Talk:Genos/@comment-38509209-20190501221358/@comment-36856368-20190630070457

I've gone back and forth a few times on your question of what the value of grit is, thinking whether to reply and I guess I will.

Put simply,

Grit is why Saitama is the only character to break his limiter. A surprising proportion of fans seem to misunderstand that Saitama didn't start out strong, didn't have special talents, was fearful and did lose to begin with. Saitama explains as much both to Suiryu and to King in the aftermath of the Superfight. He just kept coming back, no matter what, day after day. He didn't know the first thing about limits. He didn't know there would come a day when he'd be too strong to beat. He just kept getting back up and coming back.

It's easy to type this, but if we were following Saitama from the beginning, then after his victory over Crablante with his ridiculous weak spot, we'd just see a guy who means well, does well sometimes but always ends up losing. Again. And again. It took nearly a year of winning and losing for the first glimmers of Saitama's power to awaken. Imagine how we'd have mocked him in the interim.

There are no promises of reaching the top of that killer staircase to true power. But if you don't have the heart, the grit to get up and keep climbing every time you get knocked down, you definitely won't get to the top. That's the value of the grit we're seeing Genos have. No upgrade can give him grit: it's something that comes entirely from within him. 'But what if it's possible to climb without ever falling?'   For that answer, just look around at his fellow Class S members, many of whom are struggling to make sense of what is for them their FIRST ever set back. A couple have quit heroism altogether.