Why aren’t you watching One-Punch Man?

Seriously! Why aren’t you?

Okay let’s say for a moment, you aren’t an anime fan. You should still watch One-Punch Man.

In fact, if you’ve ever picked up a comic, gotten a power up in a video game or just read a single book where the hero has any kind of special power you need to watch One-Punch Man.

What the heck am I talking about?

The best backstory. The best.

One-Punch Man is the anime adaptation of the manga adaptation of the webcomic all three of which share the same name: One-Punch Man. And if that sounds confusing I’ll break it down.

Originally conceived by a mangaka in japan known only by the pen name ONE, One-Punch Man started as a very badly drawn webcomic in Japan that was simply run off of ONE’s website. ONE conceived of the idea of a super hero that was so powerful that every fight ended in, you guessed it, one punch. The webcomic itself is still ongoing and you can actually see the website here but I don’t encourage you to do that as it’s in Japanese and let’s be honest ONE’s art style is just terrible.

Just in case you don’t believe me.

Then… something interesting happened. Yusuke Murata (who you might know as the Mangaka for Eyeshield 21) started drawing One-Punch Man through Young Jump Web Comics. ONE’s unique narrative was given a fresh artistic coat to match the story along with new side stories to develop characters and such.

It was at that point that the series was being fan translated and people on international message boards started talking about it. I would say that it was also being translated by Viz in their Weekly Shonen Jump but nobody in North America actually reads that. Then, came the anime announcement and that it would be developed by Madhouse for a twelve episode run plus one OVA.

And now this beautiful bastard is out.

What the hell is it about?

One-Punch Man tells the story of unnamed hero for fun Saitama. He is an out of work salary man who started training one day. Then, three years later all his hair fell out and he was the strongest. I’m not making that up that’s literally how it goes.

Currently Saitama is the strongest in the world. Period. No Superman Kryptonite thing, no other powers. Saitama is literally the strongest person. As I said, so strong that he ends all fights in one punch. And he is bored. There’s no challenge left, it doesn’t matter how big or strong they are; nothing can keep his interest and he can’t even use his full strength. He is too strong.

You might think that’s a terrible premise but honestly, it’s by far one of the best storylines out there now. The strength of the narrative comes more from the fact that Saitama is constantly dragged into fights. You see around Saitama is a very unique and diverse world of superheroes that have different rankings and grades. On top of it there are all kinds of monsters and villains running around inflicting terror on the masses and defeating countless heroes…

Only for them to die in one hit.

It is a true and pure comedy series that takes so many of the shonen archetype characters and pits them up against the holy grail of every protagonist. Absolute power. And it’s brilliant. The fight scenes are amazing because it’s studio Madhouse and when that sucker gets on something good it’s amazing. The opening theme is done by Jam Project and they rock the living hell out of it. The Japanese voice acting is great but because it is being brought over to North America by Viz I’m terrified of what the dub track is going to sound like. Hell I’m scared of the subtitles.

And the story is really good. It doesn’t go where you expect a story like this to. You’d expect Saitama to become this unlikeable man who abuses his power and he doesn’t. He’s just a normal guy that happens to be the strongest ever. He doesn’t really care too much about what happens but he does care, kind of.

Anyway the first four episodes are up (as of this writing) over at Daisuki and I strongly encourage you to go check it out.

So why aren’t you watching?