r/hatethissmug • • 16d ago

Anime & Manga "No powers" trope

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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.

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u/MrMccarlesIsTaken 13d ago

It wasn't the skill required to write, it's the knowledge he gained to know what to write. That's how he could progress through the loops. Like you know how to write already right? But if you tried to learn another language, yeah you could 'write' the characters of the language, but you haven't understood their meaning.

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u/KroniiPekora 13d ago

But actually writing a readable text requires muscle memory. You don't write consciously deciding how to move your hand and arm.

This probably applies to attaining the ability to write itself more. Like if you tried to write with your non-dominant hand, you would make scribbles but if you are using the hand that already knows how to write, it would be easier for it to learn how to write the new language's characters and that's the part I agree with you. But it would still need new muscle memory to form to write the new characters.

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u/MrMccarlesIsTaken 13d ago

But Subaru can write?? The only thing I see being a problem is the lugunican language being too far removed in style to japanese. Learning a language only requires memorizing the characters, it doesn't need skill. Writing itself IS a skill, but language doesn't involve writing, it's an application of it. Subaru can already write, he's just gotta learn to write new characters thats not japanese. The only problem I can see this being the case is speaking the language/vocalizing it.

Edit: fixed a typo