One-Punch Man

About

One-Punch Man (Japanese: WanPan-Man; ワンパンマン) is an online webcomic by a manga artist operating under the pseudonym One, which was later remade into a digital manga illustrated by Yūsuke Murata and an anime adaptation by the production studio Madhouse.

Plot

One-Punch Man follows the story of Saitama, a powerful hero who easily defeats his opponents with one punch. Due to his strength, Saitama eventually becomes passive with his powers, as no opponent poses a challenge or threat for him. Along his journey, Saitama meets various other heroes, battles many monsters and gains his own disciple in the cyborg Genos. Saitama struggles to gain respect and recognition by society, eventually leading him to join the Hero Association, an organization which oversees and ranks all of the world's heroes.

History

One-Punch Man^[1] was first published on June 3rd, 2009, when the manga artist One^[2] released the series on his personal homepage Galaxyheavyblow.^[3] On June 14th, 2012, Young Jump Web Comics' website began publicating a stylized digital manga remake of One-Punch Man,^[4] illustrated by Yūsuke Murata^[5] approached One on his Twitter^[7] to discuss a possible collaboration. As of March 2015, the English serialization of the manga is published in Viz Media's Weekly Shonen Jump digital magazine.^[9]

2015 Anime Adaptation

On March 10th, 2015, an anime adaptation of One-Punch Man was announced in the 15th issue of Weekly Young Jump magazine (shown below, left).^[10] The cast and staff of the manga were announced through a promotional video at Bandai Visual's booth at the Anime Japan 2015 event on March 21st and 22nd, where it was revealed that the anime would be produced by Japanese animation studio MADHOUSE Inc.^[11]

On October 5th, 2015, the first episode titled "The Strongest Man" premiered on TV Tokyo. with plans for a stream on Niconico and syndication on the Japanese television stations TVO, TVQ, KBS, BS Japan and AT-X.

One-Punch Man Season Two

On September 25th, 2017, the second season of One-Punch Man was officially announced.^[19][20] Japanese animation studio J.C. Staff was confirmed to be producing the new series.^[21]

On April 9th, 2019, the first episode "The Hero's Return" of the second season of One-Punch Man anime premiered in Japan.

Following the release of the first episode, multiple posts parodying the changes in animation style and quality were posted online, with notable examples appearing in /r/animemes^[22] and /r/OnePunchMan^[23] subreddits, with some posters comparing the Saitama's new look to Megamind. For example, on April 11th, 2019, Reddit user Agentgamin used the first image of a black hole to highlight the differences in animation between the two seasons (shown below, top left).^[24] The post gained over 3,300 upvotes in four days.

Online Presence

On November 9th, 2012, the One-Punch Man Wiki^[16] was created, garnering over 175 pages over the next three years. On November 22nd, the /r/OnePunchMan^[14] subreddit was launched for discussions about the webcomic series. On March 1st, 2013, a Facebook^[18] page titled "One-Punch Man" was created. On April 5th, a page for One-Punch Man was launched on TV Tropes.^[17]

Reception

One-Punch Man gained a significant following online, averaging 60,000 visits per day according to some estimates.^[1] In November 2013, the manga had 2.2 million printed copies in circulation, which increased to 3.4 million in May 2014 and 4.5 million copies in November 2014.^[6] In 2014, the manga was nominated for the Manga Taishō,^[8] an annual Japanese manga award limited to publications with eight or less collected volumes.

Fandom

The story and humor of One's original webcomic, combined with the high-quality art of Murata's manga remake, quickly developed a substantial online following. Since then, many pieces of fan art inspired by the series has been shared on art-sharing community sites. As of March 21st, 2015, the Japanese illustrator social network Pixiv^[12] contains over 5,500 images tagged "ワンパンマン," the online artist community DeviantART^[13] has over 14,000 submissions submitted under the keywords "One Punch Man," and the /r/OnePunchMan sub-Reddit^[14] has over 1,100 subscribers. The fandom's presence can also be found on Tumblr^[15] and the OnePunch-Man Wiki.^[16]

The anime of the series was well received by the fans and also introduced many newcomers to the series, leading to significant growth in One-Punch Man's fandom. In January 2015, a month after the airing of the anime, the r/OnePunchMan sub-Reddit had grown to over 33,000 subscribers and the amount of fanworks on Pixiv and DeviantArt had increased to respectively over 11,000 and 22,000

Search Interest

External References