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One Punch Man Season 2 was probably the most anticipated anime of 2019, yet we all know that it didn’t live up to the expectations. There are several reasons for that, and today we’ll be going through them. Along with that, we’ll also look into things that made One Punch Man Season 2 inferior to the first season. We have also written a piece on One Punch Man Season 3, so make sure to check it out as well.
Production
So the first thing we’ll talk about is the production for One Punch Man Season 2. This is probably the root of all problems here. For an anime to be made, there has to be an excellent production schedule behind it. For example, My Hero Academia has a good 4-6 months of production schedule every year, which is then followed by post-production and other stuff. This ensures that the work put on the show isn’t rushed and is quality. One Punch Man Season 2 didn’t have that.
From what we’ve been told, it had a total of some 2-3 months of production time before it aired. The state was so bad that when the anime aired, only three episodes had been worked upon at the time.
Animation
This brings us to animation. Now, I’m sure all of you noticed that One Punch Man Season 2 didn’t have great animation. It certainly wasn’t anywhere close to the first season’s fantastic work. So why is that? Because of a change in studios? Well, to some extent, but not really. The staff that worked on One Punch Man stuck to it even if the studio changed.
The biggest reason why the animation sucked was due to the lack of production time. When you get less time to work on stuff, you have to cut around corners. This is why most of the stuff from One Punch Man Season 2 wasn’t close to the level of One Punch Man Season 1. The change of studio did make changes such as a different composite, and some in the staff as well, most likely.
Chief Animation Director
So, another reason why One Punch Man Season 2 sucked was due to the lack of the former Chief Animation Director, Chikashi Kubota. Some of you may know him, but for those who don’t, Kubota worked on One Punch Man Season 1 as character designer and Chief Animation Director. For One Punch Man Season 2, he was just a character designer.
So how does this make a difference? Well, the role of a Chief Animation Director is to maintain the animation consistency of all the episodes of a series and make sure that they’re close to the character sheets. Often, the Chief Animation Director will correct stuff from episodes to make sure that the animators don’t go too off-model, and also make corrections that are necessary to add more to the show. Kubota’s loss was huge for One Punch Man Season 2.
Pacing
The next issue with One Punch Man Season 2 was its pacing. As we all know, a good adaptation of manga would ideally have 2-3 21-page chapters being adapted into an episode. For One Punch Man Season 2, the pacing was completely off, and it rushed through a lot of events which were covered very well in the manga. Fans were often left confused as to why they were rushing through stuff and frankly, this doesn’t just tie to J.C Staff. The problem lies a little with all the stakeholders. Thanks to the awful pacing, episodes felt off, and they didn’t deliver as impactfully as they should have.
Lack Of Saitama Screen Time
Finally, we arrive at the final problem with One Punch Man Season 2. Now, this one is a bit difficult from the others because no matter how great the second season would’ve been animation-wise, it would still have felt off to some because of the lack of Saitama action. I think we can all agree that we barely saw Saitama in this season of One Punch Man. Rather, the focus was thrown on Garou and the others, and while that was great, it also left some of the fans very frustrated. They wanted to see more of Saitama after waiting for years, and they didn’t get it. Thankfully, Saitama will have a bigger role in the next season, so at least you guys can look forward to that.
