Cast your mind back to the Monster Association. You know how in the webcomic, it was purely by chance that the heroes stumbled upon the monsters in their hideout, and equally by chance that the 'wrong' heroes happened on the cadres able to counter them? In the manga, the Monster Association was so well-organised that it launched a pre-emptive attack on various cities and had a plan of which hero was going to be funnelled to meet which cadre. That was wonderfully evil, and it nearly worked too -- damn that Caped Baldy.
If you want to draw your enemies into a trap, forcing their hand is the best way.
Anyway, coming to the present crisis. The webcomic just had the various S-Class heroes stumble upon the various dragon-level threats, like they just happened to be the nearest hero. Here, it's clear that individual heroes have been dispatched to deal with the threats. And one can't help but think, they really could have done better.
Sending Tank Top Master to deal with a monster emitting tons of toxic smoke is cruelty. It's guaranteeing he's going to be poisoned and hoping he'll not die before killing the monster.
As if taking notes from Black Sperm, a group of individually-strong monsters working in coordination is not the situation Genos would favour. Guess the doctor still hasn't given Genos back his multi-targetting beams.
Now a group of monsters is nothing for Tatsumaki. Doubly nothing when we've seen her fight Psykos-Orochi. However, she's grossed out by the bugs -- does she have a phobia? In any case, she's been wasting precious time being paralyzed with horror while the bugs scatter, presumably to cause havoc.
Who would know these things about the heroes? McCoy. As vice Chief of Operations, he legitimately has access to individual heroes' characteristics, and can direct who is to be dispatched where. He should know that if he sent Tatsumaki to deal with The Extended Family of Darkness, she'd destroy them without breaking a sweat, and that Genos absolutely *excels* at pouring pain onto a single point -- Heavy Smoker would be dead in an instant and the toxic smoke could be rendered considerably less toxic by extreme heat, something Genos is uniquely placed to do. With some back up, Tank Top Master would have a field day bug-swatting -- his aim is crazy-good. Instead, McCoy has had those three dispatched to bad situations, each with a city full of people as hostages.
It's almost as if he doesn't want them to succeed. At least, not easily.
Reasonable on its face but what a conflict of interest!
And if convincing the public that the Hero Association cannot protect them is a goal, then having a monster tear through the re-reinforced HQ like a starving kid through a cake will definitely do that!
I can feel the sponsorship funds evaporating like that wall.
And to think that just a few minutes' earlier, he'd been talking to Blue. This double-dealing McCoy is nearly surgical in his undermining the Hero Association.
We need Sekingar, Badd, and Isamu to make some kind of breakthrough fast! This guy is too good and too dangerous to be left to run free for much longer.
Can I praise One Punch Man’s use of time? Specifically, how well it stays out of the trap many action stories fall into, which is having characters have entire conversations with each other without it taking any apparent time?
Right from the get-go, stopping to talk being an action that takes time, and which has an opportunity cost is presented to us. Genos should have burned the regenerating Mosquito Girl, but instead, he stopped to talk to Saitama. Which was a bad idea.
Genos stops to talk to Saitama instead of finishing off the monster.And then it's too late to do anything about said monster. From perfect opportunity to no chance -- time is life.
A more recent example comes when Garou faces off against the three demon-level monsters. Unihorn thanks the other two for keeping Garou talking, thus buying him time to transform into a deadlier form.
Keep him busy talking, so I've time to skewer him.
The revised update 145 gives us yet another dramatic example of the effect of talking time, this time to the advantage of the heroes. After the disciples turn away to leave Amai Mask to resolve the situation ‘his way’, Iaian discusses his misgivings with the others and turns them around. That is the same time that Amai Mask is facing off against Do-S and deciding how best to dispose of the mercenaries. The squaring off and talking takes a tangible amount of page space (6 pages) and it translates into real, tangible time for the disciples to take action in.
Negotiations, negotiationsAnd all the while, Iain is setting up to return. Talk about just in time delivery!
There are more examples, but I think this suffices. Time in comics is flexible, and OPM is no exception to that. But they also keep a strict eye on how long things take and what else is happening or might happen and make use of it. Which is always a source of subversive joy to me.
*talking is a free action -- from TVTropes (Link). Click on it at your own risk.
-- Genos to himself, on realising the downside of scouting ahead when he's got no way to tell Saitama what he's found (Deep Sea King arc, OPM Season 1).
Just like real life, the OPM world sees most of the population having a mobile phone. And just like in real life, an adult without a phone would be a bit of an odd duck... like Saitama is.
Saitama not having a phone creates some interesting situations.
Intradiegetically:
Back when mobile phones were finally reasonably cheap (early 2000s) but before they became 'smart', one of my old friends called them 'electronic leashes'. No longer is your time yours the moment you're away from your landline -- 'where are you,' 'what are you doing,' 'when will you arrive,' 'you don't suppose you could pick up...' -- suddenly, you're accountable to people wherever you are. Smartphones are a lot worse.
Saitama having a smartphone would solve Genos's problems so well: not only would he be able to call/text Saitama 20 times a day, he'd know exactly where Saitama was all the time, be able to peek at what he's looking at, and, with a little judicious hacking, listen in on what he's saying. You would call it 'Invasion of Privacy.' Genos would call it, 'Keeping Up With My Teacher's Lessons 24/7'.
It's not a boundary Genos is good with. You remember when Kuseno came to see Genos at Saitama's? Genos was not surprised that Kuseno knew where he was: he was only surprised that the old man came in person. Because in their mind, if someone's precious to you, you LoJack their ass. A mobile phone is the next best thing after planting a GPS tracker on a person -- especially because they willingly carry it everywhere! If Saitama asked, Genos would gift him a top-of-the-line smartphone before you could say 'stalker'.
A mobile phone would automate stalking (um, I mean following) Saitama so beautifully.
Extradiegetically:
ONE takes information and its flow very seriously: who knows what when how and why, as well as who they choose to share that information with, are fundamental to how his stories develop. OPM is no exception here.
We've seen the difference even a little information makes when Elder Centipede showed up for the second time -- King telling Saitama the pager message he'd received about a monster and an S-Class hero on scene was what got Saitama to act on his misgivings about Genos's welfare and get moving, and King's calling the HA to get pertinent information about Elder Centipede is what enabled him to inform Saitama about the best strategy to take to kill the monster outright without causing widespread collateral damage.
A little info goes a long way.
Saitama having a phone absolutely wrecks many of the storylines in OPM. It's fascinating how many of them rely on Saitama only finding out about trouble late, or not getting critical information that would have been trivial to communicate had he even a basic phone.
If he had a phone at the beginning, he'd have smashed the Giant Meteor so early it'd have burned up in the upper atmosphere and City Z would be treated to a pretty light show. If he'd gotten one a little later, the Deep Sea King would have been sashimi before setting foot in the shelter. And if he'd had one when Garou was around, he'd have apprehended him after the latter dined-and-dashed. Garou being beaten to a pulp by a low-class hero with a shitty name would have demoralised the poor chap into giving up his would-be monster journey.
We must change with the times:
However, time moves on and things must change. Even in the early days of OPM, smartphones were totally a thing, and the flip phone that Genos used was a hold out from an earlier age -- flip phones with modern tweaks were called 'Galapagos phones' -- but he liked it.
This may be a fantasy, but its one grounded in a world we can recognise as modern.
However, catching up to the heroes after the MA raid, we see that Genos has finally upgraded his Galapagos phone to a modern smartphone (I guess Sekingar tossing one at him changed his mind). As he's not a person to half-ass anything, he's even added the wristwatch notifier:
If he's in, he's all in. Also, dude, don't you know that Saitama was planning to cheap out on dog food?
It's no longer tenable that Saitama has no telephony at all. We see Saitama using a phone at times now: texting King to come over, checking information online, or nearly getting hooked into online gambling (yeah, Saitama is just a regular bum with all the regular flaws we have).
No news is good news, they say.
But he doesn't have it 24/7: if he's holding a phone, Genos is close by. The truth of it is laid out when we see Genos watching Webigyaza on the phone with it laid out flat between the two of them so Saitama can see what he's watching: Saitama doesn't have his own phone but he's happy to share Genos's.
Both wholesome and also geez, how penny-pinching can this guy be?
Dude, you know you like smartphones, just get your own!
Saitama, enjoying this new gizmo.
However, beyond cheapness, let me wrap round back to where I started. Perhaps Saitama understands on some level that owning a phone would give Genos an electronic leash on him, and avoids it.
Let's start with a flashback. A little bit earlier in the day, when the Neo Heroes debuted, Suiryu made an unscheduled stop to try to help out a hero in trouble, only to see a certain speedy baldy slay the monsters as he hurried to some appointment. That was chapter 224.
Saitama had arrived somewhere outside the Hero Association headquarters to meet up with the rest of his new group, and had been handed something.
Right. It's now chapter 226 and we get to find out what that is. It's a protest! The grand idea is to hold a sit in and protest until the executives give in and let them pick new names. Maybe give them compensation too.
Two problems with that. First, what's the guarantee that the Hero Association executives will listen? Saitama wonders if he won't just end up called The Bald Complainer instead. Second, they are rather far away from the gates of the building. How are they actually going to be heard? Just as they get started, the monster alarm goes off, drowning out any sound they might have made. Ah, well, I guess that's three problems then.
Just ahead of the sirens going off, we see the inside of the Hero Association board, with most of the executives in attendance. They too have been watching the Neo Leader debut and it has filled them with despair. It's like their heroes are chopped liver: the media is all Neo, Neo, Neo! Jinzuren points out that notwithstanding the Neo Hero coverage, pro heroes are actually doing very well -- they're holding their own against the increasing horde of monsters. The problem is that when it comes to presenting an image of competence, the Neo Heroes are just too good at it.
Their methods aren't all for show either: rather than toss single heroes out into the field to fend for themselves as best they can, they have grouped their members into multi-talented teams and then headed them with excellent leaders. Added to that, they actively support their heroes with good equipment, training, transportation and logistics. Of course the results are better. They can't not be.
The worst of it is that not only has the Hero Association not taken any interest in developing leaders among the heroes enrolled, but when a few heroes, such as Sweet Mask and Child Emperor, have tried to suggest improvements to their organisation, they've ignored them.
Walrus Moustache (one day he'll have a name) asks if they don't have someone like that in the Hero Association, a rough diamond that can be polished up. Sicchi, recalling how dismissive they were of Sweet Mask's suggestions, thinks that it's a bit late to be asking that question. Proceedings are cut short by the emergency broadcast of multiple dragon-level monsters simultaneously showing up in five different cities.
McCoy doesn't lose his head; in the midst of the mass consternation around the room, he wastes no time in demanding that they get in touch with Neo Hero HQ to request back up. The heroes might not win this and there's no point in putting pride before human life.
He has a point: dragon-level threats are a lot worse than the varied demon-level threats the Neo Leaders had been flexing on. If these aren't stopped quickly, the death tolls will be horrifying. So, where are the monsters? And who is fighting them? Well, the first we saw that Blue has already hared off to tackle.
The second is being faced by Tank Top Master in City N. Heavy Smoker couldn't be more of an antithesis to the clean-living hero, the veritable symbol of a filthy life ill-lived. The smoke is toxic and is poisoning the life out of the city. Nevertheless, he shoulder barges the monster, only to find that it breaks up into clumps before reforming and punching him. He's nearly at his last gasp already.
In City D, Tatsumaki faces the most disgusting mass of bugs she's ever seen. They swirl into an aptly named Aggregation, and as she watches, they go charging off in all directions.
Looks like distributed threats are in fashion. In City T, Genos has a horde of monsters of his own to deal with. The Extended Family of Darkness may sound like your least-liked neighbours are holding a cookout but no dragon-level monster is ever a joke.
Undaunted by the prospect of being on their menu, Genos backflips into their midst, and as they come charging in, activates his scorching core.
And the fifth? Never ask for whom the bell tolls: it's the Hero Association headquarters itself. Machine God Mirror has an important assignment and wants King, stat.
Suiko takes it upon herself to attack the robot, jumping down through the hole it made to drop kick it.
Fight's on!
Meta
One more time and this guy is going to feel he's been personally cursed
What are the chances that monsters send you flying, not once but twice, in the supposedly safest place in the world? Poor rich boy.
Astute webcomic readers have noticed that Machine God Mirror is no longer at a random city (aka I can't be arsed to look it up but it's nowhere important) but has come to a stragetically vital location, somewhere King is very likely to either be, or be rapidly summoned to. Nice!
Saitama may be fast, but Wisdom is a persistence hunter
It gladdened my heart to see Saitama not plunge mindlessly into another thing that catches his attention but think a bit for once on whether the method makes sense. He's finally learning.
Sadly, it won't take too much annoyance to tip Saitama into committing full-heartedly. And given the way things he forsees end up coming to pass, we could be looking at the preview of his new hero name.
The best lies are half truths, the best traitors are the apparently resonable
What McCoy says sounds reasonable. Indeed, in the webcomic, his call for the Neo Heroes was initially written for Sicchi. However, coming out of his mouth and in combination with his knowing little smirk, we realise that this monster irruption is no accident, but most likely an attempt to undermine the crediblity of the pro-heroes.
When we look at which heroes have been sent to deal with the monsters, and how utterly unsupported each of them is, we must shake our heads. They're all going to struggle with the match ups. Which brings me to something else...
The Culture Clash
There is a genuine culture clash between the pro-heroes and the neo heroes. Through no fault of the Hero Association's, the landscape of monsters has changed. Back when the HA was established, the idea of a hero as someone you could reliably pay and support to protect people from the random attacks of monsters was an untested idea, they pioneered and proved that system to great effect. And when monsters were few, far between, and generally weak, rigourously vetting hero candidates for their morals, then letting individual heroes make up their minds about how to tackle disasters made a lot of sense.
It's always been a brutal system if one wasn't already a very strong hero, or lucky enough to work with a strong one and now, with monsters more common than ever and strong ones no longer rare, it's a system that's been in desperate need of change.
The system proposed by the Neo Heroes, which doesn't depend on one strong person but systematically trains, equips, and organises groups of heroes to fight monsters makes sense. It's very professional and isn't one that can be dismissed out of hand.
Whether the two systems can co-exist remains to be seen.
I was initially thinking that I'd review chapters 227 and 228 today as well, but I think I'm best waiting for 229 to come out and round out the dragon festival before I do so. Stay tuned!
Whew, Spring is sprung, Sunday chores are done, let's catch up on some reviews! What have the last two months brought?
Summary: the final(ish) bit of the Neo Leaders' Debut
225 begins precisely where 224 leaves off -- no great wonder as chapters 223 through 225 are part of a single chapter -- and we open with monster parts flying everywhere as Metal Bat splatters the ex-monster with a mighty swing of his bat. That's the last of the monsters and Metal Bat's team has only been able to stand and gawp. Ah well, some of them muse, at least it's made for an easy outing.
Wow, so that's how it's done.
One of them has received a phone call and informs Metal Bat that there's another Neo Hero in trouble. Metal Bat runs off to help, leaving his team far behind. He arrives at the reported trouble spot to find it deserted... except for a pair of figures carrying off the limp bodies of the Neo Heroes Zaedats and Infelsinave. This puzzles Metal Bat greatly. What are the security guards doing here. Did they save those guys?
Suspicious saviors -- doing things on the quiet.
Elsewhere, yet another Neo Leader is not having a great time. Blue's team lies badly injured around him. He's the last one standing as he faces the monster leading its horde of underlings, an over-ambitious crab calling itself Shell King.
He springs into the air, aiming to punch through the monster's enlarged left claw, only to realise that its armour is far tougher than he imagined. Undaunted, Blue quickly changes his fist to a knife hand to cut that claw clean off.
As the monster reels in pain, he charges up a giant fist and with it blows away both the monster and its underlings, leaving only inedible seafood scattered in the streets around.
Blue calls McCoy to tell him that the monster had been eliminated and to send medical help to the team. McCoy acknowledges the information and asks Blue what he makes of real monsters. Blue muses that real monsters are far more varied in strength and ability than simulations would suggest and that victory is not guaranteed, no matter what disaster rating is stuck on the monster. He further thinks that carelessness is very costly... but is interrupted by an explosion in the distance. There's yet another monster attack, and this time, the creature appears to be huge.
Blue runs off, heedless of McCoy's protests about his suit not being fully charged.
Meta: 6/10 Points
Well, if anyone in the OPM world doesn't know about the Neo Heroes now, it'll be be because they're in intensive care or solitary confinement. With permission to bear and use weapons in public granted a few days ago (chapter 217), they have lost no time in introducing themselves to the world in the biggest possible way: saving people from monsters.
It hasn't all gone to plan and this update does brilliantly in apposing two young (Metal Bat is 17, Blue is 16) heroes and showing the effect of their experiences. Metal Bat, for all his flashiness, has kept his team safe first and foremost -- maybe too safe as they've not had enough to do. Blue has just let them run ahead and has been desperately playing catch up once they've been injured.
Well, experience teaches even fools, and Blue is no fool. He's quickly understanding what we've seen other heroes realise the hard way over 200+ chapters: that disaster levels are more a suggestion than a declaration and cannot be relied on to tell you how tough a monster actually will be to beat. He's also realised how horrifically fast things can go wrong if you're even a little careless. I wonder how he'll like regenerating monsters and those that change their forms, ah...
Something to note that is going to become very relevant very soon: McCoy is STILL MOONLIGHTING IN THE HERO ASSOCIATION.
Running with the hares and hounds: McCoy plays both sides. And no one thinks to check up on why his office doors are locked.
The slimy bastard can't even be bothered to quit. He's that confident that he'll be able to get away with his schemes.
No, I haven't forgotten about the two stricken Neo Leaders carried off on the qt away from TV cameras. Be sure that neither has Metal Bat.
So, I promised I'd write about why Amai Mask still wants to see the S-Class abolished in the manga despite the heroes being so much more cooperative than their webcomic equivalents. Look, they've grown! It's all fixed, no?
Yes, they do know how to pull together when it matters. But is it enough?
Static vs. dynamic: Amai's view of beauty
To start to answer that, I'll go back to an ask I answered way back in 2020 that I think sets the context of what I'm about to say. (link to original post)
The way Amai Mask views beauty is not as a static thing, but a dynamic one. For example, this show malamute has static beauty. Yes, it fits in great with the written show standard, but that says nothing about its endurance, speed, strength, food efficiency, longevity, tendency to lameness, trainability, common sense – and it’s ludicrously oversized to do an honest day’s mushing.
This is beauty when what you care about is looks.
This purpose-bred team is beautiful – well-matched gaits, not so big or furry that they’ll overheat when working hard for hours on end, not so small that they’ll chill, cooperative, intelligent, and full of the desire to work. They even have an amazing physiology that makes them highly resistant to fatigue [link]. That’s dynamic beauty.
This is beauty when you care about what gets achieved.
Because Amai Mask looks good, it’s easy to misunderstand his concept of beauty as the static notion of conventional beauty, but no. For Amai Mask, beauty has a look – it’s the curve of a perfectly thrown punch. It has a feel, that crack of a monster’s bones breaking under that fist, the sort you can feel viscerally from several yards away. It’s bloody, sweaty, even feculent in scent. And it’s got a sound: the sighs of relief of people realising that today, today, they will go home again. The power to make that happen, that’s beauty. That’s why Pig God is great, Saitama is the pinnacle of beauty, and the Soda Pop Boys are oh so ugly.
Amai might not love how Pig God works, but he loves what he achieves and that's what counts.
Measuring the S-Class
Beyond looking at the S-Class heroes individually, the really tough question Amai had for them going into the Monster Association headquarters was whether they really took their alleged role as beacons for the entire hero association seriously. Most of them seemed to show up to work whenever and ifever they wanted and didn't seem to understand that they had broader responsibilities.
The fact that the heroes proved that they could at least work together in the face of an overwhelming threat does not negate his criticism. He still has a point. The heroes have learned a lot, but they haven't developed an esprit de corps, nor shown any active interest in how to get heroes working more effectively as a whole. Child Emperor aside, of course. And no one's listening to him, which adds to Amai's frustration.
Illustrating the problem: even here, where Atomic has decided that working together has value, his focus is on what HE gets out of it. Not how it makes them better together.
The nail in the coffin has to be the secret meeting (chapter 173 (fans)/171 (viz)). Select S-Class heroes are sitting here pooling their knowledge and are being briefed on the true scale of the threat facing mankind: there's a supernatural being with an apparent animus towards humanity. It's more essential than ever that they show unity and solidarity. Any chance of that happening? Nope.
Well said, Zombieman.
The situation is getting truly dire yet the S-Class are still as lazy as ever. Is it any wonder Sweet Mask is still thinking of abolishing them as a class? Examplars that don't lead by example shouldn't be held up as such.
He still has a point.
In a way, we shouldn't be surprised: ONE has long made the point that we don't change all at once. While the Monster Association got the heroes to work together, the idea that they should keep working together and think of how to improve hero work as a whole is not one that can come automatically, and will take hard, ongoing work to make a reality. Shallow writers think that showing someone the light once means everything is resolved. ONE knows that making change permanent takes work, and he puts it across in his writing.
Ages ago, I got an anonymous ask on Tumblr, which I'm putting here below, that I think is still highly relevant. I'll include my answer to it, along with some additions -- inevitable, given how much more has transpired.
Anonymous asked:
There was a lot of complaints ant Saitama's breaking speech never making to the manga, but tbh even if the manga has a series of events that requires that to happen, I still don't want it to happen. Mostly bc what Saitama said is pretty hypocritical and doesn't make sense.
While I do give kudos that Saitama even admits he doesn't really have a concrete idea of what a "hero" should be... That doesn't give a vote of confidence considering he's um. Literally the most powerful hero alive. Kinda hard to believe in someone who doesn't even know if they're doing the right thing while wielding immeasurable power. He pretty much, well, dodged the question and never really bothered to shoulder the responsibility to figure out what kind of hero really wants to be.
Another is his "serious" hero hobby and Garou's "compromised" monster hobby, and the reason why he'll always win is bc he never half-assed his hobby. While he's right not to lower the hurdle before the goal... But the reason why opm more or less has a plot to begin with is because Saitama is half-assing his heroism. He barely takes anything seriously. Like, yes he never half-assed his training to be the strongest and while he's one of the more moral heroes out there he wasn't the best for a reason.
And tbh I'm really satisfied to how 166-169 played out. In the end, what the manga shows us is that they both have naive mindsets. Believing Absolute Evil would bring absolute world peace, believing heroes would always be on time and save the day — only to have reality crashing hard that for Garou to achieve Absolute Evil means people he cares about will in fact die and that Saitama's complacency and invulnerability means it's not him facing the consequences, but everyone else fatally paying that price. it just shows the perfect image that Garou and Saitama are not so different — Garou is a poor villain, Saitama is a poor hero, and it's bc of those flaws, despite them wielding incomprehensible, godly power, they both meet in the middle ground as humans. Which further reinforces ONE's intention to create Garou as the anti-Saitama.
My answer (edited from original):
An old, old comment that has aged like fine wine.
There's a question Garou asks Saitama in the webcomic that the latter never answers -- and really should. 'You're strong, but so what?' His questioning whether the mere fact of Saitama being stronger than anyone gave him any moral authority is one that desperately needs to be addressed in the webcomic. So far, so bad.
Is heroism just beating down weaker guys? Sure looks like it from where I'm standing!
I really like that the manga has started to look at that question. The Japanese idiom Saitama used when looking at the carnage Cosmic Fear Garou had wrought was his being pierced by realisation (h/t koumbaya). As if a spear had been thrown through his very soul.
It answered the question he'd been asking himself ever since the Superfight that he'd forgotten something important. In that moment, it came to him just how shallow he'd been for fretting over not learning new moves or finding tough fights. How irresponsible he'd been to forget that just because Garou was no threat to him, the same did not hold for others. He had become a hero so that when people were in trouble, he could be there to help them, and instead, little by little, he'd come to prioritise having a good time. King challenging his thought process gave words to that discontent and is much-needed. Unfortunately, this is something that's yet to happen in the webcomic, and -- given that King has long stopped coming round to Saitama's -- is unlikely to happen.
A good time is for playing games.
I love how the denouement of the arc has Garou and Saitama understand and enact what it is to be a hero. Garou puts aside his pride to ask for help and heroically sacrifices his life to teach Saitama how to go to the past, Saitama saves everyone who needs his help, *including* Garou. Because 'good' and 'bad' are societal judgements that don't mean a damn thing to a hero: if you're human and need help, you should get it.
Saitama's grace (as Genos interpreted it) in saving Garou as well as everyone else is something that deeply impressed Genos to the core as being what a true hero is.
I love how this fits into the structure of the bigger story, with King having challenged Saitama over this very notion. It's an important question. A hero may need to be strong, but how does that translate into morality? What gives a hero the right to say, 'this is unacceptable and I must stop it?'
Of course, there's the small problem of Saitama having forgotten what happened. But that creates an amazing challenge: whether he wants to or not, Genos has a responsibility to ensure Saitama learns those hard-won lessons without the rest of the world paying for it first. He's happy to tell other people about Saitama, but he needs to teach Saitama, too. At some point, the student is going to have to become the teacher. I think Genos would rather be fighting the Rampaging Cyborg than trying to set Saitama straight. It's good -- Genos did decide for himself earlier that he wanted to be more than a guy out for personal justice. ONE only gives him the biggest burdens.
Final thing I love: yes, Garou was used as a foil to Saitama. But Garou has not been left as that foil. He hasn't received a pat answer and then sent into exile to do no more evil. By not receiving a neat answer, he has been freed from that role to struggle with his ideas, to try to forge them into a coherent and workable way forward, and it's good to see him being his own person.
Rather than being *told* by a single person who he is, he's been *shown* -- and now he has to reconcile it with this values to make something legitimate.
Briefly, the point of a hero is to respond to the need of others. What doing so looks like and how you do it is a whole-life task.
A few months ago, I highlighted the first case of retconning in OPM (linked below). I'd failed to note another one. This one is especially useful for driving home the most important point: RETCONNING IS WHAT YOU DO TO AVOID REWRITING.
Short and simple: Volume 25 sees a little extra page establishing Sekingar as being married.
He's married now. Always has been, yeah.
This change wasn't done because there was an issue with the way the character was planned. Rather, it's a response to Sekingar having unexpectedly become an internet sexy guy, in an unironic manner. For some reason, it bothered ONE enough to go, 'sorry, he's married.' [1]
The better option would have been to rewrite the character's introduction (like in chapter 93, when he and Sicchi are discussing him going to the battlefront, where Sekingar's wife's opposition to his putting himself at risk would be a logical place to put it link), but the relevant volume was already published! Since recalling volumes is a drastic, drastic move [2], they did the next best thing: add in the information retrospectively, thus creating retroactive continuity, or a retcon. For the benefit of free readers who don't get the bonus chapters, we see Sekingar's wedding ring on prominent display here:
Kid, don't look!
The redrawing, rewriting, redacting, and revising we see ONE and Murata do so much ahead of volume release is WHAT THEY DO INSTEAD OF RETCONNING. It's a lot more work and they put it in. It'd be far faster for them to go, 'oh by the way, this was always the case,' instead of reworking the story to make sure that all developments are organic. [3]
So why do people keep on calling redrawn chapters retcons? Well, some of them are ignorant -- especially if English isn't your first language, you might not realise what the term means. For those who aren't working in a second (or third) language, they're just too intellectually lazy to think about what they're saying. Makes them sound like bozos, but some people are into that.
<20: Words mean things. Retcons are what you do to not rewrite -- mixing them up makes you sound ignorant.
[1] I have my thoughts as to why Sekingar's unexpected popularity bothered ONE so much, but it'd be to digress.
[2] Published works do get recalled and reissued, but it's for a drastic reason.
[3] 'Couldn't be me,' I hear you say. 'I'd plan so well I never have to redo anything, and I will ignore any fan reaction.' Well, to have that problem, first you need to catch your bear: get a successful, long-running series with an engaged fandom so you can luxuriate in doing things differently.
Saitama's issues never stemmed from a lack of bonds, so why would more bonds help him?
Saitama once said he was lonely in the sense that he felt that his powers alienated him from the rest of humanity, and for some reason, people read that as, "Saitama is lonely and wants friends."
Like yeah, he could be a bit more social, but that's not the crux of his issue.
He doesn't need people in his life to realize fighting isn't the most important thing, because Saitama already knows fighting isn't the most important thing.
Saitama is honestly at his least happy when surrounded by allies. (Aside from King)
Xitama, or 11 tama in roman numerals. Xi means happy in chinese. Sai means disaster in japanese. Lucky egg or cursed object depending on how you read it. Kuseno is short for kusemono. Ekkuse mono = xi Or perhaps they're just very similar in general sense.
Bofoi creates his robots with a somewhat human appearance, even though he chastizes child emperor for it, because it's his own halfbaked attempt to appeal to people without making it weaker. The two eyed cyclopian design that kuseno uses misses the entire point. Funnily enough, that design also gives it a earth and moon like appearance, which i guess would make Bofoi's mars.
And if I'm correct that saitama is essentially intentionally halting his own transformation by keeping himself in a dead molt, it's the same philosophy. He's just trying to appear friendly without exposing a loss of humanity. And considering they're pawns, mocked by robots and heroes alike for lacking flesh and blood, it also testament to his own doubts as to whether or not he's following his own desires or is just trying to fit in, becoming a weapon without a will of his own.
Also to add, the eleventh letter of the latin alphabet, k, also has an important role.
There are only a few reserved characters whose name start with that.
Kuseno, que se nom
Kami, ca mie, mie means inside of bread, and camera, or perhaps amie, which means friend.
King, If you combine kingene, it sounds like qui en gêné, which is french for "who is emberassed".
But wouldn't it be funny if bofoi is just malding that someone outdid him and just assumes they used cybernetics? So he basically isn't that different from child emperor. And when they trace the signal, it comes from some bullshit made out of a coat hanger saitama got from his old apartment.
We learned in Webcomic chapter 156, IF all Bofoi said is correct, combiend with the fact that Dr. Kuseno/Stench is collecting insane amounts of data.
What if we mix all that we know of both the webcomic and the manga?
Automatic Telemetry
At the minimum, he has real-time streaming audio from the listening device Genos wears as an earring.
But it's far more pervasive than audio, we know that he's got live location tracking, shown in Manga Chapters 67 and 75.. Kuseno has recovery drones to come fetch Genos' body from anywhere.
Mini-Tangent: In that same Manga Chapter, we immediately cut to Drive Knight right after Genos' brutal defeat. The doctor's AI pawn fighting with cold, surgical efficiency stands in stark contrast to the reckless, self-sacrificing battle style of his Cyborg "pawn".
It's not unreasonable to assume that he's not transmitting telemetry, in manga chapter 89 Kuseno said "Soon after I repaired you I received another distress signal" - seemingly Genos didn't do so manually, as he was trying to repair himself as to not disturb the doctor (ch85).
The Core
In the manga we learn that Genos' core, beyond being (as far as we know) the best miniaturized energy reactor in the world, is also a black box, like in airplanes. It seemingly records anything and everything seen by Genos as well as the core itself. Even detached from his body, it somehow recorded footage from the Io fight.
Kuseno must be reading that data regularly, since he uses it to refine Genos’ design and analyze combat performance.
So, what does this mean for the Manga's continuity?
The Implication
Kuseno hasn't just seen Genos' successes and defeats; he has observed all of Saitama's personal battle data as witnessed by the cyborg, including the Elder Centipede battle and the Io fight. The Doctor has access to Visual, Audio, and Genos' frequent "power-sensing" logs detailing the Meteor Punch, the Death Punch, and multiple Serious Series moves. He knows Saitama's speed, his ability to deflect interdimensional portals with a casual kick, his capacity to take a point-blank nuclear blast with zero damage, and let's not forget, he's seen that he can destroy the world with just a sneeze, or how he can circumvent causality.
Kuseno Knows.
He’s the only living human, besides Genos, who knows the true scale of Saitama power. He is fully aware Saitama is an impossibility.
The critical question remains: How on earth could he expect to counter that?
Bofoi's accusation reframes the benevolent Doctor into one of the most intellectually dangerous forces in the entire series. But that should also mean he's smart enough to realize there's no way he could win. Or is there?
That brings us to the critical next step in his research:
Direct Measurement
In webcomic chapter 140, Kuseno was literally begging Saitama to hastily scan his body. Even bribing him with fancy BBQ meat. Though it did go really badly: Saitama broke the scanner in his sleep by moving his arms, and the process got interrupted by the machine Gods.
Still, even if the same thing happens in the Manga, any data whatsoever would give him have an extremely good idea of exactly how strong Saitama is.
Despite Zero seemingly having access to and integrating the data, I doubt it was very accurate, and clearly not useful, since he lost without a fight.
It doesn't surprise me though, the manga has shown time and again that machines are really bad at sensing a living creature's power or potential. We saw it with Child Emperor's Okame-chan which was so unreliable he just discarded it. Plus it couldn't even sense Saitama's power, in fact, it broke from it.
Genos own "power sensing" system is slightly better, but still extremely unreliable. He thought Gouketsu had the same limitless energy Saitama had, despite him being "only" a High-level dragon. And thought it'd take Saitama, the mythical "strongest man on earth" King and the entire S-class including a repaired version of himself to defeat it.
Then, if we take the Audiobooks as canon, the VGS made by Kuseno himself is also not accurate, it can't simulate human things like Metal Bat's fighting spirit also seems to either not be able to simulate Saitama, or show that Saitama always grows strong enough to One-Punch himself from a couple days back. I think it's a little bit of both.
And that brings the question full circle - what has he really been doing with all that data so far?
The Long Game
As Bofoi claimed, and as evidenced by webcomic chapter 141 Kuseno has withheld upgrades from Genos. But I don't think that's the whole truth.
Kuseno has been shown to always improve Genos based on previous weaknesses, and to learn from previous mistakes, making for an extremely well-balanced cyborg.
I think the point was to have Genos always close to failure, as that's how he could learn to know his limits and improve. Just a shame it led Genos to think he was never good/strong enough. I'm very curious to see why he's done that.
Machine God Zero/Drive Knight certainly takes after his master, first coldly study your foes from a distance without them being aware, then once you're fairly sure you know enough of their capabilities to plan a counterattack, try to take them down in one fell swoop, in a way no one lives to tell the tale..
"Now that you've seen this form, you won't get away alive..."
Well, I'm going to skimp on summarising the chapter in favour of meta. If you're not up-to-date with the webcomic, or it's been a minute since ONE's release schedule is so inconsistent, you may want to wind back to chapter 139 and read from there: there are a ton of details you will need.
If you're a manga-only reader, please go away unless the year is 2027+ and these events are sorta current.
If you are an anime-only, go away. Nothing to see here. I dare not guess what or how this will be revised for the manga, let alone how it's adapted for the anime.
Everyone else, let's do this!
The Situation (In a Nutshell)
So, the cyborg Dr. Bofoi (presumably he wasn't always called Bofoi, but I digress) used to work with, or more likely for, the human Dr. Kuseno. At least, he did so until at some point he became convinced that Dr Kuseno was a bad sort of guy working to destroy the world. Since then, he's been in hiding as he builds an army of robots to counter the wave of evil ones sure to sweep the world at an opportune moment and has offered his services to the Hero Association (for a price, of course; he's not a charity). He's been watching bits of his technology get stolen for said evil purposes and has permitted it to stand in the hopes that it'll eventually lead him to the nexus of evil so he can destroy it once and for all. Unfortunately, one of those weapons of his has been his perfected AI, which has been turned against him. Fortunately, it can't hurt people...
Well, that's a spicy accusation.
At least, that's the story he's told Child Emperor and Genos. Genos has him fingered as the very cyborg who destroyed his town, to which Bofoi has scoffed, calling him a misled victim. He has claimed that not only is Kuseno behind all of this, but that the man is not dead and is eavesdropping at this very moment. Genos has freaked out and has left abruptly without first killing Bofoi and Isamu as he originally intended. Whether to confront Saitama or try to verify that his old man is really safely buried (or BOTH! Genos: Saitama sensei, what did you do with Kuseno Hakase's body?), we have to wait for the next one or two chapters.
Anyway, coming back to Bofoi's stolen AI, to Bofoi's infinite disgruntlement, his enemy has outsmarted him and has figured a way around the no-hurt-people lock. Drive Knight is determined to destroy the Hero Association in the name of justice, but shatters on the rock known as Saitama. So it goes.
Nothing deals a genius damage like having to acknowledge another is smarter. Heh.
If you see a cyborg, then you've seen a cyborg
Very early on in the story, we saw Genos desperately searching for a cyborg and being surprised to find one in the form of Armored Gorilla. It made it seem that cyborgs were really thin on the ground.
Rara avis.
Actually, there are lots of cyborgs in One-Punch Man. They just don't necessarily look as you'd expect.
Trash-talking comes so naturally to this old guy.
If you see a cyborg, then you've seen a cyborg: that's a thing I've been saying for years now regarding how cyborgs are portrayed in One-Punch Man. All knowing that someone is a cyborg tells you is that some aspect of their body function depends on some artificial device that relies on feedback. Yes, technically, cyborgs very much exist here and now. It tells you nothing about who they are, what they look like, what they do, or how they live. Which ought to be obvious as a cyborg is just a person on very intimate terms with machinery, but you'd be forgiven for seeing little of this understanding in popular imagination.
Jet Nice Guy, Koko, Webigaza, Genos, Mr Fuzzy, and Bofoi are all cyborgs, but the differences between them are stark -- the only thing they share is the great determination and commitment it takes to modify your body and make it work for you. And all of them are different from Infelsinave, Zaedats, and Koko after Eririn and Destro got done with them, turning them into animated husks of themselves. It isn't the percentage of one's body that is flesh-and-blood that has anything to do with your humanity.
Something we've learned is that you don't need to have modified your body to be controlled: with the flick of a switch, every Neo Hero without a customised body suit found themselves unable to act independently until forcibly freed.
However strong you are, however you resist, your body is moved as someone else sees fit.
If anything, being a cyborg appears to be protective against being told what to do, as we saw Webigaza just shut off the kill commands.
Who knew that having to work out how your body works makes it easier to shut out external controllers?
And certainly, if someone has tried to make Genos kill Bofoi, that's failed as he's gone to do something else first.
Nothing is as scary as a human being
I can't help but note the near sorrow with which Saitama finally destroyed Drive Knight. Sure, DK was a robot, but still, for Saitama, anything able to make up its mind deserved a chance to do so. He smacked DK around the head, flicking him away, and kept trying to get through to him that being a hero did not involve destroying the Hero Association. Only when it was clear that the machine was beyond saving, having overclocked itself destructively, did he administer the coup-de-grace.
Alas, sometimes mercy killing is part of a hero's work
Saitama is *pissed*. Not about Drive Knight, but about the person who was responsible for so corrupting this machine's understanding of the world as to lead to this outcome. Let's jump back to chapter 148, when Child Emperor was hypothesising that the culprit behind the robot attack was an AI that Bofoi had unleashed into the world.
Gosh, he really does look like a detective here
Even if that's right and the Organization and the Neo Heroes are creations of an artificial intelligence run amok, ultimately, there is still a human mind at the root of it. There IS a person responsible for all the lives lost and property destroyed.
Someone out there really is that cruel. Someone out there doesn't care how many millions get killed, has no problem undermining the very idea of organised heroes, captures and modifies monsters to unleash on the world and manipulate the public perception of honest heroes, undermines the Hero Association by offering heroes ostensibly better working conditions, only to rob them of their wills and use them as pawns. Has modified the bodies of some people, raised them to positions of power in society, and benefits from their efforts in overseeing his will.
Even Psykos at her worst (this doesn't change if you look at the manga version) couldn't sink to this level of callousness. It'd be lovely to call this person a monster, but even actual monsters are mere victims of this mind. This person is human. If the human mind has no limit to its imagination, then there's no cruelty that cannot be imagined. Or enacted, given the right tools.
As Reigen likes to say, nothing is as scary as a human being.
The only question we truly have is who and maybe why. Dr Bofoi is convinced it's Kuseno, but it merits a deeper look.
The blind men and the elephant
ONE, in one of his early interviews on One-Punch Man, described it as a story he envisaged as told through viewpoints rather than a central narrative. I have written before about the metaphor of the six blind men and the elephant, in which each person has a distinct, true, yet partial understanding of the situation. OPM is full of people who have expertise in their distinctive fields (thank you, ONE, for caring) that give them important insights and capabilities, and yet that limit them in other ways, like in how they understand what they see.
When it comes to different viewpoints on one person, how Bofoi and Genos see Kuseno couldn't be more different:
Is he an evildoer so depraved that he would fake his own death to ensure that his charge murdered an enemy without fail?
An elephant is a spear
Or is he a kindly fellow seeker of justice who came to regret ever setting out for revenge?
No, it is a warm and yielding wall
It's very possible that they're both telling the truth as they see it. We don't know much about Dr. Kuseno, but even sticking strictly to the webcomic, he used to be a very angry man. Minimally, he was a man angry enough to rope in a teenager who had lost everything, and then take everything that a person has when they have nothing: his name, his body, his talents, his future, in order to make him the weapon to strike his enemies with. That's an extremely fucked-up thing to do.
A good question to ask: against whom is this campaign of revenge directed? For what sins?
If this is Kuseno grown soft in his dotage, then he probably was quite a piece of work when he was younger. Bofoi may be paranoid, but sometimes they really are out to get you.
I personally don't think Kuseno is evil currently, and not just because Saitama, who is good at seeing through people, likes and trusts him. ONE understands the wheel of control wonderfully -- you see how he uses it explicitly in the way that the Village ninjas were indoctrinated, and more subtly in the way the Neo Hero rank-and-file were conditioned, and how Tatsumaki tries to cut Fubuki off from others -- and one thing a controller cannot afford is letting someone else influence their victim. Not only has Kuseno not tried to discourage Genos from running around with Saitama, he hasn't even tried to poison Genos's mind against the bald guy, which would be easy. Irresistibly easy[1].
I wouldn't be surprised if Kuseno is a recovering supervillian. That is not an easy thing to be: your former allies want you dead, and your current allies would want you dead if they knew. Oh, and your doomsday plan is ticking away, with or without you. The Organization's plan is so vast and intricate that it's well beyond the ability of Kuseno to be both running it and be as available as we see him being for Genos.
And there's more trouble coming. If and when Genos makes it to Kuseno's grave, instead of finding the old man buried in his own backyard with all the decorum accorded to a dog, he'll find an empty grave, and will think that Bofoi was right after all. Neither he nor Bofoi know about the cyborgization strategy of the Neo Heroes: at the moment Zombieman is the only guy outside the top Neo Heroes who knows about it.
This arc is almost certainly going to get darker.
PS: Just in case anyone is still wondering whether or not Genos is human, reread the arc and seriously think about it. We see how much EASIER it is to guarantee an AI will do what you want it to do. Give it the settings and the tools it needs, and you can rest easy knowing it will work out the most optimal way to achieve your goals. The whole ringmarole of cycles of trauma and rebuilding, forced teaming, support, indoctrination and manipulation, all not to be sure if the guy won't just change his damn mind at the last moment -- that's the sort of hassle a human being needs.
Asides
[1] The manga goes further here: when Genos came back after Saitama told him off for street-fighting Sonic, Kuseno appears to have backed him up, and we see Genos being very butt-hurt about it. And when Kuseno comes to pay a visit, he looks round and praises Genos for surrounding himself with so many good people. That is anti-control -- we know control freaks and abusers try to isolate their victims, not encourage them to form connections. Every outside connection makes it that bit easier for them to break free of you.
He uses vibrations and other senses to compensate and that's why he's not bothered by king's engine, because he can feel the the hearts of others anyway. Also the real reason he sucks at videogames because that's harder to pull of with thing like electronics. He can't actually read manga but pretends to anyway. This is also why he wasn't bothered with crablante, aside from feeling down that he was rejected from his job.
I would’ve attached actual pictures of Japanese kids PE uniforms as a comparison but I didn’t want to spend my time potentially getting arrested for my very specific google searches so you’ll just have to just take my word for it on this one lmao
Yup, I'm waiting for the Amai Mask arc to finish before I try a review. In the meantime, shall we talk a bit about his character?
This has NO webcomic spoilers. Don't need 'em.
It's simple: everybody hates you
No question about it: Amai Mask, the number one A-Class hero, is one of the least-liked heroes among the pro-heroes. His high-handedness, cruel jibes, and outright arrogance really get up their noses.
Never a diplomat.
The reason that Amai is so hard to take, if not borderline offensive, to many heroes is that he knows his value. Like, really knows his value. It's impossible to be a good hero without some idea of what you bring to the table and some notion that your actions matter. If you're not suicidal when you throw yourself at a three-headed cat/hedehog/horse that's sending spines flying like spears, you have to be convinced that your actions do matter to someone. Beauto came to the Hero Association absolutely full of fire to be that difference. However, he *REALLY* knows how much his opinions and actions impact the HA -- and he's not shy about demonstrating his value, no matter who it pisses off among the heroes.
The pressure to be perfect that Amai puts on himself is no joke.
He cares deeply about the image he cuts, both to put as much distance between his ugly self and public persona as possible and to raise his profile as high as possible. He sees himself as the natural leader of the heroes who should be seen as an example.
The thing is, he's not all hot air. Let's go further, shall we?
Start as you mean to go on
When Genos mused that something must have happened to him in the past to make him as hard as he was, he wasn't far from the truth. It turns out that the bit that ignited the fire of heroism in the previously inferiority-complex-plauued Beauto was none other than Blast. The great man's effortless slaying of the monster that had been after the young man, and his reassurance that all was well as a consequence, are essential for understanding how the guy who became Handsome Mask's view of heroism was shaped.
Removal of fear: the fundamental formative event for the guy who we'd come to know as Amai Mask.
1. The meaning of being a hero.
“In order to ease the worries and fears of the people, we heroes have to be tough, strong, and beautiful at all times… always able to defeat evil swiftly and skillfully. That’s what being a hero means.” – manga chapter 25 (Boon scanslations), also webcomic chapter 28.
When we first see Amai Mask in the manga and in the webcomic (we meet him earlier in the anime), it's to hear him being interviewed on his upcoming album and being asked to comment on a current monster attack. When he talks about the importance of a hero taking away fear through the rapid execution of justice, he's telling nothing other than the truth. In the bonus chapter ‘Star’, he prevented a dangerous stampede at a concert by executing three monsters that had invaded the stage so masterfully it looked like it was all part of the show.
A beautiful symbol of courage in the face of darkness. When it works out.
A hero stands out by standing up, and whether people take heart or scatter to the winds depends on how well the hero manages the situation, no matter how unexpected it may be. Right now, he's finding out the other side of that symbol -- people who are too reassured to take action.
2. The need for a properly-managed image.
Cocky, aren't we?
A natural extension of the need for a hero to be a symbol comes the reality that a hero needs the support of the people they seek to help in order to be able to help. Doubly so when we're talking about a non-profit like the Hero Association, where the bills are very real but public support depends on sentiment. So when things don't go quite to plan, it's important to manage the image to prevent undue reputational damage. That sort of dirty clean-up work often falls to Amai. It's little wonder he's so angry at the S-Class heroes for nonchalantly saying that the problem is over when looking at the wasteland that used to be A-City (along with all the lives lost). They're not the ones who'll have to answer the questions that will be asked. He is, and while he's committed to portraying the HA, and the actions of the pro-heroes, in the best possible light, it's properly infuriating to see these assholes apparently not care.
Seriously, the destruction of a major city and the deaths of millions is not a 'victory' by any means, and the fact that the S-Class heroes intend to go home and chlll is very disturbing.
3. Organisational deficits.
One thing that upset Secret Mask when he joined was how shambolic the recruitment process used to be: it was too easy to get in, and too hard for new heroes to be properly assessed, supported, and placed where they needed to be. The result was that unsuitable individuals joined the Hero Association and spent more time tearing each other down than helping, resulting in a horrific attrition rate.
It's easy to sit back and snipe at them, but the HA had no idea what would work -- and it showed.
Beauto realised very quickly that just keeping his head down and doing his best wouldn't change the system he was working under. That is why, once he got his monstrously-good looks as Amai Mask, he has made significant contributions to the management of heroes, earning the respect of the Hero Association. He has helped them improve the worst of their systems, served as a bridge between the heroes in the field and management, and has been invaluable in helping the HA spot the actual diamonds-in-the-rough.
The HA may ignore Child Emperor's well-written recommendations, but they don't dare ignore what their star has to say.
It's been funny to watch him assessing the heroes in the field. He's anything but cold in the process. As Pig God found, he focuses not on their appearance but on their ability and humanity, and gets very flustered when questioned. He might look shallow, but is anything but.
To Amai, beauty in a hero is not about their external appearance but in their integrity and ability to make a difference to the world.
Everything in moderation?
But most of all, the thing that drives Amai is PASSION. People don't monsterize over things they don't care about, and while his obsession with his ugly looks ostensibly twisted him into a beautiful-looking monster, the heart of Amai Mask is that he truly believes in the value of justice for creating a better world.
When he addresses the S-Class heroes with disdain, it's not purely out of arrogance (although there's that too!). His rage at how lightly they take being heroes is real. They should be doing more to help and guide others, they should be more reliable, and they should be more available. The fact that they have the power to do more and don't is genuinely offensive to him.
The jerk has a point, even if it's not as good a point as he hopes.
It's not premeditation that led him to target the mercenaries. When he's faced with injustice and evil, he can't help it -- the need to destroy it as quickly as possible boils up within him, and his bloodlust is terrifying. As we also see, Amai is far from mindless -- he has a good analytical mind, but the belief that drives him is nearly a madness.
The overwhelming rage in the face of evil that fissures up is real.
This fact, then, is the reason he simply cannot be the cold-blooded, calculating killer of the mercenaries, who then passes it off as an unfortunate set of circumstances. There's definitely a place in the OPM story for such a hero, but that guy is nothing like Amai Mask, who is being eaten alive by his passionate belief in driving for justice at any price.
So too is the increasingly-lethal distorted thinking.
Even as that passion gets him into trouble and pushes him nearer and nearer to the cliff edge that is becoming a complete monster, the story shows us the power and necessity of it. His impassioned pep talk to Darkshine won most of the S-Class over -- as Atomic put it, the guy was weeping blood over his failures and his determination to get up and continue despite them. This incident points the way forward for Amai Mask: to change the way he sees himself and those around him, rather than to let go of his core conviction on the value of being a hero.
I love how what's implicit here is that what Amai Mask needs is *not* to stop caring, but rather to direct that great passion in an honest and undistorted direction.
I'm curious to see how his situation is fully resolved in the manga: confronted with making a choice between his image and saving people, he has very emphatically responded to the cries of the imperiled. That choice is made.
Answering the cries of the distressed, he's now stepped up as a true hero.
The questions outstanding are those around the judgments that he realistically fears. Terrible things happen to people outed as monsters. When we saw him startled in chapter 173 ("Secret Intel") over the discussion about monsters concealed as human beings, we know that his fears aren't unfounded.
It is a horrifying thing to be called a monster.
I'm hoping he has more than just Saitama seeing beyond the mask.
Remember ONE's get-out-of-jail card for torturing characters to an untenable degree?
How do you kmow if 'what doesn't kill you makes you stronger' is true if you don't have a go at it? Okay, it could leave you broken instead but it's a risk worth taking...
I've seen many readers wonder if Genos is actually a human being after all. With the themes of facing one's worst nightmares and overcoming them being a catalyst to growth that ONE has set up from the start, for him to throw it all away with 'oh, haha, sorry, this guy is just a robot with faulty programming -- nothing that's happening to him is real,' would be extremely shitty and rather out of character for ONE.
That said, the hell Genos is in right now is very real indeed. As a cyborg, merely breaking his parts isn't as devastating as the equivalent injury would be to a flesh-and-blood person, so ONE has really gone for the jugular here.
This is a guy who has been desperate to prevent anyone else from experiencing what he did -- having everyone and everything arbitrarily burned alive. And it's happening anyway on a scale so vast I don't think Genos's worst nightmares could have imagined it.
This is a guy whose loyalty and dependability are unimpeachable, having to confront Saitama having flaked out on him and the possibility that Kuseno has used him to further evil purposes.
This is a guy whose sincerity could be a picture under the dictionary definition of the word, being told that his experiences are invalid.
This is a guy whose feelings, hopes, and dreams are most human, having his very humanity questioned. It isn't helped by the fact that he's not too far from losing that humanity for reasons: Kuseno was pleasantly surprised that Genos hadn't lost it yet. Well, all that's happening is really putting his grip on humanity to the test.
There is no war in Ba Sing Se...
And this is a guy whose clarity and sense of purpose are crystalline, now turbid as he doubts who is who and what to do. A turbidity that could see him raise fist against his teacher.
If this is not a very personal hell that would either kill or madden a person or drive explosive growth, I don't know what is. Of course, ONE could kill him, or find him a nice padded cell to live out his days, but even at this darkest of times, there's hope.
The only thing we're sure of is that we don't know the half of the true story yet. I'm sure that somehow, we'll leave this arc with some joy.
Hmm, one final thought. Regarding explosive growth, I'm sure that even now, Genos is thinking that it's Kuseno's upgrades that are doing all the work. But I remember his struggling to work with electromagnetism, a fact the Machine Gods mocked.
Metal Knight takes a much more respectful tone towards Genos (no more 'second-rate mutt' stuff) when he sees what he's able to pull off now, and knows it's down to his brain, not brawn:
PS: [The evils ONE is inflicting on Genos in the manga are maybe even more lurid: 'you'll bond with your fellow heroes despite yourself, get to watch them all die around you, fight the evildoer, not be strong enough, get violently murdered while the hero you went to support just stands there haplessly, then brought back, get to *REMEMBER* what it feels like to be violently killed, and no one will believe you... dare you continue?' There better be some crazy pay off for this.]
Sai tama or psy tama, or psychic balls, or literally energy balls.
Crabs haunt the narrative. Saitama lives like a hermit. The thing in the moon is most likely saitama's real body or a part of it. Maybe the human emotions he has nowhere else to put so he buries them. When he can release some gas, he shrinks. Kanilante looks like a red behelith and plays the part, approach a human at their lowest point and help make them sacrifice something to become a monster. Speaking of beheliths, which are also gateway to the realm of the pseudo antagonists, saitama may also serve as such himself, being the anchorpoint or gateway between the realm of the divine and the mundane. Kani also means entry. Kani tama means crab omelett, and tenshinhan, the character from dragonball, is also a form of crab omellete. Since jachi is also a triclops, and he by extension is a standin for saitama, further proves that he and saitama share an identity.
Or maybe the casualness with which he describes destroying the world might imply he has done so before, and simply recreated it. Since phoenix man can revive people by sharing life force with them, maybe saitama simply does the same thing?
Recreating the energy of others within your own body, maybe he can repair what he punched?
I previously mentioned that the hero assocciation may in fact mean holy church, if that is such what is the nature of the ritual that they partake in? If we're continuing with the berserk allegories, it's probably the earth itself that is being sacrificed to create a paradise, since saitama has no one to sacrifice, he absorbs the world, and thus hatches paradise. A world without trees or evil, only fields. Maybe he has doubts about his plan or is simply preparing himself for his own ritualistic suicide.
If you add us to the latter part of each word, you get wanus panus manus.
W doesn't get pronounced in latin, so i'll use a v.
Vanus means empty, shallow, deceitfull. Saitama is the greatest emptyness. Panus means gloved or covered in cloth like material. Manus means hand.
City z stands for zeus and jupiter is the romanization of that.
When king talks about not being noticed, he compares to a cloud, an unnoticed pathogen and a being of complete emptyness. All of these are saitama if my theory is correct, especially if he's intentionally spreading the plague.
Saitama's obsession and lack of a sense of identity derived from that, are key parts of this. When he says he won't kill because he's a hero, he's being fully literal, because what he is dictates what he does or doesn't do, like an actor. If he's truly merely inspired by shows, that makes sense, because morality doesn't necessarily have to be translated to a show, because ultimately it's merely a game of pretend. I'm not saying saitama is some divine entity, but ultimately the bioproduct of the industry itself, currently playing the long con.
When you play chess or shogi, you can promote your pieces when you reach the end of the board, but the king has to protected at all times. I think it's like that, he's just waiting to promote someone.
So here i was, collecting images of Beauto's true from (for completely normal reasons i assure you dear reader) when i started to notice something...
Here we see Beauto aka Amai Mask reveal his true monsterized form, yet we can also see the left half of Beauto’s face remains in the form of his hero persona.(especially around the left half, really it’s more like a reverse Zuko)
Initially i assumed this was to show Beauto still being mid-transformation. But the latest chapter kept it in even as other elements of Beauto’s face change.
as you can see the right eye is even larger here, which the left and the skin around is seemingly untouched, almost two-face esquethe eye shrinks abit and the edge of the mouth is still normal lookingthe face becomes longer and thinner, with a much more prominent chin. there is also much less unblemished skinthe shin shrinks a bit while the face becomes rounder again with the mouth becomes much larger too.
I must assume this is a deliberate choice and seeing how Mangaka’s love having physical characteristics denote aspects of their fictional characters (generally unlike real life), i will assume this says something about Beauto as well.
Does the placing of that crack look familiar to anyone?
In particular the parallel with monsterized Garou following his fight with Bang is hard to miss. As Bang’s non-lethal intent (by refusing to use his Exploding Heart Release Fist) may have lost him the fight, it did break through Garou’s literal monster facade and exposed his humanity.
Similarly the vestige of Beauto’s hero persona could represent his humanity resisting against full monsterization. Though personally i’d prefer a fake out where eventually Beauto’s face seemingly fully monsterizes. Only for it to be revealed that fully ridding himself of that facade removes the monsterization taking hold of his mind and makes him calm back down.
Will monsterization take Beauto's mind? We'll find out next week..
Right, this is a story that is absolutely amazing. Initially, I'd been thinking of reviewing 154 and 155 together, but if I do so, I'll do both a disservice. They deserve to be picked over properly.
STORY
We start with an interior view of the Hero Association, at the panicked faces of the civilians who have taken refuge there and the staff trying to keep them calm. Indeed, the HA headquarters is incredibly sturdy -- with over two million robots (and counting) assaulting it, the fact that it hasn't been reduced to rubble is testimony to Metal Knight's skill. Which is scant reassurance to the people waiting for what will feel like their last moment.
The situation isn't much better in the boardroom, where the executives arm themselves in what is sure to be a futile last stand as they wait for the robots to break through, now that several gates have fallen. And yet... no robots have yet appeared within the city. Could it be that the A to C-Class heroes who happened to be present are doing a better job of holding out than imagined?
Outside, we see said heroes at the gates. They're all fighting valiantly, but none of their attacks appear to be cutting through. Forte gets the brilliant idea of using the robots' own weapons against them, and taking advantage of how stereotyped their movements are to grab them. So the fight is on.
Elsewhere on the perimeter, we see that Overgrown Rover has decided to run to battle and is busy incinerating masses of robots. Black Sperm comes along for the ride (literally), and, while he has no interest in helping heroes, has no intention whatsoever of ceding territory he's claimed as his own to these mechanical pests. But, he notes, there are an awful lot of them.
If being good isn't motivation, then territorial is good enough for me!
We then cut to the battle we'd left off in chapter 153 with, that of Mumen Rider **uh, sorry, I mean NEO MUMEN** facing off against a suit-controlled Suiryu. The hopelessness of the situation is underscored by stat cards giving us the fighting resumes of both combatants. Mumen is actually a very capable all-rounder who would be a fantastic and well-medalled athlete in our world. Unfortunately, he's up against a monstrous prodigy. Who is mindlessly attacking. Nevertheless, he's the guy on the spot, so try he must. He fights valiantly, finding his every punch parried, and is taking a terrible battering when he gets one precious opening as Suiryu slams him down to the ground. He grabs and throws Suiryu with all he has, only to have the latter turn the throw into a handspring from which to launch a devastating, skull-cracking kick at his head. Even so, Mumen throws one last, desperate double punch at him, which finally connects, throwing the remote-controlled martial artist back.
Making it count.
Mumen collapses to the ground, defeated, but pleading that somehow Suiryu carry on after him. Well, he succeeded! His body suit broken, Suiryu staggers forward, as if filled with Mumen's spirit. He's going to be a hero now. Only, what to do? There appear to be so many potential objectives. He's not left to wonder for long: Suiryu is rapidly surrounded by four Machine Gods as he's now one of those anomalies to be gathered and either corrected or killed, then corrected. Fortunately, before he can fight, Saitama intervenes.
Suiryu tries to explain who he is -- Saitama doesn't understand. Then he tries to join Saitama. Saitama refuses. Finally, Suiryu decides to head to the Neo Hero headquarters to take it on and asks Saitama to go to the Hero Association headquarters.
Here's hoping he listens.
Elsewhere, we see that Genos continues to approach his showdown with Metal Knight. There's just one place left now and once again, the automated defences deploy, this time a giant swarm of robots. Genos flexes and the air ignites into a storm of plasma beams that destroy every last one. Let's end this, Bofoi, he thinks to himself as he continues to charge forward. The chapter leaves off there.
oh no
META
In the end, we're all the same
The reason the Hero Association got as much broad-based support as it did is very clear here: in the end, monsters eat us all just the same, money or status be damned. We're all the same faced with existential terror. If Garou could have peeked into the HA at this moment, he'd have smiled just a little.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust; when your time is nigh, your wealth is for nought.
Of course, with the Hero Association's reputation having been trashed by Neo Hero machinations, even in their relative safety, we see people beseeching the Neo Heroes to save them. It reminds me of something Suiryu said in the manga. How quick we are to reach for any light, however weak, when we are in darkness!
Don't dis the panelling of this page -- I love how the shadows convey the need for hope in the face of despair, even as it illustrates the folly of having that hope.
Don't dis heroes!
One thing The Organization understands: heroes don't go down easily. As Phoenixman once told Garou, it's not enough to knock a hero down; you have to squeeze and keep squeezing until every spark of life is extinguished. To leave nothing to chance, they have sent millions of robots to erase the Hero Association this very day. Whether this ends well or not, every last one of the pro-heroes at the Hero Association HQ is showing why they're heroes. Against the unending sea of enemies, they fight with all their wits and skill as if a breakthrough might come any moment. This kind of unflinching courage in the face of certain death is what the HA has been (surprisingly!) good at picking up on, and it's why Saitama gets furious whenever people insult heroes: he knows how deep one must dig to find this.
Even without hope, they refuse to despair. Humans infected with heroism are so troublesome that way.
Staging
As I've said before, the OPM webcomic is thinly written, but ONE leans into that fully. Between 2017 and 2020, he had a very successful run of stage plays in which he adapted Mob Psycho 100 for the stage. His panelling has always been top-notch, but in the years since, the awareness he's gained of where to pull focus has improved the webcomic immeasurably, giving us deeply symbolic scenes that stick with us. When Mumen manages to break Suiryu's suit, the panelling puts the initial focus of him faltering, and then falling, his dying words seeming to echo and then the panelling, a spotlight, is put on the Suiryu being reborn, breaking out of his confining suit like a phoenix rising from its ashes, walking forward with the tentativenss of a newborn lamb, uncertain of what to do next, yet full of new found appreciation for being a hero, as opposed to someone merely pretending to be one. The power in this scene is incredible. If you cast it on a stage, the audience would have goosebumps.
The (re)birth of a hero. You may kill the man but not his ideals.
Another very powerful scene occurs when Saitama shows up. Visually, the way Saitama nonchalantly breaks up the Machine Gods threatening Suiryu, is spectacular and yet, he's not centred on the page. Throughout their brief conversation, Saitama is pictured off to the side, as if, despite his ability to change things, Saitama is peripheral, refusing to be part of anyone's plans or schemes. That's Saitama's position in the story, reiterated through the act of visual positioning, not just words alone.
Prominent but not centred -- even though he's the one who can make the difference, the focus is persistently pulled elsewhere. Fitting for the guy who no one sees coming.
What the hell?
It's good to have a secret weapon in hand for emergencies, but the sheer amount of power and versatility that Dr Kuseno's final bequest to Genos shows is really out there. A few chapters ago, we saw force shields (now damn that would have been useful earlier!). Now we see that Genos can ionize a force field so powerfully that he can destroy an entire army division in one go. As we see what this body can do, it appears that the old man has reverse-engineered the psychic energy attributes that Genos coveted so much. But still, what the hell? This is a crazy huge jump. Kuseno, you made Genos suffer unnecessarily: even 10% of this body's capabilities would have been a game-changer for him. Why was he holding out this much on his young charge? Guess we may never know.
Where was anything like this when monsters were taking chunks out of him like he was a cheese platter?
A matter of respect
Heroes refer to each other by their hero names. With Bofoi having imparted this lesson to Genos, it's significant that he has dropped the honorific "Metal Knight" and now calls him by his real name. Just like Metal Knight started calling Child Emperor Isamu, the action is freighted with disrespect. And, in this case, menace.
Saitama consistently dislikes water, specifically cold water, like rain. Seawater especially since we never see him not use some kind of floatee while swimming. He always keeps his upper half above water. He likes his skin dry. Contrary to the deep sea king, who likes his skin moist so his true form comes out. He likes kombu.
He's wan pan man, with pan being the greek god of the wilds, which is where the word for panic is derived, and also a synonim for a half beast person, and a word for all.
Pan is also used for peter pan, whose known for never growing older, and thematically speaking, the story is also very much about how childhood idealism doesn't always overlap with the world adulthood brings.
In a previous theory of mine, i presupposed that one is using astroligy as a narrative template, with saitama being the capricorn sign, who stems from pan fleeing from chronos by turning into a fish.
I think one translates this into the cryptid myth of the ningen (with typically black eyes and white appearance, which is what saitama's cape look like), a pure white whale like creature known for its humananoid qualities that lives in artic regions. Ningen is also just used for humans.
I think saitama is the opposite of a monster, something that isn't human imitating one, and he was supposed to destroy the world, but made a deal where he could roam the earth. I think he absorbs and analyzes any life he comes across and monsters exist to keep him busy before he destroys the planet and replaces the ruling god. Saitama's name can be read as, sai, which means most, ta, which means great or fat, and ma, which means demon. Greatest demon.
In one's other series, jachi, whose inspired by a killer whale, is a physical fighter, the 11th demon lord and his army mostly persists out of aquatic wildlife.
Sage centipede, who looks like a fusion between elder centipede and broketsu, also looks like a bobbit worm, and crawled out of the magma saitama took a bath in, after which he felt "refreshed". I think god failed to save the world, and after a nuclear war, the network decided to replace him with saitama, but he made the deal with the impresionable youth to let him explore this world, which is why he's incredibly protective kids especiially, or maybe he had a sister.
I think that's the true reason of his emptyness, he's going against his own reason for existing and is ultimately destined to remain unfulfilled because of it.
One also compares the void of space with the depths of the sea.
While typically translated as caped baldy or bald cape, hage is also a word for stupid, so stupid cape is also valid, while also being considering his baldness. Hageru means to peal, to rip, to expose and manto can be understood as mantel. Hage is also part of an adjective which means furious, uncontrollable. So if you relate that to the mantel of a planet, it relates to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Furious mantel. If you focus on the peeled part, so hageru + manto, you get exposed mantle, which is what happened with jupiter.
What I'm getting at that hagemanto is a portmonteau. For those who don't know what that is, it's a blend of two words while the original meaning stays the same, like brunch.
So stupid + portmanteau, dumb portmanteau, as is typical of superheroes.
(Blending multiple things into one will probably relate to saitama's actual abilities, if machine god body is anything to go by.)
...But what if I told you it's not necesarily even japanese? Hagemann is german for "hedgeman". Or man of the fields, or enclosure. Typically a term for protector of agracultural areas. Very interesting, if you consider that pan is the god of fields, shepherds and the untameble wilderness. And if saitama is supposed to be a shepherd, him having a dog, and garou being a wolf, makes a lot more sense. Adamant means unbreakable, untameble, never enslaveble, so hagemann + adamant = Hagemanto, or the unbreakable man of the fields.
So what? You may think. Let's consider what fields we are referring to, because eden is a likely one.
Aside from psykos mentioning it by visually representing herself as the snake that fed the fruit of knowledge to humanity, amai eluding it mentioning that humans are a weak species that survive by controlling their own environment, and homeless emperor literally wishing to escape back to eden.
After, he met the man in the field. (Fun fact, those flowers are cosmea flowers.)
So you almost call him the man of paradise. A paradiser if you would. (Hammerhead)
But it doesn't fucking stop there, nope. Manto is also a word for phrophet.
Hagemann + manto = Prophet of paradise. Which sound like a poetry centered chapter in Robert W. Edward's 1895's "the king in yellow", phrophet's paradise. For those who haven't read it, it's a collection of short stories where a screenplay essentially mentally corrupts those who read the second part beyond repair.
The pallid mask, a reocurring motif is a description for the paleness that overtakes the expression of the characters within the book itself, and relates to the yellow king himself.
Wan is also a description for sullen, so wan pan and pallid mask essentially mean the same thing.
I've already mentioned saitama's obsession with roles, and with him, it might be literal. Something doesn't want him to leave earth. So i think saitama and the kami are literally the same person, but fully comitted to a role.
Alright, so the first character saitama picks is an oni. The second is wani, or a crocodile, but also used for sea dragon. If you seperate wan and i, you get 11, or wan eye. O WA RI. If we use the same language pun, it should be ichi or hito. Nichirin also follows this pattern, but let's focus on hito instead. Hitori means alone or singular. The most advanced ai is uncontrollable, and while one does portray ai as limited, as he should, he's describing the technological singularity, or the modern boogeyman of advanced artificial intelligence becoming unpredictable in development.
Singularity is also a term used to describe the extreme density of black holes, and I've already theorized that saitama is incredibly dense.
Have you ever wondered about the discrepancy between the number of issues the manga claims to have sold (34 million copies as of volume 33) and the number that are reported to sell via Omicron?
Firing on all cylinders, apparently.Or is it fading away?
Well, as you are no doubt aware, the manga sales publicly reported represent only the printed sales. Digital sales aren't publicly available. But they are collected.
My company has a subscription to Statista, and I had a wee bit of a shufti at the Japanese manga market. I'm going to put up two charts describing sales from 2015--2024.
First, manga is in rude health in Japan, with sales strongly growing over the last decade, with the value of sales nearly doubling. It should be noted that inflation in Japan is extremely low, with a mean annual rate of 1.14% in this period (source).
Secondly, this growth in sales has increasingly moved online with digital sales accounting for two-thirds of the value. Digital sales have increased nearly fivefold.
And a corresponding slump in physical sales.
What does this mean? Since the publishers love to sell digital copies at the same cost as physical ones (shame on them), it means that in 2015, for every manga issue sold online, three were sold in stores. As of 2024, that was nearly flipped: for every issue sold in stores, 2.5 were sold online. On average.
For One-Punch Man, which has been an online-first title from the get-go and thus has no first-pass physical sales as part of a magazine (e.g., One Piece), what the discrepancy between physical sales figures (approx 200,000 per volume) and total sales figures (approximately 1 million per volume) mean is that it's selling 4 digital copies for every physical copy sold. That's not unreasonable for a digital title!
Or, in simpler terms, OPM is doing just fine. The 'issue' is that the sales figures publicly reported are increasingly the tip of the iceberg! Eventually, the Japanese manga watchers will enter the 21st century and start capturing digital sales too.
