So the genre of Anime has infected our household courtesy of my 16 year old daughter. We now talk about Anime during our family meals, in our car rides and use Anime references to describe feelings and emotions that we might be having. This is all been kind of funny to me, sort of roll your eyes kind of thing. That is until this last week. Yes, that is when I discovered that I am wanpanman (although I have a bit more hair).
This started as an online manga (think, online comic book) in 2009. This was written by a young man, known now only as ONE. He was born in 1986. He is one of the more famous artists in the Anime universe. Anyway, I will not give away too much for you. Just in case you get swallowed up into the Anime universe someday. Be wary. The short of it is this Japanese superhero has a special power that allows him to destroy almost anything with one-punch. His name in Japanese effectively means One-Punch Man.
The secret to his power, or so he claims, or the secret to his awesomeness is that he runs like 6 miles every morning, does 100 pushups, 100 situps and 100 squats. If you any of you remember any of these blogs (I am sad for you if you do), then you will recard on day 150 of my 365 commitment I did just exactly that. I achieved 100 of the situps, pushups and squats and ran 6 miles. Now that just feel really eerie, that a Japanese kid would write a comic book that described exactly the same formula that I came up with. What he reading my blog? No, he actually came up with that before my blog so clearly he was a head of me.
That is not the point however. The point is I am not a super hero, I do not have wash board abs and I cannot knock a building down with one punch. Or, wait a minute, maybe I can? Maybe, I really am One-Punch Man and I do not even realize it! Ah. I digress, but this fits right into a plot line so frequent in an anime series. I am an average, middle aged man, with a secret power residing deep within my soul and the spark caused by some young delinquent poking at me suddenly causes me to discover the vast reservoir of strength.
Nevermind. I will get back to doing pushups and reading Faulkner and memorizing digits of PI.
Guy Reams
