Rather than talk about the What's of the Happening in OPM S3, we have to dive deeper and go into the Why's of the Tragic Mess we got from OPM S3. I'll try to explain it in a simple manner to give you all some perspective, not that it matters since everyone knows from the scrutiny, but it will help clarify why OPM S3 looked the way it is. 1. Comparison Scale * OPM S1 was hailed as an incredibly animated anime due to its animation, but some people assumed that it was because of the studio's talent or incredible budget that led to the anime's greatreception. The truth is that the anime's first season didn't even have that many talents from Madhouse. It was rather a production that assembled many freelancers and talented animators from other studios, for example, Yutaka Nakamura and Chikashi Kubota. This is important to note, while there are most definitely studios with many in-house talents at that time, Madhouse only got credit due to the perfect team of talented animators that happened to be there for OPM S1.
* OPM S2 is what S1 should have looked like without that perfect team. While it did suffer from tight deadlines and production issues similar to how S3 went through, there were still a couple of talented animators who helped save OPM from its downfall, most definitely Kenichiro Aoki, who helped provide some of the best-looking scenes in OPM S2, ultimately saving it from looking like a PowerPoint show. Although the grayish-looking backgrounds were jarring to see in the previous season, the animation was still sustainable to a good degree, despite being nowhere near as consistent as S1 was.
* And then S3 happened. Since the official teaser for S3 was announced a year ago, it was very likely that only one scene was completed before they had more finished scenes. While the blurry gray coloring that S2 had is rectified in S3, the same cannot be said for the animation in S3. As you all know from the heavy scrutiny OPM S3 went through, it was given extremely tight deadlines, implying that the project for S3 was sidelined until the announcement, whilst having very little budget for the studio. I tried to be positive and assumed that the anime would be similar to Season 2's quality, given that the circumstances were still somewhat similar to how Season 2's production went. However, this time, it did not go so well.
2. Staff Issues
* As I stated earlier about staff, Season 1 was supposed to be just a normal production, however with the network Director Shingo Natsume was able to amass during his earlier work, he was able to guarantee an incredible team to work on OPM S1 and with the amount of creative freedom the staff were given, it's what is known as the secret to how OPM was able to succeed and attract so many attention such as I, being one of my first anime to watch and repeat more than 5 times. Season 3 had more issues than just a lack of talented staff. Due to the extremely tight deadlines, it was noted that there were only a few episodes that J.C Staff handled, while the other episodes were outsourced by smaller studios from China, hence explaining why Motley Heroes received the lowest rating out of all the episodes in Season 3. The outsourcing in such a small amount of time would explain why the pacing and production were so awful, with episodes only showing characters talking and the odd color filter they would put to make them seem menacing during exposition sequences.
* The biggest reason why Season 3 is so terrible in every aspect possible would be the ridiculous mismanagement conducted by the production committee, with Bandai Namco Filmworks being the main culprit. While freelancers tried to save the season with a couple of decent storyboards and animation sequences, the frequency of this happening is all too low, and they did not have the time necessary to properly animate all episodes for Season 3. The outsourcing, the sloppy pacing, the inconsistent character modeling, and the awful censoring to cut corners were what turned OPM S3 into a dumpster fire in the end.
3. Final Conduct
* As a fan of OPM, I am both saddened and frustrated with the way OPM S3 turned out. Like most fans of OPM, a little part of me was secretly hoping that it would pull a Blue Lock comeback, with my siblings being fans of OPM and feeling hopeful that it would get better. It was unfortunate that the quality fluctuated from time to time. At the time Episode 7 aired, I was screaming as to why the show wasn't canceled at this point, as it looked so unbearable to watch. Alas, I can't seem to give the 1 rating to this season as I still found some enthusiasm, albeit little, this season 3 was able to salvage from all the mess it caused. For the aftermath, this will definitely make people lose hope towards Bandai Namco's Filmworks, considering they are involved in future projects that may cause a mess like OPM S3 to happen again in the near future. Considering how they officially announced OPM S3 2nd cour right after the end of this first cour, it still gives me a little bit of hope that it might look better than what Season 3, however, any enthusiasm from every OPM fan has just dwindled to just nothing in the end. That is the fate of a dedicated fan of a ruined franchise.
Thank you for reading.
GaGamiKhan
December 28, 2025
RecommendedFunny
Considering the content inside of this season is way worse than season 1 and 2, the fact that we had to suffer subpar animation is lessen by the hope that better arcs will get a better animation, so despite this being a positive review, I dont dislike the fact that people are speaking up about the issues in its animation, aslong as it is done reasonably. Still, the only fights that mattered were nicely animated which is a good consolation prize, it is not like they threw good animation ins the first 3 episodes and the rest were slop, the director clearly knew where to investmore time and money which is undoubtly nice, this is not a fumble, this is a production problem, I am sure the studio would have done just fine had they had more resources to work with.
People have to remember that this issue is not caused by directors and artists but by greedy decisions by the excecutives. Also if you watched S3 of one punch man hating it all the way through, atleast give toujima kaimen raider a watch, you will certainly enjoy it more.
It was nice enough 7/10
ChChamin99
December 30, 2025
RecommendedFunny
(Spanish review on my list) Let's see, people get so worked up over nothing. Complaints about the animation quality, the fact that they didn't adapt a certain frame, the use of static images, the manga being better written and drawn, etc., etc... You have every right to want a well-adapted work, especially since the first and second seasons had different levels of quality, BUT it's not the worst garbage in the world. You and I have seen worse animation. For example, in recent seasons, what happened to WannaDance? That 3D is cringeworthy, and it wasn't demonized as much as One Punch Man... On the other hand, I mean,come on, we're talking about One Punch Man. The fact that the manga has such good artwork is thanks to the fact that a chapter is published every 15 to 22 days and that the artist loves the work, but why don't you criticize the webcomic? That drawing is of "low quality".
What I'm getting at is... if a story is good, the animation is secondary. High Score Girl, Id:Invaded, Seikaisuru Kado, Piano no Mori, to name a few, are anime with not-so-great animation but with fantastic stories that are totally worth watching.
So what's the problem then? That One Punch Man isn't a good work overall. It's just heroes punching each other against supposedly increasingly stronger monsters, where no matter what happens, nothing matters because our protagonist is One Punch Man. He's going to defeat everyone with a single punch anyway. It doesn't have a good story, so you can't expect good animation. As a studio, I'm not going to invest much in an anime that wastes animation on heartless battles because that's what One Punch Man is: just fights for the love of fighting, without an important story, dramatic backstories, or noteworthy comedy. It's explosions of colors and ridiculous techniques, each one more "impressive" than the last, but regardless of everything, in the end, it all goes to... Solving it with a simple "One Punch Man"
It's the same joke repeated over and over. This anime should have ended in the first season because it stopped having anything new to say; it just keeps repeating itself.
SO, to summarize and end this, you can't expect much from a story that can't offer any more. The internet is upset because the only thing this anime can offer is animation in the fights, and it's not delivering that, but it's pointless. You should be content with watching a decently animated series (because if it's decent, it could be much worse) that isn't all that great... It's what happened with the Invincible series, only they took it in stride and understood that they do all that because of a low budget to deliver something passable.
I do recommend it for fans of ONE's work (and to contradict the hundreds of sheep who hate anime just because the internet says it has bad animation). If you're looking for high-budget animation, go somewhere else. Anyway, the story doesn't have much to offer, and judging it as a general anime without comparisons, it's average and doesn't offer anything special, but that's been known since season 1.
