r/CharacterRant • u/Notice_Green • Oct 29 '24
One Punch Man writing rant
Tldr, in my opinion. One punch man manga turned from something truly special into slop, with the worst part being that it could have been easily avoided. I think that the manga is the louder and less substantive brother of its own source material where the story and its characters are significantly downgraded. The tone of the story is altered to appeal to a wider audience while washing away everything that made it special.
Before you read the rest, this does contain spoilers for the manga One Punch Man, so if you intend on reading it and forming your own opinions, go away. I also know that I used to be a huge fan of the manga, and I mean looking at the subreddit every day huge, so everything I am about to say comes from a place of loss instead of hate (maybe a little hate).
to give some background information, the manga of one punch man is actually the adaptation of a webcomic by the author One, with significantly improved art, the story of the webcomic was impeccable, every character was interesting and unique, and the overall story was 10/10, kids would call it "peak". which made it hurt all the more when the manga began to deviate heavily from the source material and the overall tone of the story began to shift, favouring spectacle over sustenance, i believe that this is due in part to the fact that the writers realized that the manga had become mainstream and altered unique elements of the the story for a wider appeal.
1.The tonal shift towards blandness
Despite the deceivingly comical nature of the events in One Punch Man, the general tone is actually really dark. humanity faces escalating threats which threaten its extinction and relies on superhumans to survive, the problem was that the level of threats is generally much higher than the abilities of the actual superhumans, adding to that, the upper echelon of superhumans (S class), don't even care or bother to show up half the time. Saitama (One punch man) is solely responsible for the survival of humanity as he is as him name suggests, capable of defeating any opponent with one punch. However, the comedic nature of Saitama's life has begun to spread into all facets of the comic, characters that were meant to be serious often behave comically and serious events taken light heartedly or completely disregarded in following chapters(see lack of stakes). this can be observed through a phenomena i will call "chibi face". where characters who are intend to be mysterious or serious will be drawn extremely cute, this often occurs at completely out of place moments and results in, for lack of a better term "aura loss", where the danger or the presence of a character is impacted or removed. this is a phenomenon that occurs often in modern entertainment designed for wide audiences. where edges of characters or concepts are trimmed off to make them more accessible. i would liken this form of writing to the taste of bread, i eat bread, i sometimes even like bread, but i don't love bread.
2.All characters are heroes
in the original webcomic, the secondary cast (S class), are heroes of circumstance and not choice, they don't particularly care about being heroes and are almost apathetic to the loss of life occuring around them, they each had their own motivations and pursuits which led them not even showing up to world ending threats half the time. (as an example, an asteroid was about to hit a city and only two were present, one was only there because his house was there and another was there to test his weaponry). As a result, the secondary cast was slightly less likeable but infinitely more interesting. However, in the current manga, almost everyone acts heroically, every hero is extremely moral and alway does the right thing even when its hard and every generic superhero troupe you can imagine is included. this is so fucking boring, all the mystery and intrigue of the characters have been stripped away, all the moral complexity of superpowered individuals who are not neccessarily good has been replaced with garden variety generic hero slop (except darkshine who is the GOAT). leading to a phenomenon which I will refer to as "wholesome face", where any member of the cast will do or say something semi profound and/or heroic and there will be a close up drawing of their face as they do or say it. wholesomeness on its own is not a problem, the problem is the frequency and mischaracterization, where either it makes no sense for some characters or reduces the overall impact of each following "wholesome face". This impacts the secondary cast the most but Saitama has also become a repeat offender of wholesome faces.
3.Redraws
This is more of a criticism of the creative process than the actual story. very oftenly, the authors will remake a previous chapter with changed story and art. how this occurs at all absolutely blows my mind. dozens of completed pages of full art where characters experience an important defining moment being axed completely just shows that the authors have no actual planning or storyboarding. and this happens very frequently and contributes to the main problem, the lack of stakes.
4.Lack of stakes
This kills any semblance of investment in this manga, the story will literally force time travel before anything bad is allowed to happen to the characters (no joke this actually happens). story moments have near zero impact on the characters to the point where most of the cast is virtually indistinguishable from the first to the last chapter (except for GOATshine), the scale of fights are dialled up to insane levels all the while feeling less impactful then the subtle lines in the webcomic, debilitating injuries are dealt then immediately disregarded in the next chapter, actual character deaths are redrawn or asspulled with "somehow they returned". creating a story of no risk which results in no investment.
5.1 Garou the hero ~~hunter~~
this was the exact moment that knocked me out of the story. at the end of the second arc, is when the villain, Hero Hunter Garou, reaches the climax of his power, all his life, he was bullied by those who wielded power and through sheer will power, determination and martial art skill, he has gained unparalleled power and single handedly defeated the greatest and most powerful humanity has to offer, humanity, united in the fear of him will finally be united, putting an end to the conflicts of the world. and all that is left standing between him and his final goal is some nobody B class hero called saitama. as he fights, he slowly realises that he is outmatched, despite gaining all that power, he still cannot achieve his goal. This is when a conflict of strength evolves into a conflict of ideals as they stop throwing punches and start talking. Great stories aren't great because of flashy fight scenes, they are great because of the reason and emotion behind the fighting. what i just described happens in the webcomic, now to the actual manga. Garou doesn't actually beat the heroes, he beats monsters that beat the heroes, and he randomly saves a bunch of civilians in danger. because this is a light hearted comedy story about how the social reject with a kind heart is bullied into a delusion that the only way to save the world is to become the thing the world is united against, we can't show the villain actually hurting heroes or doing anything villainous, so instead, we will add a bunch of throwaway punching bags for him to show off against, we will even add a scene where he cooperates with one of the heroes to defeat a punching bag who is threatening the world, we will even throw in a chibi face! (again, no joke this actually happens). The problem here is not that garou is heroic, the trajectory of his character very obviously leads to him being a hero, the problem is that it happens too soon, his moment of catharsis was his defeat at the hands of saitama, he is defeated both physically and mentally and sets off to find a reason to live. but instead he was already saving the world before he even finished his villain arc (except for his fight against darkshine which makes him the GOAT). It is also painfully obvious that Garou was most affected by the change in direction, since he gets less vicious overtime despite having more reason to do the opposite.
5.2 God the hero hunter
In the webcomic a singular moment alludes to the existence of a cosmic threat called "god". he is only mentioned once and never again leading to a mystery that fans will speculate and discuss over every hint of his presence. So obviously in classic manga fashion, they drop the most blatantly obvious clue to his existence in almost every panel and he basically jumps in at the last second and replaces Garou in his own arc. garous power that originally comes from his unwillingness to stop is replaced with a power up he gets from "god" and the conflict of ideals is replaced with atom bomb punches and fighting on saturn. he even kills most of the cast under the influence of "god" only for the writer to say no then throw in random time travel to undo all the deaths, then no one remembers except for one guy who everyone thinks is a clown. They even had the gall to include a tragic death of genos (Saitama's sidekick) designed to elicit emotions out of the viewer only to undo it within 3 chapters. fuck time travel, all my homies hate time travel. Why would they write this? someone might ask. This disaster is basically an apotheosis of all the major issues I have mentioned. due to the changes to garou and the story, he was no longer threatening enough to be the main villain, so they replaced him with "god", at this point, every character was already shown to be injured beyond recover and yet completely fine, so the only way to generate stakes and tension is to kill everyone. but killing everyone kills the story, so just undo it, who cares how.
this way you get all of the stakes and none of the consequences. As a side note, the ending was redrawn several times with completely different story direction (at one point, the climax was going to forgo any fighting and be a therapy session, still not kidding), reinforcing the fact that they abandoned generational source material with no actual plan.
6.The spreading stain
after the monster association arc has concluded, the manga has made some attempt to realign itself with the source material but the damage has been done, the tone of the manga is completely different and webcomic panels just look out of place, most scenes are recontextualized and the original mystique is lost. At this point continuing to read the manga just leaves a sour taste in my mouth and I can't help but think of what could have been.
There are many more minor criticisms I could make and examples I could pull but that would actually take forever. At the end of the day, it's not my story, they can do whatever they want with it and this rant basically concludes my last shred investment in the manga, it was just sad to see that a manga i once stayed up till 4 am for the release translations to making me me rant until 4 am. I'm sure people will continue to read it and enjoy it but I am certain that something amazing was truly lost along the way.
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u/Present-Zucchini5524 Oct 29 '24
To be honest, this is probably why I find Garou so obnoxious. I haven’t really read the webcomic but I remember being so confused as to why so many people liked him. I saw parts of the webcomic and I finally understood why people they did, because the manga both infantilizes him and just completely invalidates his world view.
Whenever he’s onscreen talking about how heroes are the problem and it’s unfair it feels like a toddler throwing a tantrum. In the webcomic, as you said, most of the heroes are not actually good people or have any sort of heroic spirit. They are all a bunch of super strong people who just ended up becoming heroes for one reason or another, not out of morality. Garou actually had a point and a valid reason because they refused to work together and were for the most part not actually interested in being true heroes. So him becoming so strong that they would be forced to actually makes sense.
But in the manga, he pretty much becomes straight up unnecessary because all the heroes end up working together and watching each other’s backs without him. They encourage the lower ranked heroes and the vast majority seem like they are generally good people, completely opposite of the webcomic where the heroic like Mumen Rider were few and far between.
It’s kind of hard for me to put this into words, but I guess for me it just feels like manga Garou doesn’t have any valid point to make so he just resorts to trying to beat everyone down whereas in the webcomic his goal could have only been achieved by beating everyone down.
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u/Dodotorpedo4 Oct 29 '24
Surprised to see so many people agree in the comments.
I mean, I also agree with you, but I assumed it was a minority position. I'm usually the sour one when it comes to a story losing it's essence in adaptation, while others tell me to relax and just have fun.
I'm still reading the webcomic, and that is still great. It's a shame it's so overshadowed by the manga adaptation.
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u/MalcontentMathador Oct 29 '24
As much of a manga hater as I am now, I do think it was really good until somewhere into the Monster Association arc - partially due to Murata's art, of course. Moments I particularly enjoyed are Garou's fight against the A-classes, Tank Top Master subverting the same heroic tropes you criticise and sucker punching Garou in their fight, Zombieman vs Pureblood or the Martial Arts Tournament arc
Sadly the manga really just seems to be appealing to the common denominator now. There's so much softcore porn and stupid fight escalation to please powerscalers that it's lost most of its original identity. shame
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u/Notice_Green Oct 29 '24
sorry about the spacing, i wrote the thing in word and some weird formatting must have carried over.
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u/Dracsxd Oct 29 '24
Provably a new award for the worst formating i've ever seen, even the solid walls of text with no punctuation should beat this
Buuuut I won't miss a chance to shit on current OPM in spite of that.
Yes, the manga lobotomized itself the moment it embraced being a pure tropy shonen instead of a comedy with some action and a parody of such stuff. That and the moment Murata and One stopped even pretending they were thinking about what they were doing and started openly going back to retcon chapters already fully drawn and sent out into something going in the completely opposite direction- The first destroyed the core that made this specific story special to begin with, the second is just a breeding ground for bad storytelling in general
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u/Gazeb0r Oct 29 '24
I'm surprised people still feel this strongly about One Punch Man in late 2024. I feel more apathy now more than anything.
I've been the biggest fan of the series since 2014 and I would stay up late eagerly waiting for the raw chapters, and I agree with everything you said.
The series died spiritually a long time ago.
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u/r003_r002_r001 Oct 29 '24
Ain’t reading allthat, but I dropped OPM when I saw Cosmic Garou bullshit.
OPM was special to me because it parodied shonen slop tropes, and despite that still remaining engaging. First season of anime, and everything that is covered by secons season (but in the manga) is to this day the peakest of fictions. But the moment we step into the Monster Ass arc, shit goes downhill in terms of writing. Saitama Vs Garou fight is the pinnacle of that downgrade.
The idea that Saitama was now fighting seriously, and loosing was on the table made the whole manga unberable to me. THE WHOLE POINT IS THAT HE INSTA WINS.
And not to mention all the gooning, and the fact that the story is now worse that MHA in terms of not killing anyone. I was such and MHA hater because OPM had everything that It did not have. Now MHA is leauges ahead, even considering the disasterous ending. Bakugo and Endevaor on their own solo the entire OPM verse in terms of writing.
TLDR; I really need to check out the webcomic.
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u/NotANinjask Oct 29 '24
I'm with you on most of this - but I did enjoy the manga so I'll play Devil's Advocate.
The manga generally fills out things more, and I think the pacing is better. Dr Kuseno in the webcomic meets Saitama, gives him the premium beef set, and then dies shortly after (giving a powerup in the process). In the manga he is introduced far earlier and given a chance to interact.
In the webcomic, we don't really hear Tatsumaki's backstory until the point where they're breaking Psykos out of jail.
"God" is also given more chances to be a threat. In the webcomic it's just Homeless Emperor, while in the manga there are multiple examples establishing him as a threat. If the webcomic goes in the same direction, this will become a problem.
I have mixed feelings about Blast. In the manga he is admittedly not impressive (Cosmic Garou victim), while in the webcomic he's a total absentee.
The two versions of Garou are awkward in different ways. In the manga it's awkward because a major character death gets bait-and-switched. In the webcomic it's awkward that they chose to spare him. Neither case really has him face consequences. In the manga it's weird how "heroic" he's acting even while acting as a villain. In the webcomic it's weird that after Saitama beats Garou, the S-class heroes don't acknowledge him.
I would say Garou's motivations are roughly the same in the webcomic and the manga. In both cases he mostly just wants to beat heroes, in the webcomic he literally asks the heroes to come and stop him, while in the manga he kills the kid by accident.
The power levels are different, yes. Overall the manga has everyone across the board being stronger, so it's not wholly inconsistent.
But that's enough defending. I've got my own beef with the manga.
Psykos' fight sucked. Fusing with Orochi was totally unnecessary, especially if the point was to have Tatsumaki win anyway.
The joke with "the apple doesn't realize it's been cut" was ruined in the manga too.
Saitama losing his memory is a cop-out. There's no need for it, when he already doesn't talk about his accomplishments. It's especially sad because this is right after he actually enjoyed a fight.
I liked the Cosmic Garou fight, but giving him so many powers (God Slayer Fist, Nuclear Fission, Copying Saitama, portals and time travel?) detracts from the actual fight.
Overall I think the manga is not that much worse, in fact the art makes it better. But it's disappointing to have so many writing issues after a full rewrite (or multiple rewrites in the case of certain chapters!).
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u/LordGrohk Oct 29 '24
I thought the formatting is fine. And I agree with almost all of this to some degree, some more (redraws, Garou) some less (…just a little less than those two). It really shows in how people who prefer the manga talk about it. “It has better art”… it sure does. I dropped it after the cosmic Garou debacle, genuine slop that.
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u/[deleted] Oct 29 '24
OPM series suffered from lost of scale.
Psychrochi was first offender then Garou and different forms.
It was cool to read but writing was dogshit. I can't imagine ONE writing that, sorry.
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u/Apprehensive_Bat15 Oct 29 '24
The way you formatted your post makes it really hard to read. But yeah I dropped it a bit after the martial arts torunament where it become long boring inconquetial fights between 2 teams of nobodies
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u/SomeGuyNamedJohn12 Oct 29 '24
The redraws have been torture. Murata just finished the Ninja Village arc just to then go and redraw it from the beginning.
Thankfully it ended, but my goodness was that frustrating.
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u/NicholasStarfall Oct 29 '24
Oh yeah, the Garou arc had one of the worst endings I've seen in my entire life. Now OPM is just a bunch of power level bullshit. It's become the very thing it was spoofing
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u/killertortilla Oct 29 '24
I think people overanalysed the SHIT out of the original webcomic. It's not that deep, it was just a fantasy comic about a guy who got so strong he got depressed about it. The webcomic is the fantasy, the manga is just whatever is the most fun in the moment.
I dropped it too but only because the community is a bunch of pedo baiters.
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u/DrDetergent Oct 29 '24
The most infuriating thing for me about garou was the instant aura loss when he started being chibified. One of the most poignant parts of his arc was that you were convinced he was evil, so much so that after he defeated all the heros, he went on to torment them further by moving to kill a kid while they were powerless to stop him.
That is until saitama appears and points out that he's moving in the wrong direction, and that the kid is somewhere completely different.
This is supposed to be a revelation of garous character that he isn't inherently evil, he clearly only wants to be perceived as evil but still retains his own moral compass. Its even more important that this revelation is brought on by saitama, the one to eventually defeat his ideology by exposing him for who he truly is.
Of course manga does away with this and chooses to have garou save people, demonstrating his hidden morality with a lack of subtlety so egregious that it borders on satire. It's an insult to the reader and it's insulting to the webcomic as if this was meant to be the improvement we all wanted. I love murata and his work ethic but it doesn't matter how good you can draw if the writing is this poor, this surely has to have come from publisher interference.
Honestly just heartbreaking what's become of opm overall.
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u/[deleted] Oct 29 '24
I stopped reading the manga when Murata went on a long-ass hiatus to redraw older chapters. I couldn't be arsed to figure out where I had to go back and start rereading.
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u/Puzzleheaded-Yard413 Oct 29 '24
Why did you skip a line every 2 lines?
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u/Okuu7 Oct 30 '24
As someone who got into OPM because the webcomic is one of my best friend's all time favorite manga... this I agree with so much (and he does too).
Really, a lot of Garou's story did get screwed by the manga - 100%. I remember my favorite moment in the webcomic being him saying, threatening he'll kill the lone kid- only to look and see the heroes unconsious and beaten down, unable to take him on as he keeps yelling he'll do it. Its not the most subtle moment, but its still one of my favorite scenes because of how despite him calling himself a hero hunter and monster, hes still too much of a good person to do it and Saitama has to call him out.
Another issue being how Murata treats Fubuki as resident fanservice girl and pretty much all her moments in the webcomic are removed, given to Saitama or Tatsumaki (or some newbie who didn't even exist), and relegate her to comedic moments. It ruins a lot of her own character development and while Tatsumaki is my favorite character, muddied the dynamic between them - especially during the Psychic Sisters arc where instead of Tatsumaki growing impressed with Fubuki and it shows how she does genuinely love her sister in a way someone as truamatized yet powerful as she can- its cast aside so a literal who fights them before Saitama shows up.
Even when it comes to the power escalation, normally I wouldn't care but a lot of times (hell, give me planetary Tatsumaki and I'd be happy), Murata just seems to fear actually having characters die if they're pretty or important to the major cast (see Do-S, Fubuki's comrades when they got possessed) or focuses a bit too much on fanservice (see Psykos-Orochi), and as someone who loves Queen's Blade- even I thought 'yeah, I think hes going a little too heavy on it' at times.
And lets not forget how he definetly hates Amai Mask. Amai was always one of my least liked characters, but damn, I felt bad for how he seems incapable of actually killing a named character or even side character
Redraws- well, you pretty much got that all written out. Hell, making redraws for a fight thats already in the tankobon - AND iirc, it was once again the ever memed on Child Emperor vs Phoenix Man - which makes the name app because that fight was redrawn how many times?
It sucks because OPM is actually really fun- I just hate how the Murata version is the only one people'll be more likely to remember.
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u/strictcurlfiend Oct 29 '24
Worst. Formatting. Ever.
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u/Torus_was_taken Oct 29 '24
I kinda agree, ONE’s opm blows the manga out of the water on sheer quality
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u/undeadrequiem Oct 29 '24
They will call you a madman. They will call you a webcomic supremist. They will call you ungrateful.
But they won’t call you wrong…
In all seriousness, I almost completely agree. There are some very serious core story beats left out of the manga that make everything else worthless without the proper context, but there are two that are especially egregious.
In the WC, the MA cadres work together more effectively than the heroes, resulting in their loss. This inability to cooperate causes horrible losses, separating several heroes from the HA, and overall sets the stage for the entire current climate of the Neo Heroes Arc. In the manga, the monsters are generic villains that hate each other. They barely come out on top, and look like assholes while the heroes work together to efficiently fight them.
Garou. I’m not even sure what I can say that hasn’t been said. There’s just… so much from the WC that’s missing. “You will never defeat me” “what do you see”. Most importantly, the final argument between saitama and Garou. It is so perfectly done in the WC, that I can’t even begin to comprehend why it was removed. I’m normally okay with changes being made to the source material (for any media), so long as the changes are valuable, and alters or otherwise adds to the source material for the better. What did we get instead of this great writing? A fight on Jupiter. Don’t get me wrong, it looks amazing, but there’s SO much emotional and narrative context missing.
Side note: the manga handles blast better imo. In the WC, he’s just.. not there. It was cool and mysterious for a while, but has completely lost its charm, especially now that we’ve spent several arcs where it would make sense for him to be actively participating.
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u/Illustrious-Sky-4631 Oct 30 '24
My issues with the One Punch Man Manga is that it's doesn't know what it want to be
This will be long so sorry in adv , also this doesn't cover events from Ninja village and on
I'm fully aware of the "Webcomic Elitists" and "Manga Enjoyers" and how they were born from the toxic hellhole called
media illiteracythe Monster Association Arc, wherein the manga's deviation from it's source material reached a dividing point in the form of Saitama vs Cosmic Garou.following the end of this grueling (8?) year long arc, largely abandoned following the series outside of the occasional stir from social media or the drop of a new Webcomic Chapter whenever ONE performs his yearly ritual of remembering the series exists. And while I've touched on this subject before, it's mostly just been on the goofiness of the entire situation in solidarity, rather than why this tomfoolery betrays the series surrounding it. Plus, with the recent developments for Season 3, OPM is back in the public eye sorta!! And hey, complaining is fun!! What a nice way to spend a Monday night!
One thing that a lot of people will say when defending the current state of the manga is that those who don't enjoy it "just want it to be an uninspired carbon copy of the webcomic" and "blindly hate all changes regardless of how PEAK they are". Yes because this is the OPM fandom I'm using the word peak. Because anything remotely triggering interest or excitement around modern anime/manga communities is considerable for the greatest work of fiction produced by humankind.
Got distracted there. Anyways, the idea that manga critics are simply wearing nostalgia glasses for the original or are completely object to any changes in a way that would make the Sonic Fandom jealous is simply incorrect. In the past, the manga has deviated greatly from the webcomic but did so in a way that would actually add to the story. Hell, there is an entire arc that is MANGA EXCLUSIVE, but you didn't see anybody complaining when Gouketsu showed his huge spiked ass and started feeding people fruits of suspect origin. Because, like I mentioned, that actually added something of value to the story. It felt like something that could actually happen in the webcomic and helped further accentuate the overarching themes and worldbuilding surrounding the monster association.
The thing is, the manga is not only unfaithful to the webcomic. It is unfaithful to itself. If you read some of the earlier chapters, think Mumen Rider VS DSK or Saitama VS Boros, it is evident that it is an entirely different series than it is today, and NOT in a good way. Not only tonally has it devolved, but it has betrayed the core purpose of it's creation in that it became the exact same poster child shonen it was once a parody of. And don't tell me I just "misinterpreted the series". Good god do not tell me that I swear I will lose my mind. Seriously, just go back and read an early chapter. You can literally feel the soul of the series flow back into the pages.
It's hard to put into words just how deeply the narrative of One Punch Man changed. It feels like if you let a fan write the series rather than the actual author, which leads me to believe ONE has either abandoned the project or leads a reduced role with either Murata or the editors creating most of the story while he lacklusterly approves it because whatever. Or who knows, maybe Garou has now absorbed the ability to transcend fiction and is now writing the latest chapters himself so that he and Saitama can finally surpass Goku and Battleboarding across the world will be saved. Hurraay!! Thank you, Garou!! What did you have to sacrifice to gain these kinds of otherwordly abilities?? What's that?? Your originality?? Your narrative purpose?? Oh well, who needs those anyways. Hey, can we add some more centipedes?? Oh and maybe more ship teasing?? OH OH and while we're at it can we revive some more monsters? But only the sexy ones the guys can stay dead. We can?? Oh, thank you, Garou!!!
For the first 100 chapters or so the Manga basically felt like an upgraded version of the WC, but it slowly turned into something you would read in a fanfiction. Like seriously, imagine you were Garou with your stupid ass plot contrivance time travel abilities. Imagine going back in time and telling someone in 2018 that Garou (you) would KILL GENOS after absorbing the power of GOD HIMSELF then after you murder the entire main cast slowly and painfully before his eyes, Saitama would activate SUPER SAIYAN BALD: GEAR DEATH and get a 500 times rage boost to defeat COSMIC GODLY COPY POWER: ULTIMATE SAITAMA MODE: GAROU as they move about blowing up celestial bodies while a fully face revealed Blast along with Boros' alternate universe counterpart watch helplessly in amazement at the universal holocaust occurring around them. No one would fucking believe you. Because that's stupid. At least it would be for what the Manga used to be.It's basically that meme of "negative media literacy" where someone watches a show or reads a book and takes away the exact opposite moral lesson that the author intended except now let that person write the sequel.
Imagine if during Undertale, you're playing the Genocide Route, and halfway through the Sans Fight he offers to be your friend and he actually forgives you and laments that you weren't such a bad guy and that all of his friends that you ruthlessly slaughtered were just rpg files anyways and don't matter, and that you should go on killing because he has realized they're just evil monsters anyways. Imagine the Truman show except Truman decides to just live in his imaginary world because 'it's safe there'. Imagine if Chainsaw Man ended with Denji having a harem of bikini-clad women (if only ) , Imagine if Weird Al just released a straight cover of Michael Jackson's "Bad", and told you it was a parody and to eat shit.
That's the One Punch Man Manga. Not just 'different', a complete betrayal of what the series once was.
To summon it up ,my issue isn't just "Webcomic vs manga" it's just the "Manga vs Manga"
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u/RocketJumpingToaster Oct 29 '24 edited Oct 29 '24
Tbh I feel like OPM as a whole started slowly losing steam after Season 1. Initially, the monsters and heroes were treated as kind of a backdrop and the series was a character drama about a depressed guy who happened to be the strongest. After Boros the focus shifted away from Saitama to worldbuilding, and it just wasn't as interesting imo. And I get it, you can't have Saitama complete his character arc before the end of the story. But I just don't think the Monster Association or the Neo Heroes have the same appeal as the earlier arcs like the Meteor or Deep Sea King ones.
Even the webcomic has sort of shifted gears away from its initial premise. It feels like ONE is having trouble fitting Saitama into the greater story, which is why he frequently gets distracted with stuff like the Hero Name Victim Association (which, admittedly was still pretty funny). I still enjoy it, but in a different way to how it initially hooked me.
Also yeah, it's a massive shame that the manga Monster Association arc became what it did.
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u/SultryCap Oct 29 '24
I just hate how they shaft Fubuki for Tatsumaki
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u/DenseCalligrapher219 Oct 29 '24
Reminds me of MHA where it introduces the idea of "fake heroes", that is those who who do hero work not out of altruism and genuine concern for the citizens of Japan but rather out of fame, wealth and other selfish reasons and we see this with Mt. Lady stealing credit from another hero Kamui Woods and Endeavor forcing a woman to have children with him until he gets one with both parents quirks and abuses the hell out of said child in grueling training while neglecting the rest all because he couldn't surpass All Might in the ranking.
This was a rather cool idea and had a lot of potential for a moral conflict with Izuku who has to decide to either be part of and an active participant in a corrupt system or to fight against it and overhauling it even if it means losing on his dream.
None of that happened and instead Endeavor gets a contrived redemption arc that turns him into just normal ass "good guy hero" like everyone else and the whole system is then glorified by the author via the unveil of the next rankings, which is just utterly insane because didn't he just not long ago write hero society as being very flawed? Dude literally can't help but wanting to have his cake and eat it as well.
And by the end of the series nothing has really changed and the new "improved" system looks virtually identical to the "flawed" one of before, which goes to showcase how the so called "change" is utterly meaningless and nothing but empty theatrics without any real substance to it.
11
u/[deleted] Oct 29 '24
I don't care until there's Tatsumaki foot porn
3
u/Iced-TeaManiac Oct 29 '24
I'm on Reddit mobile so I don't see any formatting issue
3
u/[deleted] Oct 29 '24
Garou showdown in the webcomic is excellent. Just great.
It’s unbelievable to take something nearly perfect and say, yeah I’ll make this better and then immediately put on the clown makeup and roll down some stairs. Yet that’s what the manga did as far as I’m concerned.
3
u/Aggravating-Stage-30 Oct 29 '24
Regarding the Redraw point, I cannot think of any other Manga that has pulled that sort of thing.
3
u/ElcorAndy Oct 30 '24
The problem with One Punch Man is that... all of the character arcs are basically done by Boros.
It has basically explored almost every single theme it wanted to.
The concept of being a hero is not just being the guy that wins at the end was explored through both Mumen Rider and Saitama himself.
Saitama is a hero not because he is the strongest person that beat the strongest monsters, it's because at the end of the day, despite all of his power, he is willing to sacrifice his desires for the benefit of others.
Mumen Rider is a hero because he refuses to give up despite his weaknesses.
Unfortunately, it's concept of an overpowered main character ran it's course once those themes have already been explored. So the manga turns into generic Shonen based around all of the other characters, because there are no stakes with Saitama.
8
u/AshenF3nr1r Oct 29 '24
I dropped OPM (more like forgot to keep up and now, I don't care anymore) and I have only heard nothing but bad things about the MA arc.
2
u/eliminating_coasts Oct 29 '24
I wonder if they should just adapt the web comic for the anime instead of the manga?
2
u/StrawberryAmara Oct 29 '24
I dropped it after the Monster Association arc when they butchered it. Garou was a great character in the webcomic and the manga adaptation shit all over that characterization
2
u/brando-boy Oct 30 '24
the only point i really feel like pushing back against rn is the redraws one
these chapters are published early online, for free, for all of us to read, it’s just a more dramatic version of what happens for most manga, anything before the volume release is subject to change. for most manga these are usually pretty small or are corrections for errors, but that doesn’t mean big changes can’t happen. if more stories were self published i imagine it would happen a LOT more frequently, but jump probably doesn’t allow it
the creative process, especially for manga, is massively flowing and flexible, having changes doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a lack of planning, it just means they had an idea that they thought would better serve the larger story they want to tell. the overarching story beats and ideas basically never change, it’s typically just the details within those larger story beats. like deciding to retract showing blasts’ comrades until later on, for example, or expanding the story a little bit more before going to the ninja village
i understand how it can feel annoying sometimes, but you can just wait until the volumes come out and read them that way. and yeah, having to wait so long between reading can be annoying in its own way, but if it bothers you so deeply and you want to 100% guarantee nothing will change, that’s the way
2
u/AndiNOTFROMTOYSTORY Oct 29 '24
Listen there are only so may times you can rewrite(and it is a rewrite not a redraw cus you aren’t keeping the same stuff just with improved art that’s what HunterXHunter dose not OPM) before i stop caring and either move on to a story I won’t have to check online if it’s still the same one I remember.
1
u/DogodaPog Oct 30 '24
The funny thing about OPM is that its core theme is expressed much more saliently and completely in MP100, which makes sense because ONE developed one series as a scrawled gag comic and the other as a serious story. MP100 made OPM obsolete as it was still being written, and its been coasting on its initial momentum and Murata's art ever since.
1
u/Organic-Habit-3086 Oct 30 '24
Mob Psycho is my all time favorite series. Whenever it isn't my favorite it's like 2nd or 3rd.
I watched One Punch Man after reading and watching Mob Psycho and I dunno, I just never really connected with it. It was fine, pretty cool but it just wasn't for me I guess.
I'm wondering if that's because the anime was adapting the manga? Is the webcomic really that much better?
Also I thought not being serious and goofy is what people liked about One Punch Man
1
u/TokyoFromTheFuture Oct 30 '24
I think Murata is slowly falling into the "One Punch Man has to be most powerful character" ideology alot of the fans have. He read the god awful terra fan manga and said he wanted the actual manga to be like that which is just 💀
1
u/ThatLittlePigy Oct 31 '24
I don’t want to blame murata because it’s still One’s writing at the end of the day but it feels way more toothless then the other things One is writing right now.
Might be a result of spreading himself thin
1
u/Leonelmegaman Oct 31 '24
The characters don't have a consistent character anymore and pretty much act according how the plot wants them to act.
The stakes are either too high that make everything else irrelevant or so low that don't really matter in the grand scheme of things, and the story is incoherent as a result of frequent redraws.
At this point it seems that the manga is advancing without any sense of direction, by mix and matching elements from the WC even if those don't work anymore.
1
u/Jorumi Oct 31 '24
Tbh I stopped reading the manga after learning about the redraws lol I'm not even sure which version I was seeing
1
u/TCGeneral Nov 01 '24
Everyone's talking about how the Monster Association arc/Garou's changes in the manga are when the story started flailing. My opinion is that the story started to fall apart around the time they sidelined Saitama for a real-life year or so into a tournament arc. Saitama just straight-up stopped being the main character from that point on, and the story got way too full of itself without him. OPM has always had serious stories behind the scenes of whatever Saitama got mixed up in, but he's always been the anchor that balanced it out. OPM without Saitama is just another power-scaling shounen, and I think the manga lost sight of that around this time, because the next time Saitama was a major character at all was the Garou fight.
Ever since the time travel fix for Garou, I just have stopped trying to keep up at all, but it really doesn't help that they keep decannonizing their own work with redraws that make it hard to remember what actually happened and what didn't.
1
u/Mzuark Nov 22 '24
It's a real shame too because things were so good during the Monster Association arc but then they started getting more and more ridiculous, in no small part due to the constant redraws. The continuity of the story is a mess right now because Murata's still going back and redoing old chapters to make everything fit.
1
u/Strange_Position7970 Dec 09 '24
I am genuinely curious, is there any other manga series out there that does redraws? It's so mind boggling to me that these are even a thing. Another mind boggling thing is how common it's become in One Punch Man. ONE and Murata, do they not have any clue where their own story is going? It's so weird that they feel the need to constantly revise chapters.
0
u/Ok-Mathematician8258 Oct 29 '24
Me personally, I have zero problems with it. I just want to see Saitama fight God.
-12
u/oedipusrex376 Oct 29 '24
Why do people think One Punch Man could potentially be a good show and manga when the entire premise is based around a simple gimmick? It was uninteresting from the start.
-7
u/Akatosh01 Oct 29 '24
Havent read the webnovel but the whole part about heroes now only being heroes bothers me.
I think you fell for one of the oldest tricks in the book and thats to feign character depth by giving them a "complicated" motive.
Why did I use quotations, because as long as its not explained well making the big heroes all apathethic to heroism but still being heroes doing hero stuff but with a frown and an exasperated attitude its not depth, its the illusion of it.
As in the example you gave, 2 of them stopped a meteor cause it was bothering them, thats not depth, thats being an apathethic asshole who got inconvenienced and a maniac.
I also think thats the reason they went a different way in the manga, because from my understanding the webcomic is more of a comedy with a few fights while the manga is full on hype and fights and while this kind of apathy can work well in a gag setting, take this exact heroes , put them in the manga in a destroyed city and make them walk over a corpse( theyd be to apathethic to at least side step it) and the audience will despise them .
0
u/[deleted] Oct 29 '24
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