Magpie's Nest

META

Extras

Volume 37 showed us the aftermath of Mad Devil Yankee's encounter with hero gambling and the demon Chihuahua -- we see a bandaged Shinya wheeling his mother around. She made it! It's little wonder that the whole incident left such a bad taste in his mouth that he quit. In a splendid irony, we know from the last chapter that McCoy will soon be enjoying the tender mercies of the hospital whose horrors he so terrified Shinya about. Nice!

Now that's a fitting coda!

Heroism does not consist of running away

"If the heroes run and hide, who will stand and fight?" That's one of Saitama's most fateful words to Genos. I'm recalling them as I look at Suiryu and see the yawning gulf between his good intentions on being a hero and his praxis of the same. The Suiryu we've seen is someone who runs away from anything that looks annoying. As Bang notes, he refused to take up the responsibility of running his grandfather's dojo. His professional martial artist career was one of taking things as easy as he possibly could, to the chagrin of harder-working but less talented competitors. And, recently, he stiffed his sister by skipping out on his hospital bill and leaving her to find the funds for it. When the going gets tough, the tough get going away, that's Suiryu's motto. We saw Suiryu thinking hard about how best to handle the odious mission he'd been given, and this is his solution. Rather than deal with the difficult task of finding a way to be in charge of his squad while not arresting Garou, he's chosen to stay away and avoid the situation altogether. Sooner or later, he'll find out that the one thing a hero cannot do is duck things just because they're difficult and it goes ESPECIALLY for moral challenges. There's a reason the HA culls people who are merely strong.

Running away from taking unpopular moral stances is very unheroic. Suiryu has a long way to go yet.

A more obvious kind of avoidance is on display from Suiryu's squad. "Tell it to the monster, not me," is Saitama's retort to anyone who wants to challenge him. If you want to challenge a hero on the basis of being as strong, tough, skilled, or whatever, don't hassle the hero: try your hand at their burden. It goes both ways for Saitama: the only time he's actually struck Genos was over the latter misusing his parts to fight Sonic. I mention this because it's incredibly appropriate that a bunch of people calling themselves heroes should be given the opportunity to do hero work rather than try beating up a civilian.

From the looks of it, they've failed already. Someone save them! But not too soon!

Chickenshits.

Once a nerd, always a nerd

Speaking of old habits, it's totally unsurprising to see Garou laugh with excitement when he recognises Mad Devil Yankee. Even from his Hero Hunter days, Garou would get a huge grin of excitement whenever he met a strong hero. Whether he's prepared to admit it, he's long been deeply interested in heroes and what they do.

He's always laughed: he gets so excited when he spots heroes.

If they won't join you, beat them (or worse)

At first I had thought that Bang had followed Garou to see if he was settling in ok. From the sounds of it, Garou is no longer the 'new guy' on the crew, so Bang following comes from another concern; something about the Neo Hero scouts must have awoken a bad feeling in him. And he was right to have acted on it: at the very least, he's a witness to what skulduggery they're up to.

He may not be the wisest old man, but his instincts were spot on today.

Given that the squad came out with tranquilizers, it seems that capturing Garou alive is a goal. Arrest? Kidnapping, more like. While they could just as easily send a squad to try ambushing Bang, they're picking on Garou because they have a better pretext. As Sicchi surmised, many pro-heroes would think that Garou had gotten off too lightly, to say nothing of the wider public. Claiming to be punishing impunity is a line that the Neo Heroes are hoping will sell well.

It's bullshit, of course, but bullshit seems to be the flavour of the moment.

The road to rehab is not short

Punishment vs. Suffering

"Punishment should be punishing," is a memorable line from Dr. Ian Dunbar, a animal behaviourist. By this, he doesn't mean that one should beat the tar out of one's pet but rather, that one should ensure that the goal of punishing a behaviour actually results in fewer repetitions of the behaviour. That's what punishment is: an outcome that makes the repeat of a behaviour less likely. It doesn't necessarily have to look like something bad happening -- losing out on something good can be excruciating. It can even look like having a better alternative to the undesirable behaviour. To keep this section clean, I'm going to use the term penalty to mean the things we do to people who have transgressed against some social or legal norm to express our disapproval and hope that it results in their not repeating that transgression. Whether via fines, loss of privileges, freedom, even one's very life, penalties are intended to punish. That they often don't, well, let's go into that.

The idea of effective punishment is not concerned with whether or not the punished one suffers but rather with whether or not one does the offending behaviour again. To that end, the rehabilitation programme that is offering Garou and Shinya a way back to society without the burden of a criminal record is effective punishment. They both want to do better and this is a road for them. This is actually well-grounded IRL: rehabilitation programmes, despite frequently being spotty and opposed, result in significant drops in recidivism and people who pass through them are significantly more likely to do better in life (Mehari et al., 2024).

Indeed, if you are reading One-Punch Man closely, you will realise that this is a world fond of typecasting people. Shinya and Garou alike have despaired of being accepted as good people. Shinya felt that being asked to participate in hero gambling was his punishment for daring to admire and try to emulate real heroes. And who can forget Garou bitterly noting that to be a hero one needs the acceptance of others, meaning that he was effectively locked out of becoming one?

Counsels of despair.

A bit further into the webcomic, we learn that the lifelong discrimination against people with a criminal record is why the prisoners assigned to Puri Puri Prisoners refuse to learn how to fight monsters. What's the point of risking their lives to help people who will always reject them and treat them coldly? It's a problem we can recognise IRL and is very present in OPM-world. As Saitama put it when seeing Hammerhead, take one wrong turn and you end up in hell -- that could so easily have been him.

Saitama is not one of life's great philosophers but his ability to go there but for the grace of God go I stands him in wonderful stead.

The idea that punishment must involve suffering is deeply ingrained in the popular imagination, so I'm sure that for many, seeing Garou laughing is jarring. More on that later.

Shoulder-to-shoulder

I am yet to get round to writing about ONE as a masculinist writer, and maybe I never will, but his ability to take an authentic and compassionate look at what being a man is like is one that is much needed.

The way the rehabilitation programme in the story is structured reminds me of the Men's Sheds movement (link to Wiki). It is a movement for helping men with mental and physical health problems by giving them something productive to do together and providing peer-to-peer support while doing so. Its founder notes that 'Men don't talk face-to-face. They talk shoulder-to-shoulder.' And that's exactly what we see Garou do when he advises Shinya to go back to hero work -- not looking at him but instead staring into the middle distance and apparently talking to the air in front of him.

There is also something here that is valuable: when you're advising someone who is even a little earlier on in a journey you're taking, you reflect on your own experiences and learn as well. There's a reason 'see one, do one, teach one' is equally valuable in clinical settings and the military. We know that Saitama didn't shut Garou up and he's still been playing with the flawed logic that got him in trouble in the first place. So by having to reflect what he actually thinks is useful to someone else, he's also sorting through what actually makes sense to do.

This conversation is the beginning of Garou discarding his old childish ways of thinking.

Everything we're seeing in that little truck is well-established, well-tested and successful psychology on how to put people back on the right track. But it doesn't look like suffering. IRL, that fact blocks a lot of rehabilitation schemes. There is an evil part of us that wants to see downcast expressions, hear the clank of chain gangs, see people miserable, isolated, and in material want for their crimes. Even though we know it often doesn't work and costs more.

Once you start running, it's hard to stop

Webcomic Garou is suffering, but he's not becoming more mature, and nor is there an end to it. He has run away from justice -- he was running for his life, so who can blame him? -- so he can't be given a sentence that can be served. Manga Garou also ran away, but fortunately, Bang cared enough to get him and persuade him to turn himself in, an act that mitigated the possible penalties that could be assessed against him. Webcomic Garou has had no one reach out to him and currently, he's condemned to a life on the periphery of society, unable to get housing, or education, or a regular (as in subject to legal protections) job. If being an ex-convict is hard, being a fugitive is much worse. If he's lucky, the current robot uprising will give him an opportunity to get an amnesty from whatever he's been sentenced to in absentia.

Even though manga Garou is in great spirits, the part-time job he has for rehab is still a sentence. He can't leave the job without facing possible imprisonment -- unless he's released from his obligations early. We don't know how long it is going to last nor what else he's required to do. But at least he has a road forward, not a roadblock. I am hoping Webcomic Garou gets that roadblock removed.

Wrap up

Whew! I knew I had a bit to say but this was quite a mouthful. Yes, there will be fighting. I'm really hoping that this won't derail Garou into the worst of his thoughts. I'm glad Bang is here -- even if he doesn't intervene, he'll be able to talk Garou down if need be.

References

Mehari KR, Morgan S, Stevens LT, Coleman JN, Schuler K, Graves C, Lindsey DRB, Smith PN. Mixed methods evaluation of a jail diversion program: Impact on arrests and functioning. J Community Psychol. 2024 May;52(4):551-573. doi: 10.1002/jcop.23113. Epub 2024 Mar 16. PMID: 38491998.