One Punch Man is the best.
I could be making that statement about the anime, the manga, or the superhero and it
would still be true.
It’s easily the funniest show this year – which is actually saying something – but
it also outshines most other contenders in the realm of action and animation.
Its OP, The Hero!!
By Jam Project, mainly exists to remind us just how the best Saitama is, and of course
to get us pumped to watch the show.
Since I already talked about many of the structural tricks this OP uses to build hype in my Haikyuu
video, today I’ll be using my S-class powers of pedantic analysis, along with a little
bit of science, to measure how OP the Saitama we see in this…
OP… is.
That might get confusing.
For the record, in this context, OP means opening, not overpowered.
As the music builds we enter on Saitama’s all-mighty fist hurtling toward us against
a black void.
This singular focus gives us some idea of its immense strength, which is subsequently
emphasized by how fast it appears to be moving.
First it catches fire due to atmospheric friction, which means it has to be moving at upwards
of mach 4 – that’s 4 times the speed of sound - then a burst of light emanates from
it before it apparently turns white.
This effect could be caused by a phenomenon called “blue shifting” which occurs when
objects approach each other at high speeds, compressing the light waves coming off of
them.
It’s exactly like how the Doppler effect causes engines to sound high-pitched as they
come toward you, except with light.
Light with a short wavelength is blue, while light with a longer wavelength is red, so
sufficiently fast objects will have a blue tinge from the front, while conversely from
the back they’ll appear to be red.
In theory this means that the fist should look green, not white, but I’m going to
assume they took artistic license because a) that wouldn’t look as cool and b) it
supports my speculation.
As you can probably imagine, objects have to be moving awfully quickly for this to be
noticeable, since light moves really, really fast.
For the glove to shift this drastically, it would have to be approaching the speed of
light, which is pretty goddamn scary for anyone on the receiving end of it.
There’s plenty of evidence in the comic that Saitama can go as fast as or faster than
light – at least if Lightspeed flash’s boasts about his own speed can be believed.
That theoretically puts every punch Saitama throws in the same realm as The Flash’s
Infinite Mass Punch, except from a standing start.
Which is scary strong.
Saitama’s next punch – which, judging from the look on his face, is a Serious Strike
- shatters the void itself, bringing us to a flashy title card and eventually to the
earth.
Interesting tidbit – One Punch Man’s version of earth as seen from space here is comprised
of a single supercontinent in the shape of Japan’s Saitama prefecture, for which the
show’s hero is named.
Next we see Saitama marching forward against a backdrop of four increasingly huge and monstrous
images – first a tiger, then a demon, then a dragon, and finally a mighty fenghuang or
Ho-oh, a mythical bird often mistaken for a phoenix by westerners.
These, of course, represent the four disaster levels used by the hero association to categorize
threats: Tiger, Demon, Dragon, and God.
As is the case in the anime, the low “disaster level wolf” from the manga is left out entirely.
Each monster has its eyes set squarely on Saitama, whose screen presence shrinks until
he’s barely a spec in front of the God.
Their glares appear to be threatening, but knowing that Saitama has vaporized several
dragon-level threats in an instant (and possibly God level, since no one actually saw Boros
to give him an accurate rating), it’s more likely they’re shrinking back in fear.
And since screen presence and relative height denotes power hierarchy, then this split frame
of Saitama overlooking the entire planet tells us that he’s DEFINITELY more powerful than
any of the things he’s walking toward.
Speaking of walking, Saitama is about to do a lot of that through increasingly harsh environments
in a montage that highlights his loneliness as the strongest man in the world – something
echoed in the song’s lyrics.
Also it showcases some pretty metal monsters, all of which Saitama will definitely kill.
A lot of these mysterious beings seem to just be random monstrosities made up for the OP,
but some of them are ripped right from the comics.
The first we see is Giant Snowman, which, yes, is a real monster that really shows up
in an extra chapter of the comics.
Next are these weird Penguin monsters in the arctic, which this match cut implies are obliterated
by a punch that also happens to split the entire ice sheet and a mountain in half.
This imposing image is match cut again with Saitama walking down a lonely road, where
he is then struck by lightning.
The bolt of lightning is, of course, diffused entirely by Saitama’s chrome dome, leaving
him completely unharmed, but how tough would saitama have to be for that to happen?
Ignoring the question of how much electrical resistance this would require, which I couldn’t
find a good answer to on google, let’s talk about heat.
The plasma in a lightning bolt is heated to 30,000 Kelvins, which is about 5 times hotter
than the surface of the sun.
Other parts of the sun are much hotter than that, but it’s stil CRAZY hot, and Saitama
still tanks that formidable heat without taking so much as a scratch.
Out of a sea of flames emerges a giant bird-like creature which appears to be the Giant Crow
that attacks King’s apartment in the Manga.
Following that we see Saitama running on water and leaping through the vacuum of space – possibly
as he jumps back to earth from the moon after boros launches him there.
Running on water is a pretty impressive feat in itself – Saitama would have to be running
at least 30 meters per second to accomplish that, which is three times faster than usain
bolt, but considering he can finish a 1500 meter dash in an instant and punch at near
light speed, that’s not really all that crazy.
Jumping from the moon to earth in a matter of seconds as Saitama does in the comics is
quite a lot faster, for example, considering that it took an unmanned rocket over 8 hours
to make the same trip.
The match cut between this storm above a volcano and the immense rock giant emerging out of
it implies that it must be crazy powerful.
It absolutely dwarfs Saitama in size – that’s him down there between the credits – but
that doesn’t stop him from killing it dead toward the end of the OP.
From what I can tell the robot and worm aren’t from anything specific (please correct me
if I’m wrong), but they do look scary as all hell bearing down on Saitama.
Which of course makes it all the funnier when we cut to him casually walking past the giblets
of a freshly punched monster.
Having all that build up to such a brief (if gorey) anti-climax is hilarious, and does
a good job at capturing the tone of the show.
A few more shots impress on us Saitama’s might: his muscles ripple as he throws a punch
in slow motion, and he cuts an imposing figure as he strides alone through a desert.
Cut to Saitama fending off a horde of beast men in a beautifully-animated action climax
– not that the rest of this OP with its stark shadows and stunning line work isn’t
beautifully animated too.
Amusingly, all of the flashes we saw down in the quarry are revealed to be the sun glinting
off saitama’s dome.
The nondescript quarry in which they’re fighting could be a reference to that one
quarry they use all the time in every sentai series.
Although that’s such an entrenched trope by now that it’s hard to tell if it’s
intentional.
Saitama unleashes his devastating spec-, well, it’s not really a *special* attack…
He throws out some consecutive normal punches, which turn the beast men into red mist before
obliterating the mountain face behind them.
Theoretically it would take a 15 kiloton detonation to take 600 feet of the top of a mountain,
which means a punch from Saitama can easily outclass a nuclear bomb.
Of course, if you compare his success with meteors to that other bald guy from Armageddon,
that much should be obvious.
What follows is a montage of Saitama killing more foes – many of them actually from the
series!
He leaps to trade blows with a huge monster – who looks like somewhat like marugori
of the brain and brawn brothers, but marugori didn’t have horns – and the impact strips
the skin off him.
Now we see the Sea king getting punched.
And now we don’t.
You have to slow things down to see that Saitama has launched him into the stratosphere, splitting
the clouds above on his way up.
I’m not sure what this naked man with a star for a head is from, but Saitama destroys
him and this nondescript monstrosity quite quicky before smashing the rock giant’s
face.
This huge face in the sky also doesn’t match anything we’ve seen in the show or comics
so far, but its positioning and the way saitama breaks through it more than superficially
resemble the meteor that saitama smashed above Z city.
Genos and Speed of Sound Sonic get top billing in the first endcard, along with Licenseless
rider.
This image doesn’t say much about them, so I’m just gonna take this time to point
out that rider’s Japanese name, Mumen Rider, is a punny reference to Kamen Rider.
Tatsumaki reps for the hero association with her psychic powers, along with all the S-class
heroes who’ve appeared so far in the manga.
Note that King takes a place of prominence, because King is the best.
Saitama throws one last punch, breaking apart a beam of energy.
This looks pretty generic, but the way the beam splits and is forced back bears a lot
of resemblance to the Serious Strike does to Boros’ planet buster gun, and I wouldn’t
be surprised if the conclusion to the Boros arc is where this anime series leaves off.
And after all that intensity, there’s no other way we could end it than on Saitama
walking home from the supermarket with a bag of discount groceries, juxtaposed with a heavy
metal wail.
A perfect, hilarious ending to a kickass OP.
The OP gives us some indication of Saitama’s strength, but despite all the incredible,
physics-defying, stuff we’ve just seen him do, we’re still just scratching the surface.
If the death battle guys ever do a Saitama vs Superman episode, I know who my bets are
on.
Thanks so much for tuning into this episode of what’s in an OP.
You’d be my hero if you punched the like button, and followed it up by hitting subscribe.
If you enjoy this series, stay tuned for the next episode, where I’ll be doing something
a little different and tackling the opening to Gravity falls.
And be sure to catch up on my previous videos, as well as my game reviews for Undertale,
Xenoblade Chronicles, and coming soon, Until Dawn.
You can follow me on facebook and twitter for regular updates about all those things.
Also, if you’re wondering why the drums got so heavy all of a sudden, that’s because
you’re listening to a kickass cover by my buddy Shakydrummer, who’s got all sorts
of cool anime drum covers over on his channel.
I know you guys like JoJo, and he’s done some great JoJo stuff, so check that out.
As always, this is Geoff Thew, professional shitbag, signing out from my Mother’s Basement.