More Garou = more better.

I feel as if One Punch Man – in anime form – is in a complete no-win situation. Most fans have irrevocably soured on it, for starters. That was true even before this season. But even beyond that, it seems the series only really clicks when it’s pretty action-heavy. Yet the Catch-22 is, J.C. Staff is incapable of delivering the big action set pieces without disappointing the audience even more. Damned if it does and damned if it doesn’t. The irony is, for me Mob Psycho 100 was just the opposite – it was better when it was character than action-driven (though obviously great in both modes). I guess that just proves how much more interesting the characters are with that series.

Garou is the one exception. And more and more it seems like if this season is to be salvaged, any hope lies with him. Any time extended conversations happen with anybody else I start to drift. Was OPM always this talky – or is it a matter of a mediocre production impacting the dialogue as much as the visuals? Unfortunately Garou spends most of this episode a bloody, unconscious heap so unsurprisingly, it’s not too compelling. We get a brief conversation between Zombieman and the head of the House of Evolution about limiters (and Saitama) that’s sort of interesting. But the rest of the dialogue here is pretty blah.

As for Garou, he seems to be holding his own against King the Ripper and Insect God until a third monster – Sludge Jellyfish – shows up. He’s got Tareo and a personal grudge against Garou (the nature of which I don’t remember) in tow. The three of them are seemingly too much for Garou and it’s Ripper that does most of the damage, which the monsters assume to be fatal. They drag Tareo off to Monster HQ for Ripper to play with at his leisure, but have to explain to the boss why Garou is dead when he was supposed to be taken alive.

The whole point of the kidnapping (referenced in the premiere) is to lure the S-class heroes to HQ in an attempted rescue.  Tareo gets tossed into the cell with the kidnapped bigwig’s son, Waganma, who promptly declares Tareo his slave. Waganma is supremely confident rescue is coming, but the resident monsters don’t seem too worried about the potential arrival of the S-class. In truth of course it’s the B-class they should be concerned with, but they don’t realize that yet.

Meanwhile Saitama has arrived home, completely unaware that he’s cleaned Garou’s clock. He’s mainly upset about leaving the napa cabbage at the family restaurant, but Blizzard has kindly rescued it. She’s mainly upset about his stiffing her on the check. Saitama would like everyone to leave but the crowd keeps growing, as Dr. Kuseno (last seen way back in S1, I think) shows up to check on Genos. He brings a gift pack of premium beef to thank Saitama for looking after Genos, which Blizzard is horrified to learn Saitama plans to dump in the hot pot (she’s right to be). This is all headed somewhere besides intermittently amusing time-wasting, but the prospect is frankly not all that appealing the way things are currently progressing.