ArachDusa
She/Her- 107
- 42
The One Punch Man manga's rendition of Saitama's final battle against Garou is one of the most important pieces of scaling of the series' God tiers, not only in terms of destructive power, but also a wide array of unprecedented and exceptionally powerful hax abilities, with the crown jewel among them surely being the titular One Punch Man's power of endless growth. Here's the thing about it, though: Not only is it not unprecedented and has in fact been foreshadowed before, the way it was introduced way back when has its own interesting application for the series and its top tier scaling.
There were many allusions to the idea that Saitama's power never stopped growing, from Murata stressing out that he never stopped training to the quote to Glasses used on his profile in the Wiki itself. The most blatant, however, is the second audiobook confirming that Saitama grows strong enough to oneshot his past self every day, with both Saitama and Genos affirming that it's obvious that he wouldn't lose to himself from yesterday and that his power is dramatically increasing by the day. This statement would (and did) sound pretty murky in isolation, but after the Garou battle, it seems quite undeniable. Past objections like that time Saitama said he "can't get stronger anymore" (Which, assuming it wasn't itself an inconsistency or retconned, must have not been referring to literal physical strength) or the out-of-context statement from ONE that Garou versus Boros would be a "good fight" have now officially been blown out of the water thanks to the actual Garou fight in the manga, where Saitama's endless growth was pretty much the only reason he could prevail against an enemy who had all of his raw strength and several times the intelligence and hax.
But of course, there is now a new objection in town: Some people have argued that Saitama's strength was only growing because of his upsurge of emotions whereas it's normally static. The actual monologue where that statement was taken from paints quite a different picture:
So what do we do with this information? For starters, we should put the audiobook statement back in Saitama's profile. The Wiki already used audiobook statements to scale mid-training Saitama to Tatsumaki (which he wouldn't be even close to if we went purely by the manga) and other profiles like Superalloy Darkshine and Genos use the same audiobook that Saitama's growth statement comes from. Maybe after that we could get rid of the stuff about scaling Boros to Orochi via normal punches and possibly buff Orochi in general since he fought a stronger Saitama, but I'd rather not even go there until after we're done with the much more basic and hopefully uncontroversial step of updating Saitama's profile. The logical implications it has on other characters are a topic for another day. Thank you.
There were many allusions to the idea that Saitama's power never stopped growing, from Murata stressing out that he never stopped training to the quote to Glasses used on his profile in the Wiki itself. The most blatant, however, is the second audiobook confirming that Saitama grows strong enough to oneshot his past self every day, with both Saitama and Genos affirming that it's obvious that he wouldn't lose to himself from yesterday and that his power is dramatically increasing by the day. This statement would (and did) sound pretty murky in isolation, but after the Garou battle, it seems quite undeniable. Past objections like that time Saitama said he "can't get stronger anymore" (Which, assuming it wasn't itself an inconsistency or retconned, must have not been referring to literal physical strength) or the out-of-context statement from ONE that Garou versus Boros would be a "good fight" have now officially been blown out of the water thanks to the actual Garou fight in the manga, where Saitama's endless growth was pretty much the only reason he could prevail against an enemy who had all of his raw strength and several times the intelligence and hax.
But of course, there is now a new objection in town: Some people have argued that Saitama's strength was only growing because of his upsurge of emotions whereas it's normally static. The actual monologue where that statement was taken from paints quite a different picture:
How anyone could read this and conclude that Saitama only now started to grow in power where he wasn't growing before is beyond me. This monologue is clearly stating that Saitama's upsurge of emotions was causing the growth rate he already had to increase, not that it allowed him to grow while he previously couldn't.Even now, Saitama has only continued growing. His rate of growth, which went unnoticed by everyone because nobody was remotely on par with him, began to soar exponentially due to an upsurge of emotions like none he has ever experienced.
So what do we do with this information? For starters, we should put the audiobook statement back in Saitama's profile. The Wiki already used audiobook statements to scale mid-training Saitama to Tatsumaki (which he wouldn't be even close to if we went purely by the manga) and other profiles like Superalloy Darkshine and Genos use the same audiobook that Saitama's growth statement comes from. Maybe after that we could get rid of the stuff about scaling Boros to Orochi via normal punches and possibly buff Orochi in general since he fought a stronger Saitama, but I'd rather not even go there until after we're done with the much more basic and hopefully uncontroversial step of updating Saitama's profile. The logical implications it has on other characters are a topic for another day. Thank you.