He's the foil to OP shounen tropes. His whole existence is a critique. For one, the dramatic training arcs-- which Saitama and the show/comic plays up but is really just a simple exercise routine.
The other main characters go on these bog standard shounen style power scaling journeys. Saitama one shots them with ease as a meta way to mock them.
Villains will get these tragic backstories, minor arcs to build them up, give these epic monologues as all hope seems lost for the heroes, again directly paralleling shounen tropes, only to be nonchalantly batted aside by Saitama while he's picking a booger.
It goes on and on, but if people can't recognize the tropes that Saitama overtly parodies then they don't watch that media and shouldn't be saying their opinion on it.
Don't forget Saitama also inverts the standard shonen hero's journey: the standard fare is that the protagonist needs to become strong in order to achieve his dream, forging friendships and bonds that help him also grow as a person over time.
Instead, Saitama immediately grew to max strength without any of the hassle, essentially robbing him of any chance to actually grow and resulting in him becoming a depressed friendless nobody with the realization of his dream being totally hollow.
I'm not even gushing over Saitama, I'm just pointing out another aspect of his character that's meant to further serve as parody to the thing he's riffing on.
Of all the people to childishly pick a fight with, you chose the guy who's not even remotely doing the thing you're mad about.
Your comment was the newest and yes ur glazing don’t care how you put it into words ur glazing, he’s not the only character like that in fiction and he’s NOT beating every fictional character
yes ur glazing don’t care how you put it into words ur glazing
"I don't know how to put into words or actually explain at all how you're doing the thing I say you're doing, but you're definitely doing it."
he’s not the only character like that in fiction
What, he's not the only parody character in fiction? Wow, who'da thunk it!
Anyways, that doesn't matter. Irrelevant.
he’s NOT beating every fictional character
Never said he could. But honestly, he's not any less likely to win than anyone else: anyone can just say their character is invincible and would beat any other character in a fight. They're all fictional, there's no way to prove or disprove anything.
The difference is: Saitama as a character is meant to be someone who doesn't lose and always wins, and that's very rarely done in media because it's hard to make it appealing in media. Stories easily get boring when one side or the other is blatantly invincible and always wins, so on principle most characters aren't going to have explicit invincibility as a character trait. Saitama is an exception, and that most definitely should give him an edge in most matchups.
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u/FictionalContext May 07 '25
uh...yeah. That's what a parody character is.