One Punch Man
Genre: Action, Parody
Studio: Madhouse
License: Madman Entertainment
Episodes: 12
Directed by: Shingo Natsume
Written by: Tomohiro Suzuki
Opening Theme: The Hero!! ~Ikareru Ken ni Honō o Tsukero~ - JAM Project
Closing Theme: Hoshi Yori Saki ni Mitsukete Ageru - Hiroko Moriguchi
Unless you have been living under the deepest rock in the ocean last years biggest breakout phenomenon from Japan has been the manga and anime ‘One Punch Man’, first originally written and drawn by the Manga artist ‘ONE’ as a superhero parody series, but later adapted to serialisation by ‘Shueisha’ magazine with illustrations by Yusuke Murata for the ‘Young Jump Web Comics’ magazine and localised by ‘Weekly Shonen Jump’ for western release.
The series is set in the fictional City Z and follows the main character, Saitama, who is a self proclaimed ‘Hero for fun’ whose appearance is a joke with a plain looking costume and a bald head and somewhat plagued by his ‘unfortunate’ ability to defeat his enemies with one punch and thus has become bored with his ability and possibly life itself as he doesn’t feel any emotion with most things he does, as he seeks stronger opponents who will be able to present him with a challenge. Along the way he meets a medley of different heroes and enemies along the way which come in a diverse bracket of hilarious and awesome with either their appearance or their attitude on being heroes.
However, the case with the whole series plot wise it’s pretty much summed up overall with its premise, every fight will have no to little tension as viewers know the overall outcome of the fight, which comes to why should you bother watching it? Well the answer is simple, the art and animation by the people at Madhouse for the anime is beyond incredible as each fight is visually stunning with plenty of visual effects to leave you amazed as each bout just grows in scale to enemy variety and scale with backing tracks that only keep you hyped with each blow thrown, especially with the opening theme making you and everyone else scream out ‘WAN PAAAAAAANCH’
In the end, I would highly recommend watching the series, which is available on Madman’s anime streaming service animelab.com as it is a spectacle of its own with marvelous art and animation that will keep you seated till the very end.
Verdict: MUST WATCH
