One Punch Man Season 3

Episode 11

I do not envy the folks at J.C. Staff who worked on this season of One Punch Man. It's been clear for a while now that the team behind this anime was set up to fail, and likely never given the time, resources, or direction necessary to make this anime something interesting, or at least competent. Episode eleven looks just good enough in places to suggest that this season had the capacity to be something worthwhile if the show were in better hands. Instead, we get a couple of passable action and comedy scenes in between barely animated sequences full of dragging dialogue.

This episode opens with Child Emperor escorting Waganma to the lower-ranked heroes on the surface, and this is by far the lowest point of the episode. Not only do the characters swap information already known to the audience back and forth, but the production team also doesn't even try to hide the more limited animation on display. A full twenty seconds of this scene is a slow zoom in on a still image of a small speaker while Atomic Samurai monologues to the characters listening in, and I felt my enthusiasm for this episode plummet further with each second that passed.

Thankfully, the following sequence of Atomic Samurai fighting Black Sperm proved at least somewhat engaging. The match-up of the world's greatest swordsman fighting a monster that can endlessly multiply without losing strength is fun, and this encounter is paced and animated well enough to make that idea land. I don't even mind that Black Sperm and his copies are often rendered as CGI models in this fight, as his design is just simple and weird enough to fit that art style.

Next is an encounter between Zombieman and another Monster Association Executive, Homeless Emperor. This segment also felt a bit dry and prolonged, as it largely just amounted to the villain explaining that he got his incredible powers from “God” after being fired from his job and living as a vagrant for some time. While I appreciate that this episode is at least trying to dress up this round of exposition with some amount of action, this is still a pretty frustrating execution of this story beat from a show that used to be unrivaled in explaining its ideas quickly and in a way that's entertaining.

The last act of this episode focuses on Puri-Puri Prisoner as he fights a gang of Demon-level monsters, gains some new abilities in the process, and tries and fails to fight the appropriately temperamental feline monster executive Nyaan. This segment feels like the funniest One Punch Man has been in a while, with Puri-Puri Prisoner's power up being tied to him growing body hair and Nyaan not wanting to fight him as he correctly clocks the hero as being obsessive and clingy. I wish this episode were as good at blending action and humor as the show used to be, but at least it can do both of those things independently again.

Also, Saitama shows up for like thirty seconds to monologue at the end of this episode, which felt like it was tacked on to pad out the run time and just remind me of how ramshackle this entire season has been. Even if this episode was in the better half of episodes for the season, I cannot stress enough how much worse it is than the medium-defining first season or even the much critiqued second season. Even as the show technically improves, it continues to remind us of how far this franchise has fallen, and I cannot wait for it to be over soon.

Rating:

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When he's not doing 100 push-ups, 100 sit-ups, 100 squats, and a 10k run every day, Lucas DeRuyter is penning some kind of media or social critique. You can get updates on his hero ranking by following his Bluesky account, and keep up with his heroic exploits by checking out his portfolio. When he isn't bargain hunting, you can find him contributing to ANN's This Week in Anime column.

One Punch Man Season 3 is currently streaming on Hulu and Disney+ in the U.S., and Netflix and Crunchyroll in other regions.

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