For a series that frankly never really made sense most of the time, this was a perfectly fitting finale. I never quite figured out this second season of One Punch Man to be honest. So I can’t say whether it was successful in accomplishing what it set out to do, because I have no clue what it set out to do. I can say that it had its fair share of interesting moments, a couple of real highlights, and some clunkers. All in all a thoroughly mixed bag, and the animation quality had little to do with why.
In truth this franchise has always been a bit of a ‘tweener for me, anyway – squeezed by the ONE series I like better, Mob Psycho 100, and the hero re-imagining I like better, Boku no Hero Academia. And Saitama is less interesting than Mob or Deku, to be sure. But both he and One Punch Man were clearly operating on a higher level in the first season at Madhouse. Sure the production values were vastly superior, but that’s honestly not a huge deal for me. A much bigger problem is that this season seemed unfocused and adrift – a lot of semi-related episodes strung together with no sense of flow.
Garou ended up being not just the most compelling element of Season 2, but effectively the main character. Again – was that on purpose, or just how it turned out? I have no idea, but the finale didn’t do anything to change it. In fact the more we’ve learned about Garou the more engaging he’s become, and the less sociopathic his worldview seems. I almost get the sense that Garou was set up to a sort of foil for Saitama, a funhouse mirror image – but if so, the execution wasn’t close to being able to pull that off.
Unfortunately we were deprived of any sort of resolution for Garou’s arc, which I assume means it’s probably still ongoing in the manga. Naturally a season this disjointed would have an ending that didn’t feel like an ending, and that’s very much what we got here. As for Saitama he barely featured in it at all, but again that pretty much feels right because he was largely irrelevant for most of the season, even when he was on-screen. Of course he showed up in the nick of time to save the day against Centichoro – was there ever any doubt of that? But it didn’t accomplish much in terms of his character arc.
If OPM wants to be a story about Saitama’s angst and general lost generation ennui, I’m perfectly fine with that – that may in fact be the most effective arrow in the series’ quiver. Indeed that’s what the first season was to an extent, though it was layered on top of a pretty successful save the world plot. But gestures in that direction were halfhearted this time around. Saitama gave us the bored and disinterested schtick, but there wasn’t really any introspection on his part – hell, if King (hardly the sharpest knife in the drawer) can gut you like sushi-grade tuna with cracker-box psychoanalysis, you aren’t exactly The Sphinx.
Even in the end, in saving everyone, there was really nothing from Saitama – all of a sudden he felt better, presumably because he finally got to punch someone worth punching. So his role in all this was pretty much a write-off. In fact it was King’s ruse about having Centichoro’s arch-nemesis Blast (who still exists only in myth in the anime at least) that lured Centichoro into the path of Saitama’s one punch. Genos gave it his best shot, as did Bang and Bomb, but Centichoro seemed to be too much for any of them. But when you have a protagonist who can literally end any threat with one punch, the overall menace level is somewhat lacking in tension.
The fight between master and disciple was much better, and for a time there I really thought Bang saw no other way to end this than to kill Garou. But Garou – while he has limitations in terms of power – simply doesn’t seem to know how or when to give up. We saw the positive side of heroes through the chaos at the end of Super Fight, where the difference between a hero and an ordinary tough dude became clear, but Garou pretty effectively exposes the hollowness of the whole hero culture. I felt like the essence of his worldview was really distilled well in that flashback – it’s not about good or evil, but striking a blow for the weak.
But then, Garou is dragged off to Monster HQ and we never really get to see that story play out to its end. I suppose that’s for a third season, if we get one. I still hope we do, mainly because I really would like to see how things work out with him. For the rest of the cast and the whole Monster Association story, honestly, I’d certainly watch but I don’t find myself burning to see more of them. If it happens, it happens. I may never have ranked the original One Punch Man as highly as its biggest fans, but I liked it enough to have wanted more from the sequel. Hopefully if we do get another one it will build on what the first two season dod well, and bring a great narrative dexterity to continuing the story.
Roger
July 4, 2019 at 2:29 amI have to agree with you on this season Enzo, it felt a little disjointed. I think the problem comes from the fact that we are left at a halfway point and that we lost the focus on Saitama who just sort of shows up to save the day and nothing more, whereas in the first season we are front and center on his personal struggles. I don’t know if you ever read the original webcomic and it’s better drawn adaptation, but a lot of the plot of this season comes from the adaptation and I always felt it was more filler than anything…not to say I didn’t like it but it slowed down the final conflict against the Monster’s Association which should have ended this season…yet it also gave us some really good added content that wasn’t in the original like Garou’s fight against the lower class heroes. All in all, I think there is still plenty of good stuff left but I guess we will have to wait for Murata’s adaptation to catch up to the original web comic, and that in turn be produced into a new season.
Arabesque
July 4, 2019 at 3:02 amI’ve been biting my tongue about what I had been thinking about this season since it’s hard to not talk about it without knowing exactly where they were planning to have the cut off point at, since, as you had correctly surmised, this particular story line in the manga is not over (It is done in the original webcomic however, so we do have a clear “end point” to where all of this is leading up to. Unless ONE decides to change how the storyline ends in the manga for whatever reason).
Now that we got here, it seems clear that who ever gave the green light to have the second season clearly should have waited, because oh boy, this was the worst time to end the series at. The production issues aside (unlike you, I thought they had been pretty egregious throughout this season, though not the biggest strike against it) the direction for many of the more impactful moments of the season had been lacking if not downright bad in making it stand out. The only episode I thought was “Good” was 11, with a few moments here and there such as the Super Fight moment with Saitama getting his disguised uncovered before he almost killed Seiryu, and this episode with the Garou flashback standing out among very random string of events that seemed unfocused and without purpose.
Which is where I feel the biggest problem for this season (and really, this entire arc) had been. The feeling that a lot of the story is adrift, that a lot of these things happening matter much less than how they might have felt in the first season and the prior story arc. I thought a lot of that might have to do with the introduction of the Super Fight and New Monster Association plot threads into the arc when originally in the webcomic the story was largely about Garou (and to an extent, Fubuki’s) which made it feel like additions that didn’t really fit in an established story. But now that I watched it all unfold on screen, and less impressive compared to the more phenomenally drawn manga pages, I think that the issue is that a lot of this was just filler at the end of the day.
If there is one thing I am grateful about for the production being this lackluster and the direction being this flat, is that it showed what the biggest problems with the creative decisions made in this particular arc had led to it all going down the gutter. Without the cool animation, the weakness of the story decisions that ONE and Murata took the series become more clear than ever. Yeah, it’s really cool to see all of these fights happen on the manga page, and yeah, that’s some damn impressive art. But at the end of the day, if you only create new plot threads that aren’t really meant to serve the narrative of the arc, and instead are just there so you could draw cool shit, the arc is going to go off the rails and whatever point you are ultimately attempting to make is just going to get lost in the midst of the fluff. There is still flashes of brilliance there, but it is all lost in the quest to “draw another cool scene”.
Mob Psycho 100 was always the more superior ONE series, but One Punch Man was also quite good. It’s a shame it allowed itself to become too indulged with how good it looked that everyone involved forgot to also give a lot of those moments just as much heart to have a point at the end of it all.
Gracie
July 4, 2019 at 3:35 amI liked Garou a lot and the season would’ve been more coherent if it centered Garou better. Instead his introduction is rather floundering narrative-wise and you don’t know how to take him. Is he just the bad guy du jour or what?
I think the season works better if you look at it as a commentary on the sketchy quality of the heroes from the frauds to the stars to the ones who want to make a name for themselves.
Roger
July 4, 2019 at 3:38 am@Arabesque
I also wondered why we got an incomplete season, and what was the reason behind the production of it. I hope somebody who knows more about it can put some introspective, however if I were to guess, I think it might be a combination of several things.
Money- OPM S1 was a massive hit, both financially and culturally. A second season was a sure thing, and with it more economic gains.
Demand- Season 1 came out all the way back in 2015, and I’m sure the producers didn’t want to wait until the adaptation was far enough to have enough material for a longer season, so they took what they had and made a 12 episode season.
Necessity to stay relevant- The producers probably were afraid that if a second season took too long, people would lose interest and move onto other stuff.
Anyone has any other ideas?
Arabesque
July 4, 2019 at 9:19 amI think you pretty much hit all the major points.
What’s more interesting is if we end up getting a third season after the manner that the 2nd season turned out.
Yann
July 5, 2019 at 12:40 amI was so bummed at the end of this episode that I watched the last episode if season 1 right after, to cleans my palate so to speak. It made it painfully obvious that yes, the animation in season 2 is a disaster, but the worst part is actually the direction. It’s so one dimensional, completely flat, devoid of any subtlety, that there’s only the shadow of a good story left. Sure, Mob100 was always better. But OPM was a lot of fun and had something to say in season 1. This was the biggest disappointment for me since PsychoPass 2 (okay… I never even finish episode 1 of that one so I guess it was worse :P).