What a mess. For context, I loved season 1, giving it a ten. Season 2 was a downgrade, but I still found enough enjoyment to rate it a six. 'One Punch Man 3' is truly, truly terrible. It is an embarrassment for about everyone involved.
Before I talk about animation, I want to cover the content. Many will talk about what this season does to Murata's art, but I think one of the worst things it does is how it ruins ONE's sharp and clever writing. This season continues from season 2, adapting the manga fairly faithfully up until the latter episodes, where changes are made. The key here is that none of these changes are made to improve the story or experience, in fact as someone who has read the manga and webcomic, every alteration detracts from the experience and damages the story with later events in mind. The changes are made to reduce the workload for the production team, or simply to compress into twelve episodes what was clearly too much content for them to adapt. The first half of the show especially insists on languishing in long dialogue exchanges which are boring to listen too thanks to poor voice direction, sound design and of course, the visuals. It is in every way simply a downgrade of reading the manga. Before the season released, I wondered how they would adapt the chapters of the manga covering up to Episode 5 as they were obviously quite dialogue heavy and would be incredibly uninteresting if adapted one to one. They were adapted one to one. Due to poor storyboarding, which I will cover later, there is no regard for comedic timing, so most moments are just awkward instead of funny. Important exposition is delivered in the most boring way possible. Later episodes simply divert completely from the events taking place in the source material. I will not delve into plot specifics, but anyone who is remotely interested in the story of One Punch Man simply must read the manga. Interesting character moments are removed or simply weakened by poor execution, and the season ends incredibly abruptly (even for a 'part 1'). I do not know how they continue from this point given the story seems irreparably damaged. The sparse moments where I felt anything resembling a positive emotion was when the show reminded me of a moment in the manga I had enjoyed, and I could sort of superimpose that memory onto my current experience.

The technical execution is laughable. The aspect that gets the most ridicule is the animation. Shots are always static. When they do move, it is normally quite painful. Choppy, stilted run and walk cycles show even the most rudimentary animation fails to be performed with any amount of comfort. Even with the minimal motion in this show, most of the shots still manage to be poor drawings. Whilst I understand they are working to a high standard with the art of Yusuke Murata, the show never even manages to keep to its own character sheets. This is to be expected with 3 character designers who seem to be hired simply to draw promotional art and not actually work on the anime. The copious outsourcing does not help either and it likely hindered many aspects of the creative process here, due to a lack of time. The soundscape of the show is equally appalling. Rather than using the selection of great tracks created by Makoto Miyazaki, the anime cycles through them like Spotify free, playing anything, but always playing something. Never is the show comfortable to let a moment breathe, probably because then you would only be able to look at the drawings. In my opinion though, the voice acting though is the most under recognised flaw; I will use an example to illustrate this. Compare Dr Genus' speech in the teaser from 2024 to his speech at the start of episode three. Notice anything? Probably that the delivery is flatter and less impactful. Worse in every way. Admittedly, I normally watch my anime in dub, but even I can notice how much better the Japanese VAs really could be doing. Lines are delivered with all the care of an English Teacher, frantically trying to rush through a week of material in 5 minutes. This is not the fault of the VAs of course; it is simply another case of bad pacing.
Unfortunately, plenty of poor decisions are made by the creative team. Shinpei Nagai works on the storyboard of almost every single episode, practically storyboarding a whole season of anime by himself. It would be amazing, and is still commendable, it is just a shame the storyboards are mostly shit. Manga is not a storyboard for an anime, so the lack of any transitional shots between what are just poorly rendered manga panels makes for something which is normally just a jarring watch, but is sometimes boring, confusing, or both. The frustrating direction is by far the worst and most rudimentary thing this show does and it makes lots of it borderline unwatchable. I was having trouble and I already knew the general flow of each scene from the manga, so I dread to think of how it was for an anime-only. There are some highlights, the fight early in episode eight showing some interesting storyboarding. Equally there are scarce moments of fluid animation, many of which end up looking average at best by the standards of any high-quality production, but they are still nice to see here. It would be wrong of me to portray the season as without any of these highlights, which were surely important in the personal journeys of the artists that made them. The truth is, however, it does little for the show overall.
Hirose's composition initially seemed like a highlight at the start of the season, with some cool and impactful colour choices adding something interesting to look at. Unfortunately, one of the only highlights of the show is turned against it. Endless freeze frames drowned in sickly neon light cannot hide the poor drawings underneath. Thanks to the decaying quality of the show, these 'disco scenes' became a subject of mockery rather than a highlight. It just becomes an annoying gradient background and a childishly coloured character on top. The whole season has an amateurish appearance most of the time. The compositing does not combine the background art and the characters very well, and this was observable even in the opening: although it has some nice animation, it looks like a fan animation rather than a professional studio product. The CGI effects used for Orochi also look laughably bad. I was surprised to see them avoid trying to make a 3D model for the massive creature, though the reality is they just did not have the time.

Sad, I guess. I felt sad watching it. I dropped this show after episode five. I did end up watching episodes 8 and 12 later, as well as some highlight sequences. I evaded episode six, which is seen by most as the worst one. In that sense, I really have given the show the best chance it is possible to give it. Still, this show is miserable to get through. There are a few, rare moments where you can almost see a fraction of what this show could have been. Nevertheless, there is just not really any joy to be had in this season.

END OF REVIEW

This is not just any anime. There has been plenty of outrage on my side of the internet about what a disaster this show is. I am no veteran to the anime community, but this show has prompted me to learn much more about anime production than I otherwise would have. It is the main reason I decided to take a much greater look at art than I have done in the past. The simple fact is it is impossible to separate art from the circumstances around its creation. It seems like Nagai was a hasty replacement director for a show which realistically did not have enough time to be good anyway. Given the lack of talent, the show simply did not have enough time to be good, or even alright. It is not a surprise, we could see from the preanimated trailers and lack of any communication. I did personally give JC Staff and the team the benefit of the doubt anyway. I am by no means an expert, but I can say One Punch Man 3 is actually a show that reflects poorly on JC Staff, and they have produced better in the past; the preceding season is an example of this.
JC Staff deserve some blame, especially producer Atsushi Fujishiro. I do understand a studio needs to take on anime to survive, and JC Staff clearly are not getting large budgets from their production committees given how many anime they take on. But four anime produced in the year prior to releasing an action heavy anime is just stupid, and dangerous to put your creatives through (only considering the production line responsible for OPM3). JC Staff are enablers of the production committee system. A studio of probably above average talent and artists, but they accept anything and everything, pumping out anime like a product. So, some of it is good, some of it is bad, occasionally it is awful.
Twitter has concluded Bandai Namco is to blame for this debacle. I would rather anonymous corporate suits take the blame than artists. The truth, for me, is that capitalism is the problem, as with everything. The transformation of art into a product for sale causes this entire process. For the committee, the final goal is not good art, it is money. You do not need good art to make money. One Punch Man has a committed fanbase which is not as mainstream as some Shonen IPs in Japan, despite the disproportionately big following abroad. So, the producers did the calculus and decided that they could make more money by producing something cheap, quick, and shit, instead of something time-consuming but beautiful. Beautiful art like Chainsaw Man's 2025 Movie exists despite the systems facilitating it. It is thanks to producers who do not to allow their staff to suffer under a mountain of endless anime. Individuals who happen to be in the right positions and have the right contacts.
I struggle to be truly angry at Bandai, though I hate them as I do all corporate companies. They are just playing a game. In the same way that for many on Twitter, the quality of the show is irrelevant. It is still possible to farm likes and views from the hate, so it still works well enough as a source of profit. It benefits them good or bad, so in many ways, they are actually quite similar to Bandai.
I am angry at this system. Angry for the animators and artists, whose dreams were stolen from them. This will happen more and more in this industry, as shows are polarised in quality. It just so happens that here, an IP I liked got the short end of the stick. If an idiot like me can see how poor this season is, imagine the artists who worked on it. Imagine all the mistakes, errors, and bad decisions they reviewed, but they had to bite their tongue and leave it in the work.
One Punch Man 3 Part 2 has been announced, and nobody is excited. Everyone seems terrified at the prospect of more.
It is annoying as a fan abroad how little is to be done. Given recent Japanese politics, it seems Japan are still committed to a slow march towards destroying themselves, which provides no hope of the animation industry getting any better. Not much is going to change until people in the country decide when they want to stop slowly killing themselves. These problems are everywhere though really. I wonder when we, as a species, decide to stop slowly killing ourselves. Until then, capitalism will continue to slowly suffocate everything you love.
I am young. I might live the 90 years or so for this all to be forgotten.
When even ONE and Murata are gone.
Deep in a bedroom. A room that hasn’t been left vacant in weeks, maybe months. One rich aristocrat flicks through the vintage media. This 'One Punch Man', its fanbase still persists after all this time. It was a disappointment. It never lived up to its potential. Perhaps... a remake is in order?
Revived by the very thing that destroyed it, One Punch Man 3.2, produced now by an American Studio in 120fps will be directly streamed into the nanochips resting inside the Occipital Lobes of the new youth, created by Elon Musk himself, miraculously kept alive and living in Antarctica, one of the only remaining habitable areas on Earth. And it will all be generated by AI. And everyone will love it. And it will be much better than the original. Because it looks cool. It looks flashy. It feels good.
One Punch Man 3 feels bad. It feels painful. And it is important because of that.