Information in OPM: Frameworks
Shit that happens in One-Punch Man may be fanciful, but one thing ONE does not joke with: information. He is as strict on it as any police procedural: who knows what, when, where, why, and how? What do they make if it? Why? What will they do with it? What happens as a result?
I have many things I could say about it, but as I’ve been saying, life isn’t affording me the time for long essays. I’ll keep it short and focus on one aspect, the what do characters make of a given piece of information? Something ONE is very aware of is that WE DON’T LEARN FROM DATA. It’s not information without a framework. Scientists will formalise that framework as a paradigm but we all have a certain set of assumptions and a framing story within which we have expectations of the world and which influence our understanding of whatever we perceive. I don’t want to get distracted into the importance of framing, which is the lifeblood of politics, advertising, and any field where persuasion is important. Just framework.
Take this security camera footage, which has been reviewed by the Hero Association security guards, Dr Bofoi, and Amai Mask. We get three very different responses, based on their frames of reference.
The security guards aren’t stupid, and to their credit, they are at least considering alternative possibilities, but they have no basis to understand how reliable or how strong the newly-installed robots are. The robots don’t have a track record yet. Their impression of Metal Knight is that he’s an arrogant braggart, so they’re primed to think that he’s over-promised.
They have no basis to understand who Saitama is -- and Saitama acts too fast for them to see that he’s the one responsible for destroying the robots. As far as they’re concerned, the witness statement (from none other than the great King, who they do understand to be an exceptional hero) that the robots just blew up is as good a working theory as any. At least until there’s more information to contradict it.
Metal Knight sees the footage differently, of course. He has the background of knowing just how strong his robots are and how extensively he has tested them. On that basis, he’s able to understand that there’s no chance they spontaneously blew up and infer that the causative agent is this Saitama guy. A guy he’d be well -advised to watch carefully.
Whatever one may think about Genos, he gave Amai Mask the framework to understand what he was seeing. Saitama is not just strong, he said, he’s crazily strong beyond any logical understanding you may have. His being prepared to take Genos’s words on board is founded on his frame of reference about Genos: as an extremely serious and credible hero, who would not have taken the time to speak of Saitama so without good cause.
Because of that, when Amai Mask sees Saitama standing before a robot, the robot taking a swing, an explosion and then Saitama still standing there, he doesn’t think ‘oh, malfunctioning robot’ but ‘damn, this guy is for real.’
A man can make no better decision than the information it is based on, to paraphrase a Conan Doyle character.
And that information is itself based on his frame of reference. This becomes extremely important when information is not complete WHICH IT USUALLY ISN’T. We, the readers, are the only ones who were given a view of Saitama hitting the robots: it happened too fast and there was too much smoke and debris occluding the field of view for anyone seeing the security camera footage to see that.
So often in reading/watching fan responses to the story, it’s clear that many readers don’t take into account how drastically what characters already know and believe to be true affects the way they understand any new information presented to them. Makes for some really daft takes, doubly so when readers don’t realise that sometimes, it’s *us* who don’t get given the full picture.
ONE’s wonderful understanding of the importance of frameworks allows him to let people misunderstand situations without having to be stupid. It’s also an excellent way to give us insight into who various characters are without having to stop the story for it. And of course, it helps make the things the characters actually do as a result of that understanding that bit more interesting.
