We often tend to idolize heroes in our childhood. Be it heroes with superpowers or without, it often is the case that we see in our heroes what we would like to be ourselves when we get older. Saving a child from a burning building, taking out ten criminals with their bare hands, performing daring feats to help people; those are the typical things heroes do and that’s what the idea of superheroes is born out of.
A superhero is someone who is capable of doing much more than that, someone who can do superhuman feats that amaze everyone. But every hero has weaknesses, personal struggles, a conflict of ideas, situations challenging their moral sense of justice and finally the means of resolving them. A superhero story in any media, be it comics, movies, manga, animated TV shows or anime has all these characteristics to take into consideration while creating a superhero character. Would we be okay if Iron Man’s suit was indestructible? Would he be a relatable character if he did not have personal prejudices while making his judgments? Is he really a hero if he lets one die to save millions?
Without struggle, a superhero character is unrelatable. Would you relate to a character who beats up criminals using his bare fists and see him get hurt because of his actions, physically and mentally? Or would you prefer some wisecrack with regenerative healing powers and super everything in a red suit shooting up criminals just for fun? The choices that superheroes make decide who they are. As Uncle Ben said, “with great power comes great responsibility.” And when you strip this away from a superhero, that’s when he becomes an empty shell, an agent of “anti-catharsis”. And that’s exactly what One Punch Man is about.
One Punch Man is an anime about a superhero named Saitama who can defeat anyone, creature or human being, with a single punch. The concept is as absurd as it gets and completely goes against the established definition of a superhero. Throughout the show, we see Saitama being uncaring to the suffering of the world or the gravity of the threat his enemies pose to the world. He repeatedly states that “he’s a superhero for fun” and because he’s undefeatable and has no vulnerabilities, he’s nothing anyone expects from a superhero—except superpowers. The ease with which Saitama gains his superpowers by doing “one hundred situps, one hundred pushups, one hundred squats, then a ten kilometer run, every single day” strips away any amount of mystery or novelty associated with the traditional trope of superheroes achieving their powers, especially anime characters such as Goku from Dragon Ball Z or Ichigo from Bleach.
For this reason, the show focuses on characters weaker than him such as his disciple Genos, a cyborg who dedicates his life to defeating his arch nemesis and learning from Saitama and his secret to become the strongest person on earth. It provides a good juxtaposition to highlight the importance of vulnerability and character development in the superhero genre. It’s not just superheroes, every story has a protagonist who has a problem that they need to solve. We vicariously derive pleasure during the payoff as we are engaged with the character itself. Japanese theorist Masahiro Morioka says, “We gradually lose the opportunity of experiencing the joy of life that comes from encountering an unwanted situation” as we give in to pleasures that make our lives easier than they are supposed to be. Saitama’s frustration in being the most powerful man on the planet reflects the statement as it takes away the same joy that made him want to become a hero in the first place.
One Punch Man is a brilliant satire that emphasizes how important struggle and conflict are to gain narrative traction and characterization in superhero stories. Although it’s mostly made for laughs and makes fun of overpowered characters in anime and comic books, the themes of weakness, conflict, and humanity are ultimately what makes a superhero relatable, and Saitama unrelatable, to the audience.
