An adaptation that fails to live up to its prequel, and results in a very okay anime.
One Punch Man Season 2 was met by a lot of criticism, most notably for its very subpar animation that fails on every aspect to live up to Murata's artwork from the manga, or the style of directing by Shingo Natsume originally did in the first season. While I was one of the outliers who thought it wasn't necessarily a dumpster fire that people made it out to be, but not absolutely amazing, where I gave it an 8/10, which on my scale would be a good anime, with
...
anything lower than that being decent or worse. It goes without saying that a good story can cover up bad/okay animation, which was initially the case when I first started watching this, but for some reason, I just felt it wasn't there, and I'm here to explain why.
Story: 5/10
I was pretty optimistic when the first four episodes came out, as they were faithful to the original source material, but after those episodes, most of them fell flat. The first few episodes still do a great job establishing the threat that the Hero Association currently faces, the comedy was much more of a hit than it was a miss, and it creates a successful shift in tone that differs from what we, or at the very least, I was used to in the first season. One thing that you'll notice as you go further down the episodes is that Saitama takes a back seat, and the story lets other characters take the role of the main character. In the Hero Hunter arc, as I like to call it Garou takes the role of the main protagonist, and during the Martial Arts Tournament, Suriyu takes the role of the Main Protagonist. I do quite like this change a fair amount, but even then, I have some complaints.
Plot points that felt huge or was supposed to be dramatic felt a lot less dramatic or hype than they should have been, and as a result, they felt dry and basically little no sense of urgency or a sense of awe in them. There's honestly only some parts during the anime where I was like "holy shit, things are going to get serious now," but it just wasn't there. Another problem that I have with this adaptation is that they take way too long hype up and execute up the Martial Arts Tournament, a problem that I originally had with the source material, and which I didn't think to consider in my preliminary review, but they spend several episodes hyping it up, and you're wondering when they're actually going to get on with it. For the actual tournament, it's a pretty anticlimactic, but you kind of expected that when Saitama decided to enter in. Even the events that happen after the tournament failed to get me excited as to what was happening, or what was going to happen next.
Otherwise, the original plot that was introduced at the beginning of the season with Garou was actually still very solid, and I wish they focused on Garou's storyline a bit more rather than the tournament. The anime for me, felt like it ended on a pretty unsatisfactory note. I could totally see where Sakurai Chikara wanted this anime to end, but everything just still feels... incomplete, for a lack of better words.
Art and Animation: 4/10
This was a production that was doomed to fail at the start. I was fairly impressed about this originally, as it wasn't entirely horrible, but nowhere close to amazing, but after looking into it a bit more, I can say it's pretty bad. With J.C. Staff working on this production, everyone expected it to be bad, as J.C. Staff is not known for their action series, and more of their non-action series like Toradora! or Shokugeki no Soma just to name a few. To add on to that, J.C. staff had a schedule that could only be described as hell, as they were fresh off A Certain Magical Index III, and apparently, they had only completed two episodes when it started airing. The original complaints that I had are still present, Genos' arms, and really all of the metal textures look jarring and really out of place, with this weird, shiny looking gradient that looks very out of place; there are a lot of static lip flaps, and to add on to those complaints, when action scenes do happen, most of the times, they decide to have this white background that's really distracting, probably because it's easier to do that than draw a real background. Yet another complaint that I have is when they have those rapid attacks, it looks like blurs that make it really hard to see what the hell they are actually trying to do. A big thing that people are upset, including me, is how inconsistent it can be. One scene, it can look actually pretty good, and a decent amount of effort was put into to, and another one, they'll just repeat the same 3-4 frames and I just can't but help laugh at that. One thing that I would like to add is that most of the key frames are based on the panels of the manga redraw, I thought that was a fairly nice touch, but can get a bit tiring after a few episodes.
Sound: 7/10
One thing that is surely a bright spot, for a decent part is the sound. The same composer from last season, Makoto Miyazaki returns to make his appearance on this season of One-Punch Man, and I can say that it's still fantastic. If you listen closely, which at some parts, you can't really hear it, you can tell that this seasons' OST is kind of like the first seasons' OST, but changed a bit, and that's not really something to complain about, I just wanted to point that out. The OP is still hype as hell, though not as good as the first was, but is still a great tune to listen to. The ending is whatever, it's pretty forgettable in my opinion. One thing that I want to mention is the voice acting. I don't know if it's me but it seems as if most of the people voice acting in this don't really care much about this project. Most of them sound like they just want to get this over with and want to go home, which I don't entirely blame them for. Another thing that I felt was pretty bad was the sound design. The same sound director was there from last season, but some of the sound effects that they use can be quite on the silly side. An example of this is that in the later episodes, they use the sound from the M4A4 from CS: GO, I thought that was pretty funny, but overall, it's kind of on the weak side.
Characters: 9/10
It's really hard to screw up something such as this, as the original creator, ONE really knows how to write characters, from characters who have great motivations and backstories, along with nice, funny quirks that give them a lot of personalities, so it's not a huge surprise that this would be rated high. My points still do stand with characters such as Garou, who is a phenomenal character, and this series' first take at an actual villain and they do it well. He's not a stereotypical villain, as what drives him isn't that he's just bad for the sake of being bad, but the one thing that makes him compelling is that he's always tired of seeing the villain getting beaten, whether it be in comics or television. So, he takes it upon himself to try and dispatch of these heroes because of all he wants to see the villain win. As he takes on each fight, you get to see him grow and pushed to his limit and is still able to come out on top most of the time. This kind of characterization lets you sympathize with him, or maybe even empathize with him if your that person. One thing that I didn't like too much was that Garou didn't have enough development during the course of this season. Of course like I mentioned, he does get some but it's not enough, and he's left underdeveloped and while still compelling, just not compelling enough. The same still applies with King and Fubuki, who share their great amount of ups and downs to their characters, along with them being fairly relatable, with King, who I personally thought was the most relatable character in the series, along with his interactions with Saitama being some of the best things that this season has to offer.
One thing that I didn't like too much, but it's really not something that can make or break the series, but I thought that I should mention was that a lot was that the S-Class heroes are nowhere near as cool as they were in the manga. Normally, this wouldn't be a complaint if this was the first season, as all we really get is just a simple introduction. But now since they are much more important with the introduction of the Monsters Association, they become a key part of this entire story. Their characters are butchered to where it kind of feels like they're just powerful, that's it, not any other feeling of awe or excitement in them. But otherwise, Saitama is still the same, funny, and socially awkward person that he was, and the fact that he doesn't even know that he's socially awkward makes it a lot funnier. Genos was still the same, but he's in a lot of more difficult situations, which gives him more room to adapt to the environment around him. While the characters, in general, were still good, they just didn't have that impact that they once originally had.
Enjoyment: 5/10
The only enjoyment that I was able to get was from the good soundtrack and fairly good characters, but realistically, that can only do so much. Other than that, the plot falls flatter than it was originally in the source material, and the animation can be extremely inconsistent. Humor was still there for the first few and the last few episodes, but only periodically. It was okay for what it was, but I recommend that you read the original source material, web manga or the Murata redraw, rather than watch the anime, as it will probably leave you disappointed as it did to me.
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An adaptation that fails to live up to its prequel, and results in a very okay anime.
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