One Punch Man

That was pretty much King's advice to him.

Find a hobby.

That and basically "Stop whining about not being satisfied, that's not what being a hero is all about." King basically dunked on Saitama for, like, two pages.

I love how One Punch Man is the story of a depressed young man in his mid-20s with no friends who lives alone in a shitty neighborhood and has a hobby that he's really good at, but no job. His character development is focused on him converting his hobby into a career, making friends in his new profession, moving out of his shitty neighborhood into a better one, and making progress towards getting over his depression.

Like, that's just literally what the series is about. The superhero thing is just a framing device designed to sucker all of us into loving a series about a depressed man getting his life together.

Edited by PushoverMediaCritic on Apr 26th 2019 at 4:11:02 AM

Which reminds me, how did Saitama live three years without a job anyway?

Unemployment checks?

Man, I may disagree with you quite often, but that one post? It is golden.

Edited by Eriorguez on Apr 26th 2019 at 1:12:58 PM

The irony of course is that from the perspective of his friends, he is the one inspiring them to get out of their ruts.

I have said more or less the same thing multiple times when arguing with somebody here about how this series would end with Saitama slowly curing his depression rather than finally getting into a battle he can't win.

I was starting to think I was over-thinking King's conversation with Saitama because nobody else here ever seemed to bring it up.

I don't really either. But I don't see Saitama with Tatsumaki, Genos, or Sonic either. ^note Like. Fubuki got dined-and-dashed on by Saitama. The story would have to pull a Naruto/Hinata for those two to get together. And Genos has firmly established he's Saitama's pupil. There's nothing really there and Genos isn't somebody who exhibits much of anything beyond rage and comedic dedication. And Sonic is Saitama's established "nemesis." He's not tried to be anything but

It's entertaining to think about. But this is a Japanese manga and most of the ships we think/pretend are going to happen won't actually happen.

Edited by Soble on Apr 26th 2019 at 5:53:10 AM

I don't think we'll ever see any canon romance in OPM, to be quite honest.

If we do tho, I think itd be funny if Saitama just went on a normal date as part of getting over his depression.

And no the over the top Anime romances. Just...a guy getting to know another person.

Wait anime has romances?

Wait, anime can portray romance in a non-sterile, sensible, healthy way without resorting to stereotypes or glorifying emotional abuse?

Of course it can, and ONE himself has potential to do so, but this doesn't really come too often from my experience. Especially in action manga, because yeah.

There are actually quite a few good romances in anime out there. The thing is that basically none of them are terribly mainstream and the few that are aren't the focus of the series.

Because the most popular romance anime are the ones that are the most by the numbers :V

Why do you think they're the most common, because they sell the most.

It'd just be funny as hell for amidst all of the action surrounding the series; Saitama just casually reveals he's dating someone.

What I find interesting is how he went about framing the superhero thing.

Like, overpowered main characters are nothing special in and of themselves but the reason why they get a lot of flak from certain people is because it doesn't really feel like them being overpowered was intentional, and if it was, it was mostly to make an indulgent power fantasy.

But OPM is different. ONE specifically crafts the series around Saitama's power to make it engaging in other ways, and he actually has something meaningful and relatable to say. There have been multiple parts in OPM that genuinely caught me off-guard with how insightful they were, in a way that a lot of anime and manga these days simply are not.

People may get into this series for the fun gags and superhero action but I feel like the emotional journey of Saitama finding a way to be fulfilled is why they stick around.

The series also makes a point of showing how the other powerful characters in the series are also screwed up.

Saitama may be depressed, but he's arguably one of the most well-adjusted characters in the series.

Edited by M84 on Apr 27th 2019 at 12:35:16 AM

Ehhh, I'd say most of the cast doesn't really go beyond 'quirky.' Like if you're going by the down to earth metaphor of Saitama being an unemployed man who turned his hobby into a job, then King is just a guy that has a job he'd like to quit but can't bring himself to do it, Darkshine is a bodybuilder with self esteem issues and Bang is an old man with a delinquent "son" that he doesn't know how to handle. They're all pretty much functional in a way that Saitama is not.

Edited by Arha on Apr 26th 2019 at 11:41:52 AM

Darkshine's self-esteem issues do run pretty deep.

So deep that they normally would never come up or even be noticed by him. It doesn't feel like something that would interfere in his social life like Saitama's issues would. I mean, going by the mundane interpretation of Darkshine as bodybuilder/martial artist, I'm not saying his confidence couldn't be crippled, but until that happened there are no real problems.

I would agree that Fubuki and Tatsumaki's issues affect their lives greatly, though, regardless of superpowers.

Edited by Arha on Apr 26th 2019 at 11:55:01 AM

When those issues are brought to the surface, he's pretty much permanently changed for better or worse.

It gets to the point where he outright retires from active hero work.

True, but I'm not sure how mundane of an equivalent you can make to that. Retiring from the police or military because he's too afraid? I mean, his job is fighting monsters that can literally kill him, so it's not like he's just a professional bodybuilder or athlete or something.

Darkshine's thing is that he forgot the reality of the dangers. He really thought he had become an Invincible Hero who could be challenged but never actually beaten.

Once he got a brutal reminder otherwise, he just couldn't go back.

I kiiiiinda feel like we're interpreting him in ways that aren't really compatible with each other and that this is going to lead to an argument where we simply repeat ourselves at each other endlessly. So I'm just going to return to my basic position that most of the characters are functional or mentally stable in ways that Saitama is not but that there are exceptions such as Fubuki, Tatsumaki and Genos, who are probably about on par with him.

When listing off the stronger S Rank heroes, you forgot Lightspeed Flash, who has his Itachi backstory.

It's actually Flashy Flash.We don't want...THEM