One Punch Man – 2-4

I feel there are certain anime that upon watching the first episodes, you know that it will be something you are going to remember. This may be far too soon to say but the first two episodes of One Punch Man give me that exact feeling. The whole way through this episode I had a dumb smile on my face and eyes glued to the screen. Saitama using all his godlike power to try and swat a mosquito had me laughing very hard and the action scenes are simply beautiful. I am not the only one with high expectations of One Punch Man as many are hyping it up and claiming it will be the next western breakout hit like Attack on Titan. I acknowledge that could be possible seeing the superhero movie boom is still going strong and One Punch Man is a very western styled show. Of course the cynic within me is still holding back my excitement as I have long seen many anime fall from grace at the halfway point but the source material is strong as well as the studio so the chances of them messing up is quite slim.

One particularly interesting aspect is this show’s tendency to use high profile voice actors for one time roles. The very first villain, Vaccine man, was voiced by the voice actor known for playing Frieza from Dragonball Z and the mosquito girl in this episode was voiced by Miyuki Sawashiro, another great voice actor. The animation seems to be going for fluidity over artistic consistently which does mean that the art gets worst during fights but there is a lot more dynamic movement to make up for it. There are still shortcuts such as Saitama’s punches thrown at the lion king but for once we may have a anime where the best animated action isn’t in the anime opening. As for comedy we have a interesting factor going on. Jokes in the manga that were not that funny work brilliantly in the anime, yet jokes that were hilarious in the manga are lesser in the anime. One particular example is with the mantus enemy, in the manga this guy jumps through the wall and before he can finish introducing himself gets instantly destroyed by Saitama. However in the anime, right before he’s punched they added this “Huh?” and a delay before he’s killed which makes the punchline less funny. It’s small and doesn’t ruin the joke but the change does affect the humor. This extending of jokes is in other examples as well but quite honestly it’s nitpicking.

There is the question of whether Madhouse can keep up the high level of animation from the shows entire run as episode 4 does show signs of the quality slipping. That said it could just be a matter of that episode being given less attention is it is the weakest by far out of the four. Out of criticisms of the show so far the main complaint is that it’s rather formulaic. True at the moment it does seem to be following a monster of the week format but having read the manga I can say this evolves more into an ongoing plot before it gets tiresome. The next episode looks to adapt one of the highlight fights of the series so Madhouse better pull out all the stops.