One-Punch Man

About

One-Punch Man (also written as One Punch-Man and OnePunch-Man; Japanese: ワンパンマン) is an online webcomic by manga artist One which was later remade into a stylized digital manga illustrated by Yūsuke Murata, as well as an anime adaptation animated by the production studio Madhouse.

Premise

The story of One-Punch Man follows Saitama, a powerful hero who easily defeats his opponents with one punch. However, because of his strength, Saitama ends up becoming bored of his powers, as no opponent poses a challenge for him. Along his journey, Saitama meets various other heroes, battles many monsters, and gains his own diciple in the cyborg Genos. Even with his strength, howevet, Saitama struggles to gain respect and recognition by society, eventually leading him to join the Hero Association, an organization which oversees and ranks all of the world’s heroes.

History

One-Punch Man^[1] was first published on June 3rd, 2009, when the manga artist known by his online pseudonym One^[2] began posting the series on his personal homepage Galaxyheavyblow.^[3] On June 14th, 2012, Young Jump Web Comics’ website began publicating a stylized digital manga remake of One-Punch Man^[4] illustrated by Yūsuke Murata^[5] after Murata approached One on his Twitter^[7] to discuss a possible collaboration. The English serialization of the manga is currently published in Viz Media’s Weekly Shonen Jump digital magazine.^[9]

^{One’s Original Webcomic}

^{Murata’s Manga Remake}

Reception

One-Punch Man quickly went viral, and One’s homepage has since surpassed 10 million hits, with an average of 20,000 hits per day. In November 2013, the manga had 2.2 million printed copies in circulation, which increased to 3.4 million in May 2014 and 4.5 million copies in November 2014.^[6] The manga was nominated for the Manga Taishō in 2014,^[8] an annual Japanese manga award limited to manga with eight or less collected volumes.

2015 Anime Adaptation

On March 10th, 2015, Shueisha’s Young Jump magazine announced that an anime adaptation of One-Punch Man had been green-lit, although this news was already available the week prior to that.^[10] The cast and staff of the manga were announched through a promotional video at Bandai Visual’s booth at the Anime Japan 2015 event on March 21st and 22th, where it was revealed that the anime would be animated by Japanese animation studio MADHOUSE Inc.^[11]

Fandom

The story and humor of One’s original webcomic, combined with the high-quality art of Murata’s manga remake, quickly gave the series viral spread and notability. Since then, many pieces of fan art inspired by the series has been shared on illustrator communities, both on the Japanese web and the rest of the Internet. As of March 21st, 2015, the Japanese illustrator social network Pixiv^[12] contains over 5,500 images tagged “ワンパンマン,” the online artist community DeviantART^[13] has over 14,000 submissions submitted under the keyword “One Punch Man,” and the /r/OnePunchMan sub-Reddit^[14] has over 1,100 subscribers. The fandom’s presence can also be found on Tumblr^[15] and the OnePunch-Man Wiki.^[16]

Several scenes present in the manga feature multiple panels overflowing into each other to make the scene appear animated. These scenes became highly popular among fans due to their visual appeal, with animated GIF versions of them often being made and shared.