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The story
Yusuke Murata, the illustrator of One-Punch Man, revealed on his own X account that the model for the cover art of the latest chapter — Chapter 283, published in Tonari no Young Jump — was his own son, 19-year-old bodybuilder Keisuke Murata. The reveal sparked a stir online after side-by-side photos showed the silhouette matching the cover art perfectly, while on 5ch users both praised the son’s physique and lamented the story changes unique to the Murata-drawn version of the manga.
8/27 (Thu) 19:40
Keisuke Murata, a bodybuilder and the eldest son of One-Punch Man illustrator Yusuke Murata, has caused a stir after revealing that his own physique served as the model for the cover art of the manga’s latest chapter.
On August 27, Keisuke Murata posted on his X account, “Actually, I was the model — and reference material — for the new chapter’s cover art.” He posted the Chapter 283 cover art, published that same day in Tonari no Young Jump, side by side with a photo of himself posing with his back turned to the camera. From his broadly spread back to the contours of his legs, the silhouette in the photo lines up perfectly with the manga panel.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Read the original article here
What people said
Growing up watching how brutal the mangaka life is, it's normal to want to avoid it.
Besides, with his dad having already made bank, the right move is to chase whatever he wants without fear of failure.
His plotting has always been catastrophically weak,
and he keeps making clumsy changes to the story on top of it.
Something about it feels off compared to the original, but setting that aside, he keeps going back and rewriting past chapters over and over.
shave his head bald and there'd be zero disconnect.
Should've just honestly called it 'One-Punch-Chi Man' — did the author really think this version was funnier?
It's a rich man's hobby.
The top guys do land sponsors though.
it's just one specially-powered strongman after another showing up to get knocked down.
Isn't that basically every battle manga though…
Not much point nitpicking a gag manga over that
Is his reputation really that good?
Is all the 'no, that's not right' rewriting really just because of outside noise?
Because the original is a hundred times more interesting, yet he keeps making needless changes to it.
Same as how Takako Matsushima got praised for her Frozen dub while May J. got dragged for the theme song
— guess it can't be helped since they cram down so many carbs.
If you actually read it you'll see there's no rules to the fights with this guy —
psychics, kaiju, aliens, anything goes, it's just an incoherent mess of a battle.
I got the feeling Versus was made basically for the readers who build strength-ranking charts for One-Punch Man and argue endlessly about them online —
like the author thought, 'fine then, I'll write something specifically designed for you all to fight over rankings.'
The occult, scheming, Mob Psycho-style stuff he's doing instead over in Bug Ego.
He's really grown up.
I stopped buying the tankobon because of it.
Same here.
He injects way too much unnecessary, weird ego into it.
Same for me.
Seeing Garou fighting all cheerful like that, I thought 'that's not him' and dropped the Murata version.
Still looking forward to the original though.
Tailored for Jump's audience?
He's probably writing the broad outline, but given how much Murata rewrites things and throws in GIF animations,
there must be a lot of Murata-added changes.
Seriously can't forgive him for revealing Blast before the original manga did.
The art skill is legit though
That's an outdated art style at this point
Background and Key Points
Yusuke Murata’s One-Punch Man is not a single manga but a redraw: ONE created and still updates the original story as a free webcomic, while Murata has produced a heavily reworked, illustrated version serialized in Tonari no Young Jump since 2012 — the version most anime watchers actually know. Murata previously found fame drawing Eyeshield 21 with writer Riichiro Inagaki, which is why one poster remembers Keisuke as a toddler from that era. “Blast” is a powerful, long-teased mystery character in the series; the complaint about Murata “revealing” him early refers to Murata’s version foreshadowing or depicting story beats — including Blast and Garou’s characterization — ahead of or differently from ONE’s original telling, which is the recurring point of friction between the two versions.
The thread doesn’t really split over the cover art itself — everyone agrees the physique match and rendering are impressive. It splits over what that admiration says about Murata as an adapter: several posters use the occasion to relitigate his tendency to retcon and rewrite already-published chapters, seeing his obvious artistic talent as separate from, even in tension with, his handling of plot fidelity to ONE’s story.
What outsiders may not realize is that this is a long-running, well-documented tension in the OPM fandom specifically because two “canonical” tellings coexist — most Western readers only encounter Murata’s version and don’t know a leaner original exists. Also unaddressed in the thread: competitive bodybuilding in Japan is a small, largely amateur scene (JBBF-affiliated), so Keisuke’s path is unusual precisely because it isn’t the lucrative one some posters imply.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Geinou/Sports Breaking News+) thread “Was the Model for Yusuke Murata’s One-Punch Man Cover Art His 19-Year-Old Bodybuilder Son? The Stunning Physique That Became ‘Living Reference Material’.”
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