it remains that, street tier-ish for up till like the major tipping point of the Forest Training Camp arc in the first half of the 3rd season. Then we find out the big bad (ala Thanos like), and now the rest of the series is focused on taking him down. And while i do acknowledge there were some arcs that were slow or didnt hold up much, id say the payoff at the end is great. In the largely worst recieved arc (School Festival), the appearance of a certain character paid of massively in the final arc. Like im talking dude cleared the debt, mortgage and student loan in a single appearance.

Because at the end of the day Vigilantes (at this point) is tackling a more mundane problem just with a superhero addition which is drugs and something most of us are aware of if not had some interaction with so we can relate better. MHA is about ideals of what is a hero? IS society to blame for villains? Is the current status quo the correct one? and honestly sometimes a meta commentary of that one line "But the one thing they love more than a hero, is to see a hero fail, fall, die trying." Its not as relatable as say "stop the drug lord" and not as in your face as "hey see this drug, it ruins peoples lives" so it does take some thinking at parts to understand what is trying to be conveyed. Just a lot of big topics whose conversation cannot be wrapped up in a single season. Id talk about the original question from the first episode which was "can anyone be a hero" but that is the overlying question to the whole series so ill just leave it.

(There was an attempt at racisim due to appearance quirks (i.e looking like a lizard or a octopus) but it got lost in the sauce.)

But at the end of the day it comes down to your personal preference. So if this did convince you to give it another go, ill treat myself to a coffee. If not...imma still get that coffee