And while Son Goku is usually a go-to Dragon Ball character when comparisons are in question, this article’s representative of the Dragon Ball universe is going to be someone much more benign looking, yet someone infinitely more powerful. It is, of course, the absolute ruler of the Dragon Ball Multiverse, Zeno, the only one who can do anything he wishes. Zeno’s opponent in this article is going to be Saitama from the popular One-Punch Man series, with the reputation of being one of the strongest characters ever. In this article, we are going to compare Saitama and Zeno to determine whether One-Punch Man could defeat Zeno in a direct fight.
Zeno would definitely win in a fight against One-Punch Man. Zeno is omnipotent and could simply wipe Saitama out of existence on a whim, but even if Zeno decided to fight Saitama, his skills are on a much higher level than Saitama’s. We’ve seen that Saitama cannot defeat everyone with just one punch, he needs more, and Zeno is a character that is so powerful that he could easily withstand any punches if Saitama manages to hit him in the first place.
Now that you have the short version of the answer, the rest of the article is going to be divided into three sections, with the first two introducing the characters, their powers, and their abilities. In the end, we’re going to give our final verdict and explanation on why Zeno would win against Saitama, also known as One-Punch Man.
Saitama and his powers
Saitama is a young inactive person who’s lost interest in life and who frequently fights mysterious beings to become a powerful hero. His main attack is the famous “One Punch”, a simple punch that can defeat very powerful enemies like the King of the Seas, Ashura Rhino, the King of the Underworld, a gigantic meteorite, and many more.
Saitama is blessed with spectacular speed. A ninja-like Thundering Sonic looks slow next to him. He is able to complete a 1,500-meter course in an instant; even Genos’ computerized targeting systems have a hard time tracking him. He can use his speed to run vertically along a building to save a piece of salmon he intended to eat for lunch.
Even Boros in Meteoric Boost is slower than him. His basic speed is already sufficient to avoid the saber attacks of the famous ninja Flashy Flash. Saitama can take all kinds of impacts or flames and without taking a single bruise. When Genos created a huge explosion by his Incineration to kill Mousmétique’s mosquitoes, Saitama stood beside him completely unscathed and unperturbed despite the heat of the flames.
To make him move, as soon as he decides to stay still, even a man as powerful as Suiryû has a hard time managing to make him move back a few meters with his Nebulous Fist of the Rabid Tiger. When he was still a weak human, Saitama was as tough as an ordinary human. As an adult, he was able to get up with a nip from Crabotaur, a Tiger-level monster, and then attack him.
Saitama doesn’t aim better than an ordinary person. In particular, he has been wrong in his estimations, such as when he unintentionally punched Sonic in the genitals instead of only intimidating him. Saitama puts a little more effort into his techniques when using the Worship Streak Series. According to Boros, even so, he only shows a small part of his power. Still, the power at this stage is enough to outsmart a Dragon-level or even God-level scourge very easily.
Zeno and his powers
Grand Zeno, also known as the Omni-King, is the supreme ruler of the whole Multiverse and seemingly its most powerful being ever; as far as it is known at this moment, Zeno is the most powerful Dragon Ball character ever. Since the events of the “Future” Trunks Saga, Zeno co-rules jointly with his future counterpart.
Zeno is, along with Future Zeno, one of the two most powerful characters in the entire Dragon Ball franchise. Although Zeno’s true abilities are unknown, Zeno possesses an enigmatic and unimaginable power far beyond comprehension. Champa declared that Zeno is “a God among the Gods”. His power is so great that his mere presence terrifies all the other deities, who immediately bow before him out of fear and respect.
Whis claims that Zeno is the greatest person in the world since he has the ability to easily and instantly destroy anything, including people, planets, galaxies, and even entire universes. He could obliterate everything if he so desired, just as Future Zeno did in the Future Trunks Saga.
As evidenced by the facile erasure of Infinite Zamasu, his power is so immense that he can also easily delete those who had obtained immortality via the Super Dragon Balls. Despite the fact that the Grand Minister oversees and bears much of the power and responsibility because of Zeno’s immature behavior, Zeno is the most significant being in existence and has complete authority over everything.
Whis claims that there were initially 18 Universes before Zeno, in a fit of rage, destroyed six of them. Since Zeno cannot be killed no matter what occurs, Kaiohshin made sure he was still alive even after Goku Black and Future Zamasu murdered all the other Gods of Future Trunks’ timeline. Like all other gods, Infinite Zamasu is shown in the manga as being afraid of Zeno.
It appears, however, that Zeno lacks the same reflexes as the Angels, as he was unable to keep up with the Gods of Destruction in the manga during their battle or to see Dyspo move with such speed that the Grand Minister had to give it the Slow Motion function in his GodPad, whereas Vados could barely keep up.
He still possesses extremely rapid reflexes, though, as seen by the fact that he was able to cancel Frost before he could prepare the strike after noticing Frost’s intention to murder Freeza from the stands. Zeno has reportedly been ruling the multiverse for 8,590,412, 61 divine years as of the day of the Tournament of Power, making him the deity with the longest lifespan.
His most potent weapon, Erase, has the ability to destroy whole universes, making it the greatest power ever to appear in the Dragon Ball series. Zeno can wipe anything from existence, including entire worlds or timelines, by forming two energy balls in his blue hands. The entities that have obtained immortality through the Super Dragon Balls are also impacted by this technique.
Zamasu cries in agony as Zeno uses this method on him, but when the King totally annuls the losers in the Tournament of Power, they don’t appear to have tried it. It appears that Zeno may decide whether to make this technique painful.
There are two ways to use this technique: the first, shown during the cancellation of Universe 9, involves immobilizing the victims gradually until the technique is finished; the second, shown during the cancellation of Universes 2 and 6, involves canceling the victims without immobilizing them so they have time to say their final words. Six of the eighteen universes that existed before were removed by Zeno using this method.
Saitama vs. Zeno: Who would win?
And now for the most important and interesting section of our article – the analysis. Here, we are going to use what we have found out about these two characters and analyze how all these facts would (or would not) help them in a fight against each other. Let us continue.
Comparing Saitama and Zeno was no easy task. Namely, while both One-Punch Man and Dragon Ball actually rely on fighting and martial arts, the overall structure of these two worlds is quite different. On the one hand, One-Punch Man is a gimmick work, with lots of irony and exaggeration, whose main point is to play on the tropes of traditional manga such as Dragon Ball. On the other hand, Dragon Ball takes its power balance more seriously and while the cosmic aspect of the show did raise things to a whole new level, it still makes sense in-universe.
This is why it is so difficult to objectively evaluate Saitama’s powers and abilities in comparison with other characters, even if Zeno is an example of a character who is extremely overpowered, to a degree, in fact, that it becomes silly. But, Zeno is not a gimmick character – whatever your editor says – whereas Saitama is, even within the context of his own gimmick-inspired world. But, as usual, we have done our best, and here is what we can say.
First of all, we couldn’t do our category-based comparison because the powers of these two characters are completely different in nature. Saitama is a fighter. He doesn’t have any superpowers. He simply trained so hard that he has become invincible. This is why we could only find one common category with Zeno, and in that category, Saitama would probably win nominally because we don’t actually know how good of a fighter Zeno is. Zeno, on the other hand, has so many powers and abilities that Saitama would look silly in all the other categories, which is why we avoided such an approach.
Secondly, an objective evaluation was very difficult to make, as we have said. Namely, we know that Saitama is one of the most resilient characters ever and his fighting skills are truly amazing. He can, supposedly, beat anyone but the myth that he can do it with simply one punch has been debunked when some characters needed a more vehement beating to go down. They ultimately did, but it took Saitama more than one punch to do it. Having said that, Saitama is not omnipotent, he is not even immortal. He simply has great durability and is good at fighting. But, could he do anything against Zeno?
This is a big question that we’re prone to answering with a big no. Regardless of the fact that the two worlds function on a wholly different level, Zeno is an actual multiversal deity and the level of power we are talking about when we are talking about Zeno is more than anything we’ve seen in One-Punch Man so far. Even God from One-Punch Man doesn’t have so much power. The sheer number of Zeno’s powers and abilities would make Saitama’s head spin.
It is debatable whether Saitama could actually hit Zeno in the first place. Sure, he is fast, but Zeno’s speed is compared to those of the Angels and the Gods of Destruction, not to that of Saitama. Saitama’s speed is compared to characters that should be much slower than the Gods of Destruction and the Angels from Dragon Ball. The same goes for Zeno’s agility – sure, he might not be as fast as some characters from Dragon Ball, but regardless of that, he still should be faster than Saitama.
This would, in turn, mean that Saitama couldn’t even reach Zeno, he couldn’t even hit him. But, even if he did, Saitama’s punch is only so powerful, even a hundred of them couldn’t really defeat Zeno, who is a character that can destroy whole universes on a whim. Not to mention that Zeno has abilities with which he could simply wipe Saitama out of existence. Sadly for him, we couldn’t really find anything that Saitama could use to defeat Zeno in a fight, as the Omni-King is simply too powerful and his set of abilities is just too diverse.
In that aspect, we have concluded as we have, and that is that Zeno would defeat Saitama with relative ease. Sure, Zeno might look ridiculous and he is ridiculously overpowered, but he is what he is – an exceptionally powerful deity that, as it seems, is absolutely invincible. Most other similar characters have a weakness or can (or have been) be defeated, but from what we know at this point – Zeno is here to stay and Saitama is definitely not a character that could challenge his authority seriously.
