#Reasons to love OPM & little tidbits

[theomnicode]

Reasons to love OPM & little tidbits #5

Small characterization details that are easy to miss ep5:

Saitama is more wily than he looks on the surface & hates getting bossed around

The one time Saitama tries to socialize with other A-rank heroes and customarily offers them tea and greets them friendly if neutrally, he's not treated very kindly by Forte, who immediately tries to haze him and establish seniority and guilt trips him.

Saitama is not big on honorifics, however he hadn't yet been impolite to his guests.

Saitama knows he hasn't done anything wrong here and any perceived wrongdoings are on Forte's side; he was just out doing his own important business and hadn't had the time to socialize yet, nor does he have any extra money for any gifts like one would expect. He even tried to adress the group as a whole with friendly politeness and it's not like he knew anyone's ages yet, even if he was into using honorifics.

So, because he does not like that, he changes his tune. He's not very impressed by Forte immediately being an ass, but he's non-confrontational at the same time, so starting arguments would be counter-productive. Bossy people would just argue back anyway.

Saitama's strategy how to deal with bossy people?

Emotionally distancing himself from the person and becoming more formally polite by changing the form of adress, defensive reaction to protect himself from the hostility. Meaning he does not like the way he's being treated. Guilt tripping when he hasn't done anything wrong is not very nice indeed.

Anyone who is good in social-emotional interaction will be able to pick up on this overtly formal tone quickly enough. That their host is no longer quite as welcoming.

Then he subtly points out the fact that he is far closer to King with informal way of adress that connotates emotional closeness, a highly respected S-rank hero, who told him about this place, as a way to tell Forte that he's out of his depth here. King commands respect, so disrespecting Saitama is disrespecting King, who ranks seniority far above Forte in every possible level.

The tiniest eyebrown raise and almost amused, lopsided smirk tells me all I need to know.

"Are you trying to boss me around? Tread carefully."

This is what they call "acquaintance-zoning" from Saitama, a very classy INFJ personality move. Forte treads on very fine line indeed.

(Not sure if it's a translation, but in WC Saitama still says "Nice to meet you" instead of "Nice to be acquainted with you". But it would be nice to point further towards that very subtle emotional distancing and personality. The way Saitama more subtly starts to gauge Forte's reaction when he states his age is because he sensed this hostility is another difference from wc that could point towards this more empathic nature and being able to actually read the room better)

(Biggest reason Saitama does not like Fubuki much is definitely because she's bossy AND patronizing at the same time, the worst possible combination)

#opm #one punch man #saitama #opm meta #forte #opm manga panels #emotional distancing #wilyness #Reasons to love OPM & little tidbits

[theomnicode]

Reasons to love OPM & little tidbits #7

Small characterization details that are easy to miss ep7:

Saitama is far better at strategy than given credit for

As it turns out, he thinks about a lot of strategy and acts on the instinctual level because he is in fact, a very experienced battler at this point and who wouldn't be, after 3 years of monsters?

Tossing the moon rock around is just tip of the iceberg in how much Saitama actually instinctually strategizes within battles.

Getting into a melee range with a psychic of Tatsumaki's caliber could only be possible if he at first didn't pull any attention towards himself. In such a position, if he was a mean person, Tatsumaki would've already been defeated when he approached her from her blind spot. Someone who was more inclined to establish themselves as person of note could not be able to maneuver like this.

Not just the more obvious maneuvering around the battlefield that occured in these latest chapters, like pulling Tatsumaki out of the civilian zone, Saitama employs multitude of other strategic points in his own combat.

Such as using terrain to his advantage. On multiple occasions we've seen him jump from rocks to rocks and using launched items like rockets to maneuver around in the air and even the opposition like Genos or Garou. He can't fly, but he can make it seem like he can fly.

Herding his opponents around the field to tire themselves out so they are less inclined to fight him is part of his battle strategy, but how he does this is plain annoy, mock and use psychological tricks to antagonize his opponents into surrendering or attacking him, like he did twice in the Garou fight and once against Boros. Inciting his enemies to attack him instead of the possible civilians around makes them easier to herd around in the battlefield to go where he wants them to go and do what he wants them to do.

Such maneuvering allows for easy counterattacks when enemies get frustrated and attack with very direct movement that is easy to block and even grapple. He grabs Garou's fist not once, but twice if we include the redraw just because Garou ultimately gets extremely frustrated at his lack of progress and Saitama notes that the only progress Garou made was shred his outfit and man, he only totally noticed it just now and it's getting a bit cold, like he hadn't fought for solid minutes with nothing on.

(Solid way to piss someone off, certainly)

When someone gets too frustrated to fight and starts to fight like this, they become predictable and so, Saitama grabs his fist into an iron lock he has no hopes of getting out, besides with a surprise maneuver of surprise blinding Saitama.

Not the first and last time Saitama uses psychological trick to outstrategize his opponent. It is in human nature to not look up either when he moves so fast even Garou is confused at where he went. We instinctually do not expect attacks from the sky, rather than from the ground level.

(Pretty sure I read this from somewhere, I could be wrong ofc)

Last but not least; allowing himself to get pummeled just to show how ineffective his enemy's attacks are is another strategy to just wear down his opponents so he can finish the fight without killing the opposition if at all possible. And allowing himself to get pummeled, only to switch strategy midway and grab an uncoming fist is an unexpected move. Saitama can deliver devastating counterattacks if he ever needs to, even if someone happened to be great at martial arts. If someone wants to fight him, they're going to have to kick his ass to the curb and and get counterattacked.

Tatsumaki fight offers an interesting strategizing point because Saitama is inclined to want to finish the fight as fast as possible now. So mistaking Saitama as dodging and running away because he has no ideas how to handle it will be costly, because allowing him to think up a new strategy will just be their undoing and he'll only hone himself and his instinctual fighting style through numerous battles to become devastatingly efficient.

The weaknesses with his strategy is ofc, longer duration of the fight allows for more things happening and his strategy to even be turned on it's head and work against him in a horrible way, but I can't fault Saitama for trying to be nice guy and not try to cripple his enemies by using slightly bit too much force when he hasn't approximated the amount of force he needs to use to defeat his enemy. We know he has to really focus on opening even a bag of chips so he accidentally doesn't send them all flying and just a minor bump from that was enough to scramble Genos and his memory.

Take care Tatsumaki, Saitama is soon to have a solid strategy against OP espers as well. Everything you fling at him can become his weapon.

#opm #one punch man #saitama #opm meta #character analysis #strategy #instinct #Reasons to love OPM & little tidbits #opm manga panels #opm anime screencaps #garou #tatsumaki

[theomnicode]

Reasons to love OPM & little tidbits #1

Small characterization details that are easy to miss:

Saitama immediately becoming very serious when he hears

a) monster is on the loose b) children may need to be protected from said monster

Saitama does not play games when it comes to protecting kiddos from monsters. He cares about kids a lot and they're the only ones allowed to touch his bald head and frankly, he's very good with kids in general. This is an ingrained instinctual reaction, like when he pulled big chinned kid out of Crablante's way.

In all honesty, he would make a great dad and there would not be a kid in more safer hands. Not to mention a fun one and Saitama interacting with kids is just plain adorable.

Now that I think about it...Saitama pulling the big chinned kid away instinctually starts to sound like paternal instincts, a dad reflex if you will.

Hmm. A thought.

(I am totally, maybe stealing posting ideas from @no1monstersimp )

#opm #one punch man #saitama #opm manga panels #opm meta #character analysis #Reasons to love OPM & little tidbits

[theomnicode]

Reasons to love OPM & little tidbits #6

Small characterization details that are easy to miss ep6:

Saitama does not like burdening other people with his problems

Saitama is very independent and not wanting to burden other people with his problems stems from how he's quite often misunderstood. It is a seemingly fact of life he has carried since his teen years that when he tries to explain himself or explain his problems to people, they just don't get it or worse, get hostile towards him.

It is hard to get Saitama to open up about his own problems, especially more abstract ones and keep up the conversation especially when both parties can easily misunderstand the other; Saitama's problems being too out of the norm for King to understand and Saitama losing track of the long conversation because he keeps losing track of the context and other autism problems that pop up for him.

In this, Saitama is fortunate that he does have King and Genos he can confide in, that he can trust. But also that they actually press him for more information when he tries to deflect attention away from his own issues.

Minimizing his own issues as unimportant because he's only ever motivated to help other people and not himself and just wanting to deal with his own problems independently.

And yet, Saitama is still missing a person who he can relate to, with his abstract and humanistic problems and who can truly undertand his problems of becoming far too strong to bear and losing his sense of self.

When he tried to explain that his emotions are dulling and he feels like he's living on different reality to other people and not finding anybody else who he could relate to who had gotten as strong and at the same time, disconnected from their own feelings, because everyone else he meets is passionate about their hero work and being strong...King does not understand and the only thing he latches onto is the feeling of loneliness.

Saitama's feeling of loneliness cannot be fixed by just making new friends, because that's not the kind of loneliness he's experiencing.

There is one person who can fill this criteria however and that person is Garou. Just as much as Saitama can instantly understand and click with Garou, he has the potential to click with him. After what Garou went through with hands of OPM God after obsessively chasing power to change the world and almost lost himself and became a real monster, he's really the only person who could understand Saitama's burden of becoming so strong that he lost his sense of self over it.

Because they both seek out self-improvement endlessly to satisfy their needs, their core values. Some things they can again, relate with, such as not taking a human life.

One more reason to add to the ever-growing mountain pile that Saitama and Garou need to, MUST establish a close rapport.

So Saitama can truly begin to dig into the problems he's faced since the beginning of the series: why was he losing his emotions and humanity for becoming too strong? Why isn't anybody else facing the same issue?

And any relating problem like morality, philosophy, psychology, ethics and what have you.

#opm #one punch man #saitama #opm meta #genos #king #garou #opm manga panels #humanistic problems #abstract problems #Reasons to love OPM & little tidbits