Magpie's Nest

Raw:

Spanish

English

Was thinking about His Yeastiness idly... and then it got a bit bigger. Anyhow, let me try to tell this properly.

Yeah, he's still going on about it. It's going to be fun watching him change his mind.

As we well know, Garou has a problem with heroes, the way they're represented, the way society treats them, and the way people end up being typecast. This *is* about him, but there's a wrinkle: unfortunately for Garou (and all other characters in this story), God has a problem as well.

Now when I say 'God' in this context, don't imagine a numinous, beneficent being ensconced somewhere in a bright Celestial domain, endlessly fanned by fawning angels and taking a personal interest in humans despite being the unitary creator of reality as experienced by said humans. Think something smaller, meaner, and uglier, but far too powerful to take a designation of less than a god, something like a good old-fashioned Near Eastern god. Did I mention that he's ugly? Looks like some over-fermented dough or an extremely enthusiastic tumour pulling in blood vessels willy-nilly, so 'His Yeastiness' is a term I like for him. For the sake of simplicity, 'God' will do. Anyway, I was saying, God has a problem and it comes in the form of a certain prematurely bald man who has become preternaturally strong.

Somehow, everything in this place ends up being Saitama's fault and he's just one little guy.

Actually, God has two problems. It'd be good to smite said baldy directly but unfortunately, He can't act directly on the world. We're not entirely sure why yet but we see that some God-botherers have something to do with keeping Him away from the world. So, God has to act through intermediaries, agents who are sapient beings (usually, but not necessarily human) whom He can invest with His power and hope they act to further His aims -- alas, direct mind-control is not something He appears to be able to do, which will become important later. Actually-actually, God has *three* problems. Getting the right candidate for an agent is challenging enough -- they have to be in the right mindset and with the right intentionality to be useful -- but they can't just be invested with infinite power. As Blast explains in a for-the-moment-redacted scene, the amount of power God can invest in a being depends on how strong that being is in the first place. And when it comes to Saitama, that really is a problem because did we mention he's strong? Like, stupidly strong?

We need this lore re-established sooner rather than later, but yeah, it must suck having to use proxies all the time. Also, I told you this God critter was ugly.

Well, this god ain't called God for nothing. Manufacturing miracles out of apparently disconnected events is a Divine prerogative, and gods can afford to be patient. When Psykos (who was driven mad by same God some years ago) gathered together an insane number of powerful monsters with the intention of breaking the S-Class heroes so as to have a free hand to drive humanity to extinction, we see a certain Someone is watching proceedings with great interest. Just before we see that uncanny eye, we'd been learning about an old prophecy and something about something being reborn once sacrificed on said altar, and had had a bit of a chuckle at Orochi bleeding out on the same altar. Put a pin in that.

I spy with my little eye something beginning with...

Anyway, eventually, God seems to have found what He's looking for. As the battle rages first underground and then overground, He puts a light finger on the balance here and there to give the monsters a bit of a hand but none of the participants are what He's looking for. Finally, Garou emerges. As he is, he's far too weak to be worth approaching. But Garou has a great talent -- he can grow exponentially when pushed hard enough. So, God watches as Garou fights first Bomb, then Bang, then takes out Evil Natural Water and then Platinum Sperm, growing stronger all the time.

...G!

Garou really has become monstrously powerful, but is that enough? Not on your nelly. This is where the webcomic-addled readers expected Garou to take on the S-Class heroes. Leaving aside the fact that most can't even stand, such a confrontation would be worthless -- they're all too weak to give Garou anything remotely like a challenge. It's very appropriate that the webcomic did feature Garou fighting the S-Class, and God DID GIVE GAROU SOME POWER, but all the power Garou was able to take seemed like a cheap costume change to Saitama and he just headbutted it off him. That just won't do to chastise Saitama.

Sometimes, size matters: same characters, same gift, but vastly different outcomes based on Garou's capacity to absorb that gift.

What is a being who needs a crazy-strong agent to do with a potential one that is merely almost crazy-strong? Why give him more challenges of course! We see God take the appearance of Blast as Tatsumaki remembered him to try giving her power, but unfortunately, she's too distrustful to take His hand. Damn.

You have to admit it, there'd have been some nice poetry to a truly monstrous hero.

No problem! Orochi, remember him? Tatsumaki cast him down into the magma pit he used to love bathing in in front of his precious altar gets reborn as Sage Centipede, complete with the same heart and spitting out the very stake that was used to impale him. This deity never met a centipede it didn't like, it seems. Anyway, looks like Sage Centipede is merely a messenger of God rather than a full-blown god like Orochi had hoped, but who is a mere monster to quibble theological points? For extra spice, He raises up Evil Natural Water into Evil Natural Ocean too. Between the two of them, they give Garou a wonderful amount of hell, just what he needs to evolve even further.

Coming along nicely...grow big and strong, little chicken

And then Garou claps eyes on Saitama, and they fight for real. Needless to say, Garou is no match for Saitama, who takes everything he can throw at him with such ease that the dude is laughing at him at times, driving the Hero Hunter into heights of rage I don't think he thought he had the room for. Just as he's out of ideas, Saitama launches him into the sky with a punch that shatters his monster shell, and it's all over for Garou. There's nothing more he can do.

NOW!

And at last, the moment is ripe. Garou is strong enough to invest enough power into to give that baldie a proper whack. Just as importantly, he's finally angry enough to want to make the baldie suffer, and desperate enough to do anything to make it happen. He poses as Bang and reaches out to Garou, and even though He isn't able to impart as much power into his newest agent as He'd have liked because the ever-cheeky and defiant Garou slapped His hand aside rather than take it, it's enough to give that abominable baldie something to remember.

Even a glancing blow was this troublesome.

It's a shame that Saitama didn't remember after everything, but story is still young.

Of course, the way Garou rebelled illustrates the vital limitation of God's power -- He can't actually control his agents. His influence is an accelerant for their desires, not a controller. Once Garou realised the stupidity of his actions, he was able to repurpose God's powers to teach Saitama how to time travel to undo the harm he'd caused. Seizing back His powers He could do, but unless He breaks free and can directly interact with the world, there are real limits to what He can accomplish.

As soon as the seduction of the original promise of His gift is gone, He has no say in what people do with His power.

I don't know what God is going to try next, but He won't be able to get hold of Garou again.

So, this is the ultimate conflict of the story: there's a god and it's got a problem with a man. Specifically, a man named Saitama. Whether it's in the webcomic or manga, this is constant. I would have said that the WC God is slacking but to be fair, the quality of the opposition it had available to raise Garou's level was lacking.

The thing Gyoro-Gyoro said to Garou about the secret to explosive strength holds true: you need situations that drive you to near-death in order to grow, which creates the problem of what happens when there's no longer anyone or anything around you to force you to grow. You stagnate. Writing that made me realise that that's what's so different about Saitama: he continuously gets stronger without opposition.

Deadly opposition may be the secret to exponential growth.

But it doesn't explain Saitama, who needs nothing to just keep getting stronger.

Umm... hang on... give me a moment. A lightbulb just went off.

Well, this analysis is taking a turn. Now I get why God hasn't a problem with any of the other overpowered characters -- they're naturally self-limiting as they defeat all the opposition available to them. Whereas Saitama's strength may accelerate its growth given external circumstances, but he's growing by himself all the time. All the time!

ALL.

THE.

TIME.

Saitama may be a throw hands guy but as we saw with the time travel, there's no kind of power that Saitama cannot acquire if he decides to. There's nowhere he will stop at -- sooner or later, any deity worth calling one will be surpassed by him. I guess that puts God on a time limit: He has to stop Saitama while it's still possible. Why?

Perhaps Garou understands it better than anyone else: it's not right for a human being to become Divine.