One-Punch Man, Vol. 1

ONE is a Japanese manga writer and artist whose professional biography is, by design, nearly opaque. The pen name communicates minimalism; the decision to work primarily through self-published online comics, rather than through the conventional editorial system, indicates a creator who values direct connection with an audience over institutional support or critical recognition. This approach, unusual in Japanese manga's highly structured professional ecosystem, produced two of the most conceptually original series in contemporary manga.

One Punch Man, which ONE began self-publishing on his personal website in 2009, presented a premise of crystalline satirical clarity: Saitama, an ordinary man, has trained so hard to become a hero that he can defeat any opponent with a single punch. The problem is that this absolute power has drained his life of meaning. There is no challenge left, no fight worth having, no villain who can provide the moment of exertion that makes effort feel worthwhile. He experiences his victories with blank indifference, while the professional heroes around him perform their struggles for an audience that values the performance. The series is simultaneously a parody of the superhero/action genre and a genuinely melancholy character study — the perfect joke that turns out to have something real inside it.

The crude simplicity of ONE's self-published art — which makes no attempt at conventional manga polish — was itself a formal statement: the story's power is entirely conceptual and emotional, requiring no visual sophistication to deliver. Artist Yusuke Murata's redrawing of the series for its official serialization adds visual spectacle to the conceptual framework ONE created, and the collaboration — Murata's extraordinary technical skill in service of ONE's writing — has produced one of manga's most successful partnerships.

Mob Psycho 100, also self-published online beginning in 2012, is ONE's more personal work and, many critics argue, his finest. Shigeo Kageyama — Mob — is a middle school boy of devastating psychic power who desperately wants to be ordinary, to be liked for himself rather than his abilities, to connect with people on human terms. The series uses his situation to explore sincerely — without the satirical distance of One Punch Man — questions about identity, about what we owe to the gifts we have been given, and about the difference between power and worth. Its anime adaptation, produced by Studio Bones, is considered among the finest of its era.