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「怪人の蜂起」 (Kaijin no Houki)
“The Uprising of the Monsters”
You wanted some martial arts? Well darling you’re going to get some, erm, quasi-martial arts. Yeah, martial arts—in spirit. Not that OPM’s focus was ever going to be the intricacies of screamed move names and multi-episode buildup leading to an always less than satisfactory conclusion mind you (praise be to the DBZ strategy), but hey, hard faulting the show for hilariously ripping into those time honoured tropes. In this season it’s all about watching things get beat up, and oh boy did we get that this week.
While there’s some annoyance over the time allotment OPM is doling out to its titular character so far, there’s no denying the moments spent watching poor suckers wind up KO’d is plenty satisfying for what’s being shown. It’s blatantly obvious for example that Saitama is going to win this tournament outright thanks to the competition coming his way (barring any unforeseen shenanigans—i.e. what happens should he lose the wig of deception), so the question becomes what are we going to get out the inevitability, and Suiryu pretty much provides that answer in spades. The guy for intents and purpose is the alternate King: he’s got all the power and talent, but has no wish to use it for anything outside himself. Helping people and bettering society? Suiryu considers it a sucker’s bet, and something only fit for those unwilling—or unable—to take for themselves. Or in other words, the mindset of a thoroughly arrogant bastard. Given Saitama’s view on heroes and their societal obligations it’s going to be interesting seeing what happens when he finally runs up against Suiryu, because while the guy may technically not be a hero, he falls into the same general category. With power comes responsibility, and there’s no better teacher of the fact than the One Punch Man himself.
Getting to that teachable moment however will first take some work thanks to face of this arc’s main opponent in Orochi finally appearing and hinting towards fun things (read: disaster) happening soon. Not much of a stretch for example to imagine some serious fights building on the horizon thanks three S-class heroes being wiped in the opening encounter, and with Garo ready to help thin the herd a little more because you know this bad boy is also not going anywhere anytime soon. Not like everyone’s favourite pint sized pipsqueak is going to run into any problems with the latest wave of horror-esque riffraff (you’ll be seeing that face in your nightmares, I guarantee it), but hey, no reason we cannot have a little fun before beating evil into an unrecognizable pulp. Or, you know, incinerating it to a crisp. Yeah, I think our batch of heroes is going to do just fine.
After all with the caped baldy still doing the usual, it’s only a matter of time before this batch of enemies meets their maker.
Preview
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This episode could have been amazing… if it was directed and animated by a team that gave a damn.
The lack of quality is ridiculous, only the music, voice actors and the good source material save this disaster of an adaptatoion.
The the music, and sound in general, aren’t that good.
People seriously think this is a “disaster”, huh… Using the same descriptions for OPM that they’d use for a slice-of-life anime that’s running out of budget and has the characters move like awkward puppets with lopsided faces and incomprehensible pacing. This is why my friend (who hasn’t watched OPM yet) had to ask me if it was even worth it to bother with this series.
It’s largely down to the origins of this series. J.C. Staff was never going to match up to the arguably once in a blue moon production we got previously, while the time allotted to this season meant some condensing and rushing like we got this week was inevitable. A lot of the hate is incredibly overblown, but there is some basis for it. Personally I still like how this season is unfolding considering what we could’ve received, but I can see why some may not be as enamoured of it.
For me like I said, it’s not just the animation. For me the sound effects and mixing are very annoying. They’re using one same sound effect for almost everything. People really don’t notice that?
Player, very few people expect quality action scenes out of “slice-of-life” anime. One-Punch is an action-comedy/satire. When after a groundbreaking amazing first season you get a second season that feels less dynamic than Toradora (much love), even if the comedy is still there you can’t help but be overtaken by a deep sense of regret.
If you look at this episode, the manga had more frames dedicated to some of the fights…
Meh, I was ok with previous Eps but this one not only had a big Dip in animation quality but they are using Stand still images wayyyyyyy to often in fights ! Fights look motionless not and fluid at all. Also is it just me or pacing just got super fast this eps ???
Oh yeah pacing was off this week, this was one of those episodes which likely would’ve been better off as two. As for the fights yeah the animation is relying heavily on still images and blurring effects to hide the lack of actual animation. Not a problem in of itself (it’s useful at certain times), but it was particularly noticeable here since J.C. Staff seems to love using the method for every fight.
As other posters stated. Crap tier quality episode.
I literally had no interest to watch it in one sitting.
Shame.
Yeah, I agree. I was actually getting bored watching.
Only time I reacted was when Saitama hit his opponent
for touching his head – I laughed. 5 seconds out of
24 minutes were worth it – reset of it, meh.
https://randomc.net/image/One-Punch%20Man/One%20Punch%20Man%20S2%20-%2006%20-%20Large%2003.jpg
Yeah, hero used some fancy acrobatic attack but was beaten by a simple kick. This is why I am against learning some acrobatic martial art technique. It is cool for the movies but bad for real fights.
https://randomc.net/image/One-Punch%20Man/One%20Punch%20Man%20S2%20-%2006%20-%20Large%2029.jpg
Hope to see her again. I need more characters that resemble Soul Calibur’s Ivy.
https://randomc.net/image/One-Punch%20Man/One%20Punch%20Man%20S2%20-%2006%20-%2024.jpg
I was hoping that she would be a bit stronger than that…
Given she resisted the brainwashing effects of the whip I’d say she’s doing fine for the moment 😛
Blizzard has the right mindset now given previous events, she simply has to make the effort to improve upon her current basis.
It’s part of her character development.
Actually, I think it’s due to the source material that the episode is a bit of mess. The tournament arc, believe it or not, doesn’t exist in the web comic. It was added only to the manga. A ton of characters and monsters are introduced that don’t really matter in the long run. The episode leaps around from Saitama to Genos to Garo to Fubuki to random heroes and monsters and more, which draws the whole thing out. It basically suffers from Bleach-syndrome.
I also suspect part of why the animation took a dip was because of the shear number of characters being covered. The budget won’t go to characters that don’t matter. And there was just no time to focus on any cool fight.
Some of the animation does look cheap but I still enjoyed this season so far