Characters / One-Punch Man: Saitama

One-Punch Man Main Character Index
Saitama | Hero Association (S-Class Heroes) | Neo Heroes | Villains and Monsters (Garou | Monster Association) | Others

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Saitama

Voiced by: Makoto Furukawa (Japanese), Max Mittelman (English), Victor Ruiz (Latin American Spanish), Dario Torrent (European Spanish), Orelsan (French)

Debut: Chapter 1 (Webcomic & Manga), Episode 1 (Anime)

Saitama

^{Click here to see Serious Series: Saitama}

"Just a guy who's a hero for fun."

Saitama is the main character of the series, who on his way meets various groups of people and monsters. Once an ordinary unemployed salaryman, Saitama was inspired to become a hero when he incidentally saved a butt-chinned boy from a crab monster with nothing but his necktie. He then underwent an intensely unhealthy training regimen for three years, increasing his strength exponentially — he got so powerful, in fact, that he lost all his hair. Now Saitama is so strong, no matter the opponent, he can defeat them with a single punch. Unfortunately, the complete lack of challenge that came as a result has also caused him to grow utterly bored with his life of super-heroism.

Unbeknownst to Saitama, the butt-chinned boy he saved all those years ago was also the grandson of a multi-millionaire who went on to found the Hero Association when he learned about the incident, making Saitama the cause of the increase in and widespread popularity of heroes in the present.

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A — D

• Accidental Hero: He refuses to switch over to Neo Heroes since he considers it too tiresome, which also causes Genos to stay despite his own misgivings of the Hero Association. Considering how shady Neo Heroes turn out to be with them turning their heroes into mindless cyborg slaves, he essentially saved Genos from this possible fate.
• The Ace:
  • A highly downplayed example, almost towards an inversion. While the entire public is ignorant of Saitama and his achievements, the very few individuals who are aware of his true prowess revere him as one. Saitama single-handedly broke all preexisting records in the Hero Association's physical examinations, and in just over 65 days went from C-Class to A-Class. Saitama can achieve several feats which surpass those of all S-Class heroes. A recurring theme in the manga is that, in any given arc, Saitama almost always defeats the strongest antagonist/opponent of that arc. See World's Strongest Man below.
  • Doubly inverted. While Saitama looks unimpressive and is far from being the Ideal Hero, he is the most powerful hero who always wins. Only two beings ever came close to his power and Saitama defeated both of them. Not to mention, he is unusually perceptive about the human mind and offers simple-minded wisdom to Genos.
    Fubuki: I place your strength in high regard... Since you are the one that dealt with the Hero Killer, that means you too have reached the top.
• Achievements in Ignorance:
  • Saitama 100% honestly believes that his absolutely insane levels of strength, speed, and durability came from his daily basic training regimen. Everybody incredulously points out it's physically impossible for a normal human to get that strong even if they are trained all the time for the rest of their lives.
  • He also defeats Garou in one hit. While this isn't that surprising, the kicker is that Saitama didn't even know he was fighting him. He believed Garou was just a guy trying to mug him.
• Adaptational Attractiveness: His past self three years ago in the reboot manga. He's not actually that bad-looking bald either, but the majority of the time he's so lazy that not even his artist can be bothered to finish his artwork making him look like a Muppet or a doll for some reason.
• Adaptational Badass: Due to the Adaptation Expansion of the manga, most of Saitama's battles against the various opponents are given more context compared to the webcomic, such as being able to bathe in lava with no ill effects and being able to bypass into Phoenixman's pocket dimension, "Phoenix Space". Made even more overt with the manga version of his fight against Awakened Garou opening a new can of worms regarding Saitama’s power. Previously the webcomic depicted Saitama as someone who simply became too strong compared to literally everyone else, but the manga shows that, even if someone can actually match Saitama (i.e., Awakened Garou - Cosmic Fear Mode), he will simply grow stronger mid-fight to surpass his own limits, establishing Saitama’s strength as potentially infinite. Further, the same arc reveals he is actually a innate martial arts prodigy, if only he cared enough to learn it.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: The manga version goes an extra mile to show Saitama as a more heroic and empathetic person in certain situations, often in extra events that didn’t originally exist in the webcomic, like dealing with everyday small crimes where he is genuinely nice; in the webcomic Saitama is more consistently emotionally stunted, he does good deeds but often acts completely detached to what’s happening around him, and the moments where he emotes are few and far apart. The manga eventually reinforces the point of Saitama being more emotionally driven even further during the showdown between him and Awakened Garou, making use of the common hero trope of avenging a friend, Genos; there were no personal stakes and commitment in their original Webcomic fight.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: In line with Saitama being shown as just a tad little nicer and emotive in the manga than he ever was in the webcomic, Saitama’s care for Genos in the manga is eventually portrayed more clearly than in the webcomic. Originally any friendship was largely implicit as Saitama humors Genos with his time by pretending to be his sensei, and later on in the webcomic Saitama spends time scouting with Genos when there’s nothing to gain from it. However, in the manga's climactic Monster Association Arcshowdown against Awakened Garou - Cosmic Fear Mode, it was shown how much Saitama really cared about Genos: his apparent death is enough to make Saitama enter an intense Tranquil Fury as he attempts to beat Garou into a paste. In the aftermath, the time reversal’s events are also only perceived by Genos’ core, giving him an exclusive view of how much Saitama cares about him, while in the webcomic Genos got no such special confirmation.
• Adaptive Ability: Against Awakened Garou in the manga, Saitama goes from fighting him equally to rapidly overwhelming Garou in sheer power. Unlike the webcomic where Garou grew weaker, Saitama is explicitly becoming massively stronger at a rate that far outpaces Garou's due to a strong upswell of emotion.
• Almighty Janitor:
  • The strongest hero bar none, but started as a C-Class hero due to scoring poorly on the essay portion of the entrance exam. Not to mention that all of his observed victories are seen by the public as nothing more than flukes. His unobserved victories were all attributed to someone else, who is now the most feared hero in the entire organization, despite King being an otherwise ordinary person.
  • This becomes less and less true as more and more people begin to notice his accomplishments and Saitama moves up the ranks, eventually becoming an A-class Hero.
• Always Late: Saitama is forever showing up late to one-shot the giant monsters that have been laying waste to the city, mostly as a Drama-Preserving Handicap. Usually it's played for laughs, but can be sometimes played for drama too, as we see in the Human Monster Saga. It's even discussed early in the series by Saitama and Genos when they're travelling to the House of Evolution:
  Genos: It's amazing how you always manage to be there on time. I guess that's a hero for you!
  Saitama: Nah, I usually arrive too late at the scene.
• Always Someone Better: He is the "someone" to everyone else, and is something of a Running Gag in the series. However, there are particular standouts:
  • The ninja-for-hire "Speed of Sound" Sonic is very proud of his Super-Speed, such that he is practically invisible to the naked eye. The problem is that he is the Unknown Rival of Saitama. When Sonic tries to leap around unnoticed, Saitama easily watches him go. When he attempts a Back Stab, Saitama inadvertently nails Sonic with a painful and embarrassing Groin Attack. When he reveals his ability to create ten 'speed clones' in a fight against Saitama and considers it his best chance to kill the hero, Saitama effortlessly creates hundreds of speed clones. There's just no winning for Sonic, and the audience is expected to have a good laugh at his expense.
  • Garou is another example, whom Saitama initially beats in ignorance. Once Garou finally realizes Saitama's power, he tries to match Saitama, only to find out that he cannot beat him even after he powers up several times. Taken up to eleven after Garou achieved Cosmic Fear mode, a form that is so powerful even S-Class heroes die just by being close to him, and capable of copying powers from others, including Saitama's. And yet he's still no match for Saitama. No matter how many times he copies Saitama's power, Saitama will always hit back harder. Eventually, Saitama's power soars exponentially so that Cosmic Fear Garou is left in the dust.
    Narrator: And now, the only one on a level to be able to observe Saitama's growth, was getting completely left behind.
• And Then What?: Achieved his I Just Want to Be Badass dream and became so badass that nothing posed a challenge to him anymore. Which turned out to be incredibly boring.
• Anti-Hero: Definitely a Knight in Sour Armor. He has the power to completely change the world but is way too lazy to do so. He's also quite cynical about the hero business (not that he's wrong about said business). However, without a doubt, he will do the right thing.
• Armor-Piercing Response: His admission that he is a hero as a hobby generally catches people off guard.
• Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy: He briefly gave off this aura because everyone initially considered him a fraud of a C-Class Hero and he didn't care what society thought of him. But overall, he doesn't really consider himself to be superior to everyone and has a modest outlook on life.
• Art Shift: Saitama is drawn as either a stick figure, a slightly more detailed stick figure, or a fully drawn, highly detailed normal figure that matches the style of the other characters. It's all part of the joke that most of the time he does not look like the type of protagonist you'd see in a Shōnen battle manga and his normally unassuming appearance belies his strength.
• Badass Cape: The only thing his old tailor got right with his outfit is the superhero style cape.
• Badass Normal:
  • He managed to defeat a crab monster with nothing but his necktie before he ever started training.
  • Played With as well. Saitama thinks he's this and that his training regimen gave him Charles Atlas Superpowers. However, it's painfully obvious to everyone who's not him that no man could acquire such strength through simple training, let alone Saitama's training regimen (which is pretty damn intense, but perfectly doable for a normal human being and nowhere near paranormal-level.)
• Badass Teacher: Saitama isn't that interested in playing teacher after realizing he can't teach Genos how to get stronger physically, despite Genos putting him in such a position by becoming his self-proclaimed disciple. Despite this, Saitama does care for his welfare right off the bat, and his attachment grows as the series goes on, even if they don't have a particularly traditional student-teacher relationship. Additionally, Genos actually learns some pretty valuable things by following Saitama's example, which in turn makes him a better hero, and less passively suicidal. In the manga at the end of the Monster Association arc Saitama is beyond mad when Garou kills Genos, leading to a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown. Despite Garou's newly-gained power, Saitama grows even more powerful and beats Garou up.
• Bald Head of Toughness: Saitama did originally have hair when he was an ordinary person. His baldness came as a consequence of gaining his Charles Atlas Superpowers of Super-Strength and Super-Toughness after doing simple exercises every day. Now he is so strong that he can wipe the floor with most opponents with, well, a single punch. That said, given this work is a parody of the superhero genre, when not in Let's Get Dangerous! mode, Saitama does express Baldness Angst and his baldness is often Played for Laughs.
• Baldness Angst: Apart from being the most powerful being on Earth against whom no opponent can last for more than one earnest punch, maybe except Boros, the other thing that invokes angst in Saitama is the loss of all of his hair, which eventually came with his super strength and is one of the things he misses most from his previous life.
• Batman Can Breathe in Space:
  • Downplayed during his battle with Boros. While he does seem to still need oxygen given how he takes the time to hold his breath and pinch his nose shut, Saitama suffers no other ill effects from being on the moon's surface after Boros kicks him there, even casually taking his time in figuring out how he's gonna get back.
  • Played straight in his fight with Cosmic Fear Garou, where he's able to breathe and talk in space and in Io's sulfur dioxide atmosphere.
• Be Careful What You Wish For:
  • He wanted to become a hero who takes out villains with one punch. He succeeded, only to discover that because he's able to take out villains with one punch, he no longer feels any challenge in fighting, leaving him feeling empty.
  • He reflects he may finally have gotten what he wished for in his fight with Cosmic Fear Garou - but he's not the least bit excited about it, because it came at the cost of Genos's life.
• Berserk Button:
  • People commenting on his baldness tends to irk him, which doesn't help with the fact the Hero Association gave him the Hero name "Caped Baldy". He also doesn't like his head being touched, as shown in the fights he participated in Super Fight Arc. But a much grander button for him is heroes who act cowardly. He clearly didn't like Suiryuu's speech about the heroes.
  • As Carnage Kabuto and Dr. Genus found out the hard way, making him miss Bargain Day at the supermarket.
• Beware the Silly Ones: He may as well be the poster boy for this trope. Garou receives a brutal thrashing from Saitama after he rips out Genos’s core to get Saitama to use his full power against him.
• Big Brother Mentor: Plays this role to Genos. Although Genos originally joined Saitama to learn the secret behind Saitama's strength, he instead learns compassion, humility, and heroism. Saitama is a positive influence that is helping Genos transition from a vengeance-fueled Antihero into a true hero.
• Big Damn Heroes: A reoccurring theme and how most story arcs end is Saitama rescuing people. He is usually late and if other heroes are involved, they have probably already been beaten or are in trouble when he arrives. The biggest example is when he defeats the Sea King. As this series is a deconstruction of the whole super-hero genre, this is probably intended. Besides, he isn't aware that he was behind the foundation of the Hero Association for saving the big-chinned person's boy from a monster crab.
• Blessed with Suck: This is how Saitama views his powers. At the surface level, he managed to win the Superpower Lottery: he's insanely powerful, ridiculously fast, and practically immune to damage, to the point of shrugging off anything that is thrown at him and defeating anybody that he fights in, well, one punch. This is exactly why he's so depressed about his superhero job - there's literally no challenge for him no matter how strong and seemingly invincible his opponent is.
• Blood Knight: Part of his depression about being so strong is that no opponent can give him a challenge anymore. Whenever he faces a seemingly strong opponent and defeats it in one punch, he laments that the opponent "kinda got his hopes up", examples being Asura Kabuto and the Deep Sea King. He even had a dream that had him really enjoying the rush of fighting an opponent he thought was on equal footing.
• Blow You Away:
  • Whenever Saitama really starts to put any "effort" in his punches, then expect him to cause a powerful gust of wind created from the immense pressure of his attacks.
  • Saitama’s Serious Sneeze is just a sneeze but is powerful enough to blow away a significant portion of Jupiter’s atmosphere!
• Body Motifs:
  • Fists. His method of fighting is to punch opponents with "Normal" and "Serious" styles, and hence he's called, out-of-universe, One-Punch Man. It's also reflective of his Boring, but Practical nature which drives him to depression - punches are probably the first physical attack a person can resort to, so they aren't terribly unique.
  • His bald head. It's highly likely he gained his baldness at the same time as his powers, bringing to mind the expression that power comes with a price - his powers also cost him an exciting and stimulating life. Plus, his bald head looks a lot like a planet's surface, and he ends up colliding with a lot of those in his battles; to the Moon when fighting Boros and to Jupiter when fighting Cosmic Fear Garou.
• Book Dumb: Saitama did so poorly on the written portion of the Hero Association entrance exam that he was placed in the lowest possible category of hero, despite his record-shattering performance during the physical portion. He scored a 100 on the physical and a 42 on the book. Thus, he got a 71 (the cut-off was 70 points). ^note It's justified, since he is so strong that he doesn't need specific tactics to battle enemies. Presumably, all of his answers were just punch it and it doesn't even vary from the S-Class Heroes' tactics as seen in the Alien Conquerors arc. During his middle school years, Saitama is shown to be napping through the student orientation and was also struggling to keep up with the class, failing to even complete the bare minimum of schoolwork (such as "forgetting" to do his homework and turning it in by the next day when it was assigned to him on his first day of school). But for all that, he's not stupid by any stretch of the imagination, and is often shown to be incredibly observant and a font of Simple-Minded Wisdom; opponents he doesn't vaporize in one punch will often find themselves on the receiving end of a "The Reason You Suck" Speech as Saitama easily homes in on their Fatal Flaw.
• Boring Yet Practical: Compared to other heroes, Saitama has as much flashiness as toilet paper and hasn't the slightest clue as to how to properly utilize martial arts, but is so outrageously strong that he literally doesn't need anything else but to get close to an opponent and turn them to paste with, you guessed it, one punch.
• Born Unlucky: He grew up in poverty with no parents in sight (assuming that they're still alive), struggled to do the bare minimum in middle school which led to him being distrusted by his teachers, and was often bullied with what little lunch money he had on him being stolen. Even his first attempts at heroism ended in complete failure against Piggy Bancon. He even woefully lampshades if he's capable of growing up to be a proper adult. Fast-forward to his first meeting with Crablante showing that he's all but given up on life.
• Boxing Lessons for Superman: Bang has tried a few times to get Saitama to join his dojo, but the latter always turns him down. The most likely explanation for this is that Saitama's quest for a worthy opponent would get even tougher if he started supplementing his strength with martial arts. He eventually joins a martial arts tournament to see if he should reconsider, only to conclude that they're just meant to make you look cool when you fight.
• Break Them by Talking: An accidental expert and one of the few heroic examples. If he doesn't simply just break you physically, he may just talk. When he actually starts to care a little bit about an opponent, he can tear down their egos with Simple-Minded Wisdom or by simply pointing out that he isn't even trying that hard and that there's nothing fancy about his moveset. For example, he makes King, Speed-of-Sound Sonic, Fubuki, Garou, Boros, and Orochi all either break down crying or give into despair by displaying his strength and pointing out their flaws.
• Brick Joke: While talking with Genos before the training session, he wonders what his superhero name would be and comes to the conclusion that he would be called Caped Baldy. Several chapters later, and he does end up getting called Caped Baldy. He doesn't really like that.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: Or in this case, unbelievable yet lazy. While skill wise and intellectually, Saitama isn't much higher than a regular person, his strength and abilities outrank the best of the best, and if he wanted to, he could probably single-handedly hunt every mysterious being to the point of extinction. He's just way too lazy, bored, and laid back to even consider how his power and abilities could change the world.
• Brutal Honesty: When it comes to dealing with other people, Saitama is as blunt and straightforward as his punches. He does not sugarcoat, shows zero delicacy in conversations, and just straight up dishes out a piece of his mind to whoever he actually bothers talking to, usually in short, concise sentences. Most of the time, those short sentences are more than enough to leave an everlasting impression on those he talks to, even long after he's done with them.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: Saitama has one-punched so many humans and monsters alike that he can't be bothered to remember every single one of them, especially since the battles end too quickly for him. The moment someone is actually persistent enough to fight him again, such as Sonic, Saitama has a hard time remembering his name. He isn't even aware that he basically stomped Garou three times, despite Garou being The Dreaded "Hero Hunter" amongst the heroes at the time. Lampshaded by Saitama himself to Suiryu after he killed a monsterized Bakuzan:
  Saitama: I mean, I can't remember every opponent I punch.
• Calling Your Attacks: A more literal example as Saitama's named techniques are just regular attacks. His "Consecutive Normal Punches" are just a bunch of normal punches thrown in rapid succession and from what we've seen so far, his "Serious Series" is just him applying actual effort into a move.
• Cap: Dr. Genus believes that Saitama's power comes from overcoming the limit set by the universe on his growth potential. By doing sit-ups, push-ups, squats and running, or rather, because he was so dang determined to become the best through his constant, mundane exercise routine, he broke all the limits that could ever hold him back, including the laws of reality. Now his power grows unchecked to absurd, and possibly infinite, levels. However, Saitama himself has commented at least once that he doesn't think he can grow any stronger than he is now, implying that he does have a limit (if only self-imposed via his apathy), but considering that he can take on about 99.9% of the universe without trying, it's clear that theoretical limit isn't one he's going to reach anytime soon, if ever. His fight with Awakened Garou shows that even if Saitama fought an opponent near his level, his power will grow at a tremendous rate until he’s once again able to defeat his opponent in one punch. Thus proving Saitama’s feeling about hitting his limit wrong and suggesting he might have truly limitless power.
• The Cape: Saitama is both an aversion and a straight send up of a classic superhero. He's often selfish and is only a hero because I Just Want to Be Badass and It Amused Me. He's a Blood Knight at heart and he literally dreams of fighting something that can give him a challenge. His knowledge of the world he lives in is borderline nonexistent at times. However, he inspires devotion from the heroes around him for a reason. He manages to be enough of an unwitting Stealth Mentor to Genos, Person of Mass Destruction and cliche android boy Anti-Hero, to turn the kid into way more of an Ideal Hero. He's the World's Strongest Man, and yet lives in virtual obscurity and doesn't use his absurd power for anything except being a hero. He doesn't care about the ranks as long as they don't inconvenience him, and he fought off monsters for years without realizing he wasn't getting credit for his work. Deep down, he also cares about protecting innocent people.
• Cassandra Truth: When he first tells the secret to his success at becoming the strongest hero, those present don't believe him. Given the setting, this comes off both as Arbitrary Skepticism on their part and naivete on his; it makes sense that he'd be wrong, but also ignores that others have gained powers and peculiarities through similar levels of effort.
• Catchphrase: He often introduces himself as "just a guy who's a hero for fun".
• Celibate Hero: Despite his trusty Oppai sweater, and saying he isn’t into guys when wrongly interpreting the fact Dr. Genus was interested in his body as something else, Saitama is never shown commenting on women or interested in hooking up with someone, and his desire for recognition is never linked to wanting to be noticed by fangirls or anything of the sort (although he got a little annoyed when he heard Genos has fangirls of his own); later when Fubuki starts trying to pester him to join her group, Saitama is completely indifferent to her, as the Murata manga makes a point to have a few onlookers saying Fubuki is a gorgeous woman, and often thinks of her intruding attempts as irritating.
• Character Development:
  • Starts as a Punch-Clock Hero who only cares about the thrill of the fight, but eventually grows into a genuinely heroic person who makes himself unpopular so that other people can get the respect that they deserve.
  • Exclusively in the Manga version, during and at the end of Awakened Garou vs. Saitama fight, the new version of said event places Saitama in a spot that actively forces him to reflect on how he is faring as a hero, with Genos being potentially fatally wounded making Saitama wonder if he is too complacent by being always late to face a threat; and at the end of the fight when Garou presents the opportunity for Saitama to rewind time to undo the catastrophe he caused, Saitama actually stops to learn a martial art technique, something that he completely scoffed off as meaningless to him before, showing that Saitama will put his ego aside when a situation demands him to get out of his comfort zone. After the time-reversal it remains to be seen if these developments will stick. In the Webcomic, Saitama was never faced with a situation where his entire character was questioned like this.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: Played with. His training regimen isn't even that intense (100 sit-ups and 100 squats aren't a big deal, and while running 10 km and doing 100 press-ups is more impressive, it's still well within ordinary human limits); his commitment to doing it every day is noteworthy, but when he tells people about it they react with incredulity that it could have made him so strong. Genos even notes it would be impossible for a normal human being to reach Saitama's level just by training, suggesting his strength comes from some other source that no one will ever understand.
• Cheap Costume: In appearance.
  • Saitama in full garb looks like he's just one step away from using a paper bag as a mask, notwithstanding that his costume is extremely durable.
  • Interestingly, it seems like his suit in the webcomic may not be the same suit he had in the manga, which was a gift from a supporter. It was highly implied that in the webcomic, Saitama bought his suit on a discount from a party catalogue. It's also likely not the same color as the one in the manga.
• Clark Kent Outfit: While most of it is because of how he is drawn, Episode 5 shows that he is more muscular than he usually looks. Notably, he has a different build in Episode 2.
• Combat Pragmatist: Saitama is all over this trope. He defies Talking Is a Free Action, tends to use his ludicrous speed to get behind people before attacking, nearly always one shots his target, and will kill his opponent if he feels they're irredeemable. This is actually part of the reason the public doesn't like him much, as his pragmatism actually makes him boring compared to flashier heroes like Genos.
• Comically Invincible Hero: Played with and explored — part of the humor of Saitama's character is that he is so outrageously overpowered that his fights are humorously anti-climatic. He wins all his fights ridiculously easily, even the mightiest foes pose no challenge to him, so he does not take his hero work seriously, he goes through everything with little to no effort, and yearns for an opponent that can provide him with a challenge. Saitama is disappointed he might never find a fight that will seriously challenge him, the lack of worthy opponents has led him to suffer from a self-imposed existential crisis, and he claims that his ability to feel all emotions has dulled considerably. The combination of his attitude, unstoppable power, and "unimpressive" appearance often causes his battles to become anticlimactic. He even tells the second monster he curbstomped that his attaining the ultimate power has made his life boring as hell.
• Cosmic Motifs: Heavily symbolized by Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system. In a way, he is also like Jupiter — largely responsible for keeping threats (like meteors) ever affecting Earth thanks to its presence.
• Crippling Overspecialization: When it comes to battles or anything that involves his physical abilities, Saitama is practically invincible. When being challenged outside of that (Rock-paper-scissors, Udon eating contests, video games etc.) he ranges from average to nearly helpless.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: While Saitama is NOT stupid, he is extremely lazy and bored with just about everything. Given that he is functionally indestructible (nothing has yet appeared strong enough to hurt him in combat), this is understandable. Most of the time he barely pays attention or puts effort into anything which gives him the APPEARANCE of being a moron. And then when someone like Boros destroys a city or the Sea King mocks the resolve of heroes...
• Curb-Stomp Battle: He dishes them out regularly; the only battles he has that lasts longer than it takes for him to deliver a single punch are against Boros and Garou, and even then neither came close to beating Saitama.
• Dark and Troubled Past: While not much is known about Saitama's past, there are implications that it wasn't very happy.
  • As a twelve year old child: Saitama was shown living alone in a run down apartment, his parents neither shown nor mentioned. He had no friends, was bullied and struggled to keep up in class, resulting in him being distrusted by the people around. He wondered if he could grow up to become a proper person in society.
  • As a young adult: Saitama failed to live up to society's most basic social expectation of getting a job. He was unemployed and came close to being homeless several times. By the time the series started, he had entirely lost his will to live and just waited for a monster to kill him.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Saitama deconstructs the type of Stock Shōnen Hero that flooded the genre after Dragon Ball introduced Goku:
  • A hero who is motivated by Blood Knight tendencies will give up on heroism if it stops being thrilling for them, no matter how much good they would do. Whereas these heroes will intentionally drag out a fight to make it more thrilling for them, the closest Saitama gets is when he fights Boros and drags out the fight because he pities his opponent and wants to make it more thrilling for him.
  • Similarly, a hero who is motivated by Challenge Seeker tendencies will eventually run out of worthy opponents to fight and discover that it's Lonely at the Top. This also deconstructs So Last Season (what anime fans call "power creep") — what would the hero do if their universe didn't keep creating more powerful opponents for them?
  • The public doesn't find a Showy Invincible Hero like Saitama nearly as exciting as someone like Genos, who is often pushed to his absolute limits or otherwise puts his life at stake and, thus, leaves the outcome of a battle more in doubt. It also doesn't help with Saitama's bland appearance, personality, and pragmatism, along with the unusual Perception Filter surrounding his powers.
  • The Wish-Fulfillment aspect of Saitama's character specifically parallels Goku — while Goku always wishes to be stronger, Saitama wished to be the strongest... and the entire series is about the fallout of getting his wish granted.
  • He is also a deconstruction of the No Social Skills Trope that the Saiyans started. Goku can abandon his family for years and miss watching his sons grow up with no regrets. While the Fandom often jokes about it, stating Goku is a terrible father, Goku's family is actually very supportive and okay with his mild familiar indifference and they all still love each other greatly. Saitama is much the same and dismisses his friends as acquaintances or even annoyances sometimes, angering and upsetting a lot of them or those around them. Granted, a lot of them bother him trying to force him to become their disciple or servant, but even King has had to go all the way to his house to ask for things back that Saitama hasn't returned.
• Destroying a Punching Bag: Saitama destroys a punching bag by smashing it, and the frame it's attached to, into a wall.
• Destructive Saviour:
  • Saitama has shown to be able to control the strength of his attacks, but still tends to go overboard, occasionally causing mass devastation in the aftermath. This is another reason why he's not a popular hero; he leaves a lot of destruction in his wake. When combined with his usual nonchalant and lackadaisical attitude, he comes off as quite unprofessional and uncaring, making it hard to like him at times.
  • He can often be oblivious or not attentive, which leads to destruction that could've been prevented if he was more alert. Case in point, his second fight with Sonic. Sonic, realizing Saitama is a professional hero, proceeds to cause rampant chaos and property damage to goad Saitama, who is currently worrying about something, into conflict. Eventually, he looks up and sees Sonic before casually knocking him out with a single chop, but not before there is a lot of property damage. To cap it off, what was concerning Saitama to the point he wasn't paying attention? That he may lose his Hero Association membership because of a lack of activity on his part.
• Determinator: He’s mostly a Lazy Bum nowadays, but it should be noted that Saitama didn’t gradually build up to his Training from Hell, he did 100 sit-ups, 100 push-ups and a 10 kilometer run every single day for three years to obtain his ridiculous power.
• Deus Exit Machina: One part laziness, one part perpetual tardiness, one part "he only responds to threats he sees on the news and rarely patrols", Saitama is almost never on hand when the villain du jour shows up and starts tearing the heroes new ones, so they have to hold the line until he shows up to beat the villain with one punch.
• Difficult, but Awesome: He's this in the video game A Hero Nobody Knows, to justify keeping his canon invincibility while balancing him. He rushes to the fight, and any team with him on it has only two active participants at first. Combos and perfect guards can lower the timer, but any Saitama team will still have a battle of attrition to survive until he arrives. Successfully stall for long enough, however, and the fight's basically over, since he takes no damage, and, as the title suggests, takes down anyone in one punch (with the only way to counter him being another Saitama).
• Disaster Dominoes: Inverted. By saving a butt-chinned boy from Crablante, the grandfather of the boy funds the Hero Association, making a lot of heroes in the process. For better or worse, at least...
• Disappointed by the Motive: A rare villain-on-hero version of this. The villains may, from time to time, ask Saitama why he's a hero in the first place, fighting against the likes of Eldritch Abominations and the Monster Association who want to Take Over the World and/or Kill All Humans. Saitama reveals that it's not for a sense of justice, for revenge on some villain who wronged him, for the glory that comes with being a hero, or even for money that would inevitably come with being part of the Hero Association's upper ranks. Saitama is, in his own words, "just a guy who's a hero for fun". Many of the villains Saitama fights are utterly baffled that this Nigh-Invulnerable Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass would want to be a hero just for the sake of his own amusement.
• Drama-Preserving Handicap: When individual enemies have a presence beyond a few minutes of screentime, Saitama tends to have a hard time getting to the fight due to a poor sense of direction, leaving other heroes to shoulder the weight of the fight.
• The Dreaded: Any sentient monster that becomes even somewhat conscious of Saitama's true strength will be absolutely terrified of him, as shown early on with the (real) Subterraneans, Ground Dragon, Armored Gorilla and Asura Kabuto. Humans are generally less shaken. Even the virtually powerless and incredibly timid King shows no real signs of fearing Saitama, since he never harms innocent people. He's unknowingly gained a reputation among both the Hero and Monster communities as a mysterious creature living in Z-City after killing several powerful monsters.
• Dreaming of Things to Come: Played with and parodied. He has a dream about saving the world from the mole people who've risen from under the ground to wipe out humanity, and having a truly thrilling battle in the process. When he wakes up, the very same mole people from before are in the midst of launching their attack, but as it turns out they're actually hilariously ineffectual, and that's before Saitama decides to fight them to reenact the thrilling fight in his dream.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: He's rarely given credit for defeating a lot of the major villains early on (in fact, King's "victories" are almost all Saitama's), though he finds out it's mostly because he wasn't a registered superhero. In addition, he's unaware that the creation of the Hero Association is down to him. Even after registering, the people rarely give him credit for his victories, or are unappreciative when they do. In some cases, Saitama will deliberately avoid getting credit when he thinks others deserve it more. He also tends to neglect to report any monsters he defeated to the association, or have no witnesses around to see what he does. That said, Saitama still moves up in rank after each victory, because the Hero Association at least recognizes that he is responsible (and if he's not, they figure promoting him will prove it). He's also slowly gaining the respect of various heroes, who do realize that Saitama really is as powerful as advertised.
• Dull Eyes of Unhappiness: Almost always seen with a blank expression on his face due to extreme boredom and lack of passion, since he's so powerful that almost no one is strong enough to give him a proper challenge.

E — I

• Embarrassing Nickname: He's not pleased to know that the Hero Association gave him the hero name "Caped Baldy" and actually joined the "Hero Name Victims Association" to try and get it changed.
• Enlightenment Superpowers: This is heavily implied to be the source of his power, but it is not confirmed for sure. His physical workout didn't make him strong, it was his single-minded dedication to becoming something greater that caused him to break through reality's power limiter, allowing him to grow in strength indefinitely. It even caused his hair to fall out. His Simple-Minded Wisdom and lax attitude to his life may also indicate he has achieved some form of spiritual enlightenment. Also Played for Laughs. Saitama's story of how he got his powers plays off elements of religious practice in Japanese Zen Buddhism (removing all your hair, engaging in repetitive action to ascend to a higher plane). Both are treated as degrading and silly by Saitama and other characters however.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • Discussed and parodied after he slugs Boros mid-speech.
    Saitama: Are you an idiot? You can't just go around attacking other planets to liven up your boring little life. Even telemarketers wouldn't think of that.
  • Even though he's only a hero for fun, Saitama does not like it when people mock the very role of heroes, something Suiryuu learned the hard way.
    Saitama: Those impurities you were talking about, have nothing to do with anything. Your name is Suiryuu right? You aren't the only one doing what he wants to do. I'll give you some advice too. If your goal is to have fun, I suggest you don't get any stronger.
  • While he did only agree to being Genos' master on a whim, Saitama feels bad that he can't really offer the cyborg any valuable lessons to strengthen himself, and feels like he is scamming the poor guy. Nevertheless, he still provides to be a rather Badass Teacher who cares for his disciple's well-being.
  • No matter what, Saitama never kills humans. He even spared Garou. The code goes deeper, since he will never attack anyone, monster or human, if they are not attacking people or causing damage, as shown by him sparing Oculette in the manga. The webcomic also has him not even considering attacking or killing Amai Mask, who confessed being a monster and revealed his monster form, since he is actually using his power to help people, and had monsterized to stop a Dragon-level threat before it could hurt anyone. Saitama even compliments him for it, after dismissing him in their previous interactions, telling him he is "cool".
• Experienced Protagonist: He starts the series already possessing his renowned strength, endurance, and agility with years of fighting monsters under his belt. He also mentors the younger, less experienced Genos, even sharing the exact training methods he used to become strong with him in the House of Evolution arc.
• Expy: Of the children's character Anpanman. Saitama in his hero costume is basically a Palette Swap of the character. Further, the phonetic transcription of the Japanese name of the series is "Wanpanman."
• Fastest Thing Alive: His fight with Boros shows Saitama can easily reach lightspeed with a jump. In movement speeds Saitama also casually outpaces Flashy Flash, the fastest Hero in all of the Hero Association, and later on keeps pace with foes who are even faster than Flash is (Awakened Garou).
• Fatal Flaw:
  • A rare one for a shounen protagonist: Sloth. It's shown that a lot of Saitama's boredom and dissatisfaction comes from his own laziness and stubborness. He lives practically like a hermit in an abandoned area of town (granted, one that's abandoned because of all the monster attacks before he moved in) and while he has a circle of friends of sorts, he is generally closed off from others. Additionally, when King points out he could find something more engaging since his "hero hobby" no longer brought joy, he shrugs off the advice.
  • His other flaw is more common: Wrath. When he does find something which legitimately challenges him (especially in a way he doesn't like), he often gets very angry. So much so that he once almost killed Bang over a game Bang had challenged him to. His opponents tend to not take him seriously up until he gibs them; when he gets mad at them, every villain panics when they see his Nightmare Face. When Garou kills Genos and all the other heroes in the Bad Future, Saitama gets so mad he throws a Serious Punch at him that Garou returns. If Blast wasn't there to redirect the resulting explosion, Saitama would've have been compliant in destroying the entire planet.
• Finger-Tenting: When he contemplates his lack of fame as a hero.
• Flash Step: Even the fastest beings in the story going at full speed are terrified when he casually outpaces them. Exaggerated during his third encounter with Sonic through another of his "Serious Series", called "Serious Consecutive Side Hops".
• Foil:
  • To King. While Saitama is outrageously strong with no recognition, King is a totally ordinary guy who everyone thinks is an invulnerable superhero. Neverless, they both form a rather Odd Friendship, often spending time playing video games.
  • To Garou. Both of them have a strong sense of morality and justice, albeit manifested in different ways. While Saitama wanted to be like a hero from his childhood who fought villains, Garou wants to be a monster who defeats heroes. While Garou is a genius fighter and a prodigious martial artist, Saitama is an untrained fighter, albeit with good fighting skills. Furthermore, Garou can enjoy the feeling of losing to improve himself to become stronger in most of his fights, while Saitama desires to have a worthy opponent to find the rush of excitement he once had while he was training.
  • To Tatsumaki. Both are characters that have Art Shift between goofy webcomic and serious detailed appearance, look non-threatening but have incredible power, and have a weaker student in Genos and Fubuki respectively, but they have some contrasts: where Saitama had a normal life before becoming a hero, has a calm demeanor, is low ranking and gets no respect, and fights entirely physically, Tatsumaki had a traumatic past, is the moody and easily annoyed second highest rank in the Hero Association, and uses her psychic powers.
  • To Mumen Rider. Saitama is mellow, half-asses his fights, is incredibly overpowered and effective in battle, gets no respect from the public, and is a hero for fun; Mumen Rider is the exact opposite.
  • He also gets foils in particular arcs, like Boros (someone else who'd gotten so powerful he'd become bored, but used his power for casual destruction) and Suiryu (like Saitama, he enjoys fighting for fun, but his abilities have made him famous, and he dismisses heroes).
• Food as Bribe:
  • Was bribed by Bang to eat at his dojo in hopes that he would learn some martial arts.
  • Saitama became immediately friendly with Kuseno when the latter bought him premium gourmet beef.
• Friend to All Children: Despite being a guy who's only looking for a good fight, he's saved many people, including children. Even in his earlier days, before his Character Development, this was one of his more noble qualities. Interestingly, this appears to be more of a manga original trait.
  • His first on-screen heroic act is saving a little girl from being crushed by Vaccine Man.
  • His first heroic act just before his training was saving a butt-chinned boy from Crablante.
  • In the first omake he helps a kid to get back to his house and defeats a snowman monster.
  • In another omake, he rescues a hostaged kid from thieving criminals, who in turn intends on giving him all his meager allowance out of sheer gratefulness. Despite being incredibly broke, Saitama graciously takes the money, and gives it back to the child, encouraging him to spend it something more important.
  • During Sonic's rampage to catch Saitama's attention, he saves a boy from being hit by a car.
  • In another omake, while Saitama doesn't care about being fired if he doesn't do his job of finding a cat, he does quickly cave when the girl who owns it starts to cry, and puts her on his shoulders throughout the search.
  • He saves Child Emperor from Phoenix Man's abuse and later from being attacked by Gale Wind and Hellfire Flame. He shows admiration towards Child Emperor upon his defeat of the monster and says he's a cool hero for such a young age.
  • In respect for Tareo's wish, he stops his assault towards Garou and just knocks him off. Though it's also because Saitama didn't pay for his meal either, so there's no reason to beat Garou for doing the same. Much later, when he fights with Awakened Garou, Saitama listens to Tareo again to not kill Garou, just to stop him.
• Friendless Background: Before Genos came along, he's shown to not have any friends, not hang out with anyone, and have no desire to befriend others, even when he still was in school. He would spend most of his time training to become stronger, going out shopping, watching the news, or fighting monsters. However, as the series progresses, he eventually makes new friends, though he views most of them as acquaintances at best.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: A heroic example. Once upon a time, Saitama was a recently-fired salaryman looking for work, until an encounter with a boy with a big chin and a crab monster changed his life. After three grueling years of training, he became so powerful that he could defeat any foe with a single punch.
• Good Is Not Dumb: While not the intellectual type (he horribly failed the written portion of the hero exam) and can admittedly not be good at paying attention, he's actually quite insightful and perceptive.
• Good Is Not Nice: Downplayed. While he is a remarkably patient and passive person, Saitama is no Extreme Doormat and would snap if people start giving him sauce about his heroics, basically telling them to shove it.
• Good Is Not Soft: While Saitama isn't the Punisher, and doesn't just go around killing bad guys, he has no problem turning sentient feeling creatures (albeit monsters) into piles of meat, bones, and gore. He also doesn't even give it a second thought after turning said creatures into piles of blood and offal. That said, he rarely ever goes for the kill right off and tends to give bad guys the chance to turn themselves in or run. If the bad guys turn out to be real jerkasses, however...
• Good Old Fisticuffs: He has no martial arts training, but he is so strong that simple attacks (in this case, a simple punch) are totally sufficient to smash his opponents.
• The Greatest Story Never Told: Bordering on Perception Filter; most literally can't seem to see the things he does. Doctor Genus believes this is the true price Saitama paid for his vast power. It also helps that King was erroneously given the credit for the sole reason of being the only other person present in those fights.
• Groin Attack:
  • Accidentally does this to Sonic at one point (Saitama just held out his fist, but Sonic's momentum carried him too far forward). Luckily for Sonic, he'd wanted to stop right before making contact instead of actually hitting him, otherwise Sonic would likely be nothing more than a red mess on a tree at this point.
  • Accidentally does it to Sonic again in a special chapter, this time elbowing him in the groin (Sonic was trying to attack him from behind).
• Hero of Another Story: Played with in-universe. Most, if not all of his accomplishments are credited to other heroes, and as such, both the general populace and most of the Hero Association members barely know who he is. A smaller group are aware of him, but not having seen him in action think he's a fraud. A select few both know him and respect him for what he's done. By design, his fellow heroes are The Protagonists of the stories that the in-universe public sees and they are tiny compared to Saitama (who is The Protagonist of the story we, the out-of-universe public, sees) who would be a titanic background character of sorts.
• Hero with Bad Publicity:
  • Played straight and later invoked by the man himself. Because of his anonymity and the fact that he beats villains without any effort, people have accused him of being a fraud who isn't a "real" hero. He saves a town from a meteor but the debris destroys the city anyway, although everyone lives. After he kills the Sea King, a random Jerkass starts mocking the heroes who couldn't beat him before Saitama showed up. Saitama decides to paint himself as a selfish Glory Hound so said heroes get the credit he feels they deserve at the cost of his own reputation.
  • Thankfully this is mostly averted when it comes to his fellow heroes, especially those in the S-Class. They tend to have enough combat expertise to know he's the real deal from the start (Bang) or discover it for themselves the hard way (Tatsumaki and Fubuki). Most of the higher-ups in the Association also seem to think he was placed low due to a fluke and that he should be much higher since he utterly destroyed (quite literally) his physical exam.
• Heroic BSoD: The normally unflappable Saitama suffers one of these when Garou kills Genos right in front of him.
• Heroism Motive Speech: He makes one after some people say a lot of bad things about him, never mind that he saved them from a giant meteor in the first place.
  Saitama: Let me make one thing clear! I'm not working as a hero to get you morons to admire me! I do it cause I want to!
• Heroism Won't Pay the Bills: He receives a monthly stipend once he joins the Hero Association. Despite that, he spends an entire chapter trying to get some pocket change to try a drink from a vending machine. Before joining the Hero Association, he did not have an apparent source of income. Word of God reveals that he made a living doing troublesome part-time jobs, living frugally with his savings, and living off vegetables given to him by people he saved. Despite Genos moving in with him and paying his rent, his standard of living hasn't changed because according to the author, Saitama refuses to spend any of Genos's money.
• Hidden Depths:
  • Saitama originally comes across as a Brilliant, but Lazy type of individual, bored with everything around him. During his fights with Boros and Fubuki, however, Saitama proceeds to show that not only is he much smarter and well versed than he appears, he also has an exceptionally strong moral core.
  • Though he already seems ridiculously strong, Saitama eventually reveals he has a set of "serious series" moves... which amount to him actually trying. Yes, Saitama is barely even trying and still manages to destroy most opponents with just a single half-hearted punch.
  • He was once punched so hard he crashed into the moon (as in his starting point was Earth), and then he jumped all the way back to Earth, and landed almost exactly at where he started from after gauging the gravity of the moon by tossing one rock lightly into the air. There's Improbable Aiming Skills, and then there's GTFO.
  • Despite the absurdity of Saitama's initial claim of how he got his powers from his "training regimen", flashbacks imply that he never started off by gradually building up his body to the point where he could do "100 push-ups, 100 sit-ups, 100 squats, and a 10 KM run" without any problems, but went straight ahead and performed that amount right at the very start of his training. Taking other factors into consideration - he never took any breaks in between, powered through any sort of internal pains and muscle damage that he could've done to his body (despite the fact that a normal person's body would've shut itself down from all that extensive physical effort), did other odd jobs to support himself financially, fought Mysterious Beings during his 3 year-long training, and did all of those with a strong obsession in the mind of becoming a "strong hero who can defeat everyone and everybody with one punch" (not unlike how most people had done in their own activities that resulted in them becoming Mysterious Beings, with Crablante being one such example) - only adds to the mysterious origin of his powers.
  • In both iterations, Saitama is rather ambiguous about the care he has for his friends, considering how he treats them. In the manga, he's a bit warmer, while in the webcomic Saitama is colder and more callous. But ultimately, there is no doubt Saitama genuinely loves and cares for Genos, the manga version especially so.
  • Contrary to Saitama's look of apathy and general passiveness, Garou realizes Saitama was barely keeping himself sane at his level of power, and having Genos around helped him ground himself.
  • The manga suggests that he has a fondness for dogs, much to Genos' chagrin.
• Hidden Heart of Gold: He does not care too much about getting recognition for his deeds, since he does not really put a lot of effort into what he does anyways. But he does want other heroes, those who do risk their lives to save innocents, to be respected. And to achieve that, he will sometimes paint himself in a bad light for them to look better.
• Hope Spot: Played for laughs during one chapter when he and King were playing a fighting game. He manages to reduce King's character's life to a sliver with his "infinite combo"^note really just him spamming low kicks. King then decides that he's given Saitama enough of a handicap before showing what an actual infinite combo looks like. Saitama can only helplessly watch his character's full hp bar be reduced to 0, then throw the controller in disgust after he is defeated.
• Humble Hero: Saitama is very humble, as he purposefully let the masses turn against him for the defeated heroes to be given credit for their efforts against the Deep Sea King, even claiming that they had weakened the monster before his arrival. He did the same for the police station, killing a monster while disguised as a police officer, despite potentially gaining much fame had he revealed who he actually was. He also did not mind that King took credit for all of his achievements. Despite his humility and modesty, he still retains some sense of pride, since he wants to beat up Garou after realizing that the latter didn't want to hunt him during his hero hunt, just because he is a low-ranking hero who is not worthy to be hunted. However, Saitama's desire to pummel Garou mostly comes from his desire for an exciting and challenging fight, not from his pride as a powerful hero. Even though he expresses faint protest at it, there's the fact that his apartment is open for all heroes who he's met, to the point where there's a Running Gag of just interlopers crashing in his apartment.
• Hypocritical Humor: Despite being otherwise apathetic to collateral damage, Saitama really doesn't like being attacked in his own home, especially if it results in damage that he has to pay for. While this would upset anyone, it stands out as being one of the few "normal" offenses that can still cut through Saitama's perpetual boredom and provoke genuine anger out of him.
• I Am Not Left-Handed: Saitama's "Serious Series" of moves, where he actually bothers to put some effort into his attacks (emphasis on some. He's never gone all-out). Most of the time, he's so lazy and disenchanted he's not even trying.
• I Am Not Shazam: The series is named "One-Punch Man," obviously attributing the feat to Saitama. In-universe, he's never been called that.
• I Just Want to Be Badass: Deconstructed and Parodied. Saitama's original motivation for becoming a hero in the first place was just to be a cool, powerful badass and fight strong enemies, like many a Shōnen hero. Well, needless to say, he succeeded with flying colors and now he's so badass that he doesn't know what to do with himself. That and he doesn't seem too interested in looking for anything else.
• I Work Alone: Highlighted in one of the extra chapters. Saitama doesn't value teamwork very much and his teammates are ignorant of his power. Word of God states that Saitama would do poorly in team sports. He was also hesitant to accept Genos as his disciple, but he does seem to care for him and his small group of hero friends.
• Improbable Weapon User: He once defeated a giant crab monster using only his necktie.
• In a Single Bound: Saitama can't fly, so he usually has to jump using his Super-Strength to get places. Since he can easily jump off the Moon all the way back to Earth, it's good enough.
• Inexplicably Awesome: Saitama is basically the most powerful person in the universe, and there's no logical explanation as to how he got to be that. In his view, it's because of his training, but it's pointed out various times that a normal human couldn't possibly become that strong just by following a moderately tough (even by real-life standards) training regimen. Dr. Genus provides the closest thing to an explanation that we get when he infers that Saitama has "broken his limiter", but even then it's essentially a Hand Wave.
• Informed Flaw: Word of God explains that Saitama lacks coordination, but this is only barely suggested in the manga through his awkward posture in a few frames.
• Invincible Hero: Deconstructed and very often played for laughs.
  • Saitama is completely aware of this trope applying to him and the series deals with him coming to terms with this, eventually treating his superheroism more as a hobby than as the standard motive of eradicating evil. In his own words, "having overwhelming power is... pretty boring." And his "fights" almost always end with One-Hit Kill, with only a few actually knowing Saitama's true power.
  • In contrast, Saitama wasn't always invincible. In several flashbacks, we see him covered in his own blood after fighting battles. Currently, he's comparable to what would happen if you put pre-Cell level characters against SSG Goku, and unlike characters like Superman, he has no Kryptonite Factor. ^note This is part of why his fans are such intense rivals to Goku and Superman fans.
• Irony: It turns out Saitama inspired the foundation of the Hero Association. By saving a random kid from a monster, he gave the kid's rich grandfather the idea of creating the Hero Association.
• It Amused Me: Played with. According to Saitama, he's a self-proclaimed "hero for hobby" and has some undesirable traits that wouldn't make him an Ideal Hero. Yet time and time again, he shows that he's willing to do the right thing, and, in the manga, is more compassionable than he lets on.

J — O

• Jerk with a Heart of Gold:
  • He became a superhero for rather selfish purposes, is lazy and seems to care more about having a fun fight, and will sometimes ignore problems in his city until he's directly involved, but he does genuinely want to protect the world. He's just fallen into a lull because of how easy it's become.
  • While he doesn't always act like a paragon of heroism, some of his lines imply that, while he may not act like it, his heart is in the right place. One of the best to date? "If the heroes run and hide, who will stand and fight?" During his dream fight against the Subterraneans, while he admits that he's just a hero for fun, he also says the surface is under his protection.
  • He's also quick to let people think he's a phony, just so that the other heroes who put their lives on the line and nearly died would get the respect they deserved. He doesn't care about getting recognition from the public but thinks the other heroes should get it.
• Killed Mid-Sentence: Not him, but he kills most of his opponents in the middle of introducing themselves and gloating about their awesome powers.
• Kirk Summation: Saitama is rather fond of these:
  • To Fubuki:
    Saitama: You won't survive. You don't get what hero means. There's a lot of incredibly strong bad guys in the world. Those who oppose them are called heroes. Even if they are alone. You, who gathers weaker subordinates to feel strong, won't make it. At this rate, you are gonna cry sooner or later. When a monster stronger than you shows up, none of your subordinates will save you. Factions? Newbie crushing? Keeping your ranks? They have nothing to do with anything! Do not look down on heroes, you moron!
  • To Garou in the webcomic:
    Saitama: So you did have an "image of an ideal hero" inside of you. I see now. I now understand what you wanted to do. Even though you said you wanted to be a "monster of absolute evil"... What you really wanted to be was a hero. But you compromised and decided to be a monster. To bring about world peace, you took the easy route, thinking a monster's job was quicker and easier than a hero's. A monster's role is simpler after all, all you had to do was defeat heroes. It's perfect for someone with no confidence like you. BUT YOU CAN NEVER DEFEAT ME. And peace made by ruling the world with fear can't succeed as long as you can't defeat me. So it will never work. It's absolutely impossible for you. Because if it's your compromised monster hobby vs my serious hero hobby, even if that's all I had, I still wouldn't lose! It was a mistake to lower the hurdle right before the goal. A half assed objective just can't succeed. But what about "next time"? What will you do next?"
• The Leader: He became the leader of the Hero Name Victims Association due to being their highest-ranked member.
• Lightning Bruiser: Strong enough to kill most adversaries with one punch, faster than other heroes renowned for their high movement speed and he has yet to receive a single battle wound, even after taking some really heavy hits (like getting kicked so hard he flew all the way to the moon).
• Limited Wardrobe: He seems to have only a few sets of clothing if you exclude the special chapters. There's also his iconic hero outfit, made for him by his old tailor.
• Line-of-Sight Name: His hero name "Caped Baldy" is because, well... he's a bald guy with a cape. Compare this to Genos' "Demon Cyborg" because of his trait of fearlessly confronting enemies without regard for their numbers or strength.
• Living Emotional Crutch: Genos.
  Saitama: You wanted to save him [Tareo]? You weren't just clinging to him for support...?
  Garou: Clinging... Me? What would you know — [Falters when he sees the core, still unscathed in Saitama's hand]
  Garou: [realizes that Genos is to Saitama as Tareo is to him] (... Is that what you're doing too? There's no way a person with that kind of power can keep in their right mind.)
• Lonely at the Top:
  • It's implied at different points that one of the prices for his power other than No Challenge Equals No Satisfaction is that Saitama feels fundamentally isolated from basically everyone else, as it's been so long since he had to struggle or feel challenged by anything, he finds it difficult to relate to other people.
  • However, King eventually calls him out on this, saying he should just pick up another hobby if he's so unhappy about being isolated in his current one, only for Saitama to be unwilling to give up his superhero pastime. Furthermore, Saitama seems to not be much of a team player and it's implied he had a friendless childhood, so he may have always been pretty lonely.
• Ludicrous Gibs: Almost all of Saitama's victories are as messy as they are destructive; the only kills that weren't were Geryuganshoop (who Saitama headshots with a rock) and Beefcake (whose fluids probably would have drowned the civilians below). Special mention goes to his first kill, Crablante. The anime viewers get treated to detailed imagery of all of his innards being ripped out by his eye stalk... with nothing but a tie and some momentum.
• Made of Iron: Even before he got his powers, Saitama was quite durable for an ordinary civilian of a lower social class.
  • In his middle school years, he gets curbstomped by Piggy Bancon after failing to try and get his 200 Yen (and the other amount of Yen that the Mysterious Being stole from the two upperclassmen) back, with the end result having him thrown against a concrete wall and creating a huge crack, with only minor injuries that involved his head bleeding. Further, the one-sided fight with Piggy Bancon happened after he'd got beaten up by his two upperclassmen.
  • Later in life as a 22-year-old on a job hunt, he took hits from the super-strong Crablante, who was easily capable of killing multiple civilians beforehand, and that only lead to Saitama having blood pouring from his head and having his outfit messed up.
  • And then there's the 3-year training regimen that leads him into becoming an Invincible Hero in the present.
• Malaproper: It's deliberate. Notable examples include calling Boros "the Denominator of the Universe" and vowing to help Genos after he pounded "this Seafreak or whatever."
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Where, exactly, does Saitama's impossible strength come from? Anyone with a gram of sense can see that it's simply impossible that his training regimen could turn a normal human into something like him, but is there actually another explanation (such as him being a subconscious Reality Warper), or is that simply the absolute truth, even if it is impossible? We just don't know, and it's possible we never actually will.
• Meaningful Name:
  • This series is named One-Punch Man because he wins most of his fights with a single punch! However, Saitama is never referred to as that in the series.
  • On a more mundane note, his code name, Caped Baldy, comes from his baldness and the cape that comes with his outfit.
• Morality Pet: It's implied few times that Genos is what keeps Saitama from going berserk and still having his humanity. In fact due to losing his house, and wasting time on looking for who's making all the noise in his neighberhood, he comes very close to outright destroying the planet. And during his fight with Garou, the latter outright rips Genos's heart from his body, so when Saitama arrives, he gets so mad, he performs a Serious Punch that could outright destroy the Earth, if it wasn't for Blast's intervention.
• Mr. Fanservice: Saitama is fairly muscular and has been shown shirtless and on one occasion completely naked. Of course, his face isn't always as appealing when he's drawn in his normal manner.
• Mundane Utility: In an early bonus illustration in the manga, he's walking home after a trip to the grocery store by riding on a mechanical walker. And a nearby bystander calls him out on how lazy he's being.
• My Suit Is Also Super: Setting aside Saitama's own improbable power, his superhero suit is also incredibly durable. There're only two times it's ever suffered Clothing Damage: during the fight with Boros, where his cape was torn in half, and during the fight with Awakened Garou, where Garou's Whirlwind Iron Cutting destroyed the suit. Beyond that, it's rare to see so much as a speck of dirt on it, regardless of what attacks he lets the enemies throw pointlessly at him, or even the attacks he himself makes. Surprisingly, an individual with no connections whatsoever was able to procure such a suit, all while making himself look lame.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In "Road to Hero", Saitama discovers he can make money to pay his rent by turning in all of the criminals housed up in the apartments next to his, and proceeds to beat all of them up. When he shows his caught criminals to the landlady, she berates him for getting rid of her sole source of income, and proceeds to kick him out anyway.
• Nigh-Invulnerability: His training didn't just make him insanely strong, it also gifted him with incredible endurance and durability, so much so that hitting him can actually harm his opponent.
• Nightmare Face:
  • Played for laughs when Saitama catches up to a mole-like enemy by punching into his tunnels, bursting out of the wall with a horrific smile.
  • Played straight later, while fighting Asura Kabuto. As Asura attempts to attack him from behind, we get this shot of Saitama◊ looking positively pissed, and Asura Kabuto jumps back in terror.
  • During his first encounter with Sonic he moves his face so fast it blurs giving an incredibly unsettling effect.
  • During a later encounter with Sonic, Saitama bites Sonic's katana blade into pieces while Sonic is attacking with it. His face mid-chomp is grotesque and unsettling.
  • When Cosmic Garou rips Genos's heart out of his body, Saitama arrives late to the scene, having a Tranquil Fury face. Cue to him making a Serious Punch to Garou, making a similiar move to when he fought with Genos during their pairing.
• No Challenge Equals No Satisfaction: Implied to be the real price for his unbeatable power. Being too strong robs the excitement of uncertainty and satisfaction from effort for any task (especially killing monsters and saving people). "Having overwhelming power is... Pretty boring".
• No-Sell: Being essentially invincible, he no sells every single attack directed at him either by being too fast to be hit, by stopping attacks in their track or by simply tanking everything head-on without even flinching. In extreme cases, he doesn't even realize he's being attacked.
• No Sense of Direction: Despite his speed, he gets lost fairly easily, which is why he tends to be the last person to make it to a fight.
• Nonchalant Dodge: Not that he needs to dodge, but it does illustrate just how much faster he is compared to his opponents when they go all out with an attack and he sidesteps them as if by accident.
• The Nondescript: His baldness is the only strange thing about him, and even that just makes him look more like a cartoon stick figure.
• Non-Standard Character Design:
  • While many characters in the series are subject to this, Saitama is remarkable in how unremarkable his appearance is, being distinct not from having particular facial features but from how simplistic his face is. His baldness just adds to the simplicity even further. See the series page image for a perfect example of how he stands out.
  • It's especially noticeable in the webcomic and manga, where he is drawn so simply and crudely compared to everything around him that it counts as an Art Shift.
• Not So Stoic: Played with. In the introductary episode, Saitama says in his monologue how the emotions he once felt are now gone. This is very much not true, as right in his first scene when he defeats Vaccine Man, he's seriously angered over winning once again with a single punch. And while Saitama usually has a bored expression, he is capable of making a serious face or getting really mad, though it's usually for rather mundane things such as missing the big sale in a supermarket or him being insecure with his lack of hair.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Saitama primarily does this in two ways. He most commonly leaves himself wide open so he can unleash his one hit counter. He'll also pretend to be lost or uninterested to trick the enemy into revealing important information, be it directly or via Reverse Psychology like when he acted like he wanted to leave the ship during the alien invasion.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: After Gouketsu wrecks the martial arts stadium and heads back to the Monster Association's hideout, Suiryu warns Saitama not to go after the four-eyed giant. Saitama casually brushes off his warning to be a real hero. With the manga being told from Suiryu's perspective at this point, all that's shown is a severely injured Suiryu listening to a few rumbling sounds, followed by Gouketsu's head landing in the arena in Chapter 75. And Gouketsu's pierced corpse isn't shown until Chapter 79, when Gyoro Gyoro investigates why the giant hasn't returned from his recruitment drive.
• One-Hit Kill: His specialty, as he can defeat literally anyone with one punch, most of the time even when he's trying really, really hard not to. Needless to say, he's not very happy about it.
• One-Man Army: Considering he almost single-handedly wiped out an alien invasion force AND beat their much more powerful leader with strength to spare, it's safe to say he's this.
• Only Friend: To King. Although King receives a lot of praise and respect, until he meets him he doesn't hang out with anyone. And of top of that, Saitama is the only person who understands King's situation.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • If Saitama gets angry, he's come across a truly despicable villain, or someone's managing to bother him by, say, ungratefully insulting a hero's efforts to save people or outright decrying them as a whole.
  • In a more meta sense, if the artist/animators bother to put in the effort with how much detail he's drawn with, it means he's more than a little worked up.
• Outside-Context Problem: While the World of Badass the series takes place in is no stranger to tough guys in costumes fighting giant monsters, Saitama is something different because of just how easy every single fight is for him.
• Overshadowed by Awesome:
  • Despite being the most powerful person in the world and possibly the universe, his plain looks and penchant for finishing fights effortlessly in one hit mean that most people overlook him for the more conventional badass-looking characters. He's also willing to paint himself as a hero who takes credit for others' deeds for people to appreciate the efforts of those heroes who truly have given their all to save people, in contrast to his effortless work. In short, he is invoking this trope upon himself, in part intentionally.
  • Averted even when his power is compared to other heroes to the point it's meta. For all of his power and speed Saitama mostly only uses enough force to beat or kill his enemies. He doesn't drag things out or go for style. So while feats like punching a hole in the Deep Sea King are impressive and it's shown that the force of the punch scattered the rain clouds, it's still not as impressive to watch or as entertaining as Genos doing big attacks with his rockets or firing energy beams.

P — Z

• The Paragon: Downplayed since he's far from an ideal hero, but he still inspires various people to do and be better, usually because of them witnessing Saitama's true strength. Some of the examples include: Genos, Sneck, Bang, Mumen Rider, King, Fubuki, Suiryu, Flashy Flash, Forte Tatsumaki, Amai Mask and even some villains like Dr Genus, Hammerhead, or Garou.
• Parody Sue: Saitama, especially early on, is a parody of the God-Mode Sue, being too powerful in comparison to those he faces. But there are two problems: First, his own personal issues can't simply be punched away, leaving him feeling isolated from humanity and with nothing left to enjoy. Second, he can't be everywhere at once and can't see the future, so there's actually only so much he can do even if he can instantly end any monster that shows its face. The time it takes him to get to the fight or even realize there's one going on is easily enough time to destroy an entire city.
• Perception Filter: Seems to have one imposed upon him; he has a really hard time having his achievements recognized, especially in light of his frankly absurd power and ability. This mostly holds for the general populace, however, as his fellow heroes seem to at least respect and appreciate his skill and strength.
• Person of Mass Destruction: His "barely trying" punches turns monsters into Ludicrous Gibs and can leave massive holes in buildings, while his strongest seen punch negated a planet-ruining Kamehame Hadouken, killed the one who fired it with the shockwave alone, and left a miles-wide split in the cloud cover of the planet until it reached the horizon. At the height of his power to date, his Serious Sneeze blasted the atmosphere off of Jupiter, revealing its core.
• Physical God: He can do things like jump from the Moon to Earth in two seconds and disintegrate a mountain with the just the displaced air created from one of his punches.
• Power Copying: In the Manga version, at the end of the Awakened Garou fight Saitama is told by Garou that after copying his techniques so many times he can see Saitama is actually a martial arts prodigy like himself who can also effortlessly copy techniques, Saitama just never bothered to care about martial arts well enough to get to know that. Saitama proceeds to copy Awakened Garou's time reversal in order to end the fight at Garou's request after coming to his senses.
• Powerful and Helpless: Saitama originally became a superhero for the thrill of danger. Except that he accidentally became the strongest being in the universe, causing his work to become soul-crushingly boring. And since he never bothered to take credit for any for his victories, he's always flat broke and nobody knows who he is.
• The Power of Apathy: One of Saitama's more subtle strengths is that, in a world full of people who take themselves way too seriously, he's a laid-back guy who doesn't really care what other people do as long as they don't bother him (or go on a murderous rampage).
• Practice Target Overkill:
  • When Saitama goes through the physical application for hero registration, he effortlessly destroys a punching dummy machine. In fact, he practically does Practice Range Overkill with his side to side hops creating imprints of his feet on the cement floor and crashing into the roof for the high jump exam; the only reason he didn't jump straight to S-Class was due to the hero-ranking system being that flawed.
  • Genos and Saitama are having a practice bout, with Genos demanding Saitama try harder. Saitama obligingly throws a haymaker that he stops at the last minute. Then Genos turns around to see that the air displaced by the punch has carved an entire canyon out of the cliff behind them (And the one behind THAT one as well).
• Pre-Asskicking One-Liner: The two words you don't want to hear from him are "Serious Series". It means he is going to unleash a multi-megaton can of whoop-ass and turn your arrogant ass into paste.
• Prematurely Bald: All of Saitama's hair fell out at the age of 25 due to his intense hero training.
• Primary-Color Champion: Mostly yellow from his suit, with red highlights from his boots and gloves.
• Protagonist Title: Played with. He's the titular One-Punch Man, but is never referred to by the title In-Universe.
• Rank Up: Slowly but surely Saitama has been able to move up the ranks (having started out at C-Class: Rank 388), although the fact that Saitama doesn't particularly care whether the Hero Association knows how strong he is, while King continues to get credit for his victories, prevents him from advancing as quickly as he should. Over the series, he goes through the following promotions:
  • C-Class: Rank 342 after defeating Konbu Infinity and Sonic (both of them having been underestimated by the association).
  • C-Class: Rank 5 after destroying the giant meteor (and accidentally trashing City Z in the process).
  • B-Class: Rank 7 after defeating Deep Sea King, although Saitama willingly downplays his contribution out of respect to the other heroes that fought.
  • A-Class: Rank 39 after defeating Garou.
• Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs: "Consecutive Normal Punches". Considering just one punch can kill pretty much anything...
  • This is demonstrated during the first Anime OP in something of an Establishing Character Moment: Partway through the intro, Saitama fights a monster horde in a canyon, socking them one-by-one into the cliff-face behind them when all of a sudden a bunch of them rush him from behind. Saitama immediately turns around and throws a flurry of punches so fast the attack not only hits all of them at the SAME TIME, it blasts them all into the canyon wall so hard that that part of the canyon itself EXPLODES.
• Reality Warper: At first Saitama's immeasurable physical abilities seemed to operate on a certain level of logic, as in he attacked and deflected material foes and projectiles; even punching away Boros' final attack worked under such logic, with the sheer impact of the Serious Punch diverting a massive beam of energy. However, the little logic Saitama's abilties seemed to have is thrown out of the window in the final revision for the Phoenixman vs. Child Emperor fight (effectively the canon one): Saitama intrudes in at the last second, punching away Phoenixman's warped reality space, leaving a crack on thin air, with the monster left completely in disbelief after the fact, as seconds prior he thought nothing could stop his final attack; that is to say Saitama can literally punch and obliterate immaterial concepts, shooting the scope of his abilities to absolutely out of the realm of any logic or reason.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: He gives one to a whole city when the residents complain about his method of stopping the meteor that was going to hit the town. Never mind that he saved their city from total annihilation, the citizens started blaming him for the destruction. He wasn't happy about it.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Despite his Blood Knight tendencies, he's the blue oni to Genos' red since he's more laid back and insightful.
• Required Secondary Powers: He possesses ridiculous control over his own power. He can punch any adversary just hard enough to either kill or incapacitate them instantly, obliterated a mountain range while leaving Genos unharmed at the end of their sparring match (when his fist had stopped right in front of Genos' face, no less), and can control his strength to the point where he can do everyday tasks without issue... mostly. He did break one of the buttons on King's handheld console, after all. The strange part is that this seems to be an entirely subconscious ability. When he mistook Garou for a mugger, he struck him so hard that Garou's legs were embedded in the cement underneath him. Saitama had no idea who Garou is at the time, yet hit him with a blow that would have killed a normal human. Admittedly, Garou did attack him and give some indication of his strength, but Saitama still — in mere moments — calculated precisely how hard to hit him to incapacitate him without further injury. If Saitama intends non-lethal damage, then 99% of the time, it's going to be non-lethal. It doesn't matter how strong or weak his opponent is.
• Respected by the Respected: Most heroes that have witnessed his might firsthand have massive respect for him and his input; still, there have been very few in the first place.
• Retcon: ONE previously established Saitama as getting by with his immeasurable physical strength. He has no coordination, and if he was a regular human, Saitama would be terrible at any sport. In the webcomic, Awakened Garou outright calls Saitama a total amateur in terms of fighting techniques. In the manga, however, Garou instead says that Saitama is an innate martial arts prodigy just like him, which Saitama proves by copying Garou's time reversal technique to end the fight. It's just that Saitama has no idea he has that innate potential nor is he really interested in actually learning to harness it.
• Salaryman: Was interviewing to be one, before he ran into Crablante and took up being a part-time superhero instead. "Screw getting a job; bring it on!"
• Secret-Keeper: He's fully aware of King's true strength (or lack thereof). However Saitama's so blasé that he doesn't bother telling anybody, not even Genos.
• Shounen Hair: Before he went bald from training he had spiky hair.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: Saitama does this with a Talk to the Fist on any villain unfortunate/stupid enough to pick a fight with him. They'll Trash Talk Saitama about how inferior he is compared to them, just before Saitama simply curbstomps their asses.
• Sideways Smile: He gets a great one after he trolls Geryuganshoop by asking for directions out of his ship.
  Geryuganshoop: Take a right, go up the stairs, and wait there for further instructions.
  Saitama: A... right?
  Geryuganshoop: E-e-exactly, a right!
  [beat]
  Saitama: [unsettling laugh] I guess I'll go left then!
• Simple-Minded Wisdom: Saitama is chock full of this. He's a modest and down-to-earth kind of guy and often points out how complicated other people tend to make a situation. While he might not be the best intellectually speaking (he only just passed the hero exam due to his terrible written section), he's got the emotional IQ of Stephen goddamned Hawking.
• Skewed Priorities: Due to having overpowered strength, speed, and durability, he doesn't really care for things like beating up monsters or protecting the populace 24/7, and only focuses on mundane things like supermarket sales. A good example of this is in Carnage Kabuto's fight, where he panics when he realizes that he missed the special Saturday sale.
• Status Quo Is God: In the manga version, the Awakened Garou fight pushed Saitama’s character upside down in a way that made him experience the tragedy of being too late to save others, Genos in particular, moving Saitama to question himself if he is any good at being a hero, even as a hobby, a lesson learned the hard way which prompted Saitama to act more seriously than he ever did before, to the point he got out of his comfort zone in forcing himself to learn a martial arts move, the one thing that could save the day in the end, but that solution was rewinding time itself which in the end negated Saitama’s moment of self-reflection, since as it is he doesn’t remember ever experiencing it, thus Saitama’s character remains unchanged thereafter.
• Stealth Mentor: Played with. Saitama never really intended on teaching Genos anything when Genos convinced Saitama to take him on as a student. Once he had revealed his training regimen to Genos, Saitama felt that he had nothing more to teach him. Genos still arduously tried to learn all he could from Saitama, even after learning this fact, and it paid off in the end. Being with Saitama has taught Genos a lot about selflessness and humility. Before he was only out for revenge, hence why he never registered with the Hero Association, but now he also wants to protect people.
• Stock Shōnen Hero: Parodied. Saitama is someone who was at some point a more shonen-esque protagonist, with spiky hair, a love of fighting, and a drive to get stronger and fight more powerful opponents. However, he eventually got so powerful that the things a Shonen hero lives for became too easy to excite him, resulting in Saitama eventually losing his passion... and his hair. He does however retain the Book Dumb aspects and the flashy costume of typical Shonen heroes.
• Story-Breaker Power:
  • A Deconstructive Parody. Saitama's life has become incredibly boring from winning all fights easily, but it's Played for Laughs. The fact he has little drive to perform his heroics at all is what basically keeps the series going—if he wanted to, he could put every villain in the show down for good, and well... there'd be no show.
  • This is still present in the video game, One Punch Man: A Hero Nobody Knows, where he's still able to One-Hit Kill all enemies along with receiving no damage from all attacks. To balance this out, if Saitama is selected for a party then he isn't playable at the start of a fight, rather he serves as a countdown mechanic where he will be absent for most of the battle and will need to run over to the scene in 120 seconds. The party members present must survive for long enough for Saitama to show up, with combos able to speed up Saitama's arrival. In fact, the only character able to deal damage to Saitama, is another Saitama.
• Stylistic Suck: Saitama's model has a lot less detail than most other characters, almost as if he were drawn by a child. It's also the only way he stands out when he's on a manga cover and surrounded by larger, more well-drawn characters.
• Super Loser: Saitama may be ungodly powerful, but he spends most of his time acting like a typical citizen trying to get through a typical citizen's life, showing more dedication/struggle towards video games and groceries than all the monsters and disasters that happen upon his city/world.
• Superman Substitute:
  • The most obvious comparison, as he's got a cape, red boots, is strong and invulnerable to an insanely ridiculous level much like Silver Age Superman and generally holds back his full strength and doesn't go looking for fights unless his friends and innocent people are threatened. There’s some difference though as Saitama isn’t an alien, he got his abilities through training, he’s bald (similar to a certain Superman villain), he can't fly (only jump super high), can't shoot Eye Beams and Saitama has a much more bitter and sardonic personality than Supes. He's also more violent to his enemies, being totally willing to kill with a single punch. Then again, this Anti-Hero-like behavior and being unable to fly or use crazy powers does make Saitama akin to Golden Age Superman.
  • Saitama serves more as a deconstruction of the Man of Steel, since he’s tired of being so powerful and becomes a superhero as a hobby rather than out of a genuine desire to help people. Though it is revealed Saitama does believe in The Cape.
• Superpower Lottery: He's just about the biggest winner in the setting, with Super-Strength so ridiculous he can One-Hit Kill literally anything, Super-Speed that allows him to casually outpace even the fastest characters and avoid their attacks as if by accident, and being so Nigh-Invulnerable that he doesn't even feel an opponent's attack. The only drawbacks were the loss of his hair and 3 years of a simple (albeit arduous by reality's standards) training regimen to get there.
• Super-Reflexes: He can casually keep up with Sonic's Super-Speed, sidestep Genos' blasts during their sparring session, and even parry Lightspeed Flash's attacks (which, if said hero's name can be believed, should be physically impossible).
• Super-Senses: To a point. Saitama can very casually follow enemies that are moving so fast they are barely a blur, and can even accurately track enemies underground (who are trying their best to flee from him). However, he can usually find a fight only if someone points him at the right direction.
• Super-Speed: He can casually dodge attacks faster than the speed of sound and can create nigh-infinite amount of afterimages with "Serious Consecutive Sidehops". And considering he can jump from the Moon back to Earth in the span of a few seconds, he can easily reach light speeds.
• Super-Strength:
  • With a single punch Saitama can level mountains, fell giant city destroying monsters, cut planet destroying energy blasts in two and stop an object traveling at escape velocity. And that's not even at his full power, which we've only seen a fraction of.
  • The leveling mountains act in particular is notable in that it wasn't even Saitama's punch that destroyed the mountain, but the wind from his punch.
• Super-Toughness: Verging into Nigh-Invulnerable. He's only ever taken damage in a dream. Boros hit him so hard once it knocked him to the surface of the moon; Saitama wasn't noticeably injured by the blow, the impact on the moon, exposure to the vacuum of space, atmospheric reentry, or his impact on Earth. The moon on the other hand...
• Supporting Protagonist: If anything drives the plot more than Saitama's disillusionment in becoming a hero, it's the struggles and Character Development the people around him are going through. He usually either has some words of wisdom (even though he rarely considers them such) for them, or points out the flaws which are holding them back.
• Tall, Dark, and Handsome: In the reboot version of the manga, before becoming bald due to his training three years ago, he basically looked like a brunette version of Genos with brown-colored eyes.
• Taught by Experience: He never received any formal training, and the only experience he got was either from his training regimen or his monster hunting.
• Then Let Me Be Evil: Many situations involving his One-Hit Kill on nigh-undefeatable villains have civilians misinterpret him as a kill stealer who swoops in to steal the credit after the target has been "weakened" by the efforts of many other greater heroes who fell fighting against it, putting him in a bad light. He doesn't care that the public sees him this way, so long as he gets his job done and the heroes who fought harder gain their due credit for their efforts at attempting.
• Thou Shall Not Kill: Played with. Saitama has no qualms about killing monsters because the monsters that he usually faces are Always Chaotic Evil, out to kill people, or have already killed people. When he faces human opponents, all he does is incapacitate them, even if said human opponent is out for his blood like Sonic. Even if the opponent himself acts in a way that all other people would consider too irredeemable to let live, Saitama still spares said opponent, believing that he's still a human and can change if given a chance, like Garou.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Udon, which is a realistic preference for someone so strapped for cash. One of the OVAs shows that Saitama also gets protective over his French fries — but only the long ones that are soft in the middle.
• Training from Hell: Subverted. Saitama claims the secret to his power is "100 sit-ups, 100 push-ups, 100 squats, and a 10 kilometer run, every single day". While it can be grueling for the average person, it's still well within the limits of ordinary human endurance. For a person whose super power is the One-Hit Kill, it's rather anticlimactic.
• Tranquil Fury: Makes this face sometimes, and usually at that point he goes into Serious Mode. He gets very mad at Garou killing Genos, which proceeds to quickly make Saitama use his famous tactic, Serious Punch.
• Underestimating Badassery: Saitama is a frequent victim of this from the Hero Association, the public and the monsters themselves. The monsters just dismiss him as some small fry and attack him, only to get brutally killed by in a nonchalant manner by Saitama. The only antagonists who took Saitama seriously (and who survived his single punch) were Lord Boros and later Monster King Orochi and Garou in the manga.
• Unskilled, but Strong:
  • He lacks any form of martial arts training, but he doesn't need any, due to being stronger, faster and tougher than anyone else. He's not uncoordinated since he manages his absurd power, but compared to how absurdly strong he is, what precision he has is dwarfed by his strength in any combat situation.
  • Also Played for Laughs since he does this approach to everything, including video games. He loses in what appears to be a Pokemon-like video game against King because Saitama didn't bother with type-advantages, instead just relying on higher levels. He hasn't gotten this in his head yet.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: You'd think someone wearing a bright jumpsuit and a cape would attract people's attention, but he is often ignored, something he complains about. Justified, since there is actually an association for heroes and there are many more people wearing garish costumes, although Saitama didn't know that until Genos pointed it out.
• Wardrobe Flaw of Characterization:
  • Saitama looks remarkably lame for someone whose powers can only be described as "titanic". His costume design is plain and boring, as if thrown together in five minutes, which further drives the point of how little attention he gives to his image. One of the aspects that most affects his lack of exposure is how lazy the design is and how it makes people overlook him. Dude looks like a mustard bottle.
  • One of the unintentional aspects that his plain uniform brings is the fact that villains tend to underestimate him at first glance, and even during fights. There's a remarkable disconnection between his appearance and his powers, so most villains cannot even begin to grasp what's happening before Saitama defeats them. What makes it so funny is that Saitama wants to be noticed.
• Warrior Therapist: Buddhist undertones aside in regards to how Saitama may have reached his power, he certainly has a way with words when it matters and he uses his strength and speed to leave his opponents speechless as he verbally beats them down. If he thinks they are a danger to others or irredeemable, he just kills them. That or he's panicking because he forgot about a sale. That being said, he usually either does give enemies a chance to surrender or he doesn't attack until they attack him first.
• Weak, but Skilled: Before he gained his powers, he killed a monster despite being a Muggle at the time through skillful maneuvers and clever use of his tie.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?:
  • Saitama kills obviously-sentient non-human monsters (even ones whose inhumanity is physically slight, like a Cute Monster Girl) without the slightest hint of remorse; but he refuses to kill humans ever. This is particularly obvious in the Garou arc, where Saitama decides that Garou is human and won't allow the heroes to kill him. Part of this is that some monsters were never human in the first place. Those who were human typically went crazy due to a particular trauma or obsession and mutated; after the mutation, the monsters have lost all humanity and will slaughter and kill without rhyme or reason, so Saitama shows them no mercy. One reason he refuses to see Garou as a monster is that Garou won't kill other humans.
  • Played with in that Saitama's definition of "human" seems to depend less on someone's physical form and more on whether they're willing to kill people, and especially whether the monster is an immediate lethal danger toward people; he's let Garou and Kombu Infinity live since they were only beating people up, and specifically indicates he still considers Garou human. He's let Black Sperm and Rover live (he even keeps them as pets) when they were in a weak form, he's let Manako live, even defending her against other heroes, and he's allowed monsters to surrender (Armored Gorilla was spared). He still shows a little more mercy towards full humans (he lets Sonic live, even though he never surrenders or stops being a danger). And he even tried to talk down the obviously nonhuman Crablante, killing him only when Crablante indicated that it was too late because he'd already killed several people.
  • When Amai Mask tells him he is a human who turned into a Mysterious Being, Saitama only sees him as a fellow hero and someone who needs to find his own way to become a better one. Saitama also helps him escape once his identity is revealed to the public despite the fact he wanted Saitama to kill him to become a hero to the public.
• What You Are in the Dark: Despite needing occasional good publicity to maintain his status as a hero, Saitama will far too often ensure that others get credit for his deeds.
• When All You Have Is a Hammer…:
  • Big bad monster terrorizing the neighborhood? Punch it. Unstoppable meteor plunging from the sky about to destroy the city? Punch it. Planet-busting energy blast being fired from a dimension-conquering alien overlord coming straight for you? PUNCH. HARDER.
  • This is also a good explanation for Saitama's poor written score on the Hero Association exam. Questions like "How would you handle X threat?" would be answered by regular heroes with complicated, personalized strategies, but the only solution Saitama would need for any of them is... "punch it."
  • Justified, given that despite Saitama having absurdly high power, he is still human, thus having the limited abilities of a human. Still, he does use speed and dodges a lot of blows. He even has his own set of techniques to utilize his strength in different ways.
• Whole Costume Reference: His costume is a color-inverted version of that worn by another bald superhero, Anpanman (switched the colors of the gloves/boots and body, white cape instead of black).
• Willfully Weak: The only reason he doesn't end all his fights in one punch is he always starts out putting in as little effort as possible. When using his Serious Series moves, he can casually create shockwaves that cross an entire ocean, and this is a mere fraction of his true power. Were he to go all out, the destruction would be cataclysmic, if not apocalyptic. He has yet to actually go all out because nothing so far has ever come close to forcing him to fight seriously.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity:
  • It's not so obvious, considering how humble and reasonable Saitama is most of the time. However, it remains consistent that Saitama is not... Quite grounded in reality, and in the moments he does slip up, we do get a small glimpse that underneath his blank look is a raging insanity boiling over.
    Saitama: [To Garou] I go to complain about the noise, and somehow my house gets blown up, so now I'm stuck trying to find my stuff fishing around in a tide pool. I kinda feel like I'd rather just obliterate the whole planet.
  • Pretty much said by Garou that in no way Saitama could stay sane with the level of power he has without any sort of emotional anchor, which is what Genos is to him.
• Worf Had the Flu: He was actually knocked off his feet by a monster on his 300th day in training. Turns out it was just a bad tooth, and when said tooth was removed...
• World's Best Warrior: Along with his immense power, Saitama is both skilled and experienced with his abilities and has defeated countless monsters and organizations even before getting his powers.
• World's Strongest Man: Saitama is the titular One-Punch Man and the strongest character in the series. So far, no enemy has been able to injure him in any way, and almost no enemy has been able to survive a single earnest punch from him. A few enemies have survived punches from him, such as any human he has struck (whom he restrains himself against) and Boros, whom Saitama empathized with and held back against to give himself and Boros a satisfying and stimulating fight. Saitama's only power is that his body is far beyond human limits, allowing him to achieve astounding physical feats. His strength is so great that it vastly eclipses even artificial beings designed or bred specifically for superhuman combat, such as mechanical beings or the mutated warriors from the House of Evolution. Since no enemies have posed any real challenge to Saitama yet, the upper bound of his strength is likely even higher than it currently appears... and he still hasn't reached that upper bound even after a fight that blasted off Jupiter's atmosphere. While his power is only limited to heightened human traits - Saitama cannot fly or fire energy blasts - his superhuman abilities more than make up for the lack of variety in his powers. The only known person who might match Saitama is Blast. As Boros puts it:
  Boros: You really are... way too strong.
• Would Hit a Girl: He's fought Fubuki and Tatsumaki in non-lethal combat and (apparently) killed Mosquito Girl with a slap.
• Zero-Approval Gambit: After defeating the Deep Sea King, one obnoxious spectator calls into question whether the heroes were heroic at all. To stave off backlash against his fellow heroes and ensure the Hero Association continues to get funding and donations, Saitama claimed that Genos and the other heroes softened up the Deep Sea King enough for him to kill him and take the credit. The other heroes became adored for their deeds and the Hero Association's future was ensured, at the cost of Saitama's reputation.

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