One Punch Man Season 3 is in a lot of trouble.
Only four episodes into Season 3, J.C. Staff’s adaptation has become a lightning rod for fan frustration. The director, Shinpei Nagai, has left Twitter due to online harassment, and many animators have gone quiet. Several shots have spread as ironic memes—most notably the “Garou sliding” scene, where the character moves down a hill as a static image.
A Brief Review of the Season
This season is transparently plagued with many production issues. Beyond frequent cost-saving measures, many sequences exhibit confusing editing, flat or missing backgrounds, dull storyboarding compared to the manga and sparse in-between animation. Even stranger, cuts teased in a promotional video (PV) two years ago—and a few of Kenichiro Aoki’s earlier boards—appear altered or absent in the aired episodes.
All of this leaves the anime feeling lifeless, failing to land the series’ signature humor and the Yusuke Murata (the manga’s artist) creative, kinetic action. A far cry from even its own first season, which almost feels like a foreboding spectre for the studio all these years later.
Despite everything, One Punch Man Season 3 does show a few improvements over the previous season. The muddy compositing on metallic surfaces, especially on Genos, and effects-heavy scenes have been cleaned up. The sound mix no longer blares over the action. And while inconsistencies remain, characters are on-model more consistently than they were six years ago.
Early Warning Signs
On the topic of lengthy time frames, the most mysterious of One Punch Man’s adaptational issues is its abnormally long production time. It’s been over a decade since Season 1 became a global phenomenon, and six years since Season 2 drew a more middling response. Though the series remains popular, the momentum from One Punch Man’s unparalleled first season has significantly dissipated.
Since One Punch Man Season 3 was announced three years ago, early previews already hinted at a rushed and limited production; J.C. Staff has been juggling multiple projects and at least two animators voiced concerns ahead of the broadcast.
The Fault of a Cutthroat Industry Yet Again
One Punch Man Season 3 is a disappointment, but its issues are unfortunately not an unusual occurrence in the animation industry. While amateur mistakes and directorial oversights within complex animation pipelines can be legitimate sources of frustration, the deeper issues, as always, are structural.
It’s up to the producers to give the necessary budget, time, and respect to the animators who fuel the blood of these productions. Without that support, even the most talented animation teams will lose steam and make compromises on delivering the polish they intended—especially for a critically acclaimed property whose original star staff have moved on, and while adapting one of the story’s most action-heavy arcs.
The sullied expectations of the season aren’t experienced solely by the fans watching the show, but also by the ones making it too.
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