The story of One-Punch Man Volume 9 can be distilled down to the actions of three movers and shakers: Garo, who desires to be the “Monster” of his story, and his inexorable steamrolling of the hero and villain communities; Hellish Blizzard, who would recruit Saitama into the neofascist pecking order which she’s established in the ranks of Class B heroes due to being kept there by those who dominate the Class A and Class S heroes; and, Speed O’Sound Sonic, whose antipathy toward Saitama has developed to vendetta proportions. Unfortunately for Hellish Blizzard and Speed O’Sound Sonic, they have the misfortune to get their meetings with Saitama, which end as fans would expect, although with more embarrassment for Sonic than Blizzard. Garo also gets his wish, and despite taking some lumps in the process, he is more satisfied by its fulfillment, being victorious in battles with Tank Top Master and his Tank Top followers. There’s also a notable sidebar with Mumen Rider, who stands up for heroic ideals and gets thrashed for it, although by this point the reader can expect that it won’t diminish the C Class cyclist’s optimism…if he lives. (I’m hoping for a future volume to delve into the backstory of Mumen Rider, so that we can discuss at that pount how well the tropes of Don Quixote conflate with the never-ending battles of superheroes.)
Fans of the anime will no doubt read these as yet unaired scenes as ONE and Yusuke Murata setting up the premise of the anime’s second season. There’s probably something to this, and looking at Volume 9 with this in mind, you can see that once you brush the plot to the side, it was a spotlight book for developing two new nemeses: Garo and Hellish Blizzard.
Garo is the more interesting of the two new villains, despite having less backstory. Garo’s two-page origin is very lean, but nonetheless intriguing due to appearing to reference Chuck Jones’ “Adventures of the Road Runner” cartoon. Not familiar with that one? It’s the most metafictional and postmodern of the Road Runner cartoons, in which Chuck Jones puts the camera on an imagined audience–two little boys–watching the antics of his characters. One little boy, Ralph, says “Sometimes I wished he’d catch him,” and voices the sympathy of millions of children that root for Wile E. Coyote. Not unlike little Ralph, Garo was a TV kid rooting for the villain, Devil Earl, while watching the Justice-Man TV show. Unlike Ralph, however, who accepts the moral given by his friend (“if he’d caught him, there wouldn’t be any more Road Runner. You wouldn’t like that, would you?”), Garo reduces the story of good vs. evil to “popular guys vs. unpopular guys”, and considers the one-sided dynamic in which the latter always lose to be a tragedy. “The bad guys try so hard but always get killed! I don’t like that story! It isn’t fair! And it’s boring!” Then he mutters, “Bad guys have hopes too!” Which leads to Garo’s motivation–which can basically be reduced to righting the tragedy of a world in which the villain is expected to lose: “I won’t lose to anyone! I’ll become the strongest villain and change the story!” And, Garo uses the Hero Association’s gathering–a desperate attempt to persuade Heroes and Villains to unite against the disaster prophesied by Madame Sibabwa–as a launch party for his bad self. As he puts it, “let’s have a party where I punish cowards… commit evil…and kill everyone!”
The Looney Tunes origin of Garo..
By comparison, Hellish Blizzard’s story arc is most interesting when we see how it shapes Saitama’s development. Previously, Saitama claimed only that he was “a hero for fun,” but now we see that he also believes that while the only right reason to be a hero is this hedonistic principle, there are definitely right and wrong expressions of heroism in his book. While it is most important to take pleasure in your vocation, even if that vocation is being a hero, this hedonistic direction should overflow in vanquishing evil and service to others, and not in self-aggrandizement, or that greed for glory and public image will end up undermining your every move. “Factions?! Preying on newbies?!”, shouts Saitama at Helish Blizzard, “Securing your rank?! None of that matters! Don’t dis heroes that way!” Saitama’s superhero morality can be reduced to this simple axiom: “The world is full of savage villains and heroes face them…even alone, if necessary.”
The simplicity of Saitama’s morality, backed up by the authority of his invincibility, seems to at last persuade the power-addict Hellish Blizzard, and we see that the power of goodness can bring evil into alliance as well. “Maybe I could join them,” thinks Hellish Blizzard, but not because he is good and right, but “because he is strong.” So it seems that Saitama’s group is growing, with Hellish Blizzard–and perhaps all of her hard-won fascist followers–joining Saitama, Genos, and King. Which ironically may turn into a faction without Saitama even knowing it.
One-Punch Man Volume 9 was an excellent read that sets up the future of the series, and it’s highly recommended. The print edition of One-Punch Man Volume 9 was released on November 1st, 2016, and is available through this link. You can find reviews of One-Punch Man Volume 6 and Volume 8 on NerdSpan through the preceding embedded hyperlinks.
VIZ Media sent the review copy.
