The Fall Anime 2025 Preview Guide - One Punch Man Season 3

Saitama is a hero who only became a hero for fun.

After three years of ‟special training,” he's become so strong that he's practically invincible. In fact, he's too strong—even his mightiest opponents are taken out with a single punch. Alongside Genos, his faithful disciple, Saitama performs his official hero duties as a member of the Hero Association.

One day, monsters claiming to be from the Monster Association suddenly appeared, taking a child of Hero Association executive hostage. The S-class heroes gather and plan a raid on the Monster Association hideout to rescue the hostage. Meanwhile, Garou, a ‟human monster” who was taken by the Monster Association during a battle with the heroes, awakens in the Monster Association's hideout.

One Punch Man Season 3 is based on a manga series by ONE and Yūsuke Murata. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll, Disney+, Hulu, and Netflix on Sundays, depending on your region.

You know what? They should call him Diminishing Returns Man! Folks. Is this thing on? Seriously, though, before I touch on the episode proper, I think it's appropriate to speak on the buildup to this particular premiere—or the lack thereof. I can't say I know anybody who was excited for One Punch Man to return in anime form. The show's first season, helmed by Shingo Natsume at Madhouse, elevated ONE's charming manga into a sakuga extravaganza that continues to stand alone. It was lightning in a bottle that would prove impossible to recapture, especially when the second season changed studios and directors. Now, six years later, the third season returns with yet another director (still at J.C. Staff), and I think its audience can see the writing on the wall. Fool me once, etc.

Even divorced from that context, after such a long break, the last thing One Punch Man needed was a story-heavy chapter that, despite its verbosity, provides hardly any recaps or onramps for its viewers. You have to catch up on your own time. More to the point, this show is called One Punch Man. This is supposed to be an action series starring an eclectic cast of superheroes whose designs and powers range from kooky to borderline offensive. It has no business opening a brand-new season with a bunch of talking heads in a boardroom dryly explaining where the plot is currently situated. Immediately, I feel bored and disengaged. I understand there has to be some denouement after last season's climax, but this is where a clever adaptation can rearrange and rewrite to give the audience something exciting to grab onto. There's no such effort here.

Instead, the anime kicks the action down the road while the premiere sets the stage for the upcoming clash between the Hero Association and the Monster Association. That's about it. It reintroduces some familiar faces and provides some insight into what the monsters are plotting, but overall, the writing deprives us of any thematic or emotional footholds. It's also just not very funny. While it is mildly amusing to see Saitama and his buds lounging at home while the Hero Association sounds the alarms, the adaptation doesn't juxtapose those extremes in a humorous way. It looks and feels very dull and flat, and there's little attention paid to comedic fundamentals like timing. When the new episode of your action comedy series has no action and little comedy, that's not a good sign.

I still like my boy Garou, though. He's an actual character with an arc and everything, and he's cautiously navigating this conflict between the heroes and the monsters. While I wouldn't call him deep, he at least has more going on than the rest of the cast. If there's one thing I'm looking forward to this season, it's seeing how his story shakes out. Otherwise, I think One Punch Man's one joke has run its course.

Well, that was… underwhelming. Even with my expectations measured from the most recent, uninspired trailer, and my generally middling reaction to the show's previous second season, I found this first episode of One Punch Man's third season a struggle to endure. I mean, for a show named One Punch Man, you might expect there to have been a single punch thrown, but no. This is talking head after talking head after talking head, and almost none of them are characters I care about.

It's been six years since the last season, so I guess it's reasonable to try to get viewers up to speed, but I don't think this episode does a great job. Perhaps this is a function of the material it's adapting, because season 2 ended essentially in the middle of a story arc, with the Monster Association giving the Hero Association an ultimatum, Saitama and Garou narrowly missing an engagement with one another. Now the injured Garou is in the monsters' custody. With many heroes out of action, the Hero Association's bigwigs have an extremely boring meeting—Reincarnated as a Slime–style—that could have been an email. And it takes up half of the episode.

We only briefly see Saitama, nominally the star of his own show, for a few moments in the second half. Yes, it's kind of funny that he's lazing around while the rest of the world goes to shit, playing video games with his other hero buddies, but there aren't any big laughs in this episode. The most amusing part comes at the end with a gag about Sonic and his weight loss.

The biggest concern in production is whether the animation will be any good. I think we need to come to terms with the fact that Madhouse's insane work on the first season will never be equalled, and that J.C. Staff's vastly inferior efforts on season two are likely to be the norm going forward. With an almost complete absence of action in this extremely staid installment, it's hard to say for sure, but with the preponderance of static frames, minimal motion even when characters move, plus whatever the hell was going on with Garou's walk cycle, I can't say my hopes are high.

At least the opening track from JAM Project and BABYMETAL kicks ass. I'd love for BABYMETAL to make more anime songs; they seem practically genetically engineered for the role. While the OP sequence has some decent animation cuts, I don't think that can be relied on as a sign that the aesthetics will improve later in the show. Often, OP sequences are animated by completely different teams from those working on episodes. I want to say I'm glad One Punch Man is back, but based on this terminally dull first episode, perhaps it would have been better if he'd stayed away.