One Punch Man Season 3 is streaming weekly on Hulu in the U.S., Disney+ in Canda, Crunchyroll in the U.K., and Netflix and Crunchyroll in other territories.
Everyone’s favourite spectacle fighter gag anime is back! One Punch Man was a knockout when Saitama first landed on our screens in 2015, and whilst his cultural cache – and animation budget – perhaps lessened in the years since when production duties changed hands from Madhouse to J.C.Staff, it’s nice to see ONE and Yusuke Murata’s colorful world brought to life once again.
It’s been quite a wait for our hero to return – six-and-a-half years versus the three-and-a-half between Seasons 1 and 2. J.C.Staff continues as OPM’s production house, but the main staff credits have shifted; Shinpei Nagai takes over lead directing duties, Sakura Murakami is our new art director, and Yuki Hirose is now director of photography.
Season 3’s new opening theme gets the blood pumping – JAM Project (featuring Babymetal) offers an energising heavy metal sound against your standard flashy character poses – but if you're here for the fights, you might want to sit this premiere out. One Punch Man’s third season starter is all filler, no killer – or, to be more accurate, nearly 100% exposition. At least it’s all in service of a quintessentially OPM punchline.
Beginning in medias res (Volume 17, for the manga readers, midway through the Monster Association Arc), this episode, titled “Strategy Meeting,” opens with exactly that. The Hero Association is faced with a crisis. Hero hunter Garou is a threat that endangers them all, so a meeting has been called to discuss how to handle the situation. Many side characters have a seat at the table, and there are few recognisable faces for casual fans. It’s a great opportunity to show off the extended cast and their well-performed banter, but if this is your entry point you’re going to be lost.
The animation is limited in these scenes – unengaging pans across rooms with occasional character lipflaps – plus there are plot dumps galore and a lot of sitting around. For a season calling card, it’s more than a little disappointing. Character designs are as appealingly varied as ever, with strong, bold outlines rendering scenes cohesive, but the visual quality overall feels like a filler episode. Budget is injected every time we cut to Child Emperor, who does his stuff from an attractive (and enviable) multi-screen setup. His search for an enemy base amid a hostage situation becomes the most interesting narrative in the first half of the episode, nearly solely because the frame comes alive when he’s in it. Act one of “Strategy Meeting” feels a bit like preheating an oven. You know it’s going to cook, but it’s a slow wait for anything of note to actually happen.
When leading man Saitama is finally reintroduced mid-episode, he is found – fittingly, and expectedly – slacking off, chilling with his bros and playing a monster-raising sim on a Game Boy. One Punch Man’s anime adaptation continues to derive delightful visual humour from Saitama’s deadpan face and simple design, capturing and enhancing the comedic tempo of the manga. Lounging on his side in a cutaway void, he resembles a human Gudetama. It’s kind of nice to start the season this way, as it reminds us what One Punch Man’s shtick is. There’s a major threat, everything’s a little too self-serious, and then – Saitama, put-upon slacker of the people, who gets up off his ass with a sigh to take the fight directly to the enemy.
The laughs are few and far between, however, and the episode’s back half takes us into decidedly darker territory. The Monster Association is growing its ranks. This B-plot turned A-plot had me leaning forward in interest from my initial bored slump, raising the stakes (and the animation budget) ahead of the end credits. The much-mentioned Garou encounters the Monster Association, and finds himself enlisted as their leader. Returning composer Makoto Miyazaki’s accompanying score is fantastic – atmospheric, pulsing, and cool – and it serves the villains gallery and their ice-cold introductions well. From tentacled cyclops Gyoro-Gyoro, to latex-clad dominatrix Do-S and new recruit Machine God G5, this assembly and their machinations are comparatively riveting. We’re left excited to see what they’ll do next. Our heroes have some catching up to do.
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