We’ve all heard this before since it’s a tale as old as time: A sequel of a popular property isn’t nearly as good as the original. This is a phenomenon known as sequelitis. Sure, there is the possibility that the sequel made just doesn’t quite live up to the original work, but is still an ok experience overall, like Incredibles 2. However, OPM2 not only fails to build upon the source material, but it’s also a complete disaster as a standalone product. Hideous visuals, an underutilized cast, and unfunny jokes make watching this season about as fun as diarrhea, although there were some decent scenes and fights here and there.
This entire season is littered with still frames, gross background colors, inconsistencies, poor editing, lack of weight in any of its fights, and a weird metallic shine on a few of its characters. The phrase “Look at how they massacred my poor boy” doesn’t even begin to describe the kind of hell that Genos went through in this season. There was this scene in Saitama’s apartment where Genos’s arms look like they’ve rusted almost as bad as my sister’s bike. Whenever they have him in a fight, he looks like a cheap bootleg toy from China. They also gave him this metallic shine to really drive home that he’s this super cool fighting robot, but he just looks gross when he’s fighting. Back in the first season, whenever a fight happens, you can really feel the impact of the punches that are thrown. Characters are launched several feet away, and whenever Saitama throws a punch, it causes the monster’s body to be torn to shreds. In this season, whenever someone is getting hit, they turn the entire background into a single solitary color like red, orange, or purple. This might’ve been done to emphasize the hits, but it just looks ugly and distracting. It’s typically used over stills after the punch has been thrown, and it gives the characters this horrible looking outline after the hit. It doesn’t emphasize on the hits, but it instead just cuts after the fact, so the action can’t stick with the audience at all. Also, when a character like Bang or Garou hits an enemy several times, they have these impact effects, but they’re so stilted that they don’t feel like it's moving at all. There are several general inconsistencies, like Saitama’s head looking like it got swollen from a brain tumor in episode 1, and Metal Bat’s dried up looking blood covering his face in one scene but then having only a little bit of blood coming out of his forehead in the next. There’s a lot more than I could go over here, but I think you get the point. Aside from not living up to the standards that the first season set, it fails to live up to any basic standards in the industry. There’s an animator named Kenichiro Aoki, who is responsible for some of the shots, and the animation he’s done are the best parts of the show. You might as well call it One Animator Man since he’s the one responsible for all of the few decent parts of the anime, such as the cockroach fight in episode 6, but all of the other shots look so rushed and poorly put together. This is what happens when you rush animation and try to get something out ASAP, as a studio such as JC Staff doesn’t care about quality, but quantity. In an industry that shits out as many anime as possible, this season is just another example of horribly produced manure.
The comedy in this season is also unfunny except for a few scenes. A lot of this is because of the animation and horrible direction, but most of what the show tries to pass off as “jokes” are just not funny. As a friend of mine, SunlitSonata pointed out to me that something the first season was good at was contrast. It would go back and forth between crisp art, to a drawing ripped out of a manga, like the OK face. There was also the fight with Saitama and Genos, where it made it look like Saitama was about to punch Genos, but he just runs up to him and taps his shoulder. OPM2 tries to go for the same thing, like when Garou attacks Saitama. Saitama goes for the manga expression and knocks out Garou, but the presentation is too bland for it to stand out. When King is revealed to be a total coward, they do make a joke with Saitama’s deadpan reaction to seeing King play a visual novel, but it goes by too quickly to be funny. Another example would be when Fubuki tries to recruit Saitama into her group. When one of her lackeys tell Saitama that she’s Class B Rank 1, Saitama doesn’t care, and we get the groups reactions. The problem is that when we see their reactions, we get the gross looking solitary colored background I mentioned before and ugly shadows. I only found two jokes funny from this season, such as when Metal Bat’s younger sister knocks him out since that’s so unexpected. The best joke is when Saitama knocks out the blonde guy from the martial arts tournament. To add insult to injury, the announcer ends up embarrassing the blonde guy by revealing that his girlfriend didn’t even show up for the tournament despite the fact he planned on proposing to her. It’s such an overly cruel joke that I couldn’t stop laughing for a little while. Though that joke was saved for the post-credits scene, so I ended up missing it the first time I watched the episode. Sadly, for the most part, the presentation ruins almost all of the jokes, so it’s hard for me to care a lot of the time.
Saitama and Genos practically act the same, as Saitama is still the super strong dense hero, and Genos is the extremely serious straight man. There’s no problem with that, but they aren’t utilized very well here. They’re both are completely glossed over to the point of no return, aside from a few notable scenes. Saitama’s lack of satisfaction with fighting opponents because of how ridiculously strong he is gets completely shafted until we get an admittingly good scene with Saitama and King talking about it, but that’s all you get with him. The show revolves around a monster invasion, as the number of monsters and their intensity gradually increases throughout its run, and one human claim to be one of the monsters. That person is Garou, and he’s the best part of the show. We all have villains we find to be more entertaining than the heroes, and Garou is the embodiment of that sentiment. He’s on an ongoing quest to defeat all the heroes from the hero association to prove that monsters are superior to humans. He’s an extremely arrogant and strong material arts master. Every time he’s on screen, it’s fun to watch with his entertaining lines, and enjoyable personality. He’s not all bad, as he seems to have a soft spot for children since he was even willing to kill a monster to defend Metal Bat’s younger sister. The presentation does ruin his appearances in the show somewhat, as his muscles look like trash bags mashed together, and one of his facial expressions had a Grinch looking simile. He’s still enjoyable overall regardless, but he’s probably a lot more fun to follow in the manga.
The opening is done by JAM Project, who was also responsible for the opening of the first season. The animation for the opening might be terrible, but the song itself is pretty good. It has this real banger heavy rock part at the beginning, and the rest of the song is just fun to listen to. The ED for this season that was sung by Saitama’s voice actor, Makoto Furukawa, is just ok. Like the first season, it goes for a more melancholic song for ED, with a piano and slow singing. However, the song itself isn’t anything noteworthy and it’s nothing you haven’t heard from before. As for the OST, it’s quite good, as Makoto Miyazaki returns, and it does help liven up the most boring show with some nice rock tunes like Garou’s theme. It goes for this sort of intensity that helps liven up the otherwise stilted action scenes.
I’m sure some might be asking why I even bothered to finish a show I hated so much and write a review about it. I didn’t find OPM2 to be so bad it’s good, like Inuyashiki, and I found it boring at least 90% of the time, so what made me finish it? This review aside, the main reason would be because I was curious to see how far this titan would fall. I wanted to see how bad the animation could get as the show could progress. Most episodes were horrible looking, with episode 7 being the worst one, but there were a few decent episodes like episode 3. You’re probably better off just reading the manga.
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