Description[]
"One Punch Man versus Sailor Moon! Which lazy yet over-powered and extremely popular anime hero will emerge victorious?"
NOTE: For the sake of fairness and simplicity, Sailor Moon will be limited to her base form. Super Sailor Moon, Eternal Sailor Moon and Sailor Cosmos will not be used.
Introduction[]
Spider: Anime has no shortage of heroes with incredible powers, but not all of them are as disciplined as you might think.
Pixie: Some of them are dim-witted, academic underachievers or just plain lazy. Like Saitama, the Caped Baldy.
Spider: Or Usagi Tsukino, better known as Sailor Moon. I’m Spider.
Pixie: And I’m Pixie!
Spider: And it’s our job to analyze their power, abilities and skills to find out who would win a Death Battle.
Saitama[]
Pixie: We’ve all heard the story of the everyman who gains incredible powers and becomes a super-hero, right? Sometimes they find out that they’re secretly an alien or a Norse God, other times they get doused in chemical, zapped with lightning or bit by radioactive arachnids. Other times… they train. Really, really hard. Well not actually that hard, but kind of hard.
Spider: Saitama was an ordinary businessman, and a struggling one at that. As a child, he had dreamed of being a super-hero, but those dreams were long forgotten.
Pixie: Until the day he spotted a crab-man with sharpie-nipples trying to murder a small child with testicles on his chin. Yeah, it’s that kind of show.
Spider: Despite having no training, super-powers or even conventional weaponry, Saitama defeated the monstrous Krabmante. In that moment, he vowed to fulfill his childhood dream of becoming a hero who could defeat monsters like Krabmante with one punch. In order to achieve that goal, Saitama began a strict exercise regime of--
Pixie: ONE-HUNDRED PUSH-UPS. ONE-HUNDRED SIT-UPS. ONE-HUNDRED SQUATS. TEN KILOMETERS OF RUNNING. EVERY SINGLE DAY!
Spider: …This may sound like a lot to those of you spend the majority of your time sitting in front of a computer and watching Death Battles, but by professional athlete standards, it isn’t really that extreme.
Pixie: Ooh, but you forgot the part where he refused to use his air-conditioning or heater!
Spider: Still not actually that extreme. After three years of this (somewhat) intense training regime, Saitama’s hair fell out. He decided that this was a sign that he had achieved the power he was looking for, and he was right.
Pixie: In fact, he had become a little too powerful. To the point where he could murder dang-near every monster that came to his city—from aliens to robots to mutants—with one punch. Hey, I think I just figured out where the show’s title came from!
Spider: All of Saitama’s physical characteristics have been enhanced to the point of absurdity. He is durable enough to withstand a beating that leveled a sky-scraper and drove him into the ground, without even flinching. He is easily capable of keeping up with Speed of Sound Sonic, a ninja who moves faster than an ordinary human eye can see, and he can punch so hard, that the wind created by his strike created a canyon.
Pixie: And we haven’t even gotten to his big boy feats yet. Let’s hear ’em, Spider.
Spider: During his fight with Lord Boros, Saitama was struck so hard, it flung him all the way to the surface of the moon, and the impact didn’t even phase him. Once there, he leapt from the moon back to Earth in four seconds. Since moonlight travels to Earth in about 1.3 seconds, this means Saitama had to move at around 32.5% the speed of light, or 60,450 miles per second. In the final moments of his fight with Boros, Boros launched an attack that was powerful enough to destroy the Earth. Saitama met this attack with his own technique, the Serious Punch, which overcame Boro’s attack and killed him.
Pixie: So he’s faster than most people can react to and can punch with more than enough force to destroy a planet. Is there anything this guy can’t do?
Spider: Well… he can’t kill a mosquito, for some reason. Saitama has yet to show the limits of his power, since most of the time, an effortless Normal Punch is more than enough to destroy anyone he’s facing, so it’s hard to say how powerful he actually is. His intelligence isn’t particularly high, however. When he took his Hero Exam, he aced the physical portion, but his grade on the written portion placed him as a C-ranked hero.
Pixie: Okay, so he’s not that smart, but who cares about smarts when you can cream anybody in your way with a single punch?
Spider: Admittedly, Saitama’s intelligence never really seems to hold him back in battle, since he is never actually required to strategize. He almost never takes his fights seriously, and he often lets his enemies hit him repeatedly while making little effort to fight back.
Pixie: And then he wins with one punch anyways, because he is that powerful. He may not look like much, but Saitama may very well be the most powerful hero his world has ever known.
[Clip from One Punch Man.]
Saitama: I’m just a guy who’s a hero for fun.
Sailor Moon[]
Spider: As a 14 year-old girl attending school in Tokyo, Usagi Tsukino was far from extraordinary. She wasn’t particularly disciplined, or strong, or smart. Her grades were poor, she was often late for school, and she spent her spare-time napping and eating junk-food.
Pixie: But then a cat showed up and told Usagi she was the reincarnation of a magical moon princess or something.
Spider: You mean Princess Serenity, Monarch of the Moon Kingdom.
Pixie: Right, her. Anyways, the moon cat, who was named... Luna? Really? Luna gave Usagi a Brooch that allowed her to transform into the Pretty Sailor-Suited Soldier of Love and Justice, Sailor Moon!
Spider: With this new-found power, Usagi would be able to defend the Earth from monsters called Youma, alongside the rest of the Sailor Senshi.
Pixie: The who now?
Spider: Basically, magic soldiers in short-skirts who protected Princess Serenity in their previous lives. This series has a lot of reincarnation in it, if you haven’t caught on to that by now.
Pixie: Initially, the rest of the Senshi kind of thought Usagi sucked at being a magical warrior because… well… she did suck. A lot.
Spider: Initially, Usagi wanted little to do with her role as a warrior. She was prone to fits of terror, often fled her enemies or broke down crying, and usually had to be rescued by her ally and love interest, Tuxedo Mask. However, Usagi eventually gained the courage and confidence to use the full extent of her powers, and Sailor Moon became a force to be reckoned with.
Pixie: Sailor Moon can fly between solar systems, traveling lightyears in mere hours. She boasts a variety of potent magical attacks, such as the Moon Frisbee, where she hurls her tiara like… a Frisbee… and it transforms into a moon-shaped crescent of energy. This attack can reduce lesser foes to dust in a single shot!
Spider: When she cries, Sailor Moon’s hair-pieces amplify the sound of her voice, unleashing the powerful Sonic Cry attack.
Pixie: So she can straight-up murder you by breaking down crying in the middle of battle. I’m not sure if that’s badass, or really, really dumb. Oh, speaking of things that are dumb, Sailor Moon has a melee attack called the Sailor Moon Kick. It consists of Sailor Moon kicking you. These writers sure are great at names, huh?
Spider: Well, not all of her attacks have terrible names. For example, there’s the Moon Twilight Flash, in which Sailor Moon uses her tiara to reflect a magical beam of moonlight at her foes. Unlike her other attacks, this technique is even capable of destroying intangible beings such as ghosts.
Pixie: Her Moon Healing Escalation technique lets her shoot a beam of positive energy that can heal entire cities, cure mind-control and even bring the dead back to life.
Spider: Moon Princess Halation, one of her most powerful attacks, has Sailor Moon summon the Cutie Moon Rod, wave it intricate circles, then fire an immensely powerful beam of energy. Using this technique, Sailor Moon was able to completely obliterate Planet Nemesis.
Pixie: And finally, Sailor Moon as the Moon Spiral Heart Attack, in which she forces her enemies to consume massive amount of low-density cholesterol, triggering a fatal arterial blockage.
Spider: …That’s not what the Moon Spiral Heart Attack does.
Pixie: Okay, fine. It causes her to shoot glow-y pink hearts all over the place and blow her enemies the fuck up.
Spider: While Sailor Moon boasts an impressive variety of attacks, she has a few weak-points. She can be a bit clumsy, lazy and dimwitted, and while she’s certainly braver than she used to be, she can still be brought to tears pretty easily.
Pixie: Still… this is one pretty, sailor-suited soldier you don’t want to mess with.
[Clip from Sailor Moon.]
Sailor Moon: In the name of the Moon, I’ll punish you!
DEATH BATTLE![]
Spider: Alright, our combatants are ready. Let’s put an end to this debate once and for all.
Pixie: It’s time for a DEATH BATTLE!
* * *
Speed of Sound Sonic dashes down the street of City Z, smiling psychotically and scanning the side-walks for his target. “Where is he,” the ninja mutters, “Where is—”
“Hey.” Saitama appears before him, smiling. “Were you looking for me?”
Sonic freezes in his tracks and gasps, his eyes bulging from his head. “THERE YOU ARE!” His eyes narrow. “You’re about to pay for all the times you humiliated me, all the times you made me doubt my own power. I’ve finally perfected a technique specifically designed to destroy you! By harnessing the full extent of my speed, I can cause the molecules of my blade to vibrate at an immeasurably high frequency, causing—”
Saitama gets bored, dashes towards Sonic faster than the ninja can even react, and gently taps his fist down on Speed of Sound Sonic’s head. The blow is so intense, it slams Speed of Sound Sonic’s face into the ground and shatters the asphalt. Saitama stands over Sonic’s unconscious body, steam rising from his fist. Suddenly, a girl in a frilly outfit and blonde twin-tails appears before Saitama.
“You there!” Sailor Moon shouts. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Saitama looks at his fist, then at Sailor Moon, and blinks, silent.
“Attacking an innocent and helpless person like that,” Usagi fumes. “I won’t forgive you!”
“He wasn’t really innocent,” Saitama begins explaining. “Actually, I’m pretty sure he was trying to ki—”
Sailor Moon ignores him and strikes her signature pose. “In the name of the Moon, I’ll punish you!”
Saitama stares blankly. “Okay.”
FIGHT!
Sailor Moon grabs her tiara and hurls it at Saitama. “Moon Frisbee!”
Saitama casually side-steps and watches the whirling, gleaming crescent of energy pass him by, his expression faintly interested. Sailor Moon looks shocked, then hurls three more Moon Frisbees at Saitama, who side-steps the first two, then bends over the backwards as the third attack passes over him. Before Sailor Moon launches another attack, Saitama dashes towards her and hits her in the face with a Normal Punch.
A crack like a thunderclap rings out as the blow knocks Sailor Moon head-first through the walls of a nearby ice-cream parlor. The walls shatter, and the ceiling collapses, and destroyed ice-cream cartons spill all over the street. Sailor Moon slams into a building on the other side and sinks to the ground, rubbing her head and wincing. Saitama appears before her in a flash, but she doesn’t seem to notice him. Her eyes are locked on the puddles of melting ice-cream that are scattered across the street.
“All that ice-cream,” she whimpers, her eyes watering. “It’s all going to go to waste!”
Usagi begins bawling her eyes out, inadvertently unleashing the Sonic Cry attack. Saitama sticks his fingers in his ears and looks mildly annoyed as the force of Usagi’s voice forms massive cracks in the asphalt around him and shattered window-panes of every building in the city. Wiping the tears from her face, Sailor Moon charges Saitama and delivers a Sailor Moon Kick to the chin, launching Saitama into the sky.
Saitama sails through the air like a rocket, his expression blank. Wow, he thinks, as he passes over a flock of geese, this girl’s really powerful. This could be the best fight I’ve had since Boros.
Meanwhile, Deadpool, who is still in the middle of the Australian outback, spots something yellow and red streaking across the sky. “What the hell is that thing? Is it a bird? No, a plane? No, it’s—!”
Deadpool is unable to finish his sentence, as Saitama’s body then slams into him, forming a crater and reducing Deadpool to dozens of bloody chunks. Deadpool’s severed head flies several miles and lands in the shade of a Eucalyptus tree.
Deadpool sighs. “Another cameo… I’d better be getting an actual fight after this.”
At the site of Saitama’s impact, reddish dust is thrown up in a massive cloud. After a few seconds, Saitama steps out of the cloud, coughs quietly, and wipes some dust from his cape. Sailor Moon flies out of the sky and lands in front of him. Saitama smiles and raises his fists, ready to fight.
Sailor Moon touches her tiara and fires the Moon Twilight Flash. A silver beam of light blazes forth, and Saitama narrowly evades the beam. Sailor Moon prepared to fire again, and Saitama quickly uses his Consecutive Side-hops. He moves back and forth rapidly, creating the illusion that there are dozens of Saitamas. Sailor Moon glances from side to side, unsure of where Saitama is, and fires, but the attack misses. Suddenly the real Saitama rushes towards her and throws a kick at her head. Sailor Moon manages to block the kick with her arms, but the force makes her stagger. A wild grin stretches across Saitama’s face, and he launches the Consecutive Normal Punches. Saitama watches, ecstatic, as Sailor Moon dodges every blow.
What is this feeling? he muses. This wild, throbbing sensation in my heart…
Sailor Moon kicks Saitama in the gut, knocking him flat. She hurls a Moon Frisbee at him, but he tumbles out of the way as the attack sears the ground beside him.
Yes, Saitama thinks, smiling maniacally. Yes…
Saitama rushes towards Sailor Moon. Just as she touches her forehead to fire the Moon Twilight Flash, Saitama meets the attack with a Serious Headbutt.
THIS IS THE FEELING I’VE BEEN SEARCHING FOR!
The attacks clash, creating a massive explosion. Waves of force radiate from Sailor Moon and Saitama, flattening the land-scape, leveling cliffs and uprooting forests. The clouds above them part, and a silver gleam is visible from space.
The blast clears, and both combatants are still standing. Sailor Moon is breathing heavily, and Saitama’s forehead is charred, but he’s still smiling intensely.
Sailor Moon collects herself and points a finger at Saitama. “You may be powerful, but I’ll never give up! I’ll keep fighting for love and justice, no matter how hard it gets, no matter what pain I endure. Do you understand me, villain? I’ll NEVER SURRENDER!”
Saitama bares his teeth and draws back his fist. “That is exactly what I wanted to hear.”
Sailor Moon fires an onslaught of magical lasers from her tiara, filling the air with rivers of blazing energy. Saitama darts across the battle-field, evading Sailor Moon’s attacks, and dashes towards her, his fist outstretched. Sailor Moon pulls her tiara from her hair and uses it to block the attack. As Saitama streaks past her, Sailor Moon turns and hurls a Moon Frisbee. Saitama meets the attack with a punch, eradicating the Moon Frisbee, then side-steps a Sailor Moon Kick. Saitama and Sailor Moon chase each other across the battle-field, lunging and dodging so fast, not even a blur of motion can be seen. Only the wind created by the fighters’ speed can be felt as evidence of their struggle.
Sailor Moon skids to a halt and draws the Cutie Moon Rod. “It’s time to end this,” the heroine declares.
Saitama smirks and clenches his fist. “NO HOLDING BACK!”
The tip of the Cutie Moon Rod flashes pink, and Sailor Moon swings it a circle, then aims it at Saitama. “Moon Princess… Halation!”
Saitama draws back his fist, then thrusts it forwards with all his might. “SERIOUS PUNCH!”
An immense beam of gleaming stars and moons shoots towards Saitama and the shock-wave from Saitama’s fist shoots towards Sailor Moon. Their attacks clash, roaring, crackling, and gleaming as each wave of energy struggles to overcome the other. The Earth shakes, nearly unable to withstand the force of the battle.
For an instant, Saitama is aware of a bright light rushing towards him. He smiles.
“Completely worth it.”
Moon Princess Halation overwhelms the Serious Punch and utterly obliterates Saitama’s body.
K.O!
Sailor Moon twirls in place and strikes her victory pose. “Yay!”
A moment later, Saitama’s boot falls out of the sky and clonks her in the head. “Owww…”
Post-Battle Analysis[]
Pixie: …PLEASE DON’T KILL US! We can explain this. Really, I promise!
Spider: While Saitama’s true power has not been explored, none of his feats come even close to what Sailor Moon has accomplished. While both of them have shown enough power to destroy planets, there’s quite a difference between the size of Earth and Planet Nemesis.
Pixie: You’re about to throw a crap-ton of math at us all, aren’t you?
Spider: Well, yeah. When Planet Nemesis reached the edge of our solar system, it appeared to be the roughly the same size as the sun when viewed from Earth. Our sun has a mass of 1.979 X10^30 kilograms, while the Earth has a mass of 5.972 X 10^24 kilograms.
Pixie: For those of you who haven’t used scientific notation since High School, the sun has a mass about 330,000 times greater than Earth.
Spider: Of course, comparing the mass of Planet Nemesis to the sun is far from accurate, since Nemesis’ apparent size was greatly distorted by distance. The distance from the Earth to the Sun is one astronomical unit, or AU, which is equivalent to approximately 93 million miles. The distance from the sun to the edge of the solar system, where Planet Nemesis was, is 100,000 AU. Since the distance from Earth to Nemesis is 100,000 times greater than the distance from the Earth to the sun, correcting for perspective would place Nemesis at 100,000 times greater than the mass of the sun, or thirty-three billion times larger than Earth. Meaning that when we compare the force of the Serious Punch to that of Moon Princess Halation… well…
Pixie: The power of Saitama’s greatest feat ever isn’t even close to a fraction of fraction of Sailor Moon’s power. Yeah, I know, it hurts. Both of us are huge One Punch Man fans, and it hurts us too.
Spider: Comparing speed doesn’t get much better. While Saitama is capable of moving at 32% the speed of light, Sailor Moon is capable of traveling light-years in mere hours. To travel one lightyear per hour, Sailor Moon would have to move at a bare minimum of 8,760 times the speed of light, which would put her at fifty-eight thousand, four hundred times faster than Saitama.
Pixie: And we are low-balling the shit out of Usagi’s speed right now. Not to mention that we deliberately excluded every single one of her super-forms. You know, those super-forms where she can exceed the power of the Big Bang, fly eight-hundred billion times the speed of light, stop time, rip out souls and regenerate from nothing as long as the concept of life exists? We tilted the odds in Saitama’s favor as hard as we possibly could, and this was still a curb-stomp for Moon.
Spider: Ultimately, this gap is rooted in the nature of the shows. A lot of the comedy of One Punch Man is in the relative mundanity of the setting. Saitama’s home may be flooded with powerful monsters, but it’s still Earth. He still bums around in his apartment, goes grocery shopping, and spends time on other familiar activities. Usagi has a civilian life as well, but when the time comes to fight monsters, she usually flies to another solar system, if not another dimension. This gives her the freedom to deal with forces that cause destruction on a far greater scale than merely a single planet. Saitama and the other heroes wait until evil forces attack Earth, and then react. Sailor Moon and the other senshi jet off to fight evil before it can reach Earth.
Pixie: So, you may be asking at this point… could Saitama ever be as strong as Sailor Moon? Couldn’t he whip out some new feats next season or the season after?
Spider: Well… maybe… but for him to really stand up against Usagi, to be able to match Eternal Moon and Sailor Cosmos, he’d have to become a different kind of character altogether. At the end of the day, Saitama is a guy who punches things hard, and Sailor Moon is a master of space and time. That isn’t the kind of gap you close by training harder, it’s the kind of gap you close by achieving godhood. Even if Saitama could somehow become a being like Sailor Moon, in godhood he would have to lose many of the aspects that make him so much fun to watch.
Pixie: Look like Saitama finally met One foe he couldn’t Punch out.
Spider: The winner is Sailor Moon.