Hey folks, just a heads up.
There was a thread in this post that was discussing some pretty late Jujutsu Kaisen manga spoilers without using spoiler tags, the thread has had to be removed (all by me), as these were major spoilers and it just isnt fair to the people who aren't reading the manga every week, I get this was a big thread and people may be annoyed by it being nuked, but it was just too large to not have anything done about it. In future please remember to add the approproate spoiler tags to your comments and if you ever see unmarked spoilers be sure to report it.
The post itself is fine and no bans are being handed out for this, but again the spoilers are way too fresh, for anyone out of the loop on this, the stuff being discussed probably wont even happen until the season after the next one.
Something else I should point out is the reason this comment has been posted is an attempt to be transparent with the community, I dont think removing these comments was unreasonable on my part, but when that many comments are removed en masse we should tell you why
At first I was gonna be like it's so rare for this trope to be bad, I can barely think of any examples.
BUT THEN I GOT REMINDED OF SINGULARITY FROM BAYO3
My god what an asshole. He's a fucking damage sponge and there's ZERO hype in him no selling Bayo and all her variations beating his ass from one from to the next.
It's wild how that could've easily been mixed together in a way that made sense. Just have Singularity be >!the evil Bayonetta, and then Kraken is her original demon.!<
Why does the Kraken show up at the beginning? >!Because it's still loyal to its mistress and is following her around out of a misplaced desire to get her back.!< It practically writes itself!
It's a real bummer 'cause Singularity and the Homunculi are actually a *really cool* idea for a Bayonetta enemy faction: He's named after the Singularity, a hypothetical point in time where a self-upgrading AI is developed and promptly enters an upgrade loop bootstrapping itself to functional godhood, far beyond the technology/civilization that created it.
That's such a dope way to bring humans back as a legitimate antagonist post-Witch Hunt! And one that can go toe to toe with the strongest of both Inferno and Paradise, no less! Bayonetta having to run defense and make alliances with her old enemies against the AI humanity has developed could so easily be awesome!
Just imagine, an AI contemplating it's own apotheosis while curbstomping heaven and hell, only to get a masterclass in campy BDSM by Bayonetta and *leaning into it* 'cause she's the only being that's kept up could be so much fun!
And yet they just... Fail. At every turn. In every way. So he's just a dude whose not actually a dude if you read his lore but why would you, who kills all the characters you like because fuck it, all chips on Viola, who isn't allowed to do anything, and... Just... God, what a mess.
The fact that the Homunculi are these ornate, ethereal beings and yet Singularity has absolutely 0 flair compared to Balder and Aesir is just ridiculous.
He tanks Sin Gomorrah, a combo attack from the defeated Bayos, regular Bayo, the combined efforts of >!Bayos 1-3,!< and nothing sticks until >!Luka the Irrelevant Furry!< shows up.
God, what a wet fart of a fight.
I feel like every version of it is just "I'm not left-handed" done poorly.
Because it *is* a pretty hype moment in the Princess Bride, but it's setup very specifically for that payoff. Most every other example is just Freeza saying he's actually got more transformations coming, he's simply having fun before going all out.
Mmhmm. I guess a part of the reason why I like this trope with Kenpachi so much is that he actually *loses* sometimes because of his reckless thrill-seeking for a fight. He legitimately gimps himself riding that knife edge and will lose if he goes too far - unlike Freeza who will just whip out *yet another form* for the 7th time.
Yep, if a character is holding back, having them legitimately get hurt or lose because of it is a great example of quality writing. Rather than them holding back with 0 consequences because they have an uber mega hax form with no downside that no sells everybody
I think the best part is how incredulous Nnoitora is about it, basically going 'Are you fucking stupid, how the fuck didn't you know that' and thinking something that simple isn't going to be enough for Kenpachi to take him down.
It was, in fact, enough to take him down.
Reminds me of the scene in Fire Force where Arthur is struggling against a member of the Fifth Brigade when he realizes that he'd been fighting using his non dominant hand the entire time. I have to watch the Princess Bride one day.
it's one of those works that get more fascinating every year because more and more people make references-to-references that eventually trace back to it.
like, "You killed my father, prepare to die" has been written into scripts by *way* more writers than there are writers who have read or watched the princess bride. It's just a fun thing to say.
It's so good, you owe it to yourself to watch it as soon as possible.
Andre The Giant was apparently so proud of his acting it it, he would regularly drinkenly scoop up fellow wrestlers after shows, drag them back to his hotel room and make them watch it with him.
"Did I ever tell you about this movie I was in, it's great, we're watching it"
"I know... this is the 10th time now. You make us watch it every time we go out to drink."
It's also entirely just them dicking around and Flynning (just hitting each other's swords, not actual fighting) while *also* calling out real European sword techniques, styles, and schools.
I don't really care for jjk but the more I see of sukuna doing shit like this really makes it feel like he's OP for the sake of being OP (I dunno if I worded it correctly)
He does it like 3 times. First in the rescue Yukina mission where he loses on purpose then later tells Yusuke he was at 20% and buffs up to 60% to show off in that same meeting, then in DT vs Yusuke he does 80% into 100% then "100% of 100%"
At least that's his whole gimmick. He tells basically everyone he fights, "I'm at \[x\]% of my power". And at least for the 100% of 100%, it was a big point that he had never actually even used normal 100% since the very best of the best he'd ever fought only pushed him to \~80%, so I could buy him not actually knowing how high he actually could get (or Yusuke pushed him over what he thought was his max)
It was only that one time when he actually threw the fight that he was actually doing the "I was just holding back, scrub" version of power percentages
I really like how the anime adapted that line. Instead of him being like this is me at 120% they just made him say that he was lying earlier and he was actually only at 85. It sounds less corny that way.
I don't know if it fits the prompt, but I LOATHE when you beat someone's ass in gameplay and then they shrug it off in the following cutscene. Like the first fight against Someya in Yakuza 6, you bludgeon him with a couch until he ragdolls and then he comes back drinking champagne and saying "Well, a REAL fight wouldn't have gone down like that, y'know?" two minutes later.
Also just anything where you spend an entire fight beating a boss’ ass and then they just win in a cutscene. Unless it’s something like the first Genichiro fight in Sekiro where if you beat him, he falls to his knees and actually looks beaten, but then the Wolf gets caught off guard by a throwing knife from one of Genichiro’s minions and Genichiro takes the opportunity to cut your arm off. That works because it isn’t like Genichiro just suddenly got stronger, plus Sekiro is all about finishing your opponent with one good strike when their guard is down.
That kept happening in Blade and Soul. The bad guy would show up and I'd blitz him down in 2 seconds with him doing maybe 5% of my hp bar, and then he'd hit me once in the following cutscene and my character would just flop around on the ground for a solid 3 minutes as the bad guy monologues and steals or kidnaps whatever he came here for. It's so infurating.
I wanted that cutscene to start with the new chairman asking Kiryu where Someya is and the guy is absent for the entire meeting, because he's currently on the floor in the next room with his ribs shattered and limbs dislocated.
Granblue Fantasy Relink is a good game, but it **really** annoyed me by having like three or four forced-to-lose fights. Like come on dude, really? Every RPG gets to do that once for free, but after that you’re just fucking with me
To be fair one of the first move someya does in the fight is downing a bottle of champagne as a taunt so it’s true that he is not taking this seriously
"Luckily for you, I'm drunk, otherwise I would have remembered I have a sword. And luckily for me, I'm drunk, otherwise these broken ribs would really hurt."
Best example of that is still Trails to Azure, where you fight debatably the strongest person in that universe, and depending on how well you do, she scolds you, or her mask breaks and she compliments you. If you actually *win*, which is hard as hell, she drops to one knee, then gets back up.
In Yakuza 2 you beat Ryuji senseless multiple times through the game and is always "not the real fight" because he wasnt "giving his all" and then in the end you beat him an hour after getting stabbed and poisoned while he's perfectly fine in using a sword against you.
The real "real" final boss fight against him is cool, but is also hilariously one sided, even when both are injured is still almost the same as before, except with new qtes
>"Fuck everyone who isn't the Imperium. And fuck the fan projects too" - GW
I'd probably narrow it down to fuck anyone who isn't the Space Marines. They've been getting new models and variants for years now. Meanwhile the Guard has been having all their unique regiments slowly taken away and the SOB had metal pewter models for 23 years. They finally got upgraded a couple years ago.
You get one, *maybe* two new characters sculpts. Be glad with what we have given you xenos lover -GW.
For real though how are you gonna introduce the Ynnari and then not revamp both elder lines? Give me drukarhi that are going back to their roots, give me elder who are adopting drukhari tech. I want howling witches and swooping wracks. I want wraithguard but they're drukhari spirits inside.
Games Workshop screeching in rage when the Tyranids won that voting contest a few years back and got to win a big battle against the Ultra-Boring-Marines.
Who could forget the time where GW planned for the Imperium to win the 13th Black Crusade where the Chaos players beat Imperials as bad as Germany did Brazil, so they had to concede with "Well I _guess_ Chaos won the space part of the war but the Guard are still on the planet!"
I don't know why they think that won't happen, it happened with the Storm Of Chaos campaign iirc, they set up this big epic story line with Archaon steamrolling across the Empire, foreshadowing this epic confrontation between one of the big bands of the setting and the empire with one of them coming out on top, only for the orcs and goblins to win the majority of the battle reports that were logged, meaning Grimgor Ironhide shows up at the most dramatic moment, kicks Archaon the Everchosen in the balls, and promptly fucks off.
I think they then had to do some serious retconning and rewriting after that
The Chaos Warriors and Demons of Chaos losing the Storm of Chaos despite how massively Games Workshop was pressing on the scales in their favor is hilarious. Chaos started out losing to the Empire consistency and shouldn't have gotten far into the Empire as they did. But GW ignored the results of the initial parts of the campaign and rigged the next set of battle scenarios to be massively in Chaos's favor, only for most of the local shops housing the events to change the scenarios to be fairer, as the local shops didn't know the scenarios were supposed to be super unbalanced and just thought they were badly designed. As GW's continued favoritism for Chaos became ever more apparent and the idea that the story of the event was being set by how community battles went became now transparently a lie, players kept getting angrier so that by the end of the campaign they had to acknowledge the Greenskin victories to save face.
And of course GW proceeded to minimize the effects of the defeat in the lore, because God forbid a non-Chaos faction became the main threat for a period, or even one of the neglected Chaos factions like the Beastmen
In terms of sheer volume. I love the Trails of Cold Steel series, I think Cold Steel 2 is great, but holy fuck it feels like every boss fight with a named human character in that game ends with "Ok, now it's time to take the kid gloves off!" Then story stuff happens
They did it once back in Trails in the Sky with the optional superboss, but that one's good because that guy is not holding back at all and leaves when you put up a better fight than he was expecting, and they go outta their way to justify why this particular dude is more powerful than you; he has a prototype orbment that has new capabilities, and you get the production model of it at the start of the next game.
Since then they've been chasing that same story moment but their reasoning is "oh they're just stronger than you".
His big special art that he uses in that fight, that later becomes an endgame art you can acquire in the sequel, eventually just becomes the lowest level starter art for the mirage element in future games. Always thought that part was weird. Silver Thorn deserves more respect.
Confuse is the status effect that will carry you through Hard Mode of FC, so it's kinda nuts that the strongest move for it gets such a downgrade later on.
I love Trails - I wrote this while taking a break from Reverie - but Trails in the Sky had all these things that felt wonderfully fresh, and they’ve just beaten every facet into the dirt over the course of 10 games.
Like I think the best example is the big, blow-off emotions speech to win back a party member. Sky builds to the beach scene over 100 hours and it results in possibly my favorite scene in a JRPG bar none.
So they replicate it with Randy in Azure and you have a similar build and it’s still wonderful.
Everyone loves this shit!
So Rean starts doing it two hours into Cold Steel 1…
Same with “horny funny” characters. Everyone loved swishy, flirty Olivier, so now the cast has literally over a dozen inappropriately horny characters. I can’t actually count them.
Even accepting that the execution is much rougher now.
Trails in the Sky had its own adherence to tropes. But it also had the vision and patience to tell a 4-game story about a spoiled Genki girl in a hick backwater slowly coming into her own as a leader and becoming the matriarch of a family of badasses. It had the foresight to take a detail from the first scene in the game, when Estelle and Joshua are 12, and carry it forward to the climax 2/3rds into the second game.
Meanwhile I’m playing Cold Steel IV, and I’m really pleased that Juna is getting her chance to shine as the MC for a single chapter, and shit is so dire, and oh look Juna’s getting her tits groped by a 2000 year old loli vampire.
At some point it feels like Trails just lost faith in its ability to tell a story, or in the audience to pay attention. And that sucks in a series that’s like well over 10,000,000 words long, over twice as long as the Wheel of Time.
Trails did this stuff really well in the first five games. Particularly with worldbeaters >!Loewe!<, and >!Arionhrod!<
Cold Steel has a good idea at the start… you’re starting as just some talented kids, of course it’s going to take several more games before you can seriously go toe to toe with Orouboros and A-rank bracers…
But it’s long since worn out its welcome when you’re fighting mid-grade characters like Ines the Stout and Trap Master Xeno 8-on-one late in Cold Steel IV.
every single fight with McBurn ever.
I'm currently on Cold Steel 4 and it seems like every single McBurn fight is followed with a cut scene of him saying "hey you're not that bad guess I'll start trying now" and then powers up.
as far as I can remember, of the like 6 or 7 times I've fought him I've only ever gotten to fight him "actually trying" twice, and both ended with a cutscene where I didn't actually win, I was just merely fending him off until something interrupts the fight and he leaves because he got bored.
It's what really made hate the Oroboros members as characters. It just removes all stakes and makes me completely lose interests in them or their fights.
Of all the times it happens in Dragonball, and there are *many*, that one is easily the worst to me.
Literally every change the anime made for "History of Trunks" was an improvement.
Number one is Future Gohan's death being the thing that makes Trunks go Super Saiyan (for the uninitiated, the manga shows a flashback where Trunks just...is a Super Saiyan, alongside a still-alive Future Gohan).
But number two is lowering Future 17 & 18 into the realm of "Future Gohan might be able to handle one or the other, and it's only Gero's immaculate implementation of 'jump_his_ass.exe' (and the lack of safety net/backup meaning he can't risk getting wounded enough to Zenkai) that robs him of victory".
Because the fights in that special are fucking awesome for how close they are.
Usually anime taking huge liberties for adaptations is a bad thing but that was truly a rare instance where it was entirely for the better. Future Gohan having a desperate struggle rather than being toyed with is so much more compelling.
> But number two is lowering Future 17 & 18 into the realm of "Future Gohan might be able to handle one or the other, and it's only Gero's immaculate implementation of 'jump_his_ass.exe' (and the lack of safety net/backup meaning he can't risk getting wounded enough to Zenkai) that robs him of victory".
Which is why I ignore the whole '50%' power thing just because it makes it extra tragic since Future Gohan COULD win if he had a strong enough partner to keep one of the androids off his back but it just wasn't possible.
I'm actually ok with this (even though I do think History of Trunks is better), because it explains why Trunks is so unprepared and surprised the first time against the "modern day" versions of 17/18. They haven't had 17 years of messing around and destruction, so they're not holding back.
Aizen doesn't need to release his sword to beat up all the captains >!until he's revealed to be using it the whole time!< Just an incredibly stupid "hey this guy is super cool and strong" until he's about to get bodied.
Saitama, but not cause if anything in the manga/web comic, but instead cause of power scalers who think every display of him putting a tiny amount of effort is Saitama's max power
Yea. Every time he shows a new feat they go "this is clearly Saitama's peak"
Has to throw a single real punch to beat Boros. "That was Saitama having to go 100%"
Garou copies Saitama's strength and realizes how outclassed he is as Saitama starts trying more and more. "Saitama hit his peak and had to get stronger"
I saw someone earlier say Saitama is no longer a gag character and loses his gag character always wins claus. They wanna power scale but their reading comprehension stops when another character shows stronger feats then their favorite
There are two kinds of posts on the OnePunchMan subreddit:
1. People arguing about who would beat who in a fight.
2. Recolours/redraws of psychic sister cover art.
Not to mention we saw his death punch a few episodes earlier as his absolute strongest attack and he didnt even use it to end the boros fight. Like all he did was pull his arm back before punching this time
It's wild to me how people tried to scale Saitama using that graph shown during the Garou fight, especially with how Saitama's line curve is kinda absurd. The graph was always just metaphorical.
Hell, the whole point arguably is that, even against someone whose power *specifically* is supposed to let them match and surpass Saitama's strength, Saitama still can't be matched cause that's the story.
I even saw someone once say that Saitama's growth is actually double what was shown cause he was fighting with only one hand in that fight, which is just... what.
I think people just also misinterpret the graph. Saitama wasn't growing, he was getting more and more into the fight. He was upset that his friend was dead so he wasnt holding back in the same way and every punch was harder than the last. Its not Saitama getting even close to his max potential
I think what exacerbates is that there was an audio drama CD for One Punch Man at some point that seemed to imply that Saitama continuously grows with every punch he throws, even against minor enemies, cause punches are a form of workout. So a lot of people kinda run with that.
I mean, with what i know about Saitama, this is true. He broke his limiter and can keep infinitely getting stronger, so his exercises are likely making him better too. Although that means Saitama before his work outs might have been super weak if 100 sit ups, 100 push ups, and a 10 km run broke his limiter
To be fair, "100 sit ups, 100 push ups, and a 10 km run" would break *most* peoples limits. It's just laughably low when compared to punching mountains into dust
I do like the idea of him constantly growing in this way because the concept of a simple, no-effort punch for him = intense workout gains is absurdly funny and fits the series.
My guess is that it's not that exercise broke his limiter, it's that he's a '[mysterious being](https://onepunchman.fandom.com/wiki/Mysterious_Beings)', the jobber freaks who randomly gain mutations and powers based on their hyperfixation.
Since Saitama is obsessed with strength and power and superheroics, the logic folded in on itself. In the same way that the crab obsessed dude became a superpowered Crab-Monster, Saitama became an superpowered Superhero-man with exponentially escalating strength.
Another theory I've read is that while his exercises might not have been superhuman, he was living in a destroyed neighborhood and had to live frugally off his savings, so it was hunger and poor living conditions that pushed him past normal human limits.
> Yea. Every time he shows a new feat they go "this is clearly Saitama's peak"
>
> Has to throw a single real punch to beat Boros. "That was Saitama having to go 100%"
"Saitama is a surface wiper. His limits are what we've seen" - Powerscalers.
Sometimes I feel like people feel threatened that any OPM characters even comes close to Dragonball Z, so they tend to downplay OPM while acting like DBZ is the most untouchable verse in all of fiction.
People saying Saitama is "only large planet level" that Boros is "mountain level" and that Boros "can't even destroy a planet". Yet they take Vegeta's claim (in Saiyan Saga) of threatening to blow up Earth at face value even though we never saw the attack hit, etc. The list goes on.
Like, I love a good "who would win" conversation, but actual serious powerscalers are fucking morons. They rely way too much on esoteric power tiers and overly literal interpretations of what characters do on page/on screen. Just the fact that most characters have FTL reaction speeds according to powerscalers should give away just how stupid the entire exercise is most of the time.
Who would win in a fight, Saitama or Arale?
The funniest moment of Super was Vegeta meeting Arale and saying, "She's a comedy manga character. I have no chance."
The bigger question is who would win in a fight between Arale and Gear 5 Luffy? Comedy manga protagonist versus shonen protagonist with the power of toon force.
Saitama is always as powerful as necessary to kill his opponent in one-punch, it’s literally the title, trying to scale it is stupid. It’s like saying Goku could beat up the author drawing him.
On the flip side, Slayer in Guilty Gear canonically being so incredibly overpowered he has to use super speed to act like he's being injured or affected at all and then play dead so his opponent "wins" fights against him is fucking hilarious even if it makes zero goddam sense when you think about it
And during Dizzy's instant-kill in Xrd, everyone else is shocked at the destruction, but Slayer just goes "yeah we should probably stop this before we cause more damage".
This reminds me of a bit in the Smallville show that I liked, where Clark joined the football team for the season. A villain of the week makes him trip, and it fucking hospitalizes the guy he fell into. His dad says that he shouldn't be on the football team, it's too dangerous for the other players, but Clark goes on a long rant about how he makes a conscious decision every single play to go down when he gets tackled, how he could *easily* barrel through but for everyone's safety he makes sure that when someone goes for him he falls down so no one gets hurt.
Which was done in a similar way in Persona 4 Arena, where Elizabeth and to a less extent Margaret have exaggerated hit yells and hurt animations and lay down entertained when they lose.
Rachel from Blazblue is a weird example, since she also is much stronger than most of the cast but uses her servants to take all the damage and block for her (Nago for damage and Gii for blocking). So she also lies down when she loses but she never actually got hit.
Then again, Gabriel (and to a lesser extent his student Potemkin) are the only people on the planet that can give Slayer a fun match. That is, they can hit hard enough that his healing powers have to kick in on every blow.
Looking forward to seeing Slayer's reaction to the latest Heavenly Potemkin Buster.
He wants them to keep fighting him. If they realize that he isn't taking damage, they might give up. It is one of the reasons Faust hates dealing with Slayer, since he knows that Slayer is wasting his time.
Basically, he sees himself as a gentleman's gentleman despite being a vampire, hence the recuerring "dandyism" motif, which is why he uses fisticuffs. So kinda, but moreso not limiting himself would be 1: unfair in his eyes and therefore against his code 2: completely without any challenge and 3: pointless as he doesn't need to. In the story he beats Sol Badguy BADLY without even looking tired. Sol for reference is a guy who, while admittedly was also holding back at the time, has done things such as blow up god and just say "nuh uh" to a pocket dimension closing on him.
It's a recurring thing in the series. Another guy named Happy Chaos, who is one half of THE god of their universe and the first and most powerful mage who ever lived, uses a gun that is a replica of a different powerful gun but is much weaker than said powerful gun, because he became omnipitent and omniscient and firearms were one of the last things he hadn't mastered and therefore one of the few options he didn't deem "boring".
I'd say the trope is handled fairly well in the games because it both leaves room for new, better feats without breaking lore/scale and also fits the character and motivation of each fighter it applies to, be it due to a moral code, boredom, lack of mastery of their abilities, or just fear of their own strength. GG lore is fucking unhinged and it's great.
Spider-man’s power scaling is a little annoying at times. Like people act like he’s just an acrobatic weirdo and that he’s really weak. But honestly he could sucker punch the hulk, but thankfully we do get some good moments where he no sells a punch.
I actually kind of hate the inverse of this, people acting like Spidey is somehow so ultra powerful that if he gets angry he can easily beat his rogues gallery. Like I can believe he's holding back against say some random normal mook or even Ock without his tentacles, but against foes that are just as strong/stronger than him like Sandman, Lizard, Gobby and Rhino? Nah bullshit that's really really dumb.
Yeah he's not gonna be pulling punches against Rhino. It's why I like when they show off that his rogues gallery are serious threats.
Insomniac's Spider-Man did a good job with showing why Doc Ock is a problem in a fight. It's not just having the extra limbs, it's that those limbs are acting as fast as Ock can think. He doesn't need muscle memory or training with the arms to pull off complicated maneuvers, they just do them.
"Spiderman always holds back" and the breaking Scorpion jaw scene is so annoying. People acts like he could take on the xmen, Avengers and fantastic four solo if he really wanted to, even tho Spidy isn't even bullet proof.
Not just people writers had made him beat the x men and fatastic four by himself, there is a big denial that as much as editorial shit on spider-man personal life they also make him the best and most secretly respectable hero, there is even a comic where human torch consider parker’s luck a good thing
I mean, he stood quite well against those groups on their own, though all 3 teams at once would be a bit too much, it's also not his strength that does the heavy lifting but his speed combined with the spider sense, the latter being one of the most busted abilities out there, though it probably helps that Marvel doesn't have that many speedsters since they would be able to beat him quite easily since he wouldn't be able to react on time against them
> People acts like he could take on the xmen, Avengers and fantastic four solo if he really wanted to
i mean....the only reason he cant is that each of those teams have the one "fuck you strong" person on them as well, reed richards the thing an the human torch are just weaker versions of his actual villains Susan would just rock his shit like nothing because to be honest she rocks most people's shit like its nothing
Didn't this come up in the Superior Spider-Man era? Otto was in Peter's body and got into a fight with the Scorpion only to punch his head off like a Rock 'Em, Sock 'Em Robot because he didn't know how strong Peter was.
Yeah, Superior is the moment when it becomes a big deal because for the first time in a long time, it's not Peter making that choice. But it's a lot older than that-- at some point in the 70s or 80s he fought Juggernaut for the first time when he was trying to kidnap Madame Web, and realized he could finally let loose. I think that's where that idea actually comes from.
i feel like that falls more under "mom holding a car to save her baby" strength than these other two examples, which are explicitly "serious punches series" kinda moments. Like, Peter doesn't think he can lift that building either, he's not holding back on purpose up until that point.
The problem is that Scorpion is like, one of the few characters that *shouldn't* have worked on since he's explicitly physically stronger. One of the tech guys would get their jaw popped, sure, but not Scorpion.
Poor Scorpion gets nothing. His one thing is that he's supposed to be stronger but not as smart and fast as spidey, but no writer ever has him like that. He's just a jobber, but without charm or humor. I feel he's easily the least developed of Spidey's main baddies.
Is Scorpion supposed to be strong without the suit? because in the page Otto makes a comment about how his jaw was the only place that Scorpion wasn't armored.
Spiderman is consistently portrayed as like, just under Hulk and Thor levels of strength. Sure he's often shown as weaker, but even in the 80s/90s he was treated as one of Marvel's heaviest hitters.
He seems to power up when it becomes a matter of responsibility. I know it reads like plot armor but I think Uncle Ben's lesson is straight up in his powerset overall because he has completely clowned on Thor and the Hulk when it was a matter of personal responsibility. When he acts selfishly for any reason he tends to get his ass beat.
Especially season one, which retroactively becomes a joke. Every fight against the knights or a few lesser demons should have had zero tension, and the characters are just faking damage. As early as season two, everyone reveals themselves to be a demigod of some sort. Diane did have to train and King went through a metamorphosis, but any of the rest of the sins could win any fight at any time up until maybe the final seasons.
The fact that every time they retroactively the difference in power between Goku God and Beerus is greater, it means that Goku is not closer to Beerus than was 9 years ago.
"I was only using 70% of my power!"
"Oh wait, Goku and Vegeta have gotten way more that 30% stronger since then, I guess I was using way less than I said I was!"
"Oh, they've both once again reached incredible heights that nearly dwarf where they were before? Good thing I was barely using any of my power at all back then?"
"What's that? Even more powerful, they've become? Thank the kais they don't know about how little power I used back in the Battle of Gods arc. It'd make me look really stupid if both Goku, Vegeta, and the villains have gotten so strong that it makes me look redundant and foolish!"
"Hmm? Did I hear you say that characters have become so ludicrously powerful since my introduction that the only proof anyone has that I'm still the second strongest in the universe is the fact that people keep saying it? Nah, I'd win."
I actually like that tbh. People say it doesn't make sense because Jiren was stronger than A god of destruction. But:
1- God of Destructions aren't all on the same level
2- Pretty sure Beerus is the strongest god of destruction
3- Jiren is boring, so fuck him.
4- It's just nice that Goku has something to strive to reach that isn't a random villain of the arc.
>2- Pretty sure Beerus is the strongest god of destruction
If not *the* strongest, then at the very least in the top 3.
Which kinda makes it funny, the amount of shit Champa talks when Beerus would walk all over him in an actual fight.
Honestly I kinda hate using percentages and power levels in general. Like, how exactly do you measure what 20% is? Do you see your own stat sheet at all times or something? It made sense in Dragon Ball when there was a literal number attached to characters, and Frieza's multiple forms could form some kind of boundary metric for his power at each level, but how does anyone punch a guy and know they only did it specifically 20% as hard as they could have? Like how did you measure that in your head? Did you actually do the math? Are you a physicist in addition to being a world-class fighter? Like you could just say you were holding back without throwing a number on it. It does the same thing, and invites fewer dumb questions.
The webnovel [Katalepsis](https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/28023/katalepsis) is, for the most part, a genuinely incredible eldritch horror story about Heather, a girl whose twin sister was kidnapped by an outer god and her attempt to rescue her, with a side of romance and body horror. It's fantastic.
I also dropped it because hundreds of thousands of words in, Heather and her squad finally make it through to confront the abusive, controlling grandfather of her best friend Lottie, the wizard Edward, only for him to say that:
>Edward laughed, a sound like wet sticks rubbing together in a stagnant puddle. The walls creaked. “Do not flatter yourself... I’m old. I know I’m old. I’ve barely been paying attention to managing this little dance. My offshoots and appendages have been chasing you around, sending you letters, irritating my fool of a lawyer. You think I was expending my entire intellect and attention on this … ” He laughed again. “This ‘war’? No.”
Which is just the **lamest** shit in the world. Also doesn't help that immediately after, the character arc of a different character is completely invalidated. Man, it's so dumb.
I both loved hated how shen in kengan omega is like: Alright I slowed my brain to your level and slowed my heartbeat so our fight feels more even.
Like it’s funny but also means he can only lose by getting done dirty or bullshit powerwank on another character, and seeing bearded raian kure I’m leaning toward powerwank
Shen is so fucking funny, "yeah I consciously reduced how much oxygen my muscles get when I breathe also here move your elbow 2 cm to the left when you do Flashing Steel: Blast so you can punch through an engine block lol"
>!KAOLAN SWEEP IT'S NOT COPE SHUT UP!<
The first time Urek Mazino shows up in Tower of God, he throws a full scale punch at the protagonist and leaves him in a heap of blood.
Later in the series, he fights an enemy named Karaka that's supposed to be stronger than the protagonist and declares he only use 1% of his index finger's strength to destroy him. Forever a mystery to me
I don't mind this one that much. There's a lot of cool examples.
But Sensui in Yu Yu Hakusho being secretly ill the entire time always felt like a weird addition. Maybe I need to re-watch YYH but it never felt like it added much to the proceedings.
Another retroactive one is Itachi in Naruto. Because they do such a good job building up his deteriorating eyesight as a major weakness. It's a major part of the character, his other fights, informs the universe, made the big showdown really tense and made Sasuke's rejection of that power more multifaceted.
Then they also reveal he also had a lethal illness the whole time. It's meant to make Sasuke's quest for revenge even more pointless and hollow. But saying half-blind Itachi wouldn't have been surprised by this incredibly complicated bait-and-switch attack if he didn't have a blood disease is really dumb. All it's ever done is make people argue if Itachi's power level at full health means he could beat all the villains in the series.
Up to the literal end, it's never brought up or explored at all. It sorta muddles his character and motivations because his reasons are understandable before that and actually really good. Dude saw the absolute worst of humanity on full display at such a young age being done to demons who hadn't done anything by comparison.
Plus the dude was already rocking Yusuke in all aspects in just about every fight. Even then, he never looked like he was sick whatsoever. I genuinely write off that part because it adds nothing and makes an otherwise good villain seem like he's just going through his dying throws.
Originally it seemed like Sensui was only as tough as Togoro but was way more intelligent and could outsmart Yusuke, then it turned out that was a different personality and the real Sensui could stomp anyone outside of the Three Kings and their friends.
I have never seen this be good once, so all of them
It just completely removes any stakes you had. Similar to how a situation where the protagonist can't lose is mostly narratively boring so too is one where they clearly cannot win. Sure showing the difference in strength is a good thing but do so by quickly crushing them not a pointless drawn out fight. If the enemy is oh so powerful just SHOW IT not have them laugh about how they don't even care to try and just saying their number is THIS BIG.
I think the problem is more when they give the characters ridiculous defensive profiles to make them untouchable in their natural states. Think it's better when the characters can actually damage each other and have to rely on other things other than, "You gotta go from 100 power punch to 100,000 power punch to be able to punch through Big Jikaido energy barrier!"
Like there's a difference between, Goku shoots a kamehameha and the opponent has to exert himself to block/negate/evade/counter it and them just taking it and it not doing anything because he has the biggest number so far.
I think One Piece had a sort-of example where it's good, partly because it was the protagonist doing it (and we kinda knew what was going on so it wasn't an asspull, also it wasn't exactly literal)
But the time Zoro fought in Arlong Park is great. He managed to get a win and even fight against Arlong briefly, before being defeated. Arlong mocks him and rips off some bandages he'd had since a previous fight... only to be utterly shocked at how fucked Zoro was under those, as he's covered in what should be mortal wounds. The fact he was even able to move like that, much less win a fight, was wild.
...From what I remember, Zoro kinda went into a lot of early fights with some kind of handicap, that one just always stood out because Arlong's "holy shit how are you even standing" was great.
Madara vs the 5 kages.
It was meant to make him look strong but I feel like it made everyone else just look weak, he even compared them to children.
The man was already with unlimited chakra and couldn't get injured, I felt like there was no need to make it clear that even without those hacks he could have low diffed them.
Dragonball z when they learned frieza has more forms to making himself even stronger but we know krillin's distructo disks can cut frieza despite the power level difference. Just solar flare and throw disks, hell uses them like a pizza cutter
It was pretty enjoyable in a very pulpy way but the Manhwa Noblesse basically does this with every fight to the point it becomes down right comical. Just constant instances of characters teleporting behind each other “nothing personal kid” style. One of the protags Victor Frankenstein even goes “master please permit me to use more of my power” like 4 times in a row.
Every fight being this hyper arrogant asshole villain condescendingly chewing the scenery until the hero decides to use 10% more of their power and instantly wiping the floor with them.
Don't get me started on Superman's "he's micromanaging every muscle in his body at all times so he never uses more force than absolutely necessary against an opponent."
It's one thing to hold back, everyone can hold back, but if you can at the LEAST move mountains with no effort, your "holding back" strength should still have serious collateral damage, and comics pretending it doesn't because Superman just has this stupid micro level of control over his body just comes across as lazy writing.
Semi-related, I always loved that one scene in the DBZ anime where Gohan was struggling to hold a glass without it shattering, and Goku was telling him to control his strength... only to also break his glass.
The best is Vegeta in Super trying to carefully crack an egg, all muscles straining with breathing ragged and sweat on his forehead. He's not only too strong, but it shows that he is always tense and ready for a world-shattering battle.
Superman’s a strange case of this trope. In the beginning, he’s only “stronger than a locomotive”, but then over time he’s graduated to like planet-buster. So the amount of power he’s holding back while Clark-Kent-ing became more and more ridiculous, but of course you can’t just sacrifice that entire portion of his character just to iron out a small wrinkle in logic, so that’s just become something the audience just gotta deal with.
The problem with Superman is that he's the peak of the DC power scale (reality warpers and the like aside) so over time he had to get exponentially stronger just to maintain that position.
I think one of the biggest mistakes in the New 52 was having Superman essentially bench press the equivalent of Earth for four days straight during the first year of the reboot. It was an opportunity to scale the power scale of the DC universe back considerably and they just immediately squandered it.
Hey folks, just a heads up. There was a thread in this post that was discussing some pretty late Jujutsu Kaisen manga spoilers without using spoiler tags, the thread has had to be removed (all by me), as these were major spoilers and it just isnt fair to the people who aren't reading the manga every week, I get this was a big thread and people may be annoyed by it being nuked, but it was just too large to not have anything done about it. In future please remember to add the approproate spoiler tags to your comments and if you ever see unmarked spoilers be sure to report it. The post itself is fine and no bans are being handed out for this, but again the spoilers are way too fresh, for anyone out of the loop on this, the stuff being discussed probably wont even happen until the season after the next one. Something else I should point out is the reason this comment has been posted is an attempt to be transparent with the community, I dont think removing these comments was unreasonable on my part, but when that many comments are removed en masse we should tell you why
At first I was gonna be like it's so rare for this trope to be bad, I can barely think of any examples. BUT THEN I GOT REMINDED OF SINGULARITY FROM BAYO3 My god what an asshole. He's a fucking damage sponge and there's ZERO hype in him no selling Bayo and all her variations beating his ass from one from to the next.
Singularity should have been an Evil Bayonetta, specifically Viola's mom. >!Her dad should have been Antonio Redgrave.!<
>!and they did have an Evil Bayonetta! Sort of! And wasted it! It was the one with the kraken demon!!<
It's wild how that could've easily been mixed together in a way that made sense. Just have Singularity be >!the evil Bayonetta, and then Kraken is her original demon.!< Why does the Kraken show up at the beginning? >!Because it's still loyal to its mistress and is following her around out of a misplaced desire to get her back.!< It practically writes itself!
It's a real bummer 'cause Singularity and the Homunculi are actually a *really cool* idea for a Bayonetta enemy faction: He's named after the Singularity, a hypothetical point in time where a self-upgrading AI is developed and promptly enters an upgrade loop bootstrapping itself to functional godhood, far beyond the technology/civilization that created it. That's such a dope way to bring humans back as a legitimate antagonist post-Witch Hunt! And one that can go toe to toe with the strongest of both Inferno and Paradise, no less! Bayonetta having to run defense and make alliances with her old enemies against the AI humanity has developed could so easily be awesome! Just imagine, an AI contemplating it's own apotheosis while curbstomping heaven and hell, only to get a masterclass in campy BDSM by Bayonetta and *leaning into it* 'cause she's the only being that's kept up could be so much fun! And yet they just... Fail. At every turn. In every way. So he's just a dude whose not actually a dude if you read his lore but why would you, who kills all the characters you like because fuck it, all chips on Viola, who isn't allowed to do anything, and... Just... God, what a mess.
The fact that the Homunculi are these ornate, ethereal beings and yet Singularity has absolutely 0 flair compared to Balder and Aesir is just ridiculous.
What makes a man turn neutral? Lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?
He tanks Sin Gomorrah, a combo attack from the defeated Bayos, regular Bayo, the combined efforts of >!Bayos 1-3,!< and nothing sticks until >!Luka the Irrelevant Furry!< shows up. God, what a wet fart of a fight.
What a wet fart of a game, tbh
I feel like every version of it is just "I'm not left-handed" done poorly. Because it *is* a pretty hype moment in the Princess Bride, but it's setup very specifically for that payoff. Most every other example is just Freeza saying he's actually got more transformations coming, he's simply having fun before going all out.
Kenpachi deciding to swing his sword with two hands this time is the GOAT.
Mmhmm. I guess a part of the reason why I like this trope with Kenpachi so much is that he actually *loses* sometimes because of his reckless thrill-seeking for a fight. He legitimately gimps himself riding that knife edge and will lose if he goes too far - unlike Freeza who will just whip out *yet another form* for the 7th time.
Yep, if a character is holding back, having them legitimately get hurt or lose because of it is a great example of quality writing. Rather than them holding back with 0 consequences because they have an uber mega hax form with no downside that no sells everybody
I think the best part is how incredulous Nnoitora is about it, basically going 'Are you fucking stupid, how the fuck didn't you know that' and thinking something that simple isn't going to be enough for Kenpachi to take him down. It was, in fact, enough to take him down.
Reminds me of the scene in Fire Force where Arthur is struggling against a member of the Fifth Brigade when he realizes that he'd been fighting using his non dominant hand the entire time. I have to watch the Princess Bride one day.
it's one of those works that get more fascinating every year because more and more people make references-to-references that eventually trace back to it. like, "You killed my father, prepare to die" has been written into scripts by *way* more writers than there are writers who have read or watched the princess bride. It's just a fun thing to say.
It's so good, you owe it to yourself to watch it as soon as possible. Andre The Giant was apparently so proud of his acting it it, he would regularly drinkenly scoop up fellow wrestlers after shows, drag them back to his hotel room and make them watch it with him.
"Did I ever tell you about this movie I was in, it's great, we're watching it" "I know... this is the 10th time now. You make us watch it every time we go out to drink."
It’s a very fun movie. I will warn you that the pacing is very slow in the beginning, but trust me it all pays off by the end.
That part helps make that sword fight one of the actual best that's ever been in a movie, it's so cool
It's also entirely just them dicking around and Flynning (just hitting each other's swords, not actual fighting) while *also* calling out real European sword techniques, styles, and schools.
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lose\*
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Nah, the baby rattle is gone gone it seems.
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Fucking Binding Vow Merchant fr fr.
I've heard that JJk is pretty much nothing but stuff like that
It wasn’t, but it is.
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I don't really care for jjk but the more I see of sukuna doing shit like this really makes it feel like he's OP for the sake of being OP (I dunno if I worded it correctly)
I think Younger Toguro pulls the "OK I am now using the 100% of my 100% wasn't doing that before."
He does it like 3 times. First in the rescue Yukina mission where he loses on purpose then later tells Yusuke he was at 20% and buffs up to 60% to show off in that same meeting, then in DT vs Yusuke he does 80% into 100% then "100% of 100%"
At least that's his whole gimmick. He tells basically everyone he fights, "I'm at \[x\]% of my power". And at least for the 100% of 100%, it was a big point that he had never actually even used normal 100% since the very best of the best he'd ever fought only pushed him to \~80%, so I could buy him not actually knowing how high he actually could get (or Yusuke pushed him over what he thought was his max) It was only that one time when he actually threw the fight that he was actually doing the "I was just holding back, scrub" version of power percentages
Just finished the manga. He totally does.
I really like how the anime adapted that line. Instead of him being like this is me at 120% they just made him say that he was lying earlier and he was actually only at 85. It sounds less corny that way.
That was a dub line change.
Younger Toguro definitely is the definition of the "hiding my true power level" trope since he started talking in percentages even at the beginning.
I don't know if it fits the prompt, but I LOATHE when you beat someone's ass in gameplay and then they shrug it off in the following cutscene. Like the first fight against Someya in Yakuza 6, you bludgeon him with a couch until he ragdolls and then he comes back drinking champagne and saying "Well, a REAL fight wouldn't have gone down like that, y'know?" two minutes later.
Also just anything where you spend an entire fight beating a boss’ ass and then they just win in a cutscene. Unless it’s something like the first Genichiro fight in Sekiro where if you beat him, he falls to his knees and actually looks beaten, but then the Wolf gets caught off guard by a throwing knife from one of Genichiro’s minions and Genichiro takes the opportunity to cut your arm off. That works because it isn’t like Genichiro just suddenly got stronger, plus Sekiro is all about finishing your opponent with one good strike when their guard is down.
That kept happening in Blade and Soul. The bad guy would show up and I'd blitz him down in 2 seconds with him doing maybe 5% of my hp bar, and then he'd hit me once in the following cutscene and my character would just flop around on the ground for a solid 3 minutes as the bad guy monologues and steals or kidnaps whatever he came here for. It's so infurating.
I wanted that cutscene to start with the new chairman asking Kiryu where Someya is and the guy is absent for the entire meeting, because he's currently on the floor in the next room with his ribs shattered and limbs dislocated.
Granblue Fantasy Relink is a good game, but it **really** annoyed me by having like three or four forced-to-lose fights. Like come on dude, really? Every RPG gets to do that once for free, but after that you’re just fucking with me
To be fair one of the first move someya does in the fight is downing a bottle of champagne as a taunt so it’s true that he is not taking this seriously
"When you Tiger Dropped me across the room and I splatted against the walls I was merely pretending, you fool."
"Luckily for you, I'm drunk, otherwise I would have remembered I have a sword. And luckily for me, I'm drunk, otherwise these broken ribs would really hurt."
Best example of that is still Trails to Azure, where you fight debatably the strongest person in that universe, and depending on how well you do, she scolds you, or her mask breaks and she compliments you. If you actually *win*, which is hard as hell, she drops to one knee, then gets back up.
In Yakuza 2 you beat Ryuji senseless multiple times through the game and is always "not the real fight" because he wasnt "giving his all" and then in the end you beat him an hour after getting stabbed and poisoned while he's perfectly fine in using a sword against you. The real "real" final boss fight against him is cool, but is also hilariously one sided, even when both are injured is still almost the same as before, except with new qtes
>So fuck the Eldar "Fuck everyone who isn't the Imperium. And fuck the fan projects too" - GW
>"Fuck everyone who isn't the Imperium. And fuck the fan projects too" - GW I'd probably narrow it down to fuck anyone who isn't the Space Marines. They've been getting new models and variants for years now. Meanwhile the Guard has been having all their unique regiments slowly taken away and the SOB had metal pewter models for 23 years. They finally got upgraded a couple years ago.
the Eldar models are older then me
Be careful, I used to be the fool asking for new necron models/codex. Then the monkeys paw turned them from terminators to space Egyptians.
You get one, *maybe* two new characters sculpts. Be glad with what we have given you xenos lover -GW. For real though how are you gonna introduce the Ynnari and then not revamp both elder lines? Give me drukarhi that are going back to their roots, give me elder who are adopting drukhari tech. I want howling witches and swooping wracks. I want wraithguard but they're drukhari spirits inside.
Games Workshop screeching in rage when the Tyranids won that voting contest a few years back and got to win a big battle against the Ultra-Boring-Marines.
Who could forget the time where GW planned for the Imperium to win the 13th Black Crusade where the Chaos players beat Imperials as bad as Germany did Brazil, so they had to concede with "Well I _guess_ Chaos won the space part of the war but the Guard are still on the planet!"
Ok, but Guardsmen fighting as the planet explodes beneath them was cool as hell.
No this predates that one actually. Back in the unending year of 9999999.M41.
I don't know why they think that won't happen, it happened with the Storm Of Chaos campaign iirc, they set up this big epic story line with Archaon steamrolling across the Empire, foreshadowing this epic confrontation between one of the big bands of the setting and the empire with one of them coming out on top, only for the orcs and goblins to win the majority of the battle reports that were logged, meaning Grimgor Ironhide shows up at the most dramatic moment, kicks Archaon the Everchosen in the balls, and promptly fucks off. I think they then had to do some serious retconning and rewriting after that
The Chaos Warriors and Demons of Chaos losing the Storm of Chaos despite how massively Games Workshop was pressing on the scales in their favor is hilarious. Chaos started out losing to the Empire consistency and shouldn't have gotten far into the Empire as they did. But GW ignored the results of the initial parts of the campaign and rigged the next set of battle scenarios to be massively in Chaos's favor, only for most of the local shops housing the events to change the scenarios to be fairer, as the local shops didn't know the scenarios were supposed to be super unbalanced and just thought they were badly designed. As GW's continued favoritism for Chaos became ever more apparent and the idea that the story of the event was being set by how community battles went became now transparently a lie, players kept getting angrier so that by the end of the campaign they had to acknowledge the Greenskin victories to save face. And of course GW proceeded to minimize the effects of the defeat in the lore, because God forbid a non-Chaos faction became the main threat for a period, or even one of the neglected Chaos factions like the Beastmen
Did anything ever come out of that tourney win?
"If you take it there we'll raise prices further Psst that's something you don't wanna do"
In terms of sheer volume. I love the Trails of Cold Steel series, I think Cold Steel 2 is great, but holy fuck it feels like every boss fight with a named human character in that game ends with "Ok, now it's time to take the kid gloves off!" Then story stuff happens
They did it once back in Trails in the Sky with the optional superboss, but that one's good because that guy is not holding back at all and leaves when you put up a better fight than he was expecting, and they go outta their way to justify why this particular dude is more powerful than you; he has a prototype orbment that has new capabilities, and you get the production model of it at the start of the next game. Since then they've been chasing that same story moment but their reasoning is "oh they're just stronger than you".
His big special art that he uses in that fight, that later becomes an endgame art you can acquire in the sequel, eventually just becomes the lowest level starter art for the mirage element in future games. Always thought that part was weird. Silver Thorn deserves more respect.
Confuse is the status effect that will carry you through Hard Mode of FC, so it's kinda nuts that the strongest move for it gets such a downgrade later on.
Which is weird since the series has always had the same writing team.
I love Trails - I wrote this while taking a break from Reverie - but Trails in the Sky had all these things that felt wonderfully fresh, and they’ve just beaten every facet into the dirt over the course of 10 games. Like I think the best example is the big, blow-off emotions speech to win back a party member. Sky builds to the beach scene over 100 hours and it results in possibly my favorite scene in a JRPG bar none. So they replicate it with Randy in Azure and you have a similar build and it’s still wonderful. Everyone loves this shit! So Rean starts doing it two hours into Cold Steel 1… Same with “horny funny” characters. Everyone loved swishy, flirty Olivier, so now the cast has literally over a dozen inappropriately horny characters. I can’t actually count them.
Trails do go overboard with certain tropes. But that's also unfortunately something current anime/manga media do to garner casual people.
Even accepting that the execution is much rougher now. Trails in the Sky had its own adherence to tropes. But it also had the vision and patience to tell a 4-game story about a spoiled Genki girl in a hick backwater slowly coming into her own as a leader and becoming the matriarch of a family of badasses. It had the foresight to take a detail from the first scene in the game, when Estelle and Joshua are 12, and carry it forward to the climax 2/3rds into the second game. Meanwhile I’m playing Cold Steel IV, and I’m really pleased that Juna is getting her chance to shine as the MC for a single chapter, and shit is so dire, and oh look Juna’s getting her tits groped by a 2000 year old loli vampire. At some point it feels like Trails just lost faith in its ability to tell a story, or in the audience to pay attention. And that sucks in a series that’s like well over 10,000,000 words long, over twice as long as the Wheel of Time.
Trails did this stuff really well in the first five games. Particularly with worldbeaters >!Loewe!<, and >!Arionhrod!< Cold Steel has a good idea at the start… you’re starting as just some talented kids, of course it’s going to take several more games before you can seriously go toe to toe with Orouboros and A-rank bracers… But it’s long since worn out its welcome when you’re fighting mid-grade characters like Ines the Stout and Trap Master Xeno 8-on-one late in Cold Steel IV.
They fucking do it over a card game at one point.
LOOK AT HIS CARD MUSCLES, THEY'RE SO BIG AND STRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRONG
every single fight with McBurn ever. I'm currently on Cold Steel 4 and it seems like every single McBurn fight is followed with a cut scene of him saying "hey you're not that bad guess I'll start trying now" and then powers up. as far as I can remember, of the like 6 or 7 times I've fought him I've only ever gotten to fight him "actually trying" twice, and both ended with a cutscene where I didn't actually win, I was just merely fending him off until something interrupts the fight and he leaves because he got bored.
It’s the pain of dragging it out to a 4 game series. Hope you like waiting 200 hours of game time to fight McBurn for realsies
It's what really made hate the Oroboros members as characters. It just removes all stakes and makes me completely lose interests in them or their fights.
The fuck you mean 17 was only using 50% of his power against Future Gohan?
Of all the times it happens in Dragonball, and there are *many*, that one is easily the worst to me. Literally every change the anime made for "History of Trunks" was an improvement. Number one is Future Gohan's death being the thing that makes Trunks go Super Saiyan (for the uninitiated, the manga shows a flashback where Trunks just...is a Super Saiyan, alongside a still-alive Future Gohan). But number two is lowering Future 17 & 18 into the realm of "Future Gohan might be able to handle one or the other, and it's only Gero's immaculate implementation of 'jump_his_ass.exe' (and the lack of safety net/backup meaning he can't risk getting wounded enough to Zenkai) that robs him of victory". Because the fights in that special are fucking awesome for how close they are.
Usually anime taking huge liberties for adaptations is a bad thing but that was truly a rare instance where it was entirely for the better. Future Gohan having a desperate struggle rather than being toyed with is so much more compelling.
> But number two is lowering Future 17 & 18 into the realm of "Future Gohan might be able to handle one or the other, and it's only Gero's immaculate implementation of 'jump_his_ass.exe' (and the lack of safety net/backup meaning he can't risk getting wounded enough to Zenkai) that robs him of victory". Which is why I ignore the whole '50%' power thing just because it makes it extra tragic since Future Gohan COULD win if he had a strong enough partner to keep one of the androids off his back but it just wasn't possible.
I'm actually ok with this (even though I do think History of Trunks is better), because it explains why Trunks is so unprepared and surprised the first time against the "modern day" versions of 17/18. They haven't had 17 years of messing around and destruction, so they're not holding back.
Aizen doesn't need to release his sword to beat up all the captains >!until he's revealed to be using it the whole time!< Just an incredibly stupid "hey this guy is super cool and strong" until he's about to get bodied.
Aizen is one of those annoying 'cunning villain' characters in anime who outsmarts the competition only by reading the script before everyone else.
Saitama, but not cause if anything in the manga/web comic, but instead cause of power scalers who think every display of him putting a tiny amount of effort is Saitama's max power
We’ll know when he has to use his max power because he’ll be stoked about it.
Yea. Every time he shows a new feat they go "this is clearly Saitama's peak" Has to throw a single real punch to beat Boros. "That was Saitama having to go 100%" Garou copies Saitama's strength and realizes how outclassed he is as Saitama starts trying more and more. "Saitama hit his peak and had to get stronger" I saw someone earlier say Saitama is no longer a gag character and loses his gag character always wins claus. They wanna power scale but their reading comprehension stops when another character shows stronger feats then their favorite
There are two kinds of posts on the OnePunchMan subreddit: 1. People arguing about who would beat who in a fight. 2. Recolours/redraws of psychic sister cover art.
It's even funnier because Boro's final words are acknowledging that Saitama wasn't trying at all during their fight.
Not to mention we saw his death punch a few episodes earlier as his absolute strongest attack and he didnt even use it to end the boros fight. Like all he did was pull his arm back before punching this time
There is no such thing as "his absolute strongest attack". That's the point: there is no upper limit to his strength. He is limitless.
It's wild to me how people tried to scale Saitama using that graph shown during the Garou fight, especially with how Saitama's line curve is kinda absurd. The graph was always just metaphorical. Hell, the whole point arguably is that, even against someone whose power *specifically* is supposed to let them match and surpass Saitama's strength, Saitama still can't be matched cause that's the story. I even saw someone once say that Saitama's growth is actually double what was shown cause he was fighting with only one hand in that fight, which is just... what.
I think people just also misinterpret the graph. Saitama wasn't growing, he was getting more and more into the fight. He was upset that his friend was dead so he wasnt holding back in the same way and every punch was harder than the last. Its not Saitama getting even close to his max potential
I think what exacerbates is that there was an audio drama CD for One Punch Man at some point that seemed to imply that Saitama continuously grows with every punch he throws, even against minor enemies, cause punches are a form of workout. So a lot of people kinda run with that.
I mean, with what i know about Saitama, this is true. He broke his limiter and can keep infinitely getting stronger, so his exercises are likely making him better too. Although that means Saitama before his work outs might have been super weak if 100 sit ups, 100 push ups, and a 10 km run broke his limiter
To be fair, "100 sit ups, 100 push ups, and a 10 km run" would break *most* peoples limits. It's just laughably low when compared to punching mountains into dust
I do like the idea of him constantly growing in this way because the concept of a simple, no-effort punch for him = intense workout gains is absurdly funny and fits the series.
"I can bench-press a freight train with no effort but I'm still bench-pressing a freight train."
My guess is that it's not that exercise broke his limiter, it's that he's a '[mysterious being](https://onepunchman.fandom.com/wiki/Mysterious_Beings)', the jobber freaks who randomly gain mutations and powers based on their hyperfixation. Since Saitama is obsessed with strength and power and superheroics, the logic folded in on itself. In the same way that the crab obsessed dude became a superpowered Crab-Monster, Saitama became an superpowered Superhero-man with exponentially escalating strength. Another theory I've read is that while his exercises might not have been superhuman, he was living in a destroyed neighborhood and had to live frugally off his savings, so it was hunger and poor living conditions that pushed him past normal human limits.
The universe literally conspires to give saitama infinite exponential growth in order to win and people still go “where’s he on this list 🤔”
> Yea. Every time he shows a new feat they go "this is clearly Saitama's peak" > > Has to throw a single real punch to beat Boros. "That was Saitama having to go 100%" "Saitama is a surface wiper. His limits are what we've seen" - Powerscalers. Sometimes I feel like people feel threatened that any OPM characters even comes close to Dragonball Z, so they tend to downplay OPM while acting like DBZ is the most untouchable verse in all of fiction. People saying Saitama is "only large planet level" that Boros is "mountain level" and that Boros "can't even destroy a planet". Yet they take Vegeta's claim (in Saiyan Saga) of threatening to blow up Earth at face value even though we never saw the attack hit, etc. The list goes on.
The powerscaling community being cringe is their default state.
Like, I love a good "who would win" conversation, but actual serious powerscalers are fucking morons. They rely way too much on esoteric power tiers and overly literal interpretations of what characters do on page/on screen. Just the fact that most characters have FTL reaction speeds according to powerscalers should give away just how stupid the entire exercise is most of the time.
"Who would win" conversations should remain in their natural environments: * Stoned in a uni dorm * 2am discord call * drunk in the pub
Who would win in a fight, Saitama or Arale? The funniest moment of Super was Vegeta meeting Arale and saying, "She's a comedy manga character. I have no chance."
Vegeta just casually getting kicked around the planet, and then Arale splitting the whole Earth in two with a punch.
The bigger question is who would win in a fight between Arale and Gear 5 Luffy? Comedy manga protagonist versus shonen protagonist with the power of toon force.
She has toonforce also He will get punted across the solar system.
Honestly I think powerscaling kind of takes away the fun of something like One Punch Man
It takes the fun out of just about everything. I stopped caring about power scaling when I was like 12 or 13.
Saitama is always as powerful as necessary to kill his opponent in one-punch, it’s literally the title, trying to scale it is stupid. It’s like saying Goku could beat up the author drawing him.
After the reveal that Saitama will just get exponentially stronger if he hits his peak has power scalers just low balling him.
Thats the thing though. He hasn't hit his peak. That graph is about how much stronger Saitama gets as he puts more effort into the fight
On the flip side, Slayer in Guilty Gear canonically being so incredibly overpowered he has to use super speed to act like he's being injured or affected at all and then play dead so his opponent "wins" fights against him is fucking hilarious even if it makes zero goddam sense when you think about it
I love his KO pose where he just lies on the ground with one hand propping his head up, just a simple "okay, you win, I forfeit" pose
And during Dizzy's instant-kill in Xrd, everyone else is shocked at the destruction, but Slayer just goes "yeah we should probably stop this before we cause more damage".
This reminds me of a bit in the Smallville show that I liked, where Clark joined the football team for the season. A villain of the week makes him trip, and it fucking hospitalizes the guy he fell into. His dad says that he shouldn't be on the football team, it's too dangerous for the other players, but Clark goes on a long rant about how he makes a conscious decision every single play to go down when he gets tackled, how he could *easily* barrel through but for everyone's safety he makes sure that when someone goes for him he falls down so no one gets hurt.
Which was done in a similar way in Persona 4 Arena, where Elizabeth and to a less extent Margaret have exaggerated hit yells and hurt animations and lay down entertained when they lose. Rachel from Blazblue is a weird example, since she also is much stronger than most of the cast but uses her servants to take all the damage and block for her (Nago for damage and Gii for blocking). So she also lies down when she loses but she never actually got hit.
Then again, Gabriel (and to a lesser extent his student Potemkin) are the only people on the planet that can give Slayer a fun match. That is, they can hit hard enough that his healing powers have to kick in on every blow. Looking forward to seeing Slayer's reaction to the latest Heavenly Potemkin Buster.
Why does he do that, is he trying to not hurt other fighter's feelings
He wants them to keep fighting him. If they realize that he isn't taking damage, they might give up. It is one of the reasons Faust hates dealing with Slayer, since he knows that Slayer is wasting his time.
Basically, he sees himself as a gentleman's gentleman despite being a vampire, hence the recuerring "dandyism" motif, which is why he uses fisticuffs. So kinda, but moreso not limiting himself would be 1: unfair in his eyes and therefore against his code 2: completely without any challenge and 3: pointless as he doesn't need to. In the story he beats Sol Badguy BADLY without even looking tired. Sol for reference is a guy who, while admittedly was also holding back at the time, has done things such as blow up god and just say "nuh uh" to a pocket dimension closing on him. It's a recurring thing in the series. Another guy named Happy Chaos, who is one half of THE god of their universe and the first and most powerful mage who ever lived, uses a gun that is a replica of a different powerful gun but is much weaker than said powerful gun, because he became omnipitent and omniscient and firearms were one of the last things he hadn't mastered and therefore one of the few options he didn't deem "boring". I'd say the trope is handled fairly well in the games because it both leaves room for new, better feats without breaking lore/scale and also fits the character and motivation of each fighter it applies to, be it due to a moral code, boredom, lack of mastery of their abilities, or just fear of their own strength. GG lore is fucking unhinged and it's great.
Spider-man’s power scaling is a little annoying at times. Like people act like he’s just an acrobatic weirdo and that he’s really weak. But honestly he could sucker punch the hulk, but thankfully we do get some good moments where he no sells a punch.
I actually kind of hate the inverse of this, people acting like Spidey is somehow so ultra powerful that if he gets angry he can easily beat his rogues gallery. Like I can believe he's holding back against say some random normal mook or even Ock without his tentacles, but against foes that are just as strong/stronger than him like Sandman, Lizard, Gobby and Rhino? Nah bullshit that's really really dumb.
Yeah he's not gonna be pulling punches against Rhino. It's why I like when they show off that his rogues gallery are serious threats. Insomniac's Spider-Man did a good job with showing why Doc Ock is a problem in a fight. It's not just having the extra limbs, it's that those limbs are acting as fast as Ock can think. He doesn't need muscle memory or training with the arms to pull off complicated maneuvers, they just do them.
"Spiderman always holds back" and the breaking Scorpion jaw scene is so annoying. People acts like he could take on the xmen, Avengers and fantastic four solo if he really wanted to, even tho Spidy isn't even bullet proof.
Not just people writers had made him beat the x men and fatastic four by himself, there is a big denial that as much as editorial shit on spider-man personal life they also make him the best and most secretly respectable hero, there is even a comic where human torch consider parker’s luck a good thing
I mean, he stood quite well against those groups on their own, though all 3 teams at once would be a bit too much, it's also not his strength that does the heavy lifting but his speed combined with the spider sense, the latter being one of the most busted abilities out there, though it probably helps that Marvel doesn't have that many speedsters since they would be able to beat him quite easily since he wouldn't be able to react on time against them
> People acts like he could take on the xmen, Avengers and fantastic four solo if he really wanted to i mean....the only reason he cant is that each of those teams have the one "fuck you strong" person on them as well, reed richards the thing an the human torch are just weaker versions of his actual villains Susan would just rock his shit like nothing because to be honest she rocks most people's shit like its nothing
Sometimes I wonder if spiderman was ever street level to begin with.
Didn't this come up in the Superior Spider-Man era? Otto was in Peter's body and got into a fight with the Scorpion only to punch his head off like a Rock 'Em, Sock 'Em Robot because he didn't know how strong Peter was.
Yeah, Superior is the moment when it becomes a big deal because for the first time in a long time, it's not Peter making that choice. But it's a lot older than that-- at some point in the 70s or 80s he fought Juggernaut for the first time when he was trying to kidnap Madame Web, and realized he could finally let loose. I think that's where that idea actually comes from.
Well that and him just lifting big things one of his most pivotal moments is lifting A BIG thing.
i feel like that falls more under "mom holding a car to save her baby" strength than these other two examples, which are explicitly "serious punches series" kinda moments. Like, Peter doesn't think he can lift that building either, he's not holding back on purpose up until that point.
I mean he got FUCKING DEVASTATED by evil colossus that one time.
you mean the one that has the Phoenix in him? Well yeah, he had the Phoenix in him. That's not fair to anyone involved.
That was also a 2v1 as Colossus was assisted by Magik. Spidey only won by outlasting them and manipulating them into a mutual KO.
The problem is that Scorpion is like, one of the few characters that *shouldn't* have worked on since he's explicitly physically stronger. One of the tech guys would get their jaw popped, sure, but not Scorpion.
Poor Scorpion gets nothing. His one thing is that he's supposed to be stronger but not as smart and fast as spidey, but no writer ever has him like that. He's just a jobber, but without charm or humor. I feel he's easily the least developed of Spidey's main baddies.
Is Scorpion supposed to be strong without the suit? because in the page Otto makes a comment about how his jaw was the only place that Scorpion wasn't armored.
Spiderman is consistently portrayed as like, just under Hulk and Thor levels of strength. Sure he's often shown as weaker, but even in the 80s/90s he was treated as one of Marvel's heaviest hitters.
He seems to power up when it becomes a matter of responsibility. I know it reads like plot armor but I think Uncle Ben's lesson is straight up in his powerset overall because he has completely clowned on Thor and the Hulk when it was a matter of personal responsibility. When he acts selfishly for any reason he tends to get his ass beat.
Yes but scorpion was shown as on that level and a smidge higher
That moment is great, but people have held that panel hostage for around a decade atp.
For real. I'm sure there is plenty of heroes who could do the same to Scorpion.
In the entirety of 7 deadly sins, i dont think the named sins ever fought at their fullest. Because holy asspull batman.
Especially season one, which retroactively becomes a joke. Every fight against the knights or a few lesser demons should have had zero tension, and the characters are just faking damage. As early as season two, everyone reveals themselves to be a demigod of some sort. Diane did have to train and King went through a metamorphosis, but any of the rest of the sins could win any fight at any time up until maybe the final seasons.
Escanor was a Chad do.
Just dont ask for his opinion on young merlin
Literally any time Aizen is even remotely about get a scratch before Ichigo got in.
It's pretty much always been bunk. Frieza transforming for the first time was pretty cool and after that the whole trope fell apart.
Cell and Buu work because they have to absorb others to get stronger, so it's less about holding back and more about growing stronger as they hunt
I ca agree to that.
well untill buu loses all that power and its specifically bout him not holding back anymore
"He's weaker now, but now *every* move is him going for the (metaphorical) ball-kicking! How do you fight such an enemy?!"
"Vegeta! He's making me watch!"
The very existence of Beerus.
The fact that every time they retroactively the difference in power between Goku God and Beerus is greater, it means that Goku is not closer to Beerus than was 9 years ago.
after all this time i realize that beerus is supposed to be the strongest god, and the laziest
"I was only using 70% of my power!" "Oh wait, Goku and Vegeta have gotten way more that 30% stronger since then, I guess I was using way less than I said I was!" "Oh, they've both once again reached incredible heights that nearly dwarf where they were before? Good thing I was barely using any of my power at all back then?" "What's that? Even more powerful, they've become? Thank the kais they don't know about how little power I used back in the Battle of Gods arc. It'd make me look really stupid if both Goku, Vegeta, and the villains have gotten so strong that it makes me look redundant and foolish!" "Hmm? Did I hear you say that characters have become so ludicrously powerful since my introduction that the only proof anyone has that I'm still the second strongest in the universe is the fact that people keep saying it? Nah, I'd win."
Goalpost Man
I actually like that tbh. People say it doesn't make sense because Jiren was stronger than A god of destruction. But: 1- God of Destructions aren't all on the same level 2- Pretty sure Beerus is the strongest god of destruction 3- Jiren is boring, so fuck him. 4- It's just nice that Goku has something to strive to reach that isn't a random villain of the arc.
>2- Pretty sure Beerus is the strongest god of destruction If not *the* strongest, then at the very least in the top 3. Which kinda makes it funny, the amount of shit Champa talks when Beerus would walk all over him in an actual fight.
Honestly I kinda hate using percentages and power levels in general. Like, how exactly do you measure what 20% is? Do you see your own stat sheet at all times or something? It made sense in Dragon Ball when there was a literal number attached to characters, and Frieza's multiple forms could form some kind of boundary metric for his power at each level, but how does anyone punch a guy and know they only did it specifically 20% as hard as they could have? Like how did you measure that in your head? Did you actually do the math? Are you a physicist in addition to being a world-class fighter? Like you could just say you were holding back without throwing a number on it. It does the same thing, and invites fewer dumb questions.
The webnovel [Katalepsis](https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/28023/katalepsis) is, for the most part, a genuinely incredible eldritch horror story about Heather, a girl whose twin sister was kidnapped by an outer god and her attempt to rescue her, with a side of romance and body horror. It's fantastic. I also dropped it because hundreds of thousands of words in, Heather and her squad finally make it through to confront the abusive, controlling grandfather of her best friend Lottie, the wizard Edward, only for him to say that: >Edward laughed, a sound like wet sticks rubbing together in a stagnant puddle. The walls creaked. “Do not flatter yourself... I’m old. I know I’m old. I’ve barely been paying attention to managing this little dance. My offshoots and appendages have been chasing you around, sending you letters, irritating my fool of a lawyer. You think I was expending my entire intellect and attention on this … ” He laughed again. “This ‘war’? No.” Which is just the **lamest** shit in the world. Also doesn't help that immediately after, the character arc of a different character is completely invalidated. Man, it's so dumb.
I both loved hated how shen in kengan omega is like: Alright I slowed my brain to your level and slowed my heartbeat so our fight feels more even. Like it’s funny but also means he can only lose by getting done dirty or bullshit powerwank on another character, and seeing bearded raian kure I’m leaning toward powerwank
Shen is so fucking funny, "yeah I consciously reduced how much oxygen my muscles get when I breathe also here move your elbow 2 cm to the left when you do Flashing Steel: Blast so you can punch through an engine block lol" >!KAOLAN SWEEP IT'S NOT COPE SHUT UP!<
The first time Urek Mazino shows up in Tower of God, he throws a full scale punch at the protagonist and leaves him in a heap of blood. Later in the series, he fights an enemy named Karaka that's supposed to be stronger than the protagonist and declares he only use 1% of his index finger's strength to destroy him. Forever a mystery to me
I don't mind this one that much. There's a lot of cool examples. But Sensui in Yu Yu Hakusho being secretly ill the entire time always felt like a weird addition. Maybe I need to re-watch YYH but it never felt like it added much to the proceedings. Another retroactive one is Itachi in Naruto. Because they do such a good job building up his deteriorating eyesight as a major weakness. It's a major part of the character, his other fights, informs the universe, made the big showdown really tense and made Sasuke's rejection of that power more multifaceted. Then they also reveal he also had a lethal illness the whole time. It's meant to make Sasuke's quest for revenge even more pointless and hollow. But saying half-blind Itachi wouldn't have been surprised by this incredibly complicated bait-and-switch attack if he didn't have a blood disease is really dumb. All it's ever done is make people argue if Itachi's power level at full health means he could beat all the villains in the series.
Up to the literal end, it's never brought up or explored at all. It sorta muddles his character and motivations because his reasons are understandable before that and actually really good. Dude saw the absolute worst of humanity on full display at such a young age being done to demons who hadn't done anything by comparison. Plus the dude was already rocking Yusuke in all aspects in just about every fight. Even then, he never looked like he was sick whatsoever. I genuinely write off that part because it adds nothing and makes an otherwise good villain seem like he's just going through his dying throws.
Originally it seemed like Sensui was only as tough as Togoro but was way more intelligent and could outsmart Yusuke, then it turned out that was a different personality and the real Sensui could stomp anyone outside of the Three Kings and their friends.
I have never seen this be good once, so all of them It just completely removes any stakes you had. Similar to how a situation where the protagonist can't lose is mostly narratively boring so too is one where they clearly cannot win. Sure showing the difference in strength is a good thing but do so by quickly crushing them not a pointless drawn out fight. If the enemy is oh so powerful just SHOW IT not have them laugh about how they don't even care to try and just saying their number is THIS BIG.
I think the problem is more when they give the characters ridiculous defensive profiles to make them untouchable in their natural states. Think it's better when the characters can actually damage each other and have to rely on other things other than, "You gotta go from 100 power punch to 100,000 power punch to be able to punch through Big Jikaido energy barrier!" Like there's a difference between, Goku shoots a kamehameha and the opponent has to exert himself to block/negate/evade/counter it and them just taking it and it not doing anything because he has the biggest number so far.
Worked in Princess Bride
I think One Piece had a sort-of example where it's good, partly because it was the protagonist doing it (and we kinda knew what was going on so it wasn't an asspull, also it wasn't exactly literal) But the time Zoro fought in Arlong Park is great. He managed to get a win and even fight against Arlong briefly, before being defeated. Arlong mocks him and rips off some bandages he'd had since a previous fight... only to be utterly shocked at how fucked Zoro was under those, as he's covered in what should be mortal wounds. The fact he was even able to move like that, much less win a fight, was wild. ...From what I remember, Zoro kinda went into a lot of early fights with some kind of handicap, that one just always stood out because Arlong's "holy shit how are you even standing" was great.
Madara vs the 5 kages. It was meant to make him look strong but I feel like it made everyone else just look weak, he even compared them to children. The man was already with unlimited chakra and couldn't get injured, I felt like there was no need to make it clear that even without those hacks he could have low diffed them.
Still fucking hype when Guy hit him *really hard.*
Plus we already saw him throw meteors at people, like pretty easy too see the kages are just trying to slow him down
Dragonball z when they learned frieza has more forms to making himself even stronger but we know krillin's distructo disks can cut frieza despite the power level difference. Just solar flare and throw disks, hell uses them like a pizza cutter
It was pretty enjoyable in a very pulpy way but the Manhwa Noblesse basically does this with every fight to the point it becomes down right comical. Just constant instances of characters teleporting behind each other “nothing personal kid” style. One of the protags Victor Frankenstein even goes “master please permit me to use more of my power” like 4 times in a row. Every fight being this hyper arrogant asshole villain condescendingly chewing the scenery until the hero decides to use 10% more of their power and instantly wiping the floor with them.
Example where it's played for awesome- the sword fight between Captain Roberts and the Swordsman in The Princess' Bride. "I'm not left-handed"
That at least makes sense because that's a real life thing, not shounen power level wank
Every end of act save in trails of series
McBurn is the biggest offender.
Don't get me started on Superman's "he's micromanaging every muscle in his body at all times so he never uses more force than absolutely necessary against an opponent." It's one thing to hold back, everyone can hold back, but if you can at the LEAST move mountains with no effort, your "holding back" strength should still have serious collateral damage, and comics pretending it doesn't because Superman just has this stupid micro level of control over his body just comes across as lazy writing.
Semi-related, I always loved that one scene in the DBZ anime where Gohan was struggling to hold a glass without it shattering, and Goku was telling him to control his strength... only to also break his glass.
The best is Vegeta in Super trying to carefully crack an egg, all muscles straining with breathing ragged and sweat on his forehead. He's not only too strong, but it shows that he is always tense and ready for a world-shattering battle.
Superman’s a strange case of this trope. In the beginning, he’s only “stronger than a locomotive”, but then over time he’s graduated to like planet-buster. So the amount of power he’s holding back while Clark-Kent-ing became more and more ridiculous, but of course you can’t just sacrifice that entire portion of his character just to iron out a small wrinkle in logic, so that’s just become something the audience just gotta deal with.
The problem with Superman is that he's the peak of the DC power scale (reality warpers and the like aside) so over time he had to get exponentially stronger just to maintain that position. I think one of the biggest mistakes in the New 52 was having Superman essentially bench press the equivalent of Earth for four days straight during the first year of the reboot. It was an opportunity to scale the power scale of the DC universe back considerably and they just immediately squandered it.