Wait, why do we hate this show again? I mean, One Punch Man remains the same it has always been since season 1, sure, the absolutely beaten to death joke that was Saitama one punching everything is no longer there and was replaced with even more capeshit, but the quality of the writing is about the same. I know, people complain about this season because of the atrocious animation, and honestly, while I can completely understand that, I cannot for my life understand why it receives the amount of hate it gets, at the time of writing this it has an abysmal score in here, and that just tells me that this is most likely some people’s first Korean sweatshop anime, just some years ago, we were making fun of Nanatsu no Taizai Season 3, this isn’t the first time the production of a popular anime collapses this bad, it’s as if everyone, for some reason, just decided that this was the worst thing ever, when in reality, it isn’t even the worst anime airing this season. One Pucnh Man is just as good as it ever was, and I don’t mean that as a compliment.

I guess I was always a weirdo, while I can get behind the joke that One Punch Man decided to do on it’s first season, by the time episode 3 aired, it already got old, the writing of this series was never good and the jokes stopped being funny way too early, what people like about One Punch Man isn’t the plot or the characters, they are terrible, what people liked about One Punch Man was the animation. Yes, this is one obvious point, but One Punch Man is one of those shows where the term “carried by the animation” completely applies, first season was glorious in terms of animation, and calling it glorious falls short, Madhouse had all the connections that Maruyama had gotten, Shingo Natsume would call all the good animators from the industry and they would all answer, which is why it all took a nosedive once that golden period ended, as years later the series went to JC Staff. Look, almost any studio getting the series after the impressive work that Madhouse did with it would be a downgrade, but JC Staff is one of the most obvious downgrades in animation you can see between seasons, and this is where the problems come from for most people, as the animation got much worse, so they started seeing that the series was, in fact, shit. Having some nice eye candy can erase any criticism of the writing you can have because even if the writing is mediocre, you’ll be willing to overlook a couple of things because it looked cool or because the animation was mind blowing, as good directing can make bad or bland dialogue sound much better, and that is the bigger difference between seasons, all the complaints you can see about this series are all derived from the fact that the animation got astronomically worse once the switch to JC Staff happened in season 2.

I would say I’m glad that people are finally seeing One Punch Man for what it is, instead of just caring about the nice eye candy, but I can’t even say that, because the complaints, while being completely right, are also overblown. There was this fan animation going around in social media after episode 5 of this season aired, it looked absolutely horrendous and was obviously an amateur job by 1 guy, but since it had some flashy explosions in the background, these people decided that it looked very good and much better than the actual anime. I guess you can discuss which one looks worse, after all, I don’t defend this season’s animation, on the contrary, I also think it looks absolutely terrible, but the discussion around that video ignored the obvious thing that was that this person did a 40 second long video, while the people doing an anime series have to do 4 hours’ worth of content while having a very tight deadline. This doesn’t excuse the fact that the anime looks horrible, but you can tell that the complaints you hear about this show are overstated by people who know nothing about how the anime industry works, I mean, One Punch Man S3 had such horrible production schedule that they had to look for a director after the first trailer aired, no one in their sane mind will be able to do a work look good if they are pressured to do their work as fast as they can with a very tight schedule.

I guess I’m supposed to talk about this season’s plot, but it doesn’t really matter, it’s more inane capeshit with characters that nobody cares following what happened from season 2. Saitama barely even appears this season, which makes sense, because if you want to make an actual story, then having a joke character who can beat everyone in one punch would make it impossible unless you make him run around in circles, I don’t think Saitama appearing more would make this season better as his only joke got old a decade ago.

One Punch Man S3 is criticized for correct reasons that I have 0 reasons to disprove, because most of them are correct, but there are also some absolutely stupid complaints that are irrelevant and have been there since the beginning of the series, like seeing people complaining about things like the opening playing after the end of an episode is really weird, as if that was the first time it has ever happened in an anime. This season is as hated as is, not because it’s one of the worst anime ever made, but because people like to listen to their e-celeb overlords and they say this is the worst anime ever made for engagement, so they regurgitate their talking points because critical thinking is dead.

I don’t hate this season, S2 was already a thing that aired years ago and it also looked like shit, you should have expected this to also look bad. You should also have expected for Madhouse to not come back, I mean, let’s see what Madhouse is doing this season, it’s a show called Wandance, I haven’t watched it but if you’re like me then surely you have seen at least a couple of clips of it, and the animation of that show looks terrible, you could say that the blame falls on the other studio collaborating with Madhouse, but they should run a quality control too. Of course, this is because Madhouse has been neglecting their other projects, so they end up looking like shit just so they could pump out more Sousou no Frieren because they need to milk the money cow quality be damned, so don’t expect future projects like Liar Game to look good either, they don’t have them as priority, and since Madhouse no longer has Maruyama, even if your dreams of Madhouse, for some ungodly reason, decided to take the series back, it still wouldn’t look as good as season 1 did simply because the staff that made it as great as it is aren't working in Madhouse now. I can understand hating this series when it looks like shit when it had something special in S1, but I don’t think much besides the animation has changed between S1 and S3, and from S2 to this season literally nothing has changed, and for that reason I’m just handing my usual 20 and I’m telling you, if you liked the previous seasons of One Punch Man, you’ll like this one, it’s just more of the same.

Thank you for reading.