One Punch Man Season 3: Did Budget Cuts KO the Animation?

Everyone keeps asking the same thing about One Punch Man Season 3: did the budget tank the animation again? Short answer: no. The money is fine. It is not lavish, it is not cut to the bone, it is just... normal. The myth that a giant bag of cash automatically equals cleaner sakuga is, honestly, one of anime fandom's funniest recurring bits.

So what did Season 3 actually cost?

Anime budgets are designed to be narrow and predictable. Most seasonal shows land in the same ballpark whether they are monster hits or not. Industry CG creator Masamune Sakaki has said a standard 13-episode season runs about 250 million yen, roughly 2 million dollars, and most series do not even make that back. The exceptions are the megahits - think Demon Slayer or Jujutsu Kaisen - which do a lot of heavy lifting for everyone else.

By that math, it is reasonable to assume One Punch Man Season 3 sits near the same range as Season 1: around 2 million dollars total for the season. If you are trying to do per-episode math, you usually hear something like 80,000 dollars per episode for the core animation work, which adds up to about 960,000 dollars across a 13-week cour. The rest of the money goes to everything that is not a drawing desk.

• Animation production: about $960,000 - key animation, backgrounds, compositing
• Marketing and promotion: about $254,000 - ads, signage, events
• Voice acting and music: about $300,000 - VA fees, recording, music licensing
• Broadcast and licensing: about $200,000 - TV slots, distribution
• Admin, planning, misc.: about $300,000 - offices, scheduling, coordination

If you want a clean summary that lines up with those figures, a January 29, 2023 breakdown from analyst Sweet Jackal framed it this way: 2 million dollars per cour, with roughly 80,000 dollars per episode feeding into a 960,000 dollar animation line, and the rest taken up by non-episodic costs. That is not a studio confession, just a realistic industry estimate - and it tracks.

So why did Season 1 look so absurdly good? Not because someone backed a Brinks truck up to the studio door. It is because top-tier artists went hard.

"One-Punch Man is often perceived as having a generous budget, but that is absolutely not the case; it is strictly at an average level. It is the passion and dedication of the participating animators, along with the hard work of each section, that brings One-Punch Man to life."

About that blame game

Ever since the widely disliked visual drop in Season 2, J.C. Staff has been the fandom's favorite dartboard. Context helps. Back in 2019, when Season 2 hit, J.C. Staff was juggling eight anime at once. In 2025, they are down to five projects, which is better, but they still do not control the big levers. Production committees set the deadlines, budgets, and a lot of the creative constraints.

"Sometimes it is not about the animation studio, sometimes it is about the production committees that are on top of everything and who choose. J.C. Staff is just a studio that is trying to survive."

That is from animator Vincent Chansard in an interview at KOL: Requiem, and it lines up with what you hear across the industry. In other words: the problem is not that some secret pile of One Punch Man money went missing. It is that the system pays what it always pays, expects delivery on a tight clock, and leaves the animators to pull off miracles. Sometimes they do. Sometimes the schedule wins.

Where that leaves Season 3

If Season 3 does not match your ideal vision for the show, it is not because someone forgot to fund it. It is the usual cocktail: average budget, hard deadlines, committee notes, and artist burnout. That mix would make even Saitama shrug.

Think Season 3 landed the hits, or still waiting for the knockout? Tell me. One Punch Man Season 3 is streaming on Hulu.