Friday, August 19, 2016

FIF#17-One Punch Man


When monsters, super villains and other forces of destruction threaten the city, the people need a hero.  And that hero is…Saitama.  Except he’s not a hero in the traditional sense.  He’s not out to be a symbol of hope or be a boy scout…he’s just doing this because it’s a hobby and he’s bored.  Oh and he’s got the unfortunate curse of being able to end fights with literally just one punch.  When you’re the strongest hero on the block and no one can take you on...what do you do with that kind of drive?  He may be lazy, laid back and way to comfy with his life situation, but Saitama is the only chance the people of the city have.  Get ready for a new breed of hero.

One Punch Man was one of the most talked about Anime titles of 2015.  It was getting the kind of attention Attack on Titan got a couple of years prior and was making waves all across the internet.  With the much anticipated arrival of the English Dub on Toonami, I finally decided to see what was up and if it could live up to the immense hype.

Oh hell yes it does.  Actually no, it doesn’t live up to the hype, it surpasses it more than I ever imagined.  Saitama is a great character who, in all honesty, I could see a bit of myself in, you know minus the whole amazing powers bit.  He’s just a guy who thought saving the world would be fun and eventually just becomes bored.  Very little agitates him and he kind of shrugs off a lot of things with a devil may care kind of attitude.  This does lead to some of the shows best moments where is lack of being afraid pisses off opponents enough to attack him…before getting thoroughly obliterated by his one punch might.  I get that, being surrounded by so much frustration that one punch usually does the trick to end annoyances.  Except I wouldn’t be bored with it like Saitama is, but I would just shrug it off and move on too.

Saitama’s world is pretty much Zack Snyder’s ultimate playground of collateral damage.  Buildings, sections of the vast cities and hundreds if not thousands of human lives are destroyed regularly by chaos…and no one seems to care.  Seriously, you know the whole Picard Meme, “WHY THE F*** DO PEOPLE STILL LIVE IN GOTHAM?!”  Well why do people still live in this city that has everything from giants, to underground monsters, to killer mosquitos trying to destroy everything?  I do like that each villain has a quick but elaborate backstory that they attempt to spill out before their untimely, Saitama related ends.  This show is very much a parody of all the American superhero genre tropes and it is freaking hilarious.

What really put One Punch Man on the map for me, the moment that really grabbed me…was Saitama being unable to kill one little Mosquito, even with his punches.  As a new cyborg character faces doom from a (strangely attractive) female Mosquito monster, Saitama comes barreling down the street with a can of bug spray demanding the bug he’s been trying to kill for an hour die already.  You don’t get better entrances than that from any character.

I hear this series is short and that’s both a shame and a blessing.  Much like FLCL, such goodness shouldn’t overstay it’s welcome to the point where it doesn’t finish as strong as it began (biting nails over the announcement of FLCL 2 and FLCL 3).  It’s a shame because this is some of the strongest and funniest works of Anime I have seen in a really long time.  And the dub isn’t bad either, I actually like Saitama’s voice quite a bit and you can tell he and the rest of the cast are having a blast dubbing this one.

I should end on the note that the only reason I chose to finally check this out is because of the new Jason Bourne flick and seeing Matt Damon take a guy out in a fight in one punch…I said, “THIS ISNT JASON BOURNE…IT’S ONE PUNCH MAN!!!”  Ok im done.  Good to be back doing the FiF’s.
 

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