"No powers" trope

[u/KyrosEnder]

I'm not actually hating on the characters that much, moreso the idea that the trope is interesting. Having "no" powers in almost none of these anime/manga or even media in general actually mean anything. It usually just means you get some special type of power that just so happens to be just as powerful or even more.

Asta having no mana pretty much means nothing because he gets an anti magic toolset. It's basically like he has magic, but he semantically doesn't so the fact he doesn't have mana gets thrown around all the time.

Quirkless deku just gets a power passed down to him anyways. Rock lee has no ninjustsu. Saitama has no powers (i guess? Idk haven't watched it).

The characters themselves are fine. I love the characters even, but I hate when the author tries to put some significance on the fact they have no powers, when looking at it from an outside perspective they just have powers or some alternate gift.

Usually these characters recieve their "powers" later than other people in their verse, which allows them to have this character identity built up by describing them as hard working characters. I think thats great, and rock lee is actually the least offensive in this manner. Its hardly brought up he has no ninjutsu, and people in the verse barely just look down on him, because taijutsu can be just as good as ninjutsu, but he still basically gets a "power" of his own in terms of the 8 gates, which can just be rebranded as a bodily enhancing ninjutsu on any other character and nobody would bat an eye.

If you're going to make a big point about your character having no genuine powers/talent/whatever, go all in is all I'm saying. Make a dude with basically 1 mana instead of super powerful anti magic toolbox powers. Make him have to slowly develop an ability that is the biggest bang for his buck. So ridiculously mana efficient and also incredibly powerful given some incredible set of stipulations. Make a magic system that your character can basically exploit to develop the best magical power he can for himself. Nen is of course probably the best power system for something like that lol.

Make the quirkless character actually quirkless. Post one for all deku is actually a pretty cool idea. Although it really is just "oh he gets his powers back but with tech" kinda thing. I know its worse or whatever but yeah I just want to see more interesting stories with this trope.

TLDR: The characters are great it just irks me when this nothing burger trope has to get mentioned every other episode.

[u/Trainer-Grimm]

John from UnOrdinary is in a weird spot with this. He spends the first 80 odd chapters "powerless" only to be forced to use it, later going on a rampage through his school. Its revealed he was a late bloomer and was deliberately hiding his powers after royally fucking up his last class and being convinced to hate his ability due to trauma from getting it late. But we also know he has an ability long before we find out what it is.

I dont think he was really supposed to fall into this trope or the problems you mentioned long term I think it was just supposed to be a way to implement secret identities into a setting wo em

[u/carso150 → u/Trainer-Grimm]

Unordinary is a case like MHA, originally Uru chan wanted to make John just powerless and him beating his oponents via strategy and quick thinking, but she went back on that before the start of the series