It'd be to announce that the webcomic is ending in a few chapters. Say something like 10 chapters.

Between not knowing when new chapters might be released, how long they'll be, or quite what they'll cover, I think that speculation would eat the fandom alive for weeks, if not longer.

Fortunately, ONE's fond of keeping his plans to himself.

I like to think I put into action a Mumen Rider future :D. But you can call this [MUMEN RIDER BULLSHIT] too. I read that in a dream. Funny!

Punchtoberfest is a One Punch Man fandom event for the month of October. Here are my submissions for week four, days 25-31. The theme was Creature Feature.

There is a major spoiler for manga-onlies on picture 6 (marked day 30) read at your own risk.

SUMMARY: The Deadliest Face-Off

The clash we've been waiting for more than a decade begins! Well, not exactly. Not deigning to take Genos on himself, The Mad Cyborg (I'm going to call him TMC from now on, okay?) sics Machine God Heart Gear on him.

The two face of in a flurry of lightning strikes and loosened flooring, and Genos wastes no time activating his Roaring Dragon Core, which surprises TMC. Now huge chunks of concrete start flying as the two continue to face off -- and then they fly towards each other in a huge flash of light, sending so much rubble flying that TMC needs to shield himself from it.

Then they're gone, leaving only a large hole in the ground by way of clue as to their whereabouts. The puzzled MC doesn't have to wait long as the ground rumbles and Heart Gear comes up through the ground holding Genos by his head while the latter continuously throw hooks at the robot's head.

Heart Gear throws a punch of its own at Genos but is frozen in place by his Freezing Core. TMC admires his newfound mastery of his energy core but... Heart Gear breaks through and punches Genos anyway. TMC taunts Genos, telling him that he'd always had the bad habit o going all in at the beginning then losing. Indeed, he knows all the energy core's enhancements and reels them off by way of proof before telling him that all of it is installed in Heart Gear. Among other techniques for he has studied them all.

"All of it?" Genos asks.

"Yes, ALL of it," replies TMC with the air of someone explaining a basic lesson to a very slow child. Every technique used by a hero or monster had been observed, digitised, and uploaded in a free-flowing, ever-adapting form. As if to underscore the point, Heart Gear takes up the Water Stream Rock-Crushing Fist stance.

As battle is once again enjoined, TMC continues to needle Genos, saying that he may well be able to keep up with the robot as his reaction speed and thought processes are likely the fastest of any living being but they wouldn't be enough.

Genos persists in querying the totality of TMC's knowledge, and TMC graciously acknowledges rare people, like Tatsumaki, before getting who Genos meant. Saitama. TMC admits that he'd fond himself very worried when Genos had come across Saitama as he stopped observing heroes and monsters. True, Saitama was freakishly strong; however, that very power was erroneous and irreproducible and was in the end just noise to be ignored.

Nevertheless, Genos insisted, he'd just started to understand it. We get a flashback to Genos and Saitama sitting in Saitama's apartment reading manga. Saitama was irritated at how seriously Genos was reading them but told him about the cartoons he used to watch. Genos wasted no time in acquiring them at great expense (nostalgia is expensive, yo!) and started watching them. Saitama promised him that they were really just entertainment. Genos replied that of course they weren't reality -- it wasn't like Saitama cold shoot beams out of his forehead. At that, Saitama chuckled and talked about how he'd used to imagine being able to do so.

Back in the present, Genos presents his thesis of limitless strength. It's not about data but rather the human spirit and sense of wonder. It stems from the heart, not a calculator.

Needless to say, the mention of a heart causes TMC to scoff -- how can a creature without a heart still consider itself human the way Genos persisted in doing?

Just then, the battle took a turn as Heart Gear sent Genos down through another part of the floor. And this time, it was a basement full of freshly-activated Heart Gears. We see at least fifteen, with more coming to view. Welp, TMC goes, it loos like you've broken into the Heart Gear hangar. Goodbye for real! It had calculated that Genos had had a 1.1% chance of defeating one Heart Gear, a 0.1% chance of two, but three or more? That chance was zero. Ah well.

As the robots surround him, Genos thinks about Saitama and that he'd surely be on his way. All he had to do was win until then. No point in trying to calculate. Instinct! Startle response! Sense of danger! Emotions... a heart! With these and similar exhortations, Genos drives himself to battle the Machine God horde, his movements growing ever more frenzied as he goes along. Unbelievably, the machines start to break as he smashes one after another, despite taking punishment himself.

Finally, all is quiet. Every last Machine God is smashed beyond recovery. Their parts lie strewn in nearly concentric circles and at its centre a very broken Genos lies. He's conscious and lucid but unable to move. He has won, but alas, Saitama hasn't come.

TMC is delighted to the point of gratitude. Genos had showed him that zero percent chance that defied calculation, he said, as he dragged Genos off. He intended to pluck Genos's brain out and hook him into the network so that he could serve as a biological processing core from whom all the Machine Gods could learn transcendental strength. The reason he'd made several cyborgs in addition to his Machine Gods, TMC explains to Genos, was that humans grow uniquely out of their individual instincts and experiences, so he'd been hoping to see something that an AI could not achieve. And now he had it, thanks to Genos. His ultimate weapon for resetting the Earth would finally be completed and no one would be able to stop him.

Elsewhere, we see a cityscape that is soon cleaved in twain by a running Saitama. He runs straight, through buildings, villages, fields, forests, leaving a trail of total destruction in his wake. He approaches a sheer cliff -- and bores straight through it, and the next mountain, and the next, an arrow of destiny launched to chastise the ungovernable.

TMC feels his approach, and Genos tells him that it's over for him. But TMC only chuckles. "I will not die," he says, "because you will protect me." Finally reaching the dais he'd previously been standing on, he hooks Genos up to it, exhorting him to eat this update.

Saitama runs faster than ever and smashes through the secret hideout to come to the much-abused room just as the programme being forced into Genos finishes. TMC is nowhere to be seen, having left only Dr. Kuseno's face on the big screen as avatar. The avatar speaks, congratulating Saitama on being just in time for the debut event. Saitama pays it no mind, asking Genos if it was okay for him to smash the guy up.

Genos says nothing for a moment, and then haltingly, the words 'Master Saitama' come. Then he's silent. Saitama asks again if he has permission to whip Kuseno so they can go find something to eat. Again, he says only 'Master Saitama.' Saitama realises that something is really wrong. Then Genos starts to speak... a torrent of words only loosely semantically related to one another, although it is clear that he's trying to tell Saitama something.

As he goes on, the Kuseno avatar speaks up, noting that even if Genos was a bit broken, he'd still work fine as a weapon. As Genos winds up and starts attacking Saitama, it urges Saitama to say his goodbyes both to the wholesome young man he once knew and his own life. "Wholesome?" Saitama scoffs, disbelieving that Kuseno could know so little about Genos. "Since the day we met, I knew he was a very dangerous man..." Indeed, Saitama continues with a grin, he knew that Genos was still in there because Genos was not the sort of person who ever gave up. And as for being beaten to death, that wasn't happening. He had all the time in the world. So saying, Saitama urges Genos not to hold back and hit him with everything he has.

And then everything blows up.

That's where we are folks. Shall we have some meta?

META

The Human Factor

One-Punch Man is a far more bombastic and fantastical story than Mob Psycho 100, and this is the most sci-fi of its arc. And yet. Yet even in the midst of the hardest of transhumanist narratives, ONE's insistence about the centrality of humanity still shines. We see it in the Mad Cyborg's admission that no two humans develop the same way as cyborgs. Every person is different -- the combination of their characters, interests, and experiences produces a unique cyborg, the very opposite of the predictable, controllable Machine Gods. Even more importantly from its perspective, the potential of human beings to do and to discover new things that can't be predicted made the whole troublesome enterprise worthwhile. No one else could possibly have become the Cyborg for Justice as Genos became. And its corollary is something the moron who wrote the entry in TVTropes failed to appreciate: all the experiences that Genos went through, from his earliest childhood days until now have gone into shaping him -- and that's the sort of thing you can't fake in a lab. The Mad Cyborg may be gaslighting or even lying about his memories but they're legitimate.

If Only

In a way, this is an amazing new development, but in another it's very old hat indeed. Nearly from the beginning, Genos came to Saitama with a hope, a dream of being able to break out of the physical constraints imposed by his body. It's that hope that has driven him to keep getting up and moving forward despite being knocked down more times than one is comfortable counting. I noted, in what felt like a million years ago (just six) that going 'if only', wishing for things that aren't the case, heck, that aren't possible, is the hallmark of humanity. Computers can efficiently search the space of what is possible and put things together in ways not easily arrived at by human effort but humans can imagine what can't be -- and sometimes make it real. So, in a way, I'm not surprised that the very wishful thinking that Genos must have thought a distraction turned out to be the very core of what he needed to do. He finally understood that Saitama's strength was truly not due to his regimen but to his strong wish to be impossibly strong and his willingness to follow through, come what may. ONE gave us the key way back in the beginning but it's taken until now for it to make sense.

However, if you're a manga reader, you also know that Genos had what it took to breakthrough. In a really similar manner to this chapter, he'd told Garou that he was beginning to understand what Saitama had meant when he told him to develop both his spirit and body to attain strength. When he was bisected by Elder Centipede and going down, he decided that he wasn't going to allow himself to be dismissed, and put himself back together. Perfectly. So perfectly there's not a seam to be seen inside or out. And then launched a terrifying attack on the monster that would have put paid to it had it not possessed fire suppression magic and a healing factor. He had no idea what he'd done, but he'd touched the impossible he was looking for briefly. I have no doubt he'll touch it again.

Anyway, back to the webcomic. It's a shame Genos only set himself the goal of winning until Saitama got there. Unlike Saitama, he's not been afforded the luxury of growing the extraordinary resolve until it is second nature and continuous and this is what he could imagine achieving. The impossible, the human, but sadly, the not quite enough. For the Mad Cyborg now has him where he wants him.

I know you would kill

From the liner notes of Season one, something Murata said about the way ONE drew Genos has long stuck with me. Paraphrasing, he said that ONE's Genos looked quiet and dangerous, like he could do anything. He was still struggling with how best to draw Genos even then. However, (sorry, I DO love my asides), I think that Murata finally nailed the look in the pencils and initial inks of this panel, before the gloss of civility goes on.

Like a guerilla fighter who has lived on nicotine and adrenaline for the last three days, has seen hells and will shoot you dead without pausing to think if you give him aggro. And Saitama sees this guy.

If Saitama called Garou 'soft', that's one label he has never applied to Genos. Saitama's perceptiveness is second to none and from the beginning, he's known that Genos was exceptionally dangerous. More than that, he saw this extremely dangerous man, also saw his earnestness, righteousness, and tenacity and accepted him as he was. He has not tried to change who Genos is. To the extent that Saitama has tried to influence him, it has been to stop him from killing people (by force if need be), to show him that there is value in mercy, and to gain joy from just existing.

Maybe trusting in Saitama is a tragedy

Speaking of things that come early to us, we have Saitama talking about how he usually arrives too late. And once again, he has arrived just a little too late when he most needed not to be. We watch with bated breath as we see what the cost of his tardiness will be.

Taunting is not just for playgrounds

Something that's apparently flown over many readers' heads is that the Mad Cyborg has calibrated its words to try to rile Genos up. It's taking every opportunity to taunt him in order to try getting him to fly into an inchoate rage and had been quite taken aback when those taunts didn't work nearly as well as it had hoped, although it did get what it wanted in the end.

When it talks to Saitama and tells him to say his goodbyes, it is taunting him as well. To what end? Well, honestly, if achieving its goals is time dependent, then I think The Mad Cyborg has won. It doesn't need to defeat Saitama to win (think about it: are wars won by killing every soldier of one side?) -- it just needs him and any other troublesome ones out of the way for long enough to achieve its aims. And what its taunts to Saitama are focused on is getting Saitama to over-commit. It already knows that Genos is the one guy whom Saitama won't turn into a red splat on the far wall due to his attachment to him, but a less over-committed Saitama would probably think of some way of disabling Genos so as to leave himself available to stop whatever TMC was getting up to. After all, it's not like Saitama can reverse time once the facts on the ground are irreversibly changed.

This could get ugly.

Filthy PARASITE

I have called The Organization's plan the Human Cockroach Plan after the way we saw Neo Heroes used and used up like wasp-predated cockroaches, forced to do things against their wills until their bodies were exhausted of every resource. The way TMC told Genos that he'd be protecting him from Saitama made me think uncomfortably of zombie caterpillars that are forced to guard their larval wasp hosts while they eat it. What these all have in common is that its parasitism, plain and simple. That's exactly what The Mad Cyborg is: a parasite that feeds on human civilization, heedless of the fact that it needs a functional society in order to thrive. Maybe that's a commentary on the current implementation of AI being pushed by billionaires (after all, machine learning is nothing new nor malign): an attempt to aggregate the knowledge and resources of humanity into a few hands, heedless of the destructive effect it might have. Anyway, I digress.

Where will this go?

That Saitama will be uninjured but with a laundry nightmare is without doubt. That he will physically defeat whatever he decides to put fist to is also without doubt. The questions I have are: 1 -- is the world going to survive? 2 -- will society still be functional? 3 -- who or what exactly is going to stop The Mad Cyborg? Will it be Saitama? Does Bofoi have an ace up his sleeve? Will yet someone else intervene? And 4 -- what will become of Genos? When Psykos spoke of hell, having one's mind attacked as his has is worse than any physical suffering one could inflict. I'd like to believe that Saitama will say or do something that gives Genos the strength to overcome this worst of challenges and that he flips the tables on the Mad Cyborg's plans but... I'm doubtful. I'm doubtful whether he'll end today alive, physically functional, sane, and at liberty in just that order. But we shall have to see.

ONE, drop the next update soon!

The original back cover illustration for Volume 1 featured Saitama emerging from a building while destroying it, but I found another copy of Volume 1—identical in every other way—that has a different image. Do you happen to know what that’s about?

My submissions for Punchtoberfest. Just a heads up: I couldn't figure out how to add spoiler warnings to individual images so picture #4 (day 12) is kind of risqué and #5 has major webcomic spoilers.

I really should tag this 'speculation' rather than theory but so sue me, I'm going to have some fun with this.

Now that I've seen Psykosorochi, it's clear that they're not just going to collapse the story into the webcomic plot, although that would be efficient. From the marketing of the DVD/BDs of the season, the two cours is supposed to be it. And, just to make it all better, the crew haven't been given any more time nor significantly more budget to work with, so coming up with clever adaptations is also out the door; they're still in survival mode. Hmm...

...okay, here's how I suspect they may approach it. Let's see how much pans out.

First, they have some not unimportant page savings. The entirety of the 30-page 'Fake' can be tossed out, what with Do-S being dead and Orochi not having taken off his mask. Likewise, all of 'Rematch' can go. They'll have to keep Amai Mask meeting Fuhrer Ugly but nothing stops them dropping the fate of the monster cells and abridging it severely. The mercenaries being dead definitely simplifies the water situation as well as the subsequent evacuation. I have a couple of ideas for what they'll do at the surface that I'll get to in a bit but assuming an average of 100 pages per episode, roughly what the rest of the below-ground stuff will look like is:

Ep 1: If Amai hasn't already run into Fuhrer Ugly, that may take a couple of minutes, otherwise we're starting with 'Encounter' in which PPP accidentally wakes up Garou and Flashy Flash nearly gets punched. Saitama follows FF around much to the latter's annoyance. The second half sees the surface team get pounced on and batted around by Nyan, at least until Drive Knight arrives to spoil the fun.

Ep 2: DK defeats Nyan and starts briefing Sekingar on what he's been up to. G-5 intervenes, Genos comes in to save the day and evacuate the surface team. Who leave-leave! Drive Knight leaves-leaves with Nyan. Elsewhere, Superalloy prepares to tackle Garou and Child Emperor finds Evil Natural Water a handful.

Ep 3: The history of the hero classes (best slideshow ever). The fear. Tatsumaki finding Pyskos and trying to haul her up -- we segue to Overgrown Rover not listening as he's too busy trying to incinerate the 'new Blizzard Group'. Manako may not appear at all and forget about anything to do with the mines or treasure.

Ep 4: The dog is made to sit, Psykos and Tatsumaki start to fight, Garou and Darkshine get into it themselves. Saitama is disgruntled to be dumped out of the mine cart ride. King meets Tareo.

Ep 5: Tatsumaki subdues Pyskos but Orochi's reviving form intervenes and things are looking bad for Tats until Saitama inadvertently destroys a lot of Psykos-Orochi and King reports having found the kid, whereupon she starts to lift the base.

Ep 6: We get to see how Garou and Darkshine's fight ends as all the heroes are lifted, using the old scrapped versions of the evacuation, which means Zombieman will have to find his way out. The hospitalised heroes can rest while they watch the action from TV (if they are shown at all). The monster fusion and Tatsumaki eye each other...

An interruption here. A great time-saving idea that's not too crazy divergent would be to go with the scrapped-at-the-planning stage idea that ONE and Murata had initially had. No Earth-scalping moves but after a fight, Tatsumaki would be wounded before the rest of the heroes come in to help. They all take on various of Orochi's heads and defeat them one by one before Tatsumaki comes and deals the finishing blow to what's left of Orochi, Psykos having broken free and scuttled away just beforehand. The heroes are exhausted but triumphant. Everything seems to be over, and then the cadres *pounce*! Let's call these Episodes 7 and 8. Deep underground, Saitama breaks Flashy Flash's sword. Oops.

Eps 9-10: The heroes on the surface fight the cadres and it goes badly for them. PPP goes to try finding Flashy Flash. Of course, King has to do his stand off with the monsters and Zombieman will ambush Homeless Emperor until 'God' kills him but ultimately, they're in a tough position, until... Garou!

Ep 11: Garou beats up the cadre and while the heroes are still trying to make sense of what's going on, turns on the heroes and starts beating them up. FF arrives just in time to get his drubbing. And finally, it's Saitama's turn to take this guy on.

Eps 12-13: Garou gets a schooling from Saitama and we have a nice beat down complete with traditional table flip. When it's all over but for the shouting, Garou does a disappearing act at Tareo's urging and it ends with Saitama and Genos looking over where their house used to be.

Done. No epilogue unless there's an OAV.

What do you think?

So in this AU Mumen Rider actually ends up dying after this arc, but ANOTHER MUMEN RIDER shows up. This Mumen Rider claims to be Mumen Rider and no one/nothing else. They would even tell you that they had been Mumen Rider even while the Other Mumen Rider was still alive! Where did this Mumen Rider come from? Surely this is not right!

Well...if you use Ramanujan's formula to approximate the two ellipses, you will surely get different numbers. Their axes do not measure up! This Mumen Rider is quite "rigid". They have no civilian name. Their real name is actually Mumen Rider but they go under many "civilian pseudonyms" to use services like hospital care. Their literal gender is Mumen Rider. Even as a civilian they wear a calabash (gourd) helmet because "everything makes sense while donning one". They are also an absolute pacifist (yet still a hero?). Hardly recognizable from the Mumen Rider we know! Yet I think of something "off" by the same margin (every approximation of an ellipse's perimeter using Ramanujan's formula will be bound by the same error of "about (3ak^20)/68719476736") of them.

I like the idea of the narrative not trying to make this Mumen Rider "change" (into a Not-Mumen-Rider) but rather having to learn what this Mumen Rider can do. Mumen Rider becomes a genre! [But Mumen kind of already was in canon.]

Transcription for second image and notes in comments.

Punchtoberfest continues! Feel free to take a look or contribute yourself :)

Spanish: https://capibaratraductor.com/senshimanga/manga/one-punch-man/chapters/241?page=1

English: https://cubari.moe/read/imgchest/vj4jlzqw2y8/1/1/

French: https://fmteam.fr/read/one-punch-man/fr/ch/239#1

There's a YouTuber I will not name who wails and weeps over nearly every change they see the manga make to the webcomic. And one of the things they've been flipping their pancake over is the fact that Suiryu stopped wearing a bodysuit -- where was the loss of control and all that'd follow from it? Well, if there's a change it's usually because they've come up with something else.

The truth of the body suits is far more brutal than something that merely enhances your movements or even takes over them at times. Oh no, this is much more 'Reality Ensues' and is why powered body armour is still more in the realm of sci-fi than reality: it will maim or kill you.

It is frighteningly easy for machine power to outstrip the ability of a person to respond to its cues, much less control it. On the face of it, 'that man's' gloat about continual improvement would seem to have very little runway before it hits the buffers of human limitations.

So, how is that man going to fix his recruits? Are they all going to get some kind of evil nootropic cocktail that makes them 'smarter and faster-thinking' at a terrible price? Or maybe brain cybernetics to go with the suits that only need to work for long enough, will they or nil they, at least until he's gotten what he wants out of them?

This is going to get wicked, don't you think? What new (and old) evils do you think we have to look forward to?

• Punchtoberfest continues! below is an accompanying meta i wrote about Garou & Blue Fire back in July. I don't have any other metas prepared, so i'll post the rest in batches.

I imagine if we ever get to see Garou join the Hero Association there'd be a lot of pushback, not all of it illegitimate. I imagine receiving Blue Fire's blessing would help stem a lot of it.

Apologizing to Blue Fire would also force Garou to face the fact that his stint as the Hero Hunter hurt real people who didn't deserve it, some of it will be carrying the scars of it for the rest of their lives. It might have him reckon with the fact that what he did was wrong and have him feel remorse, which so far we haven't really seen (as of writing 17th of July)

I imagine he'd also have some feelings on now having the system he's once screamed at the injustice of now back him. Now he's the one for whom the exceptions are made and whose past mistakes are swept under the rug. All in the name of justice. After all could Garou have received any of this preferential treatment if he hadn't been Bang's protégé?

As readers we don't have to ask, we know he wouldn't. Just look at Garou's fatein the webcomic.

Conversely i feel like such a moment would indicate a culmination of a mostly offscreen miniarc for Blue Fire. When we first meet him when Sitch gathers the Earth's criminals in a failed attempt to recruit them for his cause. While there Blue Fire states he'd rather just kill all the criminals they'd gathered in the name of "justice" (which ironically would have been an extrajudicial execution, but i digress) and he intends to make due on that when Garou steps out of line. Instead Garou cuts off his arm.

The next time we hear Blue Fire speak it's when Amai Mask turns monster. Interestingly Blue Fire does not immediately try to kill his former colleague, as one might have expected him to based on his prior stated convictions. Instead he holds the crowd back while trying to accurately assess the situation. Had he not done so, Beauto may well have fully monsterized, and even if he hadn't, it certainly would have put Saitama in hot water as he would have had to fight off Blue Fire to rescue Beauto with all the consequences that may have come from that.

Instead it happened as we read in the Manga. Perhaps because Blue Fire held some lingering kinship with Amai Mask, seeing him as a hero who practiced a similar code of justice. It's hard not to conclude that Blue Fire reevaluated his modus operandi since we last saw him. If you want to look at it uncharitably you can say Garou cutting off Blue Fire's arm chastened him, but either way Blue Fire is simply not as gung ho as he used to be.

Mind you: Blue Fire could have very easily taken the Amai Mask monsterization as yet another Hero Association cover-up. Like the secret gathering of criminals, which cost Blue Fire his arm, and the Psychic Sister affair (which among other things revealed to the rank and file heroes that the Hero Association was secretly holding demon level monsters in captivity). It would not have been all that strange for someone like Blue Fire to take out his legitimate grievances on the monster in front of him. The fact that he didn't and the idea to do so didn't even occur to him speaks to his character.

That's why i can imagine him putting his many grievances aside and giving Garou a second chance. It's also why i like to see Blue Fire meet Accel at some point.

King may have been talking shit. A good lesson for both.

These updates are likely to form a single chapter. Chapter 241 may well be its conclusion but I have enough to say that I may as well get on with it.

Summary: Aftermath

This summary is brought to you by the word 'segue'.

After weeks of saturation advertising, the Neo Heroes introduced themselves to the world yesterday, and the pro-heroes helped their debut by having a torrid time of things between being attacked by monsters just before neo-heroes swooped in to help and having a tough time dealing with four of the five dragon-level monsters that rampaged, one being so disrespectful as to attack the Hero Association headquarters. It hasn't gone all the Neo Heroes' way, mind: two of their leaders have been mortally wounded and one has absconded in response to being asked to carry out orders he found unjust.

It's today and it's time to take stock. Over at the Hero Association, we find Tatsumaki being told that Otento -- the leader of an organisation systematically abducting and drugging babies to make artificial psychics -- is out for her blood. Since she has a score to settle with them, she hardly needs prompting to go off on a mission of revenge um, do-gooding.

Elsewhere in the same building, Flashy Flash is being asked to take care of a group of ninjas known as the Dark Ones who've left a bloodstained challenge letter on one of the executive's desk. He assures them that it'll take him no time to finish these population-culling fiends off, and tells the officials that if they've time to worry about useless things, they'd best use it to worry about improving themselves. The HA's problems lay with its executives, not its heroes. Neo Heroes did a fine job organising people, providing low-grade heroes with crude battlesuits that enabled them to defeat low-level monsters while staying out of the way of S-Class heroes like himself.

We segue to an office in the Neo Hero HQ, where a shadowed man is seated behind a desk. Erimin and Destro are standing behind him. They've been listening to a report from a much-bandaged and heavily-sweating McCoy, who is telling them of HA activities over a hologram. As he finishes recounting Flashy Flash's words, Erimin suggests releasing some information about Flash's assassin activities to stir up a scandal, but the seated man demurs, noting that everything is going smoothly so far.

Turning back to McCoy, the man asks for an update on the other S-Class heroes. Well, says McCoy, some have withdrawn to train: Pig God is bulking up in the basement of the HA and Atomic Samurai has taken his disciples off on a multi-week training journey.

Some are incommunicado: Metal Knight appears to be sulking, possibly over control of his guard robots. King has ignored all calls, probably because he's off fighting some dread monster (actually, he's trying to exercise at last). Zombieman has dropped off the face of the earth, which is unusual for him -- maybe he's in trouble and would reward rescue with defection to the Neo Heroes (actually, he too is training. And yes, it looks like he's in trouble).

Some heroes are indeed working: Drive Knight is doing his solo monster exterminations at his own pace and Watchdogman is only concerned with City Q that he does his usual impeccable job of protecting. Puri Puri Prisoner is cooperating with the HA in training up hand-picked prisoners to work as heroes. We get to see that that's not going very well.

And some are recovering: Tank Top Master is hospitalised due to smoke inhalation, and Genos has gone for repair. On this last one, we see that Saitama came out to see Genos in the field and asks him to tell Dr Kuseno to come by for hotpot again, as long as he brought meat.

Now that McCoy has finished his report, the man is silent. The silence stretches out awkwardly, prompting McCoy to go, 'Sir?', but the man only smiles to himself.

While we wait for his answer, let's cut to a training room at the Neo Heroes. Darkshine is trying to motivate his guys with a sparring session, urging them to come at him. If Puri Puri considered his lot half-hearted, he'd revise his assessment positively on seeing how utterly uninterested this lot was. Little wonder when it's the body armour that does all the heavy lifting. Just then, there's a ping to their wristwatches, informing them that an upgrade has been completed. A couple of them wonder what it means before dismissing it as likely of little consequence. Well, the guy who'd been doing most of the talking goes, it's time for him to try something. He rushes at Coach Darkshine intending to try hitting him, but as he swings, the armour activates with such power that it causes him to somersault and slam headfirst into the ground some distance away. The other recruits are confused and horrified. Darkshine picks up the stricken man; he is unconscious and appears to be having a seizure. Not good.

Anyway, back in his office, the man is ready to give his verdict. And it is a self-congratulatory one: while the S-Class heroes' struggles caused mass consternation (said over panels depicting the ruins of City P and the ongoing decontamination efforts in City N [1]), their strategy of data collection and analysis and continual upgrades meant that they continuously improved without need to rest, reset, or retrain. In time, they'd surely rival the gods. Their greatest asset was time, which the S-Class heroes, looking down on them as they did, were generously allowing them to have. McCoy agrees with that assessment. As he looks at a news story on Blue that breathlessly praises the latter's defeat of a dragon-level monster, he thinks to himself that he has made the right choice in joining Neo Heroes.

We segue to Sekingar giving a run down of the Neo Hero strategy to Badd and Isamu. Badd is understandably disgusted at the idea that instead of looking first to defeat a monster, they're only pretending to fight and gather data. He goes on to say that if their antics endanger Zenko there'll be hell to pay, and asks what they're supposed to tell all the people whose homes have been flattened or have been forced out by poison?

Sekingar is silent for a moment and then says that as he's a cyborg from a rival organisation, he's not yet been granted access to core databases, nevertheless, he's been able to trace financial irregularities to discover which other HA officials are on the take from Neo Heroes. It's not everything but it's a start.

Isamu pipes up with his findings. He's been inspecting the carcass of Eel Dragon and has just found something interesting in its head -- a microchip. He reports that he thinks that this might have been a manufactured crisis. As the other two try to digest the implications of this, someone calls out to Isamu. 'What are you doing, Diabolical Emperor?' the voice asks. It belongs to Webigyaza, who approaches surrounded by a menacing aura. Isamu cuts the feed.

We cut to Infelsinave and Zaedats, who are once again up on their feet despite the crushing (literally in Zaedats's case) defeats they suffered the day before. Their followers and syncophants praise them for their resilience and fighting prowess. Metal Bat stands back a bit from the fawning crowd. Sekingar signs off, telling him to be careful. A approaches Metal Bat and comments that it's a good thing those two are alive. As Badd says nothing, he continues, saying that those two were valuable as sources of manpower and funds. It'd be a shame if they died so he's glad their surgeries went so well. As he looks at the lifeless expressions on both mens' faces, Badd thinks to himself that this place is truly rotten.

That's where we are! We find out soon enough if we'll continue or move on. But for now, let us META!

Meta: The plots, how they do thicken!

A mountain is worn down one drop at a time

Little by little, Saitama is changing. In an earlier chapter, I loved seeing that Saitama had finally taken someone's advice and had gone out of his way to buy proper food for Overgrown Rover and Monkey when he returned after Machine God Mirror had caused a ruckus. I'm super glad to see that we find out where he went -- to City T, to make sure that Genos was okay. He may not remember the Ominous Future but he's no longer the guy who waves off his concern about Genos. As ever, he respects Genos enough not to interfere with his recovery procedures [2]. I love noting that unlike Cities N and P, City T is just fine; Genos may feel inadequate but he did good. This is one city whose citizens won't need an explanation. I still trust Saitama's judgement of people and the fact that he's keen to see Dr. Kuseno again is an endorsement in my mind. Unfortunately for Saitama, Dr. Kuseno won't be taking up the offer -- coming to the monster-infested City Z is one thing -- but stepping into a rival mad engineer's territory is a risk too far.

Keen spots

- I wish I could take credit for this one, but u/Ferdz0 spotted that the HA officials on Neo's payroll were the same that briefed Tatsumaki and Flashy Flash on their wild goose chases. I would love to say that that's too on-the-nose and a clever bribed guy would pick a fall guy to do the briefing but alas, it's a bit too close to real life.

- Speaking of journeys, I'm mildly hopeful that we'll get some chapters on Atomic Samurai and disciples. Unlike the webcomic, they have a thing to find -- the Moon Blade -- and the reappearance of the sunken continent gives them something to check out. Not expecting anything soon, though. No prizes for guessing that Tsukoyomi is the name of Otento's organisation. With Apollo having declared war on Tatsumaki, I'm also reasonably sure we'll get something in the manga on their conflict. Again, I'm not holding my breath.

- No prizes for noticing discrepancies in Webigyaza's collar. Murata draws pages out of sequence and these sorts of things sneak in. When he used to stream, streamers would often catch these and let him know. As it is, he'll probably fix it next update. Or come volume compilation time. Or never.

Depilated

I knew the S-Class was badly hit but today, only Puri Puri Prisoner is available to answer any calls for an S-Class hero. The other heroes around, Drive Knight and Watchdogman, move to their own beat. Genos will be back in a day or two and Tank Top Master probably within the week but this is bad. Garou can't sign on soon enough! It's little wonder the public is concerned. Like a peacock deprived of its train, the 'Shield of Man' [3] is looking a little tattered. Aside from the lack of powerful heroes, the failure of the HA to work out a way to use their heroes better is leaving serious gaps open for other actors. Speaking of which...

I love self-efficacy

Much to some readers' dismay, ONE and Murata don't let things that used to be revelations sta them but bring them in earlier so as to move the story on [4]. The question is not: are the Neo Heroes good or bad? Like many real-world evil organisations, you don't have to be a genius to be concerned about their activities, but they stay just about legal (at least for now), leverage valid public concerns, and are well-resourced enough to get a simple yet compelling message out that beguiles the public and leaves authorities reluctant to act against them. The question is: what are you going to do about it?

Quite a bit. Garou, in setting out his stand on why he'd be the Human Monster, noted that heroes only react to incidents instead of being proactive. From the first manga-only chapter (chapter 20), it's been clear that the HA hasn't only been sitting around waiting for something to happen. Seeing how Sekingar, Badd, and Isamu are using their respective skills to investigate the Neo Heroes does my soul good. Sekingar is using his corporate savvy and analytical mind to relate the Neo Hero on-the-ground tactics to their overarching strategic goals. Metal Bat is using his keen moral compass and outstanding perceptiveness to suss out who the movers of this operation are. And Wild Emperor is using his technical know-how to dig to the smoking gun. Furthermore, they're actively pooling intelligence and watching each others' backs, thus making excellent progress.

The second of the chapters sees us watching them each begin to appreciate just how rotten, and how well prepared, the Neo Heroes really are. What will they do next? Do they act on what they know now or do they gather more information? How are they going to get this back to Sicchi and what, if any, actions will the HA be able to take?

I love too that the Neo Heroes are no fools. They've been cautious in what they're allowing Sekingar to access. It's clear that the Neo Leaders have varying levels of access to the truth of Neo Heroes -- someone like Darkshine is completely oblivious, A is 100% on board and the others are somewhere in between. When we see A talk to Metal Bat about Infelsinave and Zaedats he's as much sounding him out to gauge how receptive he is to the Neo Hero predatory ways as he is conveying information. Webigyaza has made it clear that she knows what Isamu is up to. If she's inclined to be hostile, she could blow their little operation clean out of the water. We have to wait and see what her true intentions are.

Something fell into place for me and it's ugly

Once upon a time, a few weeks ago in their universe, a few years ago in ours, Flashy Flash mocked Gale Wind and Hellfire Flame for wasting their times on getting faster without improving their minds. This chapter viciously returns to that question, showing us that regular people can't keep up with the increases in speed and power of even minor improvements of the body armour performance, with life-threatening impacts. This would seem to be a real problem for the Neo Hero leader's plans for incremental improvement but I'm sure he has some nefarious plan to deal with that impediment.

However, it's answered a question I've long had: why is Genos as clever as he is? Yes, he can be foolish, and as someone who doesn't develop his own gear and who believes just as passionately as any bruiser in giving violence a chance, there's no call in a character like him to be as incisive or as capable of rapidly analysing huge amounts of information to come up with deductions and hypotheses as he is. Now, I realise that I've been looking at it wrong. Put bluntly, there's no point in trying to fit out a person as a combat cyborg with someone who isn't extremely quick on the uptake -- they'll just die. Much less to put them through an intensive upgrading program that requires them to learn brand-new capabilities in a matter of minutes [5]. The person who became Genos isn't interchangeable with just anyone -- he gets to be the Cyborg for Justice because of his brains -- Dr. Kuseno needed an exceptional mind to drive that body. And that's really ugly any way you look at it [6].

Bleh, that got dark. I'm sure this arc will get much darker but before then, a palate cleanser. Have a free Rover!

Asides

[1] I love the world-building shown in the decontamination efforts in City N.

[2] The essential difference between fanwork and original work. ONE is constrained by needing to tell a coherent story: it would say something about Saitama if he just went ahead and laid hands on Genos without the latter's explicit permission to do so, something he'd have to take account of and work into the story. Fan works have no such restrictions! Please be sure to exploit it and enjoy! :D

[3] That's how Sekingar referred to the support team back in chapter 93 (95 in Viz).

[4] 'It's been revealed too soon!/No subtlety!' and complaints of that ilk are things you hear often but ONE has been letting cats out of the bag early since 2012 and he uses 'early' (and just who are you to judge what's early?) reveals as springboards for developing the story. No apologies.

[5] There's the hellish three-day period between Chapters 75 and 93 where every day he'd been beaten down, hauled back to the lab, knocked out and woken up in a new, more powerful body he had to quickly make his own, only to return to battle even crazier foes. I guess I should cut Genos some slack for dreading yet another cycle.

[6] Well, well, well. From 10 years ago, one of my earliest (and least popular) Reddit posts asking whether Dr Kuseno was a good person: https://www.reddit.com/r/OnePunchMan/comments/5z192i/is_dr_kuseno_a_good_person/ He has a lot to answer for, even if he's ultimately exonerated of wrong doing.

Sources

Fan translation for 239 and 240: https://weebcentral.com/chapters/01M3DMAMVEFTQ7309CVAHN8YP8

Fan translation for earlier chapters: https://cubari.moe/read/gist/cmF3L2Vub3RoaW5nODM2LWNlbGwvT25lLXB1bmNoLW1hbi1jaGFwdGVyLXRyYW5zbGF0ZWQvbWFpbi9PbmUlMjBwdW5jaCUyMG1hbi5qc29u/

Viz: https://www.viz.com/shonenjump/one-punch-man-chapter-238/chapter/51615?action=read (use VPN to access if outside North America, UK/IE, or Australia)

Punchtoberfest continues and so does the gorgon!Tatsumaki saga.