The Fall 2020 Preview Guide

Osomatsu-san Season 3

The new season of Mr. Osomatsu is here… but where are the sextuplets? Unbeknownst to the Matsuno brothers, they've been replaced by a more suitable cast in the lull between seasons. Faced with their inadequacy, the NEETS go through trials and tribulations and are forced to face themselves. What will they find at the end of their journey?

Osomatsu-san Season 3 is the latest entry of the Osomatsu-san anime series, which is inspired by Fujio Akatsuka's original manga and streams on Crunchyroll at 10:30 PM ET on Mondays.

Kim Morrissy
Rating:

If the first and second seasons are anything to go by, Mr. Osomatsu premieres tend to be bombastic spectacles. In this regard, the third season is no different. Although the premise of the Osomatsu boys being “replaced” by random strangers isn't a new one for this series, this premiere pulls all the stops to make it memorable, and the ending has one of the funniest punchlines in the series ever.

I'm glad this show is back, complete with all the crass and irreverent jokes it's been known for. One of the more common criticisms of season 2 is that it fell back on sex and toilet humor too much, and while I can agree with that to some degree, I also feel that this brand of humor gives Mr. Osomatsu its unique identity as an anime comedy. This episode has the brothers turn into literal pieces of shit to make that point, and it's great.

There's some meta humor wrapped up in this episode as well, with some parts commenting on how the Osomatsu brothers are becoming irrelevant after their brief time in the spotlight. It's a new era, so they've got to catch up with the times. The choices for the replacement cast are a fairly standard joke, but the meta humor is much more cutting when the voice actor cast and director himself show up to deliver their opinions.

I've always admired the willingness of this series to constantly redesign and re-imagine its characters. This first episode was nowhere near as extra as the season 2 premiere, but the fact that this series dishes out new character designs almost every episode indicates a level of ambition that most anime comedies will never reach. Even if it's not the novelty it was in 2015, this was a confident premiere that proves that Mr. Osomatsu still has its comedic chops.