One-Punch Man

Episode 10

It's the end of the world as we know it! How did it come to this? One fateful day, without any warning, the sky grew dark when a gigantic spaceship immediately decimated City A with a shower of incendiary shells from its purple orb-and-stalactite-filled belly. Immortal mud-aliens with five faces and ten dead eyes plummeted to the ground to exterminate any remaining survivors, and the day went from peaceful to God-level Threat-acular immediately. Even the Hero Association HQ, an impregnable onyx tower, shook from the impact of this alien invasion. Is humanity doomed, or can someone, anyone, save the day?

Well, saying this all came without any warning isn't entirely true. In fact, the audience got the heads-up last week after episode 9's credits. Something about an old fortune teller freaking out because "they" were coming, whoever "they" were. It turns out, that was the Hero Association's fabled seer, Madame Shibabawa, predicting that the earth would fall to ruin at some point in the next six months, before falling herself to a dramatic and untimely demise! (Okay, she choked on a cough drop.) In response to this prophecy, we finally get a meeting of all the S-Class Heroes! The whole squad has gathered in HQ to combat the menace from outer space, from Rank 17 on up: there's Puri Puri Prisoner, Genos, Metal Bat, Tank-Top Master, Flashy Flash, Watchdog Man, Superalloy Blackluster, Pig God, Drive Knight, Zombieman, King, Metal Knight--no wait he's absent, Child Emperor, Atomic Samurai, Silverfang, Terrible Tornado (who we met as just "Tornado" earlier in the series), and even the #1 Ranking Hero Blast--no never mind, he's also playing hooky.

You know, the two absences along with the awkward attitudes of those present lead me to believe that this is more like a group of problem children than a team of elite Heroes. Metal Bat complains about missing his sister's piano recital, Blackluster only hopes that everyone at the table will check out his guns, Child Emperor is vocally bored by the proceedings, Pig God won't stop eating, and Watchdog Man only seems nonplussed that someone in the room has farted without owning up to it. You know, I'm getting the sinking feeling that these guys may have lucked out in the superpower lottery, making them more a bunch of weird OP jerks than hardworking good guys, with a couple noble exceptions like Silverfang or Genos. Regardless, the fate of humanity now lies in their hands! (Their hands and Saitama's. He decided to slip into the S-Class meeting on Genos's invitation, because he had nothing better to do that afternoon.)

With such a massive cast to breeze through in such a short amount of time, episode 10 becomes mostly set-up narration with a few standout action scenes to carry the bigger picture. Before the alien Invaders arrive, the bratty telekinetic Tornado takes out the Terror Lizard King, arrogant patriarch of the dinosaur people similar to the Subterranean and Deep Sea Kings before him. (He says he can only be killed by a meteor, so Tornado rather irresponsibly brain-bends one down to make the Rex prehistory. At least they were in the middle of nowhere and no one else got hurt?) During the invasion, action comes courtesy of Atomic Samurai and his knightly ward Iairon (pictured above) combating the mud-man shock troops of the Invaders' second wave. They're attractive and well-executed battles, but it seems obvious that the animators are once again resting their hands for a bigger blowout in the final two episodes.

So what are our two main Heroes up to while everyone else is scrambling to rescue the city? (Or in some cases, grumbling about how they can't really help and this isn't really their problem. Buncha babies in Class S, if you ask me.) Well, like most of his comrades, Genos can't jump, fly, or blast his way up to the mother ship miles upon miles above the cityscape. Even if he could use his fiery abilities to rocket his way up there, he'd be in enough of a compromised state mid-flight that a couple well-aimed explosive shells would easily take him out. He suggests teaming up with some less gravity-challenged Heroes like Tornado, but she's not having any of it. No way is she risking her life with the dead weight of other Heroes holding her down. (Gee, it's almost like the Hero Association's system of evaluating everyone individually based on case-by-case merits is really bad for promoting a sense of community, civic duty, or allowing for any productive delegation in a crisis situation like this one! There's a reason state and government forces like the police and military aren't organized under a strictly individualized merit-driven system like the Hero's Association chose, and now we're seeing the effects of that.)

Finding himself unable to rally the other Heroes to any organized plan of action, Genos gives up on the teamwork thing for now and hopes that once Saitama finds his way to the core of the mothership, they won't have to worry about anything else. Indeed, the One-Punch Man has already Mario-hopped his way across the Invaders' gigantic Bullet Bills to burrow inside the big eyesore. With a splat and a splort, he dispatches every weird new alien being in every dank corridor until he makes his way to the throne room of "Lord Boros." (Apparently not all Invaders are the same species, given the diversity of flora and fauna that comes into contact with Saitama's fists in the mothership.) We don't know who Lord Boros is yet, but I can only describe the brief glimpse we're given as a "one-eyed 90's bishounen ogre."

Like episode eight just a couple weeks ago, episode 10 is mostly prep work for something much bigger to follow. Episode 9 was such a spectacular surprise that I don't really want to speculate too much on how the battle against the Invaders will conclude, but now that we're facing a God-level Threat, it's hard to imagine Saitama going any further to prove himself as a Hero physically. Maybe his battle will be an emotional or psychological one instead? Maybe, as with so many times before, the Invaders themselves won't be the problem. Perhaps it will once again be the reactions of others that really give Saitama a challenge he doesn't know how to face. Guess we'll find out next week!

Rating: A-

One-Punch Man is currently streaming at Hulu, Daisuki.net, and Viz.com.

Hope has been an anime fan since childhood, and likes to chat about cartoons, pop culture, and visual novel dev on Twitter.