OPM Manga Ch 121 Review: To Break a Superhuman
Folks who’ve been following me a while might have noticed that I’ve been making collections of manga covers as they tell their own parallel story, at least telling us something about characters’ personalities and outlooks.
I couldn’t help but notice that chapter 121′s cover appears to be a response from Genos to the challenge laid down by Saitama in chapter 104. Don’t worry about my moving forward to try breaking my limits today: I have no intention of stopping! The parallels are more than cover deep in that both chapters 104 and 121 cover the disciples and Puri Puri. Shall we dig in?
Warning, contains cruelty to heroes. But you knew that already or you’d not be reading!
Installed with six forward gears but no reverse
“This is as far as I go…”
Chapter 104 introduced us to Puri Puri’s bid for greater heights, with the dissipating smoke and his forearms beautifully framing his still-intact sweater. He’s come so far from the overconfident guy clowning around in front of the Deep Sea King. Puri Puri will never not be funny in the idiosyncratic way he deals with enemies, but the following chapters showed us just how strong Puri Puri has become. His incredible ability to evolve his body in response to challenges is truly terrifying (in a good way).
Then/Now:
The now revived Garou has not only beaten him so savagely that his armour was no good, but is continuing to beat him, leaving him no time at all to recover and even attempt to adapt. It’s beginning to feel claustrophobic when one of my many weaknesses shows up. I love that Murata pays nearly as much attention to feet as he does to hands. Feet hold us up, and Superalloy’s are as massive as they need to ground and support his massive frame:
Yes, a much-anticipated fight is coming, but first, let me say something about Garou. There’s an old Doctor Who story featuring some monsters called the Weeping Angels. They appeared as statues… so long as you looked at them. Every time you looked away, they would inch closer, and closer, and closer still. Garou, who hasn’t said a single coherent word since reviving, is framed in the same way. His posture doesn’t change, but every time the camera pans away, it comes back to find that he’s closer, and closer. And closer. Until he’s standing in front of Darkshine.
The cameraman packs up and leaves at this moment, with the two squared off like something out of a Grecian myth: the Titan versus the Olympian. We’re sure to return some chapter soon, but before that, some more cruelty to superhumans needs to be attended to.
“This is bad…”
Chapter 104 prominently featured Atomic Samurai’s disciples, Iaian, Okamataichi and Bushidrill. It made Iaian their ambassador, looking at his internal thoughts to explore the pressures they had put on themselves to achieve more when they saw just how incredible Class S heroes were, and the pressure of expectation that Atomic had laid on them. We left them in chapter 104 pushing past the literal tangle they were in, rallying boldly to attack Devil Long Hair and attempt to close some of the gap between them and their Class S seniors.
As we saw, they succeeded in besting Devil Long Hair wonderfully: the gap may not be closed, but they have taken great strides forward! Then, they met one monster too many.
Then/Now:
Child Emperor comes across their prone bodies, and is warned by Iaian, just in time to avoid being skewered by the (to him) unnamed monster and its symbiotic hell fishes.
Of all the whimsical yet deadly toys Child Emperor has come up with, a lego-themed snowman with flash-freezing abilities is one I simply couldn’t have imagined needing to see. But I’m very glad to have seen it!
As we leave the chapter, it seems to be working! Evil Natural Water is now a pillar of ice and all its mad doctor fish are fish sticks.
Thus chapter 121 completes what chapter 104 started. As the cover of 104 implied, it was the role of heroes to push themselves beyond what they thought achievable and we saw the disciples and Puri do just that. They're out in chapter 121, with confident new heroes rushing in to take over where valiant ones have fought well but faltered.
As to what’s going to happen next…
Meta: Everything has its breaking point
I’m very happy to see that ONE removed the lines in the webcomic that had Child Emperor musing how he himself had been able to beat the disciples earlier. It wasn’t very nice of him to run them down, and it was thoroughly unnecessary in the context.
If earlier chapters showing Nyan savaging the support heroes were hard to watch (watch? isn’t this a manga? Watch.), things aren’t about to get easier. If you’re a webcomic reader, you know what’s going to happen next, but none of your foreknowledge is going to dilute the disbelief and pain that the heroes are going to be facing. If anything, because the manga is taking the time to show us how much heavier the expectations on the strike force are, and because we’ve been following them longer, it’s going to hurt more.
Most of the strike team have never tasted defeat, and even in the dire straits all of them are in, most still nurture some spark of hope that they’ll prevail despite everything. This chapter is when it all starts to get dark.