One Punch Man Review Season 2 Episode 5

The monsters attack!

Episode 5

Metal Bat versus Garou; heroes of all shapes and sizes versus monsters who have suddenly started thinking and planning; Saitama versus random guy that we’ll probably never see again… One Punch Man season 2 really decided to go for some fighting this episode and it isn’t just the tournament Saitama has entered that is heating up.

The ridiculous hero and villain names come thick and fast while watching this episode and largely it doesn’t really matter. The crux is that in every city the heroes are fighting the sudden appearance of monsters but through some plan or design the monsters they are facing are the worst possible match up for the hero in question. This leads to more than one hero biting the bitumen and the monsters largely gloating that they are in fact strong.

Possibly this would be a more interesting development except for the part where I’m thinking that if Saitama ever leaves the fighting tournament he’d just end them all in a single punch and things would go right back to normal. It is the fundamental problem with the premise of this anime in that you know no matter how dire things look you really just can’t take it seriously as a threat.

As for Saitama, he takes on his first opponent in the martial arts tournament and ends it with a backhanded slap. It is as underwhelming as any of his previous fights have been and you can tell even he is disappointed. It will be interesting to see if any of the contestants end up giving him even a moments trouble.

However, as usual, this anime knows how to over use a joke. They begin introducing the fighters of the tournament and you start being worried they are going to individually introduce each one. Then they comment that there are many others and you breathe a sigh of relief, right before they launch into a rapid introduction of every fighter. Sigh.