#i think flashy flash and amai mask are probably the characters whose revelations i'm most excited for because they're both sooo messy lol

[hiruseki]

Please talk about (manga only) flashy flash. Judging his attitude towards Monaco, he isn’t merciless like amai mask but his moral compass is twisted as hell. He killed wanted criminals (who probably were humans at the end of the day), he was merciless towards the assassins who were hired to kill him too…His sense of “heroism” is questionable- it comes across as preserving his pride more than anything. He attacked Saitama the second time, attempted to sucker kick Garou from the back..Saitama recognised him as a human instantly so why couldn’t Flash?

this one is very difficult to talk about since the manga hasn't really revealed much about him yet. a big theme in OPM is that we often operate on incomplete information. things are almost never as they seem; there's almost always much more to people than they allow us to see.

nobody demonstrates this as well as garou. our perspective is complete enough to know by now who garou really is. but the heroes don't have our perspective, and they aren't especially interested in having it. instead, they jump to an uncharitable conclusion, write him off, and try to kill him. a big lesson, i think, is that people are complicated.

all this to say that OPM loves offering us just enough about a character for us to come to a conclusion, but then completely recontextualizing them with dramatic character revelations. so far, it's done this with king, fubuki, tatsumaki, darkshine, and bang. so hang in there, i presume we'll be getting a lot more insight into why flashy flash is the way he is at some point in the future.

all that said, flashy flash is indeed very twisted. we have no idea why he's a hero; he doesn't seem interested in justice or protecting people. he is prideful, trigger happy, and generally just a dick. and re: him killing people--the story has established that murdering people is not a heroic action, no matter what, full stop. (which is one of the biggest hints of garou's heroism. he is able to uphold a moral standard that several of the formal heroes cannot).

and honestly, it probably doesn't really matter to flashy whether someone is monster or human--he sees things in an enemy vs. not enemy framework. it's just that this often translates to monster = enemy. so far, manako has been very obviously Not an enemy, so flashy has no reason to kill her anymore. garou, on the other hand, regardless of whether he is human or not, is someone flashy has coded as an enemy. (and we know it doesn't take much to be deemed an enemy--even just being potentially stronger than him is reason enough). and for flashy, it really is as simple as "kill enemies."

and to be fair to flashy, he does have reason to see humans and monsters alike as a threat vector. he has human enemies who quite explicitly want him dead. his "trust no one" mentality likely stems from the fact that he truly cannot afford to trust anyone. not his coworkers, not strangers, no one. if flashy gave everyone the benefit of the doubt or dropped his guard in any way, it would likely result in his death. so his hypervigilance and rush to permanently dispacth any perceived threats seems to be, at least in part, self protective.

and i will say that i find flashy murdering his pursuers to be far more reasonable and justifiable than, say, metal bat trying to murder garou while his back was turned after the fight was already over.

anyways, flashy is definitely a very fascinating, (and very morally dubious) character, and i'm excited to see what the manga is planning to do with him next.