One Punch-Man fans have wondered about the secret of Saitama’s strength, but a theory laid out in the manga already explains it all.

The premise of A punch is that its protagonist Saitama is stronger than anything and anyone he could face. Because the manga started out as a parody of the shonen like, the reason why Saitama is so powerful has never been explained. However, a supporting character actually offered an explanation that makes perfect sense in the context of the manga’s more recent developments.

At the beginning of A punch, Saitama was a young unemployed man with a nihilistic attitude. He had no purpose in life and believed he would never find one, nor fit into society. After a chance encounter with a monster (also called “mysterious beings” in the manga), he recalls his childhood dream of being a hero and begins training every day. His “workout” is actually nothing spectacular, just 100 push-ups, 100 sit-ups, and 100 squats, and a 10k run, but he did it every day. After three years, he is so powerful that he can defeat any monster with a single punch. He then begins his career as a professional hero, but due to his excessive strength, nothing is a challenge for him, meaning he still struggles to find motivation or excitement.

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There’s no way that Saitama’s training explains his power: other professional manga heroes have trained more horribly and are far from his level. However, there is a theory that could explain it, offered by Dr. Genus, an evil ancient scientist whose experiments were destroyed by Saitama. After witnessing the hero’s power, Genus theorizes that Saitama may have removed something he calls “limiter”. After being defeated, Genus accepted Saitama’s teaching that the true power of humans is the ability to change and grow. However, Genus later adds that there is a limit to the growth of a being, human or monster, put there by God to ensure that one does not obtain unlimited power, thus losing all sense of purpose and mental health. Saitama was able to remove this “limiter”, but the true means remain unclear. It might be Saitama’s stubborn repetition of the same simple exercises every day for three years (which puts a huge strain on a human body), but when this workout regimen was revealed in the manga, it was intended as a comedy spot, so the reason remains unclear.

However, the “limiter” theory was exposed by Dr. Genus in chapter #89, long after he met Saitama and the “workout diet comedy bit” (in chapter #11), thus giving him a lot more credit. Also, the same theory was used by Psykos, the mastermind behind the Monster Association, who experimented to find ways to break the growth limit. His only success was the Monster King Orochi, who started out as a normal human being and grew into the strongest monster through a repeated process of near-death experiences. This was mentioned in chapter #94, proving that the “limiter pause” is actually an important and recurring concept in the manga. It also proves that there is a connection between the process of “breaking the limiter” and “monsterification”, a fact confirmed by the evolution of Garou, a martial artist who was transformed into an incredibly powerful monster by the same cheating process repeated to death.

It’s still unclear how Saitama managed to break his limiter, and why didn’t he lose his mind in the process. Was this simple training regimen enough to bring him closer to death each day? It’s also interesting that Genus mentions “lose all use“as a risk of gaining too much power: perhaps Saitama avoided losing his mind because he had very little purpose to begin with other than becoming a hero (a concept explored in the extra flashback chapter”200 yen“). Finally, Genus’ mention of “God“a reference to the mysterious all-powerful being who begins to appear as the main villain of A punch? Only time will tell.

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One-Punch Man’s Saitama is known for his incalculable strength, but the manga’s final chapter drops a valuable way to measure his power.

Warning: Contains spoilers for One-punch man Chapter #157!

One of the questions that One-punch man fans desperately want an answer is how strong the protagonist Saitama really is. Because the whole premise of the manga is that Saitama is stronger than anything and anyone else, to the point of being bored with the lack of challenges in his life, it’s hard to put his power into an understandable context. , especially since most of his exploits take place in the heat of the moment. However, the final chapter of the manga may have just given readers the hint they’ve been waiting for.

One-punch man began as a satire of the shonen manga genre. It was first created as a webcomic by author ONE, who wanted to subvert many shonen and superhero tropes, making its protagonist extremely strong at the start, rather than the end as it is. usually the case. Saitama can end any fight with a single punch, rendering any struggles the heroes normally go through completely meaningless. However, he is rather struggling with day-to-day issues, such as money or hair loss. Because Saitama’s incredible strength creates obvious storytelling problems whenever he has to face enemies, most of the action is reserved for supporting characters, such as members of the Hero Association, who have to deal with often insurmountable obstacles in their fight against monsters, only to be saved by Saitama’s timely intervention.

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In the current arc of One-punch man remake of the manga, drawn by Yusuke Murata and written by ONE, the heroes struggle in the final showdown against the Monster Association. While they managed to defeat most of the opponents, including the Psykos and Orochi leaders, the Monster Association leaders proved to be much stronger than they expected. One of them, Evil Natural Water, is a stupid monster created by the experiments of Psykos, a creature whose body is entirely made of water and can absorb other liquids. After being defeated by Garou, the creature moved into the ocean where it absorbed enough liquid to grow to a colossal size, growing so large it dwarfed an aircraft carrier. Saitama, however, defeated him with one punch anyway, then moved to save the transporter, and in the process he revealed important information about his power.

In Chapter 157, pondering the best way to save the ship capsized by the huge waves, Saitama thinks that if he had a place to hold on tight, he could just lift the carrier and carry it away. While the solution he comes up with is even more ridiculous (riding the transporter like a surfboard), this statement gives readers a minimum threshold for Saitama’s strength.

The two newest carriers used by the US Navy, the Nimitz-class and the Ford-class, weigh around 100,000 tons, so it’s far to assume that Saitama is capable of lifting and moving at least that much. The force needed to hold something against gravity, or lifting, is calculated using the formula m (mass in kilograms) xg (force of gravity, 9.8). To lift this air carrier, Saitama would then produce 882 million joules of force. Although it is basically useless to convert lifting force into punching power, since many things must be taken into account in the latter (such as speed, impact, friction, etc.), even with a ratio 1:1 incorrect, Saitama’s punch would have the force of two megatons of TNT. For reference, modern nuclear weapons in the United States arsenal have a yield ranging from 0.3 kilotons to 1.3 megatons. So Saitama’s punches hit with the force of a few decent sized nukes. Poor Evil Ocean Water didn’t stand a chance.

Applying science to works of fiction can be fun, especially in the case of outrageous manga such as One-punch manbut every calculation is obviously an approximation, as comic book characters rarely adhere to the laws of physics, and this is especially true for Saitama.

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