Soon, the collaboration between Overwatch 2 and One Punch Man will arrive in Blizzard's free-to-play team shooter. On March 2, Blizzard revealed that Kiriko would be receiving a new Legendary skin as part of the collaboration coming soon to Overwatch 2, and shared some details about how the new skin was made.According to Blizzard, the Overwatch 2 x One Punch Man collaboration runs from March 7 through April 6. Fittingly enough, the event has been highlighted by Doomfist appropriately receiving a Legendary skin based on Saitama, the eponymous One Punch Man. While the series has been considered a one-hit wonder following its first two seasons, One Punch Man will receive a third anime season in the future. While ONE's work is a pastiche of the superhero genre by design, only time will tell which studio has the unenviable task of turning the series around following its critically-panned second season. As for Overwatch 2, Kiriko's Legendary skin for the One Punch Man collaboration is based on Tatsumaki, the Terrible Tornado. Though she is a bratty and arrogant girl, Tatsumaki possesses potent telekinetic abilities, which allowed her to take down some of One Punch Man's most notorious monsters. While this seems like a strange choice at first glance, considering that Kiriko is a Support hero, the powers that both Tatsumaki and Kiriko possess are as swift as the wind.
However, according to Overwatch 2 art director Dion Rogers, one of the reasons that Kiriko will receive a Tatsumaki skin for the event was due to how the character's base silhouette felt natural for making a cosplay-like skin for the event. Rogers stated that while giving Kiriko just the hairstyle would have been a simple solution, he and the art design team chose Kiriko's clothing as the main focal point for making the Terrible Tornado skin. In addition to the skin, Kiriko herself will receive a thematic name card and the "Terribly Impressive" victory pose. Plus, Kiriko's fox spirit, kunai, and talisman will also receive Tatsumaki's green tint in matches. Whether the Terrible Tornado skin will work flawlessly on launch, or suffer issues like Ashe's Raijin skin, remains to be seen.
In the meantime, Overwatch 2 Season 3 started on February 7, though not without issues and complaints from players. From competitive matchmaking imbalance issues to ongoing complaints about Blizzard's monetization practices with the battle pass, fate has not been kind to the game as of late. Only time will tell if the One Punch Man collaboration will quell some of these issues, or if they will persist into Season 4 next month.
Overwatch 2 is available now for PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.