In the wake of defeating Boros and his mighty army, Saitama has returned to his unremarkable everyday life in Z-City. However, unbeknownst to him, the number of monsters appearing is still continuously on the rise, putting a strain on the Hero Association's resources. Their top executives decide on the bold move of recruiting hoodlums in order to help in their battle. But during the first meeting with these potential newcomers, a mysterious man calling himself Garou makes his appearance. Claiming to be a monster, he starts mercilessly attacking the crowd.
The mysterious Garou continues his rampage against the Hero Association, crushing every hero he encounters. He turns out to be the legendary martial artist Silverfang's best former disciple and seems driven by unknown motives. Regardless, this beast of a man seems unstoppable. Intrigued by this puzzling new foe and with an insatiable thirst for money, Saitama decides to seize the opportunity and joins the interesting martial arts competition.
As the tournament commences and Garou continues his rampage, a new great menace reveals itself, threatening the entire human world. Could this finally be the earth-shattering catastrophe predicted by the great seer Madame Shibabawa?
[Written by MAL Rewrite]
Nenhum episódio encontrado.
Comentários
Stark700
I wish I could say the sequel for one of the most popular anime of this year to be good. I really wish I could. One Punch Man’s release back in 2015 made headlines with its high caliber animation quality and ultra comical character cast. The manga itself is also very popular. Ask anyone who’ve read the series will tell you that it’s more than just your usual battle shounen. Known for its top notch quality comedy and unorthodox storytelling, it’s a sensation. But this…second season is nothing short of a horror story. It’s the type of horror that scared me to realize how farthis anime has fallen. What did the second season go wrong?
Well for starters, there’s the change in the staff. Director Shingo Natsume left this season and responsibilities were handed to Chikara Sakurai. One of their previous project was Majimoji Rurumo, a show that probably most people has forgotten by now. One Punch Man has already established itself beyond the anime medium and with a growing popularity, it tries to aim higher. However, fans coming into this season shouldn’t have any high expectations especially if we take a look at the promotional material. While the key visual doesn’t turn heads away, the preview will. With the J.C. Staff in charge of this sequel, this raised a lot of red flags. In respect, the animation quality severely suffers in quality. Rather than a sharp, crisp quality animation with stylish aesthetics, we get static-like power point slides. Maybe I’m exaggerating a bit but this second season’s quality is easy to point fingers to. Unfortunately, it seems J.C. Staff couldn’t handle the job of making this into a sensation again. They already have their hands full with a lot of projects this year after all.
Storytelling itself doesn’t improve much either if we talk about the main plot. Again, I really wish I could say the opposite but this sequel proves itself to be a tragedy. From the rushing of certain content to underwhelming delivery of some of the important fights, I felt no impact from this season at all. Zero. Early on the in season, we also meet Fubuki (Blizzard) who leads the B-Class hero group. At first, I was ecstatic to finally see her gain some relevance. However, the fight between her and Saitama passed like a flash. There’s almost no charisma besides Saitama’s heroic speech and attitude. Even on a comedy level, it didn't draw much popcorn entertainment. Similarly, many of the dialogues this season sounds very scripted. As a manga reader, I wanted to see much more than characters speaking their lines. What I got instead is just words and words coming out in a desaturated manner. Saitama is still the bald caped hero with unstoppable power. The first season captured the magic of his character while this sequel didn’t move the needle. What I mean is Saitama’s fight against adversaries this season isn’t even near the caliber as the previous season.
But it’s not always fair to compare the previous season with this continuation, right? Truth to be told, season 1 did set the bar high. Known for its visual dynamics and ONE’s creative writing, One Punch Man has always done all it could to be its own special series. Here, it’s lost the fire. People made memes out of One Punch Man because it was comically entertaining in a genuine way. Here, there’s worthy made besides weak impressions. Even the hero hunter Garou didn’t make much of an impact. As a foil character to Saitama, I expected his personality to be a bright flair. However, Garou ended up being someone that I forgot easily. Perhaps it’s because the overall directing of the show as several events takes place at once this season. There’s the fighting tournament involving various heroes, the invasion of the monsters, and Saitama living his day as usual as a hero. The joke of being one punched is far over after we’ve seen it so many times. The monsters themselves are hardly worth writing home about. To be honest, does any antagonist this season even contain an ounce of charisma compared to Boros? That fight from season 1 was legendary.
On the hero side, we do have some characters making reappearances. Names like Genos, Metal Bat, and Tatsumaki are a few I’m sure fans remember. Unfortunately, their roles this season has degenerated to little value. New faces like Suiryu brings in some excitement although he can hardly carry this season. In fact, the Super Fight Tournament arc felt like one big talent show of weirdos gathering together. I didn’t feel the stakes were impactful nor did the results feel satisfying. I mean, the show is One Punch Man. Who else is going to dominate this tournament?
Oh how the mighty of fallen is the easiest way to describe One Punch Man Season 2. The first season was a juggernaut that exceeded expectations. Fans still embrace what became a blockbuster. It’s 2019 now and we’ll have people talking again One Punch Man again. Unfortunately, people will quote more from the manga than recommending this sequel. Trust me, One Punch Man Second Season is a mistake. A grave mistake.
CodeBlazeFate
*Mild Spoilers for One Punch Man Second Season* The second season of One Punch Man is a miserable fall from grace, with a quadruple whammy of circumstances contextualizing the gravity of the show’s failures. It’s a sequel to one of the most well-animated mainstream anime of all time, released over 3 years later. On top of that, this franchise’s counterpart, Mob Psycho 100, got adapted for a second season that practically pushed the boundaries of current TV anime 3 months before this season came out. Combined with the awful feel and presentation of this new season, that set of circumstances becomes the world’s nastiest measuring stick.Sadly, the inability to live up to any decent set of expectations isn’t unexpected when you look at all the writing on the wall. The stiff and barely animated trailers, the off artwork, and the fact that production switched over to J.C. Staff all should have told you this was doomed to fail. The worst part is I can’t even blame the people involved, as they simply didn’t have the time, physical capacity, or resources to pull together an acceptable product. It’s a cruel joke, and a herculean task for director Chikara Sakurai and team to be burdened with.
This isn’t to say that that this season would have been great if Madhouse or the original team took over. Boogiepop 2019 was animated by the same team and studio as One Punch Man Season 1 and it didn’t look that good. It was plagued with terrible artwork and redesigns, and a sheer lack of the atmosphere that both its source material and the 2000 anime bathed in, thanks to the removal of the rustic color palette for a generic one. Madhouse also animated the Overlord anime trilogy, which is littered with repulsive CGI and artwork that I’m not a fan of. The two shows they produced this season are a powerpoint presentation baseball anime and a show no one likes that apparently also suffers from hideous CGI, so it’s safe to say there’s no way they’d fix this on a visual level. Maybe the color palette wouldn’t be so unpleasant but that’s about it. Hell, I’m not even sure that studio could fix how drab this season feels, since everything feels so floaty, awkward, and self-serious. The jokes, the excessive monologuing, the terrible attempts at emotional beats, and the mind-shattering attempts at retroactively downplaying the threat of the first season’s climax are all downright surreal.
When it comes to the jokes, there’s none of the exaggeration or punchy energy to them that was present in season 1, and the lack of comedic facial expressions only adds to how limp and awkward the delivery is this season. The deadpan humor is also weakened by the stumbling, borderline lifeless presentation. I can honestly count on one hand the number of times I even chuckled in any given episode, barring maybe episode 3. On top of that, despite Saitama still one-punching overconfident bad guys in this season --i.e the main gimmick/punchline of the first season-- we don’t get to see him OHKO anyone on-screen even once until the finale. Perhaps they thought saving it up for a grand climax was a good idea, but all things considered, it’s just not worth it.
Getting back to the other issues at hand, one of the strangest criticisms I’ve ever had to lay out is that moments that seem to have happened simultaneously like the encounter between Genos and Speed-o’-Sound Sonic and the encounter between Saitama and Fubuki in episode 2 turn out to not happen simultaneously. This isn’t the first time that time becomes a liability in the show but detailing the other instance in the second half would get into some head-scratching spoilers. Another strange issue is how some episodes just end abruptly, as if they had no idea where and how to stop an episode. For a more traditional complaint, the pacing in this show is abysmal. Once the main arc of the season kicks in around episode 3, the pacing slows down to a crawl for several episodes before blitzing through everything in episode 7. The weirdest part about this is how apparently this adaptation has been burning through chapters like Sonic speeds through stages, making the sense of fatigue and whiplash all the more dizzying. No matter what, things just happen with no time to really establish anything or allow the audience to breathe and let things sink in. This, along with lifeless direction and lackluster character writing, makes it so there’s almost never any weight or impact to the big and intense moments that permeate the bulk of the season, adding to the vicious cycle of everything and nothing happening as events simply cycle through one another for no apparent reason. It’s issues like this that remind me why even in season 1, OPM was never good at being a serious narrative, let alone shuffling between parody and serious shounen.
That said, the overarching narrative of this season isn’t necessarily bad on its own. In theory, showing how the hero organization is now yet another corporation that cares more about the safety of its executives than those who work for them, and how it, Suiryu, and Garou are all foils to the heroic traits Saitama values and finds fun in, are good ideas. On top of that, the narrative genuinely gets interesting towards the last leg of the show. It’s just that everything gets tremendously bogged down by terrible presentation, hollow characterization (which we’ll get to), and a sense that vital moments are actively missing from otherwise solid character arcs and plotlines. Even worse, this season’s bloated, badly paced, and watered-down arc is all setup for a third season, so all of that arc fatigue meant nothing.
Speaking of nothing, there’s the gigantic cast of characters for this season. The characters all feel stale, including Saitama, the most entertaining character from the first season. He’s no longer this disgruntled guy who wants some respect for the hard work he put into his fun superhero craft, nor is he someone constantly wishing to fight someone strong because he hates how he can just one-shot everyone. The first scene of episode 1 tries to pretend that he still deals with the former issue, but make it past that and you’ll see that’s not the case. As for the latter problem, it’s no longer this drive that’s been eating away at him due to how disappointed he is all the time. Instead, he just casually wants stronger opponents, so he enters a tournament of martial artists, where he meets a foil of his now watered-down need to fight strong opponents. They don’t justify any of this either, so it creates this disconnect between season 1 Saitama and season 2 Saitama. They try diving back into the issue in episode 9, but they should have further demonstrated how empty he was feeling beforehand, as this episode cements that he’s not just bored, he’s practically lost and depressed. It feels like prior to tackling this issue, they wanted to give Saitama a flat arc, where people grow around him. They didn’t do a good job, for reasons mentioned prior. Another reason this doesn’t work is that the rest of the characters are incredibly one-note and eager to monologue about their baggage at the drop of a hat. Several of these monologues are intrusive and redundant as well, so the sheer abundance of them becomes grating, especially early on when they’re at their most prevalent. You know it’s bad when the one-off heroes and villains have more personality and presence to them than important side characters like King and Fubuki. Secondary and tertiary characters were never one of season 1’s strengths, but this is just lousy!
We do at least have a somewhat entertaining villain, that being Garou. However, when everything around him is so dull and when the action and presentation is as bad as it is, his intimidation and fun factor are somewhat diminished. Additionally, despite him actively going out of his way to kill both heroes and villains in his first scene and siding with the monsters who kill heroes and everyone else alike, he doesn’t kill anyone in subsequent fights. They don’t even try to justify this inconsistency. He does have some decent scenes and he does work as a warped foil of everything Saitama stands for, so despite the glaring inconsistency mentioned earlier, he’s still the best character in this show full of lifeless side characters for whatever that’s worth. On top of that, his arc to become stronger is probably the only compelling piece of writing in the show. He’s not the only foil for Saitama, as Suiryu from the god-awful tournament arc is like a more selfish, less dangerous version of him. His main difference is that he wants an easy life with his strength, and we actually see a decent arc come from him halfway into the series. The show gets to a point where I sometimes almost root for him and Garou because almost everyone else in this show is so unlikable. Practically everyone in this show is either a blank sheet or a total prick, sometimes both! Apart from a few side characters in episode 11, the only notable exception is Metal Bat, and that’s literally because of one scene at a sushi bar with like two funny jokes. Yes, they wanna show that heroes aren’t all morally sound because Garou has to have a point, but that doesn’t mean we need Saitama’s foils to be the only ones with any layered writing behind them. One last issue regarding characters is that even the world around them has none of the vibrancy and personality than in season 1. None of the one-offs are as funny or vivid as the disgruntled alien crew from the end of season 1. What a shame.
Another positive aspect of the first season was the music. The OP was a thrill ride and the admittedly overplayed OST was filled with incredibly memorable tracks that accentuated the hype and emotionally satisfying feel the show aimed for. None of these return for this second season (barring that one time they remixed one of the OG season’s tracks in episode 5), and in their place lies a bunch of boring background tracks (save for one or two of them) and a mediocre opening that doesn’t even remotely capture any of the excitement or aggressiveness it shoots for. The visuals are somehow even more lifeless in the OP than in the show too, which almost never happens. The ED is also grating to listen to thanks to the vocals, and it’s even worse than season 1’s lackluster ED. The part that stings the most is that the composer for this season was Makoto Miyazaki, the same guy who did the last season’s music. What happened?
Above all else, this show’s most controversial aspect is its visuals. By the standards of season one, the standards of the manga, the standards of both seasons of the franchise’s counterpart Mob Psycho 100, the standards of an action anime, and even anime in general, the visuals of One Punch Man Season 2 are terrible. There’s about as little animation as your current non-action seasonal or a long-running slideshow like Yugioh Duel Monsters, and almost no visual flair to compensate, with loads of panning shots, and badly edited quick cuts which make some of the fight scenes simultaneously as unstimulating as the rest of the show, and more incomprehensible than the most badly edited fight scenes from SAO and Fate/Apocrypha. Episode 7’s fights are the worst by far, with constant character model mishaps, extreme usage of bad, looping ghosting afterimages to simulate characters attacking rapidly, frame rate-killing camera movements, and CGI objects that also kill the frame rate. Even the best fights are barely above your average Fairy Tail GIF-fests, and your average fight in this show is just that but undetailed and incomplete. There are occasional, freakish drawing mishaps even outside of the fight scenes, such as the sequence where Saitama’s head is shaped like a lightbulb during a camera rotation in episode 1, or the entirety of Saitama’s conversation with King in episode 9. That alone is inexcusable, especially when this anime is 90% panning shots filled with stock assets as is! It’s even worse here where the artwork tends to be incredibly rough and badly drawn, especially with the characters’ faces and the close-up shots with inconsistent outlining, especially in episode 1. Practically every episode has a unique, outstandingly awful visual blunder to notice, and the few well-animated cuts in the show, primarily towards the final third of the series, can’t make up for that.
The strange charcoal coloring of Genos’s metal frame doesn’t even feel like it fits with the rest of the drawing of the character, and not only is it inconsistent with his season 1 frame, it constantly changes from scene to scene in the first two episodes with no rhyme or reason. As of episode 3, it seems like they’ve settled on what he should look like again before changing it one more time in another repair late into the second half, but that should have been done in the character design phase, not after production of certain episodes has ended. You can’t use the excuse of him getting all those repairs and new parts since he did the same in season 1 while looking consistent. The show doesn’t justify this itself, so neither should you. Back to the issue of charcoal-esque metal feeling out of place on the characters they’re attached to, as it applies to another returning character, Speed-o’-Sound Sonic, and other pieces of metal like Metal Bat’s...bat. This raises another issue with the show as a whole: the coloring in this season feels off. This season has a darker and more off-putting color palette than before, and along with some of the colors they used, it makes the show generally awkward and strangely bleak to look at. Even if the show somehow was animated beautifully, the color palette alone makes this show aesthetically displeasing to me. It’s a shame considering how good the returning character designs are, since now they just look off, regardless of if they’re on-model or not. Still, along with the interiors and entire buildings comprised of terrible CG assets, all of these issues make it so there can almost never be a scene that genuinely feels great to look at. Even the incredibly few moments of fluid animation suffer from most of these issues. The Blu-rays may mitigate some of these issues to an extent, but the problems are too deep-rooted for blu-ray touch-ups to truly fix.
This isn’t even a question of failing to live up to the stellar animation quality and overall visuals of the first season; this is a case of visuals that are just plain bad. It doesn’t take an animation snob to look at this and go “wow this looks wrong” or “this feels off”. No one should be grateful that a studio forced a bunch of overworked, under-scheduled staff members --including a director with almost no prior directorial experience-- to make this show. It’s not a gift, it’s a product, and a badly produced one at that. The production is so bad that the proofreader for this review had an absolute ball with the visuals, often pointing out several awful aspects and moments even I didn’t even notice. Sure, it’s no Berserk 2016/17 or Hand Shakers franchise, but that doesn’t mean we should bend over backwards just because this is a continuation of a show most of us like. As much as it hurts to say, I’m glad that this hate train started simply because it shows that even despite the pushback against this movement, we can still put our foot down on what is and isn’t an acceptable product. It shouldn’t take 3 episodes for us to see a fight with acceptable animation quality or a single cool shot, nor should it take until episode 9 for them to even attempt any interesting techniques. It also shouldn’t need up to 5 animation directors working on an episode like with episodes 2 (or 15 in the case of episode 8). That just proves this show was poorly managed, badly scheduled, and doomed to fail.
This really is the anime equivalent to Anthem and Mass Effect: Andromeda, isn’t it?
The second season of One Punch Man is the end product of mismanagement and production issues emblematic of the dismal state of the industry. This show was practically destined to fail when given to a studio that’s been spreading their teams thin through 2-5+ projects a season and having well-documented scheduling issues for the past 3 years. I can’t imagine what the team must have gone through, trying their damndest to live up to the show’s monumental expectations with such little time, staffing, or resources. It’s crushing to think that when OPM 1 came out 3 years ago, people jumped on the hype train, and now with season 2, people are jumping on the hate train. Hell, as someone who only kind of liked season 1, that’s the main reason I watched this season. While the first season functioned as the fun blockbuster anime it wanted to be, this second season was unable to truly be what it wanted to be. Honestly, it’s more depressing than hateful, and it didn’t have to be this way. That’s the anime industry for you, where blood, sweat, and tears are soaked up by cash that get put into the next season’s 5 isekai shows. One Punch Man 2 is a casualty of the industry we’re encouraged to support, and the worst part is people are ok with this.
Written and edited by: CodeBlazeFate
Proofread by: Peregrine
Karhu
It's not a very hard task to tolerate with low production values, but when the heart and soul of a beloved franchise gets destroyed by directing that completely misses the point of the series, it becomes near impossible to overlook the massive amount of problems we have at hand. Welcome to the 2nd season of One Punch Man, sequel which inferiority is beyond comparison, show which is not only terrible but an absolute disgrace towards its fans. This is simply not acceptable. This review will cover 3 main points explaining why I personally found this series to be complete bollocks. These are 1) Comedy 2)Directing, and 3) Art.
1) The comedy doesn't deliver due to poor comedic timing. It's a hollow, near dead version of what it used to be. Scenes end before they reach their climax. Nothing shines or stands above the rest. The content is never pushed to its limit or even tried to. There is no pinnacle to be found as the show is flat like the chest of those countless loli tsunderes J.C. Staff is most famous for. It's like the entire thing has been made without any vision, possibly by someone who never thought there was anything fun about this series to begin with.
Season 1 played around with its comedy, waited for the right moment and even pushed the overall comedic resolution to its utmost limit. It was the type of content that constantly showed respect to its audience, and this was done to an extent that made it very easy to respect it back. After all, making a series about a dude who -- most of the time -- wins everything with a one punch is a risky move which could only ever work if there's a perfect harmony and the strongest merits are polished. And that was done and achieved. With this 2nd season, the presentation is bad, the execution is worse, and its overall form is, at best, like a parody of its predecessor; The punch is still there, but it doesn't have any impact.
2) Immersion is the key, and it's best achieved by atmosphere because with atmosphere comes awe, and awe is something that limits disbelief and gives us the basis that is needed to forgive all sort of flaws, problems and questionable choices any series contains and does. Experiencing the gar-like awe this series is famous for and getting into the show at all has been hard, if not impossible. Action comedy series (and visual comedy alike) tend to be on par with blockbuster action by default. They in generally are build around empty and soulless ideas that don't have much good things going on. This weakness needs to be countered to create this so called "genuine entertainment" that has minimum amount of annoying problems that ruin the fun. This is typically done with written details (such as oneliners or unique characteristics), audio directing, and visual execution that solely exist to make the series seem better than it would otherwise be. I.e. value is placed on details to carry the otherwise lacking content. This job is what the director is supposed to do. But OPM S2 did nothing to fight against its own flaws, rather, it only created more of them, poisoning its own core.
Audio choices, audio directing and directing itself are some of the most important things when it comes to turning mediocrities into something outstanding. But it isn't there. Rather than playing around with the mood and teasing the audience by making us wait -- or alternatively doing the opposite by throwing in some ridiculously energetic beats -- the series is more like "let's get this over with" and then they do. End of story. It promises to reward the viewer but never does. No real value is given to any scene or moment with the comedy (like mentioned earlier) and the same thing applies with the story board, the action scenes, the visuals, and music choices and seiyuu work. To get completely serious here, nearly every scene could be used as a material for Every Frame a Painting videos as an example of the unpreferred way to do shit.
Perhaps the best example of all of this are the first 8,5 minutes of episode 09 which are so poorly made I doubt anyone who gets into film school, but hasn't even taken any lectures yet could manage to do worse job even if they tried to. Heck, I doubt there are even many graduates who could purposely achieve this level of awful. Pay attention to the lackluster sound mixing, monotonous voice acting, the near complete absence of SFX and note the music choice that would be tagged as (mellow piano) in hearing impaired subs. Perfect mood for a scene where some incredibly socially awkward dude tries to kiss his crush with whom he has never spoken with, right? Guess again! It's the most badass fight scene in the first half of this arc! And this is only the audio we're speaking of. What the actual krukk? Talk about failed delivery. Life of an art house visionary, I tell you. This can hardly be called "directing", rather, it seems like a serial production process for products that should've been buried deep under ground and sealed away in cement. Tho a better example of how awful the SFX is is a fight scene from episode 11 where the sounds of landing punches were most likely created by someone repeatedly hitting church organs with a wet sock.
3) Art. When we asked for "loyal adaptation", no one meant "keep the webcomic art as it is", but that's all we've got. MadHouse's art and animation cannot be overhyped. One Punch Man is the single best animated action anime that has yet been made, one may disagree but not change my mind. I saw it 4 times, own it on blu-ray and it looks glorious, visually one of the best things that are called anime, especially when looking into modern productions. Season 2 is a generic J.C. Staff production where still artwork flows around the screen, cheap effects and camera tricks are trying to create the illusion of animation and movement; Even the most basic scenes are done with voice-over narration to ensure there is no need to even animate mouth movements; If there is a way to save money and time, it's chosen every single time; Character models are only few steps away from sanic-tier, purposely terribly drawn memes; The color pallet is not only bland, but inconsistent to a point that the episodes could have as well been made by completely different teams who never shared any data between each other. Just compare the colors of episodes 3 and 4. Let me repeat what was said in the opening paragraph: low production can be forgiven, but One Punch Man 2nd Season's production is a heartless piece of industrial waste, anime that has not known love or passion.
-----
What J.C. Staff is doing here is despicable as it's making their creation seem like an attempt to use this entire medium as an investment platform. Minimum effort and risk to ensure profit. The ultimate safety route. "We missed out Bitcoin so let's see if this can cash us some." I guess that's why they couldn't even color metals properly since those aren't gold or silver. This is the furthest from a work of passion, driven by creed alone. Saitama is not "ok" anymore like in the meme, rather, it's a full turn around with a K.O. (sorry, I just had to put this here somewhere)
When series comes with such obvious and serious issues, I don't think there is any real reason to go in depth with the story and characters because OPM S02 is fundamentally so broken that no amount of pros falling under these categories could fix it. I will only talk about them briefly. Keep in mind that the technical aspects of the show lessen the entertainment value of its story and characters -- and ultimately they are just an inferior version of the re-drawn manga, which I personally recommend reading instead of watching this anime -- but since they are a part of this anime and not an entity that can be completely taken out of context, and considering this review is not aimed for the manga, you will face criticism that is only relevant to the anime. + This anime is not 100% loyal to canon anyway.
The story type changes during this season. The monster of the week formula is put in the background when new type of elements and side-plots are expanding the verse and moving the main focus from Saitama to other characters. At first, the series seems to be quite lost when the storyboard is all over the place, introducing characters at episodic speed and following wide range of different pov's in each, offering fights that don't seem to have real substantial value and showing monsters that are partially making the entire idea for the series seem old and outdated. It takes over half of the entire run time before the story finally tightens up, the supposed build-up phase concludes and the filler-ish feel of the past events start seem significant. Most of this run time is used to make the viewer understand the characters better and see what type of people they are, the actual means used to achieve all of this being secondary. Despite everything there is to criticize, the characters are not a missed shot. Fubuki is strengthening her role as the best girl for anime only watchers, King especially is portrayed to be an actual real human, and Garou "The Hero Hunter" is shown to be an actually very well-thought out villain. With mild issues in the storyboard (and major in their execution, of course), the story knows where it is headed and majorly improves towards the end. From these departments, the series seems bearable even under its massive problems listed above. There definitely was room for improvement from these departments, too, but even so, at least they managed to make watching this series more tolerable.
Pipe
One Punch Man 2 is just tiresomely stupid and ugly. Four years ago, Madhouse animated One Punch Man aka OPM and blew the charts with an outstanding production. The fans waited four years for a sequel, and in exchange, they got a piece of trash that is in pair with productions just as "Mommy, please save my eyes," "Honey, I destroyed OPM." I do not know if "Boku no Pico" is better than this junk, but it is clear that J.C. Staff failed severely. In one sentence: OPM2 is the kind of sequel you may end up wishing you’d never seen. If you are an OPMfollower, be advised, proceed with caution, and be ready for a long agony.
After watching the first episodes, I was feeling miserable (the feeling never changed). I was not expecting to see something poorly drawn by a group of professionals that cannot understand how an action animated sequence is made. The characters need a vibrant movement. However, in this production, the action is weird because they overused "still" sequences; they do not have the right direction (sound, art, etc.). Furthermore, the design is awful and disgusting.
All went wrong with OPM2. The animation is ugly, the colors are horrendous, the jokes are unbearable, the story... did this thing has an acceptable plot, maybe? Lastly, the fights are grotesque, uninspired. The story tries very hard to catch our attention with the comedy and the villains' performance. However, you cannot transform the wood in gold, and you cannot turn OPM2 in OPM because the jokes are bad. I do not know if it is the timing, the writing, the art, the sound, or maybe I became immune to OPM's charm, but the second season feels empty. The biggest mistake is asking more for a studio that isn't specialized in this kind of genres. They did what they could. Sadly, this sequel feels more like a cheap imitation than a sequel.
Worse yet, the story does not deliver a climax. This kind of animated series needs to have a precise harmony between action sequences, sound, art, and writing. OPM2 fails in most of them so, in the end, the fights, the comedy, are unconcluded. Call it a wrong direction, bad production, I call it lack of studio's experience. The result is an empty carcass titled OPM2.
Lastly, I can continue pointing the bad points of this mediocre show, such as the sound that for me is one of the most awful of the season because it does not help the fights and does not raise the action. However, there is some positive aspect, such as the introduction of some villains (Garou, his background) that are there to boost Saitama's performance. The direction improved in the last episodes where we can enjoy some outstanding action sequences. For example, when Garou fight against Genos. However, the poor management predominated during all the season killing the entire show. While OPM2 just implodes and burns, J.C. Staff missed a golden opportunity to display the otaku community that they can be a great studio again.
Fable242
I'm just going to start off by saying I really can't figure out why so many people are complaining about the story and the comedy isn't as good as the first season and keep placing all the blame on the studio. Honestly speaking as long as you’re a manga reader you will know that they follow the script almost to the T with only a bit rearrangement and cut off here and there. All the comedy and story came from the same script that the first came from. I already understand that humans find it hard to accept change especially when it started off ona good note with madhouse, but I really can't accept how they allow it to affect their judgment so much that they keep nip picking and trying to find every fault they can on a really good second season which will cause other people to have second thoughts if it's worth even watching from how horrible they make the anime seem.
Okay, let's get on with the review.
The story is really well done it follows closely to the pacing in the manga but with some chapters being rearranged and I mean the pages, not the entire chapter for example. say if you have Genous fight X monster on chapter 60 but in chapter 61,62 and 63 there are no more scenes of that fight until chapter 64 has a few more pages to wrap it up, what they basically do is take those pages and mash it together instead of splitting it up all the time like the manga. I can't find anything to complain about the story it's basically just like the manga, one of the things I always did like about madhouse is that with any anime production they do they always try their best to stick close to the source material instead of mixing their own ideas and ruing the story J.C.Staff is also one of those that try to stick with the source material not just story wise but also art style.
The art was great, but I won't lie there were a few scenes where people face look awkward (Genous weird face at a few scenes) J.C.Staff also suffer from a habit in this anime of doing narrow face for basically everyone, King was affected greatly cause of this it made him look like terminator on drugs. The biggest but hardly notice difference from S1 and 2 you will only notice if you actually do research and look back and forth between the two season images. Madhouse version of One has more substance in its art the character is drawn in a 3D style feel in every angle and looks shiny in a way. while J.C own has a more 2D style with a mixture of 3D and more lines. but other than all that it was basically a perfect score.
The sound was great I enjoy Garou theme music and they also incorporated some soundtrack from the original. When I first hear the sound effects for the first battle in the anime, I was wheel right in but after around episode 7, I notice that they seem to be using a limit track not just for fight scenes but even OST there isn't much variety. I really wish they either had added more of the first OST or made more new ones (I'm a big fan for anime music) and it would have been nice to add a bit more variety sound effect than running a cycle through the same old.
There's not much to say about characters if you follow the manga or watch the first anime then you know what to expect, Awesome characters as always.
For enjoyment that's obvious how can you not enjoy such a masterpiece
Overall one punch man season 2 was a success in my book yes there were a few things I felt they could of change or improve on but when I look back at many other adaptions to books, I read and the number of times I pray that they don't screw it up but these prays never get an answer. looking at the almost negligible issues I have with season 2 is cute and laughable. but I really feel sorry for J.C and season 2 OP because everyone seems to be full of madhouse on the brain it makes it really hard for most people to acknowledge this as a success but instead keep comparing it to the first season to the point that they even blame the studio for the content it presented when it all came from the source. I just hope that it's not like that overseas because if even they act like that no matter how popular the manga will be if sales for the Blu-ray etc sucks we can forget about season 3.
Story - 10
Art - 7.5
Sound - 7.5
Character - 10
Enjoyment - 10
Overall 9.5
RebelPanda
One Punch Man, a series loved by many for bombastic animation and hilarious physical comedy has been viciously murdered by J.C. Staff. Unless you have been living under a rock for the last year, it’s known throughout the anime community that Madhouse handed the second season of OPM to J.C. Staff—a studio known for cutting corners in their animation. Our expectations were low, but JESUS CHRIST THIS IS GARBAGE. The art is awful. It’s flat, the color pallete is dull, and the shading is messy dog shit. Character designs were changed from their clean cool style to jagged and hideous imitations of their former selves. Metal textureslook especially awful; it doesn’t have a shiny effect anymore, it just looks pudgy and gray.
All of the animation is practically a stop motion slide show. When there is motion it is just excessive speed lines and other cheap light effects making it hard to tell what’s even happening. Action scenes are edited poorly, shots jump from one still image to the next rather than animating the character’s movement.
This season has a slower pace with more focus on one major villain rather than a monster-of-the-week story; it’s easy to see this as an improvement, but everything is executed much worse than the original. Extensive dialogue with very little animation is used to fill screen time in place of the abundance of action scenes in season one.
Even though the characters look bad, they’re still very likable. Garou is a great villian, and there are entertaining heroes like King and of course Saitama. However, the comedic timing is poor. Jokes don’t land with any impact. Unfunny humor is entirely due to the lame visuals, mediocre sound effects, and awkward directing.
Sequels rarely live up to their predecessors, but this is a hollow, mangled corpse of the original. J.C. Staff has been overworked and understaffed for years, and they should not have been given the responsibility of a show as big as One Punch Man.
Don’t watch this. Go read the manga instead.
Krunchyman
Modern superhero movies suffer from regurgitated stories, negligible character developments, and unmemorable villains. Yet Hollywood inundates the public with action-packed spectacles (advertisements) for the mere purpose of generating boat-loads of cash and previewing the eventual sequel. Which, in turn, previews the subsequent film — creating an endless cycle of bombasity. Frankly, it’s nauseating. Given the pitfalls of the superhero genre, I expected the first season of One Punch Man to be a parallel Japanese equivalent of the cookie-cutter, American model. What I received, however, was a self-deprecating, meta anime that humorously broke the formulaic ‘rules’ of a soulless industry. Insteadof dragging out battles to fill airtime, they simply had Saitama defeat the villain with one punch. Rather than give Saitama a set of morals to live by, he fights for ‘fun.’ And in place of an emblematic suit, he wears a dorky getup that has no sense of style. But, despite this, it was hilarious!
Besides breaking all the norms, One Punch Man excelled in creating fluid combat sequences with more impact than your run-of-the-mill Shounen. With action and comedy hitting on all cylinders, One Punch Man was a raging success that spurred numerous anime and non-anime fans alike to tune into the next episode. But with season 2 under the stewardship of a new studio (J.C. Staff), hopes of receiving the same quality product began to sour. Especially with the inferior animation that featured dreadful pacing, weird character aesthetics, and a lack of fluidity. There was a joke in episode two where Saitama performed his “serious sideways jumps,” but due to rushed pacing, the joke never materialized as such.
Episode seven — Suiryu and Saitama’s championship fight — encapsulated all of the worst aspects season 2 had to offer and then some. Their various kicks and punches had no impact. Due to choppy fight sequences, it became difficult to interpret how someone was or was not getting hurt. When you find yourself rewinding to understand how something happened (the butt scene), rather than reveling in its artistic beauty — then you know the animators f—ked up!
Furthermore, the plot suffered from overloading the viewer’s senses. Far too many events (the Monster Association attacking the city, the martial arts tournament, Garou ambushing heroes, the formation of hero factions) were occurring at the same time without adequate build up. Inevitably, the whole proceeding became a mishmash of random fighting, other random fighting, and even more random fighting. Much of which felt inconsequential, particularly the ending of the martial arts tournament.
In terms of the characters, they were still entertaining enough to keep “One Punch Man Season 2” afloat. Saitama’s unassuming gags — like the bananas in the hospital — were quite humorous. Despite the alterations in animation, his character felt very much the same (which is a good thing). Although, his frequent video game outings with King became mundane after awhile. The new evil ‘monster,’ Garou, exhibited a level of depth that was refreshing to see in an antagonist. His plight to upend the established paradigm of the perpetual winning hero was a realistic motivation. Having watched WCW in my younger years, nothing was as exhilarating as watching Hulk Hogan join the N.W.O.
Why, you may ask?…Because! It was unpredictable.
Garou’s ambition to become a monster — despite being human — is unexpected given the narrative framework of season one. Furthermore, the various flashbacks and conversations with the boy in the park teased out his thoughts on the hero/villain dynamic. Giving the viewer an opportunity to empathize with his character, and understand his motivations. Does Garou’s extreme antics become tropey at times? Sure. But given the overabundance of all-powerful, omniscient beings who control matters behind the scenes, it’s nice to see a villain play it by ear and actively challenge heroes on the fly. That being said, Garou’s character felt like untapped potential. There’s only so much a 30-60 second clip can reveal about a characters rationale for wanting to become a villain. If more time was dedicated toward Garou’s specific reasons for hating heroes and preferring villains, it would have been time well spent.
Normally, decently-written characters would trounce cosmetic blemishes and a hurried plot. But given “One Punch Man’s” reliance on smooth, detailed animation to execute well-timed jokes and exhilarate the viewer. It comes as no surprise that the animation deteriorated the product as a whole. Also, besides Garou, none of the new characters resonated. King, in particular, was a major disappointment, as his interactions with Saitama were anemic attempts at comedy. How many times do we need to see him kick Saitama’s ass in video games, honestly?
In the end, it was a passionless attempt to rekindle the love fans had for season one and had all the markings of a quick cash-grab. Not unlike the superhero films it mocked in season one.
JillFanatic
We’ve all heard this before since it’s a tale as old as time: A sequel of a popular property isn’t nearly as good as the original. This is a phenomenon known as sequelitis. Sure, there is the possibility that the sequel made just doesn’t quite live up to the original work, but is still an ok experience overall, like Incredibles 2. However, OPM2 not only fails to build upon the source material, but it’s also a complete disaster as a standalone product. Hideous visuals, an underutilized cast, and unfunny jokes make watching this season about as fun as diarrhea, although there were some decent scenesand fights here and there.
This entire season is littered with still frames, gross background colors, inconsistencies, poor editing, lack of weight in any of its fights, and a weird metallic shine on a few of its characters. The phrase “Look at how they massacred my poor boy” doesn’t even begin to describe the kind of hell that Genos went through in this season. There was this scene in Saitama’s apartment where Genos’s arms look like they’ve rusted almost as bad as my sister’s bike. Whenever they have him in a fight, he looks like a cheap bootleg toy from China. They also gave him this metallic shine to really drive home that he’s this super cool fighting robot, but he just looks gross when he’s fighting. Back in the first season, whenever a fight happens, you can really feel the impact of the punches that are thrown. Characters are launched several feet away, and whenever Saitama throws a punch, it causes the monster’s body to be torn to shreds. In this season, whenever someone is getting hit, they turn the entire background into a single solitary color like red, orange, or purple. This might’ve been done to emphasize the hits, but it just looks ugly and distracting. It’s typically used over stills after the punch has been thrown, and it gives the characters this horrible looking outline after the hit. It doesn’t emphasize on the hits, but it instead just cuts after the fact, so the action can’t stick with the audience at all. Also, when a character like Bang or Garou hits an enemy several times, they have these impact effects, but they’re so stilted that they don’t feel like it's moving at all. There are several general inconsistencies, like Saitama’s head looking like it got swollen from a brain tumor in episode 1, and Metal Bat’s dried up looking blood covering his face in one scene but then having only a little bit of blood coming out of his forehead in the next. There’s a lot more than I could go over here, but I think you get the point. Aside from not living up to the standards that the first season set, it fails to live up to any basic standards in the industry. There’s an animator named Kenichiro Aoki, who is responsible for some of the shots, and the animation he’s done are the best parts of the show. You might as well call it One Animator Man since he’s the one responsible for all of the few decent parts of the anime, such as the cockroach fight in episode 6, but all of the other shots look so rushed and poorly put together. This is what happens when you rush animation and try to get something out ASAP, as a studio such as JC Staff doesn’t care about quality, but quantity. In an industry that shits out as many anime as possible, this season is just another example of horribly produced manure.
The comedy in this season is also unfunny except for a few scenes. A lot of this is because of the animation and horrible direction, but most of what the show tries to pass off as “jokes” are just not funny. As a friend of mine, SunlitSonata pointed out to me that something the first season was good at was contrast. It would go back and forth between crisp art, to a drawing ripped out of a manga, like the OK face. There was also the fight with Saitama and Genos, where it made it look like Saitama was about to punch Genos, but he just runs up to him and taps his shoulder. OPM2 tries to go for the same thing, like when Garou attacks Saitama. Saitama goes for the manga expression and knocks out Garou, but the presentation is too bland for it to stand out. When King is revealed to be a total coward, they do make a joke with Saitama’s deadpan reaction to seeing King play a visual novel, but it goes by too quickly to be funny. Another example would be when Fubuki tries to recruit Saitama into her group. When one of her lackeys tell Saitama that she’s Class B Rank 1, Saitama doesn’t care, and we get the groups reactions. The problem is that when we see their reactions, we get the gross looking solitary colored background I mentioned before and ugly shadows. I only found two jokes funny from this season, such as when Metal Bat’s younger sister knocks him out since that’s so unexpected. The best joke is when Saitama knocks out the blonde guy from the martial arts tournament. To add insult to injury, the announcer ends up embarrassing the blonde guy by revealing that his girlfriend didn’t even show up for the tournament despite the fact he planned on proposing to her. It’s such an overly cruel joke that I couldn’t stop laughing for a little while. Though that joke was saved for the post-credits scene, so I ended up missing it the first time I watched the episode. Sadly, for the most part, the presentation ruins almost all of the jokes, so it’s hard for me to care a lot of the time.
Saitama and Genos practically act the same, as Saitama is still the super strong dense hero, and Genos is the extremely serious straight man. There’s no problem with that, but they aren’t utilized very well here. They’re both are completely glossed over to the point of no return, aside from a few notable scenes. Saitama’s lack of satisfaction with fighting opponents because of how ridiculously strong he is gets completely shafted until we get an admittingly good scene with Saitama and King talking about it, but that’s all you get with him. The show revolves around a monster invasion, as the number of monsters and their intensity gradually increases throughout its run, and one human claim to be one of the monsters. That person is Garou, and he’s the best part of the show. We all have villains we find to be more entertaining than the heroes, and Garou is the embodiment of that sentiment. He’s on an ongoing quest to defeat all the heroes from the hero association to prove that monsters are superior to humans. He’s an extremely arrogant and strong material arts master. Every time he’s on screen, it’s fun to watch with his entertaining lines, and enjoyable personality. He’s not all bad, as he seems to have a soft spot for children since he was even willing to kill a monster to defend Metal Bat’s younger sister. The presentation does ruin his appearances in the show somewhat, as his muscles look like trash bags mashed together, and one of his facial expressions had a Grinch looking simile. He’s still enjoyable overall regardless, but he’s probably a lot more fun to follow in the manga.
The opening is done by JAM Project, who was also responsible for the opening of the first season. The animation for the opening might be terrible, but the song itself is pretty good. It has this real banger heavy rock part at the beginning, and the rest of the song is just fun to listen to. The ED for this season that was sung by Saitama’s voice actor, Makoto Furukawa, is just ok. Like the first season, it goes for a more melancholic song for ED, with a piano and slow singing. However, the song itself isn’t anything noteworthy and it’s nothing you haven’t heard from before. As for the OST, it’s quite good, as Makoto Miyazaki returns, and it does help liven up the most boring show with some nice rock tunes like Garou’s theme. It goes for this sort of intensity that helps liven up the otherwise stilted action scenes.
I’m sure some might be asking why I even bothered to finish a show I hated so much and write a review about it. I didn’t find OPM2 to be so bad it’s good, like Inuyashiki, and I found it boring at least 90% of the time, so what made me finish it? This review aside, the main reason would be because I was curious to see how far this titan would fall. I wanted to see how bad the animation could get as the show could progress. Most episodes were horrible looking, with episode 7 being the worst one, but there were a few decent episodes like episode 3. You’re probably better off just reading the manga.
DarthInvader
*Minimum Spoiler Review* TL;DR: From convoluted plot to character overload to just downright shitty animation & cba CGI failures, OPM S2 is not great, but it's not terrible either. It's just okay... If you like comedy that is. [Story: 6/10 , Characters: 5/10, Art: 4/10, Sound: 4/10, Enjoyment: 6/10] "I'm a Hero. You did well on your own. Leave the rest to me" - Saitama 2019 is the year of sequels. From highly anticipated sequels like Mob Psycho S2 to SnK S3 to BNHA S4, we are now experiencing delayed gratification at its finest. Major question to ask as a fan of OPM, will itssequel live up to the expectations? Will it be a masterpiece or a disaster, given how long we had to wait? Now let's be real, given that sequel ruining studio, JC Staff, is adapting this anime and somehow Chikara Sakurai, an unknown director, is driving this show off the bridge, surprisingly, if you subvert all of your pre-conceived expectations, OPM S2 is not great, but it's not terrible either.
"So basically martial arts is... A way to move around all cool-like?" - Saitama
The story follows our bored hero Saitama, who is so OP that he defeats every monster with, you guessed it, just one punch. How do you take something so stale and make it interesting. It's a parody show at its core. If you've watched enough shounen, you know the good guy will always win and the ugly looking evil monster will always lose. This season the arc changes where the antagonist is a human who roots for the monster and wants to exact revenge on all the heroes who just gangs up on the villains and kills them mercilessly for pride & money. From a parody plot standpoint, it's a refreshing pivot. We finally have a humanized villain who you can get behind in kicking some smug hero's ass. We get to see how corrupt the executives running the Hero Association is and we also get to see how selfish S/A/B/ even C class heroes can be. However, instead of just focusing on this antihero, Garou, they decided to include in the entire cast of Monsters Inc alongside it to convolute the plot even further. I understand the purpose was to act as a foil for Garou, but it wasn't executed well. There's even a mini martial arts tournament arc that really seems unnecessary but it's funny regardless. There were some moments of brilliance following the sage like dialogues from Saitama & King (a highly anticipated strong hero), but with all the one line quit pro quo jabs and unnecessary dialogues to avoid putting effort in animation, it just wasn't cutting it. This is why having a good storyboard director helps big time. If anything, this just showed the incompetence of the studio more than anything.
"There are so many extremely powerful villains in this world. A hero is someone who takes on those villains. Even if they're all alone" - Saitama
Despite the convoluted linear plot of OPM S2, the characters not half as bad in this iteration. We get to meet more characters and more S class as well as A class heroes. We get to see the moral code each of them live by and through that we can juxtapose our main hero, Saitama, and see where he stands. As always, Genos, hyped up as this great S class hero who is striving to be as strong as his Master, somehow never fails to be destroyed by every villain he comes across. Garou also stands out as a really good fleshed out villain and given his past, you are able to feel empathy for him. It's nice. However, you can tell the plot is rushed as we are bombarded each episode with a multitude of characters that we just cba about honestly. If this was a 24 episode anime and we had the chance to really get into the backstories of these side heroes/villains then their actions onscreen would make more sense. Before you complain remember that first season despite being just a 1 cour anime, keep in mind, we mainly followed the adventure of Saiama & Genos. This time, there were many more characters. Aside from that, the seiyuus did as best job they can given the material they had at hand. Garou's seiyuu just gave you that badass Vegeta feel every time he talked. As always, Saitama, said the least but the deadpan deliveries were spot on. Kudos to them atleast.
"If you don't want to get bossed around or mocked by the people around you... You just need to become stronger" - Garou
If there was one thing that stood out to all of us from the first season of OPM, it was the epic animation done by Studio Bones. The story can suck. The characters can be stale. Fans of OPM all just wanted one thing to be done right, and it was the animation. Did JC Staff do justice? Not even close. They just dropped the ball and watched it roll down Mount Fuji and given how much cash the show was bringing in they just wiped their tears from fan criticism with fat dollar bills. Jokes aside, seriously, from an animation standpoint, I was not mad, not angry, just disappointed. Even GoT ending wasn't this disappointing. The show had way too many CGI scenes. They were just never blended in well and the fight sequences seemed so choppy. When they realized they can't do fight sequences right, they started pulling the off-screen fight sequence card to not put the budget in to animating it. How do you adapt a fight driven anime and not have good key animators for it? It was just sad. One upside though, near the end, it seems they hired a good key animator for the last 3 episodes. So that's nice, in a way. Even then, a bad job is a bad job. Aside from the atrocious animation, the background music wasn't bad. It's good. There was no way we will ever trump the first OP song of OPM. However, it's as if they knew that, so they just didn't put in any effort for the OP and ED song. They were not even catchy and just downright bad. Seriously, if you know you can't adapt, then just don't adapt.
"What is evil? What is justice? All those pretty words mean that I should go die because the majority wants me dead! This is absurd! They can all go to hell!" - Garou
Overall, as stated before, OPM S2 is not great by any means, but it's not terrible either. If you can subvert your expectations from episode 1, then maybe you can just sit back and enjoy this anime. It's not that much of a train wreck. I've seen worse. No way in hell was JC Staff going to be able to produce something as good as Studio Bones. No way can an unknown director do the show justice as Shingo Natsume can. Sometimes, you just have to roll with the cards you were dealt and unfortunately, out of all the awesome sequels we are blessed with this year, this had to be the one that just shat the bed. Despite a few redeeming wholesome moments, I don't think I will go back and rewatch this season again. If you want to rewatch, I recommend just rewatching the first season. However, by no means, watch season 2 after watching season 1... Unless you're a masochist. Then do it by all means. Nevertheless, if you've watched season 1, then might as well watch this season. You've waited enough time anyway. So why not watch it and get it over with. Anyways, check it out & let me know later how you like it as well as share with me your favourite quote from the anime! Ciao.
P.S. Thank you for reading. I hope you found this short and supaishi review helpful!
amarlek
This anime must be understood in a different way because it holds deep meanings . For example Saitama, he feels bored despite his strength So we see him looking for himself. And Garou also why he defeat heroes without killing them? because he's not evil. Or when he tried to protect the child from attacking heroes who tried to kill him in search of fame, not justice The child ran away from him even though he had hurt himself in order to protect him. In the end I would say I enjoyed the anime and I hope there are more seasons.
CorkMars
I really do not agree with all the hate this season gets. I feel absolutely compelled to address all of the people intros review section that hate on this series for ALL THE WRONG REASONS. Yes, season 1 was a smash hit, it featured Shingo Natsume working in conjunction with some top the greatest battle animators of all time. BUT, I'm about to hit y'all with the facts and explain why season 2 of One Punch Man is better than season 1. Season 1 was done by studio Madhouse, a studio famous for not salarying workers, and relying heavily on freelancers. Better yet, a studioinfamous for hospitalizing animators from overwork. Yes season 1 was a grand achievement in battle animation, but at what cost? Animators at Madhouse are literally living through hell and outside of Japan we celebrate this? WHY? Because casual viewers could't care less about anything other than how cool the fights look. Ignoring the fact that the story in season 2 is objectively of much higher quality, the fights aren't even bad in season 2. Season 1 spoiled too many idiots, and now they expect every single production to feature animators working 100 hour weeks while they sit other collective FAT ASSES and enjoy. Sure, JC Staff is not a studio with a great reputation, but at least they have in house staff that they don't treat like complete shit.
At the end of the day, Madhouse couldn't have done a season 2 if they wanted to. It was only Natsume that was able to bring in so much freelance talent (from bones mostly) and he was no longer interested in working on this property! He had better things to do (Boogiepop). SO every one needs to shut up about what could have been and enjoy what we got. Would it have been better One Punch never got a second season? Some manga readers may think so, but I disagree. I'm glad we got to see this part of the story adapted, and I'm even more glad that the animators didn't end up in the hospital from working on it. Before you criticize this season, think a little bit about the work that goes in behind the scenes.
If you like One Punch Man for the fights, you'll be disappointed.
If you like One Punch Man for the story, you'll be happy with this season.
ZB_Blades
Back in 2015 an anime came out that lit up the community. Every week, everyone including myself, would wait on pins and needles for the latest episode to be released. It was an event. Each episode managed to top itself in terms of shear quality to the point where the final episode was worthy of a big screen experience. When the anime concluded, fans were eager for its return. Years went by with no season 2 announcement. Excitement was starting to waver when out of nowhere it was announced. So, was it worth the wait. The story of One Punch Man has always kind offascinated me. Yes it’s very simple and even has a monster of the week type formula. It reminds me of the Saturday morning cartoons I watched as a kid except with more crisp animation. Part of the reason the story sticks out to me has to do with the main character and our hero for fun Saitama. An overpowered, bored out of his mind completely average joe with the potential to annihilate the whole world. His mundane life definitely draws out the story well. However when it comes to this season he takes a backseat to the new driver Garou who injects some fresh blood into the world of heroes.
What sets Garou apart is that he is an underdog that sees himself as Goliath. A a self described monster with a bone to pick. While he’s supposed to be the main villain I understand why people are fascinated by him. Saitama flipped the hero genre on its head with his plain and uninterested approach while you have Garou changing the world of villains by being a champion and a symbol to the oppressed. In virtually every facet of entertainment, villains or bad guys are treated as evil, ugly, monsters with no purpose other than to be punching bags for the audience to direct their hatred on. Except Garou never directed his hatred towards them. He looked for the good in the same monsters that people wanted dead. That says a lot about Garou as a person and makes him relatable. That’s the thing about One Punch Man. Even in its superpower extreme world, it still has very grounded and relatable characters.
Now comes the part of the review that I’m sure everyone is looking forward to, the art and animation. Yes, the art and animation is different for season 2. Yes, Madhouse is not attached to this season, it’s JC Staff. Before I dive into the art and animation for season 2 I must explain something. What happened with season 1 of One Punch Man is nothing short of a miracle that we will probably never see again. Director Shingo Natsume used his connections, not Madhouse, and assembled the ultimate team of freelance animators to animate One Punch Man. Since the news that One Punch Man would be changing studios people have been losing their shit. Anime is not defined by studios, it’s defined by the people who work on it. For the people that make a big deal about the animation, they should recognize the people that make the show come to life, not the individual studio.
With that being said let’s get right to season 2. Honestly, the art and animation for season 2 is not bad. Some scenes are average and could have been done better but there are also episodes that have the season 1 quality that people have missed. Episode 3 in particular was a standout episode that really helped to show off the raw power of Garou cementing him as a legitimate threat. Ironically, some of the better animated scenes of season 2 revolved around Garou. The art for some of the characters does look a little off but the designs are by no means ruined. Think of it as an artist looking at a picture and then doing their best to copy it. It’s not going to look identical but it’s not going to look bad either. That’s what One Punch Man season 2 is. The sound ain’t bad either. It’s hard to follow up a battle cry rock anthem like the season one opening song by Jam Project but they come back for season 2 to deliver an equally as fist pumping hype machine.
Overall, I don’t believe One Punch Man season 2 deserves all the hate it’s getting. The characters we know and love are still there with some welcome additions. The story is elaborated on which is an added touch. Sure, the art and animation is a bit different but it is by no means unwatchable. The team that was assembled for season 2 had a lot to live up to and big shoes to fill. They gave it their best effort and they should be commended for it. Life ain’t perfect, anime ain’t perfect. If we can appreciate the little things, we can get some enjoyment out of anything.
LebronsHairline
Short Review: I don't understand the hate this season got. Probably because I haven't read the manga. In a vacuum, this season was hilarious and very exhilarating, making me want to know what happens next, in a way superior to the first season. I think this is for one main reason, which leads to a hot take I have: Saitama wasn't featured that heavily. In my opinion, based on the little of it that I have watched/read, OPM excels when Saitama isn't featured too heavily. And so, when you introduce a much more compelling, interesting, and funny character than Saitama in Garou, then you see thatthe show would actually fare much better if said new character was the real main character. That's right: if Garou was the main character, then I think OPM would be even better than it is now. Focusing on Saitama holds back the potential of the show. I understand the reason Saitama was made to be the main character, the whole idea is a parody/subversion of the superhero genre. However, OPM tries to have its cake and eat it too. What I mean is that the series wants to be this funny parody yet also wants to be a high-stakes action show. This dichotomy can only work for so long before the one-punch schtick gets old and makes things feel a bit pointless and lame. Shifting to Garou as the main character would positively change the show in two ways that addresses these problems. First, Garou, though extremely strong, is not unbeatable and we see him struggle and fail to get better and get to the top like all other shounen protagonists. This makes it so we don't get too bored with our main character and we can see meaningful development in the main character in relation to the major events that are going on in the story. Second, making Garou the main character still maintains the subversive aspects the original concept had but instead of the main character being stupid OP, the main character is a deranged lunatic of a villain who has nefarious goals that are hilariously expressed through the same rhetoric as normal battle shonen protagonists (e.g., Garou yearns to be the strongest villain much like how Naruto wants to become Hokage).
ezbie
It's good and the ending left me thrilled. A very good anime indeed. However, if compared to the first season, it's noticeable that some aspects of the anime in it's have changed a lot, in a way that I didn't like very much. The first of them is the art, the most noticeable changes to me being the way Saitama is now drawn. He's given more a grave facial expression, his face being drawn using sharper and angled traces than in the 1st season. He's sort of portrayed as a badass at times, which doesn't seem to fit his personality. I liked the old way the most,but it's not a deal breaker.
The plot is less comic now too, but the essence of each character is still there, but I really wish they had retained more of the humorous aspect of the plot there was in the 1st season. However, plot is still pretty damn good. Only thing I really have to complain though is the martial arts tournament, it's really boring and for a moment I thought "there you go, one more superb anime fucked by unskilled production", but I was wrong, after the tournament ends, the plot turns out to be very exciting and thrilling
Soundtrack was also better in the 1st season.
Character development is amazing, even though they forgot some characters like charanko and the bike super hero a bit, but over all it is well done.
Overall, it is not a perfect anime - it never is - but considering they changed studios for the production of this one, I'm impressed on how good this sequel is. I prefer the 1st season though.
Buuubbblesss
There will inevitably be a lot of people attempting to diagnose what went wrong with One Punch Man season 2, but I think anyone could tell you why it doesn’t work. The obvious answer is the downgraded animation and confused direction, but there’s a bit more than that. Let’s just start with the biggest problem. ~Sound~ You thought I was gonna say the art/animation? Well, that isn’t the biggest problem with One Punch Man season 2. An equally big problem is the sound effects and sound design, but to drill down further it’s the studio. J.C. Staff has no idea how to do action. Don't believe me?Go watch Taboo Tattoo. They have no idea what they're doing.
Now, J.C. staff does really well with the slice of life and romcom genres. They produced Toradora and Azumanga Daioh, which were outstanding entries in the romcom and SOL genres respectively. That last detail is important because I hate 95% of SOL shows that came out and I dislike romantic comedies. They bore me. JC. Staff is so good at doing those genres that even I enjoy their takes on them.
But action? They can't do action at all. Taboo Tattoo didn't work partially because the source material is garbage, but also because J.C. staff used terrible muddy sound effects during action scenes that ruined the fighting aspect of that show. The same is true of One Punch Man season 2. For one, the sound design in this show is horrendous. The same muddy, unfitting sound effects that I remember from Taboo Tattoo have returned in OPM. The punches lack the oomph needed to connect with the viewer, the building/concrete/rock destruction effects sound like someone tossing some pebbles, and the fire effects (Genos' engine boost sound effect especially) lack the necessary impact to feel satisfying.
Sound is really important in general, but some genres can get away with having bad sound. Say, romance or a drama. But for 3 specific genres, having good sound is NECESSARY to sell the show. Those 3 genres are sci-fi, fantasy, and action. It’s more important to get it right in sci-fi and fantasy because the sound effects chosen can make or break the world you’re trying to build, but it’s pretty damn important in action too because a fight with bad punching sounds or a car chase with unconvincing driving sounds deflates the entire scene. Go back and watch OPM season 1 and you’ll notice the sound is pretty damn good. Without those fantastic sound effects and generally good sound design, it wouldn't be nearly as effective. Punches have the right sound to feel powerful, destruction effects sounded fantastic, and the industrial/mechanical sound effects (Genos especially) sounded great. The show’s structure demanded its action be done well, and Madhouse was able to deliver. JC Staff did not.
The voice acting is mostly good, but that doesn’t matter as much in an action comedy. What’s important is that it can make its fights register with its audience with good sound design and sound effects. And they failed spectacularly at that.
Also, all the music in this show is horrible. They’re trying to mimic the approach Madhouse took from season 1 and they fail at it so hard. Like go listen to Garou’s theme. It’s one of the most excruciating pieces of music I’ve ever heard. 3/10
~Art/Animation~
On to the other big problem. The other half of why the action doesn't work is the terrible visuals. One Punch Man season 1 was a lightning in a bottle type of show that could never happen twice, in that there were a lot of freelance animators brought in to work on it, along with the source material being fantastic. The framing and composition of shots, as well as animation quality and editing prowess, propel it past any competitor on a technical level. You could feel the energy in every fight through the framing and editing, and sound design accompanied it perfectly.
OPM s2 lacks all of this. The animation quality obviously isn't up to snuff because season 1 was, as I said before, lightning in a bottle. No other action show I can think of had that consistently fantastic animation. In a way, it was privileged to have such high production values behind it, so it isn’t really fair to compare the 2 on a technical level. But even if you remove the high quality animation from the equation, it's still lacking. Not having the animation budget of Madhouse doesn't prevent J.C. Staff from recreating the great framing of shots in season 1. The camera angles and fight edits in season 2 are dull and uninspired, and the battle choreography is too stiff and looks awkward.
Also, the visual effect they used for metal effects like Genos' body and Sonic's armor looks like trash. It's awful. Honestly, any attempt at creating a metallic surface that has to move (Genos’s armor, Metal Knight’s drone, and Metal Bat’s bat specifically) has the single ugliest attempt at a metal texture I’ve ever seen. Usually I try to come up with a more nuanced take on things but that effect is rubbish. It looks like someone rubbed grease all over unpolished metal. It looks so bad that it constantly distracted me even outside of action scenes, and I had to rewind a LOT of scenes because I missed dialog while I was gawking at Genos’ armor or Metal Knight’s drone.
For some reason, that same texture is used to color Superalloy Blackluster’s body. So now they can’t even draw people’s skin right? He’s supposed to look like a beefy oiled-up bodybuilder, but the gradient they use for his skin looks…atrocious. I can’t even describe it. And EVERY shiny or metallic surface is plagued by this gradient. It’s the worst.
Lastly, there’s the inconsistent art quality. If you look closely at character outlines, they tend to be choppy and at times smeared. What the fuck is that? Was there not enough time to finish the outlines? Why are the characters drawn so unprofessionally? I don’t know what JC Staff’s production cycle is but clearly it isn’t enough if you don’t even have time to finish drawing the fucking characters.
I do think the background tend to look very nice and if your eyes are tired of the shitty leather and metal gradients and unfinished character outlines, maybe you can zone out for a while and stare at the fucking clouds or something. 2/10
~Story/Writing~
People often call OPM “One Joke Man”, and I think people are now starting to realize how thin that joke can be stretched before it wears too thin to function. The first season didn’t have any problem working around that joke because it was extremely well-animated, the choreography and cinematography were great, the sound effects and music was excellent, and any problems with the narrative were covered by its comedic timing and great pacing. The creators also took advantage of those high production values and threw in a lot of action-based comedy. They were consistent in working comedy into action scenes, which helped keep the comedy and action sides of the show flowing into each other continuously rather than feeling segregated.
With season 2, it no longer has the benefit of excellent production value backing up its comedy. Which would be fine if JC Staff was taking notes from season 1 and worked comedy into the fight scenes. But rarely does the show work in any sort of comedy into fights. When they do attempt it (like with Saitama vs Blizzard’s goons), it doesn’t work because the technical aspects of the show suck. Saitama sending some goons flying into the distance might be funny if the timing was good, the angle wasn’t flat, and the punch sound was satisfying. You see what I’m getting at? J.C. Staff’s shoddy production quality here tanks the entire thing. And it isn’t just because they have a smaller budget. There are ways to make an action comedy work on a smaller budget. Just look at the earlier episodes of Gintama. JC Staff just doesn’t have the competency to pull it off.
If you go to J.C. staff's producer page on this site and sort by score, you won't find a title with the action tag until the 23rd entry. And that show is Toaru Kagaku no Railgun S. The first true action title there is...One Punch Man season 2, the 28th highest scored show they've produced. They just aren't good at action and should not have been selected to take this adaptation. Bones (FMA/FMA Brotherhood, My Hero Academy, Mob Psycho 100) or David Production (JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, Cells at Work) would have done a much better job. Ideally you'd want Madhouse to take the helm again but for some reason (possibly involving tequila) they decided AfterLost was a better use of their resources. 6/10
~Characters~
The characters in OPM are more or less pointless to critique. OPM is a satire/parody. Pretty much the entire cast consists of joke characters. Saitama is a weirdo who beats everything with one punch and thus tends to be oblivious to situations that are dangerous to people around him. Genos is super serious but gets his ass kicked in every single fight. Mumen Rider is some dude on a bike. King literally has no powers and is some sort of otaku. Sonic is lightning fast and would be potentially dangerous…if he wasn’t obsessed with fighting the one character he has no chance of defeating, thus guaranteeing he never actually poses a real threat to the rest of the world. Some of the other hero designs include: a guy in a pineapple suit, a dude dressed up as a dog, a guy in a red and yellow full-body latex suit with a smiley face hammer, and the main character is some lanky dude with no hair and wears yellow dishwashing gloves. Almost every character has some sort of joke associated with them or their appearance. There is no point in critiquing that, so I’m leaving this score blank.
~Enjoyment~
I don’t really grade for enjoyment. How much you enjoy something is determined by the product of your experiences in life and what you consider to be a quality production, which are different for every single person. As such, attempting to grade something inherently subjective with an objective grading metric is a paradox. I will leave this score blank.
~Conclusion~
One Punch Man season 2 is a failure almost exclusively on the technical front. If you analyze it for its writing and comedy, it’s pretty good. But that’s only half of what One Punch Man is. It’s an ACTION comedy. Action is half of it, and the action is terrible. As such, I can’t really give it a score above 5. After all, it fails at half of what it’s supposed to do.
One Punch Man season 2 gets a 3/10.
fitemeillreku
An adaptation that fails to live up to its prequel, and results in a very okay anime. One Punch Man Season 2 was met by a lot of criticism, most notably for its very subpar animation that fails on every aspect to live up to Murata's artwork from the manga, or the style of directing by Shingo Natsume originally did in the first season. While I was one of the outliers who thought it wasn't necessarily a dumpster fire that people made it out to be, but not absolutely amazing, where I gave it an 8/10, which on my scale would be a good anime, withanything lower than that being decent or worse. It goes without saying that a good story can cover up bad/okay animation, which was initially the case when I first started watching this, but for some reason, I just felt it wasn't there, and I'm here to explain why.
Story: 5/10
I was pretty optimistic when the first four episodes came out, as they were faithful to the original source material, but after those episodes, most of them fell flat. The first few episodes still do a great job establishing the threat that the Hero Association currently faces, the comedy was much more of a hit than it was a miss, and it creates a successful shift in tone that differs from what we, or at the very least, I was used to in the first season. One thing that you'll notice as you go further down the episodes is that Saitama takes a back seat, and the story lets other characters take the role of the main character. In the Hero Hunter arc, as I like to call it Garou takes the role of the main protagonist, and during the Martial Arts Tournament, Suriyu takes the role of the Main Protagonist. I do quite like this change a fair amount, but even then, I have some complaints.
Plot points that felt huge or was supposed to be dramatic felt a lot less dramatic or hype than they should have been, and as a result, they felt dry and basically little no sense of urgency or a sense of awe in them. There's honestly only some parts during the anime where I was like "holy shit, things are going to get serious now," but it just wasn't there. Another problem that I have with this adaptation is that they take way too long hype up and execute up the Martial Arts Tournament, a problem that I originally had with the source material, and which I didn't think to consider in my preliminary review, but they spend several episodes hyping it up, and you're wondering when they're actually going to get on with it. For the actual tournament, it's a pretty anticlimactic, but you kind of expected that when Saitama decided to enter in. Even the events that happen after the tournament failed to get me excited as to what was happening, or what was going to happen next.
Otherwise, the original plot that was introduced at the beginning of the season with Garou was actually still very solid, and I wish they focused on Garou's storyline a bit more rather than the tournament. The anime for me, felt like it ended on a pretty unsatisfactory note. I could totally see where Sakurai Chikara wanted this anime to end, but everything just still feels... incomplete, for a lack of better words.
Art and Animation: 4/10
This was a production that was doomed to fail at the start. I was fairly impressed about this originally, as it wasn't entirely horrible, but nowhere close to amazing, but after looking into it a bit more, I can say it's pretty bad. With J.C. Staff working on this production, everyone expected it to be bad, as J.C. Staff is not known for their action series, and more of their non-action series like Toradora! or Shokugeki no Soma just to name a few. To add on to that, J.C. staff had a schedule that could only be described as hell, as they were fresh off A Certain Magical Index III, and apparently, they had only completed two episodes when it started airing. The original complaints that I had are still present, Genos' arms, and really all of the metal textures look jarring and really out of place, with this weird, shiny looking gradient that looks very out of place; there are a lot of static lip flaps, and to add on to those complaints, when action scenes do happen, most of the times, they decide to have this white background that's really distracting, probably because it's easier to do that than draw a real background. Yet another complaint that I have is when they have those rapid attacks, it looks like blurs that make it really hard to see what the hell they are actually trying to do. A big thing that people are upset, including me, is how inconsistent it can be. One scene, it can look actually pretty good, and a decent amount of effort was put into to, and another one, they'll just repeat the same 3-4 frames and I just can't but help laugh at that. One thing that I would like to add is that most of the key frames are based on the panels of the manga redraw, I thought that was a fairly nice touch, but can get a bit tiring after a few episodes.
Sound: 7/10
One thing that is surely a bright spot, for a decent part is the sound. The same composer from last season, Makoto Miyazaki returns to make his appearance on this season of One-Punch Man, and I can say that it's still fantastic. If you listen closely, which at some parts, you can't really hear it, you can tell that this seasons' OST is kind of like the first seasons' OST, but changed a bit, and that's not really something to complain about, I just wanted to point that out. The OP is still hype as hell, though not as good as the first was, but is still a great tune to listen to. The ending is whatever, it's pretty forgettable in my opinion. One thing that I want to mention is the voice acting. I don't know if it's me but it seems as if most of the people voice acting in this don't really care much about this project. Most of them sound like they just want to get this over with and want to go home, which I don't entirely blame them for. Another thing that I felt was pretty bad was the sound design. The same sound director was there from last season, but some of the sound effects that they use can be quite on the silly side. An example of this is that in the later episodes, they use the sound from the M4A4 from CS: GO, I thought that was pretty funny, but overall, it's kind of on the weak side.
Characters: 9/10
It's really hard to screw up something such as this, as the original creator, ONE really knows how to write characters, from characters who have great motivations and backstories, along with nice, funny quirks that give them a lot of personalities, so it's not a huge surprise that this would be rated high. My points still do stand with characters such as Garou, who is a phenomenal character, and this series' first take at an actual villain and they do it well. He's not a stereotypical villain, as what drives him isn't that he's just bad for the sake of being bad, but the one thing that makes him compelling is that he's always tired of seeing the villain getting beaten, whether it be in comics or television. So, he takes it upon himself to try and dispatch of these heroes because of all he wants to see the villain win. As he takes on each fight, you get to see him grow and pushed to his limit and is still able to come out on top most of the time. This kind of characterization lets you sympathize with him, or maybe even empathize with him if your that person. One thing that I didn't like too much was that Garou didn't have enough development during the course of this season. Of course like I mentioned, he does get some but it's not enough, and he's left underdeveloped and while still compelling, just not compelling enough. The same still applies with King and Fubuki, who share their great amount of ups and downs to their characters, along with them being fairly relatable, with King, who I personally thought was the most relatable character in the series, along with his interactions with Saitama being some of the best things that this season has to offer.
One thing that I didn't like too much, but it's really not something that can make or break the series, but I thought that I should mention was that a lot was that the S-Class heroes are nowhere near as cool as they were in the manga. Normally, this wouldn't be a complaint if this was the first season, as all we really get is just a simple introduction. But now since they are much more important with the introduction of the Monsters Association, they become a key part of this entire story. Their characters are butchered to where it kind of feels like they're just powerful, that's it, not any other feeling of awe or excitement in them. But otherwise, Saitama is still the same, funny, and socially awkward person that he was, and the fact that he doesn't even know that he's socially awkward makes it a lot funnier. Genos was still the same, but he's in a lot of more difficult situations, which gives him more room to adapt to the environment around him. While the characters, in general, were still good, they just didn't have that impact that they once originally had.
Enjoyment: 5/10
The only enjoyment that I was able to get was from the good soundtrack and fairly good characters, but realistically, that can only do so much. Other than that, the plot falls flatter than it was originally in the source material, and the animation can be extremely inconsistent. Humor was still there for the first few and the last few episodes, but only periodically. It was okay for what it was, but I recommend that you read the original source material, web manga or the Murata redraw, rather than watch the anime, as it will probably leave you disappointed as it did to me.
AnimeBW
It is nothing short of a tragedy what happened to One Punch Man. The first season was a stone-cold masterpiece, a showcase of action storytelling so consistently awe-inspiring that it exploded out of the tight shackles of the anime fandom and actually gained a measure of mainstream appreciation. No joke, I was actually down at a Walgreens just a couple days ago, and mixed in with the Star Wars and Marvel action figures, I saw none other than Saitama the Caped Baldy himself. That is how far mangaka One, Shingo Natsume and his team at Mad House took the appeal of this doofy little storyabout a bored superhero who was so powerful that ended all his fights in one punch, robbing him of any meaningful challenge. And it isn’t hard to see why; even today, with the shadow of its eclectic younger brother Mob Psycho 100 looming large, One Punch Man stands a testament to some of the best that modern anime is capable of. Masterfully told, outrageously funny, with winning characters and unexpected developments, the first season grew beyond being a mere parody of shonen tropes and found its heart in the story of an ordinary, extraordinary man trying to sort his life out and find his passion after feeling it slip away, turning its superhero theatrics into a surprisingly poignant metaphor on the young adult condition and the nature of happiness itself. And combined with the sheer, staggering beauty of its action setpieces, few anime of recent years have hit harder, if you’ll pardon the pun, and reached so many in the process. It had brawn, it had brains, but above all else, it had soul. You couldn’t ask for a more perfect encapsulation of the power this medium has to offer at its best.
And now, as we come to the end of One Punch Man’s second season four years later, there’s only one question on everyone’s minds; what the HELL happened?
Well, a lot happened. In fact, it’s arguable that pretty much everything that could go wrong with pulling this second season together did go wrong. The original team decided not to return to the project, robbing the franchise of the embarrassment of talent that propelled it to greatness, and a much less experienced director took the helm. It was passed to J. C. Staff, a far inferior studio with a far inferior work ethic, especially in recent years. There were production delays, scheduling issues, and by the time the first real PV dropped and revealed a far weaker product than the bar set by the original, the writing was already on the wall: this was going to be a disappointment. And I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that One Punch Man Season 2 is likely going to end up as the most heartbreaking anime of 2019. Certainly not the worst; we’ve had plenty of garbage shows already (Domestic Girlfriend, anyone?), and we’re certain to have plenty more before the year is over. But compare to the outsized legacy and overwhelming expectations it had to live up to, I don’t think any show’s failure this year is going to hurt as much as this one does. OPM has gone from being the absolute cream of the crop to depressing, barely-acceptable mediocrity. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
The story, for what it’s worth, picks up right where the first season left off, following the daily lives of Saitama, the strongest man alive, and his robot apprentice Genos as they go about their daily business and become further embroiled in the complex social hierarchies and machinations of the Hero Association. We meet a bunch of new heroes and power players, all with some important quirk that Saitama can bounce off of. Meanwhile, there are hints of a dark force bubbling right under the surface of society, a snarl of tumultuous anger getting ready to burst forth and wreak havoc upon the unsuspecting populace. And that’s all before the arrival of a monstrous hero hunter named Garou, who slaughters heroes to prove his superiority over them, exacerbates tensions on every conceivable front. The first season spent a lot of time developing the show’s world in the background, but it really steps into the spotlight here. This season is an ensemble affair, with a metric butt-ton of important movers and shakers getting involved in a massive, tumultuous clusterfuck of a situation that, in contrast to the first season’s fairly self-contained little arcs, spans almost the entirety of these twelve episodes. Saitama himself is pretty much relegated to a supporting role for the lion’s share of the story, gong his own lackadaisical way in the background while the broader scope of the world and its factions takes center stage. Honestly, I’m okay with that decision; with a character as overpowered as Saitama, it’s hard to tell a story involving actual tension if he’s in the immediate vicinity and ready to swat every possible threat away with a stifled yawn.
And for what it’s worth, if there’s any reason to watch this season at all, it’s to experience the uniquely bizarre way ONE finds to tell this story. In this conflux of conflicting agents and rising tensions, the question of what it even means to be a hero itself comes under heavy scrutiny. We already knew from the first season that the Hero Association was a flawed, corrupt system that didn’t actually recognize genuine merit, but now we’re given an intensely intimate view of just how broken its ideals actually are, and what that means for the society living in its shadow. The top hero is a fraud who got there by chance and doesn’t want the spotlight it brings him. We meet a team of bruisers who seek to keep lower-class heroes under their thumb rather than rise through the ranks themselves, because it’s easier for them to feel better about their own position that way without putting in the effort to improve. As dark plans are brought to fruition and enemies begin surfacing, we’re given a taste of just how bitter and broken some of these people have become thanks to the way society frames their position in it. There’s a martial arts tournament full of warriors who carry themselves with arrogance that their way of living is a superior and noble path to follow, dismissing the cheap facade of the hero. Garou the Hero Hunter, easily the best new character, always rooted for the underdog villains in the shows he watched growing up, and now he considers himself a monster fighting for all the monsters who were never given a fair shake, striking heroes down to prove they aren’t the omnipotent gods they’re often seen as. He’s a fascinating foil for Saitama, someone always seeking new challenges to improve himself against but still at the point where he can enjoy the tension of a fight he may not end up winning.
And all through this mess wanders Saitama himself, wondering why all these people can’t just get their heads out of their ass and live their best life on their own terms, regardless of what anyone says about them. That’s the brilliance of how this franchise seems to be developing: using Saitama not as a catch-all salve to end battles prematurely, but as a moral compass for everyone else to orient themselves around. It feels like the prototype for the kind of storytelling that ONE would later use to propel Mob Psycho 100 to such heights, using the character’s OP nature not to stop the world’s development in its tracks, but providing the world a locus of thematic clarity that they can all position themselves around and be influenced by. Saitama represents the best way forward to many of the show’s lost souls, despite he himself having no idea what his own path forward should look like. He’s a paragon her by accident, not even realizing how revolutionary his ideas come across to the heroes and villains alike he crosses paths with. He’s just a guy who’s a hero for fun, after all, and as he struggles to make sense of what being a hero even means to him anymore, he provides a beacon for everyone else to do the same. It’s smart, thoughtful storytelling that allows for genuine tension and pathos, a clear indication that ONE is not content to let this franchise rest on its laurels. He wants to push it to greater, more introspective and meaningful heights, and I give him all the credit in the world for that.
If only it was still backed by a production that allowed those strengths to shine through.
Yes, it’s finally time to get to the elephant in the room and address the inescapable truth: One Punch Man Season 2 looks bad. Like, really bad. Not just in comparison to the first season’s heights, but taken on its own merits, season 2′s production has been an utter clusterfuck from start to finish, and it shows through in every awful gradient filter, every rush-job animation, every piece of wonky character art, and every hideous pore on Genos’ garish shiny CG metal body. The whole affair is a slapped-together, ramshackle construction that fails at pretty much every single aspect of visual presentation you could possibly imagine. Where once there was dynamic camerawork and kinetic, fluid action, now there’s shaky cam and blur effects to cheaply disguise the lack of movement in combat. Where once the editing was sharp and precise, deftly snapping between different emotional states and moods, now the show’s flow is as smooth and seamless as a barbed wire enema. Punches and punchlines land without any sense of anticipation, and thus no impact, before weightlessly farting over to the next disconnected cut without allowing you any time to process the events unfolding. Many shots are taken right from the manga panels, but they’ve been cobbled together without any consideration for how the pacing and editing of a TV show is different from a series of still images, resulting in a discordant, often confusing series of moving images that jump from one moment to the next without any sense of how time is moving between them. And none of the shots are impressive enough on their own right to cover for it thanks to the shamefully haphazard animation, lacking in detail and full of stiff movement that rarely once feels like the characters are actually moving through the space. Again, this isn’t just by the standards of Season 1′s incredible kinetic motion and fantastic editing; this is just plain awful cinematic storytelling on every conceivable level.
And sure, it’s easy to complain about this stuff to such an extent that you get lost in the weeds and lose sight of what really matters. Plenty of anime in the past have achieved greatness with less-than-stellar presentations, solely by the strength of their writing and characters. But the flaws in OPM season 2 aren’t just isolated, subpar niggles. The problems with the pacing and editing effect the entire story, crippling its attempts to be exciting and thoughtful. You can’t get invested in the themes and characters because they’re portrayed too haphazardly to get you into their mindset. You can’t jive on its exploration of hero society and the psyches of everyone living within it because everything is rushed through without any consideration for letting the audience settle into its ideas. None of the physical comedy works well without the necessary detail and sharpness to sell the ridiculous gags and painful bodily contortions. The presentation actively works against the narrative, underselling its dramatic strengths and highlighting its weaknesses as it blurs through information so thoughtlessly that it often feels like we’re wasting time for episodes on end. Hell, even something as simple as the voice acting feels noticeably downgraded to a distracting degree; compared to his performance from the first season, Saitama's VA talks with the samebored, lazy monotone in nearly every scene he’s in. And that’s weird, because he was able to turn in a really strong and nuanced showing last time, showcasing the entire emotional spectrum of disenchanted apathy while making every individual emotion feel distinct and real. Maybe there was a new, less talented vocal coach? Because that’s the only explanation I can think of for how this bizarre flaw came about. And it’s indicative of the entire problem with this season; no matter how good the story might be, there is so little care put into how that story is told that so few of its strengths actually come through.
And yet. For all my bitching and complaining, I can’t bring myself to hate One Punch Man’s second season. Call it stupidity, call it bias, maybe I’ve overly sympathetic to the production team for having this impossible situation dumped on their shoulders, but I can’t see this as a complete disaster. In the end, there’s still too much obvious effort on display, too much evidence that everyone working on this out-of-control clown car was desperate to somehow make it work. The sound design, weighty and muscular and bass-y, works double time to overcome the lack of weight in the fight animation, pushing the force of every blow to its breaking point. There’s some damn impressive CG on a couple of the big monsters, incorporated shockingly well into the show’s regular art style and managing to be fluid and expressive without losing detail or polish. Plus, for all the faults in its presentation, the story still finds time to work when it really puts its mind to it. Pretty much every second Garou is on screen, you end up wanting to forgive how lacking the rest of the show is, just by sheer force of how much intrigue his plotline carries. And for what it’s worth, the team eventually does get their shit together for the final stretch of episodes, delivering a handful of episodes and fights that come so achingly close to the heights of the first season you can almost taste it. Even with all the odds working against them, the season 2 team put in their best goddamn effort here. And what could be more fitting of the spirit of this season than facing down impossible odds and refusing to give up, no matter how hopeless the situation might seem?
Still, when all is said and done, the disappointment lingers. There’s a kind of sad poetry in One Punch Man’s second season coming out right after the return of ONE’s other flagship franchise Mob Psycho 100, after close to the same wait between seasons for both of them. Because while OPM season two had pretty much everything possible go wrong, MP100 season two had pretty much everything go right. Not only did the original team have the opportunity to match the first season, they were able to surpass it, to take every resource at their disposal and create a stone-cold classic of the modern anime era. We’re never going to forget about Mob Psycho 100 after its incredible season 2. And by coming out directly afterwards, it only highlights that much more how One Punch Man wasn’t given the same opportunity to become all that it could be. It’s the greatest anime tragedy since Fate/Zero, and I think the sting of what we lost here is going to last for a very long time.
LegendAqua
JC Staff taking on One Punch Man?..to that LA says............ But first. One Punch Man is back and with a focus and look more into the Hero Association's and Monsters all the while Saitama is still depressed he can't find a worthy foe. Now in this second season, Saitama goes through a martial arts tournament all the while a person is out "killing heroes" named Garou voiced by Hikaru Midorikawa AND all the while Monsters have infested the world of One punch Man to the point they created an association to make worthy humans and heroes into monsters. So ALOT happens in season, but if anything if thefirst season gave us what happens when a person becomes so powerful, he becomes bored of hero work but works to become a hero in the eyes of public, then the second season is dealing with Saitama's continuing dilemma as well as the newer aspect of power, of heroes and monsters, whether heroes won't be tempted by more power or not and the monsters' aspect of creating destruction and ONLY needed to be killed by the heroes.
So uhhhh, abut the Monster Association, as much as it's a great comparison and contrast to how the Hero Association works is great in terms of plot and thematically with it's characters deal with devil notion, was LA the only one thinking that the monsters should had just been solo-ing instead of making an association and focused more on Garou?...just LA?.
Anyways there are some new allies and villains like LA aforementioned, the allies being Fubuki voiced by Saori Hayami and best girl of the anime as her inferiority complex to her sister Tatsumaki and why she's ALWAYS a B rank hero is telling how the Hero Association sees B Rank and lower heroes that's NOT Saitama and how the Hero Association operates and to this example, the same can be said for the Tiger level monsters and them wanting to create chaos in order to rise their threat level. King voiced by Hiroki Yasumoto being the EXACT opposite to Saitama, being actually weak ordinary human but no thanks to Saitama, he reaped the fame and he coincidentally ended up near when Saitama killed a high ranking monster as a result and now he's well known but is NOT nor did he wanted to ever be a hero. As for villains, besides the Monster Association, Garou is the only human villain and a welcome to change to what would happen if a HUMAN is the villain and needing to be stopped. Thing is, he LOVES monsters so much, he learned form Bang-sama but since that didn't get him stronger, he wants to kill heroes as not only he detest them, but he gains his own notoriety and be SEEN as a monster, oddly enough Garou got majority of the screentime, looked as an anti-hero with him humanizing monsters and hating heroes to the point of hunting them for sport and through his backstory he makes for an interesting character. With all this being said, the second season shows the desire and multiple ways how power lusts at you to the point of throwing away your humanity to be the number 1#, as a civilian, hero or monster.
Saitama is the ONLY exception as he IS the strongest, but no one cares or knows and his quest to find someone to have fun and be a hero instead of constantly one-shotting monsters and opponents alike and coincidentally enough because of this, it makes him sidelined towards his own story and his existential boredom, yes the first season looked into this, but the second season...well did much as the same really with Saitama's almost static development just with LOTS of perspectives from allies and villains alike this time.
Now the elephant in the room, JC Staff animating the second season, where the first season was done by MADHOUSE and talented animators. Well like One Punch Man's meme...it's ok, for LA anyways, as the character designs is decent enough and the action though not as bombastic and crazily animated as the first season, JC Staff did "ok". Yes the fight scenes have been neutered from the crazy style and bombastic nature of it's fights and the animation is just crazy...but "ok". LA can't really say it any other way, JC Staff didn't fuck up the animation but just played it safe with some increased quality from JC Staff because this was One Punch Man. This isn't LA being a JC Staff fanboy, this is what LA REALLY feels about the animation, not horrible, not exceptional...just..."ok".
The voice cast though expanded from both allies and villains, the voice cast was great as per usual, from Makoto Furukawa as Saitama and Kaito Ishikawa as Genos. Aoi Yuuki, Saori Hayami, Hiro Shinono and Hikaru Midorikawa did great as Tatsumaki, Fubuki, Speed-o-Sonic and Garou respectively. Really even with the expanded voice cast, the voice cast was great, what else could LA say, the original cast is back ad the new seiyuu's blended nicely with the original cast as well.
The finale was..."ok", the animation did increase dramatically with some exceptions of "multi-hits" shortcuts but with all the plotlines let loose by the end of it...well it hasn't ended, be it arc or major plotline with all these loose plotlines just left hanging, from the Monster Association, to Garou, to heck even Saitama himself and that was kinda a bummer especially with Saitama literally being the plot device punchline at the end of it all.
One Punch Man 2nd Season has a strikingly similar biting commentary about heroes but more in the focus of that lust for power that Saitama has no interest in, great new and old characters and a plethora of plotlines simultaneously and culminating in the final boss in all forms, be it human or monster. Yes the production value has gone down but it's hasn't deteriorated to the point of awful but with a great voice cast and One Punch Man even getting a second season was a godsend, even if it wasn't given to the same animators from the first season. No it won't be no Mob Psycho 100 II in terms of sequels from ONE's work, nor does this second season have the same vigor and bombastic nature, that *ahem* punchy impact the first season had going for it but still has something new to give to us, necessarily if that "new" thing helped...well it did for LA did..."slightly". But to finally answer the question LA posed at the start of this review...One Punch Man 2nd Season is just...
ok...
ItIsIDio
The second season of One Punch Man has several problems. Most people have no trouble pointing the problems caused by the animation filled with cost-cutting techniques and the pacing that seems to be so compacted that it almost seems like the storyboarding and script for each episode was done by cramming as much content from the manga as possible as can be animated. But the biggest problem of all is that One Punch Man, adds nothing to ONE's work. ONE is the author of One Punch Man, and in order to get some context for what I'm about to criticize, I'm going to talk about himas well as the other works of his that have been adapted, and even the previous season. ONE is pretty unconventional, not only in regards to the content he creates, but also in regards to the circumstances through which he became successful. For those that are unaware, ONE aspired to become a manga artist but his circumstances didn’t allow him to follow on the goal he had intended, so he eventually has started drawing a webcomic of his own on his phone. Not only did ONE not have the proper tools for his trade, he also did not have the talent. You see, ONE, sucks at drawing. While it is true that he has gotten much better as an artist since he has started, and even that if he is given enough time he can pull off a decent drawing, ONE is just unable to draw at a consistent enough level to be even mediocre in the industry, especially at the pace which a magazine would require off of him. But despite this, ONE’s work was found entertaining just the way it was by his readers, and he managed to get a large enough following to be noticed. Eventually, he was forced into a hiatus by him getting a job that limited his schedule, and he no longer had enough free time to do what he has wanted, and not continuing One Punch Man was a possibility that he has warned his readers about.
One of his readers was Yusuke Murata, enjoyed the webcomic so much that he has offered to partner up with ONE when he heard this news, with the intent of helping him continue what he enjoys doing and what he has always aspired to do, as well as improve on his work, by drawing better designs for his characters, as well as adding a lot more detail and dynamism to the story that was being presented. By doing just that, One Punch Man was launched as a manga, and has reached the attention of many. ONE's work was improved by the fact there was someone that saw potential in his work and they wanted to add more to it.
Eventually, One Punch Man is picked up by MADHOUSE. As an adaptation, MADHOUSE has managed to knock One Punch Man off the park, using every action scene as an opportunity to choreograph each fight in a way for them to be able to demonstrate how much fluidity and detail their animation can bring themselves, but also to make each hit and attack despite their often underwhelming result, look impactful and distinguishable from anything else you have seen so far. While the enemies cannot achieve impressive feats due to the overwhelming odds they have to face, the animation manages to further accentuate their strength, as well as identity through how much impact their attacks have on the environment or the characters nearby that surrounding. ONE's work was once again improved by the fact there was someone that saw potential in his work and they wanted to add something to it themselves.
Then, there is Mob Psycho 100, another work of ONE's that has been adapted. As an adaptation, their approach was slightly different. While not as condensed and bombastic as the animation of One Punch Man, Mob Psycho's approach to adapting ONE's work has a lot of its own merits, as they focused on bringing ONE's style to its highest potential, making sure they get rid of the rough edges in it. Then with what was left, rather than changing it to be more impressive looking, they opted to keep the designs as close to what ONE has drawn as possible, and instead they focused on making the show more impressive by focusing on how the animation looks during movement rather than focusing on the key frames. The animation seems like it is meant to be in perpetual motion and it is almost never sitting still. This gives Mob a very distinctive look and it is a sight to behold that is distinct from One Punch Man as far as style is concerned. Another studio that once again, improved ONE's work through adding something they themselves saw value in.
Everyone that has adapted ONE's work so far has aspired to do something with it. To make it something more entertaining for the audience they were presenting it to. However, this does not seem to be the case here. What the case here seems to be, is that a studio got stuck with a major project that needed to be done as fast as possible because of its popularity and high probability for profit, but they had no way to uphold the expectations of the audience, so rather than having a project that had some ambition behind it and was aiming for success, the circumstances behind the second season seemed to concentrate on getting it on screen so that it can sell, because someone made a business decision and they were tasked to create it. The project clearly lacks passion. Every single adapter focused on making the intellectual property that they are using to in some way profit off of the fact that they are working on it. Instead, it seems like a clear business decision to just get it done, and just focus on the quantity so that it can sell, with little to no regards to the actual quality, which at this point is something common.
What makes me believe this to be the case?
Well, it is actually the very reasons the people watching the show complain. To go into detail that would be:
• The animation. The studio animating it has used a bunch of cost cutting animation techniques such as: Removal of backgrounds during action scenes, or replacing the background with a single colored background with a bunch of lines that indicate movement, zooming on the same frame to indicate a character is talking rather than drawing a new one for when they are talking from that angle, chopping off as much detail as possible during the movement of the characters during action scenes, still frames with a few moving visual effects to simulate movement/impact and that’s only what I’ve noticed. These cost cutting techniques are consistently used every episode and almost every action scene abuses these techniques in order to make sure the episode can be done as fast as possible. There's nothing wrong with using cost cutting techniques, hell, I have noticed some moments in the first season where the monochromic background was used there too. But if your animation is strictly comprised of cost cutting techniques, with maybe a 5% of actual content, what quality do you expect of the product?
• The pacing. As I have said in the very beginning, the episodes do not seem properly storyboarded and scripted and instead they seem as if they crammed as much material from the manga as possible, and then tried to speed through as much of the scenes until there was a monologue or an opportunity to use a still frame. At best, they have restructured it to cram in the content in a way it can be compacted further. This results in this very awkward pacing where a lot of events happen in an episode, but they finish just as soon as they start, and they seem to lose their significance. The show really doesn't seem focused on telling a story here, but rather, on the most cost efficient possible way to cram in the content from the manga. What is the bare minimum for this scene? We will do that. So for a vast majority of the show, each moment just presents you with information about what is happening, and then quickly finishes any action pieces by the presentation, and just keeps on moving forward.
Surely, however, if ONE was able to hold the attention of his audience with choppily drawn drawings, there should be no room to complain in this situation either, right? I mean, these guys are just moving his content into a different format. If he has done a good job, regardless of how the show looks, it should continue to be enjoyable, and cramming in everything he has pushed into the series is just gonna showcase more of his genius. Am I and everyone else just being a hypocrite for criticizing this season?
No. It is one thing to put in your best effort to create something entertaining and it is another thing to meet a standard so that you can present to an audience for a commercial need. One focuses on quality, while the other focuses on pushing out quantity. However, considering these two major causes that spiral into causing problems for every element of the end result, criticizing them is more than warranted, regardless of what is being adapted from.
So how do these elements impact everything else?
Let's begin with Garou.
Now, Saitama doesn't do much in this season so the best goal you could set for yourself is focusing on presenting his foil and who he is, with that being Garou. Garou presents some very distinct opportunities, since, while Saitama is the strongest hero that has reached the peak of his strength, Garou is a villain who aspires to become the strongest monster in existence, who is still following his journey for power. Unlike Saitama, Garou is just as likely to win as he is to lose and he has limits. This means that while most fights in the series are filled to the brim with results that are highly expected, there are a lot more opportunities with Garou to present evenly matched fights, and to develop a choreography for the fights, so you don't just have to focus solely on animation and have options in your approach. Additionally, Garou presents a different perspective to the show, and provides some criticism to a very specific trope in media. The fact that the hero always wins, because they are popular. Despite the possible intent and depth of any of the characters presented, the popularity of the characters dictates that the audience is just gonna be delivered more of what they want. Garou is a not so subtle argument against that very notion, as is most of the show. He challenges that quite well and his confrontations center around this theme. While Garou was used for this purpose in the adaptation and his fights had some choreography and thought put into them, there are some moments where once the moments where there is a distinct action happening in the script ends, Garou just uses his blue wavy hands to hit an opponent until the action set piece ends, if he is not getting hit himself. There are some distinct opportunities that you can take a shot on to highlight exactly how the confrontation is evenly match and choreograph a fight that looks interesting and seems evenly matched. I think that this could've been used to take advantage of the fact that you cannot exploit the animation, by planning Garou's fights to be entertaining rather than just presenting exactly was what drawn in the manga. Additionally, given the fact that the show's pace is only matches by someone rolling down a mountain, I'm worried that the chaotic bouts of action are not gonna pay off for the viewers until the end of the season in regards to his characterization, and that is only if you value how he is a foil to Saitama. It has not been the case to me, but I was already familiar with the content already, so of course his characterization would have a different impact.
Then, there's the overarching theme.
Garou is not the only character that is dealing with the fact that popularity means everything in his universe. So is the world of One Punch Man. Martial artists frown upon heroes because they are only valued for their popularity rather than their skill. Other heroes also have a similar issue since they cannot get recognition because people simply do not value their contributions and they only focus on those that are better known. Everything is a popularity contest in the universe of One Punch Man. But due to the show's pace there is not a lot of time to contemplate this and the show just merely presents these ideas rather than hammering them home. True, these ideas have been presented before, but due to how fast every scene transitions this does not seem to show how this world impacts the characters living in it. There's often not a lot of time to understand who and why every character is before a scene is finally over because there is hardly any effort for the build up and pay off of each moment, and unless you are Garou or another significant character, you are thrown to the side and your perspective is not taken into consideration. Which is completely ironic, given the overarching theme that exists.
In other words, the story's potential is butchered because there is not enough focus in both the build up and the pay off, as the show just focuses on moving through scenes as fast as it possibly can. Given the fact that the world's confrontations are rather quick paced as it is, blasting through them are just gonna make them mundane and them being mundane is gonna make everything each character say matter less and less.
If you wanted to reexperience One Punch Man, I'm afraid this season is just gonna be wildly different from what you have experienced so far. If you want something more authentic to what you have seen so far, the manga is still a valid choice since it presents the well detailed style the anime might've gotten you to expect. If not, you could consider giving the webcomic itself a shot and see if the story is presented better despite the fact that ONE isn't particularly skilled at drawing. However, if you are still interested in this season of One Punch Man, be warned that it is a huge downgrade from what it used to be, so do temper your expectations for it accordingly.
