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A recent anime that came out and immediately went wildly popular is One Punch Man, a sort of shonen anime that's about a guy - called "Saitama" - who can kill anything with...you guessed it, one punch.
Boring, you say? Well, I'd almost agree with you. In fact, the main character himself would kind of agree with you.
Freaking run.
But the brilliance of One Punch Man is not really in its story or setting so much as it is in the characters and delivery. Speaking of which...
SPOILERS ALERT
This anime is rather short (rare for a shonen), the first season only having about twelve episodes. You get catapulted into the story rather quickly, but not too fast that you get lost.
Basically, Saitama started out as a nobody who one day decides that, screw this, he's becoming a hero. So he trains and trains and trains and trains for a couple years, so much so that his hair falls out. And then he becomes the strongest man alive.
Don't ask me how.
He meets up with this cyborg called Genos, who is pretty strong himself. However, he's not nearly as strong as Saitama, and after a little incident with a...somehow-oversexualized mosquito hybrid girl villian (don't ask)...where Saitama saves Genos's life, Genos swears loyalty to Saitama and asks him to become his master.
Don't even.
It was a weird episode.
They decide to enroll in the "official hero organization" thingie that apparently exists, and go to take the entrance tests. Genos gets perfect scores on the two sections (physical and mental), while Saitama totally breaks the physical test but gets average results on the mental test.
Genos is immediately classified in the top-ranked S-class heroes, while Saitama is put down in the lowly C-class heroes. Thus ensues a few episodes of funniness where Genos gets all the dangerous missions yet has to have Saitama come save his metal butt because Saitama is more powerful than all the S-class heroes put together yet somehow the hero organization leadership doesn't really give Saitama his dues...
Anyway.
The whole series climaxes when some aliens invade and Saitama, being the ultimate BA that he is, takes them all on almost single-handedly, killing the alien leader with ease.
And looking friggin' awesome while he does it.
Oh, and the other class S heroes are...
...hilarious.
...all right, they're not all ridiculous.
END SPOILERS
So how exactly is this anime good? I mean, the hero is never really in any danger whatsoever, he doesn't really have any character flaws (at least, none that affect the story), and there's never really any fear of loss.
Because he's awesome.
Yet, here shines the brilliance of One Punch Man. I mean, reread that paragraph above for a second.
Does any shonen anime not have those problems? The most popular definitely do.
One Punch Man takes those flaws and makes a semi-mockery of them by overemphasizing all of them at once. Not only that, they do it in a way that's humorous and enjoyable to watch. It's actually more of a comedy than a shonen, and since I've seen a lot of shonen (*coughNarutocoughBleachcough*) the particular style of One Punch Man is refreshing.
So should you watch it? Yes. Absolutely. Hey, it's only twelve episodes.
And it's awesome.
What you should be saying right now.
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