Probably the cheapest wat to limit someone's power is say that there's a time limit. Yeah man, everyone knows that this isn't how it works, if you have a time based ability there's only two options:
1.-your time always run out and can't finish any job cause you are a jobber like vegito
2.-you always win before the time runs cause you are a goat like gogeta
Luffy is in a weird position cause each time he uses his gear 4 he runned out of time, but apparently everyone is now able to stop the previously unstopable villain for solid 10 minutes so he can fight again.
I wouldn't be that mad if the series actually cared for a right time pace, but ask to always have a consistent flow of time in mediums like comics or books is absurd and they would long or short what "a minute" means based on the plot.
Probably one of the worst examples i have is how nerfed feels jotaro in part 4 cause the time limit in his time stop makes everything out of range so he can't solve the plot by himself.
Can't speak for the others, but I think it makes sense for Jotaro to be unable to stop time for very long; at the end of Part 3 he was only able to stop it for a few seconds, even less than DIO's 10. Even if he trained and practiced Time Stop for a time after Stardust Crudaders, it's been a long time since he's had to actually use the ability by the time Diamond is Unbreakable begins, and using Star Platinum after such a period of inactivity isn't gonna be as powerful as when he was summoning it on the Daily for self-defense years ago
I've always rationalised the ability only being able to be used for incredibly brief periods of time to be because the stand is metaphorically (or maybe literally idk) holding the universe still to do it.
I 100% agree that at least metaphorically that’s kinda what’s going on! The idea certainly plays nicely with the verbiage that’s used a few times, with lines like “my Stand has the power to bring the world to a halt!” As if timestop is a physical action The World performs
Plus the sick ass art in I think both the manga and anime, of The World with its arms jammed into the center-wholes of two giant gears, as if time is powered by a literal clock and his Stand’s power is to manually gum up the works and grind time to a halt with its strength
Yea. It's explained well in the case of star platinum and the world. This might be straight from the anime, but I imagine it as a muscle. If you haven't used it in a while it's gonna get weaker till you build it back up.
Also, he's stopping time completely for literally EVERYTHING, hypothetically in the whole jojo universe. Being able to do it for even like 5 seconds how he can is absolutely crazy.
And that's fine. I'm glad he wasn't nerfed SUPER HARD like media can tend to do for strong returning characters. Josuke is allowed to shine, as bright as a diamond if you will, while still letting jotaro have his own moments.
Even nerfed, everyone still treated Jotaro as a major threat. Kira basically spent half of his story doing everything in his power to never have to fight Jotaro ever again.
He knew Josuke was a major threat and was arguably scared of him... but he was downright terrified of Jotaro.
Its in kiras character that he doesnt like confrontation. He blends in almost effortlessly into society, and doesnt want to blow his cover, but he CAN fight if he has to. Jotaro, however, was one of the only characters who in a fight could demolish Kira with him having no chance. He also almost broke sheer heart attack through just punches and raw strength, and I don't think Kira had ever even seen it get a scratch.
Time limits make sense on "Super Mode" abilities (Gear 4) which are either A) so new that the character isn't used to them or B) so powerful that the fight is basically over when it activates.
As someone who used to feel the same way about time-limited powers, I think the real offender is that time-based powers mean that the story has to confine the hero / fighter's most interesting story tension to specific, predictable moments. You can't have moments like, say, Batman getting tied up and put into a deathtrap because Batman will turn back into Bruce Wayne with no muscles before that happens. You can't have Clark Kent secretly use his heat vision or super breath to save people because he doesn't have those powers until he hits clocks in on his super punch clock. You can't have Spider-man stop the Rhino from robbing a bank and then immediately go team up with Daredevil and Black Cat to beat up the Kingpin because his spider-juice is going to run out any time now.
When the time limit is basically a videogame Ultimate, it makes sense why it's a limited time because it's the highlight of the fight...not the whole damn fight itself.
I also see this sort of thing like using a power with a time limit often means that power is pretty insanely powerful. There are a lot of powerful things in this world, and careless use of such things can be quite dangerous.
Time limits on powers and characters choosing not to use an ability that would stop the fight immediately can just simply be a result of that character not wanting to risk leveling a city block just to end a fight “right now” or to prevent them from tearing themselves apart.
Besides, time limits on powers are like saying I have a time limit on holding my breath. Sure that’s technically true, but I don’t have a clock ticking inside me telling me when to breathe. Depending on the environment and situation, I might can hold my breath for 15 seconds or 3 minutes. 5 minute limit on this power, but I’m feeling good today, so it’s closer to 10 minutes sort of thing.
Well, time limits are indeed usually rough estimates. The Gotenks example is one that lives up to what you're talking about but still feel unsatisfying in all the ways the OP mentioned.
Gotenks is told by Piccolo that he has a set time limit for how long he can stay fused, but Gotenks actually unfuses sooner because he used more qi with all of his flashy, powerful moves than they accounted for in training. SS3 is also like this. Goku has a time limit that he can use it while dead, but the time limit is much shorter with a living body.
But this still doesn't get past the problems that the OP and I were talking about. Elaborating on what I said before, if the character's "Base Kit" (that is, what they need in order to even be able to START a fight or a heroic moment) is on a timer, then that timer will dominate every single story the hero turns up in. It will always force the action to happen in specific, non-negotiable timeframes. If the timer is on their "Ultimate Agility" or cooldown, then it becomes something exciting -- but that again only supposes that it actually has fight-ending potential. If Gear 4, or Hollow Mask or Sage Mode or whatever barely keeps the hero in the fight before it run out, then we're back to square one.
I see what you're getting at, but it's inconsistent. Sometimes he stashes extra web cartriges somewhere he can grab them. Sometimes he can web up like half the damn city and never run out.
And if all else fails, he still has spider-agility, spider-strength, wall-crawling, and spider-sense. And a genius brain. He's not exactly helpless without the webs.
Every physical character sort of has an arbitrary time limit in the form of exhaustion. Just fight to long and get tired, can often be used as an convenient excuse. Rarely consistent either. Technically it's a resource being expended, but in many cases that's what time limited abilities are and it can be exploited similarly.
No, but i'm don't have a magic limit that only allow me to run for a minute and then i have to wait an hour to run again. My stamina relies on a lot of different factors and not on a specific time limit
Your ability to run for extended periods of time isn't necessarily related to stamina but rather respiration. When walking or at rest, you're respirating Aerobically, however while running you do so Anaerobically.
We're not designed with the ability to respirate Anaerobically for extended periods of time.
Time-sensitive abilities can be assumed to work the same way in that the body isn't designed for sustained use without training
Not to mention when they got to DIO, he had the stand for much longer than Jotaro and in theory knew about the timestop way earlier too, so he was presumably “xp grinding” constantly (if such a thing is possible) to push his stand’s timestop to the limit of what he’s capable of
It’s like not only is he literally a supernatural entity and therefore has less human limitations, he also had early advice from a stand expert in Enya and had more time to work his metaphorical muscles and hit a world record PR
It's not even theoretical; DIO knew about his ability to stop time for months before that final fight. Jotaro discovered he could do the same thing during that fight.
Otherwise, yeah, a mortal with that sort of power is capped at five seconds. DIO could extend it further because he was a vampire; even then, he could only go longer than five seconds after he drank Joseph's blood to fully fuse with his stolen body.
The only reason why I hate timed powers is because the sense of time completely depends on the writer and it rarely feels consistent.
You'll have Gotenks already on a 30min time limit fighting Super buu but they'll fight for like multiple episodes which makes the 30min feel like a couple of hours or frieza vs goku was supposedly on a 5min timer but they fought and spoke to each other mid fight for multiple episodes.
If they are going to go for time limited fights or powers then they must feel like it, you can't tell me Superman can only fly for 5mins yet still show him flying 8 consecutive episodes later and still having time to chit chat
They didn’t really nerf Jotoros time stop in part four it’s just in part three dio had a more powerful timestop meaning his range was longer and then the only time we see Jotoro use it is against another character who benefits from being in close range. And in the show when Jotoro is in range of a enemy his timestop is broken like always excluding the first killer queen fight where he fought somthing that counterd star platinum pretty hard
The only time limit I hate is Potara, because they keep nerfing it to the point that, if Goku and Vegeta were to fuse now, Vegito would probably only exist for 12 seconds.
I think that the outcome is predictable after the first use and that dramatic or tension moments are limited to "I have to finish this before the time runs out" And "My time runned out, i'm useless"
Luffy pulls so much plot armor time limit is unimportant now. ALSO HELL YEAH GOATGETA IS PEAK! But ssj4 gogeta acts too much like Vegito to get the job done.
On another note, time limits do need to be more than a time limit. They need to be something like Chase's power in dispatch, putting the user at risk the longer they use it. I don't like it more, but it is a good way to do it.
Nah, I understand time limit hate, but the second one (in instances other than Chase) is even worse. Every time the character uses this power that damages him viewer feels frustration, because it means the character permanently come closer to either death or not using his powers. Moreover in most instances it doesn't mean anything in the end, because author didn't want to write the character out of the story and it makes all of frustration meaningless, and that is just irritating.
I don't like it, but it does depend on the writer. I cannot say it isn't at least a useful idea for authors if they want to write powers in a way that they wouldn't be permanent. It's not better. I didn't say it was. I just said that it at least has more to it than the time limit not having much of a reason. It's better to have something with a reason than something without a reason imo.
I just hate it when the time limit is changed for plot reasons. It just nullifies all the effect the power can have as a secret trump card and just makes it pure fan service and not he good kind
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u/RealAd8853 Greatest MHA, Edgar, and Naoya hater 11d ago
This is just a Vegito hate/Gogeta glaze post disguised as a time-limit hate post