One-Punch Man's Garou Took a Martial Arts Move to a Ridiculous Extreme
Spoilers for chapter 157 of One-Punch Man ahead!
Garou and his new battle bro Metal Bat have spent the last few chapters of One-Punch Man engaged in a fierce battle with the monstrous Centisennin, and the responsibility of finally defeating it fell to Garou at the end of chapter 156. In chapter 157, Garou shows off his finishing technique, and it's drawing some direct inspiration from a classic martial arts feat.
The transformation of Garou into this monster-hybrid form he's currently using has been a long process, and peppered into the morphing have been some flashbacks to Garou's earlier life. The primary focus has been his days at Bang's dojo, where he consistently put on his typical arrogant persona and often showed up the more experienced students there, such as the long-absent Sour Face, who has a brief cameo after going unseen since the Super Fight arc. While Garou's arrogance can be off-putting, the scene in chapter 157 reinforces the idea that Garou has never quite been good enough, as he manages to chop 49 ceramic roof tiles in half with one blow, leaving only the 50th intact. Naturally, that one surviving tile is the one that draws the attention, so even though his performance was substantially better than his peers, he still left feeling criticized and disappointed.
The moment clearly stuck with Garou as well; in the previous chapter, he ripped out the regeneration core from Centisennin and tossed it high into the sky, sending the monster desperately chasing after it. The creature's absurd length has it reaching all the way to the edge of space, at least 40 miles above the Earth. Garou brings back that classic block-chopping technique, rapidly slicing through Centisennin as his hand descends all the way to the ground, cleanly splitting all 40+ miles of a monster with a carapace undoubtedly tougher than ceramic tiles in half. His only comment after this incredible feat is, "This time, I broke them all, Old Man."
Throughout the series, Bang and Garou have had an unusual relationship, and this new memory is another to add to the pile of complicating factors. While Bang is a bit cold at times, it's also quite clear that he does care about his students and the broader world; he often was particularly critical of Garou, but only because the arrogance that the boy put on display reminded him so much of his younger self. Bang's style of teaching worked well for most of his students, it seems, but Garou definitely needed a different approach to keep him on the right path, and Bang just wasn't capable of that. It may be too late now, but Bang has realized where he went wrong, and that's been one of the driving factors that made Garou's fall into villainy so tragic.
The fact that Garou would go back to this old, relatively simple technique that it seems he never fully mastered until now is the perfect example of how his childhood traumas are still controlling his actions to this day. Much like his former master, however, this doesn't mean he's beyond saving, and with Centisennin now officially down for the count, it's time for Garou to choose: can he be redeemed as a savior of the innocent, or will he use this new power as he claims he always intended and unleash hell on Earth? No doubt, it'll soon all come down to facing off with Saitama in what's sure to be a fight One-Punch Man fans have been dying to see.