scary senpai

It’s not secret that I miss Murata’s streams so much.  I was looking through a Twitter feed for some references and found quite a few unexpected gems, the first of which I’m sharing here. @mgn_13 has translated so many gems I’d not previously seen.

All images are from the thread in question: https://twitter.com/_mgn_13/status/1006590956554993664  which covers part of Murata’s stream from 11 June 2018.

I couldn’t help but smile at Murata changing  hairstyle a bit to make him look more fierce.

But I completely lost it at Murata describing this upgrade as Genos’s chuunibyo phase, that phase most teenagers go through when they either have delusions of grandeur or think themselves special and not like everyone else.   So many of us have been wondering why such a radical and over-complicated design:

Of course it’s weird and different from anything else that came before.  The doctor let Genos tell him what he wanted.  And then did it.  Just imagining the instructions kills me.  I’d tried to sketch them out in stick-figure format, but I nearly died of the cringe-worthiness, don’t ask me for them.

1. Arm blades, cool.  More blades, cooler!

2. Jet Drive Arrow, awesome.  Ending up naked, not awesome. I shall furnish you with the clothes I will wear to battle tomorrow for you to make appropriate adjustments. 

3. I am tired of monsters trying to ambush me.  Instead I want to ambush them.  I would like a weapon that allows me to kill them without turning round.

4.  MORE BATTLE POWER.

The result looks like the over-the-top uebermensch that teenage boys like to imagine, only Genos really does have super powers.  Some things don’t change.  At 19, he should have grown out of it, but his social and emotional development has gotten a little… interrupted, shall we say?  The more reasonable part of Genos is bothered that he has troubled the doctor.  The less reasonable part of him is telling him to shut up and enjoy the power. 

No sympathy from me for the enabler-in-chief though. Dr Kuseno may be aghast at the reckless abomination he’s created but asking ‘what do you want’ is not an obligation to implement every damn-fool idea the boy comes up with.  Although I must admit that some of the implementations have been pretty damn awesome.

allegedly the adult in the room. not doing too well at it.

crossposting from bsky - glad I stopped using spotify when I did and that I unlinked it from my discord, but still

on one hand you have batarou being them and garou enhancing all of badd's chaos impulses, leading to genos being pursued by a pair of smitten but idiot goblins who probably aren't taking the time to spell out exactly what they want, leaving him confused as to why two of his friends who seemed very happy in their relationship are suddenly trying to sleep with him (maybe?). and who is genos going to ask for advice? saitama. how is that going to go? poorly. hell, saitama might even get it right like "maybe they both wanna date you" but genos thinks that's crazy because they have each other why would they want him? and no one is talking to each other because no one has a brain cell until saitama gets tired of genos' moping and locks them in a room together.

then of course there's badd/genos, who might have gotten together pre-hero hunter arc due to hanging out because badd was just excited there was another guy his age and feelings happened, both trying to court garou post ma-arc without triggering him to start breaking heroes in half again. meanwhile garou is paranoid af to have a pair of s class heroes around all the time, especially because one of them is saitama's student, and why are they being nice to him and touchy and he trusts nothing but it's kinda nice at the same time. genos probably tried to explain but either over complicates it or phrases their intentions totally wrong.

I am probably the only person on the planet who was Garou x Genos OTP. But what’s better that an OTP? OT3. (Or OT4 if you count Garou x Genos x Platonic!Saitama).

You could have Garou x Genos trying to pull Badd only to have Saitama accidentally stepping in (with the best of intentions) to make everything worse. Like…. Interrupting a subtle attempt at Date Night and assuming they are all having a traditional high school sleepover and stealing their snacks. Which makes it hard for Badd to read signals or make a move because of this fourth wheel…

on one hand you have batarou being them and garou enhancing all of badd's chaos impulses, leading to genos being pursued by a pair of smitten but idiot goblins who probably aren't taking the time to spell out exactly what they want, leaving him confused as to why two of his friends who seemed very happy in their relationship are suddenly trying to sleep with him (maybe?). and who is genos going to ask for advice? saitama. how is that going to go? poorly. hell, saitama might even get it right like "maybe they both wanna date you" but genos thinks that's crazy because they have each other why would they want him? and no one is talking to each other because no one has a brain cell until saitama gets tired of genos' moping and locks them in a room together.

then of course there's badd/genos, who might have gotten together pre-hero hunter arc due to hanging out because badd was just excited there was another guy his age and feelings happened, both trying to court garou post ma-arc without triggering him to start breaking heroes in half again. meanwhile garou is paranoid af to have a pair of s class heroes around all the time, especially because one of them is saitama's student, and why are they being nice to him and touchy and he trusts nothing but it's kinda nice at the same time. genos probably tried to explain but either over complicates it or phrases their intentions totally wrong.

I am probably the only person on the planet who was Garou x Genos OTP. But what’s better that an OTP? OT3. (Or OT4 if you count Garou x Genos x Platonic!Saitama).

You could have Garou x Genos trying to pull Badd only to have Saitama accidentally stepping in (with the best of intentions) to make everything worse. Like…. Interrupting a subtle attempt at Date Night and assuming they are all having a traditional high school sleepover and stealing their snacks. Which makes it hard for Badd to read signals or make a move because of this fourth wheel…

Just ONE and Murata stuff.

Although I'll take this as consolation, ONE, you still owe me!

I posted this a few months ago on r/onepunchfans but don't think I put it here. Rectifying that now.

Have you ever wondered about the discrepancy between the number of issues the manga claims to have sold (34 million copies as of volume 33) and the number that are reported to sell via Omicron?

Firing on all cylinders, apparently.

Or is it fading away?

Well, as you are no doubt aware, the manga sales publicly reported represent only the printed sales. Digital sales aren't publicly available. But they are collected.

My company has a subscription to Statista, and I had a wee bit of a shufti at the Japanese manga market. I'm going to put up two charts describing sales from 2015--2024.

First, manga is in rude health in Japan, with sales strongly growing over the last decade, with the value of sales nearly doubling. It should be noted that inflation in Japan is extremely low, with a mean annual rate of 1.14% in this period (source).

Secondly, this growth in sales has increasingly moved online with digital sales accounting for two-thirds of the value. Digital sales have increased nearly fivefold.

And, yes, there has been a corresponding slump in physical sales.

What does this mean? Since the publishers love to sell digital copies at the same cost as physical ones (shame on them), it means that in 2015, for every manga issue sold online, three were sold in stores. As of 2024, that was nearly flipped: for every issue sold in stores, 2.5 were sold online. On average.

For One-Punch Man, which has been an online-first title from the get-go and thus has no first-pass physical sales as part of a magazine (e.g., One Piece), what the discrepancy between physical sales figures (approx 200,000 per volume) and total sales figures (approximately 1 million per volume) mean is that it's selling 4 digital copies for every physical copy sold. That's not unreasonable for a digital title!

Edit: It worked for me!

I received wonderful news about my health not even a day after, and was able to see my friends again after not being able to hug or high-five them for a month.

I am in desperate need of luck, my insta got hacked and I am in “superstitious mode” rn while trying everything to get it back. SO!!

MAGIC BAGEL!!!

BLESS MEEEE!!!

WANPANMAS CHRISTMAS COUNTDOWN

A worldwide holiday event following a prompt list for fic, art, or other creative work! All ships are welcome. Please tag your ship and #wanpanmas2025. NSFW is allowed, but please censor for posting on Tumblr/Twitter, or link to a site that allows NSFW.

The event starts on December 19th and continues until the 25th, but late submissions are welcome until January 1st!

PROMPT LIST 12/19: Chilly 20: Going home 21: Snow 22: Friends 23: Peppermint 24: Christmas wish 25: Open/free

If anyone has a character / pairing / scenario they want to see, send me a DM! I keep these fics PG 13 at most, mostly because of the swearing.

For feasibility reasons, I try to keep these short and sweet (about 1,000 - 3,000 words?).

When I’m writing for myself, I’ll try to take the prompts in unexpected directions (like S-Class heroes accidentally-on-purpose burning the Gävle goat, or Saitama unapologetically eating strategically placed mistletoe), but I’m always open to trying new things.

... I think the world is ending, Sensei

It's so fun to redraw panels of Garou, I need to do more hehe 🤭