One Punch Man season 2 The Human Monster / The Hunt Begins (review)

So I’ve caught up on One Punch Man. We’re in season 2 and I am enjoying the anime. Things are starting off a little slow, but I can tell that they are ramping up. I’m pretty much just waiting for a pinnacle moment to take the series to another level. I’m covering episode 14 and 15 since I’m playing catch up.

The Human Monster, episode 14

We pick back up with Garou pretty much slaughtering all of the villains that the President of the Hero Association invited to a meeting to discuss a pending threat. At this point, we know that Garou wants to be considered a monster. To prove this, he massacres every villain in the room and severely injures a class A hero. We see him in a few random fights with but he knocks them out with no issue.

Meanwhile, Saitama is playing video games that he borrowed from King in the previous episodes. This leaves Genos to fight with Speed O Sound Sonic when he attacks their apartment because he doesn’t want to interrupt Saitama’s gaming.

I can appreciate that.

But the distractions don’t stop with Sonic, because Fubuki aka Blizzard comes to recruit Saitama into her ranks. She is rank 1 in class B. He resists her plan and she tries to intimidate him. But when that doesn’t work they have a brief fight encounter.

During their fight, she experienced less than a fraction of Saitama’s strength before Genos and Sonic’s fight interrupts. After which she finds out that Saitama is super strong because he knocks Sonic out with a Series Sideways Jump shock wave. And she’s drawn to him more when she realizes King and Genos call him sensei. Fubuki ends up baring her soul and telling Saitama about her plan to stay on top of Class B because Class A and Class S are too strong and her sister known as Tornado is better than her too.

I appreciate Saitama during his conversation with Fubuki. He honestly has been dropping gems to everyone he comes across so far. In episode 14 he encourages Genos to focus on getting to the top of Class S. He also encouraged King to train to be the hero he actually desires to be. He ends up doing the same thing with Fubuki. By the end of the episode, she’s enamored and becomes a part of Saitama’s group as well.

The Hunt Begins, episode 15

Saitama finally starts to catch wind of the new villain Garou and decides to investigate by talking with other heroes about their encounter with him. However, he gets sidetracked when he finds out about a tournament offering 3K in prize money.

This episode was better in regards to getting to know Garou. He’s not a likable character at all. He actually comes off a bit weird. He’s sinister at some points when he completely obliterates the Tank Top Master and his group, but then he has a moment where he’s sharing a heroes almanac with a little kid.

By the way, does anyone other than the actual monster in this show die? Because I swore Garou killed Tank Top Master, Tank Top Vegetarian, and Mumen Rider.

Especially Mumem Rider!

Garou debuted a flowing water technique and no one could combat him.

We meet Master Bang and Master Boom briefly and find out they are Garou’s sensei. Master Bang just expelled a student named Charanko to try and stop him from going in the same direction and now he wants to take down his former student. Master Bang and Boom plan to team up to eliminate Garou.

The best part of the episode is when Saitama meeting Garou. Again, he’s as oblivious as he can be because he’s focused on the tournament that he wants to join. But, in order to join a tournament, he has to impersonate Charanko. This results in him buying a wig.

Garou shows up and chops him on the shoulder, which does nothing. But when Saitama returns a chop back to Garou he’s knocked down with ease.

But why? I thought Garou was suppose to be over powered.

At this point, I have seen him decimate a gang with Fist of Flowing Water, deflect a bullet, tank a gunshot wound, and voluntarily take a sword through the hand just get the upper hand in a fight. So I’m thinking okay, here’s a real threat to Saitama.

But then during a totally random encounter, where neither one of them knew who the other was, Saitama completely punks him out. It just threw me off. I laughed but still.