Mild Spoilers for One Punch Man Second Season The second season of One Punch Man is a miserable fall from grace with a quadruple whammy of circumstances contextualizing the gravity of the shows failures. Its a sequel to one of the most wellanimated mainstream anime of all time released over 3 years later. On top of that this franchises counterpart Mob Psycho 100 got adapted for a second season that practically pushed the boundaries of current TV anime 3 months before this season came out. Combined with the awful feel and presentation of this new season that set of circumstances becomes the worlds nastiest measuring stick. Sadly the inability to live up to any decent set of expectations isnt unexpected when you look at all the writing on the wall. The stiff and barely animated trailers the off artwork and the fact that production switched over to J.C. Staff all should have told you this was doomed to fail. The worst part is I cant even blame the people involved as they simply didnt have the time physical capacity or resources to pull together an acceptable product. Its a cruel joke and a herculean task for director Chikara Sakurai and team to be burdened with. This isnt to say that that this season would have been great if Madhouse or the original team took over. Boogiepop 2019 was animated by the same team and studio as One Punch Man Season 1 and it didnt look that good. It was plagued with terrible artwork and redesigns and a sheer lack of the atmosphere that both its source material and the 2000 anime bathed in thanks to the removal of the rustic color palette for a generic one. Madhouse also animated the Overlord anime trilogy which is littered with repulsive CGI and artwork that Im not a fan of. The two shows they produced this season are a powerpoint presentation baseball anime and a show no one likes that apparently also suffers from hideous CGI so its safe to say theres no way theyd fix this on a visual level. Maybe the color palette wouldnt be so unpleasant but thats about it. Hell Im not even sure that studio could fix how drab this season feels since everything feels so floaty awkward and selfserious. The jokes the excessive monologuing the terrible attempts at emotional beats and the mindshattering attempts at retroactively downplaying the threat of the first seasons climax are all downright surreal. When it comes to the jokes theres none of the exaggeration or punchy energy to them that was present in season 1 and the lack of comedic facial expressions only adds to how limp and awkward the delivery is this season. The deadpan humor is also weakened by the stumbling borderline lifeless presentation. I can honestly count on one hand the number of times I even chuckled in any given episode barring maybe episode 3. On top of that despite Saitama still onepunching overconfident bad guys in this season i.e the main gimmick/punchline of the first season we dont get to see him OHKO anyone onscreen even once until the finale. Perhaps they thought saving it up for a grand climax was a good idea but all things considered its just not worth it. Getting back to the other issues at hand one of the strangest criticisms Ive ever had to lay out is that moments that seem to have happened simultaneously like the encounter between Genos and SpeedoSound Sonic and the encounter between Saitama and Fubuki in episode 2 turn out to not happen simultaneously. This isnt the first time that time becomes a liability in the show but detailing the other instance in the second half would get into some head scratching spoilers. Another strange issue is how some episodes just end abruptly as if they had no idea where and how to stop an episode. For a more traditional complaint the pacing in this show is abysmal. Once the main arc of the season kicks in around episode 3 the pacing slows down to a crawl for several episodes before blitzing through everything in episode 7. The weirdest part about this is how apparently this adaptation has been burning through chapters like Sonic speeds through stages making the sense of fatigue and whiplash all the more dizzying. No matter what things just happen with no time to really establish anything or allow the audience to breathe and let things sink in. This along with lifeless direction and lackluster character writing makes it so theres almost never any weight or impact to the big and intense moments that permeate the bulk of the season adding to the vicious cycle of everything and nothing happening as events simply cycle through one another for no apparent reason. Its issues like this that remind me why even in season 1 OPM was never good at being a serious narrative let alone shuffling between parody and serious shounen. That said the overarching narrative of this season isnt necessarily bad on its own. In theory showing how the hero organization is now yet another corporation that cares more about the safety of its executives than those who work for them and how it Suiryu and Garou are all foils to the heroic traits Saitama values and finds fun in are good ideas. On top of that the narrative genuinely gets interesting towards the last leg of the show. Its just that everything gets tremendously bogged down by terrible presentation hollow characterization which well get to and a sense that vital moments are actively missing from otherwise solid character arcs and plotlines. Even worse this seasons bloated badly paced and watereddown arc is all setup for a third season so all of that arc fatigue meant nothing. Speaking of nothing theres the gigantic cast of characters for this season. The characters all feel stale including Saitama the most entertaining character from the first season. Hes no longer this disgruntled guy who wants some respect for the hard work he put into his fun superhero craft nor is he someone constantly wishing to fight someone strong because he hates how he can just oneshot everyone. The first scene of episode 1 tries to pretend that he still deals with the former issue but make it past that and youll see thats not the case. As for the latter problem its no longer this drive thats been eating away at him due to how disappointed he is all the time. Instead he just casually wants stronger opponents so he enters a tournament of martial artists where he meets a foil of his now watereddown need to fight strong opponents. They dont justify any of this either so it creates this disconnect between season 1 Saitama and season 2 Saitama. They try diving back into the issue in episode 9 but they should have further demonstrated how empty he was feeling beforehand as this episode cements that hes not just bored hes practically lost and depressed. It feels like prior to tackling this issue they wanted to give Saitama a flat arc where people grow around him. They didnt do a good job for reasons mentioned prior. Another reason this doesnt work is that the rest of the characters are incredibly onenote and eager to monologue about their baggage at the drop of a hat. Several of these monologues are intrusive and redundant as well so the sheer abundance of them becomes grating especially early on when theyre at their most prevalent. You know its bad when the oneoff heroes and villains have more personality and presence to them than important side characters like King and Fubuki. Secondary and tertiary characters were never one of season 1s strengths but this is just lousy We do at least have a somewhat entertaining villain that being Garou. However when everything around him is so dull and when the action and presentation is as bad as it is his intimidation and fun factor are somewhat diminished. Additionally despite him actively going out of his way to kill both heroes and villains in his first scene and siding with the monsters who kill heroes and everyone else alike he doesnt kill anyone in subsequent fights. They dont even try to justify this inconsistency. He does have some decent scenes and he does work as a warped foil of everything Saitama stands for so despite the glaring inconsistency mentioned earlier hes still the best character in this show full of lifeless side characters for whatever thats worth. On top of that his arc to become stronger is probably the only compelling piece of writing in the show. Hes not the only foil for Saitama as Suiryu from the godawful tournament arc is like a more selfish less dangerous version of him. His main difference is that he wants an easy life with his strength and we actually see a decent arc come from him halfway into the series. The show gets to a point where I sometimes almost root for him and Garou because almost everyone else in this show is so unlikable. Practically everyone in this show is either a blank sheet or a total prick sometimes both Apart from a few side characters in episode 11 the only notable exception is Metal Bat and thats literally because of one scene at a sushi bar with like two funny jokes. Yes they wanna show that heroes arent all morally sound because Garou has to have a point but that doesnt mean we need Saitamas foils to be the only ones with any layered writing behind them. One last issue regarding characters is that even the world around them has none of the vibrancy and personality than in season 1. None of the oneoffs are as funny or vivid as the disgruntled alien crew from the end of season 1. What a shame. Another positive aspect of the first season was the music. The OP was a thrill ride and the admittedly overplayed OST was filled with incredibly memorable tracks that accentuated the hype and emotionally satisfying feel the show aimed for. None of these return for this second season barring that one time they remixed one of the OG seasons tracks in episode 5 and in their place lies a bunch of boring background tracks save for one or two of them and a mediocre opening that doesnt even remotely capture any of the excitement or aggressiveness it shoots for. The visuals are somehow even more lifeless in the OP than in the show too which almost never happens. The ED is also grating to listen to thanks to the vocals and its even worse than season 1s lackluster ED. The part that stings the most is that the composer for this season was Makoto Miyazaki the same guy who did the last seasons music. What happened? Above all else this shows most controversial aspect is its visuals. By the standards of season one the standards of the manga the standards of both seasons of the franchises counterpart Mob Psycho 100 the standards of an action anime and even anime in general the visuals of One Punch Man Season 2 are terrible. Theres about as little animation as your current nonaction seasonal or a longrunning slideshow like Yugioh Duel Monsters and almost no visual flair to compensate with loads of panning shots and badly edited quick cuts which make some of the fight scenes simultaneously as unstimulating as the rest of the show and more incomprehensible than the most badly edited fight scenes from SAO and Fate/Apocrypha. Episode 7s fights are the worst by far with constant character model mishaps extreme usage of bad looping ghosting afterimages to simulate characters attacking rapidly frame ratekilling camera movements and CGI objects that also kill the frame rate. Even the best fights are barely above your average Fairy Tail GIFfests and your average fight in this show is just that but undetailed and incomplete. There are occasional freakish drawing mishaps even outside of the fight scenes such as the sequence where Saitamas head is shaped like a lightbulb during a camera rotation in episode 1 or the entirety of Saitamas conversation with King in episode 9. That alone is inexcusable especially when this anime is 90 panning shots filled with stock assets as is Its even worse here where the artwork tends to be incredibly rough and badly drawn especially with the characters faces and the closeup shots with inconsistent outlining especially in episode 1. Practically every episode has a unique outstandingly awful visual blunder to notice and the few wellanimated cuts in the show primarily towards the final third of the series cant make up for that. The strange charcoal coloring of Genoss metal frame doesnt even feel like it fits with the rest of the drawing of the character and not only is it inconsistent with his season 1 frame it constantly changes from scene to scene in the first two episodes with no rhyme or reason. As of episode 3 it seems like theyve settled on what he should look like again before changing it one more time in another repair late into the second half but that should have been done in the character design phase not after production of certain episodes has ended. You cant use the excuse of him getting all those repairs and new parts since he did the same in season 1 while looking consistent. The show doesnt justify this itself so neither should you. Back to the issue of charcoalesque metal feeling out of place on the characters theyre attached to as it applies to another returning character SpeedoSound Sonic and other pieces of metal like Metal Bats...bat. This raises another issue with the show as a whole: the coloring in this season feels off. This season has a darker and more offputting color palette than before and along with some of the colors they used it makes the show generally awkward and strangely bleak to look at. Even if the show somehow was animated beautifully the color palette alone makes this show aesthetically displeasing to me. Its a shame considering how good the returning character designs are since now they just look off regardless of if theyre onmodel or not. Still along with the interiors and entire buildings comprised of terrible CG assets all of these issues make it so there can almost never be a scene that genuinely feels great to look at. Even the incredibly few moments of fluid animation suffer from most of these issues. This isnt even a question of failing to live up to the stellar animation quality and overall visuals of the first season this is a case of visuals that are just plain bad. It doesnt take an animation snob to look at this and go wow this looks wrong or this feels off. No one should be grateful that a studio forced a bunch of overworked underscheduled staff members including a director with almost no prior directorial experience to make this show. Its not a gift its a product and a badly produced one at that. The production is so bad that the proofreader for this review had an absolute ball with the visuals often pointing out several awful aspects and moments even I didnt even notice. Sure its no Berserk 2016/17 or Hand Shakers franchise but that doesnt mean we should bend over backwards just because this is a continuation of a show most of us like. As much as it hurts to say Im glad that this hate train started simply because it shows that even despite the pushback against this movement we can still put our foot down on what is and isnt an acceptable product. It shouldnt take 3 episodes for us to see a fight with acceptable animation quality or a single cool shot nor should it take until episode 9 for them to even attempt any interesting techniques. It also shouldnt need up to 5 animation directors working on an episode like with episodes 2 or 15 in the case of episode 8. That just proves this show was poorly managed badly scheduled and doomed to fail. This really is the anime equivalent to Anthem and Mass Effect: Andromeda isnt it? The second season of One Punch Man is the end product of mismanagement and production issues emblematic of the dismal state of the industry. This show was practically destined to fail when given to a studio thats been spreading their teams thin through 25+ projects a season and having welldocumented scheduling issues for the past 3 years. I cant imagine what the team must have gone through trying their damndest to live up to the shows monumental expectations with such little time staffing or resources. Its crushing to think that when OPM 1 came out 3 years ago people jumped on the hype train and now with season 2 people are jumping on the hate train. Hell as someone who only kind of liked season 1 thats the main reason I watched this season. While the first season functioned as the fun blockbuster anime it wanted to be this second season was unable to truly be what it wanted to be. Honestly its more depressing than hateful and it didnt have to be this way. Thats the anime industry for you where blood sweat and tears are soaked up by cash that get put into the next seasons 5 isekai shows. One Punch Man 2 is a casualty of the industry were encouraged to support and the worst part is people are ok with this. Written and edited by: CodeBlazeFate Proofread by: Peregrine