One-Punch Man - Have Your Cake and Eat It, Too

I usually don't try and put my thoughts out on shows around the time I've watched them because many of them need time to stew so I can look in retrospect, see how memorable they were and whether there was any part of the craft that was particularly good or bad. The psychological term is "the recency effect" where you will be more likely to look at things you've seen recently in a more positive light, although when it comes to this sort of thing it's possible I can have an initial terrible reaction that mellows out. Now why am I talking about this here? Well, because I can't imagine my reaction to One-Punch Man changing with time.

STORY: 3.5/10

Know how in the No Game No Life Review I talked about how a concept can get me to watch a show just because it sounds interesting? One-Punch Man was sort of like that. The idea of a Superhero who is so powerful he can effortlessly wipe the floor with all the major threats in his plot is pretty unique. Even Superman has trouble from time to time, if only due to the absurd power creep that's occurred in Western comics. That said, it's a shame nothing's done with it.

I'll start with the good parts. The setting is incredibly rich, like a mashup of every type of fiction ever. I tend to love settings like this. Urban fantasy, contemporary superheroes, the kind of setting where everything from magic to aliens to super technology to super martial arts are all on the table, as well as whatever else you could think of. Uh... I'm done with the good parts. Wow, that was short.

Anyway. The tone is wildly inconsistent. OPM wants to be a high-octane action show and a slice-of-life comedy at the same time and doesn't do either very well. I know that comedy is highly subjective, but I could watch entire episodes wondering "where are the jokes?"

The most frequent joke is simply juxtaposition of mundane stuff in a superhero-type scenario, and of course there's also the eponymous one punch that ends literally every arc. Neither are exactly gut-busters. I think ideally the writing should do to the Superhero genre what Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei did to Japanese society by pointing out the absurdities and how silly they would be stretched to the extreme, but it doesn't, it plays everything straight and claims it's being "ironic" in blatant misuse of the term.

The action itself is very poorly done due to the focus the show wants to put on Saitama. Never is there a moment where you could have other heroes fighting a monster that I even for a second expected them to even come close to winning, making the large majority of the side cast completely superfluous.

For some other points, there is no overarching plot. It takes the comic book style setting to the logical extreme by making it just a mess of disconnected story arcs that have no buildup and no fallout. It isn't like a superhero story can't have a strong narrative, nor is it like a comedy can't. If the manga gets better after the anime cut off, all I can say is "why did you waste your time with these meaningless filler episodes, then?"

Premise: 1.5/2
Pacing: 0/2
Immersion: 0.5/2
Setting: 1.5/2
Theme: 0/1
Complexity: 0/1

ART: 6.5/10

I can tell you that OPM's animation has been greatly overestimated. I know that design and art is kind of a subjective thing but none of the characters really have memorable or original designs. Lots of people just in street clothes, which doesn't really mesh with the over-the-top setting. Or, well, it does but not in a good way since the environments are all incredibly mundane, not what I'd expect from a Superhero universe.

Animation is something people have taken to a hyperbolic extreme. I can say two things about the animation: there are a lot of frames, but not many keyframes. What does that mean? Well, take a look at basically any given fight and really dissect it. It's true that animators had to draw a lot but usually it's focused more on the fluidity than it is on the dynamism. Sakuga does not translate to a satisfying fight scene by itself, but many seem to think it does. The vast majority of the series is done with static frames.

This is excusable in some series but not here. Take Jojo's Bizzare Adventure which has the same style of rather static fight scenes: there, it's a deliberate stylistic choice to look more like manga that doesn't greatly harm the plot because the fight scenes in Jojo are heavily based around wit and tactics, but here the fights are all about power levels. It's the only deciding factor. If that's really all there'll be, give me something interesting and dynamic to look at. I can watch fight scenes that I know what the outcome is going to be long before it even begins and if the choreography is good enough then it'll be a solid fight. Characters can move and talk at the same time. When you don't try and make an impressive looking battle that keeps the viewer's mind engaged, all it does is highlight how bad the dialogue is.

The animation has a lot of flair. At a glance it does look pretty impressive and there certainly are boatloads of frames with barely any off-model shots unless they are intentionally off-model. But this is a "dango over flowers" scenario. I'd much prefer more full choreography of single frames over stills that are drawn a thousand times. Granted there are plenty of fights that have choreography but much of it goes too far to try and look "big" so that individual exchanges are cut in favor of seeing dots move quickly smashing into each other.

General Presence: 1/2
Visual Design: 1/2
Backgrounds: 1/2
Animation: 1.5/2
Attention to Detail: 1/1
Visual Effects: 1/1

SOUND: 3.5/10

I want to give the voice actors credit, but really I can't. They do serviceable jobs, no doubt. In fact, I would not hesitate to have bumped the score up quite a bit, but if you glance down you'll notice it's actually a half point below average. Why is that?

There's just one problem, and it's a big problem: comedic timing. There's the saying "a good comedian can make the phone book funny" and I do believe that's true. But most of the actors in OPM just read the dialogue like they would read any generic, cliched Shonen lines. I think it goes without saying that's not funny. Most comedies, even with jokes that I don't find to be gut-busters, can manage to make me chuckle simply with an amusing delivery. Saitama's voice actor in particular needs to sound bored as hell and he certainly does but all it does is exemplify how boring everything is. Not a good idea.

The music in particular is generic. It's painfully generic. Outside of the JAM Project opening and the pretty catchy ending song, nothing left an impression on me. Possibly the only BGM from the entire show I could remember would be the main battle theme and the fact is that I wouldn't be able to tell you if that were a single track or multiple ones mixed together. A proper soundtrack stays with you, it doesn't go in one ear and out the other. There are musical motifs from shows I haven't seen in a long time that I could still hum my favorite tracks from in their entirety. Battle themes are just generic heavy metal with no soul to it and I don't even remember if there were slice-of-life or "atmospheric" tracks (though I'm pretty sure there must have been). Incredibly forgettable and unnoticeable, which are basically the two worst things you can do with a soundtrack.

Voice Acting: 1.5/4
Music: 1/4
Sound Effects: 1/2

CHARACTERS: 2/10

But hey, I've gone on record saying good characters can save a series, right? Unfortunately this is where I have to say this is easily the weakest aspect of the show.

Saitama's probably the worst, in part because his mere existence makes a savvy viewer know that you shouldn't get invested in any other characters because they aren't going to do anything important. When they do, say, Mumen Rider in the Sea King fight, it opens up massive plot holes.

But hey, having no tension isn't such a big deal if you have the central cast being well developed and interesting and... I don't quite know how exactly I can continue this sentence. Saitama and Genos are the only characters with any great amount of screentime and the two of them are as one-note as a whistle with one hole.

Another little problem with having this many characters is that screentime gets spread paper thin, so characters need to be oozing visual personality. They do not. Most of them look and act almost indistinguishably from one another, like the kind of characters that were concepts rather than others. They're split into two groups: people who are generic badass personas and strawman jerks. They try to build sympathy for Saitama by making him not get recognition but it is so over-the-top and hamfisted that for me personally it backfired. I hate it when an author clearly is showing bias towards one character to the point where everyone who agrees with that character is correct and everyone who opposes them is a jerk who deserves no sympathy. I've never seen that sort of execution done properly.

Presence: 1/2
Personality: 0.5/2
Complexity: 0/2
Memorability: 0.5/2
Development: 0/1
Pathos: 0/1

FINAL JUDGMENT : 2/10

Reminds me of my feelings watching One-Punch Man.

Well, here's the problem: no matter how unique the setting might be, no matter how diverse the cast might be, no matter how much effort an animation team puts in, there is no excuse for a show being this completely boring. The first episode showed promise, but a lot of first episodes show promise. The second episode was amusing. The third episode started to show the cracks. By the fifth episode I started asking myself, "Is this really all there is to it?" and by the eighth episode I threw my hands up and said, "Well, I gave it a fair shake and yep, it sucks."

If the focus is on action, you need the fights to have dramatic weight behind them. Or at least some creative choreography. If the focus is on comedy, it certainly would be a good idea to put some jokes in there, and an even better idea for the jokes to not be completely predictable.

It's a series where I heard the basic concept and thought "How do you make an interesting series based on that?" and the answer, it turns out is, "You don't." Once you get over the concept you find that it has no substance. It tries to parody shallow power fantasies but stumbles and ends up being nothing but a shallow power fantasy.

The one thing I can give it credit for is that watching it, I was at least as bored as Saitama was so if the goal was to get the viewer to empathize with him, it succeeded in all the wrong ways.

Pros:
+Good Production Values
+Strong Setting

Cons:
-Bland, Bland, Bland  

I get the feeling there's going to be some colorful comments about this opinion.