King is truly the strongest hero.
What They Say:
“Justice Under Siege”
The Monster Association issues a challenge to the Hero Association, telling them they have only three days to rescue the hostage Waganma. Elsewhere, Garou tries to recover from his constant fighting, but things don’t quite go as planned.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With the tournament fully in the rear view, the last few episodes of this season will be shifting the focus back over to the Garou plot, along with the increasingly dire threat of the Monster Association. This means even less Saitama than we’ve been seeing lately, but we do get the consolation of Saitama’s epic battle with King… in video games. This dynamic has always been amusing as the apparent strength of the two is reversed in reality, but then reversed again when it comes to gaming, making that the one area in which the public perception of where the two stand would be accurate. Seeing King wreck Saitama with a cute bunny girl character is especially entertaining.
Saitama’s role in the main plot involving the Monster Association has been mostly limited to saving the day at the tournament and occasionally being seen killing monsters in huge quantities without really thinking about why their numbers are so much higher than usual. It’s always fun, and occasionally gratifying, to see Saitama involved in fights, but when the series is building this larger threat of an entire organization, it makes some sense to keep Saitama away from the action and let normal heroes have their time in the spotlight. After all, none of this would mean much if Saitama just destroyed them all. This story has an enormous supply of heroes with unique designs and combat specialties, so it makes much more sense to use the concept of a corresponding league of monsters to explore those of them who have received less attention until now.
Garou also serves this purpose well, as his goals are similar to those of the Monster Association, causing the Hero Association to be pulled into his story as well. The actual monster battles already feel like exhibitions for both the heroes we may or may not have heard about and the monsters, but many of Garou’s fights take it a step further as we watch him literally study up on the powers of his upcoming opponents and analyze how best to counter them. The juxtaposition between the monsters and the man who proclaims himself to be one has been displayed more and more as we see both in similar situations. While the monsters are so vile that they’ll take a child hostage, parasitically control a Hero Association employee’s mind, feign peaceful wishes, and then murder another employee when they accept their offer, Garou continues to put himself at greater risk than necessary for the obvious purpose of protecting the hero-loving kid that happened to have crossed his path at various moments. A classic tsundere, he’d never admit this as his goal, and his insistence on continuing to fight heroes isn’t helping anyone when the monsters are causing so much chaos, but the depth of his character and inescapable humanity makes it seem less and less likely that he would actually join up with the Monster Association, a seeming inevitability given how the two antagonists of the season were set up initially.
As always, Aoki manages to churn out some excellent animation in the midst of all the mediocrity in all areas of production. This time he gets several cuts, albeit all fairly short and within the same span of action, but it’s always important to acknowledge the one bit of positive technical achievement to appreciate almost every episode, especially since it’s literally always provided by the same single man.
In Summary:
It’s hard to find anything to get excited about from One Punch Man at this point. The story is worth following, but this is such a weak presentation of it compared to what’s been available for years that I can’t recommend it with any enthusiasm. There are still moments that take advantage of the medium of animation, but they’re so few and far between, with most of the rest of the material squandering those capabilities, that it’s much less frustrating to just check out those clips than to wait for something to look decent in the episode proper. It’s still fine, and probably always will be, but there’s no thrill in just that.
Grade: B-
Streamed By: Hulu
Review Equipment:
LG Electronics OLED65C7P 65-Inch 4K Ultra HD Smart OLED TV, Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K