I originally had wanted to make a video on rejecting humanity and the symbolism that
comes with, but now looking back at it, it’s such a small part to a large idea in general.
The process of becoming a monster is a lot larger than the one person it affects, there’s
this long road to get where they ended up, usually brimming internal conflicts or circumstances
that are out of their hands.
The world is filled with these monster-like people and they’ll be the reason why people
regress into becoming one of them, and that’s a large thing to consider.
Think about how many Victor Frankensteins there are in this world that go around creating
their monsters.
Many series have had their way of showing this, but this time I’m going to use JoJo’s
Bizarre Adventure and One Punch Man.
With JoJo, we find our prime example of a monster in Dio.
While he was the one to become a monster by his own will, the world he had lived in had
made the him a monster before he had even become one.
Life before the Joestar household had turned Dio into this intelligent, self-sustaining,
narcissist as a defense mechanism to the world he had lived in.
If you aren’t looking out for yourself over anyone else, no one would look out for you,
at least where he was.
The powerful hold their power over the weak, Dio internalizes that and everything he’s
learned in that world and it reflected in his character.
He became a personification of what his placement in the world, so as soon as he was placed
into a better place, he had just adjusted and had done what the world had done to him,
but instead onto others.
But doing so had ended up creating this escalating fight between good and evil to where nothing
good was going to come from it.
He had made Jonathan Joestar into a child of circumstance and was the reason for his
growth and adaptation to the evils of the world because by Dio being a personification
of his world, Jonathan had gone against the worst that world had to offer.
He became a foil to everything Jonathan was, he pushed this man to the point where Jonathan
was able to roam the streets of Dio’s world to come out even stronger for it.
Dio couldn’t fathom the power of resolve in Jonathan’s character, he had seen Jonathan’s
results and the only thing left do was grow further than that, as a means of adaptation.
Growing past Jonathan isn’t something that would represent Dio’s character, as form
of an adapting and elevating evil, progress is meaningless journey, he wants to get to
the result, because the results are the only things that matter.
He saw the journey and skipped right past it to become the monster he’s always been.
Now, what his vampirism in specific represents has been already done in a previous video,
so I’ll be referring to that if you want more on what his vampirism means in general.
But basically, vampirism here, or just becoming a monster in general represents the absolute
worst of humanity or how people take those inhuman journeys to match other people’s
results.
And with impactful pillars of the franchise like Dio existing, there’s bound to be people
that want to follow in his footsteps for a few reasons.
Straitzo was someone who had done that.
He saw Dio’s in the end, but more so held interest in the benefits of vampirism than
Dio’s character more than anything.
Seeing Dio’s power, charisma, and lively energy was enough for Straitzo to follow in
his footsteps.
Some people take journey’s like do Dio, so they attain power, but Staitzo’s case
was that he wanted that youthful energy he had originally, that alone was probably his
drive because his youth was power to him.
When it comes to the world of One Punch Man, it’s scarily similar to our own in a way.
There’s more to be done for those that become monsters than to prevent the conditions that
normally produce them.
The monsters are dealt with as what they are rather than what they’ve been before they
had turned into that because there’s nothing you can really do once you become a monster.
That becomes who you are, and usually the people that had become monsters don’t consider
going back anyways since they embrace what they’ve become.
Monsterization is an interesting problem that happens in the One Punch Man world that is
basically a reflection of some of the many reason why crimes are committed in general,
be it circumstance or internal conflict.
Internal conflict being a large reason why people turn into monsters because there are
so many people that turn into a monster a mean to unnaturally enhance their strength.
For example, there’s everyone that Gouketsu had “turned into monsters” and I use those
quotes strongly.
Choze had a belief that his genes made himself superior in comparison to others, even after
being whooped, he believed that there was just more to himself that just needed to be
pushed out.
Benpatsu is someone who lacks the position he thinks he’s in.
He’s is basically that uncle that swears he can ball against Kawhi because he played
in high school, or he’s that one friend that swears he can beat a top player because
that one top player loses to other top players.
He already thinks the way he does, he just internally lusts for that position so he could
actually act how he thinks.
That position would also give him the confidence he wants to have when it comes to having to
come in contact with those significantly stronger than him.
He wants to be that arrogant man with power to back up his arrogancy.
Hamukich…
Hamukich is actually just an unfortunate case because of how deep his descent goes because
he had basically traded his humanity twice for similar reasons.
These were all people on the edge of becoming a monster, they were just waiting for the
push that would turn them.
Why?
Because being strong is a major thing in this universe, and most of the desires that people
have would be a lot more attainable the more strength that they have.
Except when you’re an anomaly and your strength is the reason why your desires are unattainable.
Now a lot of the people in the One Punch Man universe turn into a monster as a means of
becoming stronger because they usually plateau in their strength, be it because they don’t
know how to push their strength to it’s fullest potential, or that they’ve reach
their potential and haven’t broken their limiter and it makes sense that a lot of these
people don’t know what they want to do because the hero world, fighting world, and entire
world itself is selfish.
Those that become extremely strong usually keep their information and all and remain
at the top, so then those below them that want to become that and are having internal
conflicts will most likely turn into a monster so they get the results they’ve been fiending
for.
And if that’s not the case, you have a bunch of people that want to be strong without actually
working towards it, either way, monsterization becomes their answer.
Now, monsters themselves symbolize countless amounts of things when it comes to how many
there are and whose writing them, and to turn is a similar case with how many people have
represented different styles of writing to it.
In our cases mentioned, to turn is a representation of what it’s like to take the more “inhumane”
roads to a process and to become the worst version of yourself in terms of character.
I’m sure you can think of something that you would want to be good at which takes an
extensive amount of time if you go about it in the ways you should, or something that
you want in general, be it physical or intangible, that’ll take a ridiculous amount of time
to get.
Sometimes there are good shortcuts which cut down on things being unreasonably tedious,
like guides instead of outright trying to figure things out yourself, but sometimes
there are the darker shortcuts and they’re not plausible if you consider your health
or the morals involved.
These monsters have taken a road with no-return, unable to reconcile with humanity.
When it comes to JoJo, people turning is more so a monsterization of their character like
I mentioned previously, which is what happens in One Punch Man too because the end result
in both is the monster looking back at you in the mirror.
A reflection of their spiraling descent.
And no matter what we know about that character and what circumstances have turned the character
into the way they are, the world will only know about the monster
that was.