A Grand Prize for the Grandest Punches! Onepunch-man Nominated for the Manga Taisho!

The Manga Taisho is an annual manga award that stared back in 2008. A nonstandard amount of manga for that year are selected as nominees, and the winner holds their position as King of the Comics until the following award like a Beauty Queen pageant. And who better to win a beauty contest than the combined effort of Yusuke Murata and ONE that both continues to wow with it’s stellar artwork and fun writing and managed to give me a manga author whose works I can read without having to second guess myself.

Onepunch-man, specifically the Murata redraw version as you’d expect, it one of this year’s 10 nominees for the Manga Taisho, or Cartoon Grand Prize. It’s competition are as follows:

Ajin
Ashizuri Aquarium
A Bride’s Story
Sakamoto Desu Ga?
Goodbye, Tama-chan
Juuhan Shuttai
The Seven Deadly Sins
Terrarium in a Drawer
Boku Dake ga Inai Machi

I couldn’t find anything on Ashizuri Aquarium unfortunately. One of the previous winners of the prize was the very good Silver Spoon, and I read some of Sakamoto Desu Ga? in a bygone age and it’s actually all right, so this prize is the sort of thing you can put some stock into. I hope there’s some good news in this fandom’s future.

(Original story from the official Manga Taisho website.)

Number Onerank-man!

As the year comes to a close, it becomes time for news sites, review sites, and what have you to start throwing their Best Of lists in our faces. How much stock you like to put into those varies by person, but it’s always nice to see someone with publishing power backing you up. OtonaFami, Otona means “Adult” but I’m not sure what the Fami means, has brought out their Top 50 Manga of 2013, and standing at the top of that list is a bald guy who accidentally wandered up here looking for the coupon that fell out of his pocket.

Onepunch-man has been voted OtonaFami‘s Number 1 of the Top 50 manga of 2013. This is list that includes the breakout super hits of Attack on Titan (#4) and Assassination Classroom (#6) and the super pedigree and very well done Silver Spoon (#22.) Those little crude, if well laid out, doodles turned works of modern art master have taken this little story quite far. Now all we have to do is clone ONE so he can write this and Mob Psycho 100 at a decent pace at the same time.

“Maybe I Should Just Update All the Art…” Cannonball 1 and all the Murata Products You Could Want

Yusuke Murata, a man whose art I hope you’ve come to know and love by now, has helped to create and joined a Circle called Cannonball to release some new works. He’s working alongside three others I’ve never heard of and can only find information that links back to this very book, but there are samples of their work for this collection (1, 2, 3.) I’m not sure what the art in those pictures means for the stories they’re doing, but Murata himself will be doing a Momotaro story.

It’s been quite a while, but I don’t know if that’s a character from Momotaro, so when I say he’s doing a Momotaro story, I may mean that he’s using the character and making up whatever he feels like. If you’re interested, the book itself will launch on the 20th from MelonBooks. Fair warning, MelonBooks has an 18+ warning, but that link shouldn’t lead you to anything suspect. Be careful all the same.

However, if you’re interested in Murata’s works themselves as relate to OPM, you should follow this link to MelonBooks. That link will take you to the Murata tag where you can get all the OPM tankobans, including the 4th one with Bang on the cover that I can’t even find on Japanese Amazon, the other oneshot by him and ONE that I haven’t seen a translation for “Kaiju of the Earth,” and the t-shirt version of Saitama’s “OPPAI” hoodie. Don’t know a lot about how this place handles international shipping, but if you’ve been aching for that boob shirt, now you’ve got a place to start.

Onepunch-Man 37 Scanned

Just letting you know that the new one is out in English. I said before that you can probably use the anonymous translation done for the ONE version, but this one actually contains a different translation. The material is same, of course, but the language has adjusted to be just a bit less clunky. For example, Tatsumaki/Tornado:

Instead of “It’s unpleasant! Disappear!” Both translations are fine, but now you can pick your language flow preference.

It hasn’t been uploaded to Batoto yet, so you’ll have to read it on the Picasa gallery.

I Appreciate Your New Designs, but when I Draw Nipples, They Stay

Slow day, so I’m digging around on Naver and decided to try OPM instead of JoJo’s or Titan this time. Man, did that pay off. Did you ever think that Yusuke Murata might be a really good artist?

Because I ran across a gallery that someone compiled of a point by point comparison of the two versions. It’s not every little detail, but major panels like this where a character is introduced or something cool happens.

Some of them are good.

And some of them are outright incredible. If I didn’t already know these are supposed to be the same design, I don’t know that I’d ever draw the comparison. I wonder what it’s like for Murata to be on the other side of this equation, as opposed to when he submitted doodles to Capcom that would eventually become Dust Man. Then again, considering his talent, I could see those kid submissions being on the Capcom concept art level back then.

Check out the whole gallery. Comparing the two one after the other is fine, but seeing the two versions side-by-side may really stun you.

Onepunch-Man 36 Raws

The wait is over for original content. Issue 36 is another original work chapter for the redraw not present in the original ONE webcomic. It’s a little bridge between the end of the Sea Folk arc and the next major arc. It starts off with Genos and Saitama getting an airdrop of letters from the public. Genos gets fan letters, Saitama gets blasted for how he’s now perceived after what he said. But for all the bad things that can be said:

Letter: “Hero Saitama, Thank You!!”

Sometimes something good gets through.

The chapter is mostly about Saitama’s current standing within the Association and his potential promotion. He spends a little under half the chapter, 8 pages out of 19, at the main building in an interview to see how to handle him. There’s difficulties and things about factions within the various ranks. But we can put that on hold.

Sometimes real heroes just have to sit back and relax.

Check out the full raw over on Tonarinoyj. If we’re lucky, we can expect a translation later today.

Onepunch-Man 35 Plus

The last OPM was just shy of catching up to the ONE original translation. We got to see the Sea King go down, but we didn’t see the aftermath. A little redraw later, and we’re officially caught up with the two halves joining together at the end of this arc. Murata’s redraw is from the bottom up including Saitama’s attack against the Sea King. It’s much less flashy now, but it is no less incredible. The detail of the invisible shockwave using only the rain and surrounding buildings is absolutely beautiful. Saitama is no less awesome in his punch with a little more subtlety.

And his handling of the aftermath is pretty great too.

You can read the whole chapter either in the Picasa gallery or on Batoto. See you either in the ONE versions or in the next redraw.

Onepunch-Man 35 Raws (And Now Scans)

The death match, or more appropriately sea creature beat down, is about to begin. It’s short. If you count spreads as two pages, it’s only 11, but it’s not like normal where the chapter feels like it’s being cut short. No, this is a completely appropriate length for what happens. I won’t post many pictures, but I will tell you

The punch has been made fun of,

And the crown is off.

You can check out the whole raw at Tonarinoyj. Since this isn’t very long, you can probably expect the translation later today.

Edit: Just like that. Still don’t want to show you what happens, so if you’re looking for the translation, head over either to the Picasa Gallery or Batoto.

Somewhere, Somehow, I’ve Been The Hero This Whole Time. Heroes of Fury.

Imagine yourself in a Super Nintendo RPG. The world is rich with swords and sorcery. Monsters and demons roam the land freely. You, a simple wayfarer, wander the land in search of adventure, traveling to far off countries somewhere. One day, you somehow find yourself faced with the most traditional of quests.

Finally, a chance for your quest to really begin. You’ve been leveling up, gathered the good starter equipment. You’re all set to go. And who knows? You might be a Legendary Hero. Those prophecies crop up all the time, and someone’s got to step into the shoes to smite evil and spread Love and Peace throughout the land. It’ll be a journey fraught with peril and excitement. There’ll probably be an ice level where the blocks you push slide endlessly until they hit a wall, and you can only progress by pushing them in the right order to hold down a switch. It can be taxing, but you’d always do it to rescue the sweet, innocent, beautiful princess of this oppressed land.

I said sweet, innocent, beautiful princess.

That’s better. A Legendary Hero has to have standards, after all.

This is the setting you find yourself in when picking up Dotou no Yuusha-tachi or Heroes of Fury, lovingly translated by Kuroshio no Fansub. As Yusuke Murata never gets enough work with paltry 60 page chapters alone, ONE and he have teamed up to do the one-shot dance again. Last time, we got Dangan Tenshi Fan Club and now we move to dime a dozen medieval fantasy world. Not to say that’s a bad thing. ONE does his best work when taking a standard genre and fucking around with it.

It’s significantly shorter than Dangan Tenshi was at 19 pages, but it packs a fun ride with good jokes and Murata’s spectacular art for the brief moment we get to see it. It might be worth your time just to see the other color page. I can’t really tell you much more without just telling you everything that happens, so go ahead and check it out.

You can read the whole manga here at Batoto.

Onepunch-Man 30 Raws

It’s here. The monster Chapter 30, a bit. The chapter, so far, only equals out to 60 pages. Murata didn’t want to stretch the deadline too hard and decided to upload what he had. Cut him a little slack. 100 pages is a lot of work, and this is 60 pages of concentrated beauty.

Heart Nipple Speedo King of the Sea just out for his walk

He’s really excited to see the new guy, Hero Inazuma Max

And punch him through a building

But this was his greatest folly, because Inazuma Max can now be saved by S Rank Hero Puripuri Prisoner

And also an old friend of ours. (“Wind Cutter Leg!!!”)

You really need to check out these raws. The fight between Puripuri Prisoner and HNS King is awesome. I didn’t do any previews for it because 1: You should see it in full rather than these shrunk down preview snippets, and 2: I wasn’t sure if I wanted to post the parts where Puripuri gets naked to unlock his true potential.

You can check out the whole raw at Tonarinoyj.