One Punch Man Season 1 is brilliant

If you haven’t had the chance to watch the excellent One Punch Man on Netflix, I highly recommend it - the story revolves around a guy who can beat any monster in just one punch. The origin and mechanism of his power aren’t important - just the psychological ramifications of limitless power on someone who seeks a challenge and cannot seem to find it. The show spends a lot of time on the other characters as well - many of whom are powerful in their own right, but can never approach the level of the protagonist.

One of my favorite parts of the show is that he joins a bureaucracy of heroes where his incredible power and talent are mostly misunderstood. While he does end up ascending the ranks of the organization in one way or another, he does it with all the grace of a rampaging bull.

His biggest struggle is his complete ennui - he cannot get the zest for life that he so deeply craves. He ends up in adventures and makes friends and generally lives life, completely ignoring the Hero’s Journey model that I was talking about in my last post. Saitama does not grow in any meaningful way over the course of the season or the series. He is a ‘done’ character who is just a hero for fun - and this origin story is rightly mocked in the very first episode. There’s no greater purpose to Saitama’s existence. He isn’t the chosen one beyond being the protagonist of this show. He does not have any special martial arts knowledge or magic totem. He is just given an incredible gift and is bored by it and wants to have fun.

The show has a dry sense of humor and for the first season didn’t take itself very seriously. It mostly lovingly poked fun at a lot of anime tropes. Then the second season it got handed off to another studio because you gotta milk a popular property for as much as its worth! And listen, I watched the second season and I will probably watch it again at some point in my life (next month maybe) but the magic of the show is gone. There are a few interesting arcs, but the show started to take itself a bit too seriously. Any melodrama in Season 1 was intentionally maudlin. The villain in Season 2 has some sort of growth and arc and I just don’t like it. I don’t!

I hope studios can stop beating the corpse of good shows and just let them be. Even with Brooklyn 99 S6, I started to notice a change in tone. I don’t like change, as a rule. I collect it in jars and spend it on prata when I get the chance. Mostly to just get it the hell out of my house. If Andy Samberg wants to do a show where his characters can die in a shooting etc. he should go and get himself a new show! Don’t hit me in the feels like that!