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| "Just a series that's a parody for fun." |
I’ve made no secret of my respect for One-Punch Man and its fairly recent but profound fixture in the cluttered world of modern anime. This senin send up to the shonen superhero genre - born from the unsteady hands of creator ONE as a webcomic nearly a decade ago - initially appeared as nothing more than a poorly drawn gag manga, and even its most stalwart fans often balk at providing a detailed explanation on why it got so big, so fast. What is it about this bland, bald protagonist in a goofy costume and his zany cast mates that strikes such a chord with so many people - some who’d be the last to call themselves anime fans?
Of course, there’s the obvious draw of a new massively powerful, near-invincible character fans can add to their roster of titans - a cudgel with which to play out their vicarious power fantasies. There’s no end of the toxic hate flung about the Internet whenever someone innocently (or not) asks, “Who would win in a fight between Saitama and [X]?” - with “X” being anyone from Goku, to Superman, to God himself. While amusing in a train wreck sort of way, these pissing contests don't help us understand the wider appeal of the series - and in either case miss the point entirely. One-Punch Man has been called everything from a gag series to deconstructive satire - usually by people with little understanding of what these terms really mean.
In fact, One-Punch Man nimbly straddles quite a number of genre lines - partly because ONE didn’t have a solid sense of direction after his crudely drawn webcomic found a bigger audience than he anticipated. But the series rides on thanks to his skills as a storyteller, particularly where he manages to maintain a compelling story arc without losing sight of the absurdity of his premise - letting his fans in on an extended joke even as he (seemingly) plays typical shonen conventions straight at times.
The crucial figure in this tightrope dance is Saitama himself, and ONE expertly uses him to pivot the fraught nexus of literary deconstruction and reconstruction: the dismantling of literary archetypes by exploiting the real-world implications and consequences of their outlandishness; and the more difficult task of rebuilding them into something a bit more solid and more resilient to both past and future critiques.
A Hero Shall Lead Them...
A good place to start is with the the idea of the shonen hero and what he represents. In these series the main protagonist is usually the central focus. True, he (and it's almost always a he) may get eclipsed every once and awhile by another character due to creator preferences or fandom response, but it's still his actions driving the plot, and his growth keeping our butts in the seat. To accomplish this and keep our interest, it’s usually necessary to endow him with some standout feature: good looks, a sad backstory, a drive towards an impossible dream, or just plain, simple badassery.
...Or not
Saitama’s got precious little of any of that. On the surface, he’s a vanilla, rather boring protagonist - dull, plain-looking, and lacking any semblance of motivation or ambition besides “having a good fight.” He doesn’t have a particularly tragic backstory, or any other issue that isn’t, in some way, of his own making. He even falls a bit short in the “badass” department, since unquestionable power and ability aside, he’s too low-key and lazily efficient to capture the attention of his in-universe protectorate. Despite his phenomenal powers and obscene strength, despite his status as the main character, there’s nothing about Saitama that really stands out - at least, not in the way most audiences expect from a shonen hero. He defies our assumptions about what a hero is supposed to look and act like. But what makes this a brilliant twist instead of a recipe for tedium is the reason why Saitama obtained his unbelievable power. No mutant bite, no phenomenal superpowered lineage; he's just a guy who trained so hard that he accidentally became the strongest being in the known universe. If you think that sounds utterly ridiculous, well, you’re right - and you’re not alone; several characters in story aren't drinking his Kool-Aid, either. But the consequences of his current state is where the real fun lies. Saitama paints the picture of the quintessential shonen hero during his training - striving to be the strongest, pushing his body to the limits, and stopping at nothing to fulfill his goal. And guess what? He succeeds. The boring battles, easy victories, and existential ennui that defines and constrains Saitama is merely the end result of what happens when our shonen heroes take “wanting to be the best” to the logical conclusion. Saitama woke up one day and found that he really was the strongest guy around - and without the convenient serial escalation of threats that’s such a hallmark of every other series of this kind, he can do nothing but mourn the lack of any challenge to his unwanted supremacy.
Heroes, Inc.
Saitama’s blandness stands out all the more because he is surrounded by so many colorful characters who to varying degrees of sincerity strive to reach the pinnacle of heroic gestalt. Unfortunately, that amounts to all of jack squat in this world. Heroism is less a service to mankind or a motivator to help the helpless than a stepping stone to stardom, a way to blow off steam, or just a simple paycheck in the mail. The Hero Association who employs most of these “heroes” is a shady and slightly corrupt organization, warping the concept of heroism into some bastard offspring of a numbers game and a popularity contest. Many of the Association's cronies are apathetic to all but their names headlining the front page news, and even those who shun the limelight tend not to hold heroism in the most ideal light. Genos, our hero’s faithful cyborg Number Two, is a perfect example of this, especially in the beginning: the call to heroism had little appeal to the intense, vengeful youth, and even after joining the Association, he cares nothing for the hero culture it brands and advertises. Not that you can blame him; One-Punch Man lifts the veil on what happens when heroism becomes a commodity - much like My Hero Academia at times, but with neither that show’s affirming narrative of striving for your dreams, nor its generally upbeat framing of heroic actions through the eyes of idealistic youths.
The Breakdown of the Ideal Hero
All of the above combine to drive home the deconstructive aspect of the series. In the One-Punch universe, heroism is a public relations racket, meant to boost your social capital or that of the association who hires you. Those few who sincerely wish only to save other people often find themselves overwhelmed by powerful foes and unappreciated by an ungrateful populace. And when Saitama - a genuine powerhouse who, despite his laziness, does believe in the call to protect and serve - shows up and makes everything look so damn easy, both his fellow heroes and the people they watch over have a hard time believing he’s anything but a fraud.
At play here, then, is a fracturing of two of the most dearly-held beliefs of the shonen superhero genre: that pursuing power with single-minded focus - even if for the right reasons - will somehow make your life easier or better, and that being a hero is a noble calling that carries its own rewards. The following example shows just how ruthlessly One-Punch Man can grind down the above “logic” over the course of its run.
Case study: The Deep Sea King
The Deep Sea King Arc (for anime viewers, episodes 9 -10) is a narrative turning point in what had been up to that point a largely episodic gag fest. Besides giving us the series’ first persistent threat to actually cause a significant degree of damage to both the image of the Hero Association and the heroes themselves, this arc also established several trends that come back to wallop the shonen enterprise at many points during the show’s run. For one, we have the introduction and development of multiple heroes, each given a chance to shine and show how deadly they would be if they were up against any normal foe. Stinger, Lightning Max, Snake Fist Snek: all members of the Hero Association’s Class A, the second strongest; all laying out their well-earned hero cred, either here or in previous episodes. And all fall to the Deep Sea King with little or no effort. It only escalates from there: Speed-o'-Sound Sonic, One-Punch Man’s resident ninja and self-proclaimed rival to Saitama, fails to inflict any lasting damage on the brute. As does Puri Puri Prisoner, the first S-Class (the best of the best in the Association) we see in action besides Genos, despite a rather impressive showing. Even Genos himself gives a strong if futile effort against the evil beast, accustomed as he is to getting ragdolled in order to make the monster of the week look more dangerous before Saitama fists it to oblivion.
So far, this all still follows the standard shonen patterns: evil enemy appears, carves a bloody swath through a line of lesser heroes, and eventually stumbles into a final showdown with our protagonist. Even so, One-Punch Man still has time to play with a few genre archetypes along the way to varying degrees of faithfulness: the power of teamwork, which fails miserably; the heroic transformation sequence, which only served to show a side of Puri Puri Prisoner most of us definitely did not want to see; and even the infamous “nakarma power up,” during which resident low-ranked muggle hero Licenseless Rider gained a second wind in his hopeless battle against the Deep Sea King because the crowd he’s protecting all rallied behind him...which does absolutely nothing to change the outcome in any way. It's at this point - with all the shonen-trope fish riddled with bullets at the bottom of the barrel - that Saitama finally steps in, annoyed and ready to throw down with the king.
By now, most fans probably know the deal - but those few who miraculously missed the memo on what this series is all about might be expecting a decent fight for once. And were this any other series, they’d have every right to. Years of shonen narrative archetypes have conditioned us to expect a fight in these circumstances- maybe one-sided, maybe back- and-forth, but still, a fight. What we get was the usual half-assed, one punch victory; Saitama drops him like an afterthought, just like every other baddie on the show. But it is the crowd’s reaction and what follows that really twists the deconstructive knife. Saitama’s hilariously effortless dispatching of the Deep Sea King is par for the course for him, but completely throws his spectators for a loop- so much so that one particular ingrate uses it to argue against the efficacy of the Hero Association and heroes in general.
For most fans, this venom-spewing cretin should be burned in effigy. But his arguments, on closer inspection, don't deviate much from the tirades shonen fans often level at “weak” characters in many franchises. He questions the strength and usefulness of heroes and the hero ranking since a low-ranked nobody like Saitama can come along and end it in a single punch. Truth be told, he does have a point about the rankings' unreliability, but when he equates strength with heroism, thus casting all the heroes who risked everything to keep him and his fellow citizens safe into the proverbial waste bin, he’s not saying anything out of the ordinary for fandoms like Dragonball or One Piece, where “weak” characters are often the butts of many jokes for the sin of not being in the top power tier.
What's at heart here is the very nature of heroism itself, and who gets to define it. Our obnoxious jerk lays out his own understanding: “Anyone can buy a little time, but a hero has to beat monsters.” With that, the heckler shows his shared lineage with those who lust after the violent anti-hero archetype - the ones, like Saitama in the beginning, who are motivated more by the thrill of a good fight than a desire to save people. These are the heroes who stop at nothing to “beat the bad guy” - collateral damage, protecting innocents, or a sense of higher purpose driving their actions be damned. These are the heroes who own a dominant share of the current shonen market and who power the 90s Anti-hero trope so well known in Western comics. These heroes, and their fans, hold “badassery” as the most important and defining trait a hero can have, giving lift to the most reprehensible personal and moral views so long as they have what it takes to annihilate the enemy and confer bragging rights to their vicarious backers.
Tear Down, Build Up
There are many other instances like this all throughout ONE’s webcomic and especially the fabulous redrawn manga made in collaboration with the great Yusuke Murata. Teamwork among these heroes is seen not only to fail, but to be fundamentally flawed when weighed against the egos and relative powerlessness of the parties involved. The Hero Association gets rattled a few more times over the course of the series - each time revealing an even more unsavory underbelly in the process. Perhaps the most troubling manifestation of One-Punch Man’s deconstructive digs is Handsomely Masked Sweet Mask, the Association’s top A-Class and unofficial gatekeeper to the coveted Class S. Popular, charming, and incredibly handsome, Sweet Mask harbors an almost sociopathic degree of black and white thinking. His main quirk - aside from badgering other heroes for not living up to his ideals of “perfection” - is his relentless desire to vanquish “evil,” however he sees it. This isn’t new, of course; hero teams across genres and cultures often have at least one moral monster to wreak havoc with the series' karmic tilt. But ONE keeps true to his ironic bent by showing how flat-out insane it looks from the outside to idolize someone like that. Sweet Mask will disregard orders to bring a target in alive, threaten other heroes and even children who dare interfere with his directives, and all the while his fans cheer him on because hey, he looks so damn good doing it. This creep's in-universe fandom love him for all the most shallow reasons, and though most of us in real life are thoroughly repulsed by him (if the tremendous amounts of hate he gets across the Internet is anything to go by) Sweet Mask slyly reveals the many illogical ways we justify flocking to characters that intrigue us superficially, even as we’d find their behavior under any other circumstance - or even if enacted by a less attractive or "cool" character - repugnant.
One-Punch Man, far from being a simple gag series, runs quite a few deconstructive currents under the smooth surface of in-jokes and silliness. Sure, it’s no Voltaire or Jonathan Swift, but ONE’s crafting has more than a little method behind the madness. Indeed, you might be forgiven for assuming that the series is primarily satire - a brutal poke at the superhero premise specifically and anime archetypes generally. But there’s another side to the story; just as the little creep in the Deep Sea King Arc made his case of what a hero is supposed to be, Saitama himself had his own answer. And we’ll examine that in depth in the next part, along with the slew of other gems ONE throws in to veer his series away from simply demolishing fictional heroism’s house of card and towards rebuilding it in (partial) glory.
