Punch 7: “A Mysterious Attack”

Punch 7

Title: “A Mysterious Attack” (謎の襲撃/Nazo no Shuugeki)

Length: 16 pages

Adapts: Chapter 7 of the original web comic (15 pages)

In Short: Genos’ overly long backstory irritates Saitama.  Meanwhile, the House of Evolution launches an all-out attack to make Saitama their newest research subject.

Milestones: Genos’ backstory is revealed in agonizing detail, which means it’s also the first time Professor Kuseno is mentioned by name (he won’t put in an actual appearance until Punch 40).  Professor Genus, his clones, and the House of Evolution make their debut, along with several House of Evolution monsters who will all be dead soon anyway.  We get ages for Saitama and Genos (25 and 19, respectively).  Oh, and Mosquito Girl’s name is mentioned for the first, and last, time.

Adaptation Notes: When you remove the title page, there’s a 1:1 ratio between the pages of the remake and the original web comic (both are 15 pages long).  Previous remake chapters have had several more pages than the web comic chapter they adapted, typically due to added bits of fighting and two-page spreads.

In the web comic, once Saitama shoves Frog-Man and Slugrus into the ground, they’re never shown again and are presumably dead.  In the remake though, they reappear next chapter just long enough to be properly killed off by Beast King.

Despite the name, ONE drew Frog-Man looking more like a lizard.  Frankly, he looks a bit like Agumon from Digimon.  Murata makes him look like an actual frog, and puts some clothes on him to boot (as a result, now he looks oddly like Zoro from One Piece).

Murata’s version of Professor Genus is more of a pretty boy than the original.  But both have a strong “Jeffrey Combs in Re-Animator” vibe going on.  Or is that just me?

Translation Notes: Now that Mosquito Girl’s name is finally mentioned, I should explain that in Japanese it’s モスキート娘/Mosukiito Musume, with モスキート/mosukiito being the actual English word “mosquito”, and 娘/musume literally meaning “daughter” but commonly used to refer to young girls in general.  Pretty straightforward.  Also, note that the name is alliterative in Japanese (Mosquito Musume), something lost in translation.

While I’m on names, I might as well go over the other losers who Saitama beats in this chapter.  First is the praying mantis creature Kamakyuri (カマキュリー/Kamakyurii), who’s comically killed off midway through introducing himself.  His name is a play on the Japanese word for praying mantis, カマキリ/kamakiri.

Then there’s Slugrus, whose Japanese name is ナメクジャラス/Namekujarasu, which as you might expect is a play on the Japanese word for slug, ナメクジ/namekuji.  By the way, Planet Namek and the Namekians over in the Dragon Ball franchise are also a pun on this word.  Near as I can tell, the ラス/rasu bit on the end is just gibberish, a way of making the name different than what it’s a pun on.  A bit like the “ra” at the end of “Mothra”.  So Viz adapts this name as “Slugrus”, which makes sense, but it’s weird that they left Kamakyuri completely as-is.  Shouldn’t they have changed it to, like, Mantyuris or something?  Well, whatever.

Frog-Man is カエル男/Kaeru Otoko:  カエル/kaeru=frog, 男/otoko=man.  Nothing to see here, folks.

Professor Kuseno (クセーノ博士) is, I believe, a play on癖のある/kuse no aru, meaning “quirky” or “eccentric”.  If I had to guess.

Saitama interrupts Genos’ long story and angrily demands he sum it up in 20文字以内, “20 (Japanese) characters or less”.  The way Japanese works, each written character is at least a syllable, and often a single character represents an entire word.  See Frog-Man above for an example: 男=otoko=man.  Naturally, you get a lot more bang for your buck on a character-by-character basis when compared to English (Japanese tweets can contain a ton of info).  Due to this language/cultural difference, Viz adapts the line as summing things up in “20 words or less”.

Genos’ term of respect for Saitama is 先生/sensei, which…well, I’m guessing you’ve heard this one before.  Just read about it here.  When Saitama asks Genos to stop calling him that, Genos briefly switches to using 師匠/shishou instead, which Saitama doesn’t like either.  Both terms can potentially be translated as either “teacher” or “master” (it’s “master” in the sense of someone who’s mastered certain skills or knowledge and therefore can teach others, rather than simply a king or boss).  Here, Viz translates sensei as “master” and shishou as “teacher”.  While Genos sticks with sensei, later on Iayan uses shishou to refer to Atomic Samurai.

In Japanese Slugrus uses the personal pronoun オデ/ode to refer to himself.  In English we pretty much only have “I” or “we” for personal pronouns, but Japanese has lots of different ones, each with certain different connotations.  Watashi is the standard one, the one you learn in Japanese 101, while ore is used (mainly) by men and is (somewhat) informal.  Near as I can tell, ode is a derivative of ore.  I gotta admit, I’m not too sure what specific connotations it has, but I remember a big dumb monster in Houshin Engi using it too, so I think the idea may be that Slugrus isn’t too bright.  Maybe?  Darn it, I don’t want to have to actually research stuff!  Anyway, the whole thing goes straight into the “lost in translation” box.

Armored Gorilla talks in a standard “robotic” way, which in Japanese mainly entails using katakana in place of hiragana, and speaking in short, terse sentences.  Hiragana and katakana are the two syllabic systems in Japanese, and for every hiragana character, there’s a corresponding katakana one.  The closest equivalent in English is how we have both upper case and lower case letters.  Day-to-day Japanese consists mainly of a mix of kanji (the ideographic characters) and hiragana, with katakana reserved mainly for foreign-derived words or for emphasis.  So a character who instead speaks in a mix of kanji and katakana stands out.  Katakana characters are also more angular than hiragana, making them extra suitable for a robotic character.  Anyway, Viz represents this by using a special font for Armored Gorilla’s speech.

Finally, in Japanese Saitama mentions that he began training in summer when he was 22.  Viz leaves the “summer” part out.

Characters

==Good(ish) Guys==

Genos: Four years ago, when he was 15, a rampaging cyborg destroyed his hometown and killed his family.  Genos barely survived, and asked Professor Kuseno to convert him into a cyborg.  Since then, he has travelled from town to town in search of that mad cyborg, defeating countless monsters and “evil organizations” along the way, but so far found no clue as to the cyborg’s whereabouts.  He never imagined that anything besides that cyborg could defeat him, which is why he let down his guard against Mosquito Girl (Genos is going to lose an awful lot from here on out, but I guess he’s quite strong by ordinary standards).  He’s obsessed with being strong enough to defeat the mad cyborg, so after seeing Saitama take down Mosquito Girl in one blow he’s now shown up a week later at Saitama’s apartment, asking to be his pupil.  How he managed to get Saitama’s address is a mystery.

Being a cyborg, any damage he sustains can be repaired as long as the necessary parts are available, which is why he looks good as new despite getting beaten to a pulp last week (presumably Kuseno is the one who repaired him, as he does in Punch 40).  He has some sort of cybernetic sensors that allow him to detect the rapid approach of the House of Evolution monsters (this is probably related to how he verified that there were no “life signals” within 500 meters last chapter).  Armored Gorilla apparently has similar scanners, and can detect a “high level of energy” from Genos, something characteristic of cyborgs.

Saitama: Doesn’t want disciples, and so far finds Genos weird and annoying.  He began training in the summer when he was 22, and is now 25.  Since Genos is young, he believes Genos might well surpass him if he can keep up with his harsh training, but Kamakyuri interrupts before he can explain his training process.  He’s quite upset over having his roof smashed in.  Caught off-guard, he’s pulled down into the ground by something…

In Punch 18 Saitama matter-of-factly explains that since Genos is a cyborg he can’t get stronger through muscle training, but apparently he hasn’t realized that yet.

Professor Kuseno: A “professor for justice” travelling on a journey to stop a rampaging cyborg that had apparently gone mad during the cyberization process.  Four years ago he happened to meet Genos after the mad cyborg attacked Genos’ hometown, and he converted Genos into a cyborg at the boy’s request.  He won’t be seen or even mentioned again until Punch 40, but it’s probably safe to assume he’s the one who always repairs Genos when he gets wrecked.  The connection between him and the mad cyborg is still unknown.  Is he really pursuing that rampaging cyborg out of the kindness of his heart, or is he perhaps the one responsible for it going mad in the first place?

==House of Evolution==

Professor Genus: The mysterious mastermind behind the House of Evolution.  Him and his various clones discuss Mosquito Girl’s defeat, and decide to acquire Saitama as a research sample after watching reconnaissance footage of the battle.  This footage is taken by a small, silly-looking flying tracking camera (suspiciously similar to the sort of thing Doctor Gero uses in Dragon Ball).  Presumably he also uses this tracking camera to locate Saitama’s apartment, but it’s not clear why it took him an entire week to notice Mosquito Girl was defeated.  His research must be really busy.

Kamakyuri: A humanoid praying mantis who serves as the vanguard for the House of Evolution’s elite force. “Pretty strong”, according to Frog-Man (but per Punch 8, he probably ranks below Beast King and Armored Gorilla in the House of Evolution’s pecking order).  He crashes through Saitama’s roof but gets his head punched clean off before he can even properly introduce himself

Slugrus: A slug-man with telepathic powers.  While Kamakyuri rushes in to Saitama’s apartment to attack first, he and Frog-Man stay outside, apparently to monitor the situation.  Or maybe they’re just chicken.  His telepathy allows him to immediately tell that Kamakyuri has been killed.  When Genos detects him and Frog-Man outside, Saitama makes short work of them.  Oddly though, Saitama doesn’t kill them (in the remake version), and instead they survive to next chapter, where they become collateral damage to Beast King’s attack.

Frog-Man: Hands out with Slugrus.  That’s about it.  Per Punch 9, he’s part of the House of Evolution’s “elite force” for wiping out the human race, so he presumably must be fairly strong, but he’s defeated far too quickly to tell what sort of skills he has.

Mosquito Girl: Here we learn that she was a prototype developed by the House of Evolution.  Without sucking blood she’s merely a “weakling” as far as Professor Genus is concerned, but he’s shocked to hear that she was defeated in one blow after absorbing a large quantity of blood.

Armored Gorilla: Cyborg gorilla who appears at the end of the chapter.  More on him later.  He speaks in a stereotypical “robotic” way, and identifies Genos as a cyborg due to the high levels of energy he detects from him.

Punch 6: “Saitama”

Punch 6

Title: “Saitama” (サイタマ/Saitama)

Length: 24 pages

Adapts: Chapter 6 of the original web comic (15 pages)

In Short: Genos and Saitama meet.  Also, Mosquito Girl dies.

Milestones: After five chapters, Saitama’s name is finally revealed.  Genos’ too, but that’s not so big of a deal.  We get the first instance of Genos being caught off-guard, which will soon become his trademark.  Oh, and Genos and Saitama meet.  Did I mention that?

Adaptation Notes: The fighting scenes are more fleshed out than in the original web comic, but other than that this is a pretty straightforward adaptation.  The main difference is probably the design for Mosquito Girl’s powered-up form.  Originally she looks basically the same only more muscular (which is a rather odd look for a mosquito).  In the remake, she ditches the muscle tone and instead gets longer claws, more spikes, bigger mosquito eyes, a sort of tiger-stripe pattern over her body, and…long, flowing hair (always useful in a fight).  In both forms, Murata draws her much cuter than ONE ever did.

This is the first of a string of nine chapters that are not currently available on the Young Jump site.  Punches 1 to 5, and 15 all the way up to 79 can be viewed there for free, but for whatever reason 6-14 aren’t available.  I assume this is intended to encourage people to buy the printed editions, but if so then it’s odd that they don’t take more of the back issues off the site.  Not that I’m complaining.

Translation Notes: Our hero’s name: Saitama.  As it happens, Saitama is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan, the capital city of which is also named Saitama.  And by an astonishing, almost mystical coincidence, ONE happens to be a native of Saitama.  I mean, what are the odds?  While Saitama is the name of a prefecture, a city, and a couple of other random things in Japan, it isn’t really used as a name for people.  So the use of it as the name of the main character here is a bit unusual, like naming a character “Indianapolis”.  Or “Indiana Jones”, for that matter.  It helps establishes that the series is set in a fantasy world.  On that note, “Genos” is also a weird name (and probably comes from “genocide”).

So, Japanese has three separate writing systems.  There’s kanji (the ideographic characters they adopted from Chinese), plus the two phonetic scripts: hiragana and katakana.  Frankly it’s amazing they ever get anything done over there.  When it comes to the place names, “Saitama” is written in Japanese as 埼玉 (for the prefecture) or さいたま (for the capital city).  The former is kanji, the latter is hiragana.  With the kanji spelling, 埼/sai means a (geographical) cape or promontory, while 玉/tama means a jewel or ball.  When it comes to the character’s name though, Saitama is written in katakana: サイタマ.  Most likely this was done to set his name apart from the place names.  At any rate, katakana is typically used in Japanese to write foreign words, foreign names.  By extension made-up fantasy or sci-fi names are typically written in katakana as well, so most One-Punch Man characters have names written in katakana.  Saitama’s just another example of that.

A nitpick of the Viz translation: after all the mosquitoes swarm around Mosquito Girl to power her up, they then rush Genos en masse, but he destroys them with a single huge blast.  He follows this up by calling Mosquito Girl dumb for sending all the mosquitoes at him at once, since this made them easy to burn:

わざわざ焼却しやすく蚊をまとめて俺に向けるとは

Viz translates this as:

“Mosquitoes are easy to burn, but she sent them against me anyway.”

To my mind, this slightly misses the point.  It’s not simply that mosquitos are easy to burn (though I’m sure they are), it’s that sending all the mosquitoes at him at once turned them into one big easy target.  So leaving the まとめて/”all together” out of the translation changes the meaning.  A bit.

But the main thing that bugs me about Viz’s translation of One-Punch Man overall is that things are often worded in a rather stiff way.  Sometimes this seems intentional, like with Genos.  He typically talks in a formal or polite way, so Viz seems to represent that by having him talk a bit stiff in English, avoiding contractions in typical robot/android/cyborg style.  But in their translations for this chapter even Mosquito Girl, who talks quite casually and girlishly in Japanese, says slightly awkward things like “all the people are hiding, but not the animals in nature” and “I had no more use for them! You idiots!” None of this is terrible, but ONE really excels at snappy dialogue, and I don’t think Viz’s translation does it justice all the time.  In Japanese Genos, Mosquito Girl, and Saitama all have fairly distinct ways of speaking, but in Viz they tend to sound the same much of the time.  Of course, preserving those sorts of nuances is one of the hardest parts of translation.

All that said, “Damn stupid mosquitoes!” is perfect.

Characters

Genos: Describes himself as a “lone cyborg fighting for justice”.  His arm cannons are capable of incinerating everything in a wide radius (we even see a car getting sent flying by the blast), so before taking on Mosquito Girl he confirmed that there were no other “life signals” within a 500-meter radius.  Being a cyborg, he isn’t much phased by having one of his arms torn off, and he can self-destruct as a final measure.  While he figures out that Mosquito Girl uses blood for more than just food, he didn’t expect her to power-up from it, and is caught completely off-guard by her new-and-improved form.  Despite his earlier precautions to ensure the coast was clear before firing his cannon off, after meeting Saitama he immediately forgets the guy is nearby.  This could have had really tragic consequences if Saitama didn’t happen to be invincible (between this and the “getting caught off-guard” thing, Genos seems more than a little careless).  Upon seeing Saitama’s power, he immediately asks to be his pupil.

Mosquito Girl: Her radius of control for her mosquito swarm extends 50 km, and she grows massively stronger by having them inject her with all the “juice” that they’ve collected.  In her initial state she’s fast enough to dodge Genos’ blast and tear off one of his arms, but gets her legs torn off in the process and decides she’s no match for him like that.  After powering up, she’s unscathed by the enormous blast that kills her mosquito swarm, and fast enough to zip behind Genos and attack him before he even realizes what’s going on.  Even her torn-off legs regenerate (which makes sense, considering the House of Evolution created both her and Zombie Man).  She casually knocks lumps out of Genos for a bit with her newfound power, mocking him for being “fragile” and having a punch that couldn’t kill a mosquito.  Thankfully, Saitama’s punches are a little more effective in that regard…

 

Saitama: Still obsessively chasing after that one mosquito.  When it goes with the rest of the swarm to inject the blood it collected into Mosquito Girl, Saitama follows along and as a result meets Genos.  He’s completely unharmed by Genos’ blast…except that his clothes are all burnt up.  Though the mosquito he was chasing eludes him to the end (presumably it gets killed by Genos’ blast), swatting Mosquito Girl straight through a building seems to satisfy him all the same.  He acts genuinely impressed by Genos’ abilities, but is dumbfounded when Genos wants to be his pupil.  Quite at ease being nude in public.

Punch 5: “Itch Explosion”

Punch 5

Title: “Itch Explosion” (かゆさ爆発/Kayusa Bakuhatsu)

Length: 22 pages (Young Jump version)

Adapts: Chapter 5 of the original web comic (15 pages)

In Short: While Saitama mopes in his apartment, City-Z is attacked by a swarm of mosquitoes led by a mysterious mosquito monster.  Who appears on the scene to save the day?  Not Saitama, actually…

Milestones: First appearance of Genos, who goes on to play Watson to Saitama’s Sherlock for the rest of the series.  This also marks the start of the “House of Evolution” storyline, the first time a story goes on for more than one chapter (even though each web comic chapter ends with “to be continued”, the first four chapters are fairly self-contained).  Saitama’s home is identified as City-Z for the first time, and we get the second mention of the disaster level system.  With Genos’ arrival, we finally see someone besides Saitama battle a monster.

Adaptation Notes: In the Young Jump version Genos wears a shirt with a skull design and the word “genocide” (it’s just blank in the original).  To my mind this suggests that the character’s name is supposed to be a play on the word “genocide”, but I don’t think there’s official confirmation of this.

While Saitama thinks about how each day he just goes home unharmed and washes his gloves, in the original web comic he’s shown defeating a generic monster, while in the Young Jump version this is changed to be two aliens from a flying saucer (or at least, there’s a flying saucer in the background).  So apparently Earth has already been invaded by aliens at least once by this point.  There’ll be more of that later on…

  

Translation Notes: Saitama wears a shirt with “HAGE” written on it in large, friendly letters.  This is the Japanese word for “bald” (why he wears a shirt like that when he’s so sensitive about his baldness, I have no idea).

The original web comic and Young Jump version both begin with a picture of a cactus with the words “I’ve grown too strong” (俺は強くなりすぎた), which it turns out are Saitama’s thoughts and the start of the inner monologue that makes up the first portion of the chapter.  Oddly, the Viz translation leaves these words out entirely.  Now, many of the title pages for the Young Jump version feature some phrase superimposed over the image, like “attack from the sea!” or other things hyping up the chapter’s contents, and usually these are removed for the Japanese print edition, presumably because they’re extraneous to the story (though why they bother adding them in the first place just to take them out later is something I’ve never understood).  So my guess is that Viz assumed “I’ve grown too strong” was another of those extraneous phrases, even though in this case it’s actual dialogue and was present in the Japanese print edition.

During Saitama’s inner monologue, Viz translates 怪人/kaijin as “superhuman”.  Literally it means “mysterious person” and in practice it typically means “monster” or “villain” (generally, you could say it means a monstrous person, whether literally or metaphorically, in contrast to a monstrous animal).  In this case, Saitama describes fighting against both kaijin and monsters, using the actual English word “monster” (モンスター), so that might be why Viz sought for a different way to translate kaijin than just “monster”, in order to avoid redundant redundancy.  At any rate, the typical Japanese word for a superhuman is 超人/choujin.  Since kaijin is one of the more important words in the series, and also a little tricky to translate depending on the context, it’s something I’ll probably be returning to a lot.

Characters

Mosquito Girl: Aptly named monster who controls a massive swarm of mosquitoes by sending out a special signal.  Her mosquito minions look like ordinary mosquitoes, but are actually a new species which even experts can’t identify.  Under her control, they act as a group to suck all the blood from whatever life they come in contact with, including livestock and even humans, effectively mummifying them in the process.  Once they’ve fed, the mosquitoes return and swarm around their master, giving her all the blood they’ve acquired.  The mosquito swarm is so large it resembles a sandstorm; when it approaches City-Z a disaster level of “Demon” is declared, and residents are advised to stay indoors.  Genos theorizes that without Mosquito Girl around to control them, the swarm will safely dissipate (we can probably assume this is true, but it’s never explicitly shown).  Somehow Mosquito Girl can immediately tell when any of her mosquitoes are killed.

Genos: Weirdo who shows up in City-Z to handle the mosquito swarm crisis.  The kind of guy

who will helpfully stand around spouting exposition to nobody in particular.  After killing a few mosquitoes, he quickly works out who their ringleader is and decides killing her will solve the problem.  He sports mechanical arms with some sort of energy cannons in the palms of his hands, and wears a shirt with a skull design and the word “genocide” (overall he seems rather bloodthirsty at this point in the series; he’ll mellow out a bit after spending time with Saitama). 

Saitama: Feeling a bit down lately.  While he doesn’t care that his heroic efforts ultimately have no real effect on society, he’s concerned about his dulling emotions.  Battling monsters used to be an emotional rollercoaster, but now he always wins so easily that the experience is empty, like swatting a mosquito.  At this point, he repeatedly fails to swat an actual mosquito that happens by.  Later when he hears about the mosquito swarm approaching the city, he says he should close the windows (would the mosquitoes really be a danger to him? Perhaps they’re his one weakness).

Locations

City Z: Named here for the first time.  When the mosquito swarm approaches, a disaster level of “Demon” is declared and residents are advised to stay indoors.  Most residents appear to follow this advice, but one man goes out looting and is promptly killed by the mosquitoes.

Glossary

Threat Level (aka “Disaster Level”): Mentioned for only the second time, as described above the mosquito swarm ranks as a “Demon” level crisis.  According to the definitions provided in Punch 22, this means that it threatens the “interruption or destruction of an entire town’s functioning”.  This roughly fits with what we see here, where all residents are warned to stay indoors.  I’d assume that counts as “interrupting a town’s functioning”.  Notably, Mosquito Girl herself is never actually said to be a Demon level threat (since the authorities are unaware of her existence), but only the mosquito swarm she controls.