Television Summary XXIV (One-Punch Man)


So I decided to start re-watching the show one punch man.
Originally I had only ever seen three episodes and then I just stopped.
This time I decided to sit down and watch several different episodes over a course of a couple of days and now I'm up to about 11.
And after watching all these extra episodes I can conclude that I wish I had remained of my original Three. Because this show starts to lose an awful lot of steam.

I love the idea of one punch man when I originally saw it. An overpowered guy who occasionally beats up super-powered monsters but becoming so good at it.
That he becomes disinterested and bored by the Endeavour. Sometimes not even bothering to fight the monster simply out of disinterest.
And only really becoming truly pissed off at someone if they attacked his house or somehow got in the way of his personal life.
It was a great concept and I think it would have been great for a really short mini series that only lasted 5 episodes.
But unfortunately they didn't go that route they had 12 episodes and they decided that they didn't just want to make fun of the over-the-top fighting they wanted to make fun of kind of over-the-top writing a lot of these shows have as well.
And in doing so they went from parody to straight up copy. What initially was making fun of ridiculous monster battles and overly dramatic dialogue about pointless information mixed in with said monsters became the basis of the show and it became just as boring and disinterested is almost all those other TV shows are. Just like Dragon Ball Z*.

And in all fairness I don't know what they could have done with this show. As I stated originally it's best just to stick with the first three episodes where it's just one punch man being bored about fighting monsters and then getting excited once because he finally thinks he's getting a tough opponent but it turns out it was just a dream.
Then he meets this robot guy who supposed to be this all-powerful mechanised machine that can destroy nearly anything and of course every time he gets involved in a fight he gets absolutely obliterated and then one punch man just goes by and whack some of his finger or whatever completely destroys the monster.

And all of that was well and good. But then the show decided to throw in the secondary plot involving the superhero organisation that both of these characters try to sign up for and the rest of the show just becomes a spreadsheet of Heroes trying to get up in rank and dealing with numbers and cocky superheroes. The show that was originally making fun of overpowered Fighters like Goku or that guy from Fist of the North Star became this weird commentary about Superman and other superheroes who are just kind of perceived as full of themselves and caring more about their image than their work and then getting obliterated by monsters anyways. It's a whole thing and it's really not fun. It's just line after line of boring dialogue with no punchline. Ironically no punch Man became no punchline and the whole show just fell apart.

There's one exception towards the end where this big sea monster King comes out of the water and they set him up to be a more interesting character who has a little bit of fun dialogue and fights these ridiculously over the types of superheroes.
One of which is hyper flamboyant and turns into a naked Angel to fight.
It's kind of fun especially cuz they keep setting up at this monsters just going to eat a stadium full of people and all these really weak superheroes have to keep pushing him off so they can wait for stronger people to come by in fight him and then they get ripped to shreds.
It's the closest thing the show will get to being good again but unfortunately it all just backfires and we're back to random talking with no comedy and no action.
In a show that's supposed to be a comedic action farce.

*I've mentioned before how I don't like Dragon Ball Z. I think it spends way too much time just pondering around not doing anything and yet I really like the original Dragon Ball.
Especially the earlier Seasons where it's just Goku Going on a little 'Lord of the Rings' Adventure hunting for the dragon balls and dealing with weird environments.
The whole show was just so fun to watch. Especially as Goku grew more powerful it would go about later back to Old territories in defeating old enemies that used to be so difficult.
He destroys the Red Ribbon Army without even a second thought and only because he infiltrated the place in search of a very particular thing.

He didn't even want to destroy the Army just kind of happened. At least up until around the very end of the show where the tournaments get a little bit more prominent and it turns into that standing around and doing nothing for awhile kind of show. It works once or twice in the tournament cuz it's like an old western show where you set up the tension of two characters about to fight perhaps the whole thing was based on a Sumo match with five to ten minutes of setup and psych evaluation for about 5 to 20 seconds worth of actual fighting. Seriously sumo wrestling is the only form of martial arts I ever find fun to watch.

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