One-Punch Man’s Mysterious Hero Puts a Creepy Twist on My Hero Academia

Spoilers for One-Punch Man chapter 157 ahead!

One of the most questionable heroes in One-Punch Man to date (aside from problematic ones like Puri Puri Prisoner and Blackluster) has been Pig God, a morbidly obese man whose power set really wasn’t all that clear. Always shown eating when not in combat, Pig God is still a friendly and caring guy; chapter 157, however, has revealed that his massive bulk has a twisted little origin that might cause similar characters like My Hero Academia‘s Fat Gum to recoil in horror.

Despite being Class S, Rank 10, Pig God is one of the more mysterious characters in One-Punch Man. Even official character guides have obscured his statistics in a way that other heroes haven’t been, and the character himself, like Saitama, doesn’t seem to truly know the source of his powers. While super speed and strength are relatively common in the world of One-Punch, truly inexplicable powers, like Zombieman’s revival ability, Tornado’s psychic powers, or Pig God’s insatiable hunger, are pretty rare. Pig God has been shown devouring monsters before, which are depicted as awful tasting at best and vomit-inducing at worst, and the monster’s mass is almost irrelevant outside of taking more time. Eating even a single monster cell was enough to transform some humans into monsters, while an entire monster’s body leaves Pig God totally unfazed. He’s also able to regurgitate what he’s swallowed, which was disturbingly used earlier in the Monster Association arc to save some of the nameless mercenaries sent in before the heroes.

Chapter 157 opens with Amai Mask waking up to see a thin stranger sitting nearby in the middle of this battlefield, in a massively oversized shirt that matches Pig God’s. The battle has apparently worn him down so that his size is barely different from that of an ordinary man. This is similar to how the character of Fat Gum in My Hero Academia operates: his “fat reserves” act as a fuel source in battle, so keeping bulked up at all times means having more power to work with in a fight. As a consequence, when rough fights end, Fat Gum is often back to an average size, or possibly even exceedingly fit, with the low body fat percentage highlighting the muscles that are always present. For Fat Gum, that usually means the end of his time in the battle; after all, it can take a while to put on the weight again.

Pig God, however, has a different way of dealing with this problem: as he’s sitting there in his average-sized body, he slowly eats the corpse of a monster bit by bit. It proves a few shocking things about his powers, with the most prominent being that he wasn’t relying on his size to devour such huge creatures. Additionally, it indicates that eating now is still going to be helpful in the moment–that he’ll be able to bulk up quickly enough to help further. It also seems that some of his mass may have been redirected by Fubuki into saving Tanktop Master’s life, as Tanktop Master was shown to be much fatter when he reappeared.

While One-Punch Man‘s preference for monster villains over human ones definitely makes it a little better than if My Hero Academia’s Fat Gum were to do the same thing, it’s still a fairly dark take on the moderately common “obesity superpower” trope that crops up in comics and manga from time to time. Hopefully, Amai Mask’s powerful feelings about beauty don’t come up as the two return to the battle, because Pig God’s horrifying display could very well cause some heroic in-fighting.

About The Author

Carlyle Edmundson
(233 Articles Published)

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Carlyle Edmundson is a news and features writer with an affinity for science fiction and fantasy. He graduated from the University of North Carolina Wilmington with a BS in Film Studies and is glad that it’s relevant to his work. A lifelong fan of anime and manga, he has attended dozens of conventions over the years and may or may not have cosplayed at them. He is also the author of the Dystopian Detective series, available from most places ebooks are sold.

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