Um….. guys….

If google translate and my brains work together well then Flash is having a mental breakdown due to realisation that he. Is. A confirmed. sOfTiE (tm)

(which is especially funny considering how much of a cold-blooded a$$hole he is or seems to be in the webcomic)

It looked better in my head ok 🤡

Woops.

Flashy flash!!

Also I got a dip pen!! I love it sm! Here’s what I made with it!

Here’s before I got the pen!

Hope you enjoy!

Can somebody please explain him that this is not how healthy friendship works 💀💀💀

(process in reblogs)

At your final moments

In a place of free spirits

With no inteference

I did as i promised.

This one...i believe valentine's day outfit that Flash has in that one game but in my style.

This took 10h45! And as always drawn on ibis paint. Im still as normal about Flash.(im not at all♡) im kinda proud of myself ngl :3

Also i just wanted to say, since Murata and ONE are modifying the latest arc of the manga, i hope they'll keep the ninja angst because im so very normal about it. (I dont think anyone could tell😇)

Meta for the Ninja Arc (so far)

I thought about reviewing the chapters 195-202 (fan numbering), but summarising the action was annoying me, so let's just skip to the good stuff! This arc has been a grower: what it lacks in up-front showiness it makes up for in depth once you take the time to reread and think about it. I'm just going to pick up on a few things.

Recontextualisation

I have been thinking a lot about how much what we make of the information we receive depends on what we already understand [1]. I've written a bit about ONE's use of salience within the story. This arc though, I'm going to talk about recontextualisation and how important it is to be able to look back and understand events and even people anew in the light of new information.

This has been a huge thing for Flashy Flash. Many years ago, he and Sonic sneaked into a forbidden section of their village and saw many strange things that made no sense to them at the time. It's only very recently, after hearing about the enemy that is 'God' and Blast's efforts to counter him (chapter 173) that things started to make sense to him.

It's only after seeing Gale Wind and Hellfire Flame, not as monsters, but as the former security guards who had trounced them for trespassing that 'where' he'd seen the cube before came back to Flashy Flash, as did the significance of the sights they'd seen. And then it all started to fall into place, reinforced by his going back to the Village to find it destroyed in what he had now come to recognise as Blast's signature attack pattern.

Of course, Flashy Flash has terminal Main Character Syndrome, so he's tried to organise things so that he's the one who takes down Empty Void and reaps the accolades. It's kinda backfired but we'll come back to that in a bit.

There's another bit of recontextualisation that is not so explicit but I think is just as important. It's clear that the Tenninto were no match for Flash and that he could have killed them any time. It's also been established that Flash has never hesitated to kill anyone who came after him. It's been his policy after all. So what gives in his sudden rush to mercy?

As the chapters have gone on, it's become clear that Flashy Flash has come to see the Tenninto as fellow victims of Evil Void's dehumanising process intended to turn them into potential vessels for 'God'. Something else that Flashy Flash is probably responding to is that rehabilitating Village members was once Sonic's dream, and there's a part of him that would love nothing more than to help make it happen. Of course, if you point that out to him he'll tell you to stop being stupid.

It's amazing but Flash is outraged at the way he and his fellow victims are seen as things to be used, abused, and discarded as Void pleases, and he's looking to get justice for all of them.

Ah yes, Sonic. It's been clear that Sonic has been a much better friend to Flash than he has to Sonic, and yet, yet it would seem that Sonic is the one person he cares most deeply about: anything bad happening to Sonic would devastate him. He just has a funny way of showing it.

An irresistible vision. To think that in his heart, this is what Flashy Flash most wants.

We hope he comes to do better.

Insight

Let's talk about Sonic now. For many years now I have been hoping that something would happen to shock Sonic out of his futile rounds of attacking Saitama, being beaten by Saitama, training maniacally, attacking Saitama... his world has become very small and circular, like a round circle.

I had fantasised about maybe Genos grabbing him mid-attack and stuffing him into a narratively-convenient bin without so much as breaking stride. Something so outrageous that he could no longer ignore the need for him to change. The webcomic has sidestepped solving this problem by gifting Sonic some magic scrolls and a sword and just not having him cross paths with Saitama again. The manga is tackling the problem head-on.

Something I have loved, loved, loved about ONE is that he hasn't hesitated to give characters what they've earned. There's been enough morons bellyaching about the two not being neck-and-neck in skill like they were in the webcomic. Sonic's not weak in the manga -- Flashy Flash has experienced more battles and has had to struggle and learn more and so he's been able to progress to the point that he's left his friend in the dust.

Translation: The Back Of A Friend I Once Stood Shoulder-to-Shoulder With. There'd have been a lot less bellyaching if the translators had translated this bit.

That's the shock Sonic needed to open his eyes to the stupidity of his actions. More than that shock, seeing what Flashy Flash has been able to achieve has given Sonic the inspiration to strive for, achieve, and surpass what Flash has accomplished. His fire is back in a good way.

More than that though, the disrespectful way in which Sonic was offered more monster cells rather than a more interesting vision peaks to two things, external and internal.

Externally, it speaks to the way that we tend to think that people are only what they first show us while we understand ourselves to be complex creatures with many competing moods and wishes. Empty Void had heard that Sonic had once reached for a monster cell and assumed that he knew the sort of guy Sonic was: someone whose inferiority complex was such that he'd reach for any offer of power. But of course, that's not Sonic. Sonic has been the stubbornest person ever, who has been able to keep his sense of self despite the Village's best efforts. He reached for a monster cell because even the strongest person can despair, at least for a while.

Internally, man, the bleakness of Sonic's life is such that he doesn't have anyone to offer him a nice fresh monster cell and the monster cells must perforce cook themselves to offer themselves to him... he looks to no one and believes in none. That's painful to see.

When we think of how close he and Flash used to be, the bitterness of his mocking the prisoners for depending on each other grows sharper every time we learn a bit more about him. I don't know if he'll ever forgive Flash for betraying him.

Yes, there's a betrayal right on screen now: that of Blast by Empty Void. Blast thought they were in the business of putting God out of business but Void was using him to obtain cubes so as to raise an apostle of God.

Longer Blast: I'm not mad. I'm just very, very, very disappointed.

That said, I'm not going to let Blast off the hook entirely. He has some explaining to do!

Complicity

Blast has a lot of explaining to do. Sure, he's been refreshingly honest about what he's been doing with monster experiments, and his link to 'That Man'.

I have a feeling that Flash has been too quick to absolve Blast of blame.

We know that Blast and Empty Void went back at least 20 years. And yeah, we can just about buy that he didn't know his partner was fixing to betray him. However, given that we know that the Village takes young boys and that there were at least 43 graduating classes before Flashy Flash escaped years ago, that means that the Village had been a thing for at least 50 years. How long has Blast known about Empty Void's activities? Did he turn a blind eye to it? Or was it not a problem until it bit him in the ass? [2] What else is Blast permitting that shouldn't be?

We need answers.

I am very invested in seeing how this arc ends and what else it'll lead to.

Asides

[1] A very neat non-fictional example: this man escaping from his pursuers by lying down and thus changing their understanding of him to 'homeless guy'.

[2] A part of me notes that Blast falling out with Empty Void and beating the shit out of him coincides neatly with the time Blast's son was born. Maybe shit became a bit too real for him to ignore.