The moment the first episode of One-Punch Man ended, the internet erupted.
Its entire style ran in the opposite direction of what audiences had come to expect from superhero stories, and that alone was enough to make it explode in popularity. Strangely enough, the overseas reaction was even more intense than the domestic one. After the recent disaster of that big-screen spectacle featuring three versions of the same web-slinging hero, audiences had grown exhausted by the endless repetition of superhero formulas. No matter how many timelines, multiverses, speeches, and world-ending crises they threw onto the screen, wasn't it always the same old routine in the end?
And then, at that exact moment, a hero appeared who fought purely "as a hobby."
It was like dropping a torpedo into a stagnant lake.
Those heroes who spent every scene with stern faces, carrying moral speeches on their backs as if they were sacred commandments, had nearly given audiences emotional fatigue. So when someone so absurd, so casual, and so overwhelmingly invincible appeared, it felt fresh in a way that was almost provocative.
Even so, nearly half the audience remained pessimistic about Alex's new work. The reason was simple: this kind of premise seemed far too easy to ruin.
Most viewers believed the story had only two possible paths. Either the protagonist would eventually be weakened, or the enemies would be strengthened until the original concept lost all meaning. After all, if he really defeated every enemy with one punch, how could the story continue? But if he stopped doing that, then the title One-Punch Man would become a joke.
No matter how the plot developed, many people already felt certain it would eventually collapse under its own power scaling. More than ninety percent of viewers did not believe Alex could keep the protagonist invincible while also keeping the story from falling apart. Even classic characters who started at the peak still needed hardship, loss, and impossible dilemmas to keep the story alive. How was Alex supposed to escape that?
At that same time, on the set of Growing Pains, Melissa had secretly gathered a mountain of snacks behind her agent's back and called over several actors around her age from the cast. Her plan was simple: everyone would eat together while watching the new episode.
As the self-proclaimed future boss lady of the anime film empire, she naturally had to seize this chance to show off her boss's beauty in front of the others.
Unfortunately, if her goal was to show off Alex's face, she had chosen the wrong series. She should have waited until the day he appeared in that cold, ethereal, silver-haired fantasy look.
"Ugh… why did Alex have to shave his head? He's not as handsome anymore."
After finishing the first episode, Melissa tossed a few cucumber-flavored chips into her mouth and complained with her words slightly muffled.
"Alex's acting is amazing, though. He was so handsome as Sosuke Aizen in Bleach, but now he can make himself look plain without it feeling awkward at all."
The girl beside her clapped softly, clearly impressed. In the series they were filming, she played the elegant, popular-girl type, the kind of role that naturally drew attention.
Ever since the massive success of Ode to Joy, led by one of Alex's ex-girlfriends, and Nirvana in Fire, starring Emily and Bella, everyone in the industry had realized something important. Alex was not only talented at making his own shows. His eye for choosing scripts was terrifyingly sharp.
Any project he recommended to an ex-girlfriend or one of his own artists inevitably became a hit. Before long, a silent rule spread through the entertainment industry: if Alex sent one of his artists, or one of his exes, to a certain production, everyone else would rush to fight for roles in that same project. After all, if they could not act in something Alex directed personally, acting in something he approved of was already a rare opportunity.
That was how the actress beside Melissa had snatched her current role from an unknown newcomer. Another important male role had also been taken by a popular young actor from the new generation.
But the moment Melissa heard her praising Alex, alarm bells immediately rang in her heart.
Hmph.
All these fake-sweet girls were nothing but stumbling blocks on her road to becoming the true boss lady.
While the two of them chatted, the ending song of the first episode finished, and the platform automatically began playing the second.
At the start of the episode, Saitama appeared in simple home clothes, watering a cactus on his balcony. Then, a mosquito's buzzing echoed so sharply and so close that every viewer wearing headphones felt their scalp prickle. Many instinctively pulled off their headphones and turned their heads, searching for the dead little insect they were sure had flown near their ears. Only a moment later did they realize the sound had come from the screen.
What followed made them laugh despite themselves.
Saitama, a vein bulging on his forehead from irritation, moved so quickly his body became a blur. He darted left and right, clapping again and again, yet somehow he still could not kill the mosquito. The scene awakened a universal summer memory: heat, sweat, sleepless frustration, and that maddening buzz that seemed born solely to destroy human sanity.
The contrast became even more ridiculous because, in the previous episode, this same man had destroyed a city-level monster with a single punch. Now, he was being driven to fury by one insect.
The gap was so absurd that countless viewers found themselves smiling at the screen before they even realized it.
Then the opening song began again.
Although many people had been looping that song nonstop recently, the moment the chorus burst out with explosive energy, several male viewers who had been about to drag the progress bar forward silently removed their hands from the mouse. Somehow, skipping the opening felt like missing part of the experience.
Once the opening ended, the Mosquito Girl, played by Scarlett, made her entrance.
And the audience's reaction proved once again that men could be terribly shallow creatures.
Even with special effects covering her body in insect-like traits, wings, sharp limbs, and a monstrous aura, her seductive face and striking upper-body figure had been preserved with almost cruel precision. Immediately after that, Genos, played by Will, appeared. His dark hair had been dyed blond, his expression was cold, and everything below his neck was composed of mechanical parts.
Genos looked up at the Mosquito Girl hovering in midair, surrounded by a massive swarm of insects. Heat gathered in the center of his palm.
"I will eliminate you."
It had to be said that, in terms of appearance alone, these two were far more pleasing to the eye than Alex's bald and deadpan look in this series.
The comment section went completely insane. Some people said they had lived for thirty years and never imagined they would one day feel attraction toward a mosquito. Others begged her to suck their blood dry. A few still tried to preserve the last trace of dignity by writing that a person should not, or at least should not want it that badly. There were also comments begging for Scarlett to get more screen time, cursing Alex because he had probably already "tasted" that beauty, and praising Will's look, saying he seemed cooler than any billionaire superhero armor.
Mixed among the jokes were comments about the production itself. Some said Will had been scolded by Alex so many times on set that he had cried more than once. His softer fans immediately felt sorry for him, but they were just as quickly attacked by other viewers. If Alex had not been demanding, how could he have produced scenes at this level? Anyone who wanted pretty actors to be coddled could go watch bad shows somewhere else.
The fight between Genos and the Mosquito Girl delivered a spectacle of technology against monstrosity.
No one expected the first truly intense and evenly matched battle in the series to be carried by two supporting characters. In the first episode, Saitama's fights had mostly existed as demonstrations of scale, showing how absurdly powerful the protagonist was while flaunting the production's visual effects. But this scene in the second episode finally felt like a real fight.
"How much money did they burn on these effects?"
When the Mosquito Girl commanded a swarm capable of draining an entire city of life, and Genos answered with a sea of heat that nearly filled the entire screen, many industry insiders who were also watching quietly swallowed. Anyone walking in without context might have thought they were watching the next major installment of a billion-dollar superhero franchise.
But the balance lasted only briefly.
After absorbing enough blood and entering her second form, the Mosquito Girl easily suppressed Genos. In just a few movements, she severed his limbs and pushed him to the edge of destruction.
"So… there is no longer any chance of victory? In that case, self-destruction is the only option left."
Thrown into the air, with his core moments away from being pierced, Genos gritted his teeth. He planned to wait for the enemy's final strike, then detonate himself and take her down with him.
"Forgive me, Doctor."
The atmosphere, already heavy with tragedy, reached its most solemn point. But at the very last instant, for only a second and a half, perhaps even less, the audience vaguely saw a hand slap the Mosquito Girl across the face.
Smack.
The sound was crisp, clean, almost absurd.
In midair, the Mosquito Girl burst into a mass of flesh and blood. All the blood she had absorbed splashed across the wall of a building opposite them, instantly staining it red.
"Mosquitoes are annoying."
That naturally blank expression. That smooth, egg-like bald head. That posture far too relaxed for someone who had just interrupted a life-or-death battle.
Genos, who had been ready to sacrifice himself, crashed to the ground with a heavy thud. With his limbs gone, part of the skin on his face torn open, and sparks bursting from the exposed machinery beneath, he stared at the man before him as though he had witnessed something that should not exist. His mouth opened in shock, perhaps even terror.
That monster, the one who had crushed him so effortlessly, had been defeated in a single hit.
And after killing the Mosquito Girl, Saitama simply turned to leave, as if he had truly done nothing more than swat an insect.
"P-please wait!"
Genos, lying on the ground with only his upper body remaining, forced out a shout. When Saitama turned his head with mild curiosity, he called out:
"Please tell me your name."
"Saitama."
"Please take me as your disciple!"
"Hm… wait, what?"
When they reached this scene, many of Scarlett's fans blinked in confusion.
What?
The Black Widow was gone just like that?
After only one episode?
At that point, the audience had no choice but to admit that Alex's influence had truly reached an absurd level. He could bring in a top Hollywood actress for a luxurious cameo and discard her almost immediately, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
After that, though reluctant, Saitama accepted Genos as his disciple. Soon afterward, the organization behind the Mosquito Girl, the House of Evolution, also took the initiative to approach this strange master-disciple pair.
After easily defeating the monsters sent after them, Saitama and Genos decided to strike at the source and wipe the problem out directly. Against the first enemies they encountered, Saitama did not even need to act. Genos, eager to show his worth in front of his teacher, eliminated all of them on his own.
That behavior - cold on the outside, yet inwardly like a child desperately waiting for praise from an elder - immediately won him a wave of affection. Genos looked serious, powerful, and stylish, but there was an almost innocent need for approval in him that made the character unexpectedly endearing.
However, when he was easily crushed by the House of Evolution's strongest fighter, the audience's expressions gradually became strange.
He had just been beaten by the Mosquito Girl. How was he already getting destroyed again?
The character clearly had an impressive presence, yet for some reason, he was beginning to give off an increasingly obvious feeling of… weakness.
Will, who was also watching the episode, stared at the comments on the screen with a complicated expression. Silently, he thought that this was nothing. It was not only in his debut episode that Genos got beaten. As far as he remembered, all the way until the end of the season, his character basically did not win a single real fight.
After Genos was defeated, Saitama finally stepped forward and revealed the training method that had made him so strong: one hundred push-ups, one hundred sit-ups, one hundred squats, and a ten-kilometer run every single day.
When the fans heard this, their heads filled with question marks. Athletes, trainers, and regular gymgoers watching the series briefly fell into an existential crisis.
Was that… difficult?
Some of them trained more than that every day.
So why had none of them become that absurdly powerful?
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