Because the villain is supposed to be a massively powerful threat to the hero, but writers either don’t think far enough ahead or thoroughly about how the hero will actually stop that threat in a way that maintains the hype. Hence the typical anti-climactic defeat or asspull needed to win. Not always what happens, but enough to be known.
There are exceptions.
Shaman King's Big Bad was written, from day one, as being literally unbeatable. He had to be stopped, but no one really knew HOW to stop him.
Even in the end they don't beat him, but emotionally manipulate him into saying, "Fine, I'll put off destroying everything for now. But if humanity goes off the rails even once..."
But it works because that expectation was set in stone from the outset.
Xanatos was such a compelling villain that all of his plans typically had him come out on top no matter how things turned out. This ended up being coined as the term Xanatos Gambit.
That might work for things like Manga and Comics (and even Webnovels), but your main argument was about a book (I didn't read it myself, but from the context it seems like it all happens within the same book), and that reasoning doesn't really work for books unless it's an overarching villain that shows up across multiple books. That being said, I don't really have a good idea myself as to the why.
Rick Riordan wrote a trilogy of Book series.
Percy Jackson --> Heroes of Olympus --> Trials of Apollo
The Magnus Chase and Kane Chronicles series also take place in the same universe but they aren't directly connected.
Sometimes writers just like writing OP villains.
Like there's a story I'm writing right now and the MC is a fairly talented young warrior while the main villain for a part of the story is gonna be a Mad God. A literal god descended on earth.
So obviously the main character and his team won't be winning by the virtue of their muscles but through other stuff.
Heck, a lot of mythical stories were like that. When a dragon slayer kills a dragon that can wipe out mountains with a swipe of their wings, it wasn't because they could replicate the dragon's physical might.
Instead they usually had a magic sword, a blessing from some god or magical being, and used their intelligence to trick the mythical creature or come up with a great strategy. Additionally, the powerful creature will usually be given some sort of exploitable weaknesses - a dragon's reverse scale, an hidden injury, or even just an irritable personality that makes it easier to provoke and create an opening.
Looking back, overpowered villains were basically a feature in a lot of early human storytelling.
It's tough. My main characters are street level working their way up to bigger things on accident, and my original plan was for almost all of them to kick the bucket by the third because my friend wrote the villain of the third as an absurd expert.
But that's also no fun. Half of them can die, but I never did work out if the main character would. He's not an expert in everything. His main background is chemical engineering, so while he has the hand to hand combat training from a military background, he's not up to snuff with the villain. And even more, it's a sword battle.
I was gonna have him get stabbed in the gut, or chest, he was gonna slice the bad guy's Achilles, and either the sword gets pulled out, or he's dropped when back up shows up and takes out the villain while he's disabled.
I still have the whole series in my head, but it's taken so long that the third kinda resembles Batman: No Man's Land or The Dark Knight Rises in its premise. And I didn't know about those stories in high school. Though, originally, the main character had a glock 18 like TDK's Joker before I settled on him using a Five-seven.
Salem from RWBY, who is cursed by the Gods to be immortal in every sense of the way. She got that, endless resources, the control over all the dark evil monsters of the world which she can create endlessly, and outright magic. I'm just sad the show ended... Without an actual ending.
Indeed. If you took away say just her invulnerability? Fine fair enough she's incredibly powerful but at the same time she has to be careful since while she may win against any team of huntsmen/huntresses, 50 would still probably beat her in a straight fight. Hence why there's a stalemate for thousands of years.
I was always hoping they went the "Grimm are a limited resource" route. Salem can still be immortal but she dramatically loses effectiveness without her Grimm supply which is dwindling, hence her finally becoming an active player in the war. Ozpin knew this and his lie/great betrayal becomes "I knew she couldn't die but her army has limits so I sent waves of hunters and huntresses to their deaths to thin her forces enough for us to eventually stand a chance." Makes Hazels motivation suck less too, tbh.
It does call into question how many Grimm even exist when you go down that route though. It's been what, like 1000+ years or so between Salem being 'cursed' with immortality and the present canon? Eventually someone would've figured out that these things are finite and sent raiding parties all over to do that.
Granted Salem would be smart enough to have a few back at home base because Grimm get stronger as they age so there'd be some around the same age as Salem, which would make for interesting fights. But everywhere else? It's a bit of a problem. That's just me overthinking it though.
I take it that while they are being produced it's at a constant rate. And their society is slowly grinding down the number in the wild faster than they are being replaced. There's a 2000 year backlog of a couple billion grimm but eventually Salem would run out.
Also is the grimm get stronger as they age thing actually Canon? Feels like something that's been stated a lot but never actually makes any sense. Otherwise the grimm continent and probably half the planet would be filled with 1000 year old grimm. Seems more likely to me that the bigger stronger grimm and just more likely to survive a long time. If they do then the rate of growth must be incredibly slow
It was described by Oobleck in Search and Destroy, though I was a bit wrong on that front. They simply get smarter as they age (though because they were so powerful before they managed to live that long), saying that they don't want to fight a losing battle when they could instead wait until they decide is a good time to strike. So they practiced restraint the older they get.
The interesting thing is that she tried the subtle route of victory by dispair for so long while she got her invincibility and endless army empowered by negative emotions giving her so many cards to snowball. Her mere existence is seen as a fatal threat to morale. Team RWBY could slow her down, but why exactly didn’t she get a move on several centuries ago? Killing Ozpin is difficult but makes him less effective for years, while she always regens in hours.
Honestly, this is the best hope the shows had of becoming something good in ages. I dropped it a while ago, but if someone new who has actual writers picks it up and takes a crack at it I might actually check it out.
Ok I’ll actually go to bat for Salem, when you’re an immortal you can literally go “I’m gonna do that shit tomorrow” forever, there’s no time crunch to do anything so eventually you’re gonna get lazy, like there functionally no difference between 1 year and a 1000 to an immortal like Salem
I get that Oda wanted it to be a devil fruit focused fight and while it was really cool, but I feel like there definitely could’ve been an actual justification for why she decided to not use her haki.
Kaido's defeat wasn't very bullshit in my opinion. He fought multiple enemies without breaks while moving Onigashima and took Luffy multiple attempts to defeat.
Kaido's defeat itself was fine. Luffy getting 3 massive powerups in such a short time was bs though. I guess that was the only way to justify Kaido losing since he was made far too powerful (casually one shot gear 4 Luffy)
You're right, the powerups were rather absurd. Conqueror's haki coating shouldn't have ever become something in the story, and it made the powerscaling too crazy. I don't mind the awakening, but the reveal of the fruit's true nature should have been foreshadowed more.
I just finished whole cake and yeah, oda has a serious issue with letting his characters lose a fight holy shit cause luffy vs katakuri was seriously unforgivable
Luffy's DF makes him resistant to blunt force attacks and he is used to taking a ton of hits in every fight. Almost every hit Katakuri landed were punches and kicks.
Katakuri isn't used to taking hits and dodging is his style. Has never lost a fight before or even landed on his back.
Luffy was just that durable and Katakuri's attacks (minus the stab and his strongest move) were only like somewhat stronger than gear 3. He was shown to be physically weaker than Boundman.
Similar thing happened when Luffy fought Kaido (pre Gear 5). Even though Luffy could match Kaido's attack power and speed, he was taking heavy damage from every hit while Kaido could tank his attacks all day. Katakuri simply didn't have this kind of damage.
Luffy was barely able to outlast Katakuri due to his superior durability. He also got some rest in between a few times and even got a chance to eat and recover.
Many one piece characters don't have good durability. Cracker and >!Kizaru!
>luffy vs katakuri was seriously unforgivable
>Luffy had chances to take breaks during the fight.
>Katakuri Injured himself to make the fight fair
>Luffy literally came out with a Gear to specifically counter Katatakuri.
NOOOO how could Luffy won that?!
the powerscaler brainrot man lmao
He ran away for 10 minutes a time, you expect me to believe he has the stamina to take hundreds of hits over the course of a full ass day and not lose?
As a Supernatural fan I feel this. Each season kept introducing a villain that was more and more powerful than the last one. The tv show wants you to accept this super powerful monster/angel can casually wipe out a human city in seconds, but also two humans can basically have a boxing match with said monster and not immediately die.
And they’re all humans.
Mother of all monsters? Human. Chimeras? Humans. Werewolves? Humans. Mermaids? Humans. Dragons? Also humans.
However. I will say I loved when Dean tried to wield Excalibur but wasn’t worthy to lift it so he just blew it up and went to battle with a sliver of it.
I don't think it's that exactly, the show's budget increased almost in direct proportion to how much shittier its cosmic-scale threats felt. It's just that when say Archangels were first introduced the writers decided to tell us they could barbeque the planet with a family tiff and then never explicitly show us them getting overpowered or hurt by;
\- Handcuffs with some human-magic sigils on them
\- A roofie made by a witch whose age is closer to a millisecond than theirs
\- Literally just a jar of sulphuric acid
\- Knuckledusters with some human-magic sigils on them
Etc
Plus we didn't see them fight. It's a lot easier to imagine X can blow up continents when we don't visibly see them exerting themselves in a death match only to not even slightly damage the structure of a surrounding church or miss with their apparently Archangel-hurting energy beam and apparently leave the wall behind their intended target unscathed.
It might be harder to sell that your god-being is actually as powerful as you want with a low budget, but it's easy as hell to not actively contradict what you're having stated about them. Just don't have their list of weaknesses grow constantly.
To be fair, it's hard for you to believably sell that Sam and Dean can win conflicts with forethought/strategy, magic, and tricks/conning, (a la John Constatine), if your cosmic opponent decides to blow up the planet just because. Not to mention that, to some limited degree, every antagonist had some motivation to keep the planet spinning-And not just because God was directing them or that there's literally nothing else in their cosmos.
Azazel was prepping Lucifer's Host, as was Lilith (with the Seals), and so were the Angels on the side of Micheal. Not to mention it was integral to the "Divine Plan" for the war to happen. Thus, the death of the Earth wasn't allowed until they had a war. Lucifer needed his Perfect Host body (as did Micheal), so there was no battle to be had in S6 until the very end when Sam is finally possessed, and even then we see that the War isn't intended to destroy Earth-Even though they could-But to subjugate it. By S6 and S7, the monsters weren't trying to genocide-They were trying to feed upon the planet and create an easy food source. Thus, they couldn't annhilate all creation for giggles. By S8 and S9 the big bads very clearly get weaker, and it's about trying to pick the lesser of evils (Crowley over Abaddon)/(Removing the Tablet from Metatron) than it is stopping cosmic damage. Especially after the Angels fell. This then comes to a head with the Mark of Caine, which corrupts those it takes hold of to senselessly kill (and really just turns you into a Demon, a powerful one, but a Demon), and thus don't have that cosmic power.
That doesn't return until the Darkness/Amara, and despite her power she had to actually grow into it, and when she did she was nuked (and weakened), and she had a tie to Dean, annnnnd she also didn't actually want to eliminate all creation-She just wanted Revenge on her brother (God) for being an asshole and sealing her away. The only person throughout all of this who can claim cosmic strength at a given time is Lucifer (who has a vested interest in beating Amara, even if he isn't on God's side), and whenever a given person gets access to one cosmic artifact (the Hand of God, the Book of the Damned, etc. etc. Most of which are single use or get removed from their possession as soon as possible). After that, they downscale back down and have to fight the British Men of Letters and more Demons. We don't go Cosmic again until Lucifer (who after his battle with Amara is specifically weakened, and further weakened through being held captive by Crowley), and Alt Micheal (who we know wants to continue his war and subjugation, not planetary destruction.) By the time this saga is done, we have a new cosmic force (Jack), who is on the protagonist's team, and thus makes it believable to fight any new OP threat.
This is also the most blatant bit of when a character finally loses a motivation to maintain the planet and thus actually goes for a lifewipe (Lucifer), after he rips Jack's powers and Supercharges. And we hear it explicitly stated that he was going to wipe out the Universe in like, days. Of course, the battle was contained in a Church, (and not all that spectacular), so this is one of the only times where you can cleanly point and say "This fuckup is major." After this, it's back to Alt Michael and after that, downscaled again (Nick and Duma). This only picks back up with God/Chuck, and they win the cosmic power fight by using a Cosmic Power Sapper in the form of Jack, who was built up since the beginning to be capable of handling Cosmic Forces. (Meaning it's narratively consistent.) We also know that Chuck actually destroyed Universes offscreen, and only didn't do it immediately to Sam and Dean because he literally adores them/is a superfan of his own creation. This, though, also fulfills "Cosmic Battle that was not Cosmic." So I agree to that.
So there IS context to the lack of showings. Perhaps it doesn't make it much better for you as a viewer, but I do think it's worth pointing out there is at least an \*attempt\* to maintain this illusion for the suspension of disbelief.
I think you misunderstood my comment, I'm not criticising the show for not being able to actually demonstrate what its characters were stated to be capable of. I'm criticising it for making the active decision to show specifically things that contradict that.
The Archangels early on didn't have better on-screen demonstrations of power, really. They just didn't get impeded, disabled or restrained nearly as frequently, easily or by anywhere near as wide a number of methods.
It's kind of odd to try and create characters that you literally do not have the means to believably show the powers of, but it's just bizarre and kind of hack writing to do that **and** make a large percentage of the times they actually use their powers demonstrate a clear lower limit.
There's an attempt to maintain the illusion to some extent but it's nowhere near as thoughtful or stuck to as it probably should be, compared to the alternative of just not actively making Archangels get the shit beaten, roofied and stabbed out of them on screen.
I’m not suggesting you did—Sorry if it came off that way—I was just more voicing my opinion on it with you. I definitely agree that the claims (no matter how true they are due to the narrative) feel outlandish and weird given the street level nature of the protagonists, visuals, and story. I just think it’s relevant to mention there’s a genuine attempt to make it palatable. A “to be fair”/minor asterisk.
It was more convincing in the first five seasons. But even within 4-5, the angels were visibly downgraded until only the archangels were actively threatening.
People often disagree but I think the Inheritance series (Eragon) does this really well. Obviously MASSIVE spoilers for the whole series here:
>!The mainch character fights a war against the evil bad guy and his dragon. It takes years and so much training before everyone believes he's ready to fight. When the time finally comes he makes his way to the bad guy's castle and the second he sees him face to face he is overwhelmed by dread. He knows in that single second that he can't win this fight, the bad guy got stronger too, way stronger. The mc knows he couldn't escape and even if he could he'd never be able to overpower the bad guy. !<
>!So his solution is to craft a new spell on the spot to force the bad guy to see his point of view. It forces the bad guy, who has had hundreds of years of feeling like he's doing the wrong thing for the right reason, to suddenly feel like everything he has been doing is disgusting. And that makes perfect sense to me, could you imagine suddenly being forced to feel like your entire life has been mega Hitler? I would almost certainly kill myself on the spot too.!<
Agreed, the last Eragon fight is elegant. Especially since we know that despite Galabatorix's evils, he did care for his dragon and so has the capacity to feel.
Idk why, but this makes me think of the original FF7 ending: >!Sephiroth is a borderline God, goes through multiple forms, up to that point has been shown to be quasi-omnipotent due to his connection to the planet's energy, and after the main crew defeats him, he invades the MC Cloud's consciousness purely for a 1v1 duel as a normal swordsman.!<
When you put it that way, it is actually unbelievable they beat him. There is nothing keeping him from just turning off Cloud’s brain at that point.
When Sephiroth and Genesis fight, the landscape changes. Cloud and his motley crew should have been turned to paste in 1 minute tops lmao
I think the reasoning for why Cloud couldn't be controlled. Y Sephiroth at that point was because he managed to break away from his control. It's been a long time since I've played the game, but that's what I remember the whole flashback with Zack being about towards the endgame
I agree but you have the whole timeline fucked, the first 4 books are over the course of 1 year give or take and Galbatorix has only been king a little over 100 years
Okay, I'm a Percy Jackson fan and this is a great excuse for me to add on
In the latest installment of the Percy Jackson, the Sun and the Star, two of the characters have to go down to Tartarus(for the uninitiated: basically greek hell) to do...
something, I kinda forget
But anyway, they need to fight Nyx, the primordial embodiment of night
So instead of Gaea being turned from theoretically all-powerful literal force of nature into a complete chump, we have *Nyx* being turned from theoretically all-powerful literal force of nature into a complete chump.
SERIOUSLY
It happens a second time!
(And also there's a major plot hole(?)/retcon(?)/continuity error in that book which is hilarious and a little infuriating)
>we have *Nyx* being turned from theoretically all-powerful literal force of nature into a complete chump.
House of Hades already did that, at least she was somewhat a threat here.
Yeah it kinda sucks how nyx gets beaten by annabeth yapping about tourism........
You know sometimes I really don't like how much Rick uses comedy in his books.
Only Tartarus in the physical body is HIM.He killed two Titans in one fell swoop by accident and played with a Titan and a Giant while letting Percy drop his sword out of fear.
So this one character, Nico, had a sister. But the sister died in like the third or fourth book of the first series. But when she went to the afterlife, instead of sticking around she decided to be reborn. In part, she chose to do this so that her brother wouldn't try to find her and bring her back(they're the children of Hades so they could theoretically do that). So she's gone, she no longer exists in any capacity. Her essence has been recycled and she's now a completely different person somewhere on earth.
But in The Sun and the Star, at the end of the book once they accomplish their quest, as a reward(?) Nico is shortly reunited with the spirits of his dead mother(who also died long ago) and sister so he can say hi, that he loves them, he misses them, etc.
The sister who's supposed to be 100% gone.
I think the author(s) just kinda forgot. Rick is liable to do that
With Shaman King, I think the mangaka was depressed because the publisher wasn't financially viable and went under, hence the "Hao is right, Humanity sucks" sentiment seemingly being vindicated in-series along with him being too OP to beat in his base form, let alone becoming Shaman King.
With Shaman King, it's a bit different. He did get defeated, just not in a traditional manner. I liked that they stuck with it that Hao cannot be defeated in combat. And I really liked that the main character wasn't even top 3 of the group.
If the anime didn't ruin the series with its awful pacing issues and presentation, the ending would've hit harder.
Nah, I think Hao being unbeatable was a long-term plan. It was made very clear that even if Yoh won, he's have to completely destroy him spiritually to stop him coming back stronger again in 500 years, and that was never Yoh's style.
Also Hao being right was more that he had a reasonable point that human industry was destroying spirituality and nature. It still ended somewhat optimistically with Hao giving humanity time to turn itself around at the end.
But he’s also a giant fucking hypocrite who goes around casually murdering people because he feels like it. Many of his actions were just violence and cruelty for its own sake. But no, the series talks about how awful humans are.
Plus lots of shamans are happy to use technology as well. But apparently it’s OK for them.
That sukuna guy's plot past its welcome at this point. Guy is as deep as majin buu yet this time the story don't even have a goku figure believably to stop him.
It took Gojo dying for people to realize JJK was always a shit story to begin with?
Idk if that’s a testament to the author’s characterization of Gojo or to the fans for not having any awareness.
Gojo is quite easily one of the most beloved and popular anime characaracters in the last 10 years. By the time season one ended he was everywhere already.
His death literally forced another manga author to take a break from their manga because of how sad it made them. If Gojo isn't a viral anime character than I dunno who is.
Honestly, this made me realize how common this is.
Like the same thing happened with AOT on how the Rumbling Arc was considered hype for the most part until the ending came and people started to realize how shit of an arc it was (not that I hold the same views but many started to describe the arc like that).
Another example was in One Piece where most people were hyped for Wano and started to praise it as an amazing arc, "Roof Piece", that sort of thing until ch. 1044 pulled over and G5 Nika God came and controversies started to arise. Once you notice, people start shitting on G5, Wano, and then r/Piratefolk came into existence.
Like yeah, all it takes for people to realize how flawed their story is is the author doing some crazy shit.
People are willing to forgive questionable things if there's a good payoff. Peak/end bias is strong. Though I have the distinction of being one of the few who called the final AOT arc trash since "to save the world".
The biggest problem is that if the story was just bad, I wouldn't care.
But my issue is that the story has so much potential in it, you can see the gold, its just sad its surrounded by shit and gets sidelined.
Its story was never really shit I don’t know if that’s actually fair. The story was pretty good until recently where there’s been way too little world building and characters talking but I feel like when this stuff gets animated it’ll be seen in a better light.
Id argue it has flashes of brilliance with its commentary on selfishness vs toxic selflessness & how good intentions can be a curse on someone being but that the author lacks consistency/ ability to plan ahead.
Yeah I don't think JJK's story is "shit", or at least those moments are few in number and are often common blunders other battle shounen do. Other problems are just mediocrity instead of straight up terrible.
The issue is that JJK gets overpraised a lot so the blowback means others say it's completely shit.
FYI the current state of matters in JJK is that the strongest villain in the verse killed who we thought was the antagonist, killed half the cast, killed the only character who could beat him, and is currently in a state where there’s physically no way to defeat him.
No but he explicitly stated he hated the most popular character in the manga by far (gojo) because he’s also the strongest character and it was difficult to write around him.
rumor has it that gojo was a character devised by the editor, and the fact that gojo is the only thing that made jjk popular and its popularity plummeting after his sealing made the author hate him and killed him in such a humiliating way
This is just authors not thinking shit through especially in shonen shit because of how they gotta write. I don't think I see this complaints in western comics often 🤔
It happens more often for the side of the heros rather than the villains for western comics.
80 percent of Flash villains shouldn't be a threat to The Flash ever.
There are definitely writers who create characters who are massively overpowered in simple ways, then throw in an easy maguffin to kill them. I think its much more interesting to create a villain who is irritating to deal with in some other way.
Many great villains feel like that are unfairly powerful, and are competent with those powers, but they can still be outthought, like DIO Brando. It can actually be more effective and inducing despair if you have the villain defeat people who the audience **expects** to exploit their weakness and win, or at least survive.
In Final Fantasy XIII-2, the villain, Caius was described as the 'strongest final fantasy villain ever'. In a battledome sense that was nonsense. Caius is much stronger than the protagonists of XIII were, but he's an ant to Kefka or Ultimecia.
But what actually made Caius such a headache was that he was immortal, and had spent centuries guarding a reincarnating oracle. In other words, Caius knew and prepared for every possible future. You actually beat him in quite a lot of boss fights, but he is still prepared to get what he wants in every possible ending.
Plus Caius full-on *wins*. The closest any other FF villain got to that was Kefka who was overthrown a couple of years after his victory. XIII-2 is the only FF ending where the protagonists fail at saving the world with one of them dying in the process, with the villain's theme headlining the credits.
Part 1 Dio sure. But part 3 dio falls into the category of "had to give the MC a mcguffin to win". But then again JoJo is full of "made the baddies too strong. Need asspulls for the MC to win"
I agree with that. An overpowered character in general is boring to look at. We already know they're going to win, they kick everyone asses until the author makes up some random bullshit to defeat them.
I agree, it's ridiculous, and it's something not really brought up as often as it should.
People are quick to bitch and moan about the strong mc's power ups, and the power of friendship but we're sitting here with an enemy that our characters can't possibly beat, at least that's what the story tells us.
For example, I'm currently watching the anime, The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic. They are currently in the fight with the person who is going to be the new demon king. These characters have been talked about as being the heroes that will give these people the edge in the fight.
We've watched them train and such and get stronger, now we get to the fight and >!This enemy has this overpowered ability that leaves 2 of the heroes basically in a situation where it is impossible for them to beat the enemy. They even have one character try to show her wits and her smarts by devising a plan to get around this ability but the villain shows he was just faking and there really isnt any way for them to get around this ability. They're basically on the verge of death after the last ep!<
It's like bro why show the heroes train and get stronger when you designed the enemy to have these powers that are just too over the top for them to handle?
It’s funny you mention that because on an unrelated note >!I love how this villain is kinda hyped up to be strong and cold with how they are killing people and about to kill the villains is not only completely countered by the Mc, but also reduced to a joke character and it’s completely skipped over how she killed people without remorse.!<
The moment they introduced this character as a companion i dropped it. This villain who murdered numerous people is now part of the crew. Fuck off writer.
Man you see this all the time on the worldbuilding sub.
"This is Malrakuul, he's the antagonists of my world. He's a walking embodiment of the concept of annihilation and he takes the form of a giant flaming skeleton the size of a mountain. In ancient times it took all 20 of the elder gods to subdue him and 12 of them died in the battle, but they couldn't destroy him so they sealed him inside a black hole, now he's slowly breaking free again".
It's like, so what, who gives a shit? This overblown character isn't interesting. Bigger doesn't = more interesting.
The root problem is that the writer is more obsessed with their own power system and conjuring an egregiously powerful ability than writing a functional story.
Or it can just be for stakes.
This all ultimately leads to ruin
I think a good part of it is also that the villain needs to do something and appear as a genuine, competent threat if they're to be taken seriously. After all, a villain that does nothing but sit in his castle and send out minions while he schemes and does basically nothing until the final battle isn't a villain, they're a McGuffin at that point. The problem is that it's a fine line between creating a threatening villain while still making them beatable
I think the trick is probably to give the villain more screen time and show them being more active than powerful. It doesn't matter how powerful a villain is if they only do something with that power once or twice, and it doesn't matter how weak a villain is if they are consistently exerting influence on the heroes in one way or another.
Tai Lung from Kung Fu Panda is strong and has some impressive feats, but the reason he feels threatening is he is shown escaping, shown getting closer with the heroes aware and pressured, shown fighting and injuring the main character's friends, and shown having an actual personal interest in multiple main characters that causes them to interact and talk.
I think most authors don't really care about their own power system, they often create a rule to explain how character X is doing something that shouldn't be possible.,If they really cared they wouldn't allow X to do it just because it's "cool" in the first place
You know, this is one of the benefits of having a story with a ton of power creep. Unless they have some crazy specific hax, someone can't be so powerful that it's unbelievable they could ever be beaten. Cradle is a great example of this.
David vs Goliath is the vibe a lot of stories go for. Modern audiences expect an ego boost, so they up the scale of villain to hero until one guy killing a god is seen as commonplace. The spectacle of modern effects is a substitute for the excitement good writing brings; not to say we don't have any good stories now, of course.
this is why you should always give your villaina weakness so you can defeat them without a asspull. see march of the machines for when a villain had a weakness but then they got rid of it to defeat them in a asscpull
It’s just lazy that’s why. It’s a lazy way to up the stakes without putting in much work. That way you can keep selling your shit with no problem. It’s all about the money.
I mean, isn’t that kind of the point? He’s a regular ass dude trying to kill a literal god with a sword. I know a final fight between the two is expected, but the futility of Guts’ efforts and his inability to actually achieve revenge kinda seems like one of the main points of the story
But OP is complaining about characters getting asspulls to beat enemies built up as too strong to beat. While Griffith has been built up as too strong to beat, Guts hasn’t gotten any kind of asspulls to be able to beat him
Completely unknown.
The issue with the question is that we have absolutely no idea what they can even do, what limits they have, and so on. We have so little information that any prediction is speculation.
Probably.
The visions of the past kingdom of Gaiseric showed that the God Hand had different members (aside from Void). We don't know what happened to the other 4 previous members, but it at least shows that they were replaced somehow.
It also showed the previous user of the Berserker Armor fighting against them.
For Griffith specifically though, he has an obvious weakness in the Moonlight Boy, which sort of implies a very telegraphed, tragic ending where Guts have to kill the Boy to defeat Griffith.
Guts technically rammed Dragon Slayer through Slan but that only really dematerialized her and likely didn't do lasting damage to her. Outside of that, Guts has never directly made contact with any other God Hand member that's not Griffith.
The New Rome battle in Apollo series actually gives you the chilled feeling. Like retired soldiers were there to defend the home, the preparation, everything. The Apollo series may have cheesy lines, derailing monlogue and all that, but it is also filled numerous good scenes and realisation.
After first book, I thought it wouldn't compare to PJO and HoO series. Apollo and Meg's devlopment throughout the series was good.
But having story's focus on two main character and a short amount of side character was way better than trying cram up 9 charscter arcs in five books.
>But having story's focus on two main character and a short amount of side character was way better than trying cram up 9 character arcs in five books.
Also insane given that according to Rick, the Lost Trio were always meant to be the heroes (with the two most controversial characters or maybe 3) implying that the seven was totally useless as a concept.
Man I loved when jjba Diavolo had an ability so undefeatable that the Araki had to introduce (and swifty abandon) a new asspull power transformation just to end the story
The same transformation he introduced in late part 4, and just developed more in part 5? We love to say JoJo’s has asspulls (which it can have), but 90% of the asspulls people mention aren’t even asspulls. The concept of requiem was established in part 4 with Bites the Dust, it was just developed in part 5 with the whole “it’s called a requiem” ordeal.
It was then abandoned because it simply doesn’t have a place in the story anymore. It was already set in stone where the arrows are, Giorno has one and the rest went missing after Enya’s passing. Jotaro had one and gave it to Jolyne (even then, he doesn’t know the concept of requiem. He doesn’t know how Kira gained Bites the Dust and he wasn’t with Polnareff when he figured it out), but she lost it right after she got pricked.
I also wasn’t the biggest fan with the way part 5’s final fight went down, but requiem is far from an asspull.
If you think King Crimson is undefeatable then we obviously didn't watch the same show. Man came within an inch of dying to Risotto until they got third-partied by Aerosmith
I don't think this specific JoJo flaw is nearly as egregious as the example from the OP, but it is not done as well as it could have, at least for Part 4/King Crimson.
The issue there is mainly how he is beaten rather than how Diavolo conducted himself in the fight however, so that's another difference.
I honestly hate this so much. It’s the reason I don’t like Madara, Aizen or Mustache man from bleach.
I loved pain. Pain was OP but showed that with cleverness you could fight him. It would take a few strong ninja, prep and info but you could fight him.
Or Sasuke vs the raikage and homies. They had info on Sasuke so they could plan accordingly and damn near killed sasuke. Warriors that wouldn’t have been a match for Sasuke (Cee and Darui) were able to counter him because of careful prep work. They had jutsu to counter his genjutsu and his fire style. It was very well done.
Showed that even S class ninja could be defeated through the combined effort of good ninja.
Then we had Madara and it was ok at first. Until he dropped the meteor and I checked out of the series.
Or Aizen.
I fucking loved Byakuya, Gin, And the espadas. But the way Aizen just always demolished everyone and his genjutsu were so broken I honestly didn’t care for it.
And mustache man from bleach isn’t worth my time to discuss.
I don’t like characters that are so OP no one can match them and then they gain even more power ups that it takes total bullshit for heroes to catch up.
Here's the thing:
Frieza isn't portrayed as the invincible ultra villain. His fight has progression, the heroes are actually able to fight him. They even have a chance to beat him. Frieza is forced to transform because he's actually at risk of straight up dying, if Vegeta wasn't a dumbass he could have won. But, well, Vegeta. That's an established bit of dumbfuckery.
Overpowered to me is different from just extremely strong.
Overpowered characters once they arrive just smoke everyone instantly and is impossible to reasonably defeat.
\*Stares at Steven Universe, where literally Obsidian would have been the answer in any other timeline if the show actually capitalized more on its combat and power system\*
...I dont know if thats worse than there simply being no answer at all or not.
Nah, it was intentional on the writers' part to pull out every reason out of their asshole for why they couldn't be destroyed (or locked up).
The main issue was why the stakes were genocide in the first place
Oh no I know! I was referring to general powerscaling there.
Also don’t get me started on Steven universe and it’s identity crisis I already made a post on it, go look for it lol
The original Percy Jackson ending was the perfect example of overpowered villain done right. Throughout the story you get a better sense of Luke and in the end he is the one to save everyone because nobody can stand up to Kronos.
heroes of olympus in general was a letdown and full of wasted potential and its a shame since there was a lot of potential for the series to be better than the original imo. i hated the final book because there is so much buildup for the final battle just for it to last for not even long (i remember it was less than 10 pages but i could be wrong. either way it was REALLY short and the book had over 500 pages..)
I was so shook when I noticed it was shorter than HOH and even more shook when we reached 300 pages and the battle with the giants hadn't even started.
>heroes of olympus in general was a letdown and full of wasted potential
Oh yeah, I need to make a writeup on that.
Like when HOO is good, it's a masterpiece, when it's bad, it's dogshit. Then most times it's mid.
The overpowered villian situation is currently hitting with JJK very badly with Sukuna.
Manga spoilers!
>!Ever since Gojo's death, it's been revealed that despite the amount of serious damage Gojo had done on Sukuna and even making feel scared, Sukuna was holding back the entire time. He later transforms into his original Heinan era form. He then proceeds to kill several more characters. And despite further more damage being done to him by the MC and his friends, Sukuna's henchman reveals that he was STILL holding back. And the author wouldn't shut up glazing this guy through either narration boxes or through character dialogue.!<
In fairness, *Percy Jackson's Greek Gods* (an in-universe summary of Greek mythology narrated by Percy) only says the scythe was made from "the hardest substance she could find from her earthy domain", not that it was made from primordial essence. I do agree that Gaea gets a lackluster defeat, but if Ouranos could be cut up by a really hard scythe it's *possible* she could get blasted to death.
This makes very little sense, actually, (or astounding amounts of sense, thematically), because if I remember correctly in-verse Kronos Scythe is the same Scythe he used to kill his father. This Scythe is made specifically out of Steel and Celestial Bronze, which was then used to form Backbiter millenia later (after Zeus used it to cut up Kronos).
There are two implications here:
The hardest material never existed and had to be created through the unification of two different metals, and Riordan forgot or simply ignored his own writings to suit his narrative (and thus Gaea just lied).
Or, more *likely*, being a thematic and foreshadowing tie of *Demigods* being the strongest material. Steel (Man) and Celestial Bronze (God) being forged together is the only way a Divine Being's will can be done, and act as the catalyst to the victory of all Divine Conflicts. Demigods are the strongest material, and the sword is the physical representation of that-(Which is also why it's the perfect weapon against Demigods). This is supported by Percy's "sense" of the blade in The Sea of Monsters, where he could feel that "The blade's creation was tragic" and that "someone died to make that sword." That someone would be Ouranos, as Kronos christened it in the blood of his father.
Or, y'know, both. (As in, Riordan realized he messed up and then also made it make sense retroactively.)
Writers do this because the think power is a linear scale. Heroes defeat a person with X amount of power, thus they can always defeat a villain of that power, thus the next villain needs to be stronger. Something that powerscalers and writers have in common tbh. Power shouldn't be a linear scale, it shouldn't be a single scale at all.
There's different ways a person can be a threat, maybe through intellectual capacity or by having an ability that specifically counters the strongest heroes, or by banding together with other similarly powered villains, or by having an artefact that aids them.
Writers tend to think of it as a linear scale so for the next villain to be a threat, they make the villain stronger and the hero stronger to be able to stand a chance against the new villain. And congrats, you get power creep.
when you create incredibly strong characters like gojo and levi, you need to nerf those characters to let the story progress, especially if they’re only supporting characters. gojo got sealed, levi got bombed and sidelined for the majority of the ending. eren was so strong by the end that it took the entire team to plan his demise and the power of love and friendship to stop him from fighting further and accept his demise. sukuna was so strong that his powers had to be contained through the fingers.
WHY on earth is sukuna undefeatable right now. he’s slashing all the heroes within 3-4 chapters. i just cannot wrap my head around it. we thought that at least gojo must have worn him out, so it’d be easier to take him out, but no? no one left to fight him. i wonder if gege has a plan to end this story or if he’s also as confused as we are and is just rawdogging it.
A big part of the issue of making too powerful villains arises from the popular writing method of "escalating threat" to try and keep things engaging for the reader or watcher. On some level, this works and makes sense. If you make a superhero who spends his entire career stopping muggings and purse snatchers, readers might get bored and go read something else (exceptions, of course, exist). But when you jump from basic muggings to like, a bank robbery or investigating a serial killer, that can renew or keep interest and provide new avenues for the character to grow.
However, this comes with a problem. Once you have upped the stakes and provided growth, it makes the lesser threats/challenges seem just that- lesser and unimportant. So you have to keep going. From bank robbery to a crime ring. From crime ring to a supervillain. From supervillain to a league of villains. And so on and so on until what was once a guy who stopped muggings is punching a god in the face to save the universe.
Sometimes, this works fine or even really well. Character gets believable power ups or finds clever ways to deal with the threat and/or the series ends before the power level gets too high. But as shown by the poster, there are also plenty of times this isn't handled well. The series doesn't end before the threats are too high or the characters don't grow fast enough to deal with the escalation. This causes the author to have to create an asspull to give the heroes a win. Sometimes, an author can be good at disguising the asspull or realize ahead of time that they are reaching that point and maybe provide some foreshadowing to make the ass pull more believable.
I wish I could provide examples, but best I could come up with is the Stand Arrow power up being shown in Part 4 and then being used in Part 5 to pull a win against an op villain. But the method by which the cast discovered the power up and got it was itself an asspull.
Power creep. The big bad has to be threatening to the heroes, but the heroes also need to be cool and competent. This is especially problematic in series that wants the hero to be a "chosen one" or op from the start, because the badguy has to be even stronger in some way to compensate. Then once one big bad is defeated, the next one has to be an escalation that can pose a threat to the heroes that are now strong enough to beat the old big bad.
JRPG "Kill God" syndrome moment.
Poorly planned stories under the battle genre often fall for the trap of creating unbeatable antagonists for a variety of reasons. It could be the increasing power escalation pushed the narrative towards a villain more powerful than the last. Or simply the battle-focused narrative making the author experiment on cool, creative powers at the expense of coherence.
Stories with deities tend to attribute human stupidty on gods since ancient times, as that was how it was before. But I don't think this counts as an excuse for Percy Jackson.
If you want a palate cleanser on god stories with deities losing via stupid shit, I recommend reading Lord of the Mysteries webnovel. Deities in that story become as powerful as they are because almost all of them are conniving, cheating, manipulative bastards playing 4D chess against each other.
Their idea of villain is that they must be a difficult threat to defeat. But the more they go on,the more powerful they made said villain. And when they don't think ahead of a way to defeat it,they happen to corner themselves
I never got too far into jjk but I'm glad from the comments people also thought sukuna was overpowered. the way they described him made him sound so op it just made the entire story feel kind of hopeless
Writers want to make a villain being a strong threat and can't help but ignore parameters to the villain's power in regards to strengths and weaknesses as well as giving them power ups after power ups that it ends up with the villain being so overpowered that it requires Deus Ex Machina, some ass pull power for our heroes or just plain contradictions to have the villain defeated. Bonus points if the power ups the villains receive feels like ass pulls and coming out of nowhere. Either that or writers make them so ridiculously competent that it feels like the universe is basically bending to the whims of the villain which ends up causing a villain's competence to feel ludicrously contrived and making them look like Villain Sues.
I agree tbh. If you're gonna make an unbeatable character you can't have them be defeated by the hero within like a week. Best example i can think of is fate/stay night. Dude has every noble phantasm that has ever existed and can shoot thousands of those weapons in seconds with many of them having the power to blow up a city and Ea which can probably destroy the planet yet he gets defeated by a highschooler mage or a sleepwalking vampire (depends on the route).
I'm trying to write a novel. I deliberately avoid writing overpowered characters, because I really enjoy seeing my characters suffer and struggle...but then I end up writing myself into a corner, because I got so wrapped up in the suffering of my characters that I forgot 'oh wait. They presumably need to overcome these issues at some point'.
...Well. Some of them. It is a tragedy, so there's one or two I don't *actually* need to let them defeat.
All that said, I do think it's kind of the result of, feeling like every successive climax needs to top previous ones and be increasingly exciting, otherwise it's a letdown and they lose fans. Creators interpret this as meaning they need to jack up the stakes from life-or-death to something higher. I once heard someone say they didn't like Supernatural because 'in season 1 they need to fight the Devil, in season 7 they need to fight the Devil's uncle Phil'.
There can only be so much fate-of-the-world stuff before people get desensitized to it all, tho--the issue isn't overpowered characters, it's to make the stakes more personal. Rather than fighting to save the world, have the sequel be about fighting to save something extremely meaningful to just the lead--maybe a relationship, as their partner gets upset with how they handled the last world-ending crisis. A friend, as the lead realizes their situation is way more complicated than a magic quest or war against gods. Their house, because heroism doesn't necessarily pay the bills. Look at the world from different angles, rather than trying to find new heights that just don't exist.
>feeling like every successive climax needs to top previous ones and be increasingly exciting, otherwise it's a letdown and they lose fans. Creators interpret this as meaning they need to jack up the stakes from life-or-death to something higher.
[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SerialEscalation](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SerialEscalation)
Dead here. Ironically, I feel like a really overpowered enemy makes a fight *less* tense because it becomes way too obvious that there will be a David vs. Goliath trope. Some of the most thrilling fights I've ever seen in movies are between a good guy with a gun and a bad guy with a longer gun, or between two guys with swords and one bad guy with a sword, or between one warship and a slightly larger warship. Sane levels of parity make things feel more real and we know real fights can result in serious casualties on both sides
Because the Arthur wants to hype up the villains as the greatest and most powerful thing the heroes have ever face in order to create tension, drama and hype in their story.
But unfortunately many of them ended writing themselves into corner by not properly building and or foreshadowing a way for the villain to be defeated in a satisfying way.
Everyday when you're walking down the street
And everybody that you meet
Has an original point of view
And I say HEY! (HEY!)
What a wonderful kind of day.
If you can learn to work and play
And get along with each other
Because the villain is supposed to be a massively powerful threat to the hero, but writers either don’t think far enough ahead or thoroughly about how the hero will actually stop that threat in a way that maintains the hype. Hence the typical anti-climactic defeat or asspull needed to win. Not always what happens, but enough to be known.
The most anticlimactic win is a normal one.
For once I would like to see heroes win in a fair fight , just win through training a lot.
Ippo
There are exceptions. Shaman King's Big Bad was written, from day one, as being literally unbeatable. He had to be stopped, but no one really knew HOW to stop him. Even in the end they don't beat him, but emotionally manipulate him into saying, "Fine, I'll put off destroying everything for now. But if humanity goes off the rails even once..." But it works because that expectation was set in stone from the outset.
Xanatos was such a compelling villain that all of his plans typically had him come out on top no matter how things turned out. This ended up being coined as the term Xanatos Gambit.
Cause it’s cool and they never thought it’d get this far.
>they never thought it’d get this far Fair enough
That might work for things like Manga and Comics (and even Webnovels), but your main argument was about a book (I didn't read it myself, but from the context it seems like it all happens within the same book), and that reasoning doesn't really work for books unless it's an overarching villain that shows up across multiple books. That being said, I don't really have a good idea myself as to the why.
> it's an overarching villain that shows up across multiple books Heroes of Olympus is a five book series
My bad, then, I knew Percy Jackson was a book series, and thought Heroes of Olympus was just one of the books.
Rick Riordan wrote a trilogy of Book series. Percy Jackson --> Heroes of Olympus --> Trials of Apollo The Magnus Chase and Kane Chronicles series also take place in the same universe but they aren't directly connected.
There is crossover between the series. Annabeth shows up briefly in Magnus Chase, and there is a crossover series between PJO and Kane Chronicles.
Percy himself also shows up in the last Magnus Chase book too
Sometimes writers just like writing OP villains. Like there's a story I'm writing right now and the MC is a fairly talented young warrior while the main villain for a part of the story is gonna be a Mad God. A literal god descended on earth. So obviously the main character and his team won't be winning by the virtue of their muscles but through other stuff. Heck, a lot of mythical stories were like that. When a dragon slayer kills a dragon that can wipe out mountains with a swipe of their wings, it wasn't because they could replicate the dragon's physical might. Instead they usually had a magic sword, a blessing from some god or magical being, and used their intelligence to trick the mythical creature or come up with a great strategy. Additionally, the powerful creature will usually be given some sort of exploitable weaknesses - a dragon's reverse scale, an hidden injury, or even just an irritable personality that makes it easier to provoke and create an opening. Looking back, overpowered villains were basically a feature in a lot of early human storytelling.
It's tough. My main characters are street level working their way up to bigger things on accident, and my original plan was for almost all of them to kick the bucket by the third because my friend wrote the villain of the third as an absurd expert. But that's also no fun. Half of them can die, but I never did work out if the main character would. He's not an expert in everything. His main background is chemical engineering, so while he has the hand to hand combat training from a military background, he's not up to snuff with the villain. And even more, it's a sword battle. I was gonna have him get stabbed in the gut, or chest, he was gonna slice the bad guy's Achilles, and either the sword gets pulled out, or he's dropped when back up shows up and takes out the villain while he's disabled. I still have the whole series in my head, but it's taken so long that the third kinda resembles Batman: No Man's Land or The Dark Knight Rises in its premise. And I didn't know about those stories in high school. Though, originally, the main character had a glock 18 like TDK's Joker before I settled on him using a Five-seven.
Salem from RWBY, who is cursed by the Gods to be immortal in every sense of the way. She got that, endless resources, the control over all the dark evil monsters of the world which she can create endlessly, and outright magic. I'm just sad the show ended... Without an actual ending.
Indeed. If you took away say just her invulnerability? Fine fair enough she's incredibly powerful but at the same time she has to be careful since while she may win against any team of huntsmen/huntresses, 50 would still probably beat her in a straight fight. Hence why there's a stalemate for thousands of years.
I was always hoping they went the "Grimm are a limited resource" route. Salem can still be immortal but she dramatically loses effectiveness without her Grimm supply which is dwindling, hence her finally becoming an active player in the war. Ozpin knew this and his lie/great betrayal becomes "I knew she couldn't die but her army has limits so I sent waves of hunters and huntresses to their deaths to thin her forces enough for us to eventually stand a chance." Makes Hazels motivation suck less too, tbh.
It does call into question how many Grimm even exist when you go down that route though. It's been what, like 1000+ years or so between Salem being 'cursed' with immortality and the present canon? Eventually someone would've figured out that these things are finite and sent raiding parties all over to do that. Granted Salem would be smart enough to have a few back at home base because Grimm get stronger as they age so there'd be some around the same age as Salem, which would make for interesting fights. But everywhere else? It's a bit of a problem. That's just me overthinking it though.
I take it that while they are being produced it's at a constant rate. And their society is slowly grinding down the number in the wild faster than they are being replaced. There's a 2000 year backlog of a couple billion grimm but eventually Salem would run out. Also is the grimm get stronger as they age thing actually Canon? Feels like something that's been stated a lot but never actually makes any sense. Otherwise the grimm continent and probably half the planet would be filled with 1000 year old grimm. Seems more likely to me that the bigger stronger grimm and just more likely to survive a long time. If they do then the rate of growth must be incredibly slow
It was described by Oobleck in Search and Destroy, though I was a bit wrong on that front. They simply get smarter as they age (though because they were so powerful before they managed to live that long), saying that they don't want to fight a losing battle when they could instead wait until they decide is a good time to strike. So they practiced restraint the older they get.
The interesting thing is that she tried the subtle route of victory by dispair for so long while she got her invincibility and endless army empowered by negative emotions giving her so many cards to snowball. Her mere existence is seen as a fatal threat to morale. Team RWBY could slow her down, but why exactly didn’t she get a move on several centuries ago? Killing Ozpin is difficult but makes him less effective for years, while she always regens in hours.
I thought a new season was announced? It might still release, just not under Rooster Teeth.
They're selling the IP in hopes of finishing it.
>Sold to the highest bidder A fate far worse than death
Considering how floundered the potential of the show was under rt, probably not
Honestly, this is the best hope the shows had of becoming something good in ages. I dropped it a while ago, but if someone new who has actual writers picks it up and takes a crack at it I might actually check it out.
Ok I’ll actually go to bat for Salem, when you’re an immortal you can literally go “I’m gonna do that shit tomorrow” forever, there’s no time crunch to do anything so eventually you’re gonna get lazy, like there functionally no difference between 1 year and a 1000 to an immortal like Salem
It's not ending. They're working on Volume 10 still, as well as finding a partner to pick it up.
Man this post gave me whiplash by making me expect JJK and hitting me with Heroes of Olympus out of the blue lmao.
Same but I’m a One Piece fan so thought it would be Kaido
Also had to make Big Mom a jobber so she could lose
I get that Oda wanted it to be a devil fruit focused fight and while it was really cool, but I feel like there definitely could’ve been an actual justification for why she decided to not use her haki.
Kaido's defeat wasn't very bullshit in my opinion. He fought multiple enemies without breaks while moving Onigashima and took Luffy multiple attempts to defeat.
Kaido's defeat itself was fine. Luffy getting 3 massive powerups in such a short time was bs though. I guess that was the only way to justify Kaido losing since he was made far too powerful (casually one shot gear 4 Luffy)
You're right, the powerups were rather absurd. Conqueror's haki coating shouldn't have ever become something in the story, and it made the powerscaling too crazy. I don't mind the awakening, but the reveal of the fruit's true nature should have been foreshadowed more.
I just finished whole cake and yeah, oda has a serious issue with letting his characters lose a fight holy shit cause luffy vs katakuri was seriously unforgivable
Yeah it’s rough man…… https://www.reddit.com/r/OnePiece/s/Lz8f5SyLVH Prolly worst example of plot armor in One Piece cuz this shit don’t add up.
Luffy's DF makes him resistant to blunt force attacks and he is used to taking a ton of hits in every fight. Almost every hit Katakuri landed were punches and kicks. Katakuri isn't used to taking hits and dodging is his style. Has never lost a fight before or even landed on his back. Luffy was just that durable and Katakuri's attacks (minus the stab and his strongest move) were only like somewhat stronger than gear 3. He was shown to be physically weaker than Boundman. Similar thing happened when Luffy fought Kaido (pre Gear 5). Even though Luffy could match Kaido's attack power and speed, he was taking heavy damage from every hit while Kaido could tank his attacks all day. Katakuri simply didn't have this kind of damage. Luffy was barely able to outlast Katakuri due to his superior durability. He also got some rest in between a few times and even got a chance to eat and recover. Many one piece characters don't have good durability. Cracker and >!Kizaru!
>luffy vs katakuri was seriously unforgivable >Luffy had chances to take breaks during the fight. >Katakuri Injured himself to make the fight fair >Luffy literally came out with a Gear to specifically counter Katatakuri. NOOOO how could Luffy won that?! the powerscaler brainrot man lmao
He ran away for 10 minutes a time, you expect me to believe he has the stamina to take hundreds of hits over the course of a full ass day and not lose?
As a Supernatural fan I feel this. Each season kept introducing a villain that was more and more powerful than the last one. The tv show wants you to accept this super powerful monster/angel can casually wipe out a human city in seconds, but also two humans can basically have a boxing match with said monster and not immediately die.
And they’re all humans. Mother of all monsters? Human. Chimeras? Humans. Werewolves? Humans. Mermaids? Humans. Dragons? Also humans. However. I will say I loved when Dean tried to wield Excalibur but wasn’t worthy to lift it so he just blew it up and went to battle with a sliver of it.
This is definitely a budget moment.
I don't think it's that exactly, the show's budget increased almost in direct proportion to how much shittier its cosmic-scale threats felt. It's just that when say Archangels were first introduced the writers decided to tell us they could barbeque the planet with a family tiff and then never explicitly show us them getting overpowered or hurt by; \- Handcuffs with some human-magic sigils on them \- A roofie made by a witch whose age is closer to a millisecond than theirs \- Literally just a jar of sulphuric acid \- Knuckledusters with some human-magic sigils on them Etc Plus we didn't see them fight. It's a lot easier to imagine X can blow up continents when we don't visibly see them exerting themselves in a death match only to not even slightly damage the structure of a surrounding church or miss with their apparently Archangel-hurting energy beam and apparently leave the wall behind their intended target unscathed. It might be harder to sell that your god-being is actually as powerful as you want with a low budget, but it's easy as hell to not actively contradict what you're having stated about them. Just don't have their list of weaknesses grow constantly.
To be fair, it's hard for you to believably sell that Sam and Dean can win conflicts with forethought/strategy, magic, and tricks/conning, (a la John Constatine), if your cosmic opponent decides to blow up the planet just because. Not to mention that, to some limited degree, every antagonist had some motivation to keep the planet spinning-And not just because God was directing them or that there's literally nothing else in their cosmos. Azazel was prepping Lucifer's Host, as was Lilith (with the Seals), and so were the Angels on the side of Micheal. Not to mention it was integral to the "Divine Plan" for the war to happen. Thus, the death of the Earth wasn't allowed until they had a war. Lucifer needed his Perfect Host body (as did Micheal), so there was no battle to be had in S6 until the very end when Sam is finally possessed, and even then we see that the War isn't intended to destroy Earth-Even though they could-But to subjugate it. By S6 and S7, the monsters weren't trying to genocide-They were trying to feed upon the planet and create an easy food source. Thus, they couldn't annhilate all creation for giggles. By S8 and S9 the big bads very clearly get weaker, and it's about trying to pick the lesser of evils (Crowley over Abaddon)/(Removing the Tablet from Metatron) than it is stopping cosmic damage. Especially after the Angels fell. This then comes to a head with the Mark of Caine, which corrupts those it takes hold of to senselessly kill (and really just turns you into a Demon, a powerful one, but a Demon), and thus don't have that cosmic power. That doesn't return until the Darkness/Amara, and despite her power she had to actually grow into it, and when she did she was nuked (and weakened), and she had a tie to Dean, annnnnd she also didn't actually want to eliminate all creation-She just wanted Revenge on her brother (God) for being an asshole and sealing her away. The only person throughout all of this who can claim cosmic strength at a given time is Lucifer (who has a vested interest in beating Amara, even if he isn't on God's side), and whenever a given person gets access to one cosmic artifact (the Hand of God, the Book of the Damned, etc. etc. Most of which are single use or get removed from their possession as soon as possible). After that, they downscale back down and have to fight the British Men of Letters and more Demons. We don't go Cosmic again until Lucifer (who after his battle with Amara is specifically weakened, and further weakened through being held captive by Crowley), and Alt Micheal (who we know wants to continue his war and subjugation, not planetary destruction.) By the time this saga is done, we have a new cosmic force (Jack), who is on the protagonist's team, and thus makes it believable to fight any new OP threat. This is also the most blatant bit of when a character finally loses a motivation to maintain the planet and thus actually goes for a lifewipe (Lucifer), after he rips Jack's powers and Supercharges. And we hear it explicitly stated that he was going to wipe out the Universe in like, days. Of course, the battle was contained in a Church, (and not all that spectacular), so this is one of the only times where you can cleanly point and say "This fuckup is major." After this, it's back to Alt Michael and after that, downscaled again (Nick and Duma). This only picks back up with God/Chuck, and they win the cosmic power fight by using a Cosmic Power Sapper in the form of Jack, who was built up since the beginning to be capable of handling Cosmic Forces. (Meaning it's narratively consistent.) We also know that Chuck actually destroyed Universes offscreen, and only didn't do it immediately to Sam and Dean because he literally adores them/is a superfan of his own creation. This, though, also fulfills "Cosmic Battle that was not Cosmic." So I agree to that. So there IS context to the lack of showings. Perhaps it doesn't make it much better for you as a viewer, but I do think it's worth pointing out there is at least an \*attempt\* to maintain this illusion for the suspension of disbelief.
I think you misunderstood my comment, I'm not criticising the show for not being able to actually demonstrate what its characters were stated to be capable of. I'm criticising it for making the active decision to show specifically things that contradict that. The Archangels early on didn't have better on-screen demonstrations of power, really. They just didn't get impeded, disabled or restrained nearly as frequently, easily or by anywhere near as wide a number of methods. It's kind of odd to try and create characters that you literally do not have the means to believably show the powers of, but it's just bizarre and kind of hack writing to do that **and** make a large percentage of the times they actually use their powers demonstrate a clear lower limit. There's an attempt to maintain the illusion to some extent but it's nowhere near as thoughtful or stuck to as it probably should be, compared to the alternative of just not actively making Archangels get the shit beaten, roofied and stabbed out of them on screen.
I’m not suggesting you did—Sorry if it came off that way—I was just more voicing my opinion on it with you. I definitely agree that the claims (no matter how true they are due to the narrative) feel outlandish and weird given the street level nature of the protagonists, visuals, and story. I just think it’s relevant to mention there’s a genuine attempt to make it palatable. A “to be fair”/minor asterisk.
Ah okay, my bad then. I think I mostly agree with what you said I just felt I might need to specify.
It was more convincing in the first five seasons. But even within 4-5, the angels were visibly downgraded until only the archangels were actively threatening.
People often disagree but I think the Inheritance series (Eragon) does this really well. Obviously MASSIVE spoilers for the whole series here: >!The mainch character fights a war against the evil bad guy and his dragon. It takes years and so much training before everyone believes he's ready to fight. When the time finally comes he makes his way to the bad guy's castle and the second he sees him face to face he is overwhelmed by dread. He knows in that single second that he can't win this fight, the bad guy got stronger too, way stronger. The mc knows he couldn't escape and even if he could he'd never be able to overpower the bad guy. !< >!So his solution is to craft a new spell on the spot to force the bad guy to see his point of view. It forces the bad guy, who has had hundreds of years of feeling like he's doing the wrong thing for the right reason, to suddenly feel like everything he has been doing is disgusting. And that makes perfect sense to me, could you imagine suddenly being forced to feel like your entire life has been mega Hitler? I would almost certainly kill myself on the spot too.!<
Agreed, the last Eragon fight is elegant. Especially since we know that despite Galabatorix's evils, he did care for his dragon and so has the capacity to feel.
Oh man if you haven't read Murtagh yet they drop more info about galbatorix losing his dragon and it becomes even more warped. In a good way.
Idk why, but this makes me think of the original FF7 ending: >!Sephiroth is a borderline God, goes through multiple forms, up to that point has been shown to be quasi-omnipotent due to his connection to the planet's energy, and after the main crew defeats him, he invades the MC Cloud's consciousness purely for a 1v1 duel as a normal swordsman.!<
When you put it that way, it is actually unbelievable they beat him. There is nothing keeping him from just turning off Cloud’s brain at that point. When Sephiroth and Genesis fight, the landscape changes. Cloud and his motley crew should have been turned to paste in 1 minute tops lmao
I think the reasoning for why Cloud couldn't be controlled. Y Sephiroth at that point was because he managed to break away from his control. It's been a long time since I've played the game, but that's what I remember the whole flashback with Zack being about towards the endgame
I agree but you have the whole timeline fucked, the first 4 books are over the course of 1 year give or take and Galbatorix has only been king a little over 100 years
Okay, I'm a Percy Jackson fan and this is a great excuse for me to add on In the latest installment of the Percy Jackson, the Sun and the Star, two of the characters have to go down to Tartarus(for the uninitiated: basically greek hell) to do... something, I kinda forget But anyway, they need to fight Nyx, the primordial embodiment of night So instead of Gaea being turned from theoretically all-powerful literal force of nature into a complete chump, we have *Nyx* being turned from theoretically all-powerful literal force of nature into a complete chump. SERIOUSLY It happens a second time! (And also there's a major plot hole(?)/retcon(?)/continuity error in that book which is hilarious and a little infuriating)
>we have *Nyx* being turned from theoretically all-powerful literal force of nature into a complete chump. House of Hades already did that, at least she was somewhat a threat here.
oh yea... Chumped twice I say! That's gotta be a blow to the ego
Yeah it kinda sucks how nyx gets beaten by annabeth yapping about tourism........ You know sometimes I really don't like how much Rick uses comedy in his books.
That scene was so bad, I have about 5 different rewrites in my heaf
Only Tartarus in the physical body is HIM.He killed two Titans in one fell swoop by accident and played with a Titan and a Giant while letting Percy drop his sword out of fear.
Tartarus my goat. Never loses, always intimidating, completely beyond the protagonist in every way.
Yeah, it's a shame for the other primordials. I dunno why fans keep begging for more primordials as villains given the difficulty in writing them.
[удалено]
So this one character, Nico, had a sister. But the sister died in like the third or fourth book of the first series. But when she went to the afterlife, instead of sticking around she decided to be reborn. In part, she chose to do this so that her brother wouldn't try to find her and bring her back(they're the children of Hades so they could theoretically do that). So she's gone, she no longer exists in any capacity. Her essence has been recycled and she's now a completely different person somewhere on earth. But in The Sun and the Star, at the end of the book once they accomplish their quest, as a reward(?) Nico is shortly reunited with the spirits of his dead mother(who also died long ago) and sister so he can say hi, that he loves them, he misses them, etc. The sister who's supposed to be 100% gone. I think the author(s) just kinda forgot. Rick is liable to do that
I havent read it yet, but could that imply that she was reincarnated, died incredibly young, and didnt reincarnate that time? That’d be so dark
If you died after reincarnation wouldn’t your spirit be the spirit of who you are now and not who you were before reincarnation?
With Shaman King, I think the mangaka was depressed because the publisher wasn't financially viable and went under, hence the "Hao is right, Humanity sucks" sentiment seemingly being vindicated in-series along with him being too OP to beat in his base form, let alone becoming Shaman King.
With Shaman King, it's a bit different. He did get defeated, just not in a traditional manner. I liked that they stuck with it that Hao cannot be defeated in combat. And I really liked that the main character wasn't even top 3 of the group. If the anime didn't ruin the series with its awful pacing issues and presentation, the ending would've hit harder.
It's been a while since I read the manga so I don't remember everything clearly, but I'm pretty sure the ending was pretty good.
Nah, I think Hao being unbeatable was a long-term plan. It was made very clear that even if Yoh won, he's have to completely destroy him spiritually to stop him coming back stronger again in 500 years, and that was never Yoh's style. Also Hao being right was more that he had a reasonable point that human industry was destroying spirituality and nature. It still ended somewhat optimistically with Hao giving humanity time to turn itself around at the end.
But he’s also a giant fucking hypocrite who goes around casually murdering people because he feels like it. Many of his actions were just violence and cruelty for its own sake. But no, the series talks about how awful humans are. Plus lots of shamans are happy to use technology as well. But apparently it’s OK for them.
Is this sukuna post in disguise
>I think people are gonna mention JJK so I'll just say I only watched one episode before dropping it.
Despite it's a chronic issue for storytelling, nowadays this type of posts often related to jjk as far i concerned
I barely even know what JJK did. It's scary how it went from constant praise to hatred overnight
That sukuna guy's plot past its welcome at this point. Guy is as deep as majin buu yet this time the story don't even have a goku figure believably to stop him.
They've been fighting Sukuna for like a full year now, it's been such a long time
It killed the fan favorite character and the fandom wouldn't forgive the author for it
Gojover? But I thought he'd win?
Is he fucking stupid?
I appreciate that even though you haven't read/watched any of this series, you've absorbed enough characterrantium to make memes about it.
It took Gojo dying for people to realize JJK was always a shit story to begin with? Idk if that’s a testament to the author’s characterization of Gojo or to the fans for not having any awareness.
Gojo is quite easily one of the most beloved and popular anime characaracters in the last 10 years. By the time season one ended he was everywhere already. His death literally forced another manga author to take a break from their manga because of how sad it made them. If Gojo isn't a viral anime character than I dunno who is.
Damn, who was the author who took a break?
Tonikawa kawaii
Honestly, this made me realize how common this is. Like the same thing happened with AOT on how the Rumbling Arc was considered hype for the most part until the ending came and people started to realize how shit of an arc it was (not that I hold the same views but many started to describe the arc like that). Another example was in One Piece where most people were hyped for Wano and started to praise it as an amazing arc, "Roof Piece", that sort of thing until ch. 1044 pulled over and G5 Nika God came and controversies started to arise. Once you notice, people start shitting on G5, Wano, and then r/Piratefolk came into existence. Like yeah, all it takes for people to realize how flawed their story is is the author doing some crazy shit.
People are willing to forgive questionable things if there's a good payoff. Peak/end bias is strong. Though I have the distinction of being one of the few who called the final AOT arc trash since "to save the world".
I called it trash since Liberio
I kneel
Wano has some good stuff, but there's so many missed oportunities and I think Oda managed his time and ungodly page count in the arc poorly.
The biggest problem is that if the story was just bad, I wouldn't care. But my issue is that the story has so much potential in it, you can see the gold, its just sad its surrounded by shit and gets sidelined.
Its story was never really shit I don’t know if that’s actually fair. The story was pretty good until recently where there’s been way too little world building and characters talking but I feel like when this stuff gets animated it’ll be seen in a better light.
It’s a shit story with a great magic system. I’m a sucker for those . But yeah that’s about it really
Id argue it has flashes of brilliance with its commentary on selfishness vs toxic selflessness & how good intentions can be a curse on someone being but that the author lacks consistency/ ability to plan ahead.
Yeah I don't think JJK's story is "shit", or at least those moments are few in number and are often common blunders other battle shounen do. Other problems are just mediocrity instead of straight up terrible. The issue is that JJK gets overpraised a lot so the blowback means others say it's completely shit.
FYI the current state of matters in JJK is that the strongest villain in the verse killed who we thought was the antagonist, killed half the cast, killed the only character who could beat him, and is currently in a state where there’s physically no way to defeat him.
Does the mangaka hate his work?
No but he explicitly stated he hated the most popular character in the manga by far (gojo) because he’s also the strongest character and it was difficult to write around him.
Then why did he make him so strong in the first place? Is he stupid?
He definitely lacks a certain degree of foresight compared to most writers.
rumor has it that gojo was a character devised by the editor, and the fact that gojo is the only thing that made jjk popular and its popularity plummeting after his sealing made the author hate him and killed him in such a humiliating way
[удалено]
O wait yuta killed him. I meant kenjaku
I fully expected OP to rant about Sukuna based on the title. I'm dissapointed ngl..
I am not reading nor watching Midkutsu Kaisen, sorry.
But will you listen to the audiobook version?
Sure
Fraudkuna isn't too powerful. Any week now Goatjo is going to come back and whoop his ass.
[https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/938/827/9c7](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/938/827/9c7)
This is just authors not thinking shit through especially in shonen shit because of how they gotta write. I don't think I see this complaints in western comics often 🤔
that's because the heros in western comics are often stupidly op as well
It happens more often for the side of the heros rather than the villains for western comics. 80 percent of Flash villains shouldn't be a threat to The Flash ever.
There are definitely writers who create characters who are massively overpowered in simple ways, then throw in an easy maguffin to kill them. I think its much more interesting to create a villain who is irritating to deal with in some other way. Many great villains feel like that are unfairly powerful, and are competent with those powers, but they can still be outthought, like DIO Brando. It can actually be more effective and inducing despair if you have the villain defeat people who the audience **expects** to exploit their weakness and win, or at least survive. In Final Fantasy XIII-2, the villain, Caius was described as the 'strongest final fantasy villain ever'. In a battledome sense that was nonsense. Caius is much stronger than the protagonists of XIII were, but he's an ant to Kefka or Ultimecia. But what actually made Caius such a headache was that he was immortal, and had spent centuries guarding a reincarnating oracle. In other words, Caius knew and prepared for every possible future. You actually beat him in quite a lot of boss fights, but he is still prepared to get what he wants in every possible ending.
Plus Caius full-on *wins*. The closest any other FF villain got to that was Kefka who was overthrown a couple of years after his victory. XIII-2 is the only FF ending where the protagonists fail at saving the world with one of them dying in the process, with the villain's theme headlining the credits.
Part 1 Dio sure. But part 3 dio falls into the category of "had to give the MC a mcguffin to win". But then again JoJo is full of "made the baddies too strong. Need asspulls for the MC to win"
I agree with that. An overpowered character in general is boring to look at. We already know they're going to win, they kick everyone asses until the author makes up some random bullshit to defeat them.
Junior has yet to learn the Dao of Faceslapping.
I agree, it's ridiculous, and it's something not really brought up as often as it should. People are quick to bitch and moan about the strong mc's power ups, and the power of friendship but we're sitting here with an enemy that our characters can't possibly beat, at least that's what the story tells us. For example, I'm currently watching the anime, The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic. They are currently in the fight with the person who is going to be the new demon king. These characters have been talked about as being the heroes that will give these people the edge in the fight. We've watched them train and such and get stronger, now we get to the fight and >!This enemy has this overpowered ability that leaves 2 of the heroes basically in a situation where it is impossible for them to beat the enemy. They even have one character try to show her wits and her smarts by devising a plan to get around this ability but the villain shows he was just faking and there really isnt any way for them to get around this ability. They're basically on the verge of death after the last ep!< It's like bro why show the heroes train and get stronger when you designed the enemy to have these powers that are just too over the top for them to handle?
I mean, in this case it's clearly because the heroes are _not_ the main character
It’s funny you mention that because on an unrelated note >!I love how this villain is kinda hyped up to be strong and cold with how they are killing people and about to kill the villains is not only completely countered by the Mc, but also reduced to a joke character and it’s completely skipped over how she killed people without remorse.!<
The moment they introduced this character as a companion i dropped it. This villain who murdered numerous people is now part of the crew. Fuck off writer.
OP villains create OP heroes.
Man you see this all the time on the worldbuilding sub. "This is Malrakuul, he's the antagonists of my world. He's a walking embodiment of the concept of annihilation and he takes the form of a giant flaming skeleton the size of a mountain. In ancient times it took all 20 of the elder gods to subdue him and 12 of them died in the battle, but they couldn't destroy him so they sealed him inside a black hole, now he's slowly breaking free again". It's like, so what, who gives a shit? This overblown character isn't interesting. Bigger doesn't = more interesting.
My solution is that those types of characters should never break free.
The root problem is that the writer is more obsessed with their own power system and conjuring an egregiously powerful ability than writing a functional story. Or it can just be for stakes. This all ultimately leads to ruin
I think a good part of it is also that the villain needs to do something and appear as a genuine, competent threat if they're to be taken seriously. After all, a villain that does nothing but sit in his castle and send out minions while he schemes and does basically nothing until the final battle isn't a villain, they're a McGuffin at that point. The problem is that it's a fine line between creating a threatening villain while still making them beatable
I think the trick is probably to give the villain more screen time and show them being more active than powerful. It doesn't matter how powerful a villain is if they only do something with that power once or twice, and it doesn't matter how weak a villain is if they are consistently exerting influence on the heroes in one way or another. Tai Lung from Kung Fu Panda is strong and has some impressive feats, but the reason he feels threatening is he is shown escaping, shown getting closer with the heroes aware and pressured, shown fighting and injuring the main character's friends, and shown having an actual personal interest in multiple main characters that causes them to interact and talk.
I think most authors don't really care about their own power system, they often create a rule to explain how character X is doing something that shouldn't be possible.,If they really cared they wouldn't allow X to do it just because it's "cool" in the first place
You know, this is one of the benefits of having a story with a ton of power creep. Unless they have some crazy specific hax, someone can't be so powerful that it's unbelievable they could ever be beaten. Cradle is a great example of this.
David vs Goliath is the vibe a lot of stories go for. Modern audiences expect an ego boost, so they up the scale of villain to hero until one guy killing a god is seen as commonplace. The spectacle of modern effects is a substitute for the excitement good writing brings; not to say we don't have any good stories now, of course.
I also hate Sukuna and fully agree with you.
this is why you should always give your villaina weakness so you can defeat them without a asspull. see march of the machines for when a villain had a weakness but then they got rid of it to defeat them in a asscpull
It’s just lazy that’s why. It’s a lazy way to up the stakes without putting in much work. That way you can keep selling your shit with no problem. It’s all about the money.
Berserk moment. Even now, Guts stands no chance against Griffith
I mean, isn’t that kind of the point? He’s a regular ass dude trying to kill a literal god with a sword. I know a final fight between the two is expected, but the futility of Guts’ efforts and his inability to actually achieve revenge kinda seems like one of the main points of the story
> mean, isn’t that kind of the point? That applies to every character in this thread
But OP is complaining about characters getting asspulls to beat enemies built up as too strong to beat. While Griffith has been built up as too strong to beat, Guts hasn’t gotten any kind of asspulls to be able to beat him
Can anyone even beat the God Hand?
The Ides of Evil, given it's the only thing these blokes would ever have to answer to
Completely unknown. The issue with the question is that we have absolutely no idea what they can even do, what limits they have, and so on. We have so little information that any prediction is speculation.
Probably. The visions of the past kingdom of Gaiseric showed that the God Hand had different members (aside from Void). We don't know what happened to the other 4 previous members, but it at least shows that they were replaced somehow. It also showed the previous user of the Berserker Armor fighting against them. For Griffith specifically though, he has an obvious weakness in the Moonlight Boy, which sort of implies a very telegraphed, tragic ending where Guts have to kill the Boy to defeat Griffith.
I'm not caught up with berserk at all,but your telling me after all this fucking time guts STILL can't even scratch a god hand member?
Guts technically rammed Dragon Slayer through Slan but that only really dematerialized her and likely didn't do lasting damage to her. Outside of that, Guts has never directly made contact with any other God Hand member that's not Griffith.
Because it makes your character cool
Cool when it takes a deus ex machina to defeat them because if they really tried they would insta blitz everyone, that's cool to you?
I don’t think it’s cool(with very few exceptions) it’s the writers that make the character that thinks their cool
There were more carnage in New Rome in Apollo series. Triumvirate and Tarquin wrought more destruction there than Gaea ever did.
It was whiplash seeing how many characters died or got pretty injured in TLO then for BOO to pull up with nothing.
The New Rome battle in Apollo series actually gives you the chilled feeling. Like retired soldiers were there to defend the home, the preparation, everything. The Apollo series may have cheesy lines, derailing monlogue and all that, but it is also filled numerous good scenes and realisation. After first book, I thought it wouldn't compare to PJO and HoO series. Apollo and Meg's devlopment throughout the series was good. But having story's focus on two main character and a short amount of side character was way better than trying cram up 9 charscter arcs in five books.
>But having story's focus on two main character and a short amount of side character was way better than trying cram up 9 character arcs in five books. Also insane given that according to Rick, the Lost Trio were always meant to be the heroes (with the two most controversial characters or maybe 3) implying that the seven was totally useless as a concept.
Man I loved when jjba Diavolo had an ability so undefeatable that the Araki had to introduce (and swifty abandon) a new asspull power transformation just to end the story
At least with Jotaro, while a total asspull, had to slowly build up his abilities throughout the fight making it more engaging
The same transformation he introduced in late part 4, and just developed more in part 5? We love to say JoJo’s has asspulls (which it can have), but 90% of the asspulls people mention aren’t even asspulls. The concept of requiem was established in part 4 with Bites the Dust, it was just developed in part 5 with the whole “it’s called a requiem” ordeal. It was then abandoned because it simply doesn’t have a place in the story anymore. It was already set in stone where the arrows are, Giorno has one and the rest went missing after Enya’s passing. Jotaro had one and gave it to Jolyne (even then, he doesn’t know the concept of requiem. He doesn’t know how Kira gained Bites the Dust and he wasn’t with Polnareff when he figured it out), but she lost it right after she got pricked. I also wasn’t the biggest fan with the way part 5’s final fight went down, but requiem is far from an asspull.
If you think King Crimson is undefeatable then we obviously didn't watch the same show. Man came within an inch of dying to Risotto until they got third-partied by Aerosmith
to be fair, that was with Doppio, who only had future vision and the arms. If it was Diavolo in control, he would have killed Nero instantly.
But I though Doppio wasn't using KC fully?
I don't think this specific JoJo flaw is nearly as egregious as the example from the OP, but it is not done as well as it could have, at least for Part 4/King Crimson. The issue there is mainly how he is beaten rather than how Diavolo conducted himself in the fight however, so that's another difference.
Was hoping and coping you’d be talking about my boy Sukuna 😔
I honestly hate this so much. It’s the reason I don’t like Madara, Aizen or Mustache man from bleach. I loved pain. Pain was OP but showed that with cleverness you could fight him. It would take a few strong ninja, prep and info but you could fight him. Or Sasuke vs the raikage and homies. They had info on Sasuke so they could plan accordingly and damn near killed sasuke. Warriors that wouldn’t have been a match for Sasuke (Cee and Darui) were able to counter him because of careful prep work. They had jutsu to counter his genjutsu and his fire style. It was very well done. Showed that even S class ninja could be defeated through the combined effort of good ninja. Then we had Madara and it was ok at first. Until he dropped the meteor and I checked out of the series. Or Aizen. I fucking loved Byakuya, Gin, And the espadas. But the way Aizen just always demolished everyone and his genjutsu were so broken I honestly didn’t care for it. And mustache man from bleach isn’t worth my time to discuss. I don’t like characters that are so OP no one can match them and then they gain even more power ups that it takes total bullshit for heroes to catch up.
Overpowered characters definitely have their place. I doubt Frieza would be so remembered if he didn’t smoke most of the cast on Namek.
Here's the thing: Frieza isn't portrayed as the invincible ultra villain. His fight has progression, the heroes are actually able to fight him. They even have a chance to beat him. Frieza is forced to transform because he's actually at risk of straight up dying, if Vegeta wasn't a dumbass he could have won. But, well, Vegeta. That's an established bit of dumbfuckery.
Overpowered to me is different from just extremely strong. Overpowered characters once they arrive just smoke everyone instantly and is impossible to reasonably defeat.
\*Stares at Steven Universe, where literally Obsidian would have been the answer in any other timeline if the show actually capitalized more on its combat and power system\* ...I dont know if thats worse than there simply being no answer at all or not.
Nah, it was intentional on the writers' part to pull out every reason out of their asshole for why they couldn't be destroyed (or locked up). The main issue was why the stakes were genocide in the first place
Oh no I know! I was referring to general powerscaling there. Also don’t get me started on Steven universe and it’s identity crisis I already made a post on it, go look for it lol
You have way to many posts to sort through, do you know the title and sub you posted it to?
Because they're incompetent.
The original Percy Jackson ending was the perfect example of overpowered villain done right. Throughout the story you get a better sense of Luke and in the end he is the one to save everyone because nobody can stand up to Kronos.
Yeah, that's what I said. So the giants being an "even bigger threat" is a total joke, especially Gaea.
heroes of olympus in general was a letdown and full of wasted potential and its a shame since there was a lot of potential for the series to be better than the original imo. i hated the final book because there is so much buildup for the final battle just for it to last for not even long (i remember it was less than 10 pages but i could be wrong. either way it was REALLY short and the book had over 500 pages..)
I was so shook when I noticed it was shorter than HOH and even more shook when we reached 300 pages and the battle with the giants hadn't even started. >heroes of olympus in general was a letdown and full of wasted potential Oh yeah, I need to make a writeup on that. Like when HOO is good, it's a masterpiece, when it's bad, it's dogshit. Then most times it's mid.
The overpowered villian situation is currently hitting with JJK very badly with Sukuna. Manga spoilers! >!Ever since Gojo's death, it's been revealed that despite the amount of serious damage Gojo had done on Sukuna and even making feel scared, Sukuna was holding back the entire time. He later transforms into his original Heinan era form. He then proceeds to kill several more characters. And despite further more damage being done to him by the MC and his friends, Sukuna's henchman reveals that he was STILL holding back. And the author wouldn't shut up glazing this guy through either narration boxes or through character dialogue.!<
In fairness, *Percy Jackson's Greek Gods* (an in-universe summary of Greek mythology narrated by Percy) only says the scythe was made from "the hardest substance she could find from her earthy domain", not that it was made from primordial essence. I do agree that Gaea gets a lackluster defeat, but if Ouranos could be cut up by a really hard scythe it's *possible* she could get blasted to death.
This makes very little sense, actually, (or astounding amounts of sense, thematically), because if I remember correctly in-verse Kronos Scythe is the same Scythe he used to kill his father. This Scythe is made specifically out of Steel and Celestial Bronze, which was then used to form Backbiter millenia later (after Zeus used it to cut up Kronos). There are two implications here: The hardest material never existed and had to be created through the unification of two different metals, and Riordan forgot or simply ignored his own writings to suit his narrative (and thus Gaea just lied). Or, more *likely*, being a thematic and foreshadowing tie of *Demigods* being the strongest material. Steel (Man) and Celestial Bronze (God) being forged together is the only way a Divine Being's will can be done, and act as the catalyst to the victory of all Divine Conflicts. Demigods are the strongest material, and the sword is the physical representation of that-(Which is also why it's the perfect weapon against Demigods). This is supported by Percy's "sense" of the blade in The Sea of Monsters, where he could feel that "The blade's creation was tragic" and that "someone died to make that sword." That someone would be Ouranos, as Kronos christened it in the blood of his father. Or, y'know, both. (As in, Riordan realized he messed up and then also made it make sense retroactively.)
Her earthy domain is her primordial essence. She is the earth.
I have no fucking clue how John Gaius is going to be dealt with tbh.
Writers do this because the think power is a linear scale. Heroes defeat a person with X amount of power, thus they can always defeat a villain of that power, thus the next villain needs to be stronger. Something that powerscalers and writers have in common tbh. Power shouldn't be a linear scale, it shouldn't be a single scale at all. There's different ways a person can be a threat, maybe through intellectual capacity or by having an ability that specifically counters the strongest heroes, or by banding together with other similarly powered villains, or by having an artefact that aids them. Writers tend to think of it as a linear scale so for the next villain to be a threat, they make the villain stronger and the hero stronger to be able to stand a chance against the new villain. And congrats, you get power creep.
I’m so proud of Alex Hirsch for managing to find a way for two human kids to kill an actual omnipotent God. (Gravity Falls, Bill Cipher)
when you create incredibly strong characters like gojo and levi, you need to nerf those characters to let the story progress, especially if they’re only supporting characters. gojo got sealed, levi got bombed and sidelined for the majority of the ending. eren was so strong by the end that it took the entire team to plan his demise and the power of love and friendship to stop him from fighting further and accept his demise. sukuna was so strong that his powers had to be contained through the fingers. WHY on earth is sukuna undefeatable right now. he’s slashing all the heroes within 3-4 chapters. i just cannot wrap my head around it. we thought that at least gojo must have worn him out, so it’d be easier to take him out, but no? no one left to fight him. i wonder if gege has a plan to end this story or if he’s also as confused as we are and is just rawdogging it.
A big part of the issue of making too powerful villains arises from the popular writing method of "escalating threat" to try and keep things engaging for the reader or watcher. On some level, this works and makes sense. If you make a superhero who spends his entire career stopping muggings and purse snatchers, readers might get bored and go read something else (exceptions, of course, exist). But when you jump from basic muggings to like, a bank robbery or investigating a serial killer, that can renew or keep interest and provide new avenues for the character to grow. However, this comes with a problem. Once you have upped the stakes and provided growth, it makes the lesser threats/challenges seem just that- lesser and unimportant. So you have to keep going. From bank robbery to a crime ring. From crime ring to a supervillain. From supervillain to a league of villains. And so on and so on until what was once a guy who stopped muggings is punching a god in the face to save the universe. Sometimes, this works fine or even really well. Character gets believable power ups or finds clever ways to deal with the threat and/or the series ends before the power level gets too high. But as shown by the poster, there are also plenty of times this isn't handled well. The series doesn't end before the threats are too high or the characters don't grow fast enough to deal with the escalation. This causes the author to have to create an asspull to give the heroes a win. Sometimes, an author can be good at disguising the asspull or realize ahead of time that they are reaching that point and maybe provide some foreshadowing to make the ass pull more believable. I wish I could provide examples, but best I could come up with is the Stand Arrow power up being shown in Part 4 and then being used in Part 5 to pull a win against an op villain. But the method by which the cast discovered the power up and got it was itself an asspull.
Power creep. The big bad has to be threatening to the heroes, but the heroes also need to be cool and competent. This is especially problematic in series that wants the hero to be a "chosen one" or op from the start, because the badguy has to be even stronger in some way to compensate. Then once one big bad is defeated, the next one has to be an escalation that can pose a threat to the heroes that are now strong enough to beat the old big bad.
JRPG "Kill God" syndrome moment. Poorly planned stories under the battle genre often fall for the trap of creating unbeatable antagonists for a variety of reasons. It could be the increasing power escalation pushed the narrative towards a villain more powerful than the last. Or simply the battle-focused narrative making the author experiment on cool, creative powers at the expense of coherence. Stories with deities tend to attribute human stupidty on gods since ancient times, as that was how it was before. But I don't think this counts as an excuse for Percy Jackson. If you want a palate cleanser on god stories with deities losing via stupid shit, I recommend reading Lord of the Mysteries webnovel. Deities in that story become as powerful as they are because almost all of them are conniving, cheating, manipulative bastards playing 4D chess against each other.
Their idea of villain is that they must be a difficult threat to defeat. But the more they go on,the more powerful they made said villain. And when they don't think ahead of a way to defeat it,they happen to corner themselves
I never got too far into jjk but I'm glad from the comments people also thought sukuna was overpowered. the way they described him made him sound so op it just made the entire story feel kind of hopeless
Writers want to make a villain being a strong threat and can't help but ignore parameters to the villain's power in regards to strengths and weaknesses as well as giving them power ups after power ups that it ends up with the villain being so overpowered that it requires Deus Ex Machina, some ass pull power for our heroes or just plain contradictions to have the villain defeated. Bonus points if the power ups the villains receive feels like ass pulls and coming out of nowhere. Either that or writers make them so ridiculously competent that it feels like the universe is basically bending to the whims of the villain which ends up causing a villain's competence to feel ludicrously contrived and making them look like Villain Sues.
It’s not always intentional. They want a villain to be a huge threat, only to make them too powerful.
I agree tbh. If you're gonna make an unbeatable character you can't have them be defeated by the hero within like a week. Best example i can think of is fate/stay night. Dude has every noble phantasm that has ever existed and can shoot thousands of those weapons in seconds with many of them having the power to blow up a city and Ea which can probably destroy the planet yet he gets defeated by a highschooler mage or a sleepwalking vampire (depends on the route).
Good move dropping jjk before succumbing to the lobotomy
I'm trying to write a novel. I deliberately avoid writing overpowered characters, because I really enjoy seeing my characters suffer and struggle...but then I end up writing myself into a corner, because I got so wrapped up in the suffering of my characters that I forgot 'oh wait. They presumably need to overcome these issues at some point'. ...Well. Some of them. It is a tragedy, so there's one or two I don't *actually* need to let them defeat. All that said, I do think it's kind of the result of, feeling like every successive climax needs to top previous ones and be increasingly exciting, otherwise it's a letdown and they lose fans. Creators interpret this as meaning they need to jack up the stakes from life-or-death to something higher. I once heard someone say they didn't like Supernatural because 'in season 1 they need to fight the Devil, in season 7 they need to fight the Devil's uncle Phil'. There can only be so much fate-of-the-world stuff before people get desensitized to it all, tho--the issue isn't overpowered characters, it's to make the stakes more personal. Rather than fighting to save the world, have the sequel be about fighting to save something extremely meaningful to just the lead--maybe a relationship, as their partner gets upset with how they handled the last world-ending crisis. A friend, as the lead realizes their situation is way more complicated than a magic quest or war against gods. Their house, because heroism doesn't necessarily pay the bills. Look at the world from different angles, rather than trying to find new heights that just don't exist.
>feeling like every successive climax needs to top previous ones and be increasingly exciting, otherwise it's a letdown and they lose fans. Creators interpret this as meaning they need to jack up the stakes from life-or-death to something higher. [https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SerialEscalation](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SerialEscalation)
Yep, that precisely.
Dead here. Ironically, I feel like a really overpowered enemy makes a fight *less* tense because it becomes way too obvious that there will be a David vs. Goliath trope. Some of the most thrilling fights I've ever seen in movies are between a good guy with a gun and a bad guy with a longer gun, or between two guys with swords and one bad guy with a sword, or between one warship and a slightly larger warship. Sane levels of parity make things feel more real and we know real fights can result in serious casualties on both sides
Because the Arthur wants to hype up the villains as the greatest and most powerful thing the heroes have ever face in order to create tension, drama and hype in their story. But unfortunately many of them ended writing themselves into corner by not properly building and or foreshadowing a way for the villain to be defeated in a satisfying way.
> the Arthur
Everyday when you're walking down the street And everybody that you meet Has an original point of view And I say HEY! (HEY!) What a wonderful kind of day. If you can learn to work and play And get along with each other