One Weird Power Fantasy Trope

[Arch9CivilReactor]

It’s weird that low-effort Isekai and some power fantasies have this weird trope in their fight scenes sometimes. After giving the MC some kind of cheat, they will play around ‘fighting’ low level mobs before immediately destroying them.

Mostly by pulling out the solution really late.

Like in Lvl9999 Infinite Gacha, where the MC reacts in surprise and fights the enemy for a good while… then literally pulls out his instant win card he had laying around. There in an instant win move the MC saves for later.

More recently, there’s this Manhwa called Monster Eater where the MC fights a bunch of lizard dudes. The enemy advantage is that the leader is controlling the group. It makes it hard to kill any of the lizards as they protect each other.

Initially, he tries to fight the lizard leader and uses his superior physique. Striking a critical hit, but then finds out that the lizard leader survived. He quickly uses his analysis ability to find the lizard who could use a unique self-sacrificial ability.

I’d be fine with the fight if it just ended there…

…but then he suddenly pulls and OP thread ability out of nowhere that completely subdues the entire lizard group. Why didn’t he use that damn ability earlier? Why didn’t he start off with that move? Was there even a point in fighting?

I don’t get how this is supposed to be entertaining even for those who like power fantasy. This is followed by brain dead tactics against stupid bandits who can’t just take a step back when there is a random poisonous marsh place that the MC is immune to out of nowhere.

They had a hostage on top of that but chose not to use it.

Honestly, I don’t get this trope or why people think it’s in any way entertaining.

 

[ThisAdamGuy]

Because immediately beating every enemy with one attack is boring. That's why I don't like stories with OP main characters. If they act how someone would realistically act during one of these fights, it's boring. But if they try to draw the fight out to be dramatic or something, you get people complaining that they should have ended the fight in one hit. Even One Punch Man knew it couldn't base an entire story around that premise, which is why the fights focus more on the side characters who actually struggle.

 

[RepresentingWrath]

I can say the same about OP MCs that turns out to not be as OP. Example. For 120 chapters straight author is sucking MC off and polishing his balls, telling how cool and strong he is, showing how he defeats anyone without breaking a sweat. Only to make him struggle from chapter 121 till the end of a story. Important note, MC does not become weaker, author pulls out even stronger, bullshit enemies. What's the point? You lose readers who like OP MCs by making him struggle, you lose readers who don't like OP MCs by making him OP in the beginning.

P.S. If only this was unique to cultivation novels, but it is not.

 

[Jerynboe]

Only way I could see this being done well is if there was some kind of cost to using the most OP BS. Like, idk, have the MC start throwing up any time he instantly annihilates a swarm of enemies with a wave of scintillating purple energy.

“Noooo. I can’t rely on OP CHEAT MOVE #7 because it causes unspecified internal damage. I’d better make a policy of at least trying to fight without it.”

Shame how many stories don’t bother with even that level of justification. It’s not hard to come up with a reason for something, especially if you’re ok with it being an excuse that you never actually have to give any teeth to.

 

[RedMuffin]

…but then he suddenly pulls and OP thread ability out of nowhere that completely subdues the entire lizard group. Why didn’t he use that damn ability earlier? Why didn’t he start off with that move? Was there even a point in fighting?

Maybe something happened offscreen? Like it has been removed due to the adaptation to manhwa format? Or maybe it's how its supposed to be, completely unreasonable. There are some manhwa that don't really care about things being reasonable, it's more about cooking up ridiculous situations.

 

[CharlesEBrown]

Sounds like a problem that has also been plaguing American comic books for at least two decades. Especially when weaker or lazier writers get hold of massively unbalanced characters like Superman or about half the versions of The Hulk out there....

At least some characters ARE justified in holding back at first (Spider-Man is probably the champion of this - the few times you see him cut loose he comes very close to - or, if a "What-If/Alternate Reality/Other Dimensional Version story" actually DOES - killing his opponents).

 

[LoneQuack]

I wouldn't call it much of a trope. More like bad writing. My mc is incredibly op and I make it very clear to the reader. The only thing is he himself doesn't realize it and his most broken powers are very limited. To point out the two main he will have in his arsenal, one is future sight, something he currently has and doesn't even understand it, being a much bigger hinderance than a power up, and the second is the flames of a phoenix in which he has trauma over and I'm still contemplating if when using them is going to hurt him as if he is burning alive or not. (Haven't reached the point in the story to reveal them.)

 

[Nolff]

Make a rule of honor or internal bleeding or punishment when using OP powers.

All my main casts in A Hub were powerful as f*ck, they could've destroyed some fictions. But instead, they chose not to. Why? Well, living so powerful is boring, so they decided to resort to only a handful of powers they can use. Those powers are Fly, Summon, Spawn, Conceal, Masquerade, Morph, GTA SA punch, Ubercharge, and a few others. They balanced themselves because of various personal reasons.
Some to assert dominance, others for peak-human efficiency, some to become the laziest, and the rest for the sake of Slice of Life Life.


They agree on some things regarding their powers.

Seeing the future sucks, because then something powerful will come to destroy them. Being able to look to the past also sucks because why should they look back? Being able to read people's minds sucks because they'll get a headache when they read a moron's mind.
Being able to insta-kill enemies sucks, because there's no intensity and stakes built up. Teleporting while mid-combat sucks because they felt like pussies. Fighting with cheat weapons that defy physics sucks (excluding IRL & games' firearms) because they don't feel the adrenaline of fights. Bending some universe's destiny sucks because they believe they don't hold anyone's destiny other than themselves.

There's quite some more to the things they didn't do, but these are the main things they're seen abiding.

This is their principle, and they follow it.

They only use firearms, regular swords, normal knives & daggers, and logical weapons. They only teleport when they know there's no other way out of a circumstance. They never read minds because they like being human. They don't activate invincibility because they know they'll die eventually. Immortality is fake because they themselves had witnessed even the oldest dragon in the universe die at the age of 50M years. They use CQC techniques that can be done by the top normal humans. They use powerful abilities only to do memes, troll, do a bit of tomfoolery, or assert dominance.

Just that, nothing else.

 

[ArlindoFrancisco]

I don't like OP MCs anymore because of this. If he is super OP, it is better to have him doing slice of life shit and that being the focus of it. My Mc is not OP at all compared to the enemies he needs to fight, but compared to his allies, he is strong. It doesn't matter at the end because it is just a question of numbers. That is why his focus is to bring his allies up to his level or do things he just can't do.

Limitations, in my opinion, are important when you do some kind of power fantasy; you need rules for your character and the world itself, but if it is a comedy, I think it doesn't matter at all, and that is the thing. I think that a lot of people that like those powerfantasies just want to see the reaction of the characters to the things the Mc is doing.

You can trace this behavior to the rise of react content; they care about the content but care even more about the reaction of some people to that content. Is the same with OP MCs? He is OP, and that is boring but how about the reaction of the other characters?

That is why if you are a content creator, you should 1000% double dip on your own content by reacting to it and giving a commentary of the director after a week where you take people's feedback in the comments or something like this.

 

[TheKillingAlice]

I can say the same about OP MCs that turns out to not be as OP. Example. For 120 chapters straight author is sucking MC off and polishing his balls, telling how cool and strong he is, showing how he defeats anyone without breaking a sweat. Only to make him struggle from chapter 121 till the end of a story. Important note, MC does not become weaker, author pulls out even stronger, bullshit enemies. What's the point? You lose readers who like OP MCs by making him struggle, you lose readers who don't like OP MCs by making him OP in the beginning.

P.S. If only this was unique to cultivation novels, but it is not.

Oddly enough, that reminds me of how I hate queer bait in stories. Yurii on Ice kind of managed to con people into believing the protagonist is actually gay, by literally just showing a deep connection over a shared goal, made more gay by fan service. But normal queer bait ends up being made for no one. A really good anime I know is not as popular as it could have been, because it was queer baited to hell and back.
But, you see, people who don't like the big gay in their shows will already flee the scene upon seeing the bait - while people who were baited in are disappointed, because it's all a whole lot of nothing.

 

[QuercusMalus]

I remember one story, I think it was 'The Death Mage Doesn't Want a Fourth Life' or something like that, where one of the reincarnations has a really OP ability- the blow cuts through everything. Only problem is it's not really controlled. It will cut through allies and innocents as well as enemies and he can't really focus/direct it. That did the OP attack correctly, give it a flaw.
But I might be biased as I dislike the OP protagonists.

 

[BigBadBoi]

It's just like when you're playing a game of Aeon of Strife Styled Fortress Assault Game Going On Two Sides like League of Legends or Dota2. You don't just immediately use your ultimate abulity at the start if you're not confident in winning. Also shit writing.

 

[RepresentingWrath]

Oddly enough, that reminds me of how I hate queer bait in stories. Yurii on Ice kind of managed to con people into believing the protagonist is actually gay, by literally just showing a deep connection over a shared goal, made more gay by fan service. But normal queer bait ends up being made for no one. A really good anime I know is not as popular as it could have been, because it was queer baited to hell and back.
But, you see, people who don't like the big gay in their shows will already flee the scene upon seeing the bait - while people who were baited in are disappointed, because it's all a whole lot of nothing.

I can see it work in certain situations. Like GL bait. As much as envy dislikes it, straight people are ok with it because it's a fetish. Or the way GB+GL is used on SH commonly. It's nothing more than a fetish for certain people.

Other than that, I agree with you, and can't understand it. And while Yuri might've been an attempt to say something or change how people percieve things(I don't know, didn't watch it), novels, manga, and webtoons I talk about are b-tier if not c-tier. There are clearly no profound meanings there, so why would authors of those works willingly reduce their own readerbase? I simply can't understand it.

 

[Kamelingil]

Just to excite the audience, my MC can even erase someone without moving a finger yet he chose not to use it or he'll get bored as hell as well as the readers

 

[JayMark]

Because immediately beating every enemy with one attack is boring. That's why I don't like stories with OP main characters. If they act how someone would realistically act during one of these fights, it's boring. But if they try to draw the fight out to be dramatic or something, you get people complaining that they should have ended the fight in one hit. Even One Punch Man knew it couldn't base an entire story around that premise, which is why the fights focus more on the side characters who actually struggle.

They also lean pretty heavily into the theme that defeating enemies instantly is boring through Saitama's struggle with being so overpowered and getting no thrill from his fights.

 

[TheKillingAlice]

I can see it work in certain situations. Like GL bait. As much as envy dislikes it, straight people are ok with it because it's a fetish. Or the way GB+GL is used on SH commonly. It's nothing more than a fetish for certain people.

Other than that, I agree with you, and can't understand it. And while Yuri might've been an attempt to say something or change how people percieve things(I don't know, didn't watch it), novels, manga, and webtoons I talk about are b-tier if not c-tier. There are clearly no profound meanings there, so why would authors of those works willingly reduce their own readerbase? I simply can't understand it.

I know, with GL it works (I love how people always pretended that was not the case, if you just look at all sorts of movies and shows, and I don't even mean all the ones in recent years, but even before that <-<). And yes, that's for men and BL bait is for women.
But arguably, BL bait works way less, because it's usually less hands on, but more in ways of trying to imply things, which never really happen. Makes me roll my eyes every time. Yurii on Ice just really pulled the con off, because people with headcanons love to headcanon. .-.
A well-received anime, Seraph of the End, also realized soon that Prota and another character were hardcore shipped. In a scene at the end of season 2, those two come in late for a departure, and someone from the studio (Producer, maybe?) apparently said in an interview that they had come late because they had sex. I gathered it was because Prota fed the other, as the other was the only Vampire of the group and the only remaining "family" (orphanage) member he had. If you have the gall to say shit like that, make it happen. If you are afraid to lose your audience, don't fucking lie behind the scene. It's really not that hard.
But yeah, again, it's just diminishing their own audience and what for? For nothing. Nobody's happy at the end.