![artbyshinji:
“ Suit Genos. [hq]
👀
”](https://64.media.tumblr.com/ea73516acfee791cff6a711ca2d517e3/tumblr_pqofk2X3Lx1u13u4ho1_1280.jpg)
Suit Genos. [hq]
👀
i’ve been sitting on this for a little bit bc it’s a more personal thing and super tough to articulate besides, but here goes.
Most shounen mangaka center their stories around superpowered teenagers and children, which is just fine! I like wish fulfillment just as much as the next person. But I have to give a shoutout to ONE for doing what I haven’t yet seen another mangaka do, and capturing the particular mid-to-late-20′s sort of mini crisis a lot of people get after college, where they’ve been working justt long enough that they’re starting to stare down the barrel of “is this what i’m going to do forever and ever until i die oh god” and “I have a job and checked off all my ‘accomplishment’ boxes but now am floundering without the structure of childhood and academia”. As someone who went through a complete 180 career change in my early 20s, it means so much to me to see a young-20s character like Reigen, or Saitama, be disillusioned with their careers and switch tracks, or be depressed and unable to find fulfillment in their “same-old” routines, and have that be an important, central point of the story. I relate painfully to Reigen sitting at his desk and thinking about how he was bored and unfulfilled at his old job, and i feel like I can really appreciate the fact that he left it and made a change for himself. I relate to Saitama, if not to his godlike powers then to his feeling of “is there all there is to life? what is there to live for besides just my accomplishments?” It sounds dramatic, but it’s easy as a young adult, especially a financially struggling young adult, to ‘work to live’, and neglect everything else to the point where when you finally stop to take a look around you, you realize you’re not sure what you’re actually living for. What did you dream of doing as a child? What do you want, on your deathbed, your life story to be? your memories to be?
What does fulfillment even mean?
With Saitama, ONE answers this question first by pointing out that challenges and obstacles give life meaning. When we watch OPM, we’re not rooting necessarily for Saitama. We root for Mumen Rider, or Genos, or any of the myriad other heroes that we know don’t stand a chance. Saitama’s punch might give catharsis, but the pathos is all in the side characters. And Saitama knows this! the manga is all about Saitama struggling to find meaning in a world without those obstacles. And this leads to ONE’s second answer, through King: life is not just about maxing out your level- it’s also about exploring the game. it’s about collecting every outfit, or talking to every NPC, or befriending all the companions, or completing every side quest. ONE shows us that once you look up from your single minded drive to climb the ladder, there’s a ton more to see! friends to make! hot pot to cook! cool new stuff to investigate and explore with those friends! And this is so comforting to me, as a young adult, to have a piece of media show me that not only is struggling okay and good, but that it doesn’t and shouldn’t consume everything and that there’s more to explore.
With Mob Psycho- god, where to start with Mob Psycho. First of all, I was expecting a typical ‘everyone’s 12-14 years old and OP as fuck’ shounen. I was not expecting one of the central characters to be Reigen “I’m almost 30 and I’ve switched careers and am not succeeding in the traditional sense” Arataka, or that another central character would be Serizawa “I AM 30 and I d e f i n i t e l y switched careers and have doubly not been successful in the traditional sense” Katsuya. Both these characters struggle with the same question in different ways. Serizawa has a more straightforward narrative: he shows us that it’s never too late to turn your life around. At 30, socially anxious and with nothing on his resume besides “dropped out of middle school to become a terrorist”, Serizawa gets a haircut, gets his act together, goes back to get his degree, and by the end of the manga is not only well on his way to academic success but is really becoming his own person, with a supportive friend group, self confidence, and his own hobbies and interests. Reigen struggles to find meaning in his life beyond just being a boring salaryman - to “become someone” - and eventually through lifting his head up from the daily hustle and opening himself to others, realizes that he HAS become someone, though perhaps in a different way than he expected: he has become a very important person to all of the esper kids and to Serizawa, and through influencing them he becomes the backbone of the manga itself. Reigen shows us that personal growth can be nontraditional, and responsibility can be scary, but both lead to fulfillment.
I never truly thought about these kinds of things when I was younger, because I wasn’t living them. and the beauty of it is that both OPM and MP100 can be read by an audience without them; they can be enjoyed just for their comedy and their crazy nuts action scenes. But ONE put in characters struggling with these young-but-not-SUPER-young-adult issues, and it makes me, at least, feel seen. It makes me feel like I’m not alone in worrying about these things, in fearing the mundanity of routine, in struggling to find meaning in life while I’ve got the strength to grasp it. And it makes me feel like becoming an adult doesn’t have to be such a bad thing, after all.
