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Review: ワンパンマン 1 [Wanpanman 1]

ワンパンマン 1 [Wanpanman 1] ワンパンマン 1 [Wanpanman 1] by ONE
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

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ONE PUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUNCH!! Ahem. Just had to get the formalities out of the way.

I wanted to buy these volumes ever since the anime rocked my socks off, but I just never got around to it. And now there's like a million volumes out and it's too much of a hasstle to go buy them all. So! I read this from my library. Though I did kind of want to collect the volumes since the covers are so fricken gorgeous.

Anyway! The anime stayed pretty close to the source material, but, could I dare say, the anime did it better. The manga goes way way way too fast paced for my taste. The events fly by way too quickly and it just gives the whole thing this really jerky feeling. This type of super rushed storytelling is the type of thing I've come to associate with some types of American graphic novels *cough* books published by First Second Books *cough*, but never manga. Pretty disappointing, actually. The anime fleshed all of the scenes out way better and thus they had a lot more impact.

Also, one of the first things I noticed when I started reading was the art. It is suuper cartoonish looking, which was jarring. I usually expect my manga to look like... Manga, you know? Murata chose to largely use hatching as the shading style, which is what contributes to the cartoonish feel. That and, of course, the fact that whenever he draws Saitama it's super shitty. That's a good part though, and he contrasts it by using his usual beautiful art skills for the rest of the characters.

The only worthwhile part of this volume was the bonus chapter. It's a never-animated look into a little bit of Saitama's childhood. That was a very pleasant end to this otherwise quite mediocre volume. One Punch Man is the second best anime ever created (only semi-recently dethroned by the Mob Psycho 100 anime) so I really suggest you just watch that instead of reading the manga. The manga's presentation gets 2 stars but since it's still One Punch Man greatness, the rating gets bumped to 3 stars.

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