I had mixed feelings about One Punch Man before writing this. I think most people who watch this show can see that it’s funny, works well with American audiences because it satirizes superhero culture, and the action is cool. But after reading through the manga up until what’s been released at this point (7/2023), I saw my interest in the material waning. What was being said with One Punch Man after Season 2 ended? What does Saitama’s fight with Garou mean? Is the story trying to say something that I wasn’t understanding?

I thought about it a lot. One Punch Man starts strong with its critique of superhero culture and establishing a relatable main character with achievable powers. He didn’t get bit by a spider, he’s not a billionaire; all he did was 100 pushups, 100 sit-ups, 100 squats, and 10 kilometers of running every day, and now he can kill anything with a single punch. This inspired a ton of people to do the “Saitama workout,” which is great as it’s a solid routine for people looking to get fit.

But it’s an average person like Saitama grappling with this novel problem that really got me. What happens when you become so powerful that you can beat anything in one punch? What keeps you interested in the things you do if you don’t have anything to strive for if nothing is a challenge for you?

I think this is a question that society is struggling with a lot right now. In a sense, society itself has become too powerful. In 1800, 90% of the population of America lived on a farm. By 1900, that figure fell to roughly 40%. Today that number is 1%. When it comes to food, people don’t have to farm, hunt, or gather anything if they don’t want to. Technology has significantly shifted the burden of menial tasks like washing clothes, communication, travel, and much more. But with all this free time, what do humans do? What drives us now?

Saitama similarly struggles with this question in One Punch Man; he just deals with it through the lens of being a superhero. When we first meet Saitama, he claims he is just being a superhero “for fun.” He used to be driven to defend others and push himself to become stronger. He still dreams of having something to drive himself against, an antagonist against which he can push himself to greater heights. But in reality, no one knows who he is and he doesn’t care. He just lives as he wants to, searching for bargains at the supermarket and fighting the occasional monster. It’s on one of his “for fun” excursions that he ends meeting Genos, who becomes his pseudo-apprentice.

As opposed to Saitama, Genos has a very specific reason for being a hero, one that he outlines in a multi-paragraph outline of his backstory in the smallest, densest text possible. The long and short of it is, Genos’ friends and family were killed by a robot who he’s looking to take revenge on. His own body has been mostly destroyed, but he was rescued by a doctor who gave him powerful cybernetics in order to hunt down the robot.

The mismatch between Genos’ machine body and Saitama’s natural training method makes it impossible for Saitama to train Genos. Regardless of how many upgrades Genos goes through, Genos can’t actually do the training that Saitama did as he doesn’t have his body. Because of this, his power always pales in comparison to Saitama’s. When the two register to become official heroes, however, Genos is ranked at the highest rank, S tier, while Saitama is ranked in the lowest tier, the C tier, of heroes. This failure to see the reality of the world is a bigger part of a painting One Punch Man paints of institutions, showing that not only can they not correctly identify the realities of the world, but they also fail to organize heroes in ways that benefit society.

The ranks for different heroes become a massive part of the story, used as a kind of de facto way to judge a hero for both the audience and the characters. The characters use this information in strange ways, with lower-level heroes playing political games to try and gain ranks and fame, while top heroes stagnate (Sneck, Darkshine, Tornado, etc.).

This system meant to protect ordinary people has been twisted by people into something that makes heroes lose sight of what actually matters. For example, C-tier heroes are expected to meet a weekly quota of “good deeds done,” otherwise, they are expelled from being an “official” hero and viewed as a weird, pervert-esque pretender. The A-tier Rank 1 hero Amai Mask prevents heroes he deems unworthy from rising to S-tier by perpetually staying at the rank, even though he could become S-rank at any time.

Way later on in the story, it’s discovered that the Hero Association that organizes these heroes is deeply corrupt. They sell monster parts, organize illicit gambling rings, use heroes to protect rich people, and do potentially even more heinous things behind the scenes. The manga currently stops when a new organization, “Neo,” springs up to rival the Hero Association. Heroes sick of the blatant corruption are departing to join this new organization, but who knows what this new organization will be like.

It’s too early to say this definitively, but from my point of view, it seems like One Punch Man is building an attack against institutions that tell us how we are supposed to live our life, with Neo likely to use the idealism of the people joining to fuel a new type of corruption. Saitama, our protagonist and moral guiding light, doesn’t care about the hero association’s ranking system (unless there is money involved) or the political games the other characters are engaged in, or even the nay-sayers who write him letters about how he’s a bad hero who steals credit from others. Saitama simply lives his life the way he sees fit, following what he feels is right in his heart and having fun along the way.

For example, when Saitama one-shots the Deep Sea King, one dweeb in the crowd of people the heroes are protecting makes fun of the defeated heroes, “That C-tier hero killed that thing in one punch? What were the other heroes even doing? Genos almost died, why is he S-tier?” is the gist of what he says. Saitama hears this and thinks up an excuse on the spot, “Thank god the other heroes softened up this thing, otherwise it would have been so difficult. You hear that, guys? Make sure I get the credit!” Saitama doesn’t just protect the people from the monster; he even goes beyond to protect the heroes from the people they protect. Not just a hero of people, but a hero for heroes.

After Saitama destroys the meteor that was going to destroy a city, a couple of politically-minded heroes call out Saitama for destroying people’s property (even though he saved everyone from dying). Saitama takes this criticism and the jeers of the crowd around him willingly, much to the dismay of Genos, as he knows that without Saitama punching the meteor they all would have been killed. Saitama allows this criticism, however, then responds to them in kind. For this and “stealing” the Deep Sea King kill, he receives a lot of criticism, especially in the form of hate mail. Although it’s a little sad, he still does these things because they are the right things to do, and it doesn’t matter what others think. And even though he does get a lot of hate mail, he opens one letter which praises him and thanks him, and that one positive message is enough to make Saitama happy.

Another reason I see One Punch Man setting itself up as anti-establishment theme-wise is setting up Garou as one of the series’ first major antagonists. Unlike most of the other cannon fodder villains in the series, Garou’s reason for villainy is not rooted in wanting to rule the world or get money, or anything directly selfish. The reason why he starts down the path he does is because of our cultural inclination to have villains be defeated. No matter what their goal is, no matter how hard the heroes try, no matter the justification of the heroes, the villain is always defeated by them. To Garou, this system is simply unjust. Garou identifies with the monsters because the kids he grew up with labeled him as a monster, and the adults didn’t do anything about it. Ultimately, his goal is just like the heroes: to defend the downtrodden, the despicable, the looked down upon, the ones written off by society, the ones whose lives we write off as disposable by default. But he does this in a way that doesn’t make sense to anyone else, in a way that he as an individual interprets the world at large.

And to defend others, he pushes himself continuously. He gets beaten up over and over again. But each time he fights a new hero or monster, he grows stronger than he was before. He does this gradual progression, just as Saitama did, and only with the motivation of his own conviction. It is only his eventual accidental reliance on God (consensual or not), another institution seemingly opposed to Saitama and humanity, which spells his defeat. While the power it gives him is great at first, and allows him to match Saitama briefly, it is ultimately Saitama’s ability to break his own limits through personal motivation that allows him to outgrow Garou in their fight and defeat him.

At this point, I’m not sure how I feel about One Punch Man. If you want something to laugh at and feel a little bit, I think the show is perfect for you. If you want to become a One Punch Man superfan after you watch the show and catch up to the most current content, I’d probably recommend holding off. What I said above is my guess at the current themes based on where we’re at, but really, based on what we have right now, I don’t think we have enough content to get anything meaningful out of One Punch Man’s story. If the cope I wrote above is true, then it might actually end up being pretty decent. Or maybe there’s another path it will choose. But if it messes around much longer, my opinion may change to be more negative. Only time will tell.