He's a friend to children, a hero for the ages, and a delicious pastry product. Oh, and he can probably also destroy you.

Like many anime heroes, Anpanman has some pretty colossal powers -- one of which is the Anpunch, which can send his opponents clear to the horizon. But just how powerful would he have to be to send something like the Baikin UFO flying that far? Anime physics aside, inquiring minds want to know.

To find the answer, fans consulted Unit.Yakuri, a group of freelance writers who release the Arienai Science series in Japan. And what they came up with is, as you might expect, pretty nuts.

First off, we have to calculate the mass of the Baikin UFO. Unfortunately, the material it's made of doesn't exist in the real world, so Unit.Yakuri had to fudge the numbers a bit there. They set it at 500 kg, half the mass of a small helicopter.

Next comes the distance to the horizon. Assuming flat terrain, we're looking at a constant distance of about 16.6 km. As for starting altitude, Anpanman's air battles tend to appear to be about 10m above the tops of the trees, which was estimated to be a total height of 30 m. These two numbers can be used to find the true distance the Baikin UFO travels, taking into account both forward movement and drop.





And finally comes time. When timed, the Baikin UFO's journey via Air Anpunch comes out to about 2.47 seconds.





Using the equation velocity = distance/time, we come up with a speed of 6,710 meters per second. That's 24,155 km/h, or Mach 19.7. Just for reference, space shuttles re-enter our atmosphere at Mach 20.

But we're not done yet.

Now that we know the speed at which you travel after you've been Anpunched, we can calculate just how hard the UFO is being hit.

Energy (in joules) is equal to half an object's mass in kg times its velocity squared in m/s. That comes out to 11,255,227,716 joules. That's the same as nine GBU-28 Bunker Busters.

Fortunately for everyone, of course, this is all hypothetical, and we can watch Anpanman punch villains into the sun knowing he's not really hitting them with the force of multiple laser-guided artillery shells. Because that would be an awkward one to explain to the kids.

Source: My Game News Flash

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Kara Dennison is responsible for multiple webcomics, blogs and runs interviews for (Re)Generation Who and PotterVerse, and is half the creative team behind the OEL light novel series Owl's Flower. She blogs at karadennison.com and tweets @RubyCosmos.