One Punch Man 2×07 Review: “The Class S Heroes”

It’s another edition of misleading titles, aka One Punch Man. This week’s installment, “The Class S Heroes”, does in fact feature some of the aforementioned heroes, but it also features a couple of other plot lines in a bizarre mishmash of story.

One Punch Man Season 1 was a very monster-of-the-week kind of story. It mainly dealt with Saitama and Genos beating monsters, and occasionally you met other heroes along the way. Season 2 is following a more structured format, with an overarching plot rather than smaller, fully-contained ones. However, the plot is all over the place, and we’re currently dealing with three or four things at a time, and sometimes that means episodes are rushed and bloated, such as with “The Class S Heroes”.

I like that we’re meeting some of the other heroes. We got to see some of them in action in Season 1 when they had to face Boros and the alien spacecraft, but now we’re spending more time with them. It’s very interesting to see the difference in ability not only between Class A and Class S but also within Class S itself.

Semi-related, Class S hero Atomic Samurai approached the Holy Order of the Sword for help bringing down Garou. Remember Garou? Yeah, he was a thing. Anyway, it turns out that one of the members of the Holy Order was approached by the Monster Association and agreed to eat “monster cells” to turn into a monster. This is not a thing I thought would happen, nor did it occur to me that “monster cells” would be a thing, although this part does bring up some interesting questions. Orochi mentions that they can make more monsters, which makes me wonder how exactly monsters are made. Are they created “from scratch” or were they all once human?

Meanwhile, we have finally reached the finals of the martial arts tournament. I say “finally” even though this is only the fourth episode featuring the tournament, and one of those episodes didn’t even have any fights. Anyway, the final bout, unsurprisingly, is between Suiryu and Saitama. Essentially the entire purpose of this fight is to a) show what kind of person Suiryu is versus what kind of person Saitama is and b) reiterate just how unbelievably freaking strong Saitama is. Despite all of his other opponents being taken down by a single kick, Saitama is hardly fazed by Suiryu’s attacks, even when he starts fighting for real. Suiryu, however, is affected by Saitama’s glancing, accidental hip check.

I’m glad we’ve reached the end of the tournament. Even though it was rushed and we saw hardly any actual fighting, it still took up a third of the season, and there are more interesting things afoot. I want to learn more about the Monster Association. I want to learn more about Garou’s motives. And I want to see Watchdog Man in action, since they’ve repeatedly teased him a couple of times but not shown him doing anything.

It makes me wonder who the primary antagonist of the season is supposed to be. I originally thought it was Garou based on pre-season promotions, but we haven’t really seen him the past couple of episodes, and I doubt they can take care of both Garou and the monster uprising within the five episodes we have left.

Have you seen “The Class S Heroes”? What did you think?

Author: Jamie Sugah

Jamie has a BA in English with a focus in creative writing from The Ohio State University. She self-published her first novel, The Perils of Long Hair on a Windy Day, which is available through Amazon. She is currently an archivist and lives in New York City with her demon ninja vampire cat. She covers television, books, movies, anime, and conventions in the NYC area.

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