One Punch Man is a popular Japanese superhero manga created by One. It revolves around Saitama, a superhero who becomes bored because he can defeat any opponent with just one punch. The original webcomic manga was created by Tomohiro, also known by his pseudonym ‘ONE,’ in early 2009.
Saitama defeats all his enemies with one punch and makes fun of them. Even though it might seem boring, this anime is really successful.
Despite this success and the manga making the illustrator of the manga $15 million richer, the creator of One-Punch Man had major insecurities about becoming a manga artist.
Also Read: “I was a fan of…”: The Creator Has an Unlikely Inspiration for One Punch Man
One-Punch Man Creator’s Unexpected Insecurities Despite Success
In a 2012 interview (shared by the One Punch Man Fandom) with the creator of One Punch Man, ONE (Tomohiro), he revealed that his childhood love for Crayon Shin-chan inspired him to create a new manga. He embarked on his journey to become a mangaka during his high school years, where he started making his own manga.
However, he faced many challenges at the start, and he even felt insecure about pursuing his dream of manga creation. He said:
“I kept drawing manga from grade school onward, but never told anyone else about it, not even once. In grade school everyone else was into soccer or whatever video games were popular at the time, so I guess I was afraid of looking uncool if I drew manga. From middle school to college, I’d have friends who read manga, but didn’t know anybody who drew manga themselves, so I felt embarrassed about it.
He continued:
“In the end, I went my entire student life without showing my manga to anyone or even telling people that I drew manga. But then, my parents got angry at me a few times when they found out I had drawn a gag manga called Middle-Aged-Man Man in my notebooks. In fact, I filled up about 50 notebooks just with manga. But what hurt the most wasn’t getting chewed out for goofing off. Rather, it was having something I loved to do be rejected.”
The manga artist explained that throughout his student life, he never showed his manga to anyone or even mentioned that he drew manga. He said that what hurt the most wasn’t being scolded for killing or wasting time but rather the feeling of having something they loved rejected by others.
The Creator Revealed How He Started Making One Punch Man
The mangaka also mentioned that he faced numerous challenges not only during high school but also after that, especially in college. He said:
“Afterwards, I decided that instead of getting made fun of or rejected and losing my motivation, it was better to just not show anybody, and so I kept on drawing manga all by myself. Although having said that, it also felt really fun to store up so much “forbidden fruit” inside my notebooks. Back then I only drew manga about my crazy ideas, and never copied anything from real life. I think if I had drawn things from life back then, I’d probably be a lot better at drawing today…”
He further added:
“Even in college things didn’t really change; the manga clubs and whatnot just didn’t feel right, so I didn’t enter them. And then I thought maybe there were other people out there in the same boat I was, so since I didn’t have a laptop at the time, I went searching for “aspiring manga artists” on mobile phone sites. This was what led me to encounter webcomics for the first time.”
The creator explained that things were the same in college too. Instead, he thought that there might be others facing the same situation as him. Since he didn’t have a laptop at the time, he used his mobile phone to search for “aspiring manga artists,” and this search eventually led him to discover webcomics for the first time.
Source: One Punch Man Fandom
