Hello and welcome to another surprising episode of One Punch Man Season 2! This week OPM gives us another S-Class Hero, Garo’s past and some cool monsters. Lets dive in!
Starting off, I have to say, JC Staff is surprising me. OPM’s animation is actually pretty good, the Centisenpai cuts were fantastic. Not just in comparison to the rest of this season, but as standalone cuts. Check below the break for a clip of that. If JC Staff, and more specifically Kenichiro Aoki who animated this and Tank-Top Masters cuts, can keep this up the season has hope yet. All they have to do is nail the finale and I will be content here. I don’t know what in god’s name happened in episode 1 and 2, but they are in no way representative of the final product so far. Sure, the gradient is still crap and so to are some of the filters. But the actual animation? The 2D animation layered over CGI? Credit where it’s due, JC Staff isn’t completely bombing this.
However, sadly this is where OPM starts to lose me. What JC Staff is helping me realize is that, as much as I love ONE, I think I loved the spectacle more than anything. Murata’s art or Madhouse’s animation, that kept me going. Because when presented in anything less than stunning art/animation, OPM has trouble keeping my attention. The writing here just isn’t as crisp or poignant as Mob Psycho. It focuses more on the comedy than it does themes of youth or growth, and in this adaptation, those jokes just don’t land. The actual story itself also starts to show its holes, as it becomes less dazzling in its animation. I will get to each of these as I go on through this post. But suffice to say, OPM is starting to lose me compared to the ONE’s other works, and that’s a crying shame.
Having mentioned it, let’s dive into the comedy. It seems to me that it works much better in manga than it does extended animation. Take Watch-Dog Man for instance. It didn’t strike me near as much as the turning of the page to a sudden panel of a man sitting on a podium. King’s Otaku shirt and video-game had a similar effect. Coming off much more cheaply than they did in the manga. That isn’t to say none of the jokes landed, far from it. I had completely forgotten about Saitama’s “Water Polo Fist, Carbonation” gag. And Metal Bat’s anger at the sushi bar was much more entertaining here than the manga. But for some reason the comedy simply isn’t landing as it used to. Maybe my tastes have changed, maybe there is some fundamental direction standpoint JC Staff is missing compared to Madhouse. Hopefully I can figure that out.
The pacing also doesn’t flow when compared to the manga. For instance, this episode was largely setup for Saitama’s Tournament Arc. Yet it seems to focus more on the Monsters and Metal Bat. As a manga reader, I know why this is and the greater arc it is setting up for. Garo is meant to be the focus after all, it’s his story. There’s something to be said for the parallels between the Tournament and the Monsters, and Garo’s split ideals. His treatment of kids and his human side, vs his desire to become a monster. Two separate arcs bleeding into and supporting each other. But this 12 episode season has no hope of getting through it all, and I can’t help but feel it’s going to end at an awkward spot. I can’t imagine how this might end up feeling for anime-only watchers.
What I mean by that is this, and slight spoilers coming up for the length of the arc. The rest of this season is going to take place over the span of this single day in OPM. The Tournament, Elder Centipede, Garo. Everything in the next 8 episodes will be basically a single day of in-universe time. This isn’t an inherently bad thing, HunterxHunter did basically an entire 40 episode arc in the span of maybe an hour or two. But HunterxHunter also had much more going on story wise, setup for a hundred episodes prior to that, with overarching themes. OPM is a comedy action show about punching things and subversive humor, that bombed its first two episodes. This worked in the manga, because pacing is very different in that format. I just worry about the anime and how it will handle it.
So all in all, how was this episode of OPM? It was fine. While the animation is constantly improving, the narrative is taking some hits instead. Without Madhouse’s mind-blowing spectacle or Murata’s incredible details, the narrative has to stand on its own. And it falls short. OPM is still fun, and if JC Staff can keep up this new animation then it will be a fun Shounen. But with the expectations set by Mob Psycho, in terms of animation and narrative, OPM simply doesn’t measure up. A damn shame if you ask me. Least Kenichiro Aoki is saving the day.
