One Punch Man S2 – 6 [The Uprising of the Monsters]

Sigh Welcome once again to the sinking ship that is OPM S2. This week we see a fantastic character done dirty, botched pacing, and more boob shots than you can swing a stick at. Lets dive in.

As always, production, and oof. OOF. JC Staff screwed the pooch this week. I won’t even talk animation, because that’s obvious. Instead lets talk about how JC Staff screwed up direction and shot composition, when Murata had already laid it out for them. Throughout this episode, we have 2 conflicts going on. Genos vs the Monsters, and the Tournament. OPM cuts between the two, progressing both at once. However, what happens in the manga is the tournament comes first in ever sequence. Showing a martial arts technique and its effects, then cutting straight to Genos performing an S-Class Super Hero version of the same thing. High Voltage Fist, Machine Gun Blow, Rocket Stomp, all these mimic techniques of the martial artists. Yet JC Staff couldn’t even do that right. Showing them out of order, with no impact or connection between them. This is a staggering level of incompetence.

Last week I mentioned how this season is actually impacting my enjoyment of the source material. To further that, I had to actually go back and reread the manga on my shelf behind me. I did this to remember why I enjoy the series. How Murata’s expert art and paneling make jokes land so much better than anything JC Staff is capable of. Scroll down for an example of this. Instead of cutting to each scene, full of loud noise and motion, taking multiple seconds, we get a single image. Showing each of these badasses, before giving Saitama a tiny little panel on the toilet. The eye is drawn across their faces, into the speech bubble. Saying “Yeah, these people are strong”, before leading the eye down to… Saitama. The strongest of them all.

I’m not sure how much of it is the paneling and layout, reading right to left, and how much of it is the art really. Murata draws it with such serious passion, it could easily work as a legit Action series. Every scene, every character, is super into their world and story. They ARE characters in an action series. This makes the comedy and simple line work stand out all the more, really nailing down “Look how ridiculous this is.”. With OPM S2 though, the serious moments look just like the joke moments. There is no dichotomy. Both are complete shit. This wasn’t an issue in S1, because Madhouse made that line clear with their animation. There was a stark difference in style between the serious and jokey moments. It worked. Here we just get screen flashes and terrible filters.

The only part of OPM this week I actually liked was that JC Staff kept the Sea King moments. The reference to the first season, and how such a strong creature effects the weaker heroes. How he drove them, and Genos as well, to improve. It’s these kinds of segments, in my opinion, that ground the show. Non-stop action or non-stop comedy would lead to, eventually I feel, a bored audience. Either the jokes get stale or the action loses all meaning. But this drama and the side-characters interspersed fill the gaps. Giving context to the greater world at large, where Saitama just doesn’t care. At least in this, JC Staff did well. Granted it’s all written by ONE, but JC Staff is doing so poorly I want to give them credit for not screwing it up. A “you tried” sticker.

So, all in all, how was OPM this week? Just as disappointing as the last really. The pacing is botched, the animation a mess, even in serious moments we get numerous boob shots because why not? Yeah, Murata likes well endowed women. That’s why he gives you a full body panel. He doesn’t cut to her breasts every damn scene. Suffice to say, I am really running out of things to say for this series. I can only critique a shit-show so many ways, when it screws up the same way over and over again. I will do my best, but please forgive me if these posts start to get shorter and less formatted. Becoming more and more of a rant. Or maybe you all would enjoy that. What do I know? See ya next week!