One Punch Man Review

                                  GREAT PROTAGONIST

One Punch Man is an anime about an unemployed superhero who can destroy his enemies with one punch. As silly as that may sound, the show is actually pretty amazing and it’s main protagonist isn’t just some annoying overpowered character. No, OPM’s protagonist Saitama is a goofy and lovable dweeb who also happens to be the world’s strongest hero.

When we first meet Saitama, he echoes something that I often find to be groan-worthy in most other anime. In most other anime, being ridiculously strong is a good thing, but as Saitama points out, in truth an overpowered protagonist is incredibly boring. With an overpowered character there’s just no tension, no thrills and ultimately, no fun when a hero can just destroy his opponents with ease. It can be cool and awesome for a while, but eventually it’ll get boring and stale.

Thankfully, Saitama is not like these boring overpowered protagonists. He’s overpowered sure, but thanks to the slick animation of the show and Saitama (and the show’s) personality, OPM has already become one of my favorite shows of the season. Because rather than play off Saitama’s strength as being cool, the show gives it a more comedic take at it as well as other shounen clichés (convoluted backstories, long explanations, etc.)

Other than the concept of the show, one of the main reasons why I wanted to watch OPM is because of a certain few manga chapters (panels really) that were shown to me by a friend… in gif form.

I really wanted to see how this kind of slick animation (if we can even call it that) would translate to the anime because while the above gif is impressive in a manga, it would just be standard for an anime. So I wondered ifStudio Madhouse were going to crank the animation up to eleven in the anime. And low and behold, they frickin’ did it.

Like it’s nothing new, but in an era where the anime industry is dying and studios are being shut down, it’s still pretty cool to see that producers are willing to spend money on epic and over the top action animes with insane fight scenes. Sure the drawing quality dips, but whatever, it’s still very entertaining to watch and like most forms of media, that is ultimately the point isn’t it?

I figured that One Punch Man was going to be comedic in nature due to how it’s protagonist looked like. I was expecting tons of goofy and silly comedic scenes and the show promises a lot of it. From Saitama not caring about people’s elaborate backstories, to the zany throwaway villains and to the revelation of Saitama’s origins,One Punch Man always delivers a lot of great laughs.

I was a little bored with the first half of episode one, but I quickly grew to love the series. There are still some slow moments, but they’re always punctuated with great laughs or epic moments. There’s not much plot yet in the show, but that’s fine. It’s pretty entertaining and in the end, that’s all that really matters.

If you can only watch one anime per season then One Punch Man’s not going to be bad choice. There are nine more episodes for this season and I can’t wait to see what’s yet to come. I’m expecting a lot of hilarity and badassery from this one.