Who made One Punch Man? History of series' origin, explained

The One Punch Man series is arguably one of the most enjoyable modern seinen anime and manga series. There are plenty of reasons for this series' rise to fame. It seamlessly fuses comedy and high-octane action. It also deviates from the guidelines that most anime titles do, which gives rise to some of the most memorable scenes.

The entire story revolves around the main character who is so strong that he can beat anyone with just one punch. The character attempts to wrestle with the mundane aspects of life while defeating most monsters with relative ease.

There is no doubt that One Punch Man is one of the most unique and versatile shows out there. In most cases, anime series are adaptations of manga. However, in this case the source material is not a manga. Let’s take a look at the history of the series and understand more about the author.

---

More about the author and the history of the One Punch Man series

Originally, One Punch Man was released as a webcomic by an author named ONE. The author was born in Niigata and lived an extensive portion of his life in Saitama. His grandparents stayed in Niigata, and during his visits, his parents bought a set of comic books that were quite popular in Japan. This series was Crayon Shin-chan and was created by Yoshito Usui. This particular comic book seemed to have sparked an interest in this young man and since then, he often spent his time practicing drawing.

Fast forward to 2009, ONE decided to upload the One Punch Man series and did so on a website called Shintosha. This was a Japanese website where independent artists could upload their comics. The purpose of this short story was for ONE to practice drawing. However, the unexpected positive reception, and its sheer scale, led to the continuation of the webcomic. He continued uploading the webcomic chapters to his website FC2.

The fanbase grew as time progressed and eventually, this series was noticed by some of the most popular manga artists as well. However, ONE took plenty of breaks before he became a full-time artist. Yusuke Murata came across the series and reached out to ONE in the hopes of collaborating with them.

Saitama as seen in the first season of the anime series (Image via Madhouse)

Before working on the One Punch Man series, the two collaborated and released two one-shot titles back in 2012. Following this, they worked on the One Punch Man series and Murata released the chapter on Tonari no Young Jump website. Later in 2015, the anime adaptation of the series was announced on March 10, 2015. This created a ton of excitement because the anime adaptation would be handled by Madhouse Studios, which was one of the best animation studios at that time.

Later that year, the first season was released and this brought in an entire wave of fans, elevating the series’ popularity to another level. The second season was released 4 years later, and fans had mixed reviews about the second installment owing to the change in animation studios. This is the story of how a small webcomic became one of the most beloved modern action-comedy anime titles today.

Stay tuned for more anime and manga news as 2024 progresses.