Ugh, the training regimen revelation was complete bullshit. Sucks that this series isnt interested in believably explaining its hero´s powers, instead falls back on comedic value there :/
Ugh, the training regimen revelation was complete bullshit. Sucks that this series isnt interested in believably explaining its hero´s powers, instead falls back on comedic value there :/
"She's the only non-loli girl in the show, your honor!" will be my defense in court
That was the best part of the episode. If you label it bullshit, you don't unfortunately understand the humour in this show at all.Originally Posted by MFauli
There´s humor and there´s bullshit. This here is the latter. It relegates the entire show into the "absurd comedy" genre. Which is okay. It´s just not what I hoped for (which was a funny shounen-series that still has reasonably roots for its characters).
"She's the only non-loli girl in the show, your honor!" will be my defense in court
The correct term is satire. And this is a brilliant example of it.
The entire conceit is that the hero of the story puts in minimal effort and is so overwhelmingly powerful that he defeats his enemies in one punch, and is horribly dissatisfied with it as a result because he never feels the thrill of battle, despite how promising things might seem. It eviscerates the clichés that plague the shonen/seinen genres.
And all the while, tension is maintained, because we the audience keep wondering if at some point...one punch might not be enough.
One thing has been made clear, repetition and dedication is key to becoming more than what you started as. Saitama worked "hard" to become superhuman, crab-guy ate too much crab and became a crab guy, Genus worked hard on his own theories and cracked the fountain of youth and genetic manipulation.
In contrast, Genos went for the shortcut and became a cyborg. He's super powerful, but didn't work for it. Correspondingly, he's been getting his ass kicked every episode so far. Those who dedicate themselves to a particular task are stronger or produce stronger underlings that he's no match for. He doesn't believe that Saitama could have achieved that level of power from basic training, and limits himself as a result.
As dumb as this series is, perhaps it is too sophisticated for you. Perhaps you'd better enjoy one of the three alarmingly-identical shonen harem series this season.
Last edited by Ryllharu; Mon, 10-19-2015 at 07:06 PM.
I can´t accept those three sentences coming from the same person. By stating the first sentence, you´re implying that OPM is better at being a shounen-series than "the others". Then you proceed to downplay the quality of other popular shounen-series. That doesn´t compute. Either, OPM is satire, or it is better shounen than "the others". And maybe I´m such a dumb fellow, but witnessing the source of a hero´s power isn´t boring, isn´t clichee or whatever, it is EXCITING. It is captivating. It creates a pull, it makes me empathize with the hero. When that weirdo Rock Lee showed up and beat the prodigy Sasuke, everybody was like "wtf!?". It was so weird. But then we got those flashbacks of his training, running around all the time, wearing absurd weights permanently. That´s what made it so great.
Finding out that Saitama did pretty much nothing to become that strong, surely works for a 100% comedy show. But it can never compete with a serious story, even if we´re just talking about the bland popular shounen shows like One Piece, Naruto, Bleach or whatever. See, even Dragon Ball, a show very much seeded in the comedy genre, too, manages to give pseudo-logical explanations for its heroes´ powers. It´s not super clever, it´s not always entirely sound, but ... it fits the story and therefore allows for excitment. Son Goku facing Freezer on Namek wouldn´t be exciting at all if we hadn´t witnessed his 100g training during his space flight to the alien planet. It wouldn´t have been exciting without him losing to Ginyu´s body-switch technique, then growing stronger after regenerating thanks to his Saiyan abilities. It was this progression that made it so exciting when he finally stood in front of the big bad guy. Imagine that Goku never trained, just appeared in front of Freezer, and won. What about it? It would be meaningless. And that´s what´s happening here in OPM: The nonsensical powers of Saitama make any confrontations meaningless. Moreover, even if we could have pondered if there might ever appear an enemy who can take more than just one punch, buy revealing that his powers came from pretty much out of nowhere, even that excitment is gone.
I´ll summarize it a bit: As a straight-forward comedy show, OPM is fine and still works. As a shounen show, it sucks. And calling it "deconstruction of shounen clichees" or whatever is giving it too much credit.
"She's the only non-loli girl in the show, your honor!" will be my defense in court
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