One-Punch Man Just Got Hit With 4Kids-Level Censorship

Much has been discussed about how much One-Punch Man has suffered visually, and for good reason. With a disastrous production cycle and a team poorly equipped to handle it, it’s been a constant struggle for episodes to look passable, and with how season 3 seems to get progressively worse, that won’t change anytime soon.

What’s also been a major problem for One-Punch Man season 3, however, has been its censorship, as in addition to having less fanservice, season 3 has also greatly toned down the blood and violence for an overall inferior product. It’s been bad from day one, but in episode #10, it reached an utterly baffling degree that’s almost impossible to excuse.

One-Punch Man Just Censored Itself In The Weirdest Way Possible

One-Punch Man season 3, episode #10 covered the fight between Zombieman and a group of monsters led by the vampire Pureblood, all of which left him incredibly exhausted. In the manga, Zombieman tried to relax after the fight by smoking a cigarette, but for some reason, the anime changed it so that he was licking a lollipop instead.

It’s not uncommon for smoking to be censored in anime, with JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Adventure being a prime example, but that had the excuse of Jotaro being a minor, and his smoking was just obscured as opposed to being outright removed. By comparison, Zombieman is an adult, so it doesn’t make sense for his smoking to be an issue.

If anything, the entire situation is oddly reminiscent of 4Kids Entertainment; anime licensed by 4Kids Entertainment were rife with censorship, and most infamously, they changed Sanji’s cigarettes to lollipops when dubbing One Piece. That practice and others have been heavily criticized and ridiculed over the years, so it’s surprising that a company would willingly do the same in modern day.

One-Punch Man Season 3 Continues To Be A Massive Travesty

One-Punch Man having censorship akin to 4Kids Entertainment is nothing but terrible, and it highlights just how much of a travesty season 3 has been. It’s one thing for the anime to look bad more often than not, but if the staff has to make such a random change to the story, then things are even worse than people think.

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None of that is the fault of the animators, of course; with how poorly managed J.C.Staff’s production cycle has been, the fact that One-Punch Man season 3 is even airing is nothing short of a miracle, so at the end of the day, the biggest issue with season 3 is more poor management than it is poor talent.

One-Punch Man had the potential to be amazing, but thanks to being grossly mismanaged at every turn, it’s become nothing but a laughing stock with a team that only has time to make it average at best. The series being subjected to such random censorship is the latest example of that, and unfortunately, things won’t be improving anytime soon.