One-Punch Man

Episode 3

The fight is on! Saitama and Genos must race to the House of Evolution and confront the mad scientist Genus, before the local supermarket begins their Super Sale Day and Saitama misses his chance to take advantage of those truly insane bargains!

Yes, One-Punch Man's streak of intense self-awareness has not slowed into episode three, as we spend the first five minutes with our new villain, a stereotypical, greasy-haired, megalomaniacal misanthrope named Genus who spends his days splicing humans with animals in pursuit of some platonic ideal for evolution. His biological brilliance has even allowed him to surround himself with the perfect yes-men underlings: clones of himself! It's hard to describe just exactly what makes Dr. Genus's backstory so funny without simply saying "Look at how cliché this is! It's hilarious!"

As with Genos's sordid antihero tale from the previous episode—heck, these jokers are even a breath away from having the same name—all the joy comes from watching the show play its hokey old hand completely straight, while Saitama looks on with a dull expression. We understand where he's coming from because we've seen and heard this all before too, but we don't have to get up and literally fight it every day. I'm sure Saitama was just pleasantly surprised that Dr. Genus didn't reveal his own super-potion to mutate himself at the last second, after all his monsters were gone and our heroes were totally ready to leave. Maybe he would have if One-Punch Man wasn't in such a hurry to get to the supermarket before it closed.

Of course, there's a thin line between delivering the most rote material in a tongue-in-cheek way, and just delivering rote material and expecting that to be the joke all by itself. The latter approach will appeal to only the staunchest fans of both genre movies and irony (Ninja Slayer for example), but the former approach is really difficult, requiring sharp comedic chops and a sense of spectacle and sincere enjoyment all its own. Every little moment counts to building up the perfect genre-stomping punchline. When we actually see Dr. Genus arm every single floor of his 8-story complex of lab monsters in anticipation of our heroes' arrival, it makes Genos's decision to just annihilate the whole building in hellfire so much funnier. Even Saitama is disappointed. Didn't Genos want to see any of the crazy-ass mini-bosses before they just skip to the main course?

Then again, the main course is outstanding all by itself. Dr. Genus's trump card is a giant rhinoceros-beetle-man named "Carnage Kabuto," voiced with slobbering gusto by the always-delightful Unshou Ishizuka. During the exuberantly animated fight that followed, I couldn't stop thinking about what this monster would look like in any other anime. Most productions would probably take advantage of Kabuto's hard carapace and constant gleeful murder-face as an opportunity to animate as little as possible. He could have super-speed that zaps him from one end of an arena to the other without moving his legs, he could hover without much Wing Animation either, and his thick-lipped mouth could flap in a consistent rectangle. Easy, right? But this is not just any anime, this is One-Punch Man, and they animate the living hell out of Carnage Kabuto to make him as gross and awesome as possible. By the time he accesses his "Carnage Mode" and sends the show flying full-force into a gigantic visual Evangelion reference (think EVA 01 Berserk Mode), we've already had more great scenes and high-octane thrills than some action anime deliver in their entire runs.

Ultimately, the star feature of this episode is a moment of comedy rather than stunning animation. We finally learn how Saitama became One-Punch Man and, well, nobody believes him! He just did 100 pushups, 100 situps, 100 squats, and ran 10 kilometers every day for a year. And that's it. (Okay, he also never used the heater or A/C in his apartment to "further train his mind," but his flashback betrays the truth to us: poor broke Saitama just needed to save money.) Apparently, after going bald from the rigor of his training, Saitama crossed some sort of weird event horizon where everything he punches just stops existing (in big gory chunks), but he expects his grotesquely modified audience of one cyborg, one mutant, and one immortal-celled scientist to be really impressed and intimidated by his underwhelming efforts. Dr. Genus's big ole brain struggles to handle the truth, and Genos just plain refuses to believe it. "That's not even very intense! That's like a normal level of strength training!" he protests. Saitama doesn't really know what to tell everyone. For what it's worth, his story ultimately seems to have touched Dr. Genus in some way, as he claims to be "done with evolution" by the end of the episode, choosing to instead focus on improving himself as a person.

What episode three lacks in the variety of set pieces and gags delivered in the first two episodes, it makes up for in polished endurance. One advantage of rapid-fire humor is its ability to change up jokes when the current round isn't working, but the House of Evolution battle commits to a plot and charges it with hit after hit of laughs and awe-inspiring animation. That winning confidence makes the episode shine and gives me a lot of hope for the rest of the series to come. Now that Genos and Saitama have established a comfortable dynamic, I'm eager to see what new recurring characters might add to the mix. (Maybe we haven't seen the last of Dr. Genus? Eh, maybe we have.)

Rating: A

One-Punch Man is currently streaming at Hulu, Daisuki.net, and Viz.com.

Hope has been an anime fan since childhood, and likes to chat about cartoons, pop culture, and visual novel dev on Twitter.