Your opinion on OP protagonists in anime?
Wardog_E said: In most stories, characters have to overcome a great adversity in order to evolve and learn and become more complete people. The emotions and social circumstances created by these adversities are the bread and butter of a good story. If the adversity is insignificant the story is empty. If a character is the strongest person alive then their challenge shouldn't be to overcome a test of strength. There is no drama in that conflict. To put an example, (not anime) The Legend of Korra is at its best when Korra isn't solving her problems through brute force but through understanding other people. We are already aware that Korra is supposed to be the strongest person alive but her greatest adversity is to beat her oponents intellectually. Similarly, Mob is impossibly powerful but his real challenges have nothing to do with his psychic abilities but with his weak character. OP characters are bad because they don't allow a story to develop. This is a fantastic explanation of what's wrong with OP. I want this post pinned. |
| WEAPONS - My blog, for reviews of music, anime, books, and other things |
| There needs to be a reason why they're so OP, or at least a drawback. Biggest problem I had with Fairy Tail is almost everyone is OP for basically no reason at all and the only drawback is most of them are idiots, but like that actually mattered in battle. Someone like Accelerator (To Aru Kagaku no Railgun) though, who is ridiculously OP, has a pretty tragic reason for attaining that level of power. |
...better to be hated for what you are than loved for something you are not. |
| OP characters are bad, in everything, basically all the time. That is if you're using the word properly and you probably aren't. Mostly because I have only just decided that the common usage is stupid and should be changed. Here's why. Overpowered has become synonymous with powerful when it should and does mean unrealistically powerful. Now while I could just be being incredibly pedantic, I think it's an important distinction that has to be made since all conversations about OP characters are irrelevant and could mean anything without said distinction. I'll go through a few characters and show what I mean. [Minor spoilers probably] Guts - Not actually that OP. The guy was born in puddle of mud, blood, and afterbirth. Since then he's spent almost every waking moment on the battlefield or training. He deserves every bit of badassery and power that he has. Kirito- OP beyond the point of mere stupidity. He reached god-tier by the way of not giving a single fuck and using "inefficient leveling methods", showcasing either bad writing or the impeccable retardation of every other character in the series... which would be bad writing, but what can you do? Underserved power, at least relative to everyone else. Shiroe- Not OP at all. 8 years of actively playing an MMO should make you one of the best there, especially if you rely on your own intelligence and you're an engineering student. Gintoki- Fairly OP. He does no training that we (I) know of, barely anything else all day and he's still a god tier swordsman, not obscenely fat and all around the best. Maybe the poverty diet works more than I thought? Back to the point, OP protagonists are bad because being overpowered is inherently stupid and a sign of poor writing. Powerful protagonists are fine if they still have struggles, like poverty, politics, giant demons and getting cucked by Griffith. |
| Most people hate OP characters because in many cases they get all the girls, people can't get all the girls in real life so people know it's bullshit. |
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-Mahesvara said: Well the anime left out most of the substance of the series and definitely wouldn't recommend it to people who want to get into mahouka. Well you learn more about him as the series proggresses and he subtlely becomes a kinder person as he developes friendships, but also shows just how ruthless he can be towards his enemies as well(i.e mocking them and disintegrating them). To get the true look at his character, you have read the LN's because Tatsuya is a very introspective character and he keeps his thoughts and feelings to himself, which come in the form of monologues within the source material. I think that an adaptation need to faithfully adapt the source material while the same time been able to stand on its own. Mahouka starts off as kinda interesting for me, but I don't want to read through 20+ volumes of a LN I never even know at the first place to knew what's going on. A good anime and a good character don't needs a great bunch of extended material to makes it interesting. If you need a tons of extended materials to flesh out a character , then you're terrible at writing characters (In my opinion) |
| OP protagonists aren't bad thing it's all depends on the conflict the main hero is going through,take kenshin for example he is OP but he has an inner struggle with his previous persona and an external struggle against his opponents while OP main characters who are unkillable and have little to no struggle like alucard are boring ,they look cool at first but then you'll get tired of them. |
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Wardog_E said: Your conclusion is particularly weird considering that the rest of your post pretty much makes a perfect case for OP characters by explaining in what ways they could (and are) effectively utilized in fiction.In most stories, characters have to overcome a great adversity in order to evolve and learn and become more complete people. The emotions and social circumstances created by these adversities are the bread and butter of a good story. If the adversity is insignificant the story is empty. If a character is the strongest person alive then their challenge shouldn't be to overcome a test of strength. There is no drama in that conflict. To put an example, (not anime) The Legend of Korra is at its best when Korra isn't solving her problems through brute force but through understanding other people. We are already aware that Korra is supposed to be the strongest person alive but her greatest adversity is to beat her oponents intellectually. Similarly, Mob is impossibly powerful but his real challenges have nothing to do with his psychic abilities but with his weak character. OP characters are bad because they don't allow a story to develop. edit: wait no scratch the first part of my post, just read the OP |
| Proud founder of The Official Anti-Ging Freecss Fan Club Join now! Kellhus said: GuusWayne said: there is a limit to the suspension of disbelief And it's the fan that did it. Not the smoking porn reading rubik cube genius rape ape with a magic boat. |
| This is honestly because people are way too myopic about their understanding of the term "story" and "character," and believe that a story must follow X number of logical parameters in order to achieve something of quality. |
Wardog_E said: That's a pretty broad definition of the term you seem to be using (cause most of the time fans will categorize characters as OP when they're overwhelmingly more competent than others in a particular area that's vital to the story, like say, Levi from SnK, who does have some major emotional issues to deal with even though he's virtually unkillable), but I understand your point better now.Sapewloth said: Your conclusion is particularly weird considering that the rest of your post pretty much makes a perfect case for OP characters by explaining in what ways they could (and are) effectively utilized in fiction. edit: wait no scratch the first part of my post, just read the OP We are parting from different assumptions. IMO an OverPowered character is one that has all the tools to solve any problem the story presents to them with no real effort or struggle. An OP character isn't just someone who is better than anyone else at one or several things. You can have super cool incredible characters presented with problems that they can't easily solve and IMO that's fine and good. What makes a character overpowered is that they have TOO MUCH power for the story to create an interesting situation that involves them (or that the story just won't present that situation to not ruin the power fantasy). Of course not every part of every story with an OP character is bad and not every story that has no OP characters is automatically good; I still think stories where the protagonist never has to tackle a dificult situation that doesn't push their limits can't be interesting. |
| Proud founder of The Official Anti-Ging Freecss Fan Club Join now! Kellhus said: GuusWayne said: there is a limit to the suspension of disbelief And it's the fan that did it. Not the smoking porn reading rubik cube genius rape ape with a magic boat. |
| There's nothing inherently good or bad about any type of character, it's about how they're handled. Unless you just can't stand a particular type regardless, then that's a different story. |
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| No. It depends on the intent of the anime, and the directors execution of that theme. If the anime is trying to build tension while we know that the protagonist is in no danger, it can be counter intuitive. This is not the case for authors like ONE for example. One punch man being a satire of the Shonen/Action genre, as well as American super heroes, had an overpowered protagonist for comedic effect. It wasn't taking itself seriously, and we as the audience weren't expected to wonder 'what will the result of this fight be', instead we were just meant to have a laugh at anticlimactic endings. This was well executed for the most part, my main gripe was how repeatitive it was. Digibro made an excellent video about Mob Psycho 100's themes of self betterment and how this was enhanced by the unparalleled powers of mob being useless for achieving his goals. You can't really judge the execution of an anime by 'power' of its characters, it's just a superficial detail. If you mean 'Mary Sue' characters, yes, that is a bad thing. |
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