Ah, yes. The day we’ve been waiting for. This review is going to have a story time attached to it following the review. I hope you guys enjoy.

One Punch Man Season 1 and 2 are both available on Hulu with sub and dub options.

One Punch Man promises to be high octane, action packed, bloody knuckle brawler of an anime. It firmly did not disappoint in that regard. It has been praised for it’s animation and well that also was a knock out. In fact, the positives are just straight forwardly good. The music is good. The action is spectacular. Saitama is a lovable nut. The coloring (for a setting that is being destroyed in nearly every scene) is beautiful. The villains, despite existing for literally one punch, are still well thought out, provoking, and detailed characters. In fact, that is a luxury of the show. The villains all are good. The design of the show causes them to not be memorable or stand a chance in a fight. However, the screen time they do get, they absolutely kill it.

His fight with Mole King Dream Form and all the smaller mole people was top notch, peak anime perfection. Saitama thinks at long last he has rediscovered that spark and it is exhilarating. The prior 20 minutes are spent roughly showing how Saitama has lost that spark himself.

It is funny. The day of his origin story, life had lost all meaning to the point he was ready to die. Now, he questions if his work even makes a difference. Thus, zapping all emotion from the man. He fulfilled his dream of being a superhero and it brought no gratification.

So, yeah. You get it. I love Saitama and the art style. That is fine and dandy. What about the bad? Well, it is still the same. The show is incredibly boring. Don’t get me wrong. The manga is waaaaay more boring though. The anime gets the benefit of voice acting, quick cuts, lots of color and all the moving pieces. The manga is held together by black and white pages over word bubbles and imagery that is hard to keep up with inked out. In that regard, the anime is 100% more enjoyable. Still, the show lacks depth and remains a satire of genre that probably needed a good deconstruction.

If we wanted to commentate on the ridiculous nature of these animes, this is probably as close to perfection as it gets. The over the top training leading to baldness. The over muscularly villains. However, the show hasn’t really made any commentary on women in anime or the obsessive eating disorder main characters have (I’m half way surprised Saitama did not get his powers from ramen like Popeye meets Naruto.). The lack of a real rival still hinders the show, but than again, there’s still a lot of show left.

I’ll probably give the anime another shot before I ever buy volume 2 of the manga. Still there is no denying the shows popularity and the staying force it has. I liked enough stuff to give episode two a go soon enough. The show is just not at the top of my list though.

Score: 8 out of 10. My qualms with the show still have plenty of time to get fixed as the show goes on. In the mean time, what I liked far outweighed what I didn’t. Watch this anime. You will enjoy it.

Story Time:
One Punch Man Season 1 debuted back in 2015! It was a hit right out of the gate. I personally try to read the mangas first if I am interested. Hence, why I am only on season 2 of My Hero Academia. I ran out and bought One Punch Man Volume #1 in January of 2016, about a month after season 1 wrapped up. I was soooo disappointed and bored. My friends could not believe I did not care for it. However, once they found out I had only read the manga and not watched the anime, they all said I would think differently after watching the show. Again, they are kind of right. All the problems still exist they are just less noticeable due to all the eye candy on screen. Another factor is making yourself read the several chapters as opposed to watching an action packed cartoon for 25 minutes.

In short, they are completely different animals. One Punch Man as a concept works soooo much better in anime form than in manga form. So, yes. As my scores suggest, I do enjoy the anime way more than the manga.

When I first started I shared my blog post with all my friends. Now, the blog is bit more personal and most of them no longer read it. So I doubt any of them will actually read this review. If they do, I hope the 4 year wait was worth it. Haha.