Just compare it to something like the recent version of Mahoujin Guruguru. It gets old and stops being funny very fast, because it becomes predictable. The reason they often call the show “One Pun Man”, is because everyone keeps repeating the same one joke in every episode. The show is just making jokes about the stereotypes of superheroes, and it does it without even having much variety. It’s funny but it’s not subverting anything. It’s like a clown who makes fun of other clowns. If you are poking fun at something without trying to improve it, you are embracing the very thing you ridicule, and on top of that you make it self-indulgent. As soon as the arc is over, everybody go on with their lives, as if nothing happened. It also feels pretentious when it tries to sound serious without having consequences, such as the dramatic scenes when Mumen Rider cries about doing his best despite being weak, and everybody blaming the protagonist for not doing his job that well. I keep hearing how it never gets old because it’s self aware, and that means … absolutely nothing if they don’t do something with it. It’s not doing something we have never seen before to count as though provoking, and it doesn’t lead to a permanent, meaningful change in-series to count as a deconstruction of something. It’s almost as if everybody was hyping it only for the animation, while the endless analysis of its deconstructions were just bullshit for excusing their fondness of a typical satire. And look at that the second season was announced to have not that pretty colors and everybody nags about not being good anymore.
If it was as good as so many claimed to be, the pretty colors wouldn’t be a defining factor. That’s nice and all, but a deconstruction is not defined by how it looks.
A deconstruction like One Punch Man needs it because it elevates the jokes to new levels. There is nothing wrong with pretty colors, if they are adding to the context. I am being an asshole because One Punch Man looks great. The name of that show was… My Hero Academia, a generic fighting shonen that everybody overhyped because of the pretty colors. It was also a deconstruction of the western superhero formula, a thought-provoking masterpiece that was constantly subverting everything you knew about the genre and was presenting things in a way that had never been done before. But fear not, since quite recently we had another show about superheroes and this one had lots of pretty colors.
Unfortunately, almost nobody knows of it and the rest don’t talk about it because it didn’t have pretty colors. And it managed to do all that with a low budget.
And the name of that anime was… Tentai Senshi Sunred, a very fun and self-aware plotless comedy that even bothered to make the main villains seem like sympathetic fellows, instead of generic monsters of the week that get blown up in a few seconds. It was about an unemployed and bored of his own life superhero, casually defeating any monster that attacked him. The reason Toriyama eventually dropped the parody and turned it into a fighting shonen was because he realized the joke of an unbeatable protagonist got old very fast.So, fast forward a few decades and a satire of superheroes came out, in a way that had never been done before. And the name of that show is… Dragon Ball, back when Goku was a kid. It’s about a protagonist so strong, to the point he can beat any opponent with one punch. There is this show that does things like none other.
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