10 Second Anime - One-Punch Man - Episode 9

Saitama defeats the Sea King but doesn't take all the credit. Genos reads fan mail.

Episode 9 - "Unyielding Justice"

Heh.

The hero always arrives just in time, right? That's the one thing missing from that unappreciative nerd's diatribe against "heroes" who didn't defeat the bad guy. Saitama was definitely the hero with the results, but even he couldn't let that guy's comments stand. Of course, he's going to end up getting a nickname like "Saitama the Cheat" instead of One-Punch Man, but it's not like adoration is his number one motivation.

Saitama's punch was so strong he stopped the rain!

Saitama had some nice moments with Genos and Mumen Rider. His relief that his only friend was still alive was a good one. Also, appreciating Mumen Rider's efforts to delay the Sea King from slaughtering everyone was another one.

Aw. Genos' little smile that maybe the people would start seeing the Saitama that he knew didn't last long.

Genos looked every bit the S-Class hero the worried people needed to see.

If it weren't for the Sea King's rapid regeneration, the other heroes would have had a chance.

Sometimes in anime the useless heroic gesture is romanticized and I definitely saw shades of that with Mumen Rider. However, all the heroes mixed in with the evacuees did the same thing. If you don't fight, there's zero chance the villain would be defeated. Even one useless hero has a nonzero chance.

Contrast Mumen Rider's actions here with the remote control S-Class hero who couldn't do anything with the meteor. He was only there to test his new missiles, not to try everything he could to save that city.

Saitama doesn't need fan letters when his number one fan is already living with him.

The wisdom of Saitama-sensei sometimes floors Genos. A hate letter gets no rise out of Saitama other than "this guy has a lot of free time." I hope that hate letter didn't come from Mumen Rider... He didn't exactly specify how he couldn't fit everything into the letter he sent. Nah, I kid. That thank you letter had a lot of stuff crossed out before the writer just wrote a huge "THANK YOU!" on the piece of paper. Mumen Rider deserves his Rank Number 1 for C-Class for being the nice guy hero type that he is.

Hmm.

The Sweet Mask had an interesting reaction to seeing the real Saitama.

It was almost an annoyed expression that a hero like Saitama would give all the other heroes a bad name. The super slo-mo couldn't even capture how fast Saitama's punch was. If there's a hero this strong around, why even have the other ones?

It appears to me that Sweet Mask is ascribing too much emphasis to the mystique of a hero. A hero isn't just a solution to a bad guy problem. He's also a symbol, an avatar and an ideal for regular people to look up to. If you have a bald nondescript guy who's actions are too powerful and even too fast to see, well, how is the populace supposed to react to that? Saitama may as well be a tactical nuke.

Saitama appears to agree with him to some degree. When that nerd started bad-mouthing the efforts of all the other heroes who had no chance against the Sea King, Saitama deliberately down-played his own actions. Unfortunately, he made the same selfish point on his actions that he made to the crowd after the meteor strike. It's not in Saitama's character to make smooth noble statements about relying on other heroes for a group effort. He had to put it like he took advantage of the situation to take all the credit. But of course, if he admitted it like that, he's not taking all the credit. Which was his intention so the crowd would not look down on the weaker heroes.

That's a lonely road to travel, but Saitama was already on this road of defeating all those huge monsters without receiving recognition. There's a reason he's the only person left alive in Ghost Town and why the Hero Association had never heard of him before. Saitama must have been through this before as he got stronger and then so strong, nobody could actually perceive his heroic actions. A one-punch hero isn't a hero at all if people can't see him trying hard. He's a monster.

What's bad about going through this again for Saitama is having a friend see it happen. That's new and may spur some character development in Saitama. So far, we've just had character revelation, which is interesting in its own right. But a hero needs to struggle for the regular people to admire him. This is why Genos admires his Master. He sees this struggle, but would be happy if others could just recognize his strength.

That won't happen, however, until he's in the S-Class with Genos. Nobody would believe a C-Class could blow up a meteor by himself or defeat a monster that took out an army of heroes without suffering any damage. Moving up to B-Class suits the lazy Saitama just fine. No more weekly quota of good deeds!

I really appreciated the structure of this episode. We got the action, the heroics and the cheer from the crowd in one sequence. Then we had the aggravating scene of the nerd belittling all the other heroes presented as a flashback. This was a great way of letting the audience bask in the blood-pumping action and enjoy the satisfying victory before pushing out all that emotion so it could philosophically reflect on the differing ideas of what a hero should be. Nice story telling right there.

Next time is probably the beginning of the last story arc before the season finale. I have a feeling we'll meet the villains behind altering the path of that meteor. There are no coincidences in a tight story like One-Punch Man.