By Dustin Cabeal

I have one gripe with this volume of One-Punch Man. There’s a lot of filler at the end of the volume. Granted it’s still entertaining and well-illustrated, but it’s not what I’m here for. It feels like Viz trying to pad the pages so that they can get a few extra volumes squeezed into the run. The “Bonus Manga” ends up being just over a fourth of the volume. Add that to the fact that the rest of the volume is split between Saitama, the baseball bat guy, and the current Human Monster bad guy, and it starts to feel stretched.

The parts that do continue the storyline of the Human Monster are fantastic. It’s so good that you just want more and more of it. This wouldn’t be so bad if the rest were just as entertaining and good story wise. If you can distract the reader with two stories that are both good and drawn out, then that’s great. If one of them is weaker, though, it’ll only be highlighted when you make the switch back and forth, and that’s what happens here.

Frankly, writer One hasn’t developed the rest of the heroes enough to hold the story on their own. Personally, I don’t think he should, but if he is going to, it’s better to go the King route and include Saitama in the development. It worked for Genos as well, but when you remove Saitama you remove interest as well.

Even though I didn’t love the filler stories, I did enjoy seeing Tornado’s sister again. She does add to the story, and it would be nice to see her be included in the main story rather than secondary stories since she has more personality and development than much of the characters used in the main plotline.

The art, of course, is immaculate. It elevates the story for sure, and you can easily be distracted by the weaknesses in the story because of it. If I had written this review after just finishing reading the volume, I would have scored it higher just because of the art. Artist Yusuke Murata amazes me the more I see his work and seeing his work makes me want to see more of his work. If One-Punch Man ever ends, I will follow Murata to anything else he works on. Even coasters for gift shops.

While this is the weakest volume of One-Punch Man thus far, it’s still a hell of a book to read. I would take this volume over the vast majority of American superhero comics out there and quite a few other mangas. It’s entertaining; it’s beautiful, and it’ll continue to be both for a long time.

Score: 3/5

One-Punch Man vol. 10
Writer: One
Artist: Yusuke Murata
Publisher: Viz Medi