One Punch Man #02 — “Why Not Show the Floor Again?”

October 11th, 2015

 

Did someone mix in the backgrounds with the storyboards again? Oh well. Run with it.

Impressions:

It's always nice when you can pinpoint the exact moment where everyone gave up. There's about a four to five minute span in this episode where everybody clearly just left for the day, and they threw the visuals together out of random stock art of floors and walls. See if you can spot the segment from the screen caps! Unfortunately, the formula hasn't changed much from last last. Do a big world ending introductory sequence, then protagonist pops out to kill the monster and shrug. The tension and weight is all theoretical, leaving the action still little more than the equivalent of jangling keys (very nice, shiny keys, mind you) until they figure out a way to make something matter, which I think would undermine the entire one off gimmick around which all concepts of this show apparently must revolve.

The big change this week is that instead of four basically unconnected segments, there were three. Lengthening the initial one that involves as little of the protagonist and his one note gimmick as possible for close to a third of the episode, and making the unanimated talking heads bit the shortest was definitely the correct move. If it's supposed to be funny though, it's not working. The closest it got was the same kind of joke that General Mills used for a decade to sell Cinnamon Toast Crunch. "He can beat anybody in one punch… but can he defeat a mosquito!?" The other 'jokes' this episode basically boiled down to "You must be a super human." "No I am not." I'm starting to wonder if adding a rim shot or a laugh track might actually help, if not just for the ironic sensibilities. That's a dark road to start going down.  

       

Posted in One Punch Man | 10 Comments »

10 Shouts From the Peanut Gallery

  • Paulo27 says:

    “Looks at us exposition about a character like every other dirty anime does but we know we’re doing it! Aren’t we funny!?”

  • Opulent Rag says:

    Eh, bug girls were nice.

  • JCA says:

    Are you sure this is supposed to be a comedy? It’s seems to just be playing everything completely straight, aside from the occasional weird character design.

    • Paulo27 says:

      That’s how parodies are nowadays, they just play everything straight and label themselves as parodies at one point or another and it’s automatically hilarious.

      • Themaster20000 says:

        That’s what old parodies did though. Like The Naked Gun films,where Leslie Nielsen played his character straight through all the silly antics.

        • Aroduc says:

          Not really. Absurd things would happen/be said, and they’d be taken in stride. That’s not the same as all the usual cliches happening and then having the ‘straight’ character point out that they are ridiculous. The key difference being that if you stopped right before that comment, there would be no ‘joke’ or parody at all. Admittedly, it is very much a cultural thing stemming from the boke-tsukkomi comedy duo. The ‘punchline’ (ironically) isn’t the ‘funny’ man of the pair, but the reaction of the straight man. Not to say that the west hasn’t gone through its phases with that kind humor too (Three Stooges being a good example).

          But also, the Leslie Nielsen parodies having more than one joke is a huge difference too.

  • dark says:

    so each episode random bad guys get killed by 1 punch and lame jokes and this is all to it?

  • arknoir says:

    Be it the manga or anime, I like One punch man due to the main character’s nonchalence towards most things.

  • gustave154 says:

    not sure if this review is being sarcastic. i thoroughly enjoyed watching this.