One-Punch Man Manga Artist Releases New Animated Short

A new One-Punch Man animated short has made its way online.

The new animated short was directed and released by Yusuke Murata, the artist for the One-Punch Man manga. Murata released the short through his Twitter account as an apology for recent delays in the release of the manga. A translated version of his tweet reads, "I'm sorry to have kept you waiting... The latest story update to One Punch Man has been delayed due to various circumstances. Please wait just a little bit longer. Please look at these short animations I made with my own hands."

The new short was produced by Murata's team, Village Studio. It depicts Saitama casually defeating a monster only to discover and advertisement for a 1 yen (roughly 1 cent USD) meat clearance sale. Saitama then races across the city in order to get to the grocery sale in time, but is delayed by numerous obstacles and hazards. The silent short also features cameo appearances from a few of the other characters from the series.

In addition to his work on One-Punch Man, Murata is also known as the artist on the popular football manga Eyeshield 21, which was written by Riichiro Inagaki. Murata has also worked with American comics publisher Marvel on several occasions, and was previously commissioned by the company to create variant covers for Amazing Spider-Man, Spider-Island and Spider-Verse.

One-Punch Man originally debuted in 2009 as a self-published webcomic by the artist known as One, who would also later go on to create Mob Psycho 100. The series was remade into a print manga in 2012 with Murata. The webcomic has now been viewed more than 8 million times, while the manga remake has more than 30 million copies in circulation. An anime adaptation of One's work was released in 2015, and was produced by Death Note studio Madhouse. The series was broadcast on Cartoon Network's Toonami block in 2016, and received a second season in 2019. The series was also adapted into a video game that was released on the Playstation 4, Xbox One, and Windows PCs in 2020. Later that same year, Sony Pictures announced that it producing a live-action adaptation of the series which will be written by Jumanji: Welcome to the Next Level writers Scott Rosenberg and Jeff Pinkner.

The series tells the story of Saitama, a bald superhero who has the ability to defeat any enemy with a single punch. Despite his incredible power, Saitama is given a low-rank by the Hero Association, a governing body that manages the world's superheroes, due to him scoring poorly on the organization's written test.

The One-Punch Man anime is currently available for streaming through Netflix, Hulu and Crunchyroll. The manga is localized in English and distributed internationally by VIZ Media.

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Source: Twitter