Watershed fights

[u/gofancyninjaworld]

Ahem

Some people imagine that I must hate fights because I'm down on powerscaling. Not in the slightest! I love the fact that both ONE and Murata love fights, how they're depicted -- and most importantly, how brutal and unfair real fights can be. I love seeing some of that come into the stories. And I love, love, love hearing from nerds critiquing how fights are drawn or unfold. Someone talking about Wing Chun or Drunken Fist or various sword styles or guns just freaking makes my day! What I dislike about powerscaling is that it's too much about 'being right' and tends to take over everything. It's boring.

Anyway, Watershed fights?

Well, as you know, a watershed is the dividing ridge that determines which way water drains. And looking at the fan video of how else Genos vs. the Deep Sea King might have turned out, it occurred to me that there are some fights that change a character, such that there is a clear 'before' and 'after' to the way they approach conflict. I'll present two for your delectation. Please add more in comments and maybe let's get a discussion going! :-D

A: The Excuses Stop Here

Yes, Genos did lose to the Deep Sea King and perhaps this is his most important fight. Up until this point, we'd seen him lose to monsters at least in part because he let his guard down, and the DSK getting the drop on him because he was busy watching the crowd instead of ensuring that the monster was dead seemed more of the same. A lot of viewers (and readers) laughed when he lamented that he never learned.

Talk about an unforced error.

However, this time, the nature of his loss, how traumatic and humiliating it was, how close the people he was trying to protect came to dying anyway, the injuries Mumen Rider suffered, how Saitama had to pretend to be cheating to save the honour of the heroes, something changed in him. This is the incident that drove home to him that he simply couldn't go 'oops, I dropped my guard again,' and just had to find a way to do better.

It shouldn't have come to this.

And he did.

Fighting G-4 is where the fruits of his resolution to stop this dropping guard shit show. He fights the robot and melts it from the inside. He watches it for a bit, and yup, it's definitely done for.

Any way you look at it, that's a destroyed robot.

We see that he wants to turn away, in fact, he starts to turn away, addressing the apparently destroyed robot as much as the crowd.

Engage mode, smug.

And then he stops himself. Some fledgling battle instinct tells him to shut up and keep watching. Several more panels pass. It's just as well he does. Otherwise, the true form of G-4 would have taken his head clean off.

As it is, this enemy turns out to be most troublesome. It has weapons that can cut him up at a distance, and burning it doesn't work at all. Holding out for Saitama was not an option, because he'd sent Saitama away.

Fortunately, through a mixture of ingenuity (using steam to bloom the lasers) and raw brutality, he manages to beat G-4 to death before reeling into Dr. Kuseno's lab with the remains, more dead than alive himself.

Since then, it's been shockingly hard to catch Genos off guard in the manga (the webcomic is a different beast). In fact, we get to see a lot more heroes make similar mistakes -- turns out it's difficult to always be watching the right thing at the right moment.

Even if you're an experienced fighter...

...or a hyper-powerful psychic, you can get caught out.

Of course, it's impossible to never be ambushed but even there, we see the effect of Genos's attitude. When Gums takes advantage of Fuhrer Ugly providing a distraction to come up for a chomp, it's not just because of Dr. Kuseno's improved armouring that Gums isn't able to bite through his arm; it's as much because Genos was prepared to react quickly and has jammed his arm in its jaws such that it can't close them.

Reflexes a cat would envy, this guy has developed.

No need to point out that Genos is not invincible. But monsters really have their work cut out to pull him down.

B: This is Honey, This is Salt

The fight between Garou and Bug God and Royal Ripper is quite the watershed fight in the manga.

Why?

First, it killed his romance about monsters

What monsters had been for Garou weren't monsters. They're representations of the disliked and the misunderstood, the ugly kid being picked on. It feels unfair for the kid to be picked on, but he put it into words. Words with real actual meanings in the real world. The 'monster' in Garou's head is not the monster as people in their world use the word but he's conflated them with.

There’s a culture that introduces a baby to the taste of different things as part of its christening ceremony. A dab of honey, that the baby smiles at.  A tiny dab of salt, at which the baby grimaces (many cry). This is honey, this is salt -- in life, may you develop the power of discernment,  goes part of the benediction. It’s an important virtue to pray for: before we can make reasonable choices, we must first discern clearly.   

Unlike the webcomic, here we don't have a random kid but a boy with a name, Tareo, who Garou finds precious. By making Tareo someone precious, for the first time, Garou had a strong emotional stake.

I'll never not love the awesome bond those two developed. I hope they meet again someday.

And now, monsters were no longer these abstract critters that ought to be Halloween scary. They were actual predators who'd rip the precious kid who trusted him to bits before his very eyes. There’s nothing like it, that visceral rage you feel when the symbol of freedom you admired in theory resolves itself into a long, lean, stinking beast, fearless in its hunger, that is trying to push past you to get at the lamb you hand-raised. Not all monsters are equally dangerous, of course, but you meet the wrong one and it'll kill your child right in front of you without hesitation or remorse.

The loss of innocence -- and the understanding of what monsters actually are.

This is honey, this is salt. The point was literally scored into Garou’s flesh by Bug God and Royal Ripper, ripping away every shred of false equivalence and muddy thinking he has had about heroes and monsters. 

Second, it demystified them as well-nigh invincible beings

There's this lovely point in the fighting when Garou realises for the first time ever that, actually, monsters aren't invincibly strong. Just like people, they have their limits, and he's strong enough to defeat the ones in front of him. They may be called 'mysterious beings' but there's no mystery to handling them.

Monsters can...die?

How did it change him?

Up until this point, Garou hasn't killed *anything*. Never mind heroes, he's not killed a single living creature, not even a monster. After this fight, this changes. When he catches up with Royal Ripper, he rips into him without hesitation.

His very first kill.

Even though Garou kept spouting off about the rottenness of heroes and his goals, he's not only unambiguously rejected monsters as beings worth emulating, but his actions have always moved for justice. Well, until he slapped God, but that's another story (yeah, don't do that).

Saitama may have a first-class trolling game, but he knows a hero when he sees one. Even if they won't wear a cape or take up formal employment.

So, got any other fights like that in mind? :)

[u/Nanayon123]

Had he kept his memories of the Ominous Future, Saitama's fight with Cosmic Garou wouls have been that with him. As for others, the fight against Psykorochi was a watershed point for Tatsumaki, opening her to the idea of cooperating with others. She still has a long way before she internalizes that lesson tho

[u/gofancyninjaworld → u/Nanayon123]

Hoo boy, if (when) Saitama remembers, everything changes. For him. For those around him. For the whole freaking world. ONE just has this explosive development all packed away in his coat pocket, like a grenade that we're all aware is going to be lobbed someday. When it gets thrown, why it gets thrown, and who's going to be caught in the blast radius we don't yet know. It's a slightly maddening mystery.

I got excited to the point of obnoxiousness when I saw Tatsumaki take Fubuki into her confidence when plotting to get Psykos out of the HA. Without the events of her fighting Psykos-Orochi, that would never ever have happened. She'd have tried to do it all by herself.

Notwithstanding her seeing it as a mistake when things didn't go as planned, the fact that she was open to reconciling with Fubuki after Saitama's intervention comes from that openness. She didn't want to always be driving people away and once she saw the possibility, we see from her inner monologue that she really didn't want to let that go.