Well, it’s time for a new season, and I completely failed at staying kept up on posts.  Since I don’t want to bother making post after post, I’m going to bum rush through these with some overall and final thoughts so I can move on to the current season.

Just one exception: Young Black Jack.  Unlike UshiTora and OPM, I didn’t stay up to date with that series.  It wasn’t exactly out of disinterest, mind you.  I’ll get around to watching the rest of it eventually.  Maybe within the week.

Ushio & Tora

Overall, the individual episode quality of the series remains consistently high.  Every individual piece is close to perfect: characters, music, mood, voice acting, animation… it’s all there.  But the main problem the series has is pacing.  It really, REALLY needed to be a 52-episode series.

The first 13 episodes were pretty close to as perfect an adaptation you could get of the parts of the manga it covered.  It was missing one or two important aspects here and there, but whatever it missed was acceptable when you considered how much ground needed to be covered.

Around the time of the Beast Spear Candidate arc is where things started to go awry.  It started out well enough with the Hinowa and Nagare episode.  But then we got to the Moritsuna siblings 1.5-parter and the horrid pacing reared its ugly head.  That was an arc that really needed to be its own 2-parter.  Then there was the questionable decision of actually dedicating a full episode to the one-chapter mirror episode.  Weird and, IMO, downright wrong decisions were made when it came to which parts of the manga to keep and which to throw away: Hyou’s role was greatly reduced in the Kamuikotan arc, the HAMMR Institute was kept in while the Western Bakemono were left out, Ushio’s training with the Moritsuna siblings during the Kirio arc was left out… But perhaps worst of all and the most worrisome is that, if the next episode title is to be taken at face value, we MAY NOT GET AN ANIMATED BEAST HORDE ARC.  What the actual fuck?!  If there was one arc I was looking forward to in this entire adaptation, IT WAS THE FUCKING BEAST HORDE ARC.  How the fuck do you mess up something like that?  I mean, I still have some faith that they’re not THAT completely incompetent and that there may be some shuffling around going on, but it’s a legitimate concern, especially when you consider that Hyou’s presence has already been toned down before.

That all said, Ushio & Tora was a series I consistently looked forward to watching every Friday, and that hasn’t changed.  Y’know, except for the fact that it’s not airing this season.

The series still consistently keeps me entertained, and it does so much so well, especially the characters.  It’s also 90’s cheesy as fuck, but that’s part of the charm, and it’s something that might be a bit lacking in more recent anime.  That’s not to say it’s completely lacking, of course – just that sometimes you have to embrace the cheese rather than deconstruct it out of obligation.

One-Punch Man

What really is there to say about One-Punch Man that you can’t immediately understand after watching it?  It’s pretty much a perfect adaptation of the manga, even going several steps beyond it.  The music is epic and on point at all times, the voice acting completely nails every character, and the animation… oh GAWD the animation…  They were even kind enough to give us a small sample of Fubuki, knowing full well the adaptation wouldn’t be going that far.

If there’s one flaw I had to point out, it’s that the inserted Sweet Mask / Genos subplot went fucking nowhere.  The scene they had in one of the earlier episodes was a welcome addition if only because it makes sense for Sweet Mask to approve of a direct S-Class promotion, but those scenes went maybe one step too far, giving Sweet Mask just a bit too much importance.  Honestly, this flaw can easily be turned around and translate into satisfying dividends with just one simple thing: make a Season 2 that covers the Garou arc.  Please?  Pretty please?

The one specific thing I really wanted to cover was the Boros arc.  It met and exceeded expectations spectacularly.  The animation went up to 12 there.  Also, that bookend during the climax of the fight.  In case you missed it, there was a short scene after Saitama returns from the moon where Boros does a slow walk into a run straight at Saitama, and it perfectly parallel’s Saitama’s dream fight against the Subterranean King, and it sends its message perfectly: this is Boros’s dream fight.  This is the battle he longed for all this time, but to Saitama, it’s just a walk in the park.

It’s just surprising how One-Punch Man is just so… competent on every conceivable level.  It’s pure, unfiltered hype, and I think we’re all suffering from withdrawal symptoms.