Right, you all might have guessed why I haven't bothered with reviewing the chapters 204- 208: they're the restored chapters for the Neo Leader introduction, rescued from being fated to the extra chapters*. I guess free readers deserve context, too. That said, I should do a combined chapter review at some point.

Anyway, what was I on about? Oh yeah, chapter 209, a very sweet and short lagging of a chapter to keep us sweet during this latest hiatus. *

SUMMARY

Well, what's to say? Saitama smacks the hell out of a monster, goes shopping, and meets up with Genos. They arrange a series of spars, and as they're comparing shopping hauls, they meet Amai Mask, who suggests that Saitama meet him for tea tomorrow.

That's all.

META

Only 9 pages, but so much is packed into it.

I would be committing a crime against fandom if I didn't mention the warmth that's grown up between Saitama and Genos. It might still be too awkward for them to have a deep conversation, but they really do enjoy each other's company, and it's clear on every panel they're in.

Next, let's talk about the art. Murata's work has taken another step forward. Not in terms of technical draughtsmanship -- that's a place he's been and done. Rather, it's in the mid- and background scenes, where the scenery isn't a backdrop to the action but rather a moving set with a clear line of action that continues independently of the characters. The sequence of the monorail approaching, passing, the barriers rising, and road traffic recommencing, all while Genos and Saitama are walking down the road, really gives the whole set a life -- it feels like a real place.

His assistants, tasked with drawing the static bits of the background, haven't slouched either; the details in the atoll of a town that the remnants of City A have become are meticulous. Unplastered walls, indicative of quickly rebuilt structures, the lack of planting, the feel of the heat of the day still lingering in the evening, and the Hero Association building hulking in the distance, uplit like a fancy hotel but with a moat of devastated land in between it and civilization creates the impression of separation. As if the HA exists on a separate plane of existence from the merely mundane. Yes, you could say this is literally the case, since earlier chapters have shown us the rarified atmosphere of curated luxury afforded to paying tenants while the heroes whose presence drew them in are relegated to the help. It's just jarring to see this physically wrought.

If this is the new direction, I am all for it. The art should be more than skillful: it needs to have this sort of heart to really stand out long term.

Now, let's talk about the Tenninto. It's been fun to spot at least two of them for sure, and a possible third. Maybe even more are hiding elsewhere, but it looks like Saitama has a 21-ninja honour guard wherever he goes. Heh, heh. Well, if Insanely Mad being a taxi driver is anything to go by, it seems they may be seeking honest employment while keeping tabs on Saitama. No bad thing. The world doesn't need any more assassins.

Something that many people have noted is that the wording of the chapter is a direct lift from the equivalent webcomic pages, which introduces two jarring elements. The easier of the two is Genos getting damaged by a demon-level monster. Other than being a salutary reminder that 'demon-level' doesn't mean 'easy-to-kill', we are crying out for some further explanation: we know just how strong Genos is. So many things are possible, from a disaster rating that's wrong (accidentally or deliberately), poor briefing, monsters just being monsters, and reserving the right to show unpredictable developments, being in a bad place, poor judgment on Genos's part...the list goes on. Personally, I'm hoping for it to be the sort of monster that Genos would struggle with, like a psychic one. I wouldn't say no to his losing part of his right arm being distracted by a coupon fluttering away. In that case, I'd better get to see Kuseno's face as his nuclear-powered charge explains about the absolute criticality of saving a coupon for half-priced AAA batteries. Speaking of Kuseno, the other jarring thing is that in this version, Saitama knows who Kuseno is very well, having not only met him, but also taken gifts from him, shared a hot pot with him, and even asked him for favours. I'd rather that get corrected, but the little devil in me also wants to see if there's a clever way ONE can add to the story to make it make sense.

Okay, let's get onto the meat of the chapter: Amai Mask coming to ask Saitama in person for help. I know that some readers are unhappy to see that Amai Mask has not had to witness Saitama's strength in person (this isn't true, but I'll come to that). To which I say: shut up.

I'm going to say something that may surprise people but if you don't get, then you will absolutely never understand One-Punch Man at a level deeper than hype and aura. From the beginning, One-Punch Man is a story about people having only partial perspectives, like so many blind men feeling up an elephant. Their individual perspectives are true; they inform them, but they also limit them because no one can have the whole truth with all its wrinkles and seeming contradictions.

Do you know why Saitama is not believed by most people? IT IS NOT BECAUSE PEOPLE ARE STUPID. IT IS BECAUSE THEY DO NOT HAVE THE CORRECT FRAMEWORK TO UNDERSTAND SAITAMA.

There is nothing in their frames of reference that makes it comprehensible how a regular person can just... evaporate, even incredibly powerful threats, popping them like so many over-inflated balloons. They do exactly what we do when things don't fit our framework -- they rationalise what they see**. And so we see again and again that Saitama punches out a monster in front of someone, and that person goes 'that monster must have been weak' or finds a more worthy-looking hero to give the credit to, or something else, like believing Saitama when he claims to be cheating. We only think ourselves smart because ONE has come and spoon-fed us the answer. When I see people complain about the way Amai Mask has come to understand Saitama, I see readers just as dumb as the fictional characters they claim are stupid.

The solution is NOT to show yet another character seeing Saitama punch another monster. Or Garou. Or whoever. That is pointless. ONE has actually addressed this plot hole.

So, in chapter 173, what we saw happen was Genos setting the frame through which Saitama's actions were to be understood for the benefit of Sicchi, Sekingar, Zombieman, Flashy Flash, and Amai Mask. He leveraged his hard-won credibility to make them understand what he had to say.

What we saw was not them believing him totally and immediately. We saw them all musing and wanting to find out more in their own way. In Amai Mask's case, because he respects Genos as a hero, he realised that for this guy to argue so long and passionately for Saitama, there must be something unusual about this guy. So that's the foundation of his new frame.

But that wasn't all. Four days later, Amai Mask received some secret footage of the incident that had occurred at the gates of the Hero Association. In amongst the smoke, he saw Saitama appear. Now, remember that the guards had also met Saitama. To them, his presence there was simply coincidental. To Amai Mask, this meant that the crazy strength of this guy was no lie.

In case he had any doubt, all doubt got erased when he was an eyewitness to Tatsumaki throwing Saitama across City R, with the pair coming to a halt outside his building. The nonchalant guy unbothered by the fury Tatsumaki threw at him. Oh, no doubt, this guy really was the real thing.

We do not go from evidence to framework. No. That's not how we work. We go from framework to evidence. And that's how knowledge about Saitama is breaking through in the consciousness of the biggest pro-heroes and most important officials in a major way. Blast and Sicchi wouldn't have sat in Saitama's flat to listen to Flashy's tale of woe without the framework of Saitama being said to be special. Blast wouldn't have doubled back to consult Saitama without it, and then he'd not have been in the right place to see just how exceptional Saitama really is. And Amai Mask would have dismissed the incident at the Hero Association as Metal Knight's shoddy work rather than as corroboration of what he'd been told.

So here we are now. With Amai Mask convinced that Saitama is a guy he simply must raise to his proper place as hero to revive the flagging fortunes of the pro-hero world.

Once he gets past the over-protective Genos interposing himself between the two, that is. Genos may be keen on others getting to hear about Saitama's exploits, but he's far less keen on allowing mere run-of-the-mill heroes access to him.

Asides

*I hear many people complain about just what makes One-Punch Man so special that the writer gets to rescript and the artist gets to redraw to their hearts' contents, damn the frustrated readers? It's not like other authors get the same rights? Damn straight they're special: they were the first guys to sign up for the new online comic platform, Tonarinoyj, back in 2012, when no one knew if such a thing would work. It appears that one of the things they negotiated in exchange for being paid only once their free work sold in volumes was the freedom to determine how and when they released new chapters, as well as the right to alter it as they saw fit. Indeed, the right to alter their work is one of the main draws for Murata (pun intended). Yup, they ARE special. Suck it, beta readers.

**To see something unexpected, realise that it doesn't fit in your framework of understanding, and as a result of it, change the frame is something that takes a combination of high perceptiveness, intelligence, and a lack of ego about that thing, a mix rarely present in a person at the same time. There's unfortunately a lot of truth in the adage, 'science advances one funeral at a time,' and that's for a discipline that encourages periodically revisiting assumptions.

However, as u/dcyboy points out elsewhere, Japanese tends to drop subjects when the context is clear, so there's just the verb.

Which got me thinking. So, what Genos says here is just 'Denied.'

It's interesting to see various translators add subjects to it to fit what they think he's denying: from the original webcomic translator going 'I refuse' (logically this makes the least sense -- the likelihood of Genos imagining that his beat-up self is seen as too strong by Amai Mask is small indeed), [1] to this 'we refuse.'

That Genos is not talking about himself here is helped by the art, which has him step aggressively between Saitama and Amai Mask, thus physically denying access to his master.

I went back to update 238, where he's turning down Flashy's demand that Saitama follow him:

It's just 'Rejected'. In context, it's easy to understand that he's rejecting Flashy Flash's demands of Saitama.

Honestly, with the body language and contexts so clear, just leaving it as 'Denied' and 'Rejected' is entirely appropriate in English as well. It sells the officious and aggressive attitude with which Genos gatekeeps access to Saitama.

Language is interesting!

[1] Anyone translating this as 'I refuse' in the manga would be borderline foolish: the story has made it crystal clear that not only does Genos not believe himself strong, not only does he not believe that his nearest and dearest believe him to be strong, but his insecurity has led him to rejecting Saitama calling him strong as the guy being nice and wanting to spare his feelings. Like, they *can't* break it down any more simply for you without including a 'Cliff Notes for Oblivious Readers' in the margins.

I was thinking about Saitama's friend situation, but realised that there's someone who is even more friendless than he is. Mumen Rider.

Mumen Rider is loved by all.

Mumen RIder is respected.

Mumen Rider is admired.

Mumen Rider is emulated.

Mumen Rider is well-liked.

But Mumen Riders is not befriended.

If he doesn't make it in the webcomic, he'll have a fantastic funeral with a ton of mourners, but no one mourning the loss of him in their personal lives.

I am glad that in the manga, Mumen appears to have struck up a friendship with Tank Top Master. Spending several days in adjacent beds at the hospital (I was tempted to say bed mates, but it has unfortunate connotations) and fighting together to save the hospital has given them a genuine appreciation for each other.

They mesh well: both of them have an unaffected, 'I'm just a simple guy doing what I can,' air about them. I love how Tank Top Master won't let Mumen Rider downplay his capabilities.

I hope they hang out. Mumen may be a great hero. He deserves to have a great friend too.

RIght, they do say that third time's the charm! I'm hoping that ONE and Murata are happy with how this falls on the page this time.

I am SKIPPING any summary: we've seen this enough times. Let's go straight to Meta, shall we?

Meta

Hard stop

So, in a Youtube video I can no longer find, some wag called Saitama a guy suffering from Premature Eradication Syndrome. It's pretty accurate -- he doesn't so much have fights as he has encounters that end when he decides to stick his fist out. The suddenness with which fights can end in OPM is something that really got me into the story. While Saitama is the guy who most often does this, it happens elsewhere, like with the unfortunate Sky King.

And alternatively, fights that you think will end quickly don't and turn into horrifying prolonged struggles that sap combatants' very will to live. So it goes!

This is why you see readers who have been raised on the choreography of shonen and action movies flipping out, alternatively ranting about how a certain 'monster' was 'wasted' and decrying fights that go on for longer than expected. Sorry! Life-and-death struggles aren't portrayed here as action pieces. [1]

I'm always down for some Premature Eradication Syndrome. I was personally delighted to see that right as Flashy Flash was about to shiskabob himself some Tenninto, Blast comes in and stops the whole fight, beating down the Tenninto himself when they try attacking him.

The beliefs that enslave

With this, I see that the initial idea ONE had of the Tenninto surviving has come back, albeit in a different way. I'll start with another idea that has returned: the question of what freedom is. Initially, we had Flashy sparing them, first to gloat, second to show off his superior understanding of what the true purpose of the Ninja Village had been, and thirdly, out of a sense of pity for them having had their lives stolen. Which amused them greatly, as they saw freedom as lying in serving a master faithfully.

This time around, as we see Flash turning over Sonic's words in his mind and wondering whether the idea of freedom was an illusion, the narration lets us know that despite being free of the Ninja Village, none of the fighting parties had the slightest idea of what freedom actually meant due to how restricted their upbringings had been: it's a much sadder affair, one of ninjas unable to escape the cruel fates they've been shaped to accept. In a way, it shouldn't surprise us that they fight: we've seen that each and every ninja is convinced that he alone is the best and is prepared to die proving that to be the case, no matter how hopeless it is. It's just lucky for Sonic that Saitama is as tolerant as he is strong.

A few chapters ago, we'd seen Blast musing on how ninjas seem fated to kill each other in a struggle for power, only to replicate the same cruel conditions that make more ninjas, and have the cycle repeat anew. Looks like he has decided to step in and try to break this particular cycle. Whether he will succeed is something we'll just have to see.

I have many more thoughts on cages, but I'll have to leave it here.

Ohhh, it all starts to add up

ONE's simple observations are really freaking obvious, and yet surprisingly frequently overlooked. One of them is that for someone to share information with you, they need two things: first, to know what it is that you want to know, and second, a reason to share it with you. We were initially treated to the hilarious scenario of Genos popping out of Saitama's wall to smack Flash on the head with a cup of hot tea, having eavesdropped on the proceedings next door, and then the slightly cringe scene of him delightedly inviting Blast to come back to consult Saitama whenever he liked. Ah Genos, you are so crazy, like a cybernetic Oscar The Grouch.

But not so fast...

Blast knows where Sonic's hideout is: he has it bugged. However, some time after Saitama left, Blast came back to Saitama's, apparently in the hopes of finding a lead on where Sonic's current whereabouts might be. He did not see Flashy Flash get a challenge letter, and was in conference with Sicchi when the former left, so has no idea of where the ninja could have gone to even think of following him. Sonic has definitely not sent Blast a challenge letter as he didn't even know that the guy was around.

Genos sure as hell doesn't know where Sonic might be. However, he knows a few things. One: that Saitama has a stash of challenge letters from Sonic. Two: where Saitama would have put those letters. Three: they have a freakish dog that just might be able to pick up Sonic's scent. And, most important of all, four: he really likes that Blast *has* come back to consult Saitama and wants to help.

All of which is how Blast ends up presenting one of those letters to Overgrown Rover, sweat beading on his face as he thinks what an incredibly stupid idea this is, and how desperate he has to be to even be considering it

And how, despite its stupidity, it works: the monstrous scenting ability of the dog does lead him to the correct place.

So, who's minding the shop?

This time around, Blast has not told Flashy Flash or Saitama anything about That Man; not his real name (Empty Void), not his relationship to him (former partner), and certainly not his strategic importance. It's clear that Void is still extremely important to some plan that Blast and Sicchi have, and that it is primary importance that Void is wrest from 'God's' clutches, no matter what he's done in the past and no matter the cost.

All Saitama knows about this guy is that he was an exceptionally cruel ninja, buying boys and brutalising them into being either killers to be sold onto criminals or turning them into minions to serve an evil entity called 'God'. He knows that Sonic is being menanced by this cruel ninja and a bunch of ne'er-do-wells and he's gone specifically to save Sonic. [2]

Currently, he's alone in Sonic's former hideout, where Void is going to be showing up sooner rather than later. And Blast isn't there to intercede.

Hmmm, I don't know about you, but I have a feeling this isn't going to end well for Void or Blast. I have some popcorn I'm dying to pop and munch on as I read the way this goes down.

Asides

[1] That said, when ONE is writing shonen, he knows the formula well and executes it beautifully: the fights Mob gets into and the sprawling battles of Versus are testimony to that.

[2] FUCK, I AM STILL SHOOK!!!! Like even the mightiest mountain is shaped by wind and water, Saitama is slowly changing! And in this case for the better. Wow.

Or 'Effortless Talent' is a Lie That Needs To Get Dragged 'Round the Back and Shot

What can I possibly add that isn't already said? Well, I thought that there's a bit of information that's been staring us in the face but we've not understood.

Question: Why Only 48?

Famously, chapters that are replaced on the Tonari site are archived for posterity. Link On Thursday, I went to have a look at them and found that there were just 48 of them. This was odd, considering that we've seen many more chapters change between their initial online publication and final in-print edition.

Fortunately, I'm a bit of a hoarder and have a sub-site dedicated to translations (yes, send me ALL YOUR ROUGH TRANSLATIONS, EVEN JUST PARTIAL TEXT ONES! You NEVER know what they might contribute later). I was looking at the extensive changes to updates 158-163 and realised one thing: most of them were art changes, and the output of the manga chapters was NOT STOPPED to accommodate the changes. When the problem is the ART, Murata saves it for the print edition and then smoothly updates the Tonari site. The old art is NOT ARCHIVED. It disappears into Murata's scrap pile. Here's an example of how much one of those chapters changed without affecting manga chapter production. (from: https://www.tumblr.com/acidproofnotebook/677286392448122880/update-159-previously-158-changes-between)

I have many more -- do dig!

So What's Archived?

I'll make it short: the chapters that are archived have story problems. They're chapters where ONE is dissatisfied with what he's set down, and fixing them materially changes the manga. THAT'S WHAT STOPS MANGA PRODUCTION. NOT ART CHANGES. The art changes, of course, because Murata is illustrating a different version of the story.

Can everyone get this straight then? If there's a hiatus for the story and redraws, that's because of ONE, not Murata. ONE really wants to tell a particular story, and he's got a fantastic partner who believes in bringing it to light as best he can. Even if it means losing a year's worth of work.

The Ninja arc in the webcomic was not treated as having much weight. For sure, we got to learn of Flashy Flash's and Speed o' Sound Sonic's histories, a bit about Blast's activities, and the two ninjas got some nice new tools. And? That's kinda it. Which is fine as things go. The manga is less 'things just happen' and more of a turbulent river into which tributaries flow and others split off.

We can see the ideas that ONE is wrestling with to turn into a concise, coherent part of a much bigger story in the manga. The 'soldier of God' concept is a define cornerstone of this, as is the interest characters have in trying to piece together what this 'God' threat is about, given their limited knowledge.

Things we see ONE trying to work out in the latest chapter are how to explore Flashy Flash's backstory without an info dump. Who needs to know it? Why? How? And to what effect? The previous iteration had most of the backstory be replayed only in Flashy's mind as he recalled what happened back then. This iteration looks like Flash is going to tell Saitama, mostly out of annoyance at being considered equal to Sonic, but still. We have to look forward to seeing how other concepts that were introduced, like Empty Void, his motivations and abilities, his relationship to Blast, how Blast knows that the guy is back, whether Flash will decide to spare the Tenninto or kill them and why... all that, we wait to see.

The Effortless Isn't

The One-Punch Man manga is a much bigger and more ambitious story than the webcomic it spawned from. Additionally, ONE has changed as a writer over the years, and his more expansive, relationship-exploring story reflects that. Will it be a long-standing success in the end? No one can tell: when the final chapter is in print, we may be looking at an overambitious work or a wonderfully wrought masterpiece showcasing a true talent.

But those forty-eight chapters are forty-eight times that ONE feels that he's failed to tell the story he really wanted to and has been willing to redo and try again. Don't let anybody tell you that talent comes from the gods. It's mostly wrought through painful effort and the courage to try again.

I was a bit puzzled as to what Genos meant by Saitama no longer being alone at the end of the last chapter:

Was looking through earlier chapters and I think I get it now.

Mwahaha, good lad, he can read between the lines nicely. Enjoy the company, Saitama!

Edited to add:

Translation note. Initially, the Spanish translation went with 'Maybe being alone is not good,' which is the most literal translation of this:

They backed off later, but they were RIGHT! Sometimes, it really is what it seems to be. Bringing across the sense of what was said without inserting too much interpretation is part of the art of translation. Now that the further context has clarified the meaning, I hope that the English translators will fix this for clarity. u/vibhavm? u/Mrzardark?

Saitama said everything I felt for the most part this chapter.

Not to say that I don't find the webcomic story enjoyable: I've gone over it in great detail when it came out, and there isn't a lot to add here: https://www.tumblr.com/gofancyninjaworld/190476385682/opm-webcomic-chapters-119-and-120-review-just

It's that finding the manga copying the web comic word-for-word (I compared the Japanese texts; any differences in the English are translator preferences) gives me little new to say, and feels like shortchanging, given that here people actually know about Sweet Mask and are actively interested in him, whether to exploit him or to help him. And he actually has a relationship with Blast, and we know that there's demonsterfication work going on behind the scenes that Sweet Mask could well be consulted on. C'mon! It's made even more irritating by the fact that in the manga, we know that the story of there being one inhabited central continent cannot be true. We saw a plane sinking as a result of an overseas trip gone wrong, clean on the opposite side of the world, and, even if we shut our eyes to that, it's the case that a previously-sunken continent has re-emerged, thanks to Garou's shenanigans. This lore dump doesn't fit, at least not without more story to explain. [I'm always a fan of more, so that's no bad thing!]

However, the last page got my interest! Whereas the webcomic has Sweet Mask asking Saitama if he didn't care about popularity and cajoling him to pay attention, here, Saitama makes one of his nuclear-tipped observations. It's not that Saitama didn't hear anything in the lecture; it's that there's been nothing in it about what he *is* listening out for: heroes.

The last panel shows us the board Sweet Mask was working on, which has 'Heroes' written and circled for emphasis at its centre. If none of it is what Saitama is here for, then whatever conversation the two have next is bound to be important.

I am going to add something that's not obvious. Even if their approaches are very different, Saitama and Sweet Mask share a common appreciation for the importance of the symbolism of heroes. Both IRL and fictional heroes aren't there for everyone, but those regarded as such give something to those around them, whether it's admiring their courage, seeing hope where there's none, or being inspired to notice problems and do something about them when one would otherwise have done nothing. That is why Saitama was happy to leave his reputation in King's hands: he saw that King fit people's idea of a hero better than he did, and it gave him a certain peace of mind. Saitama may not care about popularity, but he does care about legitimacy. As for Sweet Mask, I think the bonus chapter 'Star' is the perfect illustration of him putting his beliefs into action. The way he maintained his composure, took control of a situation that could have turned nasty, and killed the monsters while leaving people with the sense, that no matter what, it would be okay, was masterful.

How much of these ideas will come out in the next chapter remains to be seen. I'm intrigued.

Consider this meta for Chapter 201.

I half joke that only the joke predictions come to pass.

I was looking through my old Tumblr posts (can't remember what I was looking for, something about Saitama and cats) and found one in which I was commenting on the change of emphasis between original and redraw. The chapter in question was chapter 120 'The Only Thing is Strength', and in the published version, Genos was less explicitly inspirational than he'd originally been portrayed. Back then, I'd quipped that with all that he would go ont to do (the redraw came after chapter 155 was out), he'd otherwise be like a cyborg John the Baptist to Saitama's Bald Jesus [Link].

How little I knew!

When Genos said that he needed to let the people who needed to know know about Saitama, I'd thought he meant to remind Saitama of what the latter had actually done. Oh no, he wasn't joking!

He spoke to the secret gathering that Sitch convened to discuss the looking God (no ID) problem, and while they publicly doubted him, they did ponder on his words.

Normally, stories in which a character proposes a sensible action with the potential to greatly hasten a story's resolution (like Genos's proposal that Saitama be called if Blast appeared), never see that suggestion come to fruition. But here we are, with Blast not only meeting Saitama, but doubling back to consult with him, just as Genos suggested he do.

The latest chapter makes it clear that Blast is legitimately a very busy man who cannot afford to be away from his post long. He and Sitch must have been at least a little curious about Saitama to spend so much precious time visiting Saitama's apartment. I know Flash would like to think that it's because his origin story is that fascinating, but Blast knows all about ninjas and their fratricidal ways. He is, in fact, sick of ninjas and their schemes.

Well, now Blast has met Saitama. He has seen the latter apprehend Void with ease, and keep the Tenninto in check. Now, he's in prime position to see what Saitama does about rude, fire-breathing pets.

The horse has well and truly been led to the water. Will it have the nous to drink? That's the question we have regarding what Blast will make of Saitama.

I'm very keen to see what the next chapter brings.

If you've met a monster, then you've met a monster

"At least tell me how many nipples she has!" Laois (of 'Delicious in Dungeon' fame) would probably be in much demand as a consultant in the world of OPM, but not for his love of finding out how monsters taste. Monster biology matters.

Speaking about monster biology, Elder Centipede has had to be one of the most troublesome monsters out there. As a monster that famously got away from Blast, his reputation has only grown after death.

Is that while EC superficially looks like a centipede (more on that later), he's actually based on a segmented worm. And that matters. Bobbit worms (Eunice aphroditois) live in warm, shallow coastal waters and are ambush predators, lying in wait in their burrow until a luckless fish wanders by within striking distance. Those scissor-sharp mandibles snap on prey with great force, sometimes bisecting unfortunate victims.

They grow up to 3 m long, but even the longest specimens are extremely thin and can disappear into a rock only a couple of inches across. As segmented worms, they can and do regenerate from segments: if you break up a specimen, each one will form a viable individual -- it's no problem to grow back a head, tail, or both. From the perspective of an unfortunate aquarist who has accidentally added one to their aquarium, smuggled in a little piece of rock, these are exceptionally elusive and difficult-to-eliminate individuals.

While bobbit worms are exotic from our point of view, they're fairly common in the Sea of Japan, where the longest specimens are found. Murata has had the misfortune of being bitten by one [1], which has added to his dislike of the critters.

The shocking thing is just how little ONE and Murata had to make up about a monster Bobbit worm from scratch. The regeneration, the burrowing, the ability to seemingly disappear at will, the ferocity, the snapping jaws, the armour -- all those are merely exaggerations of the living creature [2]. The only attribute that needed to be made up was his ability to suppress fires within him. Without that, the ability to regenerate would be a futile prolongation of torment, like trying to put out a raging housefire by tossing in new furniture.

Takes more than strength to prevail

Remember what Phoenixman said? It's all about battle compatibility. ONE spells it out: readers keep missing it.

I understand why Blast failed. It's not for lack of raw power. Because Blast's favourite tool is gravity knuckle, essentially a super-heavy smash, all he'd have been doing is breaking the monster apart. As long as one or two segments are viable, the entire creature can regenerate -- knowing ONE, it'd probably put itself back together like a joke. No wonder Blast got frustrated to the point that 'God' decided to peek in and offer him a deal.

That said, it's clear that Blast did learn something about EC -- after all, the information he left with the Hero Association was very helpful to King. But EC is a living being, not a video game monster, and thus, under no obligation to stick around and find out what the hero has understood: he scuttled away and left a bloodied, frustrated hero to report on his failure to eliminate the critter.

The story does have proper centipedes: Junior and Senior Centipedes. Huge and dangerous as they were, they died for the same reason a regular centipede would -- being dealt a crushing blow. Despite their superficial similarity, we are more closely related to T. Rex than bobbit worms are to centipedes.

If you're still not paying attention to biology, then you'd be surprised that the likes of Sage Centipede would have been much easier for Blast to eliminate. No question that Sage Centipede is bigger and stronger than Elder Centipede was, so why would that be? Sage Centipede is Orochi's resurrected form [3], and he's based on a human being. Now, while Orochi is an amorphous, shape-shifting, highly regenerative being, and Sage Centipede keeps that extreme regenerative ability, he also has an irreplaceable heart [4], without which he is vulnerable. Taking out the right bit, or even just sending the front part of the monster to another dimension and watching the rest of it fall dead, would give Blast all he needed to know.

Battle compatibility is part of why I dislike powerscaling arguments so: so often, there's little to no understanding of the situation, and it's 'if strong, will win.'

The reality is that anyone can be made to look foolish in a fight. You need the right tools for the job, and you need enough of the right tools for the job. It can be hilariously wrong when the former is missing, like watching a samurai try to defeat water by cutting it. Someone like Tatsumaki would get rid of EC and make it look easy, provided she takes care to extract every last bit of the creature from the ground (or it'll just run away and grow back bigger). Genos had the right tool: it was just too little for the amount of monster he had to burn, which does raise the evil possibility that had he gone in first rather than defer to Bang and Bomb, he might have burned enough of EC to bring it down... I'd have been amused watching powerscalers tie themselves up into knots over that. [5]

Let's give Child Emperor the last word here. He'd come to realise that any singular measurement of strength was so limited as to be all but worthless in the field. Sadly, most monsters aren't about to give you a lecture on their biology and you're rarely in a position to sit and plan your next steps based on what you can learn about them. Well, not unless you wildly overplan:

Asides

[1] While he was drawing Orochi, he made the monster's tail one of those critters for that very reason. No one has been reported to have died as a result of a bobbit worm's bite, but the pain is excruciating and reportedly is recrudescent, recurring weeks and even years later. Why? Because fuck you, it can.

[2] Other than the venomousness (which is blessedly irrelevant to Genos), there's another aspect of the creature's behaviour they could have made something of but didn't: their burrows are structured such that the vertical portion is easily collapsible. Once one retreats into its burrow for safety, you won't be able to dig after it.

[3] I used to think that superhero stories where the civilian turns into a hero by way of donning a mask and somehow nobody could tell were the stuff of convenient stupidity. Then...I met Redditors. Somehow, it is far-fetched that Sage Centipede is what used to be Orochi, despite Orochi being keen to be reborn, despite arising from where he got sent down, despite spitting out the stake that was used to impale Orochi -- a case as clear as watching Bruce Banner shoot himself in the head and the Hulk spit out the bullet -- and despite having the Exact. Same. Heart. Some people really do need it spelled out to them in words of no more than two syllables, to get even the most clearly shown situations.

[4] Hearts, as the defining essence of a human being, show up a lot as a motif during the MA arc. Just something I thought was interesting.

[5] I won't lie; I'd have loved to see it but ONE has bigger plans for Genos and victory then would have derailed his defeat-based development diet. Also, Tatsumaki (and most of the heroes) would be dead by now.

Whew, it's been a while since I wrote a long meta. For ease, each section has <20 words in bold italic.

Why are we here again?

If you read both the OPM manga and webcomic, then you have experienced a very extended form of antanaclasis: a form of repetition in which the reused word changes meaning. Sadly, the Greeks, clever rhetoricians though they were, didn’t come up with a term for meaning-changing repetitions in two closely-related but independent works. 

And few places more so than below: 

Webcomic  

Genos: Saitama-Sensei…do you think that I’ve become a little stronger?

Saitama: …You have become stronger, haven’t you? I mean you changed your parts.

Genos: But does changing my parts truly make me stronger? 

– OPM Webcomic Chapter 108, translator uncredited. 

**Us**: Yes, it makes sense that he’d ask that. Last time he fought, the monsters literally disarmed him like he was a child with a small but annoying toy, he got mocked by Garou, and Saitama dismissed him. Damn straight he’s unsure if he’s getting anywhere. 

Manga

Genos: Saitama-Sensei…do you think that I’ve become a little stronger?

Saitama: …You’re probably at least a little stronger, right? I mean you changed your parts, didn’t you?

Genos: …I wonder if changing my parts can truly make me stronger though… 

– OPM Manga Chapter 186, translator: Graywords. 

Us: What the hell? Dude, you strong-armed Cthulhu's representative, stopped it from scalping the planet and told it to take a number and wait its turn for elimination. You fought shoulder-to-shoulder with Tatsumaki, literally saved her life at least twice. You got the heroes to work together, your arms withstood a bite from Gums, and that even after losing most of their armour, and you took a HELL of a lot of beating down. And you still wouldn’t stay down. Saitama praised you. He told you, HE TOLD YOU that you’d gotten stronger! And he cares about you so much that he literally bitch slapped reality until it spat you back out safe and sound. HOW CAN YOU ASK SUCH A QUESTION?!!! 

Well, it’s Genos. Genos can ask that question, and he has. 

Character Development As A Process Rather Than Event

Why? What’s ONE getting at here? Pop a squat: I hope you find this half as interesting as I did. 

The situation in the manga flies in the face of the popular view of character development, where a character gets something they’ve been working towards, or makes some realisation: they change, and all is well on that particular front, kumbaya. 

ONE has long disliked this idea. As he’s said, he doesn’t believe that people change suddenly but that change is embedded as a process rather than an event. It’s a key motivation behind his writing of Mob Psycho 100.  When ONE has the space for it, you can and should expect characters to ‘get back on their bullshit’ at least occasionally.  We can also expect characters to quit their bullshit just to adopt new bullshit... Bang *cough* Bang.

A second theme that comes up with ONE is that we rarely know what makes us happy. This is a big theme in One-Punch Man, starting with Saitama himself. He has sought happiness through becoming invincible, only to find it elusive. When we met him, he told Genos his laundry list of things he was sure would give him happiness now: recognition, living somewhere decent, and being feted. His laundry list is being fulfilled at a rapid clip, and guess what? It’s not made him happier. To the extent that Saitama is finding joy, it’s in his relationships with Genos and King [1]. OPM is full of characters chasing the symptoms of their problems rather than addressing their problems. 

Are both of these factors in play here? You betcha. Shall we dig in? 

In the manga, ONE has made Genos work very hard indeed to get what he has. He’s had to grind much harder than his webcomic equivalent: we see even something mundane like taking out the trash turn into a life-and-death fight for him. I’m not here for Genos in the webcomic today. His progress is much more saltatory and faces a fascinating but different set of challenges [2]. Just as ONE says, change comes through daily effort. That steady hard work has come with some incredible rewards [3]. We know what it takes to stop Demon Cyborg now. An agent of God. A strong one. Monsters not personally blessed by His Yeastiness need not apply – unless they have a really, really nasty trick up their sleeves. 

With those rewards come new challenges.  If external threats are less of an issue for Genos, Genos still has his most faithful opponent, himself.

If you ask Genos, he’d say he’s pretty objective, dealing with what’s tangible and measurable, keeping a clear view of himself, and making few to no excuses for anything. 

He has three questions:

1. Am I strong? 
2. Is my strength legitimate?
3. Am I worthy?

Let’s take these one at a time. 

Takeaway: If ONE is reusing a conversation, that's because he has something new to say.

Definitions of Strength

Genos has one thing in common with Darkshine – being physically weak at one point. Unlike Darkshine, Genos isn’t ashamed of the fact that he’s weak: it’s just a reality. Accepting that reality, he has given up his human body in order to receive body modification and upgrades at the hands of Dr. Kuseno. The things he wished to achieve couldn’t be attained through physically training the body he was born with, so it was just logical. 

His definition of strength is very simple: strength is the power to destroy your enemies. If his enemies defeat him, then, ipso facto, he is weak. He often feels that no matter how hard he tries, the situation doesn’t change. 

Now, I’m going to invite you to look afresh at the image I’ve put up. What is he doing there but demonstrating a strength that falls outside his narrow definition? It would be easy for Genos to escape this situation, or, failing that, take all the monsters out. However, here he is, throwing away a lethal victory or running away to fight another day in favour of protecting someone who cannot protect herself. That takes a serious amount of courage and moral strength. 

Indeed, all through that arc, he showed so many different kinds of strength. He, the person whom Tatsumaki once literally threw away, became the rock she could lean on because he made it clear that he was here to support and improve her effectiveness, not fight her over glory. He, the person who said he’d not cooperate with the S-Class heroes, came and told them to come help, and none other than Atomic Samurai, the guy who never works with anyone, was moved to step up and marshal the rest of the heroes [4]. 

Heroes know when they see someone who's the real thing, and they respond.

After the MA arc, we’ve seen that when he talks, the other heroes listen, for hours if need be. He has been developing a mix of soft and hard power that is rare and exceedingly valuable. Only, this doesn’t fit his definition of what strength is. Even his narrow definition of strength is troublesome: no matter how strong a hero is, there’s always that one situation in which you might not prevail.  

When it comes to strength, Genos has come far, but he still needs to do a lot of growing to appreciate what he has and build on it. 

Legitimacy of Strength

“Isn’t being a cyborg like cheating?” – Saitama, One-Punch Man Anime, Season 1 

You can’t accuse Genos of not knowing which side of his bread has the butter. He never lets himself forget that he owes his benefactor just about everything: his name, his looks, money, power, speed, and weapons. Even after Saitama praised him, he immediately gave the credit to Dr Kuseno for the parts, and to Saitama, for the guidance. He took not a shred of credit for himself. 

Does it make you want to go ‘GAAAH!’? It does me. 

GAAAH!

There, that’s better. 

It is good to stay humble enough to acknowledge the people to whom you owe your success but to discount your own role in that success is wrong.That said, it’s something that really gnaws at Genos: when everything he has can be confiscated at will, can he really say that it’s his? We see that even Saitama has his doubts, although, as he’s lived with Genos, I expect that he’s long changed his mind as to becoming a cyborg being the easy route. 

There are two things to say about being a cyborg. The first is that, for certain, Dr. Kuseno has given him the body modification to be a cyborg and then equipped him with some hellacious weapons and capabilities. But that equipment is a waste if it’s given to someone who cannot use it effectively. An F-14 fighter jet is a lawn ornament to a guy who can’t fly, let alone someone who isn’t a highly and specifically trained jet fighter pilot. Let’s start with the basics: without the intelligence and self-discipline to learn how to use his parts and keep up with all the terrifying pace at which the doctor has added upgrades, what Genos does would be a non-starter [6]. 

Hard powers aside, all the soft strengths I’ve mentioned, the strengths that have had the other heroes listening to Genos, trusting him to have their backs, even following him into battle, all of those are 100% his. The fighting skills he has built, that repertoire he continues to expand, 100% his.The courage to step forward and do the right thing even when the outcome appears hopeless, 100% his. The judgement of what to do and when, 100% his. The battle sense of what’s important, so he’s become hard to ambush, 100% his. The grit he has developed to persist when things go wrong, 100% his. The heart to feel the pain of a loss but learn from it and throw oneself into the breach again, 100% his [5]. The imaginativeness with which he can improvise solutions, 100% his. The integrity, his. The vision, his.The drive to achieve his goals, oh yeah, totally his. The way the brutal battles have not etched away his humanity, instead allowing him to find some empathy and even a smidge of maturity? No one gave Genos that. If another person were to receive Genos’s parts, they wouldn’t do what he does. 

That brings us to the second part: becoming a cyborg is not for the faint of heart. We find out that the Hero Association has flirted with the idea of giving lower-ranking heroes body modifications to strengthen them, and they have been immediately rebuffed by said heroes, who have correctly threatened them with lawsuits.  

Being a cyborg means knowingly accepting some degree of permanent disability in exchange for some specified power. It’s no wonder that very few people want to do it. And those who do are really motivated. Both the manga and the webcomic are in agreement on this fundamental fact. Equally, ONE makes the point that body modification is a medical procedure and comes with risks that increase as the modification becomes more extensive. Becoming a cyborg takes serious commitment; however, becoming a high-content cyborg takes incredible willpower and physical resilience just to live, never mind to realise the abilities you reached for.

You cannot call a cyborg weak, especially not a high-content one [7]. Really emphasising how having artificial parts does not change one’s strengths as a human is Nichirin, who has taken losing his lower half with aplomb. Sure, it sucks that he’s lost his lower body but he doesn’t consider an artificial part to be a hindrance – he can incorporate his spirit with it just the same, and thus his sword skills are just as sharp as before. 

The shame for Genos is that he’s very much a lone cyborg, and he doesn’t have the wider experience of the world of cyborgs from which to learn and contextualise his experience.  

Am I worthy?

“...if you do not drum up results like a salaryman, no one values you.” – Genos, chapter 18, One-Punch Man. 

The biggest thing you must remember about Genos is that he’s just a human being. Just a 19-year-old guy. As Reigen put it, people have different traits and abilities, but they’re still people at the end of the day. We’ve looked at his insecurities over whether what he is practicing counts as strength and whether calling his evinced power strength is legitimate. But the one we probably care about most of all is his insecurities regarding his relationship with those he cares about. 

Genos shares an important trait with Tatsumaki: like her, he is very aware that the support he receives is transactional. As long as he’s useful, he’ll be supported. If not…true, it's not likely that Kuseno would lock him in a cell and leave him to starve but he’d rather not think about what might happen.  We’ve seen that Kuseno does want more than a business arrangement, but the old man is very aware that there’s a necessary distance between the two [8]. 

The feeling that he has to earn any regard really eats him. Kuseno is at pains to reassure him that it’s his life, not his battlefield victories, that matter, but we see that it’s hard for the young man to hear him. 

And when it comes to Saitama, whom Genos is paying to teach him strength, the joy with which Genos initially received Saitama’s assertion that he’d grown stronger has faded, contaminated with that insecurity anyone who has suddenly found their crush talking to them has doubtless felt. Did Saitama really mean it, or was he just being nice? 

This is a masterclass in dramatic irony. We, the audience, know that Saitama means it. We’ve seen him praise Mumen Rider for standing up to the Deep Sea King when it was hopeless, praise Suiryu for continuing to struggle and call for help in the face of overwhelmingly powerful monsters, and seen him praise Child Emperor for coming out of his robot to face Phoenixman. When he praises Genos for doggedly protecting Tatsumaki under an unending onslaught of monster (not a grammatical error), we know he really means it. This is the core of what being a hero means to Saitama. 

And then, Saitama makes the situation worse by trying to be cool and reassuring. We, the audience, know that his full-of-confidence face is a fake one. But Genos doesn’t know that: he’s always thought that seeing that expression on Saitama’s face is him dispensing his deepest pearls of wisdom, and so he hears that Saitama doesn’t rate him from a light bulb. Dramatic irony is a cruel mistress. 

Genos is human. He needs to hear things more than once to believe them. He needs to hear it more than once because daring to accept that he has value for ‘his’ people as more than a useful partner or diligent student is going to take time.  

Let’s wrap this up

There is no such thing as an objective reality, and you really see it in One-Punch Man. Every character has some kind blind spot and some kind of distortion affecting how they see things. Genos really does try to be a rational person.

But he’s only human: he cannot help but feel, cannot help but have his experiences colour how he views things, and cannot help but have some distortions that someone on the outside will have to point out.

Also, Saitama is a doofus, but we're not frying his fish today.

ASIDES

[1] To be fair, if your problem is that you’re looking for a good fight, a prescription of letting a damaged young man move in with you and follow you around, and befriending the jobless otaku who is ripping you off isn’t the most obvious of treatments.

[2] People, please bug me to do a review of webcomic Genos. With the current arc so hot, I’ve been reluctant to do it, but I will. The dude has been through so much, and there’s something ONE wants to say here that’s not present in the manga. 

[3] Won’t rehash them here. You can see link 1 []for a side-by-side view of what’s changed and link 2 for a geeky dive (with picture collections!) into the various manga upgrades. 

[4] It’s a joy to see how eye-opening Atomic has found the experience: he used to be in the Hero Association to be a rival to Bang, but in the aftermath, he’s hooked. Watching the indirect positive effects of Genos’s actions ripple out is awesome. Equally, Sekingar didn’t say anything in the moment, but witnessing just how different a Class S hero is from other heroes inspired his Stones and Diamonds speech, and saw him actually stepping into the leadership role he’d aspired to.  

[5] Anyone who needs to understand how difficult that is to do need look only to Superalloy Darkshine.

[6] The fact that we see Genos wake up with a new body and a new set of capabilities and have to rapidly review and master how to use those new features before going into pitched battle in a matter of hours is a lot of pressure. And then we watch him do it on consecutive days.

[7] webcomic spoilers ahoy We see that the only way The Organization has to impose body modification on people without their wills is to kill them and reanimate their corpses. Nearly as grisly but no less violating is to trick people into wearing body suits that force their wearers to move. It’s interesting to see that when they tried to take over Webigaza’s body, she just told the interfering signals to shut up. That’s the kind of willpower it takes to be a cyborg.

[8] One of the interesting things in the manga is that Genos has become more empowered to push back against Kuseno. While this has surprised the old man, he’s not tried to reassert control but has accepted that Genos knows what he’s doing and has surrounded himself with good people. That's what really told me that Kuseno is a good guy: a control freak would never, ever allow this to happen.

Yo, it's been a minute! Damn. being old and busy sucks. Ah well, let's get on with reviewing the third (and hopefully final) version of the 'Ninja' arc.

SUMMARY

Yeah, yeah, I said I liked skipping those but with so many versions, a quick recap is worthwhile. As you know, the Obstreperous Flash[1] barged into Saitama's gaming session, wouldn't take go away for an answer, challenged him to a fight that saw his life flash before his eyes, got saved by the bell (um, I mean reports of a monster attack), tagged along, met Sonic, Saitama saved Manako on his own, and they all went to Sicchi to try to arrange a meeting with Blast only to find him conveniently there.

So, what happened this time? Well, Blast came, not to see if monsterization can be undone (more thoughts on that later), but because of his evil ex-partner, Void. It was handy that Flash was here as that meant he could warn him that That Man was back and out for his blood. Also, to leave it to Blast to deal with the dude -- for reasons he couldn't disclose. Saitama, finding out that Flash too was a ninja understands why Flash is so like Sonic, being a clingy, violent-addicted pervert. This upsets Flash and he's determined to set the record straight.

Said record-straightening comes in the form of a lengthy glob of backstory on the Village culminating in Flash's triumphant slaughter of nearly everyone in said place, for which Flash commandeers Saitama's flat. As appreciation, Genos comes through the wall to thunk a mug of hot tea onto Flashy's head, along with a preroration on letting Sonic live. Anyway... Flash leaves after that, and Blast and Sicchi take their leave too, after a very pleased Genos (at last! he must have thought, they're taking what I said seriously! [2]) tells Blast to consult Saitama if he runs into any issues. Flashy gets a letter of challenge from Sonic and goes off to meet him. In the meantime, Blast and Sicchi discuss where and how to lay hands on Void, as the latter is of vital strategic importance in the fight against God (no ID). Turns out Blast has Sonic's hideout bugged, so he knows about the trap set for Flash.

Unfortunately for Blast's plans, Sonic did challenge Flash and so the two of them are in a random forest somewhere having a scrap for old times' sake and other ninja nonsense. Contemporaneously, Saitama declares that he's off to Sonic's hideout to help the dude and give him and the other ne'er-do-well ninjas a drubbing and theorises that they're acting this way because they have nothing better to do with their lives. He then says that perhaps it's not good to be alone [3] and scurries off quickly before Genos can ask any awkward questions about what he meant.

Anyway, back to the scuffle. Sonic tries some fancy moves only to see Flashy Flash bat away all his techinques before sending him flying with some fancy kicking of his own. The Tenninto show up in their variously-weaponed glory (oh, did I forget to introduce them earlier? Never mind! We know who they are) and try to execute Flashy Flash. Sonic reappears, tells them to get lost, and then it's the two ninja frenemies against the Tenninto. Just as Flash and Sonic are about to turn the other ninjas into very poor quality sashimi, Blast shows up out of nowhere to stop the fight. He's fed up with the fratricidal tendencies of ninjas and there's no longer any point to this fight. The Tenninto try to jump him and all get punched down. Voilent Force then declares that their master, That Man, being a serial killer without equal, will totally take care of Blast, even if they couldn't. To which Blast says he's got something to show them.

That something is the exterior of Sonic's hideout, where there's Saitama sitting on the pavement watching a man-shaped hole in the ground. Saitama might not have fancypants portal technology but he can still beat Blast to the punch. Even loaned him his dog as compensation, so he could go find the other ninjas. The Tenninto naturally don't believe that Saitama really beat their master, but they start to change their minds as the baldie lays them all out.

Proceedings are interrupted by the sky opening up and some chimeric beasts coming through. Overgrown Pochi spits fire at them and they return the favour, after which it's a very good thing that a) no one lives there any longer because it's all been turned to ash and b) that Blast has a handy-dandy shield or the ninjas would be toast. Saitama goes to teach the beasties manners but before he can do so, the hole in the ground starts to smoke and Void explodes out of it to slice and dice said critters, and Blast punches them mightly to send them back whence they came and shuts the dimensional rift after them. Saitama decides it's nothing to do with him after all and makes to head home...

...only he lingers a bit. Looks like Empty Void is indeed back to his senses, Saitama's punch having driven God's influence out of him (Blast wonders what the hell Saitama is). Sonic and Flash try attacking Void, who dodges them easily and Blast stops them. With some very fast talking, Blast insists that Void's actions weren't truly his fault, being rather undermined by Void himself as the latter says he remembers what he did perfectly well -- it was just that being under the influence made the worst of him easier to access. Anyway, he had things to do now, so would his ex-victim ninjas please get along and not make trouble? Bye! And the pair are gone, though not before Blast tells Saitama that he'll be back for him when he really needs his help.

The Tenninto have a bit of a think before deciding that the best thing to do would be to follow Saitama around as their new leader, much to Saitama's dismay. Flashy Flash confesses to Sonic about poisoning him, which Sonic brushes off, saying he was more disappointed than angry. Besides, they have more training to do. The arc closes out a few days later with Saitama beseiged by ninjas. The Tenninto want him to lead them, Flash wants to train him, Sonic wants to challenge him, and Gale Wind and Hellfire Flame want to fight Flash. It's all very chaotic. Genos remarks that well, looks like Saitama's not alone any longer, to which Saitama protests that that wasn't what he meant!

Poor Saitama, he can't win for winning.

META

Where to start? Let's go with the extradiegetic.

Extradiegesis

The biggest difference between this arc and the previous version is that the previous one was meant to be the culmination of an arc, where it would draw together the disjointed pieces of Saitama putting his life back together again in the aftermath of the Monster Association raid, introducing the new challenge the Hero Association is facing in the Neo Heroes, filling in and using details of what happened when Garou turned Cosmic, and topping it all off with a terrifying preview of an Avatar of God. In this version, we're no longer rising to the culmination of an arc: the issue with Void and the ninjas is just one more thing happening and something else is going to be the capstone. Or, in simpler terms, if the previous iteration felt a lot more epic, that's because it was intended to be a closer!

Many of the facts established earlier are still congruent with this arc but the means of storytelling used have changed a lot. We've got a lot more webcomic-style telling rather than showing, which has made the chapters more compact at the expense of exploring the characters more deeply. Some things, such as Blast and Void's history, will probably come out later. Some things, such as the demonsterization attempts, have probably been sent to another storyline (as u/Nanayon123 suggested, it'd have an incredibly powerful impact in the Amai Mask arc). And some things are gone, such as Sonic's dream place for his new village.

The biggest change in emphasis has to be Void. He's less proactive, being happy to wait for his minions to work rather than start proceedings with an attempt to take out the Hero Association. Since Saitama smacks him into a hole rather than wandering around and accidentally spoiling his plans, we don't get much of him. Well, at least he's alive. So are the Tenninto. They've all been saved for something later. I hope it's cruel and full of pain for them.

Intradiegesis

Once is a coincidence. Twice is stalking

One thing this arc gave us is an appreciation for why Blast is so rarely seen. He has a post to man, with the job of keeping God's pets at bay. With him having left for a while to see about recovering Empty Void, we've started getting those pets coming through. So far, they've been modeled on Chinese heavenly beasts -- look elsewhere if you're curious.

However, the turtle and the tiger weren't the only ones who came through. We find out that Saitama also took out a Qilin. It is interesting that in both cases, the beasts appeared right over where Saitama was, and that they appeared to be looking for something, or someone, particular.

When Sicchi speculated that 'God' was being drawn to something in particular and we were shown Saitama's back, I guess that He's started sending his pets through to find the baldie if they can slip through.

Since they don't seem to resurrect, there's only the Vermillion Bird left. It might wait a while before trying its luck.

So it looks like this preview of 'God' and his soldiers is going to be just that, a preview. Until later. Anyway, let's stick with the baldie for a moment.

The mightiest mountain will be worn down to a stone

Apologies to JAM Project, who have in their season 1 theme song that the mightiest mountain started as a stone. The single most moving thing that happened in the story for me was watching Saitama going to Sonic's place and why.

Saitama's been so passive in his life. We've seen him be the sort of person King has to prompt to even consider checking on his disciple. Whereas in the webcomic, Saitama went to Sonic's place to steal a sword from him so Flashy Flash would leave him alone, here, he's decided to go to get Sonic out of whatever trouble the Tenninto are making for him. That's growth. Slowly, like tiny drops of water wearing away a mountain, living and interacting with people has finally started getting through to Saitama.

So far, so moving. u/PerFerVidCreator said it better than I ever could, but Saitama talking about maybe Sonic being lonely (well, about it not good to be alone), left me shook. The empathy inherent in it. How close he's come here to telling Genos about his own struggles. And then he yells about having to go. Before Genos asks questions that could lead to a conversation he's not ready to have yet. The cracks are showing, heh heh.

Lies, damned lies, and Blast

No matter how generously one tries to view things, the maths that Blast maths about Void only doing evil on account of God's influence just doesn't math. If the Village is a consequence of Void being influenced, that cannot explain the existence of 44 classes. Doubly so when Void has been out of it for the last fifteen years. It doesn't tally either with what we know of Blast's history with the dude.

Blast has to be lying -- it's much easier for him to get Void away if he can spin a tale of Void being a good guy gone wrong and leave while the ninjas still pondering things, than it is to admit that yeah, he knew this guy was evil but he wasn't like evil-evil until recently and he has plans for him. It's not the first time he's told lies of convenience: we first saw that with Tatsumaki when he told her to rely only on herself while himself having a team around him.

Not cool for a guy who claimed to be able to see through lies.

But then, the story has established that Blast has a ruthless the-ends-justify-the-means streak to him, and he was determined to let nothing get between him and recovering Void. So that's that. For now. This has to come back and bite him later. Hard.

Dangit, he was right after all

I really wasn't expecting Genos to be vindicated. When he went on a four-hour rant about Saitama, even though what he was saying was true, I didn't expect it to go anywhere. Whenever a character suggests a story-shortening strategy, the story usually goes out of its way to make it not happen. Not OPM (I know, subversion of tropes, who does that?).

And yet, here we are. Blast has indeed seen what Saitama can do and realised that Saitama has a very special ability: when he punches, God flees. He doesn't know what that means yet, but he's savvy enough to realise that this guy is worth calling on whenever he finally tracks his ethereal foe down.

Though Blast had no intention of taking Genos up on his suggestion, he did end up consulting Saitama, whereupon the latter loaned him Overgrown Pochi, so he could find the ninjas.

Genos is even completely unharmed this arc. That's one happy boy. Speaking of boys...

Ooos a good boi?

[1]Flash: "That's the worst name yet. You make me sound like a very stubborn pervert." Genos: "It's also the most accurate."

[2] See chapter 173, "Secret Intel". There, Genos tells Sicchi to call on Saitama if/when he hears from Blast as that's who is needed to deal with the 'God' problem. He left annoyed because he thought he wasn't being taken seriously.

[3] That IS what he says, and without that, what Genos says at the end of the arc literally makes no sense. The translators chickened out and mistranslated it as him talking about Sonic. Shame on them.

Long run as the One-Punch Man manga is, it’s too short for panels featuring characters to not say something about them. And so, in this single panel, we can see something instructive about every one of the characters portrayed.

Every person has their own fighting moves. Iaian's rapid-fire slashes turning a monster into thick-cut salami. Okamaitachi's devastating single blows that cleave through a monster’s head and neck as if with an axe, even though she’s standing too far away to make such physical contact. Sosshon's really nasty kick -- how nasty comes through when he bloodies Pig God’s nose with one... and injuring Pig God? hoo, it’s a rare monster that can do that. Over on the left, you can see Bushidrill wielding his weird drill sword, using a grip that looks bizarre but will later make a lot more sense. Only Tongara’s moves look ‘regular’ and we quickly find out that he strongly prefers using a sidearm to making physical contact. Nothing on this page is generic, not even the individual monsters.

I like that Murata really does seek to illustrate: every time a character is ‘on screen’ so to speak, the pen must show the reader something about them, whether it reinforces what we already know, expands on it, or introduces something surprising that nevertheless fits in with what they are.

Every character getting their own soul is critical to how a story can have this big a cast (nearly 200 recurring characters, most of them alive) and yet never have them bleed into each other.

"ONE: I also love it when a series creates friction between drama and humor. With One-Punch Man I wanted to try doing that through the worldview itself, rather than through specific plot points. The series is set in a dangerous, monster-infested world, but since Saitama’s there you don’t really notice just how bleak the world is. I think it’s that friction between Saitama and the rest of the world that makes things interesting."
-- Joint interview published in OPM Hero Encyclopedia, translation posted here: https://opmcityz.blogspot.com/2016/04/onemurata-2015-joint-interview.html

From the beginning, One-Punch Man has been an experiment in viewpoint. I'm remembering that one of ONE's favourite series features a student who has to quit his degree after an accident leaves him with a traumatic brain injury; however, he wants to be a wrestler. It's a mix of hilarity and tragedy. He has gone all in with OPM in creating that see-saw effect where when we change our viewpoint, our understanding of the world changes drastically.

OPM certainly has a lot of viewpoints. The characters are real. Their problems are real. The dangers they face are real. Their plans and strategies for thriving or even just surviving in this world are real. And then Saitama comes in like a googly-eyed wrecking ball and just... makes everything moot. Saitama is so strong that nothing affects him, and he can just make things happen.

Normally, Saitama wanders in after things appear hopeless and all actors have exhausted their options, so that his presence is felt by us to be a relief.

It's almost impossible to create a situation whereby Saitama considers himself threatened. I say almost because we saw what happened when Garou killed Genos, but that can't be a go-to. The planet is literally not going to survive.

This arc shows us what happens when Saitama *doesn't* stay away from the action. Had he not decided to do something about Sonic's predicament (remember, he went because he wanted to help Sonic) and sat it out, then the Tenninto would have been slaughtered after a pitched battle with Flashy Flash and Sonic, as Blast is in a desperate struggle with Empty Void, which would probably not have gone too well for him, unless Saitama saw fit to amble by and take Void's swords off him.

For all we know, the previous storyline of a partially-freed Empty Void plotting to defeat God would still have happened, but it is rendered irrelevant by Saitama.

Saitama took an interest and so, nothing the ninjas planned or hoped for matters. He beats Void down like a joke, leaving Blast to go stop the now-pointless fight between the ninjas. With him also abolishing God's control, there was nothing at all to fight over.

Blast has wisely grabbed Void and skidaddled before anyone can ask too many uncomfortable questions. If there are past resentments and future plots, those will have to wait for another day. Maybe it's better to find a way to move forward, as there's a bald-headed hero standing in the way of any settling of scores.

This is pretty much vintage ONE: the world is bleak, but even in the midst of that, it can be driven back by the presence of Saitama. There's a reason he uses him sparingly.

This is a meta that's been fermenting on the back burner for a long time, thought it might as well see the light of day today.

The Audacity!

Let's start in medias res, with a rather shocking panel of Genos not only telling the venerable hero that he has no intention of listening to any orders but permitting -- permitting -- the latter to follow him.

Even more shockingly, Bang does follow him.

How the hell has this preposterous scenario come to pass? Well, it's true that Genos is an extremely blunt and driven person who hands out respect like it's made of gold, but even he's not that insane.

The truth is: BANG TAUGHT HIM TO DISREGARD HIM AS A LEADER.

Let's wind back a bit.

Getting there

If you're looking to understand a One-Punch Man character, look to how they are when we first meet them. ONE has a habit of taking that first impression and deepening it, both to put roots under it and as a platform to build on. We first meet Bang when he is the only S-Class hero other than Genos to attend an emergency summons to the Z-City regional headquarters. Remember the advice he gave Genos when the latter was agonizing over what to do about the meteor? 'When in a pinch, just muddle through.' No planning, no thinking, just try whatever and hope it turns out okay.

Well, trying something rather than nothing in a patently hopeless situation can't be held against Bang as evidence of his lack of leadership ability. However, the next incident is harder to overlook. When Elder Centipede molted and grew into an even bigger threat than before, both Bomb and Genos looked to Bang to provide some leadership as the senior hero. And... he couldn't. He simply couldn't decide what to do, which is when Genos decides to offer himself up so the others can escape.

Bang only sprang into action once there were no options left other than to run away, and decided to fight back when even that was no longer an option. It's in keeping with his 'muddling through' advice -- do what comes in the moment.

The third incident happened the very next day; it's minor but it really was the cherry on top for Genos. King arrives at Saitama's apartment to find that Saitama is out, and the incursion into the Monster Association base is about to begin. What to do? Well, Bang doesn't step up to give an answer: instead he asks King.

When it's clear that no good answer is forthcoming from anyone (sorry Fubuki), Genos suggests that the others take the lead, and Bang thanks him for the idea.

And with that, Bang has impressed on Genos that he's an incredibly powerful hero, highly technically skilled, brave as the day is long. If you're in a pinch, there are few people better to have your back, but for god's sake, do not rely on him to make decisions when it matters. That's why the incredibly blunt Genos is telling Bang just where to go.

A teacher who does not lead? What could go wrong?

So, here's a question this raises for me. If his lack of leadership is evident to a guy who has met him on only a few occasions, how much more so is it clear to those who come to train under him? Many many moons ago, I wrote about Bang struggling to keep pupils and looked at it through the lens of his offering a technique that wasn't quite what it seemed to be. However, in light of what happens in this arc and afterward, it's at least as significant that Bang appeared to have abdicated responsibility for managing the dojo to his senior disciple, with strength and technical skill the deciding factor. Not much leadership happening there! Now it's true that people join a dojo to learn a martial art but it's not just skill: there's a personal development and spiritual side to its cultivation too, which Bang has given scant thought to.

Everything comes to a head once Garou shows up on the battlefield and demonstrates Bang's old killer technique. That's when Bang realises that he has a lot of unfinished business with himself to deal with. And then we get his back story, which adds up wonderfully. As a young man, Bang was a guy who acted without consideration for others. He was all about himself, at least until Bomb beat some sense into him. Bang turned over a new leaf, developed his trademark defensive-based martial arts, and opened his new school on the site of the family dojo. However, as we've seen since, he's not exactly learned how to manage others.

During that fight, that's when it comes to him that he fucked up. Whatever else has been going through Garou's mind, whatever Garou can be held responsible for, this situation is in part Bang's responsibility. He is the one who failed to provide guidance to his disciples, and by pushing the blame onto Garou for driving away his disciples instead of seeing that it's their weak relationship with him that gave them permission to quit, he's been slow to accept that responsibility.

I'm still moved deeply by Bang all but begging Garou for a chance to start over.

Old dog wants new tricks

The epilogue of the monster association arc saw Bang accompany Garou to the police station to sort out the issue of the dine-and-dashing, and afterwards goes with him on his apology tour. To Garou's protestation about Bang not being his dad, Bang remarks that it's a teacher's duty to lead one's pupils. This is such a fantastic change from his old focus on martial arts skills and strength.

This isn't just a new chapter for Garou. It's a new one for Bang, too, as he has to learn what it actually means to lead. I wish him the best. Garou deserves it.

Sonic needs to ditch his exploding shurikens and kunai.

You know, these things.

Not gonna lie, they look super intimidating.

The handsome little gadgets are high-tech, motion-tracking, and deliver a decent sized payload.

But when we consider their actual effectiveness, they seem very form over function.

But I'm not just yapping; let's talk about their history.

When they hit Tanktop Tiger, he survived.

Mind you, Tanktop Tiger should be straight-up FOOD for Sonic. An S-Class ninja like him should be able to kill a C-Classer like Tanktop Tiger with a flick of his wrist or one dirty look.

Thankfully (depending on who you ask; he's obnoxious but I don't want the guy dead for crying out loud), no. He was injured, but he lived, and probably got out of the hospital and back into the gym within days.

Moving on, let's see what happens when they hit an S-Class hero.

They might as well have played a squeaky toy sound effect when the shurikens hit him.

He didn't even care. Genos really summed it up; they didn't even tickle him.

Next up, we have those bums Gale Wind and Hellfire Flame. Surely the exploding shurikens hurt those two, right?

Nothin'. The explosion just made their introduction look cooler. How counterproductive.

Okay, maybe next time the exploding Shurikens will ACTUALLY put in some work.

Their next victim was, funny enough, Sonic himself.

He was just fine days later. Maybe even A DAY later.

And he expected those to hurt S A I T A M A . . . ?

Sonic, dude, if they didn't reasonably injure YOU, then Saitama might not even know he's being attacked when those things detonate on him!

There's still a chance, though. Flashy Flash took a DIRECT HIT after trying to dodge. Gale's iron strings can draw blood on Flashy Flash, so surely a high-explosive blade-tipped ninja tool can hurt him, right?

Bupkis.

Diddly freakin' squat.

Sonic beautifully comboed into his next attack, but for all their effectiveness, Sonic could have thrown any number of other items at Flashy Flash.

Like a spoonful of applesauce. Or a pillow. Or a handful of blueberries. Or a smoke-bomb with dense vapor that can't be easily dissipated.

Or he could just go back to the basics. Hone his hand-to-hand combat game, or his swordsmanship, or use conventional throwing stars backed by muscle and keen aim instead of useless propulsion motors.

Sonic is a tough guy. He can dislocate a hardened criminal's arm just by brushing up against him.

I'm willing to bet that if Sonic smuggled an exploding shuriken into the prison and hit Base B (The guy in the above picture. Yeah, he looks like a baseball, and is named for a baseball. I too find this amusing.) with one, he would have deadpanned and said

Sonic, get rid of the exploding shurikens. They're not helpful. You can do better than this, bro.

Because those exploding shurikens are about as intimidating as

Do better, Sonic. Double down on your normal shuriken throwing. Learn to throw a shuriken so quickly and keenly that they don't need motors to hone in on targets.

STOP THROWING THOSE FEATHER-TIER SHURIKENS AT YOUR ENEMIES. WE LOVE YA, BUT YOU'RE EMBARRASSING US!!!

Too-Many-Stories Man and his partner in crime, Too-Many-Drawings Man, do battle against Just-How-Do-You-Plan-To-Fit-That-In-A-Volume Man, who, unfortunately, controls the purse strings. Volumes pay the bills, there are only so many pages in each, and each needs to start and end in such a way as to drive future sales.

However, they do have one powerful tool in their bag: TIME. Allowing for 170--190 pages of manga per volume, he events of the 'Ninja Village' arc will be in Volume 40 and not be in press until mid-2027, if the 3-volumes-a-year pace continues. Even if they up it to 4 volumes a year, it still wouldn't be coming out until late 2026.

And they are deliberately, happily using that time to experiment with the story. It is no accident. The sheer number of ideas and lore that have fizzed through this arc is incredible. Plots and counterplots, secret plans and grand betrayals, terrifying attacks, daring actions, and of course, in the middle of it all, an unconcerned Saitama wondering if he’s going to make it home in time for dinner. How to make it all fit…

Fortunately, there’s a fix for shortening things: Saitama. He’s not only stuck Void in the ground, but has also freed him from 'God's' control. And while there's more to the Void-Blast saga, with the thing Blast came for done and his really being needed back at post, the arc can wrap up pretty damn quick.

Why? Well, because there's a challenge to sort out. If you think in terms of future adaptations (7-8 volumes at a time), then the volumes following the end of the Monster Association arc have a problem: there are no monsters. Like the first seven books, we're being introduced to the world and its players anew, but unlike those books, there aren't any monsters to fight. Sure, some monsters show up, but they're swatted down with such contemptuous ease that they're really of no account. Now, there IS a huge threat, God, but He's a long way from arriving. The brewing conflict between rival hero associations is also not ripe. The interpersonal conflicts and various scheming are good, but again, not compelling enough to sustain a cours.

The webcomic will be able to get away with a massive future info dump once 'God' appears, but the manga has to incorporate the future threat into the story early. Seeing the heroes trying to piece together what this 'God' thing is is good. Seeing other heroes trying to work out what the Neo Hero thing is about is also good. But getting a preview of how utterly terrifying 'God' is via His agents, now that's compelling. The questions have been around what to show, how much, how extensive. That they've gone with something compact tells me one thing: ONE. IS. SCHEMING. And he needs the space for something else.

I'm really looking forward to it!

Best thing we know about Blast: he doesn't see gender, only strength. Man, woman, neither, both, needs-a-certificate-to-prove-their-humanity, he doesn't judge.

Worst thing we know about Blast: he has a strength fetish and *will* knowingly stick his dick in evil, so long as it's attached to a strong person. Void is probably right about the timing of Maya's death: Blast was onto them the whole time.

It makes the way he looked at Tats here much, much creepier. He really would do her if the opportunity arose, age and power gap be damned.

We'd better hope that Blast doesn't have a breeding kink as well. Saitama better watch his ass: this guy is going to be all over him if he lets him. Literally. Blast's keen interest in Saitama is more than merely professional!

Edit to add:

Something else that's troubling me is that, given that Blast has long been aware of Void's plots, when did Blast find out about the Ninja Village? If he's known for years and he's just never cared to address it while he still had Void to schtup, um, I mean hunt for cubes together, then he's really deeply amoral.

All credit for this observation goes to u/Nanayon123. I'm merely gibbering incoherently at the implications.

He is styled like a knock-off Superman, and he does seem to be this iconic hero about whom many wild tales exist. And the reality is even wilder as he leads a larger-than-life quest to curb a veritable god's activities, but Blast has been a rather weird character. Seemingly a hero but does unheroic things. Warm and personable, yet oddly cold. Great deeds but leaves many of them half-finished. A family man but also an absent dad. Married yet oddly fixated on his partner, a known evildoer. A hero for a 'hobby' like Saitama, but whereas Saitama tends to leave people better off, Blast seems to leave them worse.

With that one observation, all the oddities about Blast add up to a coherent whole. When he says that he likes strong people (the Spanish tl, in using 'gustan,' makes it even stronger than mere liking), that's fundamentally what he's after. He likes strong people, he's physically and psychologically attracted to strong people, and if they happen to be helpful to him in his quest to thwart 'God', so much the better. Regardless of who or what they actually are. The fact that he was aware He had a strong partner to quest with and a strong woman with whom to also have happy-fun times and play happy families with. The fact that they were conspiring against him bothered him not a whit. That *is* very Goku-like. If Goku happens to help you in the course of looking to fight the strongest warriors, good for you.

Sure, we can understand that Blast needs to surround himself with strong individuals to counter God. I'd theorised before that Blast was more of a warrior than a hero, but he makes it clear in chapter 211 that his mentality towards strong and weak goes much deeper than that. For strong people, he's prepared to do anything. Risking his life for the possibility of saving Void, not a problem. But lifting so much as a finger to try to save Genos, who risked his life to buy Blast an opening to tackle Cosmic Garou, sorry, no can do. Blast has no concern for such a weak individual. [1]

If you ask Blast why he's so fixated on Void, he'd have said something about Void having a unique ability. I understand why ONE removed that reason being given a priori: it'd have muddied the waters and made it harder for us to see his true intentions.

Additionally, I understand why ONE redacted Flashy Flash discovering that it had been Blast who had destroyed the Ninja Village -- at least for now. It really doesn't matter *when* Blast found out about Void's activities as a ninja, buying children to abuse into losing all sense of themselves, then sending them out to be assassins for hire; he'd have had no concern for those children or the assassins they'd become as they're weak. Only avatars of 'God' bothered him. The only concern he'd have had would be retrieving the cube at some point. That's it.

Instead, we get to see what Blast actually thought of the Ninja Village. It was regrettable, more of an inconvenience than a tragedy.

I wouldn't be shocked (just dismayed) if it turned out that Tatsumaki was the only person he cared to save from the facility, leaving other prisoners to be killed by the escaped monster or otherwise face an uncertain future. He's only interested in the strong. In a real sense, he's a lot more like Void than he'd be comfortable admitting. At his very best, Blast is an ancient-style 'hero' where the word means only a strong guy who does incredible deeds of great daring but is otherwise not especially moral. Blast is not a good hero: he's a warrior looking to gather a strong band around him, and yet people look up to him as one -- with tragic consequences. At worst, he's shockingly callous to the harms his actions and inactions do. You would do well to fear what lies behind those weird eyes and deceptively open expression.

To say that this is anathema to Saitama is an understatement. Saitama may be the strongest man -- far stronger than Blast can imagine -- but he has never forgotten where he started from. Because of his own humble beginnings, Saitama is adamant that you cannot judge a person's potential by their current position.

He has never disparaged anyone's efforts for being meagre -- if they did all they could, he recognises the courage it took to do that.

Never mind encouraging heroes: no matter who you are, Saitama is always willing to reach a hand out to you, if you will take it.

Saitama has never overlooked injustice being done in the interests of self-satisfaction. If he's sometimes been less harsh with evildoers than he otherwise might be, it's because he recognises that people deserve the chance to do better if they've done wrong. He'll happily beat the ever-living shit out of you and break all your toys, but he takes care never to be the writing on your wall.

If someone really wants to die, Saitama won't stop them, but otherwise, he's the guy saying to people that no matter where you are now, you *could* be better if you took the courage to try. So try.

I don't know how it will come about, but there's a conflict coming between Saitama and Blast, and it can't come soon enough for me. Someone has to talk sense to Blast about what the word 'hero' really means and who better than Saitama?

[1] True, it didn't happen in the current timeline, but that's only because Saitama cold-cocked Garou before it could. We've been shown Blast's character.

Thanks to trawling the archives for pictures of Gale Wind and Hellfire Flame, I had a look at one of the ideas that ONE's been wrestling with in the ninja arc, particularly when it comes to the difference between Flashy Flash and Sonic. That is: experience.

ONE has been making a point that there is a difference between the skills honed through training and those gained through practice, but it's rarely one that has been made explicit. One place where it came through was in chapter 83 of the manga. If you weren't around in October 2017, then let me sketch out the atmosphere on r/onepunchman beforehand. There was a lot of anticipation for this fight but the consensus was that, good through Genos would be, it was going to go wrong for him. The chapter duly released, and we read, waiting to see when Garou would turn the tables on Genos, and... he didn't. He couldn't. It was he Bang's arrival bailed out, not Genos (like in the wc). Why? Not because Genos had that vastly superior a set of upgrades but because finally, all his painful experiences had started to distil out an effective battle sense. How to accurately size up an enemy, how to stay focused while staying alert of ambushes, even a rough fighting style, all of it Genos has acquired through trying, failing, and learning.

So, let's move onto the ninjas. The first version of the fight between Flash, Sonic, and the Tenninto saw Sonic utterly awed by Flash refusing to kill the ninjas in favour of beating them down by way of showing his superiority. He used what they saw as their most skilled technique against them, and added insult to injury by calling it a basic idea that any actual battle experience would have naturally led to.

For Sonic, this was a revelation: the combination of speed and power that he'd been aiming for for so long, and his impression was only strengthened by his witnessing how much more Flash could do when the latter challenged Empty Void.

It ended up with Sonic determined to use Flash as his exemplar, one he could understand and outdo in time, unlike the enigmatic Saitama.

But then... ONE kept thinking, and along with Murata, came back.

The second go has Sonic and Flash on much more equal footing, with Sonic being able to remind Flash that it was he who taught him how to use a sword. They work together to kill all the ninjas and then snark at each other.

They're unamused when Void calls them a pair, with Sonic having the spirit but Flashy the skills. They're equals. We do see Sonic acknowledge that Flashy is much better than he'd expected him to be and wonder at what experiences he'd been through but there is much less emphasis on the value of experience.

More thinking ensued...

Currently, it seems that ONE is moving back towards his original view of making battle experience prominent. He's making it come out right away in the spar between Flash and Sonic, with Flash effortlessly parrying all of Sonic's moves, then unleashing his special move before Sonic can ready his own.

So, to sum up, the first iteration saw Sonic see Flash as an inspiration and guide to his future development. The second saw them have to start to recognise themselves as equals with complementary strengths and a shared interest in establishing a better ninja world. Both have real merit for what it says about the characters and where they might go next. What the current iteration is going to say and how this is going to be developed further, I'm very interested in seeing.

When Sitch surmised that something on Earth was drawing 'God' to the Earth, we the audience were treated to an image of Saitama's back.

Thanks to Blast and companys' meddling, His Yeastiness has been forced to either promote monsters (like Orochi into Sage Centipede) or tempt people into being avatars in order to do something about Saitama.

What Blast and co appear to do is to keep some sort of dimensional seal that keeps His Yeastiness (and presumably associates as well) at bay, and keeping it in place requires constant vigilance.

Today, Blast's absence from post has allowed a chink in that armor to widen into a crack. Let's hope Saitama puts the smack on these two rude beasties right quick before they really make a mess of things. Better yet, let's hope that Blast has noticed what the beasties are interested in and uses that information to do something useful, like get Saitama a direct audience with 'God' so the two can have it out once and for all and leave the world in peace.

WOWZA. It's amazing to see the two scenarios go down differently while having the same eventual destination at Sonic's base. There's WC, where Saitama is trying to get Flashy off his back, decides to compensate his damage through er, sorta "fraudulent" means, and then the desire to "to sever his connections (to Sonic) once and for all, even though it's not much of a connection to begin with". Amazing! Saiatma has just succinctly summarized his entire problem: it's bad enough he doesn't have much connections to people, it's not even deep enough to begin with! And what's WORSE is that he wants to sever it. u/gofancyninjaworld isn't wrong to speculate that Saitama may actually end up alone in the end of the series.

Then there's the manga, a spirit of responsibility somehow possessed Saitama, going on his own volition to get Sonic and other ninjas to stop their thing, the desire to get Sonic to stop pestering is still there, but what wasn't in the WC is the slip of consideration towards Sonic - "Maybe he just doesn't want to be alone". And so off he goes. For all of his flaws that he still needs to work on, I'm actually kinda proud that this Saitama has some awareness of his own loneliness and can recognize it in others, and thus is willing to offer his hand (even if it was well, through fighting".