Today marks the long awaited debut of my ten-part mha rant, written by a sapless mha fan, cuz nothing says true love like an abusive relationship.

I’ll write these as I go along. Mainly cuz you may already know, mha is really freaking long. 170 episodes long, as a matter of fact. That’s a 3-digit number! Which is one-digit higher than the average mha viewer’s iq (amazing jokes like this are why nobody clicks off my stuff)

I already have a set structure for this, with plans to have each and every part be published vaguely around 8:00 pm gmt+3, so everyone is wide awake (which is ironically when I go to sleep. If timezones didn’t exist, I’d definitely be sweating my pants at the thought of everyone being conveniently gone whenever I come back with pizza. Thankfully, my big Brazilian fanclub keeps me emotionally secure at all times)

Moving along, fair warning cuz there’s spoilers for the entire opm webcomic.


It’s hard to describe my emotional connection to ONE’s original version of One Punch Man, the webcomic is one of the most meaningful pieces of media to me and was quite responsible for shaping my core and positively impacting me through life.

It’s actually somewhat challenging to put into words, as unlike most manga, OPM’s appeal comes not from its admittedly simple plot, but rather its raw and concise art.



A proper and good-faith critique of ONE’s art doesn’t really exist on the internet as far as I could find (and I looked for years), most of it comes from non-readers of the webcomic which I feel births a lot of poorly researched arguments.

As someone who actually draws for a hobby, much like ONE, I feel confident in being able to provide a sincere critique.

But there’s no amount of words to properly describe it. I feel it’s necessary to establish what OPM is before moving onto what MHA does poorly.

The 156-chapters long manga is rather easy and concise to follow, irregular chapter releases also mean there’s no hurry to catch up, plus the sporadic storytelling means there’s no worry to getting invested in a plot that may never conclude, plus the consistency in its narrative means things still explored and developed in literally 30% the amount of the time it’d take MHA to wrap up a protagonist farting scene.

The irony is that between the two, OPM is arguably way more comedic, and yet it takes its worldbuilding way more seriously, no “storytelling by the flight of your pants” methodology. ONE actually respects his characters, unlike MHA, which is way more interested in the male gaze than actually developing its characters (the double irony is that mha chars are both ugly and the fact that real ecchi shows are far better at developing their cast, sometimes the MHA mangaka is the farthest thing from competency).

Now to explain the contrast a bit, the funny thing is that MHA has less ingredients in its worldbuilding, yet still fumbles. MHA has quirks, hero society and villain society. That’s it. OPM has hero society, monster kind, aliens, supernatural and science fiction. Almost double the ingredients, yet OPM presents them so simply that they’re much easier to absorb compared to MHA franchtic and headless chicken style of storytelling.




Now in this ten-part rant, there will be at least two parts where I’ll praise MHA (like the fact I love Shoto, Deku, Bakugo, Lemillion and Can’t Stop Sparkling ), but here I’ll spend time just discussing OPM and other stuff.

The graph above represents threat levels in OPM, something that felt sorely lacking in MHA.

Weirdly enough, despite mha being “more serious” than OPM, it has an even more vague goal than OPM. I’ll explain how.

Deku wants to be the “symbol of peace”, but he fails to become that by the end of the series.

The graph above isn’t a simple graph, it sets up one of the primary antagonists of OPM, an unknown entity of “God” level that Saitama will eventually face to prevent the extinction of humanity and become a recognized hero.


Now one other thing to mention (besides ONE’s art being absolutely breathtaking) is the fact that yes, hero society has a real structure in OPM, unlike the celebrity-glorifying culture of MHA’s pathetic hero society (which is just hyper authoritarian and rich heroes patting each other on the back while they punch down blue collar criminals way below their weight class and act like they’ve done a heroic deed).

Best part? OPM consistently calls out its bad heroes, unlike MHA which only gives them a slap on the wrist (I was gonna name-drop endeavor, but I love him, so he’s safe), so OPM is self aware, while MHA has less competency than fanfic writers (no shade intended, I’m a fanfic writer too).



So did saitama achieve his goal? That’s the funny part… he doesn’t need to. He has the life and personality of your usual salaryman, so a veggie sales day is more important to him than saving the world. He’s my hero for a reason. Very relatable.

Meanwhile, Deku is constantly outshined by his peers like Shoto and Bakugo.



I’m actually convinced Lemillion was meant to replace Deku. Deku is clearly a really tiny part of his world and his existence is really negligible. I love him, but the world would be better off if Lemillion was the hero. He becomes Number 1 for a reason, and he has a more proper underdog story. He worked for his own bread, unlike Deku who had everything handed to him on a silver platter (yet still acts like a whiny little sissy, I promise I still love him though).

Saitama doesn’t quite have this issue. Not only did he work for his own bread, he’s humble, heroic and gets the job done.



And now for my final point about worldbuilding… VISUALS
this is a manga discussion after all.








ONE clearly does not slack off here as he consistently draws breathtaking panels with incredible shot composition, it breaths a ton of soul into his world. The raw and blunt way of expressing everything has consistently left an impact on me, I find ONE to be a major source of inspiration not just artistically, but in work ethic too. He is passion in the purest sense of the word and I can only aspire to be a tenth of a tenth of what he could do.






There’s just a certain ambient that’s nigh impossible to narrow down to mere words. It must be felt, and I run the risk of ruining it by trying to verbalize something you need to feel for yourself. The occasional eeriness of it all also adds to the whole experience.





^ this is Tatsumaki, she’s easily my favorite in the webcomic and a fantastic display of ONE’s immeasurable talents, so I’ll stop describing it and just let it breath and speak for itself.

Part 2 of the rant will discuss *checks notes*, this, apparently

Yeah I have no right calling out others for being sporadic whenever I check my notes.

It will come out… some time in the future. It will discuss why I like deku in spite of everything. It feels like i should make this a latter part, but I honestly really can’t fit it anywhere else. My structure being this cursed is a byproduct of my own insanity.

With all that said, I’m quite proud I managed to air out my thoughts on OPM. If you made it this far, stare at my knuckles fig for 30 seconds.