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the-sage-libriomancer · 6 months

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i’ve been watching One Punch Man, and i do appreciate that ONE makes sure to balance class differences (in terms of status, not money) pretty evenly. a lot of class-centric stories, especially in shonen, pick one of two extremes: make all the characters high-ranking individuals with low-ranking npcs as cannon fodder, or make all the lower-ranking MCs rise to the top while high-ranking characters sneer. The first one paints the high-ranking characters as the only people worth talking about; the second one makes the low-ranking characters seem like plucky underdogs who deserve their positions more than the high-ranking ones.

but One Punch Man has a point to make about hierarchies - namely, that people can be good and bad no matter where you are in the pecking order - and unlike a lot of other shonen works, he puts his money where his mouth is. sometimes you get selfless, heroic Class S heroes (Genos, Bang), and sometimes you get selfish, arrogant Class S heroes (Metal Knight, Tornado). sometimes you get altruistic, hard-working Class A heroes (Smileman, Lightning Max) and sometimes you get self-centered, opportunistic Class A heroes (Snek, Dark Gatling). sometimes you get Class C heroes who are willing to sacrifice themselves to save others (Muman Rider, Chain Toad), and sometimes you get Class C heroes who’d rather chase after recognition and fame at the expense of other heroes (the Tank Top brothers).

and in the middle of that you have Saitama. possibly the most powerful man alive, easily the most powerful man in the Hero Association, and yet he's ultimately just a c-grade hero trying to make his way up the ranks like everyone else. he does want to earn a higher rank, but only because it's a goal to pursue (and probably because he's lonely and conflates attention/notoriety with human connection, but that's a whole other post). and yet it's been shown multiple times that even in the face of an opportunity to raise his rank, when it comes down to it, Saitama will always pick helping others over being a hero. he'll lean into ugly rumors about being a lying cheater if it helps Class B heroes get the recognition they deserve. he'll save people who insult him (Suiryu), people who are taking advantage of him (King), people who obviously deserve whatever karmic punishment he's saving them from (the butt-chinned kid). he treats everyone equally, regardless of rank or wins/losses ratio, and judges them on their own merits - not by how powerful they are or how high their rank is, but by how well they treat him and others.

One Punch Man stands out because ONE is determined to go the extra mile in showing that status simply doesn't matter to real heroes. it's not a matter of what rank you are - it literally is just how you choose to conduct yourself. you get bad apples in every bracket, but you also get real gems who defy all the negativity that builds up between ranks and genuinely try to help. you can tell ONE really thought out his deconstruction and subsequent reconstruction of the class/status divide and power scaling issues that are so prevalent in shonen manga, and as per usual with his works, it makes for a thought provoking read.

#anyway. that's enough big words for one day #i just think it's neat how ONE always says “is anyone gonna thoughtfully critique that” and doesn't wait for an answer #i've never known an artist like him #one punch man #saitama #analysis #sage speaketh

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gofancyninjaworld · 1 year

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OPM webcomic chapter 142 review: Unforgivable.

Story

So after nearly two years of absence, ONE once again drops a ninja update of the webcomic on us. This is a normal-sized (15-16 pages) webcomic chapter, but we've no idea whether there are any follow-ups to come soon. Combined with the fact that this is an action-packed release with very little in the way of conversation, it's a chapter that just whizzes by in a kinetic stream of beautifully-composed action shots.

We open with the city under attack. A bird (looks like a crow) is perched on a telegraph pole. As it is startled into the air by the laser beams cutting through the building in the background, we see the building explode. The next scenes are confused voices emanating from the surrounding buildings, with people asking what is going on so early, what alarms there are, urging loved ones to get up and get out… and these voices become less coherent as the horror of the reality overtakes them.

The robots march through the city, systematically and thoroughly destroying every building, car, person, and object in sight. They miss no one and overlook nothing and they keep formation to ensure that no one gets a chance to double back and slip through their ranks. This is not an attack. It is an extermination.

Their progress is halted by a figure landing in front of them. It's Genos and the footprint he stamps into the road is apparently a challenge, a wordless declaration that none shall pass this point. He doesn't spend time posturing, but charges straight into the ranks of the robots and…

…robots start to disintegrate, some punched so hard they fly to pieces, some slashed in two, some apparently shocked. Genos mows them down so fast they appear suspended in the air, their slowly falling bodies the only indication he had ever been there. As the entirety of the division is destroyed, we finally see Genos again, walking through them in the same manner that Saitama had walked through the attacking robots the night before.

A figure appears before Genos in the dust and smoke, and he punches it, realising too late that it's Saitama. Fortunately, Saitama had adroitly dodged around him, and no harm was done. Saitama smiles slightly as he declares that Genos has become strong: the doctor's final upgrade was a success.

Genos does not acknowledge the praise, thinking briefly before suggesting that he and Saitama split up, Saitama to tackle the remaining forces in the city while he Genos goes ahead to Metal Knight's hideout. For a few moments, Saitama is silent. He slowly turns around and then waves to Genos as he starts walking off, telling Genos that he understood and the latter was to be careful.

Genos doesn't spend time looking wistfully after Saitama. If anything, the inner rage stoking him seems to flare up even hotter. He takes off (the very first time we've seen him fly in the webcomic -- anyone wishing to dispute that is confusing it with the manga) and flies off. En route, he encounters a monster nonchalantly perched on a building, playing with a truck like it's an overgrown Lego piece. Thinking that it stands to reason that Metal Knight would use monsters as biological weapons in conjunction with robots, Genos slashes at the air with his fingers, and the monster is cleaved in several places as if with a sword. Genos isn't to know it but it is Meat Dumpling and with the monster's destruction, Zaedat's murder is avenged.

Unforgiveable, Genos says to himself, as he flies off.

That's where the chapter leaves off. Shall we meta?

Meta

A: It's Needs O'Clock

I'm going to try to make this the only place I compare this with the manga. Manga readers will notice a similarity between the slashes that Genos used to dispatch Meat Dumpling and Bomb's Whirlwind Cutting Iron Fist. It can't be because of the former having observed the latter in the webcomic as Bomb never used such a move in the webcomic. It's something he (well, Kuseno) has come up with independently.

One of the things you have to accept as a webcomic reader is that characters are capable of doing things when the narrative requires that they are: there isn't time or space to go into development unless it's super-critical to the plot. If you want to see characters grind, you need to read the manga. It doesn't bother me, but it's something to note and respect.

B: A whodunit resolved

With the appearance of Meat Dumpling, an important set of troublesome coincidences ties itself up into an incriminating body of fact beyond a reasonable doubt. The fact that Meat Dumpling was out there in the middle of a robot uprising clinches it: it was sent out precisely to target Zaedats. This ties in perfectly with how Destro and Erimin were able to recover both Zaedats and Infelsinave: the monsters are under their control and of course the monsters relinquished them without a fuss (or without harming those precious heads of theirs).

this looked like such bad luck, including the suit's failure to allow him to escape, but no longer

Those two Neo Leaders weren't unlucky, they were the subject of hit jobs so that their resources could fall under The Organization's control.

A's total lack of surprise was also suspicious but then again, it's A: a guy without a shred of morality

Hoo, so now we know that the robot uprising and the cyborg conspiracy (and whatever fuckery is going on at the Neo Heroes) are all linked. We suspected it was because the body suits they'd been handing out to Neo Heroes looked suspiciously like modified versions of the suits Hammerhead and crew the Organization allowed them to steal. Sonic recognising those suits strengthened our suspicion.

The appearance of cybernetically modified, remotely-controlled monsters whose actions happened to benefit the Neo Heroes but not pro-heroes strengthened our suspicions still further.

With the Machine Gods (an Organization special) declaring to Genos that the day of reckoning was about to begin, we knew that The Organization was up to something big.

However, there was still a tiny bit of room for there to be another bad actor to take advantage of the situation to carry out their evil plans. With the monster appearing, there is doubt no longer: Destro, Erimin, the rampaging robots, the Machine Gods, and the Neo Heroes are all of a piece.

If someone had tried putting these pieces together, they'd have been shouted down as a swivel-eyed conspiracy theorist. But there you go: occasionally, what seems to be a shadowy, well-resourced, well-organized conspiracy to subvert justice and subjugate society IS JUST THAT.

Only just about nobody believes it…

C: Half the Reason

…except Genos and Kuseno. Genos seemed mad to a lot of readers when he first came to Saitama talking about rampaging cyborgs and the total extermination of everyone in his home town, and of shadowy enemies that were all but impossible to track down. We'd seen monsters, sure, but what was this about cyborgs? Was he making it all up? Even though we saw at least one cyborg associated with The Organization early on in the series, we had no real leads as to what was really happening, how extensive it was, and how it all fit together (well, we still don't have the last) until now.

Why would anyone in their right mind give up their human body and become a living weapon? Well, One-Punch Man has been clear that there are many reasons that people become cyborgs for, but in Genos's case we now have half the reason: because nobody wanted to believe that what had seemed a random series of attacks was part of a much greater war, and thus nobody was prepared to challenge it. This was the only way available to him to take that stand.

Something that is both observable to readers within their own lives and observable to readers within the confines of the story is that it is really difficult to kill everyone in a place. Kill at least one person? Not too bad. A few? Tougher. Many? Tougher still. Most people? That's quite the ask, even with heavy artillery. Everybody? That takes some serious planning and execution. We've noticed that monsters, for all their strength and size, are remarkably bad at killing lots of people: they can nab some people randomly and knock some buildings down, but the sort of kill numbers are far lower than one would initially expect -- if one forgets about the propensity of people to save themselves. We're not chickens stuck in a chicken coop, painfully shivering as we're grabbed one by one. The heroes are useful, yes, but damn do the monsters help by being more interested in intimidating people than killing and eating them for the most part.

Chillingly, the most economical explanation is that once the method of achieving total kills was validated, it no longer needed the human input of a cyborg and could be automated.

The difference between what monsters do and what the robots were doing is chillingly clear. Not a single person woken up early that morning survived. That's the sort of thoroughness it takes to kill everyone in a town and I praise ONE for showing this to us in such an economic manner. This scene must have been a horrible flashback to Genos's fateful day. It really takes a certain kind of mind to execute this. One thing often misunderstood in the story is the word 'bosu' -- it does not so much mean mad as it means rampaging, out of control. The mad cyborg is less mad than it does go on systematic rampages, rampages that have resulted in the total destruction of multiple towns. The only thing special about Genos's former town is that it's the last known place struck.

And his literally taking a stand to stop repeats of these exterminations is incredibly admirable.

D: Prelude to a Tragedy

However, happy as everyone is to see Genos wrecking the bots like wrecking is going out of fashion, I don't think there are many who are optimistic about what is unfolding. For it's the first act in a tragedy. A tragedy whose full impact we are surely going to see unfold over the rest of the arc, and quite possibly in many arcs to follow. Genos is going to attack Metal Knight, the latter having successfully been framed by Drive Knight. The chances that the Metal Knight who has been watching Organization operatives with such suspicion is himself the culprit is slim. However, Drive Knight gloating about how Metal Knight was blindsided by the rise of the Neo Heroes very strongly suggests that the doctor, for all his crabby, misanthropic presentation, is indeed innocent.

There's still room for reasonable doubt when it comes to Bofoi's intentions and actions, but Genos is not in the mood to listen. He's entirely fixated on killing. Whether he kills Bofoi, is killed by him, or they take each other out, the only beneficiaries are the enemies of mankind currently trying to break civilization with machines and modified biological weapons.

Perhaps Saitama should not have let Genos go alone with only the exhortation to be careful. Genos will need all his wits and all the luck he has never had to thread this particular needle without tragedy.

Good luck: the ease with which the unforgiving can become the unforgiven is truly terrifying.

#OPM #OPM webcomic #review #Genos #Saitama #Metal Knight #Drive Knight #The Organization #the day of chaos #so this is what it's come to: there's never a good time to face evil but this showdown looks to be particularly heavy #especially if there's a miscarriage of justice #Saitama I hope your faith in your disciple is rewarded

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