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Settling on what anime series to watch next out of the many, many available to me sometimes gets simplified by having decided to follow them up with their manga versions. However, this can mean being aware of volumes of manga piling up in waiting. Just lately, though, things did come a head in just such a way as to simplify one of those cases. The superhero spoof One-Punch Man had come to my attention through impressed comments about the animation in its adaptation, but as the wait for a second series to continue the story came to an end I was noticing complaints this new work had been assigned to a much less impressive studio. It didn’t take me long to decide to move straight on to the volumes of its manga I’d stacked up and take my chances with them.
With that, it also didn’t take long before I’d decided that Yusuke Murata’s illustrations of ONE’s story were impressive enough for me to feel I wasn’t missing any hypothetical elaboration in animation. The volumes were quick going, too; with longer chapters than a lot of manga have, there were fewer places to just put them down. The story also stayed on its oddly entertaining edge between spoof and serious, with the overpowered and frustrated superhero Saitama only sometimes stumbling into the escalating battles the other heroes and villains put much more effort into, and even that staying a satisfying nick-of-time sort of rescue. I suppose this story makes me muse a bit whether there’s something “constructed” on a fundamental level about just about any “superhero” story, as much as we seem to be instructed at the moment to accept their final triumph in popular culture. At the same time, I did manage to buy the latest volume of the series just as I was running out of accumulated copies, so it might be a while before I see how the story continues. In this particular context I can get to thinking the superhero manga and anime My Hero Academia, even if it’s stayed just one of those series I never quite get around to even as it gets longer and longer.
With that, it also didn’t take long before I’d decided that Yusuke Murata’s illustrations of ONE’s story were impressive enough for me to feel I wasn’t missing any hypothetical elaboration in animation. The volumes were quick going, too; with longer chapters than a lot of manga have, there were fewer places to just put them down. The story also stayed on its oddly entertaining edge between spoof and serious, with the overpowered and frustrated superhero Saitama only sometimes stumbling into the escalating battles the other heroes and villains put much more effort into, and even that staying a satisfying nick-of-time sort of rescue. I suppose this story makes me muse a bit whether there’s something “constructed” on a fundamental level about just about any “superhero” story, as much as we seem to be instructed at the moment to accept their final triumph in popular culture. At the same time, I did manage to buy the latest volume of the series just as I was running out of accumulated copies, so it might be a while before I see how the story continues. In this particular context I can get to thinking the superhero manga and anime My Hero Academia, even if it’s stayed just one of those series I never quite get around to even as it gets longer and longer.