#but there's only so long you can cling to a person like they're your liferaft

[gofancyninjaworld]

OPM manga updates 212 and 213 review

Hap-palled

Now y'all know that I've never met a piece of OPM story that I can't glom onto and gobble up like I'm late to a buffet and have been on an all-day fast, so you betcha I've got thoughts on the last couple of chapters. To say that I've got mixed feelings is an understatement. Fortunately, I found just the right image to convey this; it's a picture of Ippo (titular character of Morikawa's long-running boxing manga series Hajime no Ippo -- check it out if you like sports manga) being equal parts happy and totally appalled. Hap-palled, I'm calling this emotion.

I thought about summarizing the last two chapters but doing so is getting on my nerves and fuck it, everyone bothering to read this is highly literate, so you know the story. Let's just go straight for the meta.

META

I'll admit it; there's quite a bit in here that made me laugh. ONE's love of low-brow humour never left him and he brought it back. I shouldn't laugh but the ludicrousness of Saitama farting his way back to Earth after being teleported to the Sun; his wardrobe malfunction that restored his clothing everywhere except over his crotch, and Saitama being knocked ass over teakettle by an over-enthusiastic Genos did make me chortle. And of course, seeing Genos alive makes me happy.

However. Let's get more serious.

It's Not What You Want; It's What You Can Live With

While One-Punch Man is a story grounded in Saitama's lack of fulfilment owing to his getting what he wanted, in this story, if you look around, it's full of highly-capable, highly-driven, highly-accomplished people getting what they say they want... and then trying to live with it.

You can see OPM as an extended mediation on the futility of looking to any specific achievement or emotion as the source of happiness. When people ask how it can be classified as a seinen despite never having met a shonen trope it won't clothe itself in, it's this. And when OPM brings the sobering reality that happiness is not a static thing that can be attained once and for all to the world of insane characters striving to achieve impossible things, the implications get frightful.

Saitama's wishes have an especially terrible way of coming true.

Let's start with a positive one. You know OAV 1 when Saitama was sitting alone in the diner and saying that he had to believe that there was somebody out there who saw what he did and appreciated it. And that maybe it could be the guy who'd asked to be his disciple? Don't remember it? Go refresh your memory when you finish reading this. In chapter 155, that moment when Saitama finally understood that Genos really is a hero in his own right and isn't just fighting to get battle data or to fulfil the terms of their contract was the moment Saitama realised that his prayers had been answered TO. THE. LETTER.

Less positively, this arc has seen some of Saitama's less positive wishes come true too. His desire for a tough fight, for a rival who spurred growth, to feel himself growing stronger, to have to come up with new and exciting moves, he got them all.

Not that Garou was much of a rival; he only lasted as long as he did because Saitama decided to beat him with one hand. King pissed Saitama off by calling his desires shallow, immature, and not what being a hero was about. How right he was. The tragedy for the planet's existence was what it took for Saitama to see the truth of that.

I know Saitama said that he'd felt like destroying the Earth in a fit of frustration over losing his house. The fact that he really did throw a punch that would have destroyed the planet were it not for Blast (and team) intervening on losing Genos... should really give Saitama serious pause.

Garou also got his wish of being the Ultimate Evil, the ominous future that threatened survival itself, but how bitterly he came to regret it!

Just Had To Go There

After update 211, we had much speculation on how it could be possible that Genos's injuries were compatible with life. The answer: they weren't. Everyone else with blood coming out of every available orifice? They're dead too, even the allegedly unkillable Zombieman. Garou? He died; God went Old Testament on his ass and turned him into salt for displeasing Him. Saitama's the only person left alive on a planet that looks lifeless as far as the eye can see -- and probably much further. Not that the still-living would have much consolation: Jupiter, the protector of Earth from deadly projectiles, has been splashed and is slinging gigatons of rock and gas spewing in every direction. Even the Sun has not been left unscathed. ONE really went there, huh. But we'll fix it all... with time travel! This side of me is just appalled.

Physics is of course, not a friend to manga, but this time travel via subatomic particles thing takes the cake. There's just a homeopathic whiff of reality to it, in that subatomic particles can be symmetrical in time as well as space (e.g. an electron moving forward in time can be represented as a positron moving backward in time), but Garou being able to make particle and anti-particle sychronise but cancel out and Saitama being able to make them all go the same direction, thus moving backwards in time on the macroscale, ah hahaha.

Hell Is Truth Seen Too Late Redux

A few weeks ago, I wrote a meta about Garou's development in the story that is panning out quite well (damn) link.

As you know, I am never happy to see just one translation source. The last few chapters have really brought home why it's so important to have more than one independent person/group looking at the source material. A real problem with Garou's entanglement with God was that the translation given by the Reddit scanslation group and Viz alike was 'avatar', which created the impression that Garou was forced to do God's bidding. How does any redemption for Garou make sense if he didn't do anything? Denying characters agency is a horrid thing to do most times. Denying Garou agency is especially senseless.

I suspected otherwise and said as much; however, it's Koumbaya's love of digging into the connotations of the words used that really shines here. In an excellent bit of detective work (here), they pointed out that God's words to Garou were not that Garou would be His avatar per se, but rather the terms used when you empower someone to act in your place and with your authority. It would have been more correct to call Garou God's agent rather than His avatar. Garou has not been deluding himself about his actions being his own will. He was just telling the truth. Which means that what he did is his fault. This is a good thing but bear with me a second.

In their translation of update 211 (here), they also pointed out that when Garou was noting that he'd have to never see Tareo again, he moved from pronouns indicating closeness to those indicating distance. English has no compact ways of indicating distance. French can go from 'tu' to 'vous' here, so their translators are going to find this easy to convey. I noticed a couple of people puzzled as to why Garou went in the opposite direction to Tareo rather than towards him; that's your context. Garou should have left when Blast pleaded with him to come to a pocket dimension to save the lives of the people around him. He'd give anything right now to do that now, but Hell is truth seen too late.

One of the big, big flaws of Garou is that he's never seen people as people. They've been faceless things to him, and Tareo was the only person who could consistently cut through his miasma. His tendency to do this is mirrored by Saitama's state and thoughts just before he met Genos, btw. Like him, Saitama was losing his sense of reality. One becomes a monster when one becomes a separate existence from humanity, indeed.

Garou Finally Changes His Story

Bringing it all together, seeing Saitama holding that core was what brought it home to Garou that other people could understand him. They could feel like him, suffer like him, not think through the full consequences of their actions like him.

All through this story, Garou has seen himself as a victim of circumstances and has railed on how other people should behave better. Other people should stop being bullies. Should stop discriminating. Should stop being heroes with smug smiles on their faces as they put down the outcasts. He's appointed himself a monstrous busybody, going around trying to dictate to people how to be -- by knowingly adding great, needless cruelty to their lives. Nothing good was ever going to be built out of an enterprise founded on such crooked foundations. Well, what about you, Garou? What can you do to do better than you did before?

That's the most wonderful thing, to see Garou actually ask himself and find an answer to that question.

If Garou chose his actions, then that meant he had responsibility. If he had responsibility, then that meant he had agency. And if he had agency... then what stopped him from using his talent and imagination to consider a way to use his (literal) God-given abilities to a better end?

And that's when Garou humbled himself to ask for help. He could see how to use those powers, but he acknowledged that it was Saitama who had the ability to pull it off. This is a ridiculously huge step forward for him. I also read a certain humility in his asking Saitama to stop him before it was too late. An acknowledgment that he isn't going to be able to make different decisions without intervention.

I wondered how Garou's actions in this timeline could be forgiven. I had really hoped that what would happen is that he'd reverse entropy and heal the people he'd hurt, but alas, it was too late for anybody. I'm not a fan of redemption being death, but I understand ONE choosing to keep it simple (told you I was hap-palled). His actions were unforgivable so he paid for them with his life. But, he paid bravely. Even as God was turning him into salt, he did not waste a second panicking or feeling bad for himself and continued to instruct Saitama.

You may go 'why am I saying mean things about Garou?' But I feel that if for me not to note and condemn his bad sides is to sell his good aspects short and minimize the great personal development that he made. It's to me like measuring a mountain only from sea level, ignoring the fact that it is a sea volcano with its roots deep in the abyss. Half-assed.

He that would change the world must first start with himself is said so often it sounds trite, but self-transformation is no joke. Garou changed his story and, sad as I am over how it turned out, I couldn't be more proud of him. It really makes the cover hit different when you look at it again after reading the chapter and you realize that that's not Garou and Saitama's fists clashing but is rather a fist bump and that Garou's already turning into salt even as he does so.

In the end, they are not so different.

Too Little, Too Soon?

Speaking of personal change, let's move to Saitama who realised too late what he actually valued. And then dismantled causality itself to undo things. That moment of empathy when Garou realised that Saitama clung onto Genos as he clung onto Tareo for his very sanity, I wonder if Saitama has that same insight into his actions?

As I watch Saitama apparently forget why he re-entered the timeline once he merged with his present-day self and see him distracted by his disciple and a wardrobe failure in a very inappropriate place, I'm scared that Saitama won't remember enough to understand why he has to completely defeat Garou. If he only 'almost' beats Garou, Garou will continue on his catastrophic path and that would be a crime for which Saitama would be entirely responsible.

I hope the mute witness of the core he's still holding and the cramp in his left hand remind him of a future nightmare that might still come to pass, just a few minutes from now. I hope that his arms remind him of the feel of the dead child he rearranged to look as if they'd inexplicably decided to take a nap in a sea of rubble. I hope that his tongue reminds him of the taste of a youth crumbling away, who used his last bit of life to ask him to save him from himself. Even if Saitama doesn't remember what happened, I hope he realizes what he has to do and that it's not over until he ensures that Garou quits his quest for evil and finds a better path.

horrible, meaningless ends I never want to see again

Please, Saitama, this isn't the time to half-ass things. Beat Garou completely. His life and the lives of everyone you know and care about depend on it. Maybe that's why there's still a time-travelled core in Saitama's hand; the future is not averted. It's merely postponed unless he does the right thing fast.

I'm also concerned that Saitama may have dropped back into time too soon. That gamma-ray burst has still happened and it might not be too long before people start dropping dead anyway.

I've got a feeling that this isn't over by a long chalk. That baleful moon is still watching. It's not over until the Sun rises.