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OPM Webcomic Chapters 157 and 158 Review

Yo! It's been a while and I've been fizzing with impatience to have the time to sit down and write these reviews. I love hearing your thoughts, too!

Summary

Chapter 157

Round 2!

The chapter opens to an exhausted and bloodied Metal Bat looking at the slumped-over bodies of Erimin and Destro. Remarking that it'd been a tough fight, Metal Bat slowly squats, using his bat for balance. He's not given rest: a series of beeps and clicks alerts him to a change in the duo. They shed their disguises to reveal two cyborgs, one with its brain visible through a transparent covering over its cranium. Destro wastes no time in charging Metal Bat in what he called 'Destroy Mode', smashing the hero through multiple walls, then pinning him and punching him repeatedly in the face. Erimin supports him with her 'Eliminate Mode', stabbing at Metal Bat and abstracting his epinymous metal bat.

'Destro, enough!' she says, 'he's already dead' but Destro doesn't listen, continuing to pummel the young hero. She points out that the building may self-repair but the damage he's continuing to do will make trouble for them. Destro does not relent. She gives up on getting through to him and decides to go kill McCoy. Just as she turns around, there's a 'smack!' Metal Bat has caught Destro's fist, and then there's a sickening crunch as Metal Bat smashes Destro's head in with one mighty punch, killing him.

'Thank you for dropping the human act', Metal Bat says as he explains that he's never had the opportunity to just go all out against someone. With a huge flurry of blows, he does for Erimin too.

Metal Bat finally fully letting loose -- what a terrifying sight!

Elsewhere, McCoy is fleeing, well, walking briskly away from would be more accurate, Mr. Fuzzy's bodyguards. He comes to a door at the end of the corridor and it is helpfully unlocked.

Inside, he sees none other than Mr. Fuzzy, who has been gagged and bound to a chair, with an IV running into his arm. After being ungagged, Mr. Fuzzy wastes no time introducing himself and starts talking about 'a great light of destruction,' and the need to stop the inorganic consciousness that has lost its way. He tells McCoy about the antenna at the top of the building sending signals to the robots currently rampaging and it was down to the heroes to do something about it. McCoy asks if there's something useful the latter can say, like where the kill switch might be.

There's a pounding at the door. The bodyguards have arrived. McCoy starts to weep -- surely his hour has come. And then there's silence. Metal Bat opens the door, having dispatched said bodyguards. Mr Fuzzy thus has time to explain that the antenna was controlled by a remote that was in the hands of a fake Mr Fuzzy. The robots couldn't be beaten by calculation but by the wild factor that people could bring. McCoy interprets that the heroes needing to go wild and not give up and Metal Bat sees it as mere common sense.

Elsewhere, Fake Fuzzy sits in a chair observing A's dismantlement of Ryumon with approval. It has been most illuminating, he says. A remarks that people and monsters aren't that different. He plan son expanding his tormet to AIs like Mr. Fuzzy too. Speaking of torment, he was enjoying keeping Ryumon alive far beyond the point at which he should have died.

Metal Bat and McCoy approach he office, following the bloody drag tail that they presume to have come from Ryumon. Just as they reach the door, the doors are flung open and a panicked A comes haring out, screaming for help. He doesn't get far as a clawed, scaly hand grabs him by the head and starts dragging him back. Metal Bat frees him with a swing of his bat and shouts at McCoy to stay back. He's faced by what appears to be an actual dragon. A tells him that it's Ryumon, and he's now a monster and needs to be killed right away. Just then, Amai Mask and Webigaza come crashing through the office windows, with Amai asking what's going on.

Couldn't be happening to a nicer person -- A fleeing for his life.

Chapter 158

A bewildered Ryumon watches as everyone around him appears to have gone mental. Everyone is talking at once, asking whether they should kill him, commenting on his bloodlust, crediting him with saving their lives… Webigaza cuts in saying that Ruymon had been looking out for her and was so nice as to buy her lattes and she was sorry for judging him by his appearance initially. Metal Bat says that he's just confused. Amai asks if he's still of sound mind and if this was his first time monsterizing. Ryumon finally speaks: what the hell is everyone talking about?

There's silence as the people in the room digest this information.

Ryumon explains that he'd been on the verge of death and he'd felt this sensation welling up in his chest, speculating that this power had to be what they called justice and he felt almost invincible. Amai interrupts him by showing him his reflection in a piece of glass. Ryumon is shocked. Amai starts to explain that monsterfication is the hyper-development of violent physical capabilities accompanied by psychological degradation -- but it turns out that what Ryumon is shocked about is how awesome he looks, looking like the reification of his beloved tattoo. After a bit of self-admiration, Ryumon thinks to ask where A is. On being told that A has escaped, he starts to freak out, saying that A is incredibly evil and simply can't be left at large. Amai Mask stops him, assuring him that A will be found and that right now, stabilizing Ryumon's mental state had to take priority.

Fake Fuzzy, who'd been sitting quietly in the chair, finally interjects, annoyed that his test subject was being interfered with. He wanted to see more of the potential of humanity. Webi recognises him and tells the others who Mr. Fuzzy is, informing them that he's the one who put the Neo Heroes together, managed Blue, and turned her into a cyborg. Fake Fuzzy asks if she's blaming him for her current predicament, calling the tendency to blame others for one's shortcomings a characteristic of manipulable humans. Giving her inefficient modifications had been a valuable experiment.

Amai tells Webi to ignore his taunts and keep calm but she assures him that there's no need for his concern: these modifications were her choice at the end of the day, and despite their inefficiency, she was still able to protect people she cared about.

Ignoring Webi, Fake Fuzzy orders McCoy to monsterize, which he refuses to do. No way he's taking orders from a robot (not that he could monsterize in any case but that's beside the point). Ryumon notes that this robot isn't built for combat and must be for espionage, to which Amai adds that all everything they're seeing and saying must be being relayed to the mastermind. Metal Bat moves to bash the hell out of Fake Fuzzy but Amai Mask redirects him to the true goal: stopping the endless plague of robots and Neo Heroes. McCoy recalls that Real Fuzzy told him about a remote control.

'This?' Fake Fuzzy asks, taking out the remote control. Then destroys it. It wants to see the gathered group show it another of their 'errors' that so throw off its calculations. As the heroes digest what this means, Webigaza detects massive numbers of robots approaching from all sides. Amai tells Metal Bat to take the tower and destroy the transmitter at its top. The rest of them will hold off anything trying to storm the tower.

Dance, worms! Give me more data!

All around, things are looking dire. Heroes are fighting bravely, but the robots keep coming. Back in Bofoi's no-longer-so-secret hideout, he and Isamu are wondering how to stop Genos. Bofoi reckons that Saitama is probably the only one other than Kuseno who has influence on Genos but with his communications network jammed, he has no way of reaching the Caped Baldy. Isamu realises that the Neo Heroes' comms are still unjammed and wonders if he could contact one of the other leaders. Bofoi advises him to try contacting them one by one.

We see that the other leaders are mostly not in a state to respond for one reason or another. We focus on Accel, who is running for his life despite the batteries on his roller blades being totally dead. He can feel his former men practically clawing at his back but he won't give up.

Metal Bat reaches the tower's roof, to be met by a troop of Machine Gods. No words are exchanged as they enjoin a battle most brutal, man against machine. In the aftermath of the explosions, we see Metal Bat resume his trudge up the seemingly endless stairs to the very top of the tower. Finally, he reaches the antenna. It is massive but with a few brutal swings, he destroys it.

All around, things suddenly quiet down: just as Accel's former team mates are about to pounce on him, they suddenly collapse. He stops running, astonished. Then his phone starts to ring. It is Isamu, asking if he can hear him. On his replying in the affirmative, he tells Accel that he has a vital message for him to relay.

Fake Fuzzy is not dismayed by the outcome. Seeing this display of human unpredictability has been most useful information for the establishment of the new world order. Eliminating highly capable humans has to be…well, we don't get any further as Amai destroys the robot.

Finally, Accel reaches the Hero Association headquarters. He sees Saitama and calls out to him, telling him that there's a hero job that only he can take care of.

META

Can I start by praising ONE developing his ability to create tension on the page? Through interleaving the parallel stories of desperate struggle on the parts of the heroes in the field and those in the tower, he made for a really gripping climax to the robot rampage. It's over. At least for the moment, and not a moment too soon.

Other short observation is going to be pure Captain Obvious mode. For a guy who has never been afraid to create yet another character, it's nice to see ONE finally close the circle on something. Erimin and Destro happen to be none other than the pair of cyborgs from The Organization whom we saw beat down Hammerhead after allowing him to steal the bodysuits. At last, it all comes together. And while they were people under those metal bodies, I don't feel one whit sorry for them. They had it coming.

McCoy continues to make down payments towards his redemption by having standards. He was just a greedy man who wanted an easy life, not someone who wanted to see the world destroyed. So far, he's been helpful in alerting Metal Bat to the problem and has found the Real Mr. Fuzzy, whose information has been useful-ish. I hope we'll see him contribute a bit more. Speaking of unexpectedly useful people, the partnership that's developing between Webigaza and Amai is fantastic to see.

Something I'm less fond of is the continuing retroactive continuity. It'd have sure been nice for us to have seen Ryumon being nice to Webi, no? Since this is an unpaid project, ONE isn't about to rewrite the story to accommodate these characteristics about Ryumon, so we get more retconning via Webigaza to cover the hole. Not that I mind over-much. The way things are, humanity needs every ally it can get if it wants to survive. Another issue I have, but one I'm very hopeful will be resolved with more information is one of timing. How long has Mr. Fuzzy (the real guy) been in captivity? For Fake Fuzzy to take credit for Webigaza's body modification, it would have to be months, and yet the way he's being held speaks to someone held short term. There's a discrepancy here that needs to be resolved.

Wild factors

'Humans are strong because we can change ourselves,' Saitama famously said. And yet, if you study enough people in enough detail, certain predictable patterns appear, patterns that can be predicted and manipulated in fine detail, which The Organization has been doing, greatly aided by the massive information gathering available to a contemporary society. However, leaving aside the potential for change, humans in this world can have strange powers. Metal Bat is a fantastic example: his power is to hulk out when he's pushed hard in battle; the closer to death he is, the stronger he becomes. While no one would envy his trigger nor what lies behind his discovering such a power, with such a reliable power, he's a guy who has no need to grow. He really has won the superpower lottery. These powers that people sometimes have interest The Organization greatly. How do you identify such individuals? What makes them come out? How do they respond? How do you take them out?

First type of error: the super-powered humans.

The second type of 'error' that interests The Organization is the ability of people to transform into monsters, which Ryumon showed them most splendidly. The circumstances under which people can be provoked into turning into monsters is interesting, and as for monsters, The Organization has no fear: they know well how to bend monsters to their will.

Second type of error: the people who transform.

And then there's the third kind of 'error', exemplified nicely here by Webigaza. She should be dead of overheating and goodness knows we saw how hot she ran, and yet, somehow, Webigaza appears to have found a way to tame her inner flame well enough to keep going to protect the neighbourhoods she grew up in. What she's done is closest to what Saitama was talking about. That too, is of interest -- even regular people might not fall down when you expect them to.

Third type of error: the people who just transcend their limits.

Watching Fake Fuzzy assiduously taking notes as if to make some last-minute adjustments for these errors was creepy and I worry that the heroes let it get too much of an eyeful before destroying it. Depending on how fast The Organization can turn data into insight and innovation, this could make for a very tough future battle.