With the recent surge of anime titles streaming from Japan, a lot of quality shows tend to get left by the wayside unless they’re mega-popular, multi-million dollar franchises. That isn’t to say that shows like My Hero Academia or Attack on Titan aren’t good, but those shows tend to dominate discussion simply by virtue of being popular. For every huge Shonen franchise that gets lavished with praise and attention, you have an abundance of smaller titles like Kakegurui, Made in Abyss, The Promised Neverland, Mob Psycho 100, and Land of the Lustrous that are well liked, but never get their due time in the sun.
One-Punch Man was unique in that it was an ultra-successful show and was one of the best series of 2015, but only had one season under its belt. It captured the world of anime by storm in the fall but quickly relegated itself to meme status with reruns airing on Toonami for nearly three years. All of that is about to change when One-Punch Man’s second season debuts on April 9th and will stream exclusively on Hulu in the United States. Not only that, but a special will air in Japan one week earlier on April 2nd, though there are currently no announced plans to air that special outside of Japan.
With the recent Funimation/Hulu deal going through last year, I can’t say I’m too horribly surprised by this announcement. I’m a bit bummed that, as of writing, the series isn’t set to appear on any other streaming services, so I won’t be able to just watch everything on Crunchyroll, but I’ll gladly take the series streaming on Hulu than Netflix. Viz Media, the publisher of One-Punch Man, assures us that each episode will stream “the same day as Japanese broadcast” with subtitled episodes, which is a thousand times better than Netflix’s approach, who’ll get the rights to a show and release the series to stream months after the series finished its run and being left to die on its service, unpromoted and unloved. Bottom line, get those Hulu subscriptions updated because I will gladly pay $6 a month to see Saitama continue to be his dorky, nigh invulnerable self.
One-Punch Man Season 2 Airs April 2 Special Before April 9 Hulu Premiere – [Anime News Network]
