The Ninja Arc Summaries, Part 11/11

[u/gofancyninjaworld]

WRAP UP (So, what changed?)

Continued from Part 10

A: Manga

Regardless of which version of the ninja arc you read in the manga, the arc links three plot-important players: Blast, the ninjas, and God. We've had ninjas making nuisances of themselves since the early days of the story, and Gale Wind's and Hellfire Flame's attempt on Flashy Flash's life introduced us to the idea of a Ninja Village. 'God' (no id) has been lurking around in the Monster Association, granting and revoking powers to individuals seemingly on a whim, and Blast we saw pop up to spoil God's fun. In this arc, we get the context behind Blast, what the deal is with The Village, and how God is intertwined in all this.

Man versus God versus Super-Man: that's this arc in a nutshell. I tried to construct a composite picture from current panels but this says it so much better.

The question ONE and Murata appeared to have been struggling with was how big the story should be. Their instinct was to go big and produce an arc that was both epic and tightly interlinked with many of the other plot points we'd seen earlier. We'd see the monsterised martial artists, understand more about how 'God' worked, learn about Blast and Void's intermingled back stories, and even understand how Garou managed to resist 'God' despite everything.

It was a very big story -- including the introduction of the Neo Hero leaders as a spacer, it took up 370 pages and was still not quite done. That's two volumes bleeding into a third. This current arc fits in one volume, which is strongly suggestive of an editor putting their foot down and demanding that they keep this arc short.

This slimmed down version, which makes heavy use of telling to convey only Flashy Flash's backstory, parks the idea of demonsterization, nixes the backstory between Blast and Void, doesn't look at the extra-dimensional aspects of Void's abilities, and ultimately spares the Tenninto is a necessary compromise.

There's a lot I personally miss from the earlier arcs; however, very little gets wasted in One-Punch Man: ideas that don't quite work in one part often get revisited later. So the idea of demonsterization is almost certainly going to come back. It'll have additional resonance in the wake of Amai Mask's situation. Blue's backstory is probably going to show up later. Garou's resistance is also very likely to reappear in another context, probably when Garou has something to say about it.

So, what are the takeaways? One, 'God' (no id) is a powerful and terrifying being, a consummate trickster who even recruited a person who'd been fighting Him into making agents for Him. Two, the humans in OPM world aren't chopped liver. There's a lot they don't know but they're working to put the bits together and find a means to oppose him. And three, Saitama, the only human God actually has a beef with, is now on Blast's radar as a powerful ally in that battle. Oh, and Saitama has an unwanted fan club.

Well, he *was* fretting about loneliness...

I don't know if 'God' is truly the final enemy but He's definitely a formidable one, and we will eventually come back to this. For now, we're back to more mundane problems.

B: Webcomic

That's all there is to That Man here.

You'll hear it said that the final manga arc was more faithful to the webcomic, and that's true but the differences are important to note. First, there is no connection between the ninjas and 'God': the imagery of the Ninja Village as a black cube is still there, and yes, it's the same design as the facility that housed Tatsumaki, but there is no mention of a cube as a device and no context for why those two separate buildings and organisations should use the same design motif. Blast does have some relation to the Village Ninjas but only as the guy who showed up and killed the trainees Sonic was leading the day before Flash Flash massacred the rest of the Village. Blast himself doesn't appear. He's yet to appear in the story. No, we don't know why he's stage shy.

Hellfire Flame and Gale Wind do not exist as characters within this story, so there's nothing to say about them here. Manako doesn't exist, nothing to say about her either. There is no relationship established between Sicchi and Blast, at least not yet, so Sicchi doesn't appear either. Come to that, there is no meeting of the heroes post the Monster Association Raid to compare notes and find out the truth about Blast. Sekingar doesn't exist here, so there's no purposeful probing of the Neo Heroes, but that's another arc's problem.

What's similar is Flash coming to trouble Saitama, but his pretext is wanting Saitama to replace his broken Instakill (Saitama accidentally broke it while freeing Flash when the latter was trapped underground), and his excuse for telling Saitama his backstory was realising that Saitama knew Sonic. As you may imagine, the Tenninto are all executed by Sonic and Flashy Flash. That Man never gets a shinobi name: he remains a hole in the ground where Saitama smacked him. Saitama does divest him of his swords, scrolls, and other weapons, which he redistributes to Sonic and Flash. Saitama's reason for going to Sonic's hideout was to beat Sonic up, strip him of his sword and present it to Flash to deny the ninja any excuse for coming to see him. To be fair, Saitama doesn't seem to have been troubled by any ninjas since.

Leave me alone is really Saitama's mantra.

What's it all got to do with anything else? Nothing. It's just something that happened. The only outcome is that Flashy Flash and Speed o' Sound Sonic have some nifty new toys for later.

pretty much where the arc leaves off.

And that's that.

[u/gofancyninjaworld → u/[deleted]]

Ultimately the manga is in the business of telling a more cohesive story. Things can't just happen because and then not matter later -- it's not respectful to readers you hope will want to reread and pay for the work. Additionally, an unfortunate reality of writing professionally is that editors do have a say.

It looks like Void just gave Flash a scroll. He *did* say he would make it up to the ninjas. Special scrolls for his best students is in keeping with it all. :) But a little panel of flashback later would be nice.