REVIEW: ‘One Punch Man’ Season 3 Episode 4 — ‘Counterattack Signal’

One Punch Man Season 3 Episode 4, while not atrocious, is the most underwhelming episode in the season so far. While it includes the same hijinks and narrative elements seen in previous episodes, it doesn’t progress the overarching narrative in any meaningful way.

One Punch Man Season 3 Episode 4 begins as Garou (Hikaru Midorikawa) awakens from his battle in the previous episode, which left him bloodied, bruised, and on the brink of death. After recalling his fight and defeat, he suddenly gets physically stronger and heads to the Monsters’ hideout to save Tareo from King the Ripper. While the rest of the episode doesn’t feature any other impressive visuals, the details on Garou’s muscles as they strengthen look impeccable and intricate.

Meanwhile, Child Emperor zeroes in on the Monster Association’s location and tells the Hero Association official Sekingal not to include Genos in the upcoming mission due to his mysterious origins and Silverfang due to his association with Garou. This suggests that distrust is slowly building among the heroes. Whether or not this will lead to greater ramifications in future episodes remains to be seen.

Distrust builds among the heroes, with One Punch Man Season 3 Episode 4 building up to the future.

Back at Saitama’s house, the entire group, including Dr. Kuseno fights over hotpot, and they all bicker with one another, specifically Genos (Kaito Ishikawa), who argues with everyone over various things. The scene concludes with Saitama (Makoto Furukawa) kicking King out of his house after the others have departed. The Hijinks in Saitama’s house have been a recurring humorous aspect of the season so far, but this scene provided little to the episode, as it isn’t particularly funny, and the dialogue between the characters is inconsequential.

The next scene shows Sekingal and the S-class heroes reassuring Narinki, the top Hero Association official whose son was captured, that he will be saved. They then have a final meeting as they prepare for the upcoming battle against the monsters.

This scene is notably the second time the season has featured the S-Rank heroes, as everything else so far has boiled down to lengthy monologues, rescuing a child multiple times, and the heroes gathering their forces. While these build-up episodes are somewhat important to the season’s overarching narrative, they fail to be engaging, and many scenes are downright unimportant.

Unfortunately, with little else to engage beyond the usual, this episode merely treads water.

One Punch Man Season 3 Episode 4 ends with Garou making his way through the monsters’ hideout, wiping out many monsters on his path. He finds and kills King the Ripper just in time and rescues Tareo before he is tortured. The fight scene between Garou and King the Ripper was short and underwhelming, similar to most episodes this season so far.

It also isn’t much of a fight scene, as it was admittedly one-sided, and barely features any movements, with underwhelming animation from J.C. Staff. It does, however, prove that Garou gets stronger after every fight and is an enigma akin to Saitama.

All in all, One Punch Man Season 3 Episode 4 is another episode that builds up the big battle to come. Unfortunately, most of the events in the episode and the season overall so far feel unimportant and like padding that annoyingly drags out the season.

One Punch Man Season 3 Episode 4 is streaming now on Crunchyroll. 

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