DEATH BATTLE

No livestreaming premiere, huh?

Weird, guess they either forgot or decided no point to doing that.

This reminds me, I should watch OPM S2. Heard it sucked, though

Funnily, a lot of the beats in this fight are very similar to Aang vs Ed. Ed misinterprets something Aang says as an insult about his height and starts the fight. Tatsumaki misinterprets something Mob says as an insult about her height and starts the fight. Aang and Mob both tell their opponent that what’s gonna happen next is their fault after they transform.

The manga’s still great, I hear.

Edited by Vespa on Nov 6th 2019 at 1:31:35 PM

It sucks in the sense that the change in animation studio means it looks nowhere near as good as the 1st season.

Eh, the animation isn't the problem. The problem is the pacing. Saitama himself gets largely demoted to a supporting character in his own series. He has a fun storyline in the first half of the season where he attends a martial arts tournament because he wants to experience martial arts, but that's pretty much the extent of his involvement.

Most of the season is taken up with two other major story threads which cross paths with Saitama on very rare occasions, mostly by accident. About 95% of the action consists of heroes that are not Saitama fighting enemies that are not Saitama in battles that never, at any point, involve or feature Saitama.

And then it ends partway through the actual storyline it's adapting, providing no form of payoff or resolution to anything that's happening.

One Punch Man season 1 was a hilarious send-up of shonen anime. Season 2 just is a shonen anime, except for the brief moments when it remembers that Saitama exists.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Nov 6th 2019 at 11:51:45 AM

Is this because of the material being adapted or did the anime writers screw the pooch and not raise the babies?

No its a faithful straight-forward adaptation, it just stops in the middle of an ongoing arc that's currently still going due to the season being only 12-episodes.

Also heh Reigan being referred to as an internet Sex God.

Edited by slimcoder on Nov 6th 2019 at 10:55:18 AM

Probably the material.

This arc is building up towards the Saitama/Garou final fight, or to be more precise, building up Garou for that fight. We see where Garou stands during two early confrontations with Saitama that end... exactly as you would expect them too. Garou basically has to fodder everyone else to get up to the right level and Saitama has to be kept off the board in order to keep him from ending Garou before the latter can reach the right level.

I haven't read the manga. But if I had to hazard a guess, I'd say it's because the new animation studio stretched out a certain portion for too long. Some of the Not Saitama fights really drag on and on. There's like a whole episode just spent on one monster torture-porning a dude.

If you've seen the first season, remember the Deep Sea King two-parter? Imagine making an entire season out of that. That's OPM's second season.

OPM is interesting in that regard. Anime supporting characters are often pegged to their main protagonist. Kuwabara can't blow up a solar system because he's pegged to Yusuke, so his limits have to be within reason of Yusuke's limits.

But the whole point of Saitama as a character is that he has no limits. He can tank anything and beat anyone in one punch. There is no scale that his characters need to be pegged to. Whatever they can do, Saitama can trump it by virtue of being Saitama, and that is accepted as a rule of the series by the writers and the audience.

This mean's that his characters are free to do whatever the f*ck they want. There is no main character benefit holding them back. If the writer just up and decided he wanted Genos to blow up the moon, that'd be fine, because literally the only restriction on how powerful not-Saitama characters are allowed to be is that they can't beat Saitama.

There's no obligation where, like, Krillin's not allowed to be able to blow up planets until Goku's able to blow up planets. Rather, the relationship goes the other direction; every feat that Genos or Tatsumaki or Tanktop Master or Garou or whoever pulls off is automatically a feat for Saitama 'cause Saitama can beat them all in one punch.

Their feats empower him, rather than his feats limiting theirs.

Deep Sea King was only two episodes long?

It felt so much longer in action holy crap

To add on, Tatsumaki is the second most powerful hero in the show, right behind Saitama. (Technically Blast is above her, but we've never seen him.) So she can do whatever the fuck she wants, because she's the strongest around, except for Saitama and whatever villain they want only Saitama to be able to beat.

Huh so she beat Black Sperm?

I thought that was Atomic Samurais fight.

Edited by slimcoder on Nov 6th 2019 at 11:17:52 AM

Why is that a name

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1__sbFipfoI1wDJGTNPsrBQ5rbQtLOX3z_WT4tChB2FA/edit

One of the researchers made a doc answering some questions people might have.

Nah. The anime is a straightforward adaptation to manga with little to no alterations. In fact, I felt like some fights were even shorter in the anime.

The thing is, Saitama is not a focus of the narrative anymore and things doesn't revolve around him exclusively now. Because, really, how much story you can conduct about a guy who beats everyone in one punch as a main hero without it turning stale and boring really fast? Everyone already got the joke, the first season pretty much gave us everything we need to know about Saitama. So the next logical step is to flesh out other characters and explore the world more, even if it means that Saitama's role is getting significantly reduced.

About Mob vs Tatsumaki: I was rooting for Mob, of course, but I was ready for this outcome. I figured that it's just inevitable that DB will present some insane numbers for Tatsumaki just on account of to how OPM setting and scale is much crazier than Mob's.

The second season did suffer because of the animation hit, yes. Excepting a few places, it just didn't live up to the presentation of season 1. However, The Garou arc being as long as it is also harms the anime, because you're left on a cliffhanger regarding his character until years down the road.

So the in-universe reason for Deadpool vs. The Mask is Wiz and Boomstick want to get rid of Deadpool for good. What if they succeed, only to find out The Mask is even worse?

Then they will just ask for somebody to stop him.

There was an old lady who swallowed a fly.

See. There's a flaw in your theory that the show's just shifting focus to all the other characters because he sucks and they're interesting. A flaw that isn't the fact that people tune into One Punch Man to see the titular One Punch Man.

The flaw is that they're not. They're not doing that. There has been no change in focus.

Season 2 did the same thing that every individual arc in season 1 did. They have a cast of wacky and colorful heroes and they have bad guys. The heroes line up to fight the bad guys and proceed to get effortlessly shitstomped because the bad guys are so, so tough. Bad guys just stomp the heroes left and right, all to build up how scary they are.

Then, right at the end, Saitama shows up and ends the bad guy in one blow. Rinse and repeat.

Season 2 is still doing that. They focus a lot more on the various heroes and have a lot more battles happening at once, so that a higher quantity of heroes can get stomped by a higher quantity of bad guys. The whole Monster Association invasion is just heroes getting stomped all over the city. Scene after scene of hero after hero getting stomped. Mountains of useless hero bodies everywhere.

Garou's arc is about him stomping various heroes. And then the heroes go hunting after him so that he can stomp them. And then they finally get the upper hand over him, but then he just stomps them all simultaneously anyway. No one accomplishes anything, no one ever beats him minus the occasional humiliation when he bumps into Saitama. Except one guy. One C List Fodder Hero beats him. And it happens offscreen.

Meanwhile, the martial arts tournament ends in monsters attacking the arena so that they can stomp all the combatants. Which they do. Lost of colorful characters who exist only to be wacky personalities and get stomped. And then Saitama does his thing.

It all culminates in Centichoro, returning from his previous appearance where he stomped Metal Bat. He's back to stomp some more heroes, which he does. Then Genos actually pulls off a really cool and clever finisher to end the conflict. Which doesn't work because Genos is C-List Fodder, so Centichoro stomps him some more until the last minute or so of the season, when Saitama does his thing.

It's the exact same formula that the previous season had. The only thing that's changed is that the sequences where C-List Fodder heroes get stomped by bad guys have gotten longer. The show spends more time per bad guy stomping more useless heroes.

I wouldn't be opposed to more focus on the other characters if the other characters were allowed to do anything. But they're not. They're still just cannon fodder and Saitama is still the only character allowed to defeat bad guys. There comes a point where you're just like, "WE GET IT, this bad guy is REALLY POWERFUL, no one can beat him, can we get to the Saitama punch already? I'm ready to move on to the next plot." Season 2 crosses that line multiple times.

Like I said, it's the Deep Sea King arc, but stretched across an entire season. And somehow, despite spending SO MUCH TIME on just this one set of bad guys stomping every f*cking hero under the sun, it actually manages to end without resolution. Like apparently this one set of bad guys still has way more ineffectual heroes that they need to stomp before Saitama can punch them and the story can do something else.

That's not "fleshing out the other characters". It's not "exploring the world". It's just bad pacing. 12 episodes is a long time to spend building up to the same joke that was already told about 5 or 6 times in the first season, and then not even fire the punchline.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Nov 6th 2019 at 4:34:13 AM

Uh, Deep Sea King, Boros, and Garou were not jokes in the slightest. Hell, the first two ended with the most poignant moments in the entire series. And just because the other heroes were defeated doesn't mean they weren't fleshed out, especially when they get the most screentime and development in question.

Also I'm pretty sure you're using C-List Fodder incorrectly.

Yeah, Garou isn't a joke. See the Webcomic.

Also, the Mask/Big Head should wreck Deadpool.

"Established but minor/obscure characters are used to provide casualties in major events. Meanwhile, the big names are safe."

Yeah C-List Fodder isn't being used correctly here. Hell Watchdog Man the guy who handed Garo an L is S-Class so he's literally the opposite of that trope.

Edited by slimcoder on Nov 6th 2019 at 6:10:48 AM