‘One Punch Man’s New Chapter Is An Actual Beast

Warning! Spoilers for Chapter 131 of One Punch Man below!

If you’ve been waiting on the next season of One Punch Man, the latest chapter of the manga should get your attention.

At over 130 pages, Chapter 131 is the most massive chapter in the series to date. One Punch Man illustrator Yusuke Murata released a transcript of the chapter, and the huge stack is an unforeseen amount of work from Murata and series creator ONE.

Chapter 131 picks up right where the last chapter left off with Bang squaring off against his former disciple Garou after Garou had just been weakened by a fight with a number of A Class heroes. The fight is not only impressively drawn, but even injects story into it by flashing back to Garou’s past of dealing with kids bullying him for often siding with monsters in stories.

After their fight comes to an end, however, the Monster Association’s plan kicks into action as they kidnap the injured Garou before Bang can finish him off. Despite Garou’s pleas to keep fighting, he’s carried off by a bird monster who wants to take him to the Monster King, Orochi to try and talk him into becoming a monster too.

Suddenly, the Elder Centipede shows up once again as Bang, his brother Bomb, and Genos fight back in various with multiple two panel layouts demonstrating their and the Elder Centipede’s power.

The main crux of the chapter sees Genos fighting the Elder Centipede and going through a crisis of confidence and power after failing to defeat Gouketsu in the chapters before. Luckily for the three of them, Saitama eventually shows up and delivers the best Serious Series: Serious Punch in the series to date with several pages dedicated to the Elder Centipede’s body exploding and reacting to Saitama’s punch.

For those unfamiliar with One Punch Man, the series follows Saitama, a regular working Joe who one day puts a stop to a violent villain attack. After this fight Saitama is inspired to become a hero. Training his body hard everyday, he’s eventually granted with extreme strength. Looking for a worthy opponent, Saitama joins the Hero Association in the hopes of fighting them. But every fight he gets into ends after a single punch! Forced to wander through life increasingly bored of his supreme power, Saitama has become hilariously disconnected with the world of action around him.

One Punch Man started life as a webcomic by series creator ONE in 2009. After going viral, surpassing seven million hits in June 2012, illustrator Yusuke Murata approached ONE about redrawing the series for a release in Shuiesha’s Weekly Young Jump spin-off webcomics. Thirteen volumes of the series have been released as of this date.

VIZ Media bought the rights to distribute the manga in English, and the series was later adapted into a 12 episode anime series from Madhouse. The series first aired in Japan in 2015, and later debuted its English language broadcast on Adult Swim’s Toonami block in 2016. A second season of the series is currently in the works.