Talk:Saitama/@comment-85.73.7.62-20170524105927/@comment-35110640-20170528162222

This comment on a YouTube video sums up the anime really good: Whereas I agree that Saitama and OPM is mainly a joke, a satire, a comedy, I believe it's deeper than that. It's not purely a joke. In fact, I'd say it's an intelligent deconstruction of conflict in stories in general.

Here's what I mean: take 99.9999% of stories that actually have a "good guy" and a "bad guy". In those stories, the conflict is...the good guy vs. the bad guy. Duh. But here's the problem. We all know how this conflict ends. Sure, it may vary in degree; sometimes the good guy dies defeating the bad guy, sometimes the bad guy leaves irreparable damage behind and the victory is bittersweet, sometimes the good guy just blows the bad guy away in a whirl of awesome. But how many stories truly end with "Bad guy wins, good guy dies. The End"? Almost none. Hence OPM jumping the curb in storytelling. ONE is smart enough to know his audience, and basically seems to be saying, "look, we all know how this sort of story ends, so let's just go past that and see what happens." OPM is the story of after the big win. It's the "what now?" story. People who say OPM is boring because it "doesn't have conflict" truly are small-minded, and can't conceive of a story that doesn't follow the exact same conflict pattern that all 56516714695727^16813784 stories before it had. It's truly different. OPM is a gag story that has managed to make me laugh...and darn near cry, and I never feel any such emotions when watching shows that are custom designed to give you the "feels", so predictable are they. OPM, on the other hand, is a triumph of storytelling, and has cemented itself as one of my favorite stories in any medium.