One Punch Man was to many a surprise success. The type of anime that comes around every couple of years the breaks through into Western culture in a standalone way. It is the type of show you watch not knowing it is anime when the dub is played on Cartoon Network at night (AniList ranks it as the 4th most popular show of all time). Upon its completion, people were primed for a season two, and unlike a lot of popular shows, the second season was seemingly announced pretty quickly – albeit by a different studio – before being kicked down the road for four years.

Let me cut to the chase, though: if you watched One Punch Man, you should watch its second season. There are just some expectations you need to manage on the way in.

Many people decried the studio change (from MADHOUSE to JC Staff) when it was announced and are currently still frustrated at the end-product, but they acquitted themselves adequately enough. There are good moments and moments that look cheapened. If you’re expecting the same quality as the final episode of the first season, you’ll be disappointed, but the animation does not stand in the way of itself.

The real frustration is systemic, however, and to get into, it we need to expand our lens. I know this is a detour, but if you want to get a handle on season two of One Punch Man, I think it is important to contextualize this.

One Punch Man started as a webcomic by ONE (also of Mob Psycho 100 fame). Its art is… well rudimentary, I suppose. Mob Psycho 100 stayed fairly faithful to it, but One Punch Man had a foundationally different look except for when, for effect or for the fans, it would cut back to the ONE style.

One Punch Man (the anime) doesn’t look like this though because, once One Punch Man got popular, it was redrawn(?), redone(?) into a manga by Yasuke Murata (of Eyeshield 21 fame). If you got to a Barnes and Noble and buy One Punch Man today, you are getting the Murata version, and frankly, that is a net positive. He is really good. Look up his live streams, truly amazing.

The issues started when ONE slowed down his work on the web comic (taking two years off from the webcomic). He, as is common in the web to physical transition (similarly to WNs to LNs), was working with Murata to ensure the manga was a success and to make changes where he thought they were required and then working with Madhouse on the anime and finishing Mob Psycho 100 and then ostensibly working with JC Staff on season two.

This (and this is a bit of speculation) had a ripple effect into the manga where the arc covered by the second season is still ongoing (it is completed in the webcomic), but I believe it is dragging on longer than it narratively made sense to – definitely longer than it did in the web comic. This is speculation, but it seems like everything is bottlenecked at the Monster Association Arc in part because the anime is taking its cues from the manga – not the webcomic.

This takes us back to the anime. The season is split between two main plots: the Garo/Hero Hunter Plot and the Monster Association Plot with a C-Story that is largely peripheral. Without getting into spoilers, since the MA Plot is still unresolved in the manga, it seems like JC Staff decided to find a spot in the middle of it to end the season and space itself accordingly. As a result, nothing (except for the C-story, I guess) is really resolved. There is no climax like there was in season one (maybe because season one didn’t know there would be a season two while season two knows there will be a season three).

As someone who is ahead of the show and the manga, it sucks because this season could have been an amazing two-cour because where it stops makes sense, but the wait doesn’t. It could have been another season one. However, for what looks like practical business reason, it is largely a set-up to be paid off later. That doesn’t make it not worth watching. It doesn’t make the series worth abandoning, but I do think that you may be better served waiting until season three comes out to have a complete narrative arc instead of this appetizer.

It’s hard to decide how all this should affect one’s viewing of the second season. An easy solution would be for the anime to go off the webcomic to fill in the holes, but that would hurt the manga sales. Anime is never supposed to supersede the manga. An axiom serious enough that Piccolo went to driving school to ensure it.

Is it Murata’s fault? No, he’s seemingly doing his best with the storyboards he gets from ONE. (It's hard to slack off when you literally livestream yourself doing work.)

ONE’s? It’s not like he’s not working. He has a lot of plates in the air, so probably not.

JC Staffs? Maybe.

It has been four years since the first season. I feel like someone, somewhere was starting to sweat. Was One Punch Man losing its pop culture influence? Can we afford to wait for a season two for another six months? A lack of confidence led to this. At whose feet, I really can’t say.

Ultimately, though, that takes us to the question: should my sister watch this anime?

Yes, but maybe not now. I think One Punch Man Season 2 will be best watched when season 3 is out. I don’t believe there is a release date yet, but I’d recommend you give it the rest of the year for something. If there is an announcement, hold off. If not, watch it and supplement the manga to get some sort of pay off.

60/100