Why do a lot of people hate overpowered main characters in novels?

Discussion in 'Novel General' started by Silentstorm, Nov 23, 2019.

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  1. NinjapowerMS

    NinjapowerMS Local man ruins everything

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    One punch man is self aware and it's precisely the reason it's making fun of.
    The other overpowered garbage takes itself seriously and reeks of wish fulfillment that's why it's laughable how delicately crafted everything is to praise how big the Protagonist's dick is to the readers.
    Hell I think Solo leveling is overrated nonsense but at least the Art style is damn amazing so it has that going for it.
     
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  2. oblueknighto

    oblueknighto Blue Person

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    Because being OP usually means there’s no challenge to overcome and so there’s no tension. Nothing to be curious about once the main character can just destroy everything.
     
  3. Lang10

    Lang10 Well-Known Member

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    OP Mc are often bad because of bad plot and conflict. Plot and conflict are what moves a story, but with an OP MC who can beat anyone, it will be hard to write around that. An example of this is Death March into another world. The MC so OP, he can do anything but lacks any real opposition, while Overlord is a good OP MC story as OP Mc in terms of near godlike power, the MC weakness the lack of knowledge of both the world and the ruler he just became and then trying to balance as the Power ruler but the knowledge that he is not as wisdom those serving him.
     
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  4. Innieminnie

    Innieminnie Secret Parrot, Hidden Dodo

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    Mostly because it makes the story tedious and repetitive. One-Punch Man to me, is more focused on showing characters outside of Saitama face a huge threat they aren't prepared for- and then having Saitama kill it in one punch. Like, it's a typical story until Saitama is included. I love all the other characters and their interactions too...basically, it's got my type of humor and I love it.
     
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  5. Deadmantellnotales

    Deadmantellnotales rebmeM nwonK-lleW

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    Most people hate overpowered MC because of their fucking sense of justice. The MC who have power and didn't kill the enemy because he don't want to hurt humans, those make people pissed and ultimately make them hate-ish(repulsive is the better word) the novel.
     
  6. Shtirliz

    Shtirliz Well-Known Member

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    It's easy to answer. As MC is so overpovered than what the point in these kind of stories? To make such points and make them also interesting require much more brains, thinking and time from author. And if any of required resources are lacking then here goes bad story.
     
  7. simak

    simak Well-Known Member

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    Lack of conflict makes many stories boring. Many get repetitive after a certain power level.

    Alternate take is that most creators and protagonists of OP characters, especially ones who are granted the powers with little or no effort, are gamma on the social sexual hierarchy. Other people for relate and get annoyed by too much gamma.
    : Social sexual hierarchy
    : gamma in the hierarchy
     
  8. The Hamster Overlord

    The Hamster Overlord Mad scientist/Revered wizard/Alleged antichrist

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    Ps: thanks for making a venting threat m8.
    A badly written overly competent mc requires the rest of the cast to be too incompetent to shine. That in itself will drag the quality of the story down and the plot won't be as fulfilling.
    Most otome game reincarnation stories (and op stories in general) feature an mc that has no creativity and can only bring the inventions and ideas from their home world. It makes for a situation where the cultures of the fictional world and the world of the mc are compared with the mc world being soooo much better than the fictional world. That brings two obvious problems (for me at least) : 1)why should I invest into caring about the inferior fictional world? 2)its just unpleasant when cultures get compared, fictional or not. Every culture is an accumulation of many generations of the efforts of the people and implying that one is better than the other makes me feel bad. Especially when it comes to the food. Food in a region gets developed historically with the available resources. When a random person comes from another world and just dumps new food that everybody immediately swoons over it mskes me believe that either the food they had was just that bad or just makes it too unrealistic.
    The popular works that you have mentioned have their op MC's but the intent behind them is different and most importantly exists. Usually the rookie author making an op story will just get a random "wouldn't it be cool?" - esque idea and write the story from there with little planning or thinking behind the process, resulting in a work lacking substance. Why do you think there are so many tropes in plots? The school arc, the tournament arc and such story developments in shounen stories, for example, are usually (there are exceptions of course) put there just because the author didn't have enough ideas and creativity and motivation to just come up with anything else.
    A book can be ridden with cliches and still feel fresh and interesting if the author thought the story and characters and the settings and the execution and maybd the intent behind the arcs through. Overlord, for example, is very very full of cliches but it still is an interesting story for said reasons.
     
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  9. gnessa14

    gnessa14 Well-Known Member

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    Because it's worse than Dragon Ball. At least, in Dragon Ball, they keep going OP but new villains who are more OP than them show up. In novels, these OP main characters just pew pew pew everything. It gets boring. Like Solo Leveling for an example. I prefer stories with weak or side characters as the MCs.
     
  10. sjmcc13

    sjmcc13 Well-Known Member

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    You do realize the description you just used applies to Superman, who people love....
     
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  11. Silentstorm

    Silentstorm Well-Known Member

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    This is in most Shounen series, from the very start, seriously, thinking of old shows for kids(and one mecha series) you have:

    Mazinger Z: The very first Super Robot series ever, main character has to constantly get creative to win, the mecha is upgraded all the time, and it keeps losing parts or hurt a lot leading to a lot of repairs, the series even ends with common mooks, not the super powerful last villain, completely wrecking Mazinger Z:
    [​IMG]
    Literally, while i admit that is from the movie, it's a movie doing it's version of the last arc which ends with Mazinger getting destroyed and the pilot being just there for the villains to crush easily, it didn't even get the honor of being wrecked by the super awesome one of a kind in terms of power villain, it may be a super robot show, but the writers wanted to show Kouji(the pilot) actually earning his victories rather than just having monsters constantly attack Mazinger and nothing happening because it's too tough, Mazinger Z doesn't even have an alternate mode nor does get stronger because of determination or something like that, it has a fixed level of power and arsenal, and yeah, Kouji manages to get out of it alive despite Mazinger having lost one arm and leg because he's just that good...and others save him too to be fair.

    Kinnikuman- Probably the least known series i will mention, but it was very influential in it's time and the main character starts as being someone who trains to get muscle, but is really cowardly and useless in a fight at first until he learns he can turn determination into power...which doesn't stop him from being an utter coward, still, he does fight, and in most fights he is beaten a lot and has to struggle just to win, in two fights, he is literally killed and has to be ressurected, and one villain beat him so bad that even though he ended up being, later events show he still has nightmares and is terrified of the villain.

    Saint Seiya- The main character only easily wins his second fight in the series against Geki, aside from that, every other fight in the series, for him and his friends, is hard fought and it's indicated that Seiya should have died a few times during fights and only stood still because of his determination and desire to save the world, and many times he and his friends don't beat the villains so much as others appear to help them.

    Hokuto No Ken- Kenshiro is overpowered, but he spent his entire life training in the most powerful martial art style created with the blessing of God so that it's users could shape the world for the better in times of need, he still loses four times in the series, and those defeats end with him in a bloody mess with a clear indication there was no way for him to win, requiring rematches for him to save the day.

    Dragon Ball- Goku and his friends constantly meet new foes, and while Goku and his friends get new forms, they also train a lot and each major foe takes a lot of them in order to beat.

    I guess that's a thing in Shounen, many times, the main character doesn't start as being OP or only thinks he is OP, but ends up facing really strong foes that forces them to train, acquire new power and it's a gradual progress to getting strong rather than sometimes some Deity just giving cheat powers to someone or someone just being reborn as their avatar in a game they played a lot, Shounen quite a few times is more about seeing the main character get strong rather than starting strong, with some exceptions like Hokuto No Ken and OPM here and there.
     
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  12. ToastedRossi

    ToastedRossi Well-Known Member

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    I think that a lot of readers feel that there's something wrong in the books that have overpowered characters, but there's a bit of confusion because they may not be particularly good at identifying and articulating exactly what they have problems with. But just because you have trouble being precise about what you have problems with doesn't disprove there being something wrong with the work.

    The biggest problem I see with stories with overpowered characters is that they are deceptively difficult to write yet they get tackled by authors who don't have that much writing experience. The reason should be obvious: when you have a character who can easily defeat any and all challenges, the story isn't going to have any tension any more so you have to be more creative at telling it. The way it works for the better books, like Overlord, is to create challenges that either limit the protagonist's powers or turn one of his powers against him or to put him in positions where having more power doesn't lead to a positive outcome or to tell smaller stories from a different perspective. That way, even if the reader is fully aware which side of a conflict is going to win overall, there's still a lot of tension from wondering if a particular side character is going to survive or in how the protagonist has to deal with his restrictions.

    Sadly, most writers don't have the skill and perhaps the emotional maturity to pull this kind of storytelling off. So what they end up doing is telling traditional stories where the protagonist has to overcome challenges but because these challenges are trivial, it makes for a boring character and a boring story. And it's not something just limited to amateur writers either. I've seen professional writers and television show runners do the same thing. They think that the lack of limitations means that there's endless potential for storytelling when the opposite is true: limitations give rise to conflict and it's this conflict that increases storytelling potential.
     
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  13. nuubman

    nuubman Russia greatest love machine !

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    Superman has a solid story foundation as why he acts the way he acts (he is literally a God among men in the dc world, besides he grew up with parents that drilled in his mind that he must be the good that he must be what others can't be blah blah), the characters in the dc world are not one dimensional like some other novels he must show restraint with how he acts you literally have lex luthor waiting for him to make a mistake so he can rally other super heroes to kill him, besides the thing with superman is that he is supposed to be the symbol of whats good in the world, the shiny boy that usually shows the good side of everything etc etc, and again the dc world although not perfect is not a one dimensional world, there have been other authors that show the so called" what if", injustice for example with superman going in a killing rampage, superman has a solid story foundation and background to his actions unlike the other Mc's that act like retards just because.
     
  14. Wujigege

    Wujigege *Christian*SIMP*Comedian

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    One Punch Man is a parody. Which takes a lot more skill than you think.

    Fist of the Northern Star is a romantic story very well disguised as action.
    It's an heartfelt story

    Both take a lot of skill.

    Most importantly both are not shonen. Characters are grown men
     
  15. akki

    akki [Ani's C☕ffee-mate #3] [Shady Merchant]

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    If there’s nothing to the plot apart from mc constantly going up again bad guys then an overpowered mc becomes too boring~
     
  16. Asf

    Asf 《《The aria of souls》》

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    I avoid most if not all with any tags of OP protagonist.
    In my mind , it will all just fall into the same trope over and over again.
    With the overexerted enemy with their background story and his reputation becomes somewhat powerfull looking, and the MC just oneshot the dude the next second..
    erasing all the villains background story worth that the author trying so hard to explain.
    And then comes the annoying MC worshipping moments....
    And ofcourse all the waifus and husbandos becomes wet for it the second it happens.

    which will then be repeated over and over and over again..
    It becomes redundant each time since every problems will just easily be solved with mindless violance..
    If he cant do that then he isnt really OP right?
    whats the point reading it then?
     
    Last edited: Nov 24, 2019
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  17. Kaylee

    Kaylee Well-Known Member

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    Yet, all Superman movies are flop. Show how much people love a perfect superman like Superman huh
    It's totally different when he's still Clark Kent, and still has problem with his identity crisis,

    imo, One Punch Man is success with the OPness, coz the side characters get more scene time, and it's not set in an isekai/transmigrated/rebirth. It's the same Earth, with all the 'life is suck' problem, just how those hero still needs to pay bill and have a self crisis.

    What makes OPness too much, when MC in isekai but very washy washy, indecisive, like 'oh you're a monster/demon but you wont kill human coz you're once human/you want to be like human yet all the humans are killing/hunting monster/demon'.
    Well, one of the reason *shrug*
     
    Last edited: Nov 24, 2019
  18. gnessa14

    gnessa14 Well-Known Member

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    I mean... being strong and getting stronger over the course of the story are both fine as long as there are more powerful enemies/villains who will make the MC work for it (like Dragon Ball). What that I find unacceptable is the OP MC who defeats everything with zero effort. There's no anticipation/suspension because the outcome is known and the process to get there is negligible. Like they always say, "The harder the battle, the sweeter the victory."
     
  19. sjmcc13

    sjmcc13 Well-Known Member

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    I am aware, the issue is not the power, or being a boy scout, it is the quality of the writing and storytelling, and since most of the works people use these complaints against are amature works written for a young adults from a culture with a very different sense of morality and values. One of the big ones being the lack of a proper adversary Lex Luthor was created the way he was so he could be a worthy adversary, but not destroy half the planet every time they came into conflict.
    Except They do not, They are not as successful as Marvel movies but they are not flops either. Only 1 of Reeves 4 films did not get more in the box office then it cost (keep in mind that the box office is not the only source of revenues for these films), 1 made about nearly 6 times and 2 nearly 4 times. Of the new films the worst is returns which was still a financial success, but batman v superman got about 870 million at the box office (the 2nd best of the DC films) Plus DC itself has a bad track record with movies, but great track record in TV and animated series (smallville, Justice League cartoon etc) heck that Krypton got a 2nd season shows interest in the superman mythos.
     
  20. Silentstorm

    Silentstorm Well-Known Member

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    More about the good cast of fun characters, also add a good sense of style.

    As for Hokuto No Ken, it helps that Kenshiro trained his whole life to become strong and uses his abilities to punish villains, he will also gladly cry and talk about love so he isn't just a stoic badass, add to that really cool moments with better lines than a lot of other stories with overpowered main characters, and the fact Kenshiro has lost a few times, and you can see why people tend to like him even when they think Hokuto No Ken may be a bit too silly or really not all that well written, particularly after Raoh.

    As for the times he lost, let's see, the first time he is left bleeding out with seven new scars as his foe leaves without a single scratch, the second time his foe easily and casually overpowered him so much his friends actually put themselves in front of the villain to stop Ken from going for a rematch while injured and to easily die, the third time as his enemy gleefully let himself be hit by several moves...only for Kenshiro to do no damage and getting several injuries that also leave him bleeding out and almost dying as the villain laughs like nothing happened, the fourth time the villain also pretty much ignores everything Kenshiro throws at him, outright breaks Kenshiro's best move, and it ends with him crucifying Kenshiro and at one point complaining about him being weak as Kenshiro's blood is spraying all over the villain.

    Sure, he lost and only had a hard time very few times during a long series, but when he has a tough time or he loses, he loses badly which only serves to make his rematches where he wins that much cooler, and it's seen that for all his strength, there are ways he can be hurt or even die...until the end that is, when everyone else that could be a threat to him is pretty much dead...even the sequel stories are more about having some awesome looking shenanigans as Kenshiro demolishes everything in his path...though the villains are a lot less fun, quirky or interesting sadly, as well as the fights feeling a bit phoned in and you leave with something that isn't as cool and as memorable as the original series.
     
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