After Genos suffered a crushing defeat, Saitama had no choice but to step in.
Unable to defeat him in his normal state, Carnage Kabuto immediately entered his berserk form, unleashing Carnage Mode. For a brief moment, he even seemed to have Saitama on the ropes.
At least, that was how it looked on the surface.
In his rampaging form, Carnage Kabuto slammed Saitama away with a brutal punch. Before Saitama could even hit the ground, the monster burst forward at terrifying speed, vanishing in a blur and reappearing behind him. Another punch sent him flying again. Then another. And another. The cycle repeated in a savage storm of blows, as though Carnage Kabuto intended to crush him so completely that he would not even have the right to breathe.
As he attacked, Carnage Kabuto roared with wild, twisted excitement.
"My Carnage Mode can last for an entire week! After I kill you, I'm going to the city, and I'll slaughter every last human being there!"
"What?!"
The instant Saitama heard those words, his careless expression vanished. His eyes snapped open, his pupils trembling with an intensity so exaggerated that it almost looked as if those words had shaken him more deeply than any attack ever could.
Seeing that reaction, most viewers instinctively assumed Saitama was worried that if this monster escaped, ordinary civilians outside would suffer an unimaginable disaster.
But a small portion of the audience felt, almost immediately, that something was off.
After all, Saitama had never really seemed like the kind of protagonist who carried the fate of humanity on his shoulders with noble righteousness.
"I made a fatal mistake…"
Saitama clenched his teeth in silence. His fists tightened.
"This guy said that mode lasts a whole week. In other words, if I let him keep rampaging like this, then…"
In the next instant, Saitama suddenly accelerated.
His body shot forward faster than the eye could follow, and an uppercut erupted from below, punching straight through Carnage Kabuto's chest. This was the same monster who, even in his normal state, had defeated Genos with a single blow.
At the same time, Saitama shouted with genuine horror on his face.
"I'LL MISS THE SUPERMARKET SALE DAY!"
When Saitama screamed those words with an expression worthy of the end of the world, tens of millions of viewers felt reality itself freeze for a second.
What the hell was that?
It was impossible. Truly impossible to hold any normal expectations for this protagonist.
Just a moment ago, his face had been so serious that everyone thought he was worried about the catastrophic damage this monster might cause to modern society and innocent civilians.
But in the end, the thing that terrified him was missing a supermarket sale?
The live comments exploded.
"I'm never trying to predict this story again. You never know what kind of insanity Alex is going to write."
"I really thought this bald bastard was worried about the survival of humanity. Who could've imagined he only cared about supermarket discounts?"
"Joke of the day: supermarket sales are more important than the safety of the entire human race."
"This is ridiculous, but for some reason it feels weirdly satisfying. Honestly, if it were me, I might think the same way."
"Exactly. What do other people's lives have to do with me? This is exactly the kind of protagonist I like."
While the internet collapsed into chaos, Genos, half-destroyed and barely holding himself together, hurried over to Saitama.
"Master! The supermarket closes at ten tonight. If we rush back now, we may still make it!"
"Really?!"
Saitama came back to life on the spot.
Without the slightest hesitation, he turned and threw a punch that blasted a colossal hole through the enemy base, tearing open a passage dozens of meters wide as if the entire structure were made of paper.
"All right! Let's go!"
"Yes, Master!"
Standing before the massive hole Saitama had punched through the base, the founder of the House of Evolution watched the backs of that bizarre master-and-disciple pair as they left. Tears and snot streamed down his face, and his expression looked utterly broken, as though his entire worldview had just been crushed without mercy.
After a long silence, he muttered to himself.
"Maybe… I should stop doing this kind of research."
And with that, the first day's update came to an end.
For a while, it felt as though the entire internet had awakened at once. Countless users began hammering away at their keyboards, posting their opinions across every platform they could find.
Some said it was a fascinating anti-traditional take on the superhero genre, but that Alex had made the protagonist so strong they were worried the story would collapse later. Others argued that the first two episodes had perfectly presented a new kind of hero unlike anything audiences had seen before, but the real question was how long that freshness could last. A few joked that the lives of all humanity were apparently worth less than a supermarket sale day. And there were also plenty of viewers who admitted they did not know whether the series would fall apart, because at that moment, all they wanted was the next episode of One Punch Man.
Of course, there were also stranger complaints mixed in.
"My goddess Scarlett disappeared after just one episode?"
"Your goddess doesn't even know you exist. Why are you acting like it's your business?"
The concerns among Alex's fans and the wider anime community did not fade. Many people remained worried about whether the story would eventually collapse under the weight of its own premise.
But at least the first two episodes were flawless.
If someone absolutely had to point out a weakness, perhaps the only issue was Alex's appearance in the series. After all, plenty of viewers were still trapped in the overwhelming beauty of Sosuke Aizen and had not yet recovered from that image.
"This show is definitely going to become a massive hit. If nothing goes wrong, it'll get at least five billion views."
After watching the first two episodes with Clara and Maggie, who played Mia's mother, Sophie's eyes were shining.
Maggie gave a soft laugh.
"Now we'll have to see whether it can maintain this level."
After finishing the episodes, she felt she finally understood the taste of younger audiences a little better. There was still something of a generational gap, but even Maggie had to admit she was astonished by Alex's talent.
Still, just like many viewers online, she also found it difficult to believe Alex could maintain a story where the protagonist remained invincible forever.
In the first two episodes alone, the protagonist had already defeated three boss-level villains in a row.
It was satisfying. Extremely satisfying.
Even Maggie, who was already past forty, had to admit that.
But if every weekly update followed the same structure, the audience would grow tired of it in less than a month.
"Alex will definitely handle it!"
Clara immediately defended her future husband.
She had already been irritated while reading the comments during the episodes. Now, hearing the same kind of doubt in real life made her even more unhappy.
Silently, she decided that next week, she would not invite these people to watch the series with her again. They were always looking down on her boss.
Once this production wrapped, she would definitely go back and report everything to him.
After the first two episodes of One Punch Man aired during its opening week, the series held a rating of 9.3.
Many people, after rating it, also left their thoughts in the comment section. A considerable number of them said that if the score could stabilize at 8.5 by the time the series ended, that would already be impressive.
Because in their eyes, the work was doomed to collapse later.
Since the protagonist's core identity was being the "One Punch Man," then if the series wanted to preserve that premise, every enemy, no matter how powerful, had to be defeated with a single punch.
At first, that approach was indeed funny and refreshing.
But within two or three weeks at most, the novelty would wear off.
On the other hand, if the protagonist were weakened later, or if the enemies were artificially strengthened, it would betray the very core of the title One Punch Man and reduce the show to the same stale formulas as every other mediocre series.
No matter how they looked at it, many people believed One Punch Man could never replicate the miracle of Bleach.
"Mark, do you think this series will fall apart later?"
At Aurora Entertainment, Talita, who looked delicate enough to be mistaken for a doll, asked Mark, the only actor from the company who had participated in Alex's new series.
In truth, calling him the "only" one was almost the result of Aurora's own mistakes.
The company no longer possessed the overwhelming dominance it had enjoyed ten years earlier. Among the artists still under its umbrella who could truly carry the company's reputation, there were basically only Mark and Lena left.
There were even rumors that Lena wanted to leave.
At this point, even Talita, with her delicate image and rising popularity, could already be considered one of the company's more recognizable faces.
"Just wait. Next week, these people are going to get slapped so hard their faces swell."
Mark answered while scrolling through the comments on his phone, his expression far from pleasant.
He played Sweet Mask, so he knew where the story was heading next.
Anyone who thought One Punch Man was simply a pure anti-trope superhero comedy was gravely mistaken.
In fact, the official streaming platform and its comment sections were still relatively civilized.
The real madness was among entertainment bloggers, gossip accounts, and traffic-chasing media pages. There, things had already turned into a carnival of demons. They were one step away from declaring One Punch Man completely worthless.
Although the first two episodes that had just aired were almost impossible to criticize, they could still mortgage the future.
So headlines began appearing one after another.
"Alex May Be Facing the Greatest Failure of His Career."
"Alex's New Work Makes a Serious Mistake in Its Protagonist Design."
"Out of Creativity? Alex's New Series May Be Unable to Inherit the Banner of Bleach."
"A Major Production Doomed to Collapse from the Start: One Punch Man."
The first and second episodes released that week had no real flaws, but that did not mean those opportunists, desperate to ride the heat, could not find a way to attack.
Even truly great people could be targeted by critics determined to dig up dirt. Alex, meanwhile, was far from flawless.
Dictatorship on set. Messy relationships with actresses. Exploiting actors. Cursing out the media.
If any ordinary young celebrity carried even half of those accusations, they would have been canceled eight hundred times over.
But Alex's talent was too dazzling. Dazzling enough that, for the moment, it forcibly covered that entire pile of problems.
However, the instant one of his works showed a real flaw, the haters would not hesitate to drag him straight down into hell.
The truth was that most viewers were only discussing the first two episodes that had just aired. But that silent majority simply watched the show and moved on with their lives. Many could not even be bothered to post comments.
As a result, a loud minority ended up replacing the voice of the majority.
And so, in the public perception, it almost looked as if One Punch Man had already failed.
By the time the second week's update was about to arrive, the series rating had fallen directly from 9.3 to 8.9.
The power of rumors was terrifying.
Even Mark, who was known for his gentle temper, could not stand it anymore. He directly posted a simple message on his verified account.
"New episode tomorrow. Let's see."
The next day, Sweet Mask, the character he played, would make his debut.
But the reason Mark had the confidence to write those words was obviously not because of his own role.
It was because of the content of the next update.
That section was one of his favorite parts of the story.
It was also the sequence that, in Alex's previous life, had made countless people become fans of Saitama.
After Mark, Emily, Violet Grant, Will, Patrick, and several other actors also began leaving messages online, directly confronting the marketing accounts attacking One Punch Man.
Do you people ever get tired?
If you want to criticize it, at least wait until the series actually has a problem before you start barking.
Early the next morning, seeing the generals under his command facing the war so boldly, Alex rubbed his chin and felt that he could not afford to look weak either.
So he wrote:
"Today, what Saitama says is exactly what I want to say to everyone who can't stand seeing me still standing."
When many internet users familiar with Alex's usual style saw that post, they froze for a moment.
That tone…
Wasn't it a little too refined?
Too calm?
It did not match the arrogant, provocative Alex in their memories at all.
After all, his acceptance speech at the national awards ceremony some time ago had been so pretentious it could almost be framed as a masterpiece of arrogance.
Why was he so peaceful this time?
Even so, as the discussion grew louder and louder, more and more people decided to check out Alex's new series, the production that had already stirred up a sizable online war.
Deep down, everyone was curious.
What exactly did Alex want to say?
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