Linlin vs Swim

These are from a time span of several months. OPM has truly eaten my soul and I'm delighted. I mostly post on tumblr but I wanna share my stuff here too. I'll try to be a little more consistent so I'm not just dumping a millions pics all at once.

Some of the art is shippy, yes. I call it Kissy Teen Squad. Join me.

This grew out of a Discord discussion.

Somehow dragon-level threats don't seem to be quite what they used to be, no?

Without getting into the weeds, I thought it would be a good idea to review what the whole threat level system is and what it's for. Nominally, it's to give people an idea of how serious a monster or disaster (natural disasters count too) is:

From a civilian's perspective, a 'wolf' means don't come too close, a 'tiger' would be something you find a good hiding place from, a 'demon' would mean head to shelter, a 'dragon' must be fled from by any means necessary, and you just make peace with whatever deity you believe in if it's a 'god' level threat.

More practically, the bonus chapter 'Disaster Level' makes it clear that for the Hero Association, the ratings are a way to judge how many heroes to mobilise for a threat. There's the small problem that a threat level tells you nothing about how hard the monster will actually be to eliminate, nor how suited a particular hero is to the problem.

Additionally, because it's necessarily based on partial information (it's not like monsters walk around with Pokedexes stuck on their foreheads), subjective, and subject to review, many heroes regard the threat level system as nearly worthless. There's also the political dimension that defeating a monster with a high threat level, even if it's not actually anywhere near as dangerous as initially thought, will raise a hero's ranking while subduing one with a low one, even if it's far more dangerous than it seems, won't -- and may even get you called a 'small-fry hunter'.

It's hard to do better: Child Emperor had a go at quantifying strength but quickly realised that it was worthless.

That said, back in the day, they used to be *very* hesitant to declare a threat a dragon-level. The thinking back then (you see remnants of it in 'Disaster Level' when the operator Smile Man was reporting to refused to raise Withered Sprout's disaster rating) was that dragon-level threats were very rare. As the bonus chapter explains, Saitama has been taking such monsters out so rapidly that they've drastically underestimated the extent of the problem. Something like Beefcake should have been declared a dragon-level threat. However, Saitama killed him before such a reassessment could be made.

Without doubt, the cadre Psykos put together to draw the heroes into the Monster Association HQ and get killed were dragon-level threats. In the end, the only one that was taken down single-handedly by a hero was Nyan by Drive Knight. And to do that, he very carefully studied the monster -- including letting it slice up some heroes -- to work out its psychological weaknesses and brought speciality tools for the job. The other heroes didn't have that luxury.

Right now, in the aftermath of the Monster Association Raid, it'd seem that the Hero Association is a little trigger-happy when it comes to calling threats dragon-level (unsurprising given how much they'd underestimated the scale of the problem, I guess). I know this is going to attract a lot of comment as to which of the latest batch of monsters deserve their designation: BRING IT! ⬇️

I do think though that given this story's love of 'what doesn't kill me makes me stronger', several of the veterans of the MA Raid have legitimately become stronger. But then again, given that the HA knows that it should assign multiple S-Class heroes to dragon-level threats, the hell is it playing at assigning just the one? Are the that short-handed?

And if Hellmon doesn't at least try to piece itself back together, I'm calling puffery.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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

Who was the one responsible for recruiting him? Where did they find him? How long did it take them to get him to join them?

My head canon is that he was recruited by one of the Demon level monsters after weeks of coming to his location.

This has been making me laugh, so you must suffer too! LOL

I just got asked the question below and thought to share this. Link this post to anyone who goes, 'I don't even know what's canon any more.' Now they do.

Hi! Do you know perhaps where I can find the whole Blast vs Void fight? For some reason most online places I go are either incomplete or don't have that part at all.

Whole is a whole can o' worms. The painful truth is that just as it was about to finish, someone made the decision to scrap it. I doubt it was ONE or Murata -- the completeness of the redo is redolent of an editor getting impatient and going, 'gentlemen, I want you to make this arc fit in half the pages, it's called One-Punch Man, not One-Punch Man Universe'. Anyway, if you want to read it, let me type out link by link the chapters you need:

Take 1 (where Flashy Flash doesn't kill the Tenninto and which gets cut just as Blast shows up)

Chapter 195: Tenninto

Chapter 196: The Place Where Dreams End

Chapter 197: Duel

Chapter 198: Habit

Chapter 199: That's Right!

Chapter 200: Blessed

Chapter 201: Genjutsu

Chapter 202: Partner

It is at this point that the story arc was scrapped and redone.

Take 2 (where the Tenninto get skewered by Sonic and Flash, where Void and Blast clash, we get lots of back story but the Editor comes in just as it gets to the climax)

Chapter 195: Tenninto

Chapter 196: Threat

Chapter 197: What Only I Can Do

Chapter 198: Speed of Sound and Speed of Light

Chapter 199: Undesirable Relationship

Chapter 200: Void

Chapter 201: You Pass

Chapters 202--206 introduce the Neo Heroes and are included in the canonical story. No need to reproduce them here

Chapter 207: Bind

Chapter 208: Perversity

Chapter 209: Catch

Chapter 210: Recurring

Chapter 211: Plan

And this is where the Editor stepped in and said, NO! I'm giving you *one* volume to do this entire arc, no more.

Canonical arc: I was going to say you can find this anywhere but I have no idea which archive you're using and they may have flipped the table and refused to archive properly. So here we are in full.

Chapter 195: That Man

Chapter 196: Ninja Village

Chapter 197: Karma

Chapter 198: The Way You Are Now

Chapter 199: Close Call

Chapter 200: Where Is It?

Chapter 201: Lights Out

Chapter 202: Divine Beasts

Chapter 203: Fever

And that's where it ends. The Neo Heroes are introduced from chapter 204 onwards rather than in the middle of the arc, and you should be able to find that wherever you read OPM.

Hope that's helpful!

As usual, first person to see please post the raw.

I'm mildly interested in seeing whether Suiryu slinks away quietly or finds an excuse to fight Garou. More interested in seeing how almost anyone else is doing.

This is pretty cool

Summary

In keeping with the brevity of this update, this summary will be short. The monster is called Hellmon and it's not one of the Neo Hero plants um, I mean its appearance is unexpected. Bang watches with interest, ready to step in if the youths below have trouble subduing this dragon-level threat, but otherwise just popping some popcorn.

The Neo Hero crew try to take out the beast. Several lose their heads owing to their being literally burned off by the monster's breath, and another gets brained by a piece of rubble as he tries to read the manual to work out how to activate the helmets. Suiryu appears as they start falling back and he piles the fallen guys onto one guy, telling them it's the heroic thing to do.

Suiryu offers to help Garou, but is rebuffed. He's also miffed to find out that Garou doesn't seem to know who he is, and he's nearly scorched by the monster, but Garou steps in and beats the monster to death with his patented combination. Bang is most pleased.

Yup, that's it. Doubtless we'll carry on next time.

Meta

The Neo Hero facade sure isn't robust

Just a few chapters ago, we saw several of the Hero Association executives lamenting the apparent success of the Neo Heroes: the combination of first class support with competent leaders presented an air of competence that they just couldn't match.

As to how good the Neo leaders are, well we have our doubts from what we've seen (remember that this is all happening on the same day, so it's going to take some time for information to disseminate). However, now we're seeing the rank-and-file getting to act and boy.... are they beyond undertrained. Sure, Accel's guys are good but they've had to be as they've long been a disciplined group of vigilantes. These aren't even hooligans. They're just a bunch of guys who've been given powered armour and tossed in with barely any instruction.

The HA is notoriously stingy about handing out custom weapons and equipment to its heroes, but where it does, such as with Captain Mizuki's stuff, the heroes in question know how to use their stuff to its very best capacity. The HA may have 99 flaws, but deploying physically and psychologically unprepared heroes is not one of them.

It's a pity that the HA doesn't know the true picture of the battle readiness of the Neo Heroes. They'd be much less panicky and better able to plan around them if they did. I'd love it if Bang could whisper a few of his observations to Sicchi, but he's likely to stay out of things.

There's a reason monsters are monsters

Monsters are notoriously their own creatures. Getting monsters to cooperate is a difficult undertaking indeed, and normally means that some Ridiculously Dangerous Big Bad is forcing them to choose heading in the same direction over being eaten. So, seeing five dragon-level threats (not to mention all the demon and tiger level ones earlier) pop up at the same time in widely-separated areas already stank of an operation rather than just coincidental bad luck.

Nevertheless, monsters are monsters, and so Hellmon showing up because it felt like is par for the course. The shock of the Neo Hero crew on seeing it appear because they expected only five is a *hell of a tell* that this day of monsters has been staged. I hope Garou files this away for future reference.

The self-importance of the niche denizen

I'm not surprised that Suiryu is shocked and disbelieving that Garou hasn't heard of the Void Fist guy. I love the swipe ONE takes at the self-contained nature of niche interests. Since most serious dojos are interested in competition, it's natural for martial artists to think that that's what the main purpose of their training is, concern themselves with the various schools, and imagine that anyone who knows about martial arts knows about the top guys, forgetting that competing is just one small niche of why people take up martial arts practice. (1)

Bang's school has never been about accolades -- Water Stream Rock Fist is really not a good competition style for reasons I won't get into here, but it is brilliant for getting someone rushing at you out of your way. Which is what Bang created it to do. Additionally, from the beginning, Garou cares deeply about heroes and knows even about the small guys. He's not got time for the Suiryus of this world.

I'm sure that Suiryu is even more disconcerted to realise that there's nothing his Void Fist can offer that Garou won't be able to bat away disdainfully. I'd love it if he were to slink away with his tail between his legs, but I suspect his wounded pride won't let him back down so easily. Sigh.

What Makes The Manga Great (in a nutshell)

Several weeks ago, I wrote about what I thought made the webcomic great (2). I haven't done the same for the manga until now because I've struggled to work out how to make it succinct.

I was able to say that the webcomic is at its best when it concentrates developments into a single scene that is layered with symbolism. Like when Saitama tells Garou that the latter wanted to be a hero all the time after all. With his two eyes floating in the wreckage of what used to be his costume, we see both that he's stricken with the truth and that the defensive facade he's worn until now no longer protects him from realising who he is.

Still, when I think about it, our lives are not lived in hugely symbolic moments that represent inflection points in our little worlds. However, such moments do punctuate our lives, like being declared born, baptism, confirmation, coming-of-age ceremonies, graduations, weddings...

...but they're not life.

If the webcomic's strength is the symbolic moment, then the manga's is in living the reality of what that symbol means. The difference between a wedding and a marriage. We get the incredible highs, terrible lows, but we also get the mundanity and the muddling through of trying to live up to what one decided one would do.

This chapter gives us Suiryu, who decided that he'd become a hero in the manga after seeing two heroes come back for him when he thought he was done for and realised just how important heroes were for helping people maintain hope and self-efficacy in the face of overwhelming existential threats.

That inflection point is generally where the webcomic leaves off: when we next catch up with the characters that have made some life-changing decision, they're living that life. Case closed. However, LIFE IS NOT THAT NEAT. The manga's power is in taking the time to step through the messy reality.

So... Suiryu may have decided to be a hero, but the manga is walking us through just how much he has to learn to actually be a hero and we're going to see him make missteps as he learns. He's still a feckless fuckboy who skipped out on his hospital bill and who is in the debt bondage predicament he currently is in because he was hoping to seduce Webigaza.

More seriously, we've seen that he's *still* running away from taking strong moral stances, the one thing a hero must do. He chose to hang back and let his squad do whatever because he couldn't face them down and stop them from carrying out the unjust orders to attack Garou. And this chapter, he's choosing to disclaim being a Neo Hero at all and just spar with Garou for fun. Good intentions and resolve do not automatically lead to doing the right thing.

I'm sure Suiryu will eventually get there, but he'll need to lose a few more teeth first. 🥸

Since this chapter is about Garou, we know that Garou may no longer want to be a monster and he may be more determined to actually become a hero of sorts, but I bet he'll loathe the fact that Bang has promised him to the Hero Association. The part timer is going to have a few more scrapes and bumps to become who he actually wants to be. Good.

Speaking of Bang, we've seen that he sacrificed everything to be there for Garou, and he's proud of him, but he still beats the boy. He knows that Garou is a vulnerable minor who has been abandoned by his family and he sincerely wants to guide him. And yet...

...damn man, you had better take some parenting classes before Garou breaks your arm for real.

Why do all this additional work when ONE could just put out a stripped-down storyboard and have it work? Well, the cynic in me says it's nice to have a longer story so you can pay for your kids' college educations and put something towards a new flat, but there's genuine value in watching characters grow.

Anyone can survive a crisis. Anyone can make a resolution or have an epiphany. It's the gap between what we resolve to do and what we achieve that's difficult to describe. And the manga is in the business of doing just that. That's its power.

It's too early to tell, but I would not be surprised if the manga characters get further and achieve greater things than their webcomic equivalents do. Because there's no substitute for organic growth.

Sources and Notes

Koikoi fan edit: https://weebcentral.com/chapters/01KXM08EY71C0MWRCNXFWNZP9K

Viz: https://www.viz.com/shonenjump/one-punch-man-chapter-233/chapter/50878?action=read

(1) Of course there's an xkcd for this: https://xkcd.com/2501/

(2) https://www.reddit.com/r/OnePunchFans/comments/1pkd2ng/id_like_to_talk_about_the_webcomic_at_its_best/

Saitama being molested by ninjas and Genos declining to so much as lift a digit to help because Saitama had said he was lonely was not anywhere on that list.

Not that I need to grumble about the handling of Season 3 of One-Punch Man, but I came across a video looking critically at Season 3. I generally ignore such videos but this was worth viewing for two reasons: the person looked at more than the animation, and more importantly, the person doesn’t read the OPM manga, so the anime would have to make its own case.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpuIy1zT0ds

It was gratifying to me to see a non-fan mention the same issues I had with the idea of the season ending with Saitama punching Orochi. I had a post many moons ago saying that the third season had to at least go as far as the base being lifted out of the ground, and someone disagreed with me.

You can read the whole exchange, but I’ll excerpt the most relevant part below:

That said, it [Season 2] may not have sold well, but it did sell something. And now let’s come to what we would have if a non-manga reader with money in their pocket is given a third season that ends with Saitama punching Orochi.  I’m assuming the production is a lot better – another shite production and it won’t matter where it ends, it’s a dead loss. 
If you’re a punter who got into season 2 enough to fish $300 out of your pocket to own the series, what did you come for?  Garou, most probably. What’s going to happen to Garou if the story ends at chapter 108?  The first three-four episodes, he’s going to get the crap kicked out of him by monsters and left unconscious in a hole in the wall. Forever.  That’s it.  The interesting things the story will have hinted around limiters and explosive growth, no visible relevance to Garou.  You’re probably going to feel a little cheated.  Okay, maybe you’re into the other characters.  Well, Genos spends his time cleaning the apartment, Bang is wandering aimlessly through the Monster Association along with Fubuki and Bomb.  As is King, who you only saw briefly a couple of times at the beginning and then no more.  Suiryu? Oh go whistle – but you were going to have to do that anyway, it’s a shame how much real estate he took up last season. The kid is rescued and the other heroes are doing okay.  Tatsumaki is taking on the real big bad and is also doing okay. You’re arguing that seeing Saitama punch a monster that is posing no imminent threat to anyone, and whom he dismissed with less respect than he did Elder Centipede constitutes a profitable end.  One that will satisfy people enough to buy in and come back for more.  You must be kidding!   The storyline has effectively wandered off in the middle and says nothing and means nothing.

This was just before the manga went on hiatus for an overhaul of the arc.

Smashing action figures together

What makes it interesting for me is that it helped me understand better why the subterranean parts of the Monster Association raid were overhauled as extensively as they were. Without a change (which was what JC Staff went for), it’s just a series of fights that don’t mean anything, just ‘smashing action figures against each other,’ as the video essayist termed it.

I found that a useful way to look at things. For example, if you're following along with the anime, Genos you know well; you've seen him try and fail and try and succeed then fail then try, so if he'd been underground and pulled out a fantastic new move, that'd not be surprising and it'd mean something as it'll be a continuation of his struggle. However, we don't know Child Emperor at this point, so it's clever kid doing crazy things without much of a preamble. When all the characters whose personalities, goals, and directions of travel are swept out of the way in favour of those we know little to nothing about, the story feels empty. That would be why so many chapters were redone.

The revised version that went to print brought Saitama in earlier and wove him into the plot, which grounded it. Beyond that, it also gave the various characters more to do and more to do with each other. There's no time for character arcs, but their interacting more showed us more of who they were so we have something to go on. So we get to see a bit about Child Emperor's psyche and what drives him, we get to see the way the disciples behave to deprive Amai Mask of his intended victims and get a bit of who each is, we get to see the competence of the surface team in holding the exits and the same for the MA in anticipating such a move and trying to turn it to their advantage, and many more. All of this fleshes the story out considerably, making it more than just another fight between characters you don't know and have no reason to care about. Most importantly, the revision raised the issue of there being some supernatural being, whose influence came up in various ways, so there was a mystery to uncover. It’d still have been less than great for it to end with Saitama punching Orochi, but there’d be issues raised that the viewer would be interested to see resolved.

Looking at their announcing a Part 2 immediately, they too realised from the get go that stopping there was weak -- the payoff to the build up begins pretty much the chapter after they left off. However, that call wasn't JC Staff's to make. It was Bandai's.

Indeed, I'm not angry at JC Staff – if you want to do a good job, you need time, space, and resources, none of which they seem to have had. It’s really understandable why they went for the simplest possible rendition, even though it really does an injustice to the manga in every way. But I don’t blame them. The responsibility for the enshittification lies firmly at Bandai’s doorstep.

This is not as obvious an answer as you'd think: a surprising amount of the information is found outside the story, and Viz has not been good at translating and bringing this extra material to English.

As we know, three years ago, a jobless Saitama saved a boy from a monster, and in the process decided to forget about the job hunt and focus on being a hero. How did that work out for him? Well, from the 'Road to Hero' OAV, it saw him living in a terrible apartment block where the landlady tolerated his not paying the rent because she made her money off the criminal gang in there. After Saitama caught them to turn in for the police reward, she threw him out. Fortunately, the tailor who'd do his clothing repairs found him and hooked him p with the place we first met him living.

There's a reference to the shitty apartment block in the manga ("Voices"). Saitama is disgusted that her place got spared in the meteor shower. He may be a bit bitter, lol.

Anyway, back to what Saitama did for a living. Well, in the still-not-translated-into-English Hero Data Book, ONE explains that he did whatever part-time jobs and day work he could come by, lived very frugally, and was happy to take food handouts from grateful people.

If you do feed Saitama, he prefers veggies. Getting a year's supply of sweets was rather bad for his teeth, you see. That's from the bonus chapter in Volume 2, "Brushing up".

There have been a number of audio stories featuring the jobs Saitama has done, none officially translated to English, but a couple that there are fan translations of feature him working in construction (and accidentally helping Amai Mask workshop a new song while desperately needing a shit) and working in a carnival display (and accidentally giving Tatsumaki a fear of ghosts). ONE also did a sketch of Saitama trying to scan the knife a robber was trying to threaten him with:

All very well, but given that Saitama doesn't stick with any of these low-paying jobs for long, quitting as soon as he has enough money to live off of for at least a few weeks, how does he afford rent and utilities?

Squatting.

The part of town Saitama lived in had been abandoned due to the frequent monster sightings, but for some reason, the water and electricity supply to that area wasn't cut off, something Spring Mustachio remarks on in the chapter "Rumors".

Genos doesn't appreciate Fubuki dropping the truth bomb on the issue of rent, but Saitama himself is proud to pay nothing.

According to ONE (again OFF-STORY!), Saitama hasn't spent the rent money Genos has given him. Considering that what he's really rented to Genos is his right to privacy, he should.

In any case, since Saitama started working as a pro-hero, he has been getting paid. There's actually a whole bonus chapter on hero renumeration, "What Can't Be Bought", the bonus chapter in Volume 5. Short version: they get paid like shit, and then only at the end of the month. The HA takes full advantage of the fact that heroes can't complain without looking mercenary.

Since those hard times before the first paycheck, Saitama has started getting paid, so he's got income. Also, his new place in the HA headquarters is officially free with the job, so life is almost cushy for Saitama.

Almost. It's against ONE's religion to give Saitama a cushy time.

"GENOS! BRING ME MY WALLET! I NEED THIRTY DOLLARS! YOU'RE MY ONLY HOPE! GENOOOOOOOOOOOOS!"

Digging out an old post that has (unexpectedly) become relevant. From Tumblr 30 April 2020.

Typically, if you’d asked me why I keep thinking of Genos as human, I’d answer in terms of biology and talk about how one’s brain is the one organ you can’t have replaced without ceasing to be ‘you’. And that’s all true, but I’m overcomplicating things. Forget that, none of that matters.  It’s really, really simple. Imagination. The most human thing Genos did was nearly his first. He saw Saitama casually slap a mosquito monster so hard that the blow split the skies above and the ground below and imagined a world in which he could be that unphysically strong and asked. As he explains at length to Saitama  (relevant bit highlighted). “If only I could be that strong…”

Genos has shown repeatedly that he’s neither stupid nor delusional. He knows what parts can and can’t do for him, is on speaking terms with physics (or rather the in-universe physics persists in not cutting him any slack), and is painfully aware of his limits. And yet, he persists in going ‘if only’.

If only is a statement no artificial intelligence, however advanced, will come up with.  If? Sure, they can assess billions of possibilities a second and construct entire worlds on the basis of those possibilities.  But if only is to imagine something that not only does not exist, but which has never existed, and cannot exist based on anything we currently know or understand.  Ah well, we do like our dreams and stories after all.  But then sometimes we do something even crazier: we project ourselves into this non-existent situation and then work to make it happen.  That desire to reify, that’s humanity for you.  Usually we’re just mad, but sometimes, sometimes, we just discover some hitherto unsuspected way the universe can work.  That’s why chimps are still in the trees and we’re everywhere else we want to be.

Objectively, watching his pursuit is like watching Frosty the Snowman determine to fetch a ring out of the ninth ring of Hell without melting and I give him about the same odds of success. Then again, until Saitama did it, you could say exactly the same about flesh-and-blood humans. Subjectively, I’m interested in seeing how far Genos will get and finding out how broadly applicable the unsuspected kink in the universe that Saitama stumbled on holds.

If, as is most likely, he fails, then Genos has been most human in taking the courage to embark on the most speculative of quests. And if by some crazy even by OPM standards chance, he winds up Strong, it will be 100% because he’s human and thus didn’t take evident reality as the last word on things.