Review: One-Punch Man

Is it okay to laugh during a global crisis? One-Punch Man says sure, why not?

I’ve never watched anime before, nor have I read manga. It’s not that I was deliberately dismissive of it, I just never had any strong desire, especially given the already massive stack of books and movies I have been meaning to consume. But my best friend Kina and I started having movie nights in quarantine to deal with our loneliness, and after we had watched just about every awful horror movie on Netflix and finished season seven of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Kina decided to put on One-Punch Man. 

“You’ll like it,” she said. “It’s so funny and really just completely insane.”

I didn’t protest, because Kina had control of the remote that night, so there was really nothing I could do. Kina ended up being mostly correct: the show is both incredibly funny and wildly insane. But she was wrong about one part — I didn’t like it. I absolutely loved it. 

One-Punch Man is the story of Saitama, a man who decided to be a hero not because of his awe-inspiring superpowers or his deep desire to do the right thing, but because he thought it would be fun. After training so hard for a year that he literally goes bald, Saitama becomes the most powerful hero in the world, with the ability to vanquish any villain with a single punch. Together with Genos, an eager but broody cyborg with a tragic past, Saitama must make his way into the Hero Association, an organization tasked with managing heroes from all major cities, in order to get the recognition he truly deserves. Along the way, he just so happens to uncover a mad scientists’ depraved experiments, stop an assassin from taking innocent lives, anger just about every other hero he encounters, and save the world at least twice a day. 

It’s both ridiculous and utterly perfect all at once. 

The show doesn’t take itself too seriously, and that’s part of its charm. Saitama is an inadvertently hilarious character, as viewers watch the most powerful man in the world angrily chase down a mosquito or cry on the street after he forgets his coupons at the supermarket. The stakes are high — almost every episode deals with some kind of world-ending calamity — but tensions are eased with endless jokes and plot points that are so absurd you can’t help but laugh. Any suspense in the show comes from the build up to battles rather than the battles themselves, because everyone knows that Saitama is merely going to punch the villain and the entire thing will be over. 

But it’s also an interesting criticism on superhero culture today, and what it means to be a hero. Saitama is clearly the most powerful being on the planet, but he isn’t the most heroic. He’s a fundamentally good guy, sure, but he’s a self-described “hero for fun,” who tends to get lost on his way to battles. Genos, Saitama’s reluctant prodigy, means well, but gets blinded by his own anger and desire to be the best. The rest of the heroes are self-absorbed and callous, more focused on their own image than truly being a hero. In fact, the most noble character in the entire series is an ordinary man with a bicycle. Yet he’s looked down upon, and placed as the lowest hero ranking. 

It’s an important commentary on heroes and how we view them and their motives. It’s especially relevant right now, when the government praises essential workers as heroes but fails to provide them basic necessities and livable wages. 

But One-Punch Man isn’t about the commentary. It’s a nice addition, yes, but the series is fundamentally there to make you laugh. After years of being inundated with gritty and dark superhero movies that try to “push the envelope” by driving their heroes closer and closer to the edge, it’s refreshing to watch something silly and optimistic. It’s nice to be able to look at a world on fire and laugh because our hero somehow lost his clothes. One-Punch Man manages to capture the best parts of superhero narratives by ignoring the envelope altogether and focusing on telling a fun, engaging story about heroes and villains and the misadventures in between.