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One-Punch Man
ワンパンマン
2015 · TV series · 24 min episodes · 3 seasons
AnimationComedyActionAdventureScience FictionFantasy
Saitama is a hero who only became a hero for fun. After three years of “special” training, though, he’s become so strong that he’s practically invincible. In fact, he’s too strong—even his mightiest opponents are taken out with a single punch, and it turns out that being devastatingly powerful is actually kind of a bore. With his passion for being a hero lost along with his hair, yet still faced with new enemies every day, how much longer can he keep it going?
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11 comments on Hacker News
All complicated commercial art (movies, series, games, music, designed spaces...) has its budget as a key constraint of what is built. You don't get a new season of an anime that looks 4 times better because of a random genius: Someone evaluates the money it will make, and somehow decides that increasing the animation budget will be worthwhile. It was the same when it was animated by hand, with huge cameras and cels, than in modern digital-first animation, and whether it's using plain hand-ish drawn 2d, or using 3d models for some shots. The art is tied to the budget, and maybe the next season the budget is 2/3rds of what it was before, and the technical quality drops (see One Punch Man, Blue Lock and such)
So when an artist looks at AI, it's unlikely to be as a tool that will build a whole piece: Insufficient control, and currently nowhere near good enough to do more than occupy space, like a little painting in a hallway or in a hotel room. But it is something that can be used to better spend the budget in places where it'll be more impactful for the quality of the piece. Not unlike how CGI is often used today in places where it wouldn't have been 20 years ago, and it's aiming to be invisible. Not because the shot was impossible, but because it's cheaper.
Treating AI in art as a moral thing will end up being like the people being against synthesizers in the 80s: It's a viable creative choice for some things, but ultimately not a good expectation for industry direction. Ultimately the vast majority of art is commercial, and we'll see shortcuts being taken for budgetary reasons. Nobody is manually animating every detail of every mesh in a game like this was Toy Story. And even though doing that would produce more work for artists, it wouldn't make better games, really. And we'd sure have far fewer of them.
Animating is a ton of work. Animation decisions can give a great deal of "feel" to a cartoon. Studio Ghibli works are distinct from Disney's old animation and each conveys a distinct feeling. Those decisions are often made by the production team. Its why One Punch Man season 3 is so derided this year after Season 1 was heralded as the greatest season of Anime in a very long time. You'd think following the literal story boards provided by the already published Manga would be simple! but somehow it lost all of its charm.
Animation, or shooting video is the result of many, many pieces. If you're not putting a ton of work into the decisions that result in the final "shot" the video camera makes then the video that is shot isn't magically going to show an enormous amount of care in its construction.
> Anime was probably my first introduction to "Heroes can both sacrifice and still lose. "Winning" may not be worth it but may be the only option."
One punch man, season 1. So chill, both pays homage to and is an amusing pisstake on the dragonballz kinda idea of heroes, training and "leveling up your power".
And then there is a double episode, around 7 or 8, that is a beautiful essay on "what defines a hero". For me, this was chefs kiss good and defined the series for me.
Personally I wouldn't mind a better animated season 3 of One Punch Man.
One Punch Man originated as a very poorly drawn web comic (as in, the author had no training in arts whatsoever[0]). Its claim to fame is that it's a parody of the superhero genre, in which most characters worry about status, except the overpowered-but-low-key main character.
I'd argue the plot of one punch man is about as predictable as it gets, (it's basically a series of boss arcs where side characters struggle and Saitama saves the day but somehow doesn't get the credit). Notably, Saitama has just about zero character development throughout the series. What makes it interesting is the comical relief provided by the constant social commentary on the notion of "strength = recognition".
Interestingly, among superhero movie fans, it is often said that DC movies are worse than Marvel movies, because DC movies lack character development. Infinity war notoriously doesn't even have a happy ending. So I think saying that american superhero movies lack substance isn't necessarily accurate.
[0] https://www.looper.com/img/gallery/the-untold-truth-of-one-punch-man/it-started-as-a-webcomic-1506705178.jpg
I think the really interesting counterpart to this is the anime One Punch Man. The main character, Saitama, can defeat any opponent, typically with one punch. It's the title for a reason; you know he'll always win, and it'll be disappointingly easy pretty much all of the time.
The point of the series is that you can take such an uninteresting overpowered character, in a superheroes vs supervillains setting, and still end up with an interesting plot. Of course none of the plot hinges on the question of whether Saitama will be powerful enough to win, that'd be stupidly bad writing.
Mainstream US superhero movies are mostly plots about whether their equivalent of Saitama will win. The action & graphics are the point, the plot is an afterthought.
If you feel like this you may be interested in anime. If you're ok with reading subtitles, or watching a smaller subset of the entire corpus with good English voice overs, you'll find some pretty amazing stories and a very different story telling method from what is available in Hollywood.
Great places to start:
- Mob Psycho (good English voice overs): A show about a high schooler who has magical powers (telekinesis, etc). He works for a "Psychic" (con artist) to help people who encountered ghosts or spirits. This is a coming of age story about emotions and friendship.
- One Punch Man: Super heros are common place and there's one guy who is determined to become the best. He starts a work out routine where he does 100 sit ups, 100 push ups, and 100 squats every day and, somehow, he becomes the strongest thing in the universe able to destroy anything with a single punch.
- Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: A Japanese manga author's attempt at taking inspiration from 1800s western story telling and American culture. It's a story about how something happened which changed the destiny of the Joestar family.
Something to expect is the motifs, character archetypes, and method of showing something are very different from the movies and TV I grew up on. Jojo has done some things that aren't a good look in western media.
Also, a lot of really good anime is only really good because it is a masterful subversion of tropes which makes it hard to give people recommendations to some of the best shows out there. The recommendation would go "please watch these 15 garbage shows (~40hr of content) so you can watch this one 14 episode (~5 hr of content) show that's been cancelled. It's worth it, I swear."
I also enjoyed Ergo Proxy, Texhnolyze and Planetes. Ghost in the Shell is still the only movie I revisit every now and then (out of all movies ever). They are all slow, I want to take the time to watch them again some day.
Very different but I also enjoyed Naruto as I grew up myself. It's long (but you can skip all fillers) but sometimes very deep. I enjoyed Kenshin but never finished it.
As mentioned below Samurai Champloo is also nice and Steins Gate (nice, strange atmosphere) and Death Note: very psychological: He thinks that I think that he thinks and I'm smarter so... Love that. And One Punch Man, puts a smile on my face.
If you want weird: FLCL. What was that about?
If you haven't watched End of Evangelion and the sequel movies, those are my favorite parts of the series.
Gurren Lagann is a wonderful homage to other mecha series. The series evolves in a REALLY interesting way, it blew my mind. Is worth sticking it out to the end!
Berserk (2016) is awesome, though I go back and forth on weather it transcends it's own violence. I'm probably just being a prude though, since nobody else seems to care haha.
DevilMan Crybaby(2018) is worth a watch. It is a gorgeously animated edgelord anime, run through a modern filter to make it more palatable.
Dorohedoro (2020) is bizarre and nihilistic and is written by a female author which is cool.
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure (2012 - present) suffers from being the product of a "less woke" 80's and 90's but man... I love it so much. It is so dumb and fun. There is a LOT of it but you just have to go along for the ride.
One Punch Man (2015) is great fun.
I tend to follow individual studios and directors.
Hiroyuki Imaishi has been consistently excellent.
Satoshi Kon is a legend, pick ANYTHING by him and you will not be disappointed.
Shinichirō Watanabe. I'm especially fond of Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo.
Studio Trigger makes great stuff.
Are the profits not shared with the animators?
It boggles my mind that an anime as popular as One Punch Man got awarded to a bottom-of-the-barrel anime studio for S2. I mean, you can see the stark contrast between seasons 1 and 2. Season 2 has very sparse action scenes, and heavily utilizes off-screen talking (i.e. the camera is panning some static background while a conversation is taking place so the animators don't have to animate). That leads me to believe the money/profits generated by the success of a season is getting eaten by ip owners and middlemen, and that the studio itself is fighting for the scraps. If so, that incentive structure needs to change if you want to increase the quality of the anime. Can anyone who knows more about the anime business model in Japan chime in? Is this a case of IP owners holding an iron grip on the rights and profits and being stingy with anime studios?
At any rate, I'm surprised more American-based anime studios aren't springing up to poach Japan's top animation talent with top pay.
Perfect example. I have Netflix, Prime and Hulu. Thats already too many as most have a bunch of crap and a few shows I like, some have duplicate content.
I watched One Punch man on Netflix and can also watch on Hulu. Season Two was released on Hulu. Well that works for me but what about people who had Netflix, Like OPM and now want to watch season 2?
I've been binging Star Trek. I'd also like to watch the new series on CBS. Of course CBS had the bright odea of starting their own streaming service. The cost is $5.99/mo with commercials or 9.99/mo without commercials. No.
So all the idiots taking their toys home and starting their own streaming biz are driving piracy. I used to download TV shows all the time but streaming made that unnecessary as I could pay a little money to have legal access to plenty of things I want to watch. No one wants to juggle multiple streaming services just to watch a few shows. People don't want to go back to spending $200 on TV and internet. I'd rather spend no more than $25/mo on tv and $50 for >=100mbit internet. Thats an ideal number considering I spend less on electricity each month.