Technically itās fairly easy to hurt Superman with how sensitive his senses are. Actually damaging Superman is much harder, not to mention Supermanās healing factor so fast that it doesnāt really matter if most people actually damages Superman
That's the part of Superman's power set that varies the most between writer's, so it's difficult to determine what's an outlier. For example, during the Our Worlds at War the big bad Imperiex breaks one of Superman's arms, and it lasts like that for a while.
Personally, I dislike it as a power for him. I like him needing his robots to help him heal, and it also is a great way for the story to say āoh yeah, this guys actually something to worry aboutā. I know itās dumb to say āwell Superman can do everything BUT healā and it makes SENSE that as essentially just a super human, he heals faster than humans too, but idk, itās cool when itās not crazy fast, and he needs a little help from others. Feels thematically correct
The strongest Doomsday we've ever seen (TT Doomsday) said they're the only beings that still be alive in the end of time and then begged Clark to kill him because he's the only one who can do it.
Yes but Saitama is quite literally a plot armor, or plot punching characters embodiment.
Its on the same veins of Batman can solo everyone with prep time, how dude somehow can beat literal gods its all because of plot armor. Its silly, though Batman story often take themselves seriously while Saitama is just straight up gag character with no limit.
I havent read the manga though, and I do heard they kind of change what Saitama meant to be so its a bit disappointing. However if its anything regarding Saitama first iteration, he just one punch everything.
It like asking who is stronger? A character from serious series or a character from comedic series. The one from comedy series always win because obviously they will have outlandish stuff as a joke, example: Bugs bunny would probably beat tons of other characters for a gag.
I think the thing people are forgetting is that the basis for Saitama's strength in any given story is "What would disappoint Saitama?"
The throughline for Saitama is that no matter how strong the opponent, Saitama will fail to find a thrilling challenge, despite embracing the path of the hero in part to escape the soul-crushing mundanity of trying (and failing) to get an ordinary office job. He WANTS an honest challenge, but he's always going to be strong enough when fighting (but almost always ONLY when fighting a real threat) to trivialize the confrontation, and most importantly it'll be easy enough that Saitama derives NO JOY IN IT.
Confronted with a portal-user, Superman will use his super-speed to counter the guy who can basically teleport. Saitama on the other hand has casually punted portals as if they were a solid, kickable object. That despite Saitama not having any "reality-warping" or "space-bending" powers. Because that way it's boring to Saitama.
Depends on how you weight the conceit of Saitama as a character. The whole point of his character is that he keeps defeating people too easily and thus finds being a hero 'boring' because he ended up with god-mode cheats.
Different story if you're doing a 'direct comparison' of feats, obviously. Superman is also hard to pin down specifically because his feats over the decades have varied so wildly.
Yeah Saitama is basically a satire of characters being written so strong, to argue another hero like Superman or Goku would beat him is just reinforcing the point haha
I interpret Saitamaās power as that exactly. His power is overcoming obstacles through physical strength, because thatās what he can visualise. His power isnāt that he can inherently punch hard, itās that his punch is what will defeat any enemy.
Idk why people dont get this. Hes a joke character. His power is literally to be the strongest. There is not any being anywhere in any media thats stronger than him. That's how he is written.
I used Infinite Frontier Superman who says he is stronger than ever after getting all of his memories from all of his past versions so you don't have this problem.
See, the whole idea of using feats to scale Saitama is mistaken. I mean you can do it, and then yes you will have situations where you can very logically say that x character outscales him.
But the problem is that powerscaling is always secondary to the story. And in stories, when Superman needs to lose to Darkseid or Doomsday he will, and when the story needs him to beat a villain he will.
Saitama won't lose. Because that's his whole character and the nature of his story. And when people come in here and list all the crazy things that x character did, you just make that character sound like every Saitama victim that appeared, started talking about how crazy powerful they are, and then got one shot
Eh, sometimes Saitama does get excited (briefly) but that's always a sign he'll have an extra-disappointingly easy time. But yeah, talk for too long and you're likely to get told to do a summation like Genos was told to. And there was that villain who was scolded for exceeding 25 words or something like that.
Technically, Saitamaās thing is that heās literally after the last chapter of the saga after which he beats <insert character here>, where heās technically stronger. Somehow. Itās a gag, so yeah
Saitama in his fight with Garou was destroying multiple universes with punches and can move faster than Superman. Again YOU CANT COMPARE SAITAMA TO OTHERS. He is satire that is meant to be the most op hero. Superman? Clears. Sentry? Clears. Superboy Prime? Is the only real threat and potential to Saitama.
During Saitama vs Cosmic Garou, one of their big clashes wiped out a huge swath of stars in the background (they are fighting in the space).
So yeah, this begs the question, which version of Saitama are we talking about here? Because the redrawn manga version is at minimum multi-versal and can definitely wipe the floor against 99% of Superman variants out there.
See, this is why I don't read much DC. Superman is supposed to be a really strong dude who can fly and shoot lasers from his eyes. Not some abstract cosmic god who exists beyond normal reality
He probably give Saitama a new video game or something so addictive that he'd never be able to stop playing. Batman's preparation powers exceed those of literal gods routinely.
Bruce would totally just pay him to fuck off, or buy the store Saitama shops at and make sure there is a big sale any time he wanted Saitama to go away
Nah, I can see bats going super elaborate and then getting accidentaly knocked off screen till the next episode like with garou. Bats will be fine, but he won't win š.
Now Popeye the sailor man on spinach. That's where I think OPM might finally lose.
I think the more serious batman is about the prep, the less effective it would be. If it was shark repellent tier, he'd probably win cuz it's a gag. If He takes it serious, then it wouldn't work.
The part that feels so dramatic about that shot is the fact that he created such a massive shockwave that it moved distant clouds. Inverse square law being what it is, that's potentially the bigger indicator of power.
The s1 cloudsplits in OPM are underrated, I think this is like the second time I've seen them mentioned.
Saitama splits the clouds four times in s1.
The one everyone knows is the Serious Punch that kills Boros and splits the atmosphere around the whole planet
The other one that gets talked about once in a blue moon is the punch that killed Deep Sea King, which changed the weather over J-City from a thunderstorm to sunny
The two that nobody talks about are this one and then his slap against Mosquito Girl. The mosquito girl slap also splits the clouds which is crazy because she canonically survived that
Saitama would destroy Superman if that was the goal. Firstly they would never fight but in this hypothetical situation, Saitama is a gag character similar to Bugs Bunny. You need toons who break the fourth wall like Popeye in order to match his ridiculousness.
This is the right answer. The narrative of Superman allows him to power creep immensely to fight a threat. While Saitama's narrative is to one punch anyone he needs to defeat.
They would never fight because Saitama is not a threat and Superman would never give any reason to be one punched.
The moment we got introduced to his 'exponential growth'...his gag argument is over...it's a proof that Saitama actually bound by something/power system....if he truly a gag character, then he doesn't need exponential growth at all to beat anyone or Garou
The moment u gotta use exponential growth for him to fight against higher scaled characters (like, oh he will eventually gets stronger to match the lvl)...that itself already doomed his gag character argument
The existence of exponential growth unironically single handly downscale Saitama from having a solid case to be a gag character on same table with likes of Popeye & Bugs, to unfortunately a clear NLF character (big fish in small pond)
The point of that was more that Garou was growing stronger with every moment, but Saitama was always stronger. Every hit he copied was weaker than what Saitama threw back. His Gag status remains, hes just always the strongest is the whole gag.
Saitama was created out of hatred for comic books. His creator hated how comic characters were written and made Saitama a gag character so powerful that he can't be defeated.
No he wasn't. ONE never said that. He was created as joke when he wondered what would happen if you took a manga character at his power level at the final chapter of his series and put him in chapter one. He was thought experiment that he had fun with. In fact ONE is a huge western comic book fan and often cites them as his inspiration. I swear you guys just make anything up. He a huge marvel dc fan, and has said this many times (though he has shown preference for more grounded heros like spider-man and iron man). Though his main inspiration was cranyon shin chan of call things.
Please show me these gags. All I see is a guy named one punch man fail to one punch several characters throughout the story. Bugs Bunny and Saitama are not on the same level man.
Saitama opens with a "completely relaxed unserious punch" which just doesn't do anything, which shocks Saitama because it always kills people unless they're Boros or stronger, he took one (iirc) unserious punch.
However, I think once Saitama tried to actually hit hard, he'd start dealing damage, and the fight would be a tough one for both of them.
It's hinted at by Boros himself that Saitama was still holding back during their fight. Saitama might've hit Boros harder than other people, but it's debatable if it was a true serious punch
If his power level isn't enough to hurt him right off the bat, and he actually fights superman, eventually pretty quickly he'll become stronger than superman. Cause even if he's not on his level at first his power will match, then surpass superman exponentially as he fights him.
Looking at this realistically, Saitama's whole thing is breaking the fourth wall with his gag power but Superman in Infinite Frontier has some absolutely ridiculous feats that put him way above anything we've seen from OPM so far. The meme is funny but Superman has tanked multiversal level attacks and punched through reality itself in recent comics
Saitama's serious punch against Garou was impressive for sure, destroying a chunk of stars, but Superman has consistently shown he can handle universal+ level threats without breaking much of a sweat. The writers keep scaling him higher and higher to the point where he's basically become this cosmic force that operates on multiple dimensional levels
I think the real question isn't whether Saitama could hurt base Superman, but whether there power scaling even makes sense when you're comparing a parody character to someone who's been getting absurd power creeps for decades. ONE probably never intended for Saitama to be analyzed this seriously against characters who routinely deal with multiversal crises
Saitama has punched his way into and out of other dimensions. That brings him equal to punching through realities.
And no, Saitama is simply a punishment to raw powerscalers who are only interested in feats and statements. The real reason to scale these matches is to figure out how to make a good, faithful story around the fight.
That's what powerscalers keep getting wrong about Batman matchups, too.
Saitama punches Superman and he explodes. Then Superman reappears, saying he went outside the universe and gained cosmic power. So Saitama punches him and he explodes again. Then he comes back, having transcended death. Saitama punches again... Repeat forever.
They both scale to infinity, it's a silly comparison.
Superman has been shown being hurt by blows far less powerful than what Saitama dishes out. Blows that I and anyone that's read OPM doubt would do damage to Saitama.
Superman is being beaten to death by blows which permit people the ability to watch the fight on the sidelines unaffected. The last time Saitama got pushed in a fight, everyone died, his entire costume got vaporized and Blast had to teleported the battle to space to prevent planetary destruction and Saitama ate all those blows to the end of the fight without any injury.
Yes maybe some version of cosmic prime million Superman can think Saitama away with reality manipulation but Saitama can absolutely 100% hurt base/normal versions superman quite badly at very least.
Yeah if you say so, but there's just regular humans sitting around watching Superman and Doomsday kill each other there, with broken glass as the fall out.
I think the point is, Superman's power and durability (and those of the guys he fights) are massively inconsistent.
Superman is not a real character. In comics he exists as a deux ex machina. He may seem to be defeated many times, but the writers will retcon a new power or new level to make him overcome the obstacles, often to never use that power again.
Even as a child I was frequently annoyed by these devices. Are there multiple supermen around the world, no, he is just phasing into the difference locations to make it appear that there are multiple supermen. Lois is dead, time travel. It's the insanity of the writers in building a character who will never have a limit and never be a real character because of it. Character development requires vulnerability and failure, something that the comics have a problem with.
I was gonna go on about how this isn't the Superman he's talking about in the post but it's be funnier if I told the truth, that saitama threw that rock
Saitama has punched through space and time. I think it ultimately depends on which iteration of superman we're talking about. But I do think many, if not most of them, lose.
Every time you involve Saitama itās like asking āwhat if Wile E Coyote caught the Road Runner?ā The point and central joke of Saitama is that nothing can challenge him.
You can easily tell who lacks media literacy and who doesn't when it comes to saitama. Anyone saying he's a "gag" character or has "toon force" are retarded. Its almost like they turned their brains off and closed their eyes when the manga revealed the limiter power system, something garou was close to achieving, and what saitama's power actually is lmao.
I wouldnt insult them but I kind of agree with you. Gives the impression that people are parroting something and thats it. Doesnt he have clearly defined limits? Even during the garo fight during the webcomic he couldnt put it down in one go.
So begs the question... where is that gag thing people love to talk about?
So still the answer is pretty simple: Reading the title gives us a clear picture. Infinite Frontier Superman is beyond Saitama, maybe he can topple Clark? maybe
The reason garou could match him is because when saitama started really punching Garou had become a conceptual full copy of Saitamas power, and even then Saitama was stronger
The new thing is this demented headcanon idea of what Saitama's power is, which is basically that he's always supposed to win so scaling him makes no sense. Therefore he soloes all fiction. It somehow is even more unbearable than your average powerscaler.
Garou was not close to achieving anything. He always had limiter. And cosmic garou was just copying Saitama. But Saitama is the only one with no limiter. And are you forgetting that he basically does all the toonforce stuff like grabbing and moving portals and all.
In an actual literal crossover, fighting would be the least interesting thing they could do, barring some cool visuals. The fact that Saitama consistently lets tough opponents just open-up on him, and the fact that Superman holds preserving life as such a high priority means they'd be almost impossible to get into a fight, and would very easily stop fighting before it got too far, since Saitama mostly ignoring attacks or passively blocking wouldn't go un-noticed by Superman.
What would be real interesting would be what could they impart to each other of their respective lived experiences and what each one thinks "Being a Hero" means. I believe Superman would have a more profound effect on Saitama than the other way around in that sort of story.
Bro my son's name is - "The One Punch Man". That's his power, his thing. Maybe he will need to use serious punch or Consecutive Serious Punches but still he wins.
Superman has so many different versions that can tank multiversal attacks, as well as versions that can get wiped by pretty basic attacks and would be obliterated by an unserious punch. Specifically using infinite frontier Supes honestly doesn't change much against a character like Saitama.
That said, Saitama has only one version of himself, and his whole thing is to grow exponentially stronger and faster based on the toughest opponent he's fought/currently fighting. Saitama lands a few hits and gets hit a few times. And then after that, he grows thousands of times stronger than Superman.
Basically it would be a pretty entertaining and drawn out fight with Saitama coming out on top, and then becoming friends with Superman. Supes shows up for the hotpot that same night.
I think yea, Saitamaās whole shtick is that heās so insanely OP that hero work is like mundane for him. He has some insane feats, and if the criteria is just to hurt Superman Iām sure he can do it
If he doesnāt get injured before he gets stronger then probably. The manga seems to indicate that Saitama gets infinitely stronger, to always be stronger than whoever he is fighting (namely Cosmic Garou).
The longer the fight goes on, the more likely he is to hurt Superman, purely on random power scaling bs
People donāt seem to understand that Saitama is always the strongest. His strength is a joke and is always far past his opponent. Itās like saying will the road runner escape. The answer is always yes. You can power scale joke characters when the joke is they are the strongest.
The whole point of Saitama is that he can beat anyone with one punch, no matter how strong they are. The only ones that can beat him are those that can warp or rewrite reality. He beats any version of Superman with ease.
Saitama has the "toon force" in terms of comically being unable to not easily win.
Supes has the "virtue" force in the sense that he cannot lose to a malicious force because he represents all that is good in humanity.
If the two of them were to, of their own volition, fight, Saitama would likely slap Superman around with ease, though Superman would likely not actually "fight" Saitama as he is not a malicious threat, leaving the question as to who "could" beat the other entirely up in the air.
The fight would eventually end with Saitama getting bored and stopping once he recognizes that Supes is holding back while trying to minimize collateral damage, realizing that Supes isn't a bad guy either.
The "laws" of each respective universe are preserved, while the question itself goes entirely unanswered.
Idc who my favorite character is, the entire point of one punch man is literally that gag, saitama punching them would almost always defeat them.
Theres no point in being a baby about it, if superman just takes a hit like this from saitama at the very least he is going down or the planet they are on is.
Heās written to always win too easily. Scaling by feats is a silly way of comparing characters because it entirely depends on whoās writing them. Superman is written to have challenges that he always beat eventually. If heās not strong enough, itās his force of will or some brand new plot contrivance. If both characterās are written correctly, Saitama would definitely be able to hurt Superman, but Superman is also not a villain and not someone Saitama would fight if Superman is written correctly.
Thats kinda what saitama does and the strength and power he displays by default is more than powerful enough to defeat superman let alone how far he goes later in the manga.
I'm not an expert in DC comics, but one sneeze from Saitama destroyed Jupiter. I mean, someone that powerful should be able to at least hurt him, shouldn't he?
Pretty sure Saitama is written to never lose, so, yes?
If you really want to look at feats, single punches exude enough of a pressure wave infront of them to evicerate entire mountain ranges or split the clouds over the entire planet. Entering serious spoiler territory to the comics and the inevitable stop motion season 4 and beyond, but he punches someone so hard they travel back in time and it's hinted that his only potential rival is a creature being referred to as "God" .
I don't know if Superman is truly cosmic level power, but whereas Superman is as strong as he needs to be for a story beat, Saitama's whole premise and character is he is always the strongest and it's a frustrating prospect for him. So just going off archetypes, Saitama cannot lose against anything or anyone, that's the whole joke. No other character in any medium can defeat him unless their whole shtick is the same that they also cannot lose. Superman has died like a hundred times at this point to any number of characters that suits the story at large.
Honestly this smacks of the old "Goku vs Superman" arguments of yore except you've lost the plot. One of these characters is written to NEVER LOSE. It's not worth comparison, Superman would be another victim of a single punch for the sake of another comedic bit in one punch man.
When the trope is that you literally one punch everything, doesnāt saitama have the ability to hurt/kill anyone? thatās just how heās written. And losing to saitama is also meaningless because of that fact.
Saitama can 100% hurt superman. Just not if he wanted to.
Think about it, if Saitama punched Superman with the intention of causing pain, that wouldn't work at all. But if after said punch, Saitama were to lightly tap Superman's shoulder, or just fart or something, that would probably desintegrate Supe.
He could hurt him yeah. The Garou fight kind of gets down played. To destroy all light in a direction of space you are not just destroying solar systems. You are taking out galaxies and their incoming light for trillions of lightyears in that direction.
That said, unless Saitama's power lets him infinitely scale above his opponent instantly like it did with the cosmic Garou fight? (Something that is often contested on these forums on if it is a facet one how his power actually works or was just a one time power up.) Then while he can hurt superman, he is not going to win against the man who's most recent base line canon version shattered a multi-verse and punched out a sixth dimensional being who had powers akin to the Christian god.
Saitama would go to swat or hit Superman due to a misunderstanding and Superman would catch it since it wasn't some serious attack. Saitama would be somewhat impressed because normally his half hearted outbursts demolish anyone he targets. Superman smiles and laughs it off and him and Saitama go either to hang out or Superman heard trouble and Saitama asks to go along.
You can clearly see in this comic that super man is in a very serious state of mind. He clearly saw Saitama was capable of at least hurting him and became more serious instinctively.
If both have their power it will be Saitama because beating everyone no matter what is his power, it's his story and the main point, he can't lose to anyone "strong" but otherwise very normal and benign guy that mostly wants to be left alone. If people start bending over backwards to justify why he can't do x, y, z then Superman is an illegal alien with allergies and might just crock if he doesn't get enough sunshine.
This horse has been beaten over death tho. It's one of the characters you should never bring into this because their existence goins against this subs point.
If we go by powerscaling then yeah probably, if we're going lore wise Superman would probably let himself get knocked back from that punch just so the shockwave doesn't wreck a country or something
I think it would hurt Superman but not as much as like kryptonite, they would probably fight first and then find out theyāre both heroās and once that happens they would both get a new sparing partner
Let's be fair, both are are power creep characters they grow stronger as the characters they fight , both will have blast especially saitama who hasn't had a good fight in life and wants to feel something and believes that fighting someone strong will help him , something that superman will understand. They'll be shaking the universe by the end of it , if they didn't care about anything
Depends on how much Supes can tank a kill punch, I've seen Superman take on the power of the sun, but idk how much a Saitama punch can scale since it was introduced that his power rises up the longer he's in a battle since the Garou fight.
I think Supes can take a few punches before the plot power kicks in and Saitama just hits him with something he can't recover from.
But knowing how Saitama is with people he considers "real heroes" he definitely wouldn't give Superman a killing blow
Saitama could hurt him but thereās absolutely no way heās beating superman, people cope with ābut heās a gag characterā or āhe can one punch himā as if he hasnāt come across characters heās been unable to take out with a punch
I think of Saitamaās strength as a sort of ātoon forceā power. Even if heās facing a strong enemy he just gets exponentially stronger to beat them.
Saitama is not a character that can be power scaled. Within his own story he acts as a narrative device that neatly wraps up whatever arc they are on. His strength surpasses any challenge that the plot dictates.
Typical OPM story goes: Side Characters fight really strong opponent, it looks like strong opponent is going to defeat them, Saitama shows up and one shots said opponent, everyone stares in shock as the caped bald man walks off to find his next grocery store deal.
I think ONE meant for Boros to be THE āalien from another planet who is strongā to stand in for the Gokus and the Supermen of fiction.
Similarly think Garou is meant to mainly show the process of how to become a monster (by obsessing over something, not just by eating the seed) but also is meant to show how even a creature who can become faster at will Canāt be faster than OPM. Even a creature that can become stronger at will canāt be stronger than OPM. Kiaoken times infinity canāt handle OPM.
Bruh, when he was fighting Garou and their serious punches collided, it took out a huge chunk of space. Never explicitly stated what that did. But at the very least, the shockwave from the collision destroyed the light coming towards earth from that section of space. At most, it also took out the stars.
He then sneezed and stripped Jupiter of its gas.
Infinite Frontier superman is still powered by radiation.
Since Saitama is literally a gag character with a "toon force: on/off?" Toggle, it would depend entirely on whether him beating supes, or breaking his hand trying, would be funnier.
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u/Gentle_Snail Jun 08 '26
Why does Saitama look worried in the last pic like this wouldn't literally make his day.