One Punch Man: Theory about Saitama's power (Major spoilers)

HUGE SPOILER WARNING.

They had the Genus guy from the "House of Evolution" explain it in the web comic version. Saitama broke his "limiter". This allowed him to acquire "Unnatural Strength". The best way to explain this is if you think of the ONE Punch universe as an RPG. In this sense a "limiter" would be like a characters "level cap".

The pinnacle of humanity would be the "Geniuses" people like Bang, Sonic and Atomic Samurai. Since they are above average they have an above average level cap.

Then their are people that are born "Special" like Tatsumaki and Fubuki. While they are normal humans for the most part, they possess special abilities and therefore the fact that they average physical abilities is moot.

Then there are "Enhancers". These are the people that use surgery and mechanization to alter themselves, i.e. Genos and Zombieman. They start out as normal humans that would probably cap at level 10, but their alterations serve as a kind of "cap raising". By altering themselves they raise their limit, but they don't surpass it.

Then there are monsters. They are similar to enhancers, but underwent their change after experiencing severe, or ridiculous trama. This raises the cap, but doesn't break it.

Then you have the other species. Individuals like Sea King and Boros are simply beings who reached the cap for their respective species.

Finally we come to Saitama. Let's say Saiatama had a level cap of 10. So he starts working out, or gaining exp, and after a short period he hits his cap of level 10, but he doesn't stop grinding. He keeps doing, relatively, limit pushing exercise every single day. This makes his exp pile up and pile up until the system (reality) malfunctions and raises his level to 11, and as a side effect all his hair falls out. Now we have Saitama a level 11 character with a level 10 cap. In a game this would be called a glitch, in reality we can call it "unnatural". All those other characters whether they are c ranked or s, threat tiger or god still exist within the limits of "natural". It's not that Saitama's strength has a superior "quantity" to others, it's that it has a superior "quality".

/r/manga Thread