Episode 4: “The Modern Ninja”

The Modern Ninja

今時の忍者/Imadoki no Ninja

• Murata's sketch for the episode, as featured on his Twitter account:
  

•  This episode covered four chapters, 12-15, and even found time to include a few original scenes.

• Cold opening: Hammerhead ranting about social inequality, and resolving to destroy Zeniru’s house.

• Hammerhead mentions having stolen his battle suits from “that organization”, but this gets left out of Viz’s subtitles for whatever reason (instead, he only mentions stealing them, without mentioning who from).

• In the manga, after Hammerhead’s goon destroys the first building (the one that turns out to not actually be Zeniru’s house), Mumen Rider shows up to confront them and gets quickly defeated.  Then the scene switches to Saitama’s house, where he hears about Hammerhead and his “Paradisers” on TV, including about how they’ve severely injured several heroes (in part a reference to Mumen Rider).  Then we get a scene where even the armored police are unable to halt the Paradisers’ advance.

• In the anime though, things are rearranged a bit: after the building is destroyed there’s instead a new scene introducing Mumen Rider, showing him getting a kid’s balloon out of a tree.  Then he rides his bike off in the direction of a large plume of smoke, presumably to confront the Paradisers.  Next we get the scene in Saitama’s apartment, and the TV report is changed to mention how the Paradisers destroyed a high-rise building, rather than anything about them injuring heroes (presumably because in the anime we’ve seen them destroy the building but not seen them beat any heroes yet).  Then there’s the scene of the Paradisers and the police, after which Mumen Rider finally shows up to confront the Paradisers.  One effect of this rearranging is that when some bystanders cheer on Mumen Rider and say everything will be alright now that he’s here (which happens in both versions), in the anime it looks like they’re all totally confident that Mumen Rider will be a lot more helpful than the police, who are still hanging around.  Either way, they’re wrong.

• Some differences between Viz’s manga translation and their anime subtitles: when Hammerhead’s height and weight are stated on the TV report, the subtitles leave them in metric (2.15 meters, 210 kg), while the manga translation converted them into US units (7 feet, 462 pounds).  Zeniru’s house is called the “Golden Pile o’ Poop” in the manga translation, and the “Golden Turd” in the anime subtitles (both translations of 金のウンコ/Kin no Unko).

• Chapter 12 ends with Saitama being mistaken for a terrorist by the townspeople and having to assure them he’s not, meaning that in the manga this is shown before Sonic and the Paradisers start fighting.  The manga also contains a scene (added in Murata’s remake) where one of the boulders thrown by Hammerhead crashes into the Golden Turn building, causing someone who looks suspiciously like King to shout that the poop has exploded (in the background there’s also someone who looks suspiciously similar to Bang’s “#1 disciple”, Charanko).  The anime removes the King/Charanko cameos and combines the “poop exploding” scene with Saitama being mistaken for a terrorist: Saitama assures the townspeople he’s not a terrorist, then sees the boulder fly into the Golden Turd building.

• The anime has Sonic lop the Paradisers’ heads clean off, rather than simply slash their throats like in the manga.  I can’t tell if this counts as censorship or not.  Well, there’s less blood in the anime, so I guess it is (the Paradisers’ bodies seem to be filled with a uniform black substance, possibly chocolate, rather than blood, guts, bones or anything messy like that).

• In the manga as Hammerhead runs away after losing to Sonic, he notes that it’s the first time he’s ever lost a fight.  This line gets dropped in the anime.

• Eye-catch this episode: Sonic running.

• After the eye-catch, there’s a wholly original scene showing Genos being repaired by Professor Kuseno over at Kuseno’s laboratory.  In the manga Kuseno doesn’t make an appearance until Punch 40 (equivalent to Chapter 45 of the original webcomic), in a scene that’s very similar to this new anime one.  Genos tells Kuseno about how Saitama’s saved his life twice now (after he got “caught off guard” by Carnage Kabuto), and Kuseno says that he’s currently developing some new parts that once equipped may make Genos stronger than Saitama.  I assume this is going to tie into Genos and Saitama’s duel, which will probably be next episode, since in the manga Genos’ fist is labeled as “Anti-Saitama”, as if it were a new arm created specifically to fight Saitama with.  Which doesn’t exactly jibe with what Kuseno says in this new scene, but it might have served as the inspiration.  Anyway, despite the “Anti-Saitama” arms thing, in the manga Genos is not explicitly portrayed as significantly powering up until he gets upgraded with G4’s parts (Punch 40 again).

• Oh yeah, and during the Kuseno scene, there’s what looks like an afro wig on the table.  I think it’s supposed to be Genos’ puffy hair from last episode, which Kuseno apparently just removed and replaced with new hair.

• In the anime, the flame decals on Hammerhead’s suit glow when he bulks up into “full power” mode.  After Saitama defeats Hammerhead, in the manga he briefly reflects on how he’s not so different and might have ended up like Hammerhead if he wasn’t careful, at which point Sonic shows up.  The anime removes this last line about how he might have ended up like Hammerhead, and instead creates an entire little scene about it at the end of the episode.

• OK, so originally after Sonic talks a lot about having to kill Saitama and all that, Saitama says he knows Sonic just wants to test out his techniques, because of his “innocent” (無邪気/mujaki) smile.  Sonic then shows off the evilest, least innocent smile you ever did see…the joke being the contrast between Saitama describing the smile as “innocent” and the smile not actually being innocent at all.  Viz’s manga translation messes this up by mistranslating Saitama’s line so that he says Sonic has an “evil grin”, but thankfully the anime subtitles properly translate it as “innocent”.  Now, 無邪気/mujaki means “innocent” but literally breaks down as “not evil” (無/mu=”not, un-“, 邪気/jaki=”evil”), so presumably what happened was that the manga translator just overlooked the “not” part, which naturally inverted the original meaning.  It happens.

• The anime has Sonic hype himself up a bit more (while talking to himself, as he zips around Saitama), saying that his speed is faster than sound and creates shockwaves.  The anime subtitles translate the “speed faster than sound” (音速を超えるこのスピード) bit as “speed that beats sound”, which sounds a bit strange.  Heck, couldn’t they just say “supersonic speed”? (Yes, I’m nitpicking)

• As Saitama talks about how he’s defeated all sorts of monsters and evil organizations and whatnot, the manga shows some of the enemies we’ve seen so far: Vaccine Man, the Subterraneans, Mosquito Girl, and Carnage Kabuto.  The anime’s Rogue’s Gallery is a bit different.  There’s some guys we’ve seen in the anime before (Vaccine Man, the giant Maru-Gori, Beast King, and Carnage Kabuto), plus several monsters not featured in the anime: the baby-faced giant insect “170,000-Year-Old Cicada Nymph”, the boxing monster “Incarnation of Electric Light String”, and the self-explanatory “Octo-Claw Man”.  Two of these guys were featured in side-stories showing Saitama back when he still had hair (Light String guy is from the side-story “Brushing Up” in vol.2, while the Cicada Nymph is from “Summer” in vol.3).  Meanwhile, Octo-Claw Man is the monster Saitama fights in King’s flashback in Punch 39 (vol.8).  In other words, all three were monsters defeated by pre-bald Saitama, making them appropriate for a run-down of his past victories.

• In the manga, the long and detailed explanation about the Hero Association was presented as an info-dump text box.  In the anime, it’s presented as part of the Hero Association’s website, and Saitama reads it aloud while checking out the site on his computer.  When he gets to the part about non-registered heroes being regarded as weirdoes, he breaks off and Genos finishes reading the sentence for him.  Apparently, the mascot of the Hero Association is some cute cartoon character wearing a bird costume.  What the?

• After the Hero Association explanation, in the manga Saitama solemnly says that he didn’t know anything about it, and Genos explains that the organization was created only three years ago, after the wealthy Agoni’s grandchild was saved from a monster by some random guy (you get three guesses who that could have been).  This part isn’t in the anime this episode, but might be included next episode somehow.

• The scene where Hammerhead is confronted by members of the mysterious “organization” that he stole the powered suits from comes at the end of Punch 14 in the manga, meaning it’s shown there after the “innocent grin” bit, before Sonic starts zipping around Saitama.  The anime moves this to after the entire Sonic/Saitama fight and the Hero Association stuff, and changes it to a night scene.

• Following the Hammerhead scene, there’s another anime-original scene, as Saitama fills out his Hero Association application form while listening to a TV interview with one Mr. Majimeda (a pun on 真面目/majime, meaning “serious-minded” or “diligent”).  Mr. Majimeda discusses the Hammerhead incident and how it relates to the recent social trend of more and more young people not wanting to work, something he blames on too many song lyrics about “following your dreams” and other such nonsense.  While listening to this, Saitama reflects on how he’s not so different from those guys, and might have ended up like Hammerhead if he wasn’t careful.  This scene is an expansion of that line in the manga where Saitama reflects on his similarity to Hammerhead before Sonic shows up.

• Next episode preview: Saitama and Genos wait in line to take the Hero Association entry test.  Hammerhead narrates, saying that he’s reformed and wants to do some PR for himself, but is told he can’t.

• Next episode: “The Ultimate Mentor” (究極の師/Kyuukyoku no Shi)

• One’s cartoon for this episode, as featured on his Twitter account:

  

  One week until episode 4 airs

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