One Punch Man S2 – 8 [The Strong Ones Fight Back]

Welcome one and all to another week of mediocrity, as OPM continues to flounder. This week OPM speeds up dialogue, almost blinds me with flash-fades and in general just disappoints me. So, that said, lets get into it! And fair warning, this is going to be a short one.

Now, I could rail against a lot of things this week. From the continued use of flash-fades, to the terrible impact or just covered up animation. However, I feel like a better way to spend our time, is to dial in on a specific issue each week. This week, I choose to rail OPM’s pacing, in both animation and dialogue. You see, OPM’s big issue in this department is it never gives anything room to breathe. It burns through dialogue and fights at light speed. It knows exactly where it wants to end, but to get there, it has decided to just hit the 2x speed button. An exaggeration on my part, slightly, but the point is made. Take this week for instance, ending on a dramatic cliff-hanger instead of the humorous one the manga did. As if they don’t know what kind of show OPM is.

Take for instance Snek and Max this episode, along with the monster conversion of the fighters. In the first, because OPM is speeding through dialogue, it removed a meaningful pause in their appearance with Suiryu. Where in the manga this appears as a “That’s a stupid question”, sort of reaction, here it’s an immediate “We are good guys”, sort of thing. Minor to some, perhaps, but it was a much more interesting scene in black and white. Meanwhile with the fighters, OPM really skipped over some of their dialogue, along with Suiryu’s musings. As if it was to eager to jump into the next fight. Season 1 used fights to fit between the comedy, with the comedy and absurdism as the punchline. OPM Season 2 though seems to be going for the other way around. Focusing on fights it doesn’t have the chops to pull off.

So basically, to finish off my complaint this week, OPM has no calm. Its either doing nothing, or trying to do everything. Early episodes had little happen. Sitting in one place with pointless conversations happening. Recent ones though are now burning through content at a rapid pace. I understand some of that is the sheer amount of fights going on this season. It’s a lot. But I could forgive cutting some of the less important ones short (though they are already pretty short) for the benefit of these more important scenes. All that said though, those aren’t the only issues. Join me next week, as I rage against sound design, and how CS:GO gun sound effects made their way in as bird monsters punching. See you then!