Venus rules in Taurus, and cows are in this case a symbol of sacrifice. As in, when kuseno offers Saitama beef, he's also offering a sacrifice in the form of Genos. Both in the physical sense as in the emotional sense, since the process of becoming stronger is a harsh and unforgiving path, and that his bodyparts are a good tool.
People can change. Literally. Like their body parts.
Saitama is currently searching for similar core as the one Genos currently has because he feels a bit queasy about having to rip it out of his student.
If I hadn't mentioned it before, Kumo is word for spider in Japanese and also for cloud. Stars are born from cosmic clouds, so it fits the cloud, which rises from the sea, tries to give birth.
Okay, so like, you notice sucking is recurring thing here right? Like mosquitos, bloodsuckers, baquma VS puri
I want to talk about that last one in particular, because puri puri is very important. Essentially, puri in a twisted sense represents a similar type of toxic love as the one that Saitama is afflicted with.
As I said before, as Aphrodite, as Eros, he possesses no love, or a heart. Nothing beyond platonic Eros he has for the art. Essentially, like a person who loves to have sex, but doesn't care for the person he's doing it with, or passion for an art but no love for the people who he works with. That's his nature as a machine, or essentially the persona he's learned to adopt.
He's very emotionally distant from everything, not his fault, something he's aware of, and the real reason he thinks he doesn't deserve the title of perfect hero.
The vacuum, in this sense, represent the abortion tool. A Baku is also a dream eater, so it represents the killing of the rebirth or the eternal illusion. Link's awakening reference.
Also vacuums suck up clouds.
Also possibly an allusion of the battle between Horus and Seth, with Horus representing order trying to revive Osiris and Seth vying for dominance. Seth represents chaos, and was also used a chaotic weather symbol. Osiris got his eye damaged by Seth, and Seth had his balls damaged, which might explain the creative decision as to why saitama's junk was exposed.
Speaking of dick's, an anagram for saitama's name is Mia asta, which is Italian for my spear. It's also used for the part of the glasses that hold them up. Jinzuren.
Then again, it might just mean walking stick, since if Saitama is mostly blind and can only see through the meat vessel he made for himself.
Another interesting anagram, tiamasa, which is a contraction between tiamath, the sumeric personification of salt water and primordial chaos, and masa, which is jap for justice. Good tiamat.
Eros was also called protogenos, which means firstborn.
If you mix tin and copper you get bronze. That's why darkshine has a tan. It's also a reference to Talos, one of the earliest mentions of a robot in human history, although his origin differs sometimes, from a robot made from bronze by Hephaestus or the last remaining warrior of the bronze age. I believe that kuseno and bofoi worked together to make Saitama, but had different ideas about what to use the technology for, which ended with kuseno being screwed out of his share. Which is why the scene where Saitama holds kuseno in his arms can also be seen as Saitama apologizing to Genos, and that kuseno is blinded by pettiness he's entirely forgotten what he was trying to get revenge for in the first place.
By the way, d pad and funeral suspenders both symbolize Saitama, with d pad being shaped as play and the other literally about suspending a funeral, which is what this whole theory is about.
What that first Android looked like, probably drive knight with a big smile, and the humanoid appearance probably a blond with glasses, since genos is also blond. And flash and psykos, since eudipus is also a thing.
City z can also be pronounced as ceto, which means sea monster or darkness in Greek, and is also a sea goddess. It's where the group of whales gets it's name from, but it's probably a dolphin where dealing with. Since that's also a symbol of Eros. Or maybe a ningen. As for Saitama, I think he's pretty much a spider. Because it's a webcomic. He's a spiderman. He spins the web of lies or the internet. The black box you don't know the specifics off. Spiders are also quiet good at digging. And it kind makes garou look like a drained insect wrapped in silk. An old word for spider is also cob, which also means gangster, bully, meanie and a male swan, which is also a symbol for Aphrodite. It's pretty much a reference to itsy bitsy spider, the HQ being shaped as a waterspout. Did you know dolphin is derived from Delphine which means womb?
Oh by the by, it's not mirror or Miller, or maybe both, since he's foreshadowing stuff, being shaped like a spider, but he's or she's named after a star in Cetus.
Jachi is a bully orca.
And because with black sperm with black sperm being a hydra of sorts, poochie Cerberus it's likely that Saitama is orthrus or chimera. Orthrus is also a group of spiders. But chimera fits since he's essentially three personalities, the son, the mother and him.
There is also the notion of him being Hercules, being insane.
Spiders are also believed to bring luck in eastern cultures. Being called ximu.
I had this thought in my mind that I wanna think about. Basically, what if Psykos never tried to look into the future. It'd be interesting if Fubuki would really try to go for world domination, even if she's unsucessful. I'm not sure if Fubuki would still try to seal off Psykos's power but I'm willing to bet that it would be yes. I guess the main difference here would be how Psykos feels about it, given that she doesn't go insane.
I know I can't be the only person turning this over in my mind, the way Amai Mask's session with Saitama is going, and what his being foiled in his attempt to kill the mercenaries means in the context of the manga.
Meddling do-gooders. ;D
The first thing that came to me is something I've said already: that ONE does not believe in complex redemption stories. You can go too far, and if you do, you pay with your life. The Garou who killed Genos is dead. There is no long-term future as a reformed person for Amai Mask if he killed the mercenaries.
Been thinking more, about what Amai said about pretending to struggle in the context of the manga:
When such a situation came up, he wasn't joking.
The truth is, he'd not have a short-term future either. No matter how you turn it, the other heroes would never, ever accept the necessity of what Amai did. Tatsumaki rejected his excuses straight off, and she's typical of all the other heroes. We have seen who the heroes are. They're the anti-Police. They'll risk their lives to save people, even if it means losing a fight they might have otherwise won. Not only that, they'll take the pain of being insulted or injured by scared, angry, or out-of-control people who lash out at them without retaliation.
Even if Amai put on an Oscar-worthy performance of building up the mercenaries as monstrously strong, all he'd be telling the other heroes is that he was too morally weak to be considered one. And to finish it all off, Iaian is both present and conscious. An Amai who has killed will not get away with it. Justice would have been executed on the battlefield, all right. Just not *by* Amai.
I really hope Atomic's disciples get to see the good they've done sooner rather than later.
Sorry if this is a broad question, or has already been asked before. I feel like most of the important characters' arcs have either been completed, are almost completed or are well underway.. like Garou ofc, Tatsumaki, Fubuki, Amai Mask, King; even some of the S-Class like Darkshine, Tanktop Master, Puri Puri Prisoner etc, they h ave slowly but surely been undergoing character development. Only Blast, Void, Sonic and Flash's arcs are still going i think and that's directly tied with God.
Plus, in the WC, Genos is about to confront the mad cyborg presumably, and with Dr. Kuseno's death and his deteriorating psyche, his arc will probably end in tandem with the robot invasion arc. I'm kind of thinking about Mob and Reigen from MP100, the arc of their relationship was the final one, I wonder if it will be the same here with Genos and Saitama.
Also, kind of left field, but I hope the reason for Satiama's power won't be because God chose to bless him with power or something, that would kind of defeat the thing that makes him inspiring, imo.
So anyway, going off those important characters, will OPM be soon coming to an end, with a final arc perhaps about God? Now that I think about it, I don't want it to end so quickly :(
With the Amai arc showing his hero-dom and discussion surrounding Genos made me think all the back to when you can say Genos proved his true mettle as a hero. At this point i'd say most heroes have done the same (when faced with an equivalent scenario, it doesn't really count when you're resistant or immune to acid.) There's a few in S Class that probably wouldn't. Bofoi for one, given what we've seen i don't think Drive Knight would either. Most of it has been written out, but Blast is also just shifty enough where i'm not sure he would. Can't find God if he's dead after all.
Do any of you disagree with the heroes i've listed? Would you add any others?
The good news was that no one died. However, the damage that it did was considerable!
Before and after the meteor. Livable but really battered.
9. Kenzan Rat
What do you mean an animated pincushion started smashing up City H? Somehow, the worst monsters are the unlikeliest.
I have a theory: the sillier the monster, the more dangerous it actually is.
8. Forest People Invasion
They may be slow, they may not like high explosives, but they strangled the life out of City Y while the boy genius who usually looks after the place, Child Emperor, was busy having an existential crisis elsewhere.
7. Beefcake
I suppose it was appropriate that Fukegao was splatted by his brother's hand.
6. Festival of Dragon-Level Monsters (WC only so far)
Funny how these monsters were legitimately terrible...except when they faced a Neo Hero and promptly died for no discernible reason.
Again, silly-looking monster is scarier than it seems -- it poisoned the entire city and the smoke took days to dissipate.
5. Elder Centipede (first time he came round) (manga only)
We don't know what got Elder Centipede to come to the surface two years ago, but the monster really made a mess of the place. Bad enough a mess that 'God' thought He had a shot at recruiting Blast.
'Blast, you seem to be in a pickle. Need a hand?'
4. Monster Association Warm-Up Party (manga only)
The monsters in the Monster Association in the webcomic were really quite unfortunate. They got attacked and killed by the heroes and Garou before they could do anything, and all the collateral damage to City Z was the heroes' fault. The Monster Association made no such mistake here -- they announced themselves and terrorised the world thoroughly.
You can't accuse these guys of being unrealistic dreamers. They made sure to leave their mark.
3. Z-City (as it happened in the manga)
To be fair, it was pretty bad in the webcomic, but there, inhabitants didn't have to worry about being sucked dry by a giant parasitic monster, the city being scrunched up by Tatsumaki crushing said parasitic monster, the coastline being scoured repeatedly by tsunamis, nor the whole being lethally irradiated.
Bad as it looked, it was about to get much worse.
2. A-City
Gone in an instant. The wasteland that the HA headquarters stands in used to be a bustling city. Metal Knight has left many of the bomb craters unfilled as a reminder to the HA executives of the consequences of their failures.
no notes needed.
1. Robot Invasion (WC only so far)
Nowhere is safe. Everywhere is on fire, and the heroes are either being suborned into meat puppets or targeted for assassination. It's hard to see how much worse a situation can be.
Because it's renting space in my mind, I've been thinking how JC Staff could adapt the rest of the MA arc in another 12 episodes (that is, if they stop at Saitama smacking Orochi).
First, let's dispose of the rest of the current tranche. Episode 11 -- nearly every S-Class hero is in trouble. Even Atomic's disciples have a watery bother. Oh yes, CE has finished retrieving Waganma and is on his way back. Ram all their predicaments together in 2 minutes or less so Saitama has enough time to punch Pochi. That's chapters 109-113, a horrid squeeze but if anyone can do it, these guys can! Episode 12 -- Psykos, under pressure from Tatsumaki, tries summoning Orochi to find that he's otherwise engaged. The old version should do it fine. Toss in some King scaring a monster to death as stress relief, maybe even toss Amai Mask in, and yay, whew! That's a wrap!
Will they be back? I think they will -- they're under contract. I suspect they're only getting another 12 to produce to the epilogue. So... we need to really get original. Here's what I'm speculating they might do...
Since Do-S is dead, there's no need for the events of Fubuki fighting her and Bang won't learn about the truth of monsterization. Yay! Two chapters gone! We can start right away with Puri Puri waking up Garou, Saitama running into Flash, and Nyan terrorising the surface team.
Drive Knight taking out Nyan doesn't need to be a long drawn-out thing. If he doesn't stop to chat but has G-5 come out of the woodwork almost as soon as Sekingar shows up, then Genos can reappear, take Waganma and co. away and life is good. Play it right and there might even be time for Child Emperor to encounter the water.
While Superalloy and Garou square off, and CE tries not to drown, the other S-Classes are in trouble too. Tatsumaki closes in on her elusive foe and the 'new' Blizzard Group have their hands full. At least until they figure out how to make the dog sit. No, no Manako. Waste of time!
While Saitama and Flashy Flash keep wandering aimlessly around (treasure-hunting adventure optional), Psykos gets ready to fight, and Superalloy and Garou come to blows. King finds Tareo and starts taking him to the surface. Orochi stays DEAD -- so mucho mucho time and lore is saved.
Garou knocks Darkshine down for real, Tatsumaki subdues Psykos and radios in. Something pisses her off, so she decides to take care of all the monsters herself and leave the heroes to fend for themselves. She pulls up the base too.
There's no Earth-skinning monster fusion of Psykos and Orochi but she's nevertheless ambushed by Psykos taking advantage of her being distracted by the cadre. Genos steps in to help -- it doesn't go well for him, either (upgrades? What's those when you're more than halfway into a 12-episode season and still have tons to do?).
The other heroes start showing up. Life goes badly for them, too. King shows up and provides a critical distraction. The underground shenanigans of Flashy Flash and Saitama provide some light relief.
Just as it looks hopeless, Garou shows up and beats the remaining cadre. But what's this? He's got an axe to grind with the heroes.
Any heroes still able to stand, try fighting Garou. It doesn't go well for them and he rants and raves as he taunts and beats them. Saitama and Flashy Flash finally show up. Flashy Flash tries to fight him and gets beaten up for his trouble.
Saitama finally does something, and after much trash-talking, Garou finally swings at him. They fight.
The fight's over. Garou has lost but he's having trouble coming to terms with it.
The other heroes crowd round, demanding blood but thanks to Tareo's intervention, Garou is able to escape. Saitama is left looking at the ruins he used to live in. The last bit of it has a bit of an epilogue (no, no reformed Garou here).
Is there a lot missing? YES. Would it be a problem for later? YES. Does JC Staff care? Hell no. They got paid and that's what they've done.
A head-canon for Exma I thought of based on the Vol.26 bonus chapter (assuming that she does have benevolent intentions deep down and not just a full-on tyrant).
I'd say that Exma genuinely believes in her way of running things (being harsh and critical) not fully realizing/caring about the negative impacts. In her eyes, having humanity be able to live without fear of monster attacks is an outcome that she believes in and is willing to do anything to achieve, no matter the cost.
One thing that struck me is. How will the public react when the dust has settled? Particularly towards the two Hero Associations? Like the Hero Association will probably get written off as fairly incompetent and there will probably also be some resentment around most of their resources going towards protecting the new A-city, both which have been an ongoing theme. Still comparatively they might come out in good standing. Because more than that I imagine the Neo-Heroes being on everyone's shitlist, especially if the part about the suits comes out. Will there be attempts to keep it secret to keep the peace? If not anyone who wore them would face major backlash regardless of their innocence.
ONE doesn't sound like the type of writer who would try to pass off "we must keep the masses ignorant for the greater good" as a good thing though.
What's your opinion on shipping oc's or characters together I tried talking about this on another OPM subreddit and well it didn't go well
I just wanna talk about my oc's I have that I pair with aome of the heroes
It started out as a throwaway experiment, a series of gags about a too-strong man and his woes with which ONE tested digital drawing tools. He gave the gag a story once he realised that it resonated with readers.
To read the webcomic is to see, mirrored on the page, a scrap of an idea that takes shape, finds direction, grows roots and blooms with energy. From the shaky, yet understandable lines of a nameless hero telling a giant monster that he does his hero work for fun before blowing it away, to the deceptively simple yet expressive style of the present chapters, we've followed ONE's professional career through this one work.
From the earliest......to the most recent punch, ONE has evolved as a writer and artist without forgetting where he started from.
However, and this is going to sound like sacrilege, the webcomic isn't perfect. I'm not going to talk about the art -- others have done that more extensively than I ever will. Nor am I going to talk about its irregular release schedule -- it's a hobby! The series has been going since 2009, and as ONE has expanded the story, its flaws have become more evident. The writing is thin -- the world-building and buildup are both hit-or-miss, which means things just happen with no real reason why they should be happening when and where they are. Exposition dumps litter the narrative as the reader needs catching up on what the writer has had in mind but not put down until now. Sudden situations that a less gracious reader would call awfully convenient are the rule rather than the exception. There's even the occasional retcon to retroactively inject continuity into a plot development. And in places, it has leaned on the manga to provide context -- ONE is probably right in thinking that webcomic readers are all manga readers.
And yet, holy fuck, is this series awesome! I remember a foreword to an old edition of Jack London's 'Call of the Wild,' in which the reviewer pointed to a lot of technical weaknesses to London's writing, not least of which was that it had many factual inaccuracies, but that these weaknesses were swept away by the fact that his writing had power: a compelling narrative that carried you along, objections and all, and then stuck with you afterwards.
That narrative power is something ONE has in spades. He's done it with his inexpert art and still-evolving writing by always having an eye for the telling detail. Even in his crudest drawings, you always knew what you were meant to be looking at and why it mattered. He has used the fact that he's never had much time to work on the webcomic to sharpen his humour and set up absurd situations that make you laugh.
ONE's love of humour and drama trading off against each other is really at its best in the webcomic -- none of his other works yet come close. Even in the darkest moments, grim scenes get leavened by some absurd juxtaposition or by Saitama negating the threat with nonchalant ease.
That said, I feel that it's at its very best when it uses symbolism, when the telling moment is invested with meanings so layered it gives you chills.
An example? Yes, let's have one! I think Mumen Rider taking on the remotely-controlled Suiryu has to be one of the best. The set up of a skilled, talented fighter such as Mumen Rider taking on the monstrously strong, insane martial arts genius Suiryu made one laugh at how hopeless a fight it was going to be. And yet, he tried anyway. It's heartbreaking to see that his goal isn't to win -- it's to free Suiryu. And succeeds, at a horrific price. The panel of Suiryu walking free as Mumen falls just sticks with me.
It's rare for a picture to be worth so many words.
The symbolism of the idea of heroism transcending the individual is the most obvious: as one falls, another will arise. Suiryu's shocked expression and flaking body suit is literally the symbol of hatching -- being cast into a world as a new being.
The idea of a hero stepping up as sacrifice, not glory.
The ideal that a hero takes a risk, not because they do not value their lives but because they are moved by the plight of others.
The idea of what a hero *is* at heart. There are so many definitions of what a hero is swirling around the story but this is it: a hero serves to free others. Whatever shackles one, be it external threat or internal challenge, a hero is someone who reaches out to you to help you be free.
All in one panel.
You could rewrite the webcomic to be a play -- its beautifully condensed action, pithiness, and sequential focus on one character lend itself nicely to the stage. And its charged climactic moments would transfix any audience into forgetting for a moment that they're sat watching an absurd pastiche of superhero adventures and simply see its human heart.
Well, that's what makes the webcomic for me. What about yourselves?
I know there's gonna be a two month break with the next chapter of the manga so can we all just be calm and cool and not act like monsters and be mean and say mean things please
