One-Punch Man (Volume 4) – This is How They React!
When the Rank S heroes are unable to stop a meteor destined to destroy City Z, Saitama steps up and smashes it to pieces. The resulting debris pummels the town, but no lives are lost. You’d think they would be happy!
One-Punch Man (Volume 4) – This is How They React!
What happened?
Genos gets a call telling him to come to headquarters, but when he gets there it’s been evacuated. Only one other hero has answered the call – an elderly martial artist called Bang. He tells Genos to run away as this is a Dragon-level threat. Regardless, Genos will not quit and rushes to the rooftops of City Z in an attempt to destroy the meteorite heading straight for it. People have started to evacuate, but it’s too late. The city will be destroyed if it strikes. Another Rank S hero arrives – BOFOI, although he’s only interested in testing some missiles out using a remote suit of armour.
BOFOI does nothing to help and then Bang catches up. Genos and Bang try to destroy it but it’s too big. That’s when Saitama wanders in and launches himself at it, punching a hole straight through and smashing it to pieces. The people were saved but the smaller rocks still caused a lot of damage. Saitama’s rank climbed, but the people were blaming him for causing the destruction and riding on the back of Genos and Bang.
Saitama went out to help, but he ran into Tank Top Tiger and Tank Top Black Hole who accused him of being a fraud. They even riled up the masses who started to yell at Saitama. However, Saitama wasn’t concerned by their angry words. He knew what he did was right and was prepared to let them blame him. He took care of the Tank Top brothers and then left. Bang saw the whole thing and was disturbed by how they treated him. There was no time to rest though, as a new threat was emerging from the sea!
What did you think?
So, this is where the story really gets interesting. We know Saitama is stronger than anyone. We’ve seen it. There are people at the Hero Organisation that know it too, and yet, they gave him the lowest possible rank. Were they setting him up to fail, knowing that he would climb the ranks too quickly, or did they really mess up? This points to some level of malevolence or incompetency from the top. Both could be a serious problem. Of course, this is nothing without the reaction from the people they are paid to save.
One of my strongest beliefs about heroes is that they do what must be done regardless of how it will make them look. We’re starting to see that a lot of the heroes are purely interested in appearances, especially how almost no one turned up for the Dragon-level threat. We also saw that there is an opinion poll on the heroes and Genos has done well in that, not that it interests him. Basically, I think there’s much more to this than Saitama defeating every opponent with one punch and using coupons for his groceries. I can’t wait to see how this develops over the coming volumes.
Volume highlights
Other posts in the series
- Series Review
- Volume 1 – One Punch
- Volume 2 – A Hero for Fun
- Volume 3 – Nothing Unusual
- Volume 4 – This is How They React!
- Volume 5 – To the Hero Saitama, Thank You!!
- Volume 6 – Can I Have Some Tea?
- Volume 7 – Prophecies are Unreliable!
- Volume 8 – His Name is King…
- Volume 9 – Nothing But Trouble!
- Volume 10 – With Everything I’ve Got!
- Volume 11 – I’m Done with Teams!
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Oo, the cover of this volume looks amazing! Epic martial arts gramps in the foreground, and Saitama being Saitama in the background. Yes, I loved this part of the series, where One Punch man really shows that he’s a hero because he wants to be a heroic, not because he wants to be famous or look good to the public. He’s going to save people whether they like him or not!
I love the covers for One-Punch Man. They all look really cool at first, but then there’s some detail that makes you realise it’s something else entirely.
I also love the way he isn’t afraid to take the anger of the people if it’ll help them resolve their own issues. He is a true hero in every sense of the word.