Potato is yum

I love One Punch Man. In fact, I would say it’s the best anime for someone first getting into anime or webcomics. It’s that good. I think there’s a few reasons for why it’s just so good.

The first is that the story is OPMC with no limitation. There is nothing stopping Saitama from just walking up to every enemy and slapping them. And well, that’s kind of exactly what he does. Every time we see a new villain we see them with the knowledge that Saitama is gonna walk up and slap them. What the story does is build around how we get to that slap. How Saitama gets involved and how other characters interact with these villains.

In the Anime, this is solidified right in the first few episodes where each episode introduces a villain, shows them doing evil, shows someone failing to stop them, then showing Saitama accidentally pass them by while living his daily life and demolishing them before either continuing on with his life or crying at how easy it was. On paper this might make Saitama seem like a flat two dimensional character. However, the story subtly builds substance to Saitama’s character by showing bits and pieces of his daily life showing he has normal struggles just like the average human allowing us to emphasize with him.

On top of this, the animation and facial expressions are made in such a way that the humor of his failures are taken to the extreme. One of my favorite is when he realizes that he might miss a sale in the market because he was busy fighting a monster that could level a city. This is the kind of worry that I have as a poor college student which makes it incredibly hilarious and relatable since I’m sure many viewers would have a very easy time understanding that feeling.

The overall design of Saitama as a character also helps with the very simple appearance in comparison to the incredible detailing of other characters. And the use of this detailing often is used to highlight some of the humor like in the hammer scene where Saitama manages to grab the hammer and the overly detailed swing emphasis the comedy of the situation.

The story does it right by making the story not about Saitama’s strength but a story about Saitama as a character and showing him lose part of himself (heh see what I did there?).