By Jonathan Klotz
| Published
Anime release schedules can get interesting. On the one hand, you have One Piece, which routinely releases new episodes whether or not the manga has caught up, and then on the other, you have One-Punch Man, which took 11 years to release three seasons. In a perfect world, the reasoning would be that the studio wanted to take their time and ensure every episode maintained the same, exceptionally high-level of quality as the first season, In our world, One-Punch Man Season 3 was made by an overworked, underfunded studio happy to get anything out the door. All three seasons are now on Netflix, but you only need to watch the first.
The World’s Strongest Hero Defeated By Poor Animation
One-Punch Man tells the story of the World’s Strongest Hero, Saitama, so powerful he vanquishes all foes with a single punch. You’d think that would make for boring and dull battles, but under the watchful eye of director Singo Natsume, alongside his animation team from Space Dandy, the first season, released in 2015, is one of the most beautifully animated Shonen years, before Demon Slayer. The battles between the Hero Association and the escalating series of villains looked and sounded like nothing else out there. Until Season 3.
Animated by J.C. Staff, the same studio behind Is It Wrong To Pick Up Girls In The Dungeon and the final two seasons of Slayers, One-Punch Man Season 3 looks like it was animated in Powerpoint. The hero hunter Garou takes center stage for the season which adapts the Monster Association Arc, noted for both its length, and the wild way it changes the world of One-Punch Man following the massive, catastrophic battle between the Heroes and the Monsters. That and it introduces a strange, all-powerful entity dubbed “God.” Totally normal stuff.
One-Punch Man Season 3 Was Doomed To Fail
If it was up to the level of Season 1, One-Punch Man Season 3 would be an all-time great season, that’s how cool the original webcomic version of the Monster Association arc is. In making Season 2, J.C. Staff replaced Madhouse’s silky smooth animation with still shots, hand-painted backgrounds with photographs, and in Season 3, it became even more pronounced. In defense of the studio, it all starts with the original artist, Yusuke Marata.
Marata is a perfectionist to the point that he’ll fully draw story arcs multiple times. While this creates the best-looking manga on the market, it also takes forever, and when J.C. Staff needs reference material, it simply doesn’t exist. Or if it does, it could change in a few months.
Instead of getting animators and creators on the same page, One-Punch Man was allowed to languish in production hell for so long, Demon Slayer was able to debut and reach its endgame before Saitama’s story reached the halfway point. Fans are frustrated, the team at J.C. Staff is frustrated, and original director Natsume keeps waiting for the phone to ring so he can return to one of his favorite characters. At the end of the day, the fall of One-Punch Man will remain one of the biggest disappointments in anime history.
One-Punch Man Seasons 1 through 3 are now streaming on Netflix.
