One-Punch Man Review

The 2015 season is a genuine technical achievement. Shingo Natsume directs loose, weighty, hand-drawn fights built on full-body animation and real camera movement, and the Boros sequence remains a high-water mark for television action. The joke worked because the animation took the fights seriously while Saitama did not. Everything since undermines it. The J.C.Staff seasons flatten the layouts, lean on CG crowds and held frames, and stage the Garou fights with none of the original's sense of weight, which leaves the writing exposed.

And the writing is thin. Saitama cannot develop because the premise forbids stakes, so the series offloads its drama onto Genos and Garou, neither of whom is interesting enough to carry it, and the Hero Association satire is one observation repeated at length. Mumen Rider is still the best thing in it. Graded as a whole rather than on its best twelve episodes, this is a one-gag comedy whose production quality, the only element genuinely elevating it, has steadily receded.