One Punch Man 2nd Season

In the wake of defeating Boros and his mighty army, Saitama has returned to his unremarkable everyday life in Z-City. However, unbeknownst to him, the number of monsters appearing is still continuously on the rise, putting a strain on the Hero Association's resources. Their top executives decide on the bold move of recruiting hoodlums in order to help in their battle. But during the first meeting with these potential newcomers, a mysterious man calling himself Garou makes his appearance. Claiming to be a monster, he starts mercilessly attacking the crowd.

The mysterious Garou continues his rampage against the Hero Association, crushing every hero he encounters. He turns out to be the legendary martial artist Silverfang's best former disciple and seems driven by unknown motives. Regardless, this beast of a man seems unstoppable. Intrigued by this puzzling new foe and with an insatiable thirst for money, Saitama decides to seize the opportunity and joins the interesting martial arts competition.

As the tournament commences and Garou continues his rampage, a new great menace reveals itself, threatening the entire human world. Could this finally be the earth-shattering catastrophe predicted by the great seer Madame Shibabawa?

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Saitama Main

Furukawa, Makoto Japanese

Genos Main

Ishikawa, Kaito Japanese

Garou Supporting

Midorikawa, Hikaru Japanese

Tatsumaki Supporting

Yuuki, Aoi Japanese

Mumen Rider Supporting

Nakamura, Yuuichi Japanese

Fubuki Supporting

Hayami, Saori Japanese

Speed-o'-Sound Sonic Supporting

Kaji, Yuuki Japanese

King Supporting

Yasumoto, Hiroki Japanese

Metal Bat Supporting

Hatano, Wataru Japanese

Puri-Puri Prisoner Supporting

Onosaka, Masaya Japanese

Hosoya, Nobuyuki Producer

Satou, Souta Producer

Fujishiro, Atsushi Producer

Matsui, Chinatsu Producer

Reviews

Jul 5, 2019

Fable242

Recommended

I'm just going to start off by saying I really can't figure out why so many people are complaining about the story and the comedy isn't as good as the first season and keep placing all the blame on the studio. Honestly speaking as long as you’re a manga reader you will know that they follow the script almost to the T with only a bit rearrangement and cut off here and there. All the comedy and story came from the same script that the first came from.

I already understand that humans find it hard to accept change especially when it started off on ... a good note with madhouse, but I really can't accept how they allow it to affect their judgment so much that they keep nip picking and trying to find every fault they can on a really good second season which will cause other people to have second thoughts if it's worth even watching from how horrible they make the anime seem.

Okay, let's get on with the review.

The story is really well done it follows closely to the pacing in the manga but with some chapters being rearranged and I mean the pages, not the entire chapter for example. say if you have Genous fight X monster on chapter 60 but in chapter 61,62 and 63 there are no more scenes of that fight until chapter 64 has a few more pages to wrap it up, what they basically do is take those pages and mash it together instead of splitting it up all the time like the manga. I can't find anything to complain about the story it's basically just like the manga, one of the things I always did like about madhouse is that with any anime production they do they always try their best to stick close to the source material instead of mixing their own ideas and ruing the story J.C.Staff is also one of those that try to stick with the source material not just story wise but also art style.

The art was great, but I won't lie there were a few scenes where people face look awkward (Genous weird face at a few scenes) J.C.Staff also suffer from a habit in this anime of doing narrow face for basically everyone, King was affected greatly cause of this it made him look like terminator on drugs. The biggest but hardly notice difference from S1 and 2 you will only notice if you actually do research and look back and forth between the two season images. Madhouse version of One has more substance in its art the character is drawn in a 3D style feel in every angle and looks shiny in a way. while J.C own has a more 2D style with a mixture of 3D and more lines. but other than all that it was basically a perfect score.

The sound was great I enjoy Garou theme music and they also incorporated some soundtrack from the original. When I first hear the sound effects for the first battle in the anime, I was wheel right in but after around episode 7, I notice that they seem to be using a limit track not just for fight scenes but even OST there isn't much variety. I really wish they either had added more of the first OST or made more new ones (I'm a big fan for anime music) and it would have been nice to add a bit more variety sound effect than running a cycle through the same old.

There's not much to say about characters if you follow the manga or watch the first anime then you know what to expect, Awesome characters as always.

For enjoyment that's obvious how can you not enjoy such a masterpiece
Overall one punch man season 2 was a success in my book yes there were a few things I felt they could of change or improve on but when I look back at many other adaptions to books, I read and the number of times I pray that they don't screw it up but these prays never get an answer. looking at the almost negligible issues I have with season 2 is cute and laughable. but I really feel sorry for J.C and season 2 OP because everyone seems to be full of madhouse on the brain it makes it really hard for most people to acknowledge this as a success but instead keep comparing it to the first season to the point that they even blame the studio for the content it presented when it all came from the source. I just hope that it's not like that overseas because if even they act like that no matter how popular the manga will be if sales for the Blu-ray etc sucks we can forget about season 3.

Story - 10

Art - 7.5

Sound - 7.5

Character - 10

Enjoyment - 10

Overall 9.5

Reviewer’s Rating: 10

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Jul 22, 2024

FAKEANIMEGIRL

Mixed Feelings

Well-written

https://noahsb1c7c15d6d.wordpress.com/

This went the direction I hoped the series would after the first season. ONE wasn't clever enough to keep the manga going as a gag manga, and quickly wrote Saitama out of a bunch of scenes to just play it as a straight shonen. Yeah, it's over-the-top and the powers can be kooky, but neither of those traits are anything close to uncommon in shonen. There's been self-aware shonen since JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, but I digress.

Saitama continues to be used as a sort of tension-relief, with the pattern being that powerful opponents are set up outside of his reach, and satisfaction is continuously derived by ... characters who think they're hot shit inevitably running into Saitama and getting knocked down a few pegs. It's simple and nothing outside of what Dragon Ball Z did constantly, but it's amusing nonetheless. Saitama's invincibility is essentially a fact at this point, and always knowing that a comeuppance is around the corner leads to the anime's funnest moments.

This has the unfortunate side effect of making any scene without Saitama usually fail at any attempted drama. The results of every fight are known not to matter, as if the villain is to succeed and progress in fighting heroes he'll inevitably be destroyed by Saitama, and if anything of permanence happens, either a villain will die simply before Saitama makes it happen, or a hero will die. Problem there is, OPM puts so much work solely into its character design that none of those heroes have any backstory that makes victory or failure have any meaning beyond its impact on the plot.

The bright side is that season 2 admitting it's just another shonen series means that it has to fall back on more conventional storytelling to make the characters who aren't Saitama compelling, as they necessarily need to pick up most of the slack as he's usually never around. Both characters introduced in season 1 and new characters alike get more defined personalities, motivations, and weaknesses. This transition isn't as effective as characters who have these things from the start, though (i.e. most shonen works), as ONE is forced to play catch-up with defining a huge cast he set up almost at the start of the series. The consequence is that a lot of these moving parts of the story still haven't gotten additional characterization - there was simply too much to get to in this amount of time. So there's still a bunch of people running around who are literally nothing more than their character design, which I find as dull as I did in season 1.

The new villain Garo is the star of the show here, a powerful man who fights nearly anyone he comes in contact with, overcoming them with sheer tenacity and brute force. His love for combat, his desperation to overcome his inadequacies, abrasive personality, and feeling like he's fighting for underdogs makes him a stark contrast for Saitama. Though the two don't end up establishing a relationship in this batch of episodes, the switching between of their opposite perspectives keeps the season's pacing and tone, dynamic and gripping. Garo is a ton of fun to watch, but I find the emotional core of his story to be mostly ineffective. Garo fancies himself on the side of the monsters, emphasizing as a child the fact that they're unpopular underdogs always destined to lose. It's an interesting concept, but OPM's world completely fails to ever make the monsters sympathetic.

One of Garo's flashbacks has him claiming that an aquatic monster is just "trying to protect the ocean," and he reacts with horror at the fact the heroes mercilessly destroyed the monster's eggs. It certainly sounds awful if true, making the heroes out to be more bloodthirsty than the monsters, but this is never supported by literally anything else in the series. OPM had an opportunity to be morally ambiguous here depending on how it portrayed its monsters, but trapped itself by always wanting to characterize them as stock evil as possible in order to properly parody its genre's melodrama. This season goes even further in committing to that one-sided portrayal of monsters with another subplot that very clearly demonstrates that becoming a monster turns you into a bloodthirsty psychopath with no instinct control. It needed to show the audience just a single time that monsters were capable of more complexity, but it completely neglects to do so. This results in Garo's passion and motivation making him look like an idiot if examined with any scrutiny. When looking at his claims fairly, all we have are his perspective (demonstrated to be formed by bad logic) and a single anecdote from when he was a child that, if true, is so astronomically in the minority of monsters that it's virtually irrelevant. Garo wants to be on the side of the underdogs who always lose, but fails to acknowledge that 99.9% of the time monsters are being slain because they mercilessly kill and devour powerless humans, who are objectively speaking the biggest underdogs in this entire equation, meaning by Garo's own logic the heroes are more morally just than he is. It's an incredibly simple conclusion to come to that goes completely unaddressed and it has the effect of making Garo look like a huge idiot, burning away goodwill towards the character that's the primary focus of the entire season.

I'm sure there are people that argue this nonsensical backstory is another intentional gag, but I see zero reason to believe that. It seems to me that this is played straight in attempting to make Garo look like a sympathetic anti-hero, as there are additional scenes that go out of their way to establish Garo does believe in a moral code (his caring of kids) that would back up the belief that he takes his mission seriously. Not to mention that the basic idea of making the emotional core of your main character an intentional joke goes against all basic common sense ideas of writing. The tension of virtually any scene involving Garo relies on believing that both Garo and the heroes he fights are both victims who believe in justice, and you're supposed to sympathize with both sides of the battle despite the idea that only one is supposed to come out victorious. Unless you're willing to admit that these scenes are designed to be inconsequential, devoid of thrills, and pointless, you need to acknowledge that you're meant to take Garo's beliefs seriously in order for all of these scenes to have any meaning. And I find it impossible to believe that ONE didn't want these scenes to be exciting, unpredictable, and having you root for both sides. If they weren't, no one could possibly have any investment as to what happens in this series, as it would all amount to having the depth of just watching a laser light show. It's one of the classic fatal flaws of trying to argue One Punch Man as above its genre, and yet if you humble it down to conventional storytelling you're forced to admit how bafflingly underwritten certain aspects of it are. I had to take quite a skip and a hop to argue why Garo's backstory is ineffective and stupid despite it being incredibly obvious, but I just know some sections of the fanbase will still attempt to argue in favor of it, so I felt like I had to. This is why I tend to dislike discussing OPM in any critical way, because I usually end up having to run a marathon of justifications for a mostly really basic show that's just dumb fun.

But it IS fun, I've never not admitted that, even if I don't think it's genius-level fun. Garo may not be used to his full effectiveness, but he's still a joy to watch. The jokes may often be obvious and repetitive, but they still evoke smiles. The fights are emotionally and strategically nothing special, but fast-paced and exciting in their scale. All of this amounted to a series I burned through in almost a day once I got into it, and I was disappointed there wasn't more (especially since it ends on a horrifically unsatisfying cliffhanger in a way the first season didn't). To OPM's credit, I thought the character King was maybe the best joke the series has come up with thus far. The idea of a character who's incredibly weak just coasting by off intimidation via a fake reputation is nothing short of brilliant. Shonen works absolutely love establishing a future character's power by having those in-the-know immediately respond to them with immense fear, and the result is often not getting to see this character's power until far into the series' future, building hype that can carry a serialized work for a long time. It's a typical trick, but OPM's parody of it is a million times more clever than acknowledging that the main character always wins. Alas, I still have some issues with execution. I think OPM brings this joke to a conclusion far too quickly, when it could've had much more use. King is immediately established as being a phony both to the audience and Saitama. It could've been hysterically funny if Saitama was desperate to see a display of King's power, but King always denies him by posturing and saying something like fighting is always a waste of time for someone as powerful as him. It would've given Saitama a character relationship he didn't have, and the dramatic irony between the audience knowing King is weak yet the invincible Saitama taking him seriously would've probably worked well. It also could've been a lot of fun to have King fully take advantage of his reputation. King doesn't deny his false victories, but he doesn't deliberately make use of it either. King always wants to avoid fights because he's actually a coward, which is funny, but you could still have that be his internal character while also having him be vain and greedy enough to attempt to scare off people far stronger than him just by posturing. A new villain shows up that's completely unstoppable, King makes a rare appearance and stares him down with his intimidating face, the villain is aware of King's reputation for being one of the most powerful heroes and believes it when seeing his demeanor in person, the villain runs away or surrenders without even a fight and King's fearful reputation grows even further. I think that would've been an amazing character, but as he is now King is one joke that's resolved in no time. He's a coward that only is famous by accident, and he'd rather just be left alone and play video games. King's an immensely likable character nonetheless, but it bothers me that such a genius concept goes underutilized. Again, I'm forced to conclude that ONE is just limited as a writer.

Season 2 also introduces Fubuki, who is given a decent enough backstory to start with, but then basically never does anything again for the rest of the season. Boy, she sure is hot, though, right?

I'd be remiss to end this review without talking about the series' change of studio. The first season was well-regarded for its high quality animation relative to other contemporary anime, and in that regard I'd say the critical consensus was right on the money. For reasons that I'm sure aren't good ones, the second season shifted creative hands. Many people were worried that one of the first season's best traits would be lost by this transition. And they were right! Season 2 doesn't look anywhere near as good as the first. In-betweens are absent all over the place in action scenes and characters outside of center frame are often hideously off-model, for starters. The sad thing is, season 2 probably still looks better than most anime these days, but unlike season 1 that's more indicative of how dire the quality of animation is in modern anime rather than any sense of accomplishment. If season 1 looked like this it probably would've gotten away with it, but now that season 2 invites direct comparison the whole attempt just comes across as kind of pathetic. Something season 2 revels in that I fucking hate (and don't remember happening in 1) is the recently popular technique of applying a dimming effect to the entire frame to make action scenes look more dramatic. It essentially looks like someone turned the brightness down on their screen for a few frames. It looks like fucking dogshit and I cannot believe anyone in the industry or fandom thinks this looks better than no additional editing at all. It's an utter joke any professional can think this is effective. Lighting is supposed to enunciate certain parts of the frame, and that requires that other parts of the frame are lit differently in order to create contrast. You wouldn't think the purpose of contrast would go unknown by professional artists, but here we are. It's at least obvious why studios want to use this technique: it's way easier to turn a slider down in a video editor than it is to color individual frames in a way that simulates natural lighting. But not being capable of putting in the second of thought to realize highlighting only works when not everything is highlighted is nothing short of amazing to me. It's like someone hands you a long document and for the sake of organization they used a yellow highlighting marker to show someone the most important parts at a glance. In this case, you'd be getting that document with every line of text drawn over with bright yellow. It would be useless in its intent to focus you on certain parts, and it would look like shit. And thus is the same result of this animation "technique." Lastly, the audio mixing in some action scenes can be downright trashy. For some reason there are a lot of impact sound effects that seem as though they're mixed super low in comparison to the music. This muffled sound takes away all the power of punches, etc., and I have no idea why it was done seemingly at random. There are multiple fight scenes where the screen dims, a powerful character throws multiple punches with the force of cannonballs, and yet each hit sounds like the person on the defensive is being hit with wet sponges. Exhilarating!

It's bizarre to finish a One Punch Man season enjoying its story more than its animation, which was the exact opposite reaction I had from season 1, yet here we are. It's a shame, because this season could've had both and have been an easy improvement over the first, but the staff just weren't ready to go that extra mile. We can only hope a possible season 3 will turn things around, but I know I at least will be paying attention should it happen. At this point I'm always ready for some more dumb fun. Because that's what One Punch Man is. And more power to it now, I say.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Jul 2, 2019

Stark700

Not Recommended

I wish I could say the sequel for one of the most popular anime of this year to be good. I really wish I could. One Punch Man’s release back in 2015 made headlines with its high caliber animation quality and ultra comical character cast. The manga itself is also very popular. Ask anyone who’ve read the series will tell you that it’s more than just your usual battle shounen. Known for its top notch quality comedy and unorthodox storytelling, it’s a sensation. But this…second season is nothing short of a horror story. It’s the type of horror that scared me to realize how far ... this anime has fallen. What did the second season go wrong?

Well for starters, there’s the change in the staff. Director Shingo Natsume left this season and responsibilities were handed to Chikara Sakurai. One of their previous project was Majimoji Rurumo, a show that probably most people has forgotten by now. One Punch Man has already established itself beyond the anime medium and with a growing popularity, it tries to aim higher. However, fans coming into this season shouldn’t have any high expectations especially if we take a look at the promotional material. While the key visual doesn’t turn heads away, the preview will. With the J.C. Staff in charge of this sequel, this raised a lot of red flags. In respect, the animation quality severely suffers in quality. Rather than a sharp, crisp quality animation with stylish aesthetics, we get static-like power point slides. Maybe I’m exaggerating a bit but this second season’s quality is easy to point fingers to. Unfortunately, it seems J.C. Staff couldn’t handle the job of making this into a sensation again. They already have their hands full with a lot of projects this year after all.

Storytelling itself doesn’t improve much either if we talk about the main plot. Again, I really wish I could say the opposite but this sequel proves itself to be a tragedy. From the rushing of certain content to underwhelming delivery of some of the important fights, I felt no impact from this season at all. Zero. Early on the in season, we also meet Fubuki (Blizzard) who leads the B-Class hero group. At first, I was ecstatic to finally see her gain some relevance. However, the fight between her and Saitama passed like a flash. There’s almost no charisma besides Saitama’s heroic speech and attitude. Even on a comedy level, it didn't draw much popcorn entertainment. Similarly, many of the dialogues this season sounds very scripted. As a manga reader, I wanted to see much more than characters speaking their lines. What I got instead is just words and words coming out in a desaturated manner. Saitama is still the bald caped hero with unstoppable power. The first season captured the magic of his character while this sequel didn’t move the needle. What I mean is Saitama’s fight against adversaries this season isn’t even near the caliber as the previous season.

But it’s not always fair to compare the previous season with this continuation, right? Truth to be told, season 1 did set the bar high. Known for its visual dynamics and ONE’s creative writing, One Punch Man has always done all it could to be its own special series. Here, it’s lost the fire. People made memes out of One Punch Man because it was comically entertaining in a genuine way. Here, there’s worthy made besides weak impressions. Even the hero hunter Garou didn’t make much of an impact. As a foil character to Saitama, I expected his personality to be a bright flair. However, Garou ended up being someone that I forgot easily. Perhaps it’s because the overall directing of the show as several events takes place at once this season. There’s the fighting tournament involving various heroes, the invasion of the monsters, and Saitama living his day as usual as a hero. The joke of being one punched is far over after we’ve seen it so many times. The monsters themselves are hardly worth writing home about. To be honest, does any antagonist this season even contain an ounce of charisma compared to Boros? That fight from season 1 was legendary.

On the hero side, we do have some characters making reappearances. Names like Genos, Metal Bat, and Tatsumaki are a few I’m sure fans remember. Unfortunately, their roles this season has degenerated to little value. New faces like Suiryu brings in some excitement although he can hardly carry this season. In fact, the Super Fight Tournament arc felt like one big talent show of weirdos gathering together. I didn’t feel the stakes were impactful nor did the results feel satisfying. I mean, the show is One Punch Man. Who else is going to dominate this tournament?

Oh how the mighty of fallen is the easiest way to describe One Punch Man Season 2. The first season was a juggernaut that exceeded expectations. Fans still embrace what became a blockbuster. It’s 2019 now and we’ll have people talking again One Punch Man again. Unfortunately, people will quote more from the manga than recommending this sequel. Trust me, One Punch Man Second Season is a mistake. A grave mistake.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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