Anime Review – One Punch Man

“Saitama is a hero who only became a hero for fun. After three years of “special” training, though, he’s become so strong that he’s practically invincible. In fact, he’s too strong—even his mightiest opponents are taken out with a single punch, and it turns out that being devastatingly powerful is actually kind of a bore.
With his passion for being a hero lost along with his hair, yet still faced with new enemies every day, how much longer can he keep it going?” – Daisuki.net

Streaming at Daisuki , Hulu

Episodes: 12

Source: Webcomic/Manga

Review: I do a panel once a year at the Anime Detour anime convention focused on “Anime for Grown-Ups” – anime series that older anime fans might enjoy. I try to pull anime series, old and new, from several different genres that have aspects that might appeal to folks who are older, have a lot of life experience, and might not identify very closely with the typical anime protagonist (teenage male high school students, specifically). There are people who tend to misinterpret this as me saying that popular anime or anime aimed at younger audiences is “inferior” in some way to these shows and movies that I’m suggesting in this panel, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s just that, sometimes, it can be difficult being an older anime fan and never seeing yourself represented in the shows you like to watch, especially in the popular ones.

The upside is that, when the overlap between popularity and representation happens, it’s like striking gold a hundred times over. One Punch Man isn’t a complicated show and its action animation and humorous writing have made it really popular with the anime viewing masses. But the element of the series that resonated the most with me and which I think makes it more successful than anime with a similar focus is that its central character embodies a lot of the things that can make life as an adult an emotional struggle.

Let me just say, I really like being a grown-up. I like handling my finances, being able to hold down a job, and having the ability to decide what to do with my time. Driving a car is really great, and watching all the R-rated movies I like is pretty nice, also. But there are struggles, too. Navigating treatment for mental illness sucks, mortgages are complicated and scary, and even a good job can get really boring and tedious if you aren’t in a space where you feel like challenging yourself. Possibly one of the worst parts of coming into your adulthood is eventually gaining enough knowledge of the world to become cynical about it. If you’re careful and lucky this might be avoidable, but I think for most of us it’s easy to allow the gleam of adulthood’s privileges wear off, or perhaps you’re in a situation where you’ve never really even been allowed access to the things that others take for granted. Either way, arriving at the realization that “this is it” can be kind of sucky.

What I loved about this show is that this is exactly where we meet Saitama. Currently stronger than just about every monster, demon, or alien that shows up to harass the people of his city, Saitama’s internal desire to fight for justice and defend the citizenry is currently at a low simmer. He’s reached a point where life no longer holds any challenges, and waking up from a wonderful dream where he’s in an all-out fight for his life, only to realize that the hot-blooded danger he envisioned in his mind’s eye was all an illusion, is depressing. There’s actually some humor in this situation, but I think different audiences will laugh for vastly different reasons. Young people will likely giggle at the utter absurdity of Saitama’s battle power and how his low-key attitude about it all is so incredibly different from your typical bellowing shounen anime protagonist. But for those of us who have been around long enough to have come to the realization that, most of the time, you don’t end up in some career that uses all your talents and pays enough to allow you to live your dreams, and most of the time life isn’t an endless parade of doing whatever the hell you want with your time, the laughter definitely comes from a place of understanding. For a show about a guy who punches dudes through buildings and causes enemy bodies to explode, I’m starting to make it sound kind of depressing.

One of the things that saves this series from being entirely cynical is the relationship between Saitama and his eager student, the cyborg soldier Genos. It’s clear from the outset that Genos doesn’t really need anyone to train him since his robotic body affords him all sorts of power, so much so that he’s immediately recognized as one of the top-ranked heroes in Japan.  Even though he could survive well enough as a loner, he thrives when he looks to Saitama as his master.

There are a lot of times when I wonder why, at the age of 34, I still attend a college anime club. Most of the time when I’m there I get really irritated at the other attendees and their inability to settle down and watch the shows, or the fact that they might not appreciate the full scope of why some series are classic or important (not just older shows, but some really great newer ones, too). But I also get the experience of being around people who are plenty smart and full of real talent, and for some reason some of them want to talk to and get to know me, too. It’s easy to look at anime fandom and think, as an “older” fan, “there’s nothing left for me here.” Fandom keeps getting younger while I stay the same, or at least it seems that way sometimes. But when I see my younger friends’ artwork or hear about the new cosplay they’re working on, or if they want to talk to me about lolita fashion, there’s something about those interactions that remind me that there isn’t such a wide gulf between myself and these people, and being around them helps remind me that I don’t have to let go of all the shiny things in life just because life itself isn’t a constant stream of shinies and rainbows. I like to think (and have interpreted the situation as such), that Saitama gains a little bit of the same perspective being around Genos, whose earnestness helps to offset Saitama’s ennui very well.

The other aspect of the series  that reflects its underlying youthful joy is the way that this show was animated. As much as I would love to be an expert on key animators and the animation process in Japan, it’s just not a sense that I’ve had time to develop and so I leave it to the experts. There’s an excellent article over at Anime News Network written by contributor Kevin Cirugeda regarding what makes One Punch Man‘s animation so special, complete with commentary and some informative gifs that should give you a pretty good idea of what has gone into making this show look the way that it does. The biggest takeaway I had, though, and what I think is especially relevant to the spirit of this series, is that the production team for this anime wasn’t working with some extravagant animation budget or an abundance of time in which to draw it all. What it is, according to the chief animation director, is simply the work of passionate animators doing their best. Knowing anything about the Japanese animation industry, with its ability to work its animators to the bone and pay them salaries that keep them in a state of poverty, it seems almost impossible to think that there are animators left with the ability and drive to push their art to the limit. But once again I think that’s one of the lessons worth learning from this series – it’s easy to be cynical (and sometimes grossed-out) once you know how the sausage is made, but it bears repeating that there are many people who, either because of their young age or some magical ability of theirs to keep from becoming completely jaded, truly exemplify why there are things worth caring about.

If I had to levy a complaint against this anime, it would probably be that it gets bogged-down by introducing a lot of side characters and “plot” (defined very loosely) in the second half that drag the show down a bit. With a title like One Punch Man expecting high art would be stupid, and the show appropriately spends most of its time being, how to say, “dumb as hell.” That’s fine and doesn’t bother me. Even with a paper thin plot I still managed to somehow draw a lot of personal meaning from the show. But once the series achieved “dumb as hell and full of other dummies, too” by introducing a slew of other hero characters in the latter several episodes, I started to get a little annoyed. Some of the characters are interesting – I especially liked Silver Fang, the old man with high level martial art powers. But some of them are downright irritating, namely Tatsumaki, the green-haired esper with a bad attitude who spends most of her screen time being snotty for no reason. In any case, because the anime is so brief I felt like there really wasn’t time to utilize the large cast of characters very well, and if there had been a good way to keep things simple (at least for this season of the show, as there will surely be more to come later on) and focus on Saitama and Genos for a while, I would have preferred that. Because the final confrontation is so purely focused on Saitama, specifically him finding someone with whom he can have a (nearly) fair fight, I think this would have been do-able with a little tweaking. But surely that would have upset fans of the source material, so it’s just another no-win anime adaptation situation.

Being an adult is complicated, and it doesn’t always feel that great. For every awesome splurge, there’s also an accompanying bill to be paid. The ability to do the fun things you want to do is coupled with the lack of energy that keeps you from doing it. You can buy any anime DVD you want, but there might not be a lot around that you want to own anymore (not my personal problem, but then again I’m a hopeless weeb 4 lyfe up in here). In some cases, it can feel a little bit like there’s not much point to going through the motions every day. I think it’s great, then, to have a reminder that there are still thrilling experiences to uncover (even if you have to wait until you’re discovered by a disgruntled space alien with a penchant for violence… yeah, sometimes anime isn’t all that realistic).  I wouldn’t have expected that reminder to show up in the form of an incredibly popular shounen series, but it serves as a great reminder that there are plenty of younger people out there with valuable things to teach us, and that listening to them might just keep us young.

Pros: The show, possibly somewhat by accident, is sort of insightful about the struggles of adulthood. Dat animation.

Cons: It gets bogged down with too many characters (some of whom are very irritating) in the second half.

Grade: A-