Oh snap ONE actually tweeted something. To celebrate season 3 announcement.
But is it just me or does it feel poignant that Saitama's one eye is hidden by the destroyed layer of wall here? I've never seen Saitama drawn in official sources with his eyes hidden behind objects before.
I may be over-analyzing one drawing, but you never know with this author, so hear me out.
Hidden eyes have meanings in OPM. Like one of Garou's eye turned red when he started monsterizing and when he broke out, one of his eyes was revealed.
Notably, if we've ever seen a half monster and half human, it's always been with the monster eye on right and human eye on the left. When Garou broke out of his monsterization, the human eye is again his left eye. Same goes with Psykos.
The good and evil characteristics of human and the outside transformation is when their heart starts to turn inhuman as they progress in their monsterization.
But we've also seen that some beings are not permanently turned into monster looks and they control their own forms. Because there are multiple ways of being evil, some are just not visible, just like humans can be innately evil. Just looking like a monster is not enough to make one into a monster or absolute evil. One would also have to be evil on the inside, down to the very soul. And there are many ways of regression into this state of evilness.
Like breaking down your own boundaries about what you consider as morally good and hiding those morally good characteristics when breaking said boundaries.
Something that Saitama did when Garou killed Genos and the colliding punch could have destroyed Earth and subsequently it did actually destroy unknown quantity of the known universe and they proceeded to absolutely obliterate Jupiter and it's moon. None of it can be viewed as morally good action, they destroyed entire planets. The only thing stopping him from killing Garou was really Genos' core.
It feels like it's not just foreshadowing about what is to come in Season 3, but also OPM in general. That Saitama in this fight, has started to break the boundary between morally good and morally evil into the grey zone when he has so far been presented to us as morally good. And maybe explore further how far he's willing to go to retain his bonds with other people, because we only got a small taste about that; there really is no limit about how far he's willing to go to retain those bonds.
It is both sad and terrifying prospect.
Edit: More potential avenues of analyzation include the rock face identity (murata tweeted about heavenly rock cave door being opened), Garou's leggy pointing out of the wall like hes being swallowed by the current and only has one leg at the door and saitama coming out on top, but he's changed now.
(oh my god if they're actually somehow going to include garou fight in season 3 it would have to be 24+ episodes long I would die happy and the promo artwork did look promising, like the nuclear green background, long as manga content doesn't get cut and it's not rushed it would be insane season, unlikely to happen cuz volumes havent caught up yet but one can hope for split season...)
Your posts on Saitama and food made me really sad. But it makes more sense that he is drawn like this now. I thought it was just a shift in style. Because even Genos looked babyish in the first chapters. But buff characters were always buff and were drawn buff. Saitama though... He looked like a baby but really slender. Lean but thin. Imagine what can eating good food do to you in two months. No wonder he started looking so bodacious
Ofc I am not discounting art style change from the picture, which is honestly more likely that Murata-sensei has just gotten better at drawing Saitama and the style in drawing Sai has shifted and that's all there is to. He might've just gotten a new reference body style to draw from. We've seen Saitama drawn really buff and detailed before, when they took the hero test, so it's nothing new. It's more apparent in the anime when he's drawn with even more bulging muscles.
Whether there is anything to this is up for speculation, but I would not discount proper nutrition from the equation. Nutrition is important and will always be important. But it might not be in the exact way we think it is. Something that I also thought about after making that one particular post.
Whether or not this post invalidates my previous post about Saitama not getting his fill when eating because his body physioque demands is up to you. I'm going to go fairly off-tangent (or not) here if you'll allow me haha. This gonna be a long post.
About Saitama and his self-image and how it's possibly portrayed in the manga and anime.
Imo, the real change between this Saitama and the Saitama we saw on the moon of I.O seems to be in how Saitama appears to see HIMSELF, when he actually gets serious. Or, how OTHER people are able to perceive him.
It is a shift in the mindset of his self-image.
Residual self-image is the concept that individuals tend to think of themselves as projecting a certain physical appearance or certain position of social entitlement, or lack thereof. The term was used at least as early as 1968, but was popularized in fiction by the Matrix series, where persons who existed in a digitally created world would subconsciously maintain the physical appearance that they had become accustomed to projecting.
"Show me no mercy."
That is, when he does not hold himself back. He's drawn the same when he's just there, being goofy, not very serious and holding himself back from going all-out. You can almost overlap the images with below manga panel.
There is a subtle difference though. His hero suit is more form-fitting. Because suits in this universe answer to the bearer's feelings. So he seems to be more heroic, instead of comedic.
Art style change or not? You decide.
Yes, he was messing with you Garou. Because you too, were just playing around being a monster.
However when Garou became a true monster, Saitama stopped playing around and holding himself back. And upon doing that, became morally dubious when he tried to punch Garou and destroyed moon and jupiter.
Even Garou wonders what the hell is this monster at the end. Speculation can be made whether Saitama is simply letting his innate monster side show because he legitimately wanted to kill Garou. The egoism and superiority complex would be that monster side, when he assumes that mindset of superiority. Something that he seems to be hiding well. More on this later.
The point I am trying to make here though is that it is quite possibly that the beefiest Saitama's physical appearance is not even a product of his physical conditioning. He appears just the same as ever...except when he is exerting his power. Then he gets the bodacious body.
One could say he's just exerting his muscles and that is also true, but tbh it doesn't seem to be all that. That's just appearances.
And technically, does he even need to exert his physical muscles if he's going to punch with divine power? I mean, it would explain why he doesn't get physically tired. His mental stamina is just sky high.
But not actually endless, because when he was running around all day, visualizing and looking for any bad guys in the anime episode, at the end of the day he had to take an actual breather. Which lines up with what we know about current Saitama and his exponentially growing power.
(a close look at the fist of god in that last panel, his divine power, I love small anime details like this)
I think Genos says it he best.
"You are so...full of shit!"
"That's just standard strenght training! And it's not even that intense! Anyone could do it!"
"I have to get stronger. I didn't ask to study under you so I could listen to your jokes!"
"Saitama-sensei, your power...is clearly beyond what you can achieve by just training your body!
And he's right, anybody could do it. Saitama's standard strenght training. Other people do far more. Garou has been training for years upon years of intense martial arts like Bang to get that body of his. What Saitama thinks is strenght training is an actual joke, the punchline if you will.
We arrive to the heart of the issue. Saitama's strenght was never anything that could be achieved by training his body.
Ergo, it means that by further strenght training, he could still not achieve a better body via just doing his strenght training, even with better nutrition. He already hit his peak body via that strenght training alone.
Ain't nobody gonna get biceps, pecs and sixpack like that with Saitama's strenght training lmao. Even if he ate well and nutritious food. Who are we even kidding? xd
But he hasn't trained differently either, just added punching monsters to his list and doing his training instantaneously. At least, I don't think he could achieve it like that with normal power.
Instead, I believe it's all just his cognitive power at play. Chances are, by altering his self-image, he has unconsciously also altered his body to match. If it's just appearance or actual physicality, not entirely sure. Which is a positive outcome but...
The depiction of Saitama in Jupiter is basically how Saitama saw himself and how he is able to be perceived. It's the power of his cognitive levels rising exponentially, the whirlpool of heaven stripped bare with the catalyst of emotional surge (as Murata-sensei tweeted) and let loose. (The depiction of Jupiter's red spot swirling around Saitama's head is a really nice artistic touch tbh.)
But it also wasn't a very nice Saitama was it? That superiority complex.
As the fight progresses, so does Saitama become more and more buff, but he's dissociating hard at the same time too and then back to his dopey self and not feeling or caring about a thing.
People with low self-esteem have a tendency to fixate on their body image. And Saitama is self-conscious, we know that from all the times when he gets self-conscious about his bald head. But since Saitama has...interesting powers, he fixates and alters his body quite literally in accordance to his self-image.
Aside from having low self-esteem, sufferers typically fixate on altering their physical appearances. Such behavior creates body dissatisfaction and higher risks of eating disorders, isolation, and mental illnesses in the long term.[2] In Eating Disorders, a negative body image may also lead to body image disturbance, an altered perception of the whole one's body. Body dissatisfaction also characterizes body dysmorphic disorder, an obsessive-compulsive disorder defined by concerns about some specific aspect of one's body (usually face, skin or hair), which is severely flawed and warrants exceptional measures to hide or fix. Often, people who have a low body image will try to alter their bodies in some way, such as by dieting or by undergoing cosmetic surgery. On the other hand, positive body image consists of perceiving one's figure clearly and correctly, celebrating and appreciating one's body, and understanding that one's appearance does not reflect one's character or worth.
Speculation can be made whether Saitama also subconsciously hides his true face behind that goofy face of his, because his lack of hair has become a complex. And why there seems to be such few witnesses to how he really looks and other people attempting to perceive his true self, will find themselves stumped and confused (or what appears to be his true self or Wounded Healer archetype).
(I've never heard Genos sound as confused as this lol, his brain is doing that apple loading screen)
(Can we get more of this Saitama look because the King panel is one of my fav Saitama faces by far, he looks sooooo goood)
Within Shinto it is believed that the nature of life is sacred because the kami began human life. Yet people cannot perceive this divine nature, which the kami created, on their own; therefore, magokoro (真心), or purification, is necessary in order to see the divine nature. This purification can only be granted by the kami. In order to please the kami and earn magokoro, Shinto followers are taught to uphold the four affirmations of Shinto.
By purification, it means with tears, since in Japan, salt water acts as purifier. Then they can perceive the true nature of Saitama.
Saitama's view on self-image is also probably the reason he doesn't scar, when other people did during their training. The only other reason would be that he can actually regenerate like monsters can, but it can definitely contribute to his poor self-image if he thinks it as monster-like quality he just happens to possess and associates it with being evil and monster-like. It might just be metabolism. But we can also speculate upon that. Other people perceive him with "eyes of a dead fish"-look and mostly negatively.
Saitama is the only character in the series who seems to flip-flop between actual looks when it's not for a comedic reason. Even between same page. Nobody else's facial features or musculature change so drastically, besides like Tatsumaki for caricatyre reasons.
Comedy is one thing, but Saitama changes in inverse to that, when he gets serious. So it's probably a serious reason.
You may notice how buff his arm seems to be on upper panel, but then we're back to slim arm. Then the panel with Genos where he looks at Saitama's profile and next Saitama panel we're back to dopey.
I've honestly gone very off tangent and idk if it's interesting or not... but here is where the proper nutrition and new lifestyle changes comes into play.
Evolution wise, our brain size started to increase once humans managed to acquire calorie-rich and difficult to acquire food and behavioural and social changes.
The temporal lobes, which contain centers for language processing, have increased disproportionately, as has the prefrontal cortex, which has been related to complex decision-making and moderating social behavior. Encephalization has been tied to increased starches and meat in the diet, however a 2022 meta study called into question the role of meat. Other factors are the development of cooking, and it has been proposed that intelligence increased as a response to an increased necessity for solving social problems as human society became more complex. Changes in skull morphology, such as smaller mandibles and mandible muscle attachments, allowed more room for the brain to grow.
The increase in volume of the neocortex also included a rapid increase in size of the cerebellum. Its function has traditionally been associated with balance and fine motor control, but more recently with speech and cognition. The great apes, including hominids, had a more pronounced cerebellum relative to the neocortex than other primates. It has been suggested that because of its function of sensory-motor control and learning complex muscular actions, the cerebellum may have underpinned human technological adaptations, including the preconditions of speech.
It has been suggested that the changes were mainly social and behavioural, including increased empathic abilities, increases in size of social groups, and increased behavioral plasticity. Humans are unique in the ability to acquire information through social transmission and adapt that information. The emerging field of cultural evolution studies human sociocultural change from an evolutionary perspective.
Once he got proper nutrition of meat, starch and vegetables to actually supplement his overall training, it is not just his physioque that grew, it was the cognitive levels too. Possibly the sensory-motor control that is developed in infancy that is referenced to as the Inner child in omake, his ability to understand causality, time and space. Big brain time basically. Mind expansion.
Intelligence is present; motor activity but no symbols; knowledge is developing yet limited; knowledge is based on experiences/ interactions; mobility allows the child to learn new things; some language skills are developed at the end of this stage. The goal is to develop object permanence, achieving a basic understanding of causality, time, and space.
But chances are, other concepts that cognition develops as it matures apply.
Concrete operational stage
Elementary and Early Adolescence (7–12 years)
Logical and systematic form of intelligence; manipulation of symbols related to concrete objects; thinking is now characterized by reversibility and the ability to take the role of another; grasps concepts of the conservation of mass, length, weight, and volume; predominantly operational thinking; nonreversible and egocentric thinking
But it wasn't just that. It was the increase in pleasurable social stimulation that allowed him to reach the height of his cognitive levels and actually gain the self-image to match. Or able to showcase the self-image that actually physically matches his real body physioque.
However, when it comes to nutrition and Saitama's powers, it was even more vitally important that he get the proper nutrition and social requirements to sustain himself. He was training hard not just physically, but mentally. It was so taxing he went bald. That kind of stress on the brain can't have been healthy.
This guy looks like death warmed over him. Pig God also has ability that turns his body fat into source of fuel for his powers and what might be his life-energy. Giving that up to Tank-top master made his entire physioque shrink.
Body needs some kind of fuel as energy to continue metabolizing and working normally. When Saitama was just eating banana in the morning and something like idek rice on eggs for supper? It's not enough. Maybe he could be able to persevere on such a diet if he was normal human and just not have any gains on physioque, but he's nowhere near being normal. He just plain forced himself to change.
He has divine power that was also constantly stressing his brain, his cognition and when he was doing hero work, if he was to expend all that emotional energy in cathexis and blow up stuff, it would also require him to produce same amount of energy to match. Equivalent exchange, Full Metal Alchemist style.
My hypothesis is that his body had started to cannibalize itself because it simply did not have enough resources to use as fuel. Not from food nor from socialization.
By draining his emotions and possibly other cognitive skills as fuel for his divine power instead and causing his apathy. Yikes.
Because he always expells his serious punches in anger and he always feels less stressed or even no emotions at all after serious punch. By forcing himself to change and using his divine power, he rapidly sped up his metabolism and cognitive thought processing and suffered because he was poor financially and poor socially to give himself enough water and sunlight to grow like the Cactus metaphor.
It was worse when he had no energy for the Garou fight, after walking all day in dark caves with zero food and he was irritable and exploded immediately and uncontrollably when he saw his entire social circle had been killed.
Chances are, Saitama might just wither away eventually if he actually lost that social circle...that's how one can defeat Saitama, by striking a dead blow to his heart. If they can get past Saitama's powers, that is.
If the beefy Saitama is his current true image? Body image wise, that's great. It means that he has stopped cannibalizing himself from the inside out and he's now getting enough nutrients and meeting his energy requirements sufficiently enough that his self-image is now relatively normal. And has stopped having a "mostly" negative view of himself.
But there's still a reason why he tries to hide it so much and why it only seemingly comes out when he becomes serious. And even then, in only few rare scenarios.
He deems his abnormal strenght, his full power and divine powers, as something monstrous. Because of the scenarios where he has to use it.
The times when he realises that he cannot show mercy to an individual and is forced to possibly kill them.
"Bla bla bla. Are you done? With this fight?"
Saitama is not trying to taunt Boros, at least not in the way we think. He's trying to dissuade him from continuing the fight, so he would not have to kill him. Because he empathised heavily.
But Saitama does not kill people, it's against his morals. He only kills things he deems as monsters. Evil things who have turned their beings against humanity. But he may not truly feel like monsters deserve killing either and he feels he's forced to do it if he's to continue to be a hero and protect humanity and he's become desentized to killing monsters, though this is speculation.
It is the look of a person who is world-weary. A thousand yard stare. When heroism didn't turn out to be like he thought it would be.
Possibly the reason he never seems to feel fully like a Hero and why he's envious of people like King and even Garou to extent. And why he feels weird for trying to pretend to be a Hero. The loneliness he feels because he seems alone in his dilemmas. Being and feeling monstrous while doing something you're passionate about.
There is nobody he can relate with. When he finds someone he can relate with, he really wants nothing more than to spare them.
There is a quote from Deadpool that seems fitting, which I found from youtube comments when watching Totally not Mark's video how Saitama redefines heroism. I recommend watching btw, its a great video.
"Four or five moments, that’s all it takes. To be a hero. Everyone thinks it’s a full-time job. Wake up a hero. Brush your teeth a hero. Go to work a hero. Not true.
Over a lifetime, there are only 4 or 5 moments that really matter. Moments when you’re offered a choice. To make a sacrifice, conquer a flaw, save a friend… spare an enemy. In these moments, everything else falls away."
Which feels very poignant, considering how Deadpool also looks under the mask. Appearing as Hero on the outside, but a monster on the inside.
Another point of view is that the reason for Saitama's apathy and losing his humanity is because of how Saitama started to view himself as; a person with less humanity because he felt monstrous doing his hero work and less emotions when he was constantly locking up his emotions behind a facade of apathy just to deal with his conflicting feelings. So it started to became part of his self-image and the person he views himself as. If you believe in it hard enough, it must be true right? Which is honestly just as bad as your own body eating itself out on the inside. Both can be true interpretations.
We've not even arrived to the debate about what makes monsters evil and deserving of the death blow. Who's to decide whether or not Manako for instance, deserves to die? Saitama or Amai-mask? Is Manako evil enough monster that she would have to die or good enough to live? We will probably discuss this come Amai-mask arc.
Saitama sees the world as black and white more often than not. People, monsters and himself. At least when he is losing his touch with humanity.
Psychoanalytic theory posits that an individual unable to integrate difficult feelings mobilizes specific defenses to overcome these feelings, which the individual perceives to be unbearable. The defense that effects (brings about) this process is called splitting. Splitting is the tendency to view events or people as either all bad or all good.[1] When viewing people as all good, the individual is said to be using the defense mechanism idealization: a mental mechanism in which the person attributes exaggeratedly positive qualities to the self or others. When viewing people as all bad, the individual employs devaluation: attributing exaggeratedly negative qualities to the self or others
He gave that same thousand yard stare look at Garou that he gave to Boros, multiple times even. Feeling like a monster because all he wanted to do is kill Garou to revenge Genos and dissociating from his feelings entire so he wouldn't be able to feel the pain. So he clung to the last vestige of humanity on his palm.
When he lets out a less than ideal side of himself loose on the opponent to do what he feels passionate about, acting out in justice, but struggles with feelings of shame and guilt over his actions because he also feels like a monster while doing so against a person who he can't box neatly into what he depicts as morally evil. And feelings of guilt and shame for in this instance, trying to carry out justice by serious punching Garou to smithereens despite Tareo asking him not to and the end result almost destroying earth. And lastly, feelings of guilt and shame over enjoying his hero work to alleviate his boredom.
If Garou wanted to become absolute evil by transforming from human to a monster, Saitama parallels that by wanting to become to the opposite; absolute good by transforming from monster into a human. Something essential in humanity he feels like he has lost. He never felt like he fit into society anyway and he feels let down like Hammerhead and one foot away from becoming like one.
And it has become a self-perpetuating cycle; alleviating his emotional pain by engaging in impulsive behaviour to relieve it and then feeling shame and guilt. Then it becomes automatic response.
Because being passionate about Hero work also saved him and gave him means to vent out his negative feelings like anger, emptyness and depression so he did not succumb entirely and he could connect with his passions again. It gave him a sense of purpose and means to change himself.
In all honesty, Saitama seems to suffer from Borderline Personality-disorder, and more than likely ADHD and all of this undiagnosed but that's another topic entirely. Speculation can be made again whether it's related to when he first gained his powers as infant, related to his powers in general which causes similar symptoms to arise or if he always had these qualities, but we'll need more information about his past to be sure.
(that impatient foot tapping can point to symptoms of adhd yeap, same as his inability to focus on long speeches)
Combat service...
Question: Has Saitama ever enlisted in the military? Which is extremely common if one is poor plus male. And military exists in OPM.
Men raised in poverty had greater odds of draft and all-volunteer military service. Early-life experiences, independent of military service, appear associated with greater odds of MD. Assessing childhood poverty in service members may identify risk for depression in later life.
Because in all honesty, the metaphor here when Manako, one eye'd monster, is sitting on the toilet and hiding her face from Saitama seems kind of...fitting. In OPM game, Toilet-dwelling monster is metaphor for God, the source of monsters and evil. And Saitama locks himself in the toilet, like he locks his emotions away.
If Saitama has some kind of trauma from his time in the military that causes him to dissociate, it would explain the stare he gets when he feels like he has to take a life to do his hero work, to preserve the needs of the many. Like he did when he killed Boros and when he felt like he failed everyone he knew and wanted to kill Garou.
(Reincarnation anybody? I heard first era in OPM was about war and stuff)
When recounting his arrival in Vietnam in 1965, then-Corporal Joe Houle (director of the Marine Corps Museum of the Carolinas in 2002) said he saw no emotion in the eyes of his new squad: "The look in their eyes was like the life was sucked out of them," later learning that the term for their condition was "the 1,000-yard stare". "After I lost my first friend, I felt it was best to be detached," he explained.
The parallels in these two panels are pretty astounding. But in the bottom one, Saitama has also suffered a psychological wound and it depicts the wounded healer archetype very well.
Wounded healer is a term created by psychologist Carl Jung. The idea states that an analyst is compelled to treat patients because the analyst himself is "wounded." The idea may have Greek mythology origins. Victor et al. (2021), a pre-print study, found that 82% of applied psychology graduate students and faculty members in the United States and Canada experienced mental health conditions at some point in their lives.
As an example, of the "wounded healer phenomenon" between an analyst and their analyzed:
The analyst is consciously aware of his own personal wounds. These wounds may be activated in certain situations especially if the analyzed wounds are similar to his own.
The analyzed wounds affect the wounds of the analyst. The analyst either consciously or unconsciously passes this awareness back to his analyzed, causing an unconscious relationship to take place between analyst and analyzed.
Humanity has made contact with a threat of this scale and has known true Fear, but as long as Saitama's combat service remains a secret, nobody will know.
I wonder if this'll relate to time travel in some way.
Side note, Saitama also taunted both Boros and Garou just to draw their attention intentionally as means of protecting other people with self-sacrifice and classic thinking process of a wounded healer archetype, but also that BPD self-harm shining through. Intentionally using himself being impervious to draw fire.
It's not a healthy outlook, no matter even if he's impervious to harm. He's just found he can do it and it works when he does hero work. He did not care much about being careful about getting harmed before he got impervious either.
Anyways, less about nutrition, more about how Saitama is drawn and how it relates to the plot, his self-image and his mental state.
But regardless of how you see it, I believe current Saitama IS a depiction that he is slowly getting better. And getting the nourishment and help he needs to actually grow and heal. Which is the general takeaway.
Same hair, which is receding for Dr. Bofoi and short for him and Bang, same hairline for both Blast and Bang, same large nose for Kuseno, Bofoi and Bomb but the downward angularity and nose bridge is more prominent in Bang, Garou and Blast. Same mustache for Bang and Blast and same short bangs in the front (hehe geddit) and Bofoi, Bang, Garou and Blast all share the wild eyebrows while Kuseno and Bomb's eyebrows are less wild. Same high cheekbones are visible for Bofoi, Kuseno, Bomb and Bang and Blast and Bang share the same chin too. Bonus points for Bang having the same hair colour as Blast and Garou getting a similarly coloured hair as Blast once he got into spiral Garou form. Young Bomb also has the same goatee as Blast but managed to get different flowing hair, unlike everyone else's spiky hair.
Bonus image for more obvious hairdo comparison:
Inb4 Blast is actually Bang's illegitimate grandson and this whole fight was a family feud type of deal. Bang's actual heir versus the person Bang wanted to make into his heir.
And that would make Garou Blue's cousin or something if Garou's parent is related to Blast.
Idk the family tree might be frikken wild. I'm gonna take a wild guess it's not all natural genetic relations. Bonus points if Genos is related to Genus and there's been a lot of gene manipulation thrown around.
I sense a certain arc is going to be a blast. If this family tree is gonna get super messy.
If we're gonna follow the WC scene where Saitama bodily hugs Tatsumaki so he can drag her out of the HA HQ.
That is the first time Saitama physically "hugs" someone else, a human being.
Someone who is not Genos, the closest person to him. The biggest physical contact he'd had with Genos is holding him to his hip and dangling him awkwardly after Genos got Carnage Kabuto'ed.
Sure, Saitama is only doing it to drag Tatsumaki out so she doesn't fight inside, but oh boy if Genos sees it, that one is going to sting.
That the first person Saitama hugs is not even him but a female hero Saitama doesn't even like. And Genos went to hell and back to save her life too, literally trying to drag her to safety with his teeth and bodily protecting her and earned her respect. It'll feel like karmic bitchslap coming back to haunt him and a betrayal.
Genos deserves affection back from Saitama, whether it be verbal or physical, to affirm that they're actual friends. The lack of acknowledgement is going to hurt big time. Showing affection to everyone else not called Genos and even initiating physical contact is going to hurt even worse and push him away.
It'll make Genos feel like he's just being used like some token that Saitama can cling to and not an actual human being with emotions.
Saitama not remembering that Genos is actually important to him is already biting his ankles. Still too complacent.
@gofancyninjaworld You had that meta about everyone trying to warn Genos of Saitama. I'm suddenly feeling like what if Genos starts to believe in that too. That he's just being swindled.
Romeo, Juliet, Psychostimulants & Parallel world & Meta ramblings
So I recently made a romeo and juliet Saigenos post and I had forgotten that there was an actual CD drama with Saitama playing romeo and Genos as the juliet...
And there's a particular line that caught my attention. Besides the uh, tragedy aspect that Saitama would follow Genos to his apparent death. Which I already hypothesised on my own since that is what he does when Genos dies on him.
Because he, unfortunately, has some suicidal tendencies which a lot of people tend to forget about Saitama. In his darkest moments, he has considered it or attempted it and if Genos was to die, his heart can't take the loss. Anyways...
(I wish I had the full translation but this'll have to do)
(the end of this meta rambling is kind of long since I'm tired so bear with me lol)
Paraphrasing, but I'll work with what I have. I can't find translation elsewhere. :(
What got my attention were these two lines:
He then asks Dr. Kuseno to give him a "poison" that will fake his death so that he can eventually end up running away with Saitama.
The bottle is the poison that Dr. Kuseno prepared, but if a normal human drinks it, they'll probably die.
Remember guys when Genos asked Kuseno for psychic powers because if he had them, he could have saved sensei's crabs, in one of the OVA's? Well...
That looks suspiciously like a bottle of poison, doesn't it?
A bottle of poison to boost psychic/cognitive powers.
A psychostimulant.
Something that also made Psykos more vulnerable to God's powers too.
I am not sure, if bottle of poison is a direct reference to this, or if it's a metaphor about the poison that is divine power.
Hiziki has been mentioned bunch of times. Toxic food item in high quantities. As food item and something that Genos is seen carrying. It's a product in the sale leaflet that Saitama has a breakdown about when defeating Carnage Kabuto because he's late from a sale.
So the metaphor for toxic food item that he cannot resist, negative emotions following a breakdown, seems to be pretty clear. Kinda like when he threw that super angry punch at Garou.
Recent studies have shown that hijiki contains potentially toxic quantities of inorganic arsenic, and the food safety agencies of several countries (excluding Japan), including Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States, have advised against its consumption
Arsenic is a fairly classic poison in a bottle. King of poisons with a murderous history.
Since the very earliest of times poisons have been used as a means for settling old scores, instruments for personal advancement, as a means to execute criminals and by those who found life to be an intolerable burden.
Divine power might be the poison. Bottled up emotions, so to speak. Or maybe even imprisoned emotions.
Or, another hypothesis.
I have thought in the past about what would happen if Saitama took hallucinogens too. The results would be that he could go into psychosis and have paranoia, because of the way they interact with his cognitive powers. Don't put Saitama near psychostimulants.
Poison in the bottle might be medicine too. The saying "choose your poison" comes to mind.
What you say when someone's supposed to choose between two horrible options.
You could either chop off your toe or you can stab yourself with that piece of broken glass. Pick your poison.
"The origin is simply that since the mid-19th century "poison" has been slang for alcoholic drink (in Australia a pub was known as a "poison-shop"). This may refer to the Latin root "toxicum" (meaning "poison")of the word "intoxicate", or it may just be a reference to the bad effects of excessive drinking. Thus the phrases "what's your poison?" "Pick your poison" and "choose your poison" arose naturally.
Might be a reference to how Saitama would have to pick between two horrible options for him at some time.
Psychostimulant for something like treating adhd. Saitama has a lot of adhd like symptoms honestly, most likely related to his powers. Genos tries to preserve Saitama's crabs, metaphor for hearty and positive emotions because he worries for his emotional and mental state all the time. It's not that farfetched to think that he would want to find a way to increase Saitama's quality of life if he finds a way to diagnose that Saitama has adhd.
In the CD drama, Saitama is dying from poisoning himself, something that King narrates. King is suspiciously is wearing the Zoo-men shirt in this Omake with the metaphor for eye of prominence, being a reference to the watchful eye of God.
It may also be a reference to conspiracy theory, where eye of prominence is often used. That Saitama's bottle of poison is a "choose your poison" type of scenario, where he will die from some kind of "poisoning" unless he does what King suggests in this chapter, working as a group, holding hand, believing in his companions to give them strenght.
Taking excessive medicine is suicidal behaviour, like drinking poison. Poison mushroom and energy drink seems like a fitting metaphor for poison in a bottle which works as a mental stimulant. And psychostimulant for Saitama would cause paranoia and hallucinations and he'd go full Mob Psycho ??? and he'd probably have an actual seizure too and start to think that everyone is an enemy around him in his psychosis.
Corn soup flavoured energy drink from vending machine is metaphor for hearty emotions and mental stimulants that cause artificial evolution of species, taken from God's cube. Saitama mentions corn when he speaks to Choze who talks about selective breeding of his bloodline. Which is basically eugenics in a nutshell. God's cube is a vending machine for artificial evolution as it grants wishes, so beings can gain divine power and transform like Garou.
A clash of reality and ideals is painful, if his cognitive mind is boosted far beyond what it should normally be, kinda akin to how it was on I.O where he did not remember what happened and there was a reference to epileptic seizure. It might be when Saitama can finally perceive the Unknown properly. The abyss itself. Inescapable reality that King in the omake says that "you have no choice but to watch it."
The truth of reality. That the heavens is stone cold, isolated, emotionless and immoral and the monster side, the abyss, has the actual life. Like how Saitama has to accept his monster side to find his spirit, because he thinks his emotional response is somehow monstrous. The key seems to be to gaze into the abyss.
Note the small vitruvian man Saitama on the left side.
According to the biographer Walter Isaacson, the use of delicate lines, an intimate stare and intricate hair curls, "weaves together the human and the divine".
"It's still for children" refers to the inner child, the infantile feeling of omnipotence and the happy ending in kid's show.
Intelligence is present; motor activity but no symbols; knowledge is developing yet limited; knowledge is based on experiences/ interactions; mobility allows the child to learn new things; some language skills are developed at the end of this stage. The goal is to develop object permanence, achieving a basic understanding of causality, time, and space.
"That kind of wishful thinking will get one killed one day".
How ominous when I've been talking about God's cube and how it grants wishes.
Genos is the spy of the enemy, the monsters, as Child Emperor guesses, but said secret mission plan blows up.
He then asks Dr. Kuseno to give him a "poison" that will fake his death so that he can eventually end up running away with Saitama. Because he's a cyborg, it wont affect him. However, he ends up forgetting where he put the poison and then randomly detonates.
Funnily enough, OPM God has only ever appeared to people in fatherly figure forms. And Dr. Kuseno sees Genos as a surrogate grandson. Ergo, he's a fitting father figure for Genos.
So what about them parallel worlds then?
I'm going to ramble a bunch of meta references from now on, because I'm trying to put these thoughts into paper
Lets try to imagine a scenario. There's some themes that happen and the OPM High school drama is an AU, so we'll treat it as parallel universe scenario and "what-if." So I'll try for deconstruction of the themes.
Person 1: There it is, standing in front of the spacecraft! This is trouble, your mom got a call from someone, saying she was your fiancee!
Person 2: No, it can't be! And the alien's been taken out.
Person 1: She contacted me too. "Everyone in my way has been eliminated. I can't wait for our date tomorrow."
Person 2: I never agreed to any dates! The woman's more dangerous than the aliens!
Genos asks Saitama to take him in as his disciple, but because of their opposing families, Saitama says it's difficult.
Genos ends up thinking of a plan so that they can run away together to a place where no one can interrupt his studies under Saitama as a disciple, but he runs into Charanko, who is randomly Tybalt. Genos ends up killing Tybalt because he's getting in his way.
I'm all here for Genos trying to elope with Saitama lmfao. xd
Tybalt is Romeo's rival in the play and the only rival to Saitama who I can think of (similar to charanko) is Garou. Juliet's short tempered first cousin. Sleek yet violent manner. But it may also be a reference to Nyan, prince of cats.
But in all honesty, it's probably a reference to how Genos wants Saitama's powers to time travel. I can't think of a reason why Genos would not want to go back in time to save his family and kill the mad cyborg if he knows how. It's the one thing he desires most in the world, to be able to take revenge.
Genos has a bone to pick with Garou though. And if Garou remembers anything at all about the consequences of using divine power and getting under the thrall of God and monsterizing as a result and then time traveling, he would try to warn Saitama of the consequences.
We also know Genos is jealous af though and won't be having any of that. He gets mad if fangirls try to vie for Saitama's attention.
He then asks Dr. Kuseno to give him a "poison" that will fake his death so that he can eventually end up running away with Saitama. Because he's a cyborg, it wont affect him. However, he ends up forgetting where he put the poison and then randomly detonates.
Genos already has divine power in the form of his new core, so what he needs is the cognitive powers.
He might attempt to break his limits. Simulate death. To get enough power to time travel. To preserve Saitama's positive emotions. Maybe he wants to go back alllll the way so Saitama won't ever suffer from depression.
(how to become creepy stalker handbook 101)
He might get his hands on God's cube and/or Psykos psychostimulant and attempt to use that.
Dr. Kuseno is the father figure and possibly metaphor for God in this case. That or it is actually Dr. Kuseno who has hidden shit like God's cube all this time (dude what the fuck that would be hella good reason for organization to attack him) or reference to Dr. Genos who's expertise is genetic engineering and an expert in subject of breaking limitations. Could also be a reference to Dr.Bofoi.
Or bear with me...my craziest idea that Dr. Genus is legitimately Genos grandfather. At least genetically related.
And then I look at them side by side and it suddenly doesn't sound so crazy after all. Because my God they actually look similar. Same nose, same eye shape and lashes, eyebrows, profile...
*shifty eyes*
You know... I'm beginning to wonder...if Genos circumstances aren't similar to that of Zombieman. It would explain a loooooot.
And that if cyborg isn't a metaphor for half human, half monster. Half divine person. A hybrid.
Emotionless Terminator that wants to annihilate the human race, as Genos' face has been depicted a fair bit.
Add in God's cube to the mix and you can get some...interesting hybrids.
Nice "medical" research you got there, HA. Selling to the highest bidder eh? Monsters that can regenerate scales would be pretty valuable. As infinite genetic material samples.
Is Kuseno actually looking for...not a cyborg but a maddened half human half monster hybrid? HMMM.
Anyways
Genos thinks it won't affect him because he's a cyborg, so he won't monsterize like Garou did or get any sort of negative effects right?
Right? (if the half human, half monster metaphor is correct, then it should not affect him)
It might spectacularly backfire on him anyway. Because he already has divine power inside his core and his brain. He might actually spiritually die or his inner universe might explode. He's not equipped to handle that much power and it would be his undoing. Amai-mask warns him about being a hothead and getting burned for it and in this case, it might be literal. Kuseno warns that his young mind would be his undoing, might be literally again.
Or it might be a reference to the OVA where Genos loses his memory and Saitama accidentally death slaps him. Because he forgot where he put his poison into, his jealousy and possessiveness. Daybreak chapter cover symbolism for heartbreak, because Genos becoming dubiously evil to get what he wants would break Saitama's heart.
Saitama finds Genos "dead" and the line that King narrates is that "he painfully grieved over Genos." Saitama says "hey Genos...are you really dead? You're all beaten up..." in a sad voice. He then says "hmm, anyway I'm kind of thirsty right now" and sees a bottle next to Genos.
This would be the Saitama grieving over Genos dead body scene that was stolen from us by time travel fix-it. ;_;
Saitama will always grieve over Genos, no matter what kind of death.
And then yeah...uh, Saitama gives in and picks his poison. The bottle of psychostimulants or the god's cube or simply gives in to God's influence because he craves to have Genos back. He needs water as well as sunlight, else he is not able to grow and have a life of his own.
If he takes either of them, or god forbid, both, we'd have a psychotic Saitama in our hands. Or the poison may be a metaphor for poisonous emotions too.
The bottle is the poison that Dr. Kuseno prepared, but if a normal human drinks it, they'll probably die. So he drinks it and Genos wakes up randomly and cradles Saitama as he cries, "Saitama-sensei, why are you here? Why did you drink the poison?" and Saitama is "dying."
I'm not sure if Genos waking up randomly is because Saitama enters the spiritual space because he goes psychotic, is dying or sees the truth of reality.
But if Genos "dies" and then Saitama also "dies", they would probably both end up in the spiritual realm yes. Same place where Garou was when God spoke to him after Sai punched him and same place as Child emperor.
And God no longer is gonna co-op with Saitama nope. As it probably has been pulling the strings behind the lines all this time. It'll just leave Saitama's body to die a miserable death when his brain fries itself or something like that.
Genos then says, "It's okay, Saitama-sensei. I will ask Dr. Kuseno to save you by turning you into a cyborg." King then narrates that Saitama becomes a cyborg, and he and Genos live happily ever after. THE END.
Genos be like: Everyone fucking dies ending.
Saitama turning into a monster because he goes full Mob Psycho ??? paranoid would probably end the world yea. Or turning into a monster bent on destroying humanity, a cyborg. Break causality, space and time and warp the reality.
Or maybe Genos makes a bargain with God. To save Saitama. Oof.
That's a heavy, heavy bargain to make.
King: No, happy ending.
It doesn't sound like happy ending to me King lol. It's a tragedy. But maybe...it's a parallel world. Parallel world happenings is all about choices.
Such as that if Saitama actually continues to have actual friends and ignore the bottle of poison and make good choices, then we'll not get THE END but Happy ending.
Rock-paper-scissors game he has to play that he is determined to win. Against God.
(God has taken on the visage of Bang already, Genos got oneshot in the Game but Saitama is determined to win)
When one tries to do actions on touchscreen immediately after picking their nose. The booger remnants on the finger cause the finger to stick to the surface of the touchscreen.
The fig sign is a mildly obscene gesture used at least since the Roman Age in Italy, Southern Europe, parts of the Mediterranean region, including in Turkish culture, and has also been adopted by Slavic cultures and South Africa. The gesture uses a thumb wedged in between two fingers. This gesture is most commonly used to ward off the evil eye, insult someone, or deny a request. It is also used more innocuously in Northwestern Europe and countries such as the UK, US, Canada, Australia, The Netherlands and Czech Republic to pretend taking the nose off a child.
It is impossible to gain an advantage over an opponent that chooses their move uniformly at random. However, it is possible to gain a significant advantage over a non-random player by predicting their move, which can be done by exploiting psychological effects or by analyzing statistical patterns of their past behavior. As a result, there have been programming competitions for algorithms that play rock paper scissors.
During tournaments, players often prepare their sequence of three gestures prior to the tournament's commencement. Some tournament players employ tactics to confuse or trick the other player into making an illegal move, resulting in a loss. One such tactic is to shout the name of one move before throwing another, in order to misdirect and confuse their opponent.
In its ICD-10 disease classification, the WHO defines nose picking as "other functional and emotional disturbance usually beginning in childhood or adolescence"
Or maybe...it's actually because Genos already went alllll the way back in time to Saitama's childhood to preserve Saitama's happiness. And inadverently caused his powers. To change his fate.
There's a potential reference to bottle of poison in Disney's hercules. Mortal potion.
Hades concocts a potion to make baby Hercules mortal so that he can kill him. Hades instructs his sidekicks, Pain and Panic, to administer the potion to Hercules, who becomes mortal as he drinks the potion, but keeps his godlike strength, as he does not drink the last drop. Pain drops the bottle when he and Panic hear Amphitryon and Alcmene coming, and the bottle breaks.
I can't help but think Pain and Panic are Sonic references. Or maybe Flashy flash even, because Saitama perceives him to be in emotional pain from loneliness.
Might explain why Saitama immediately trusted Genos and fast and why he's always making these Saitama comments about Sonic.
"Seed-on-the-ground...?"
"No wait, "Lost-and-found...?"
A jack-o'-lantern (or jack o'lantern) is a carved turnip, pumpkin or other root vegetable lantern,[1] commonly associated with the Halloween holiday. Its name comes from the reported phenomenon of strange lights flickering over peatbogs, called will-o'-the-wisps or jack-o'-lanterns. The name is also tied to the Irish legend of Stingy Jack, a drunkard who bargains with Satan and is doomed to roam the Earth with only a hollowed turnip to light his way.
And now I can't help but think that there's a connection with Saitama's childhood, the ninja village in WC, Flash and Sonic and God's cube.
The OVA death blow from Saitama and Genos losing his memory, reminds me of Garou's soul traveling back in time to say goodbye to Tareo and influencing past Garou's actions, but Garou not remembering any of it. It's also the OVA episode where Saitama says to Genos that he wanted to become his disciple, but Genos has no memory recall whatsoever.
Genos also manages to burn Saitama's shirt from his heart, reads manga about romance, tries to woo fubuki, loses his sense of self, gets a sudden feeling and being almost forced by unknown power to move to certain place to trigger a memory recall about Saitama and sales and his original mission to be there; to preserve Saitama's happiness.
Fubuki has a fun reference to yakuza culture with Gunshot Genos.
Yakuza culture states that all followers are teppodama (鉄砲玉, lit. "rifle ball"), bullets to be fired by their superiors. The bullet does not think for itself; it is simply aimed and released.
To which Genos answers "You seem to be mistaking me for someone else! That's not who I am."
Blizzard of Hellstorm may be a reference to the God below which appeared to Homeless emperor in gust of wind, nature elements. It's a pun. And that Genos is a spy of God and a weapon to be used against Saitama.
(Yea so, that's a lot of ramblings and my brain is mildly fried because I didn't sleep that well and I've been cooking this for few days and forgot my train of thoughts, so enjoy the uh meta rambling.)
(Currently trying to deconstruct OVA's, which is more fun haha)
"A being like that shouldn't be allowed to roam free on Earth."
Is... would someone actually try to contain Saitama if they knew of his powers?
I actually thought about something like this happening if someone ever found out just how strong Saitama truly is. Like Team Blast.
Blast and his connection to cosmic powers. My theory is that Blast and his Crew will find out and them having the means and confidence to actually engage and contain beings who have divine powers… this may actually foreshadow an eventual conflict between Blast and crew versus Saitama and his group. But I am speculating at this point, since nobody else would not truly have the means to deal with beings who have some sort of divine power nor understanding of them, so Blast and crew makes sense.
Plus these guys seem confident and competent in that regard and they're fighting God's and Garou WAS at some point even with Saitama before Saitama's powers shot up exponentially.
If they actually have legitimate means to suppress divine powers... then it would spell trouble for Saitama if he has to legitimately fear for his life or worse, separation and isolation from his anchor.
And it might trigger another extreme emotional response related to dissociation in the form of depersonalization.
Panic attack.
We already had psychological numbing, disengagement and amnesia, classic dissociation symptoms from trauma.
Which I don't think is entirely caused by Genos dying anymore...him dying is just a trigger. I'm willing to bet it's trauma from his limiter breaking.
Garou is also no longer roaming the earth, not in his godly imbued form... so part of that has already been achieved.
