May 2026’s Newsletter: “Learning from Media: Anime and Writing Overpowered Heroes”
Stop me if you’ve seen this one before:
The hero swaggers onto the scene. They burst out flashy fight moves. Enemies fall left and right. The hero flies through and nothing can touch them. Are they even trying? Lights, fireworks, lots of special effects. It sure looks cool.
But is anyone, like, worried?
The overpowered hero can appear in any work of fiction, but it’s a trope I’ve noticed often as a lover of anime. And as an author, I’ve found myself considering its uses.
Sure, the hero who’s effortlessly cool is fun for a little while. But they become tiresome when overdone. An anime– or any story, for that matter– who’s only trick is: “look at how awesome our hero is!” isn’t going to hold my attention for long.
However, there are ways to get around this.
This can be done through the use of genre and stakes.
I’ll be analyzing four animes and how they use a combination of genre and/or stakes to keep their overpowered heroes interesting.
“The Secrets of a Silent Witch” by Matsuri Isora
“One Punch Man” season 1 by Yusuke Murata
“Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End” by Kanehito Yamada and Tsukasa Abe
“Mashle, Magic and Muscles” by Hajime Komoto
I’ll be giving details about these anime, so, uh… spoilers ahead.
Secrets of a Silent Witch
In this world where witches chant incantations to cast difficult spells, Monica is one of the seven most powerful witches at the age of 16. She can easily defeat any enemy that comes her way. (And she can do it without verbal incantations!)
So the anime’s about Monica fighting stronger and stronger magic battles?
Nope!
The show does a classic trick for creating stakes in a story: pit the protagonist against a challenge they are unsuited to.
Monica is helpless in social situations due to her extreme social anxiety. And the anime is about social/political intrigue and building friendships, not magic blasting. Monica has to go undercover in a school to uncover secret plots against the prince’s life, and protect her own identity and reputation at the same time. For someone with social anxiety, it’s a nigh impossible task!
You see, the anime is using its genre to keep the viewers invested. If this was an action anime, Monica would solve all the problems and there wouldn’t be much of a show. There’s no stakes when we know she’ll win each fight. However, because the genre is intrigue– something Monica struggles with– the anime creates plenty of juicy conflict for our protagonist.
Will Monica overcome her social anxiety in order to save her friends? Will she make a fool of herself in front of the student body? Will they uncover her true identity as the Silent Witch? You’ll have to watch the next episode to find out!
One Punch Man Season 1
Here we have another anime that uses its genre to invest the viewers. However, instead of setting the protagonist against stakes they’re unsuited to, this anime is a comedy.
One Punch Man intentionally spoofs the overpowered hero trope.
Saitama is so overpowered, he can defeat any enemy with one punch. And he’s bored of it. As a battle anime protagonist, his purpose in life was to get stronger and fight tougher villains. But now that he’s reached the pinnacle of his achievements, he’s lost his purpose in life.
His fights are too easy. Even he finds his fights boring.
The story’s deconstructing the overpowered hero.
Because this anime is a comedy, the focus is on the humorous situations Saitama and his friends end up in rather than the question: “Can Saitama defeat the villain?” We the viewers don’t need to be on the edge of our seats to be invested. Instead, we’re laughing as Saitama spends an episode trying to swat a fly and then burrows into the ground to hassle a mole villain.
When the anime does require a fight to have stakes, it does so by delaying Saitama and putting his friends in danger while he’s not there. An example takes place at the end of season one. The less powerful heroes who we’ve grown to care about are defending a civilian shelter. The question becomes: Can they hold out long enough for Saitama to arrive? Or will they die before he can save them?
We know Saitama can defeat this villain, but if he’s not there, can the other characters do the same?
Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End
I give you another anime that refuses to be driven by action. “Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End” is a character study focused on personal growth.
Elf mage Frieren is powerful enough to create small black holes. She could defeat most everything her young party comes across.
However, their encounters usually don’t require that. Instead, they’re interpersonal challenges, search quests, puzzles, learning opportunities, etc. And they always lead to personal or relationship growth for one or more of our characters.
For example, ongoing plotlines include Fern learning magic, Frieren learning more about human nature and her lost relationship with the dead hero Himmel, and developing Fern’s and Stark’s relationship.
Much as the plotlines are personal and character driven, the stakes tend to be so as well. Will Fern and Stark make up after their latest fight? Will Frieren find her lost ring that Himmel gave her?
When this anime does have action sequences, it often raises the stakes by switching the point of view character from Frieren to the younger, more vulnerable characters: Fern or Stark.
Because Fern and Stark are less powerful than Frieren, the audience is genuinely worried whether or not they’ll win. These kids are less experienced and struggle their way through their battles. They also experience major growth with each combat, which makes their battles quite satisfying to watch.
One example is the battle where Stark and Fern are each dueling a demon in the Northern Lands. Frieren isn’t around to help them. Both kids are injured. They’re backed into corners. The demons are gloating. We’re on the edge of our seats. But the enemy underestimates our young heroes, who prove themselves far stronger than the demons thought. They turn the tables and pull out a victory.
Another example is the battle Fern and Frieren fight together against the sealed demon Qual. Notice how Frieren is present during this battle. Neither Fern nor Fieren were in any danger– but neither Fern nor the audience knew that at the time. This is because Frieren is using the fight to teach Fern about combat magic. (In a very hands-on way.) It’s an interesting sequence of events not because of their struggle to win, but because of what Fern learns and the lore world building. Once again, character development is the anime’s plot-driving force.
Meanwhile, whenever Frieren does enter the battlefield seriously, she wipes out her enemies. And this is just fine. It’s a rare occurrence in the anime, so the audience isn’t bored. As I said in the intro, sometimes watching your hero wipe the floor with the enemy is pretty awesome.
Mashle: Magic and Muscles Breaks the Rules
“Masle: Magic and Muscles” begins as a comedy. It has plenty of fights, but engages the audience through humor and the clever ways Mash incorporates sports into his fighting.
Then the show introduces Innocent Zero. The Big Bad. The Final Boss. Innocent Zero raises the show’s stakes when he proves too powerful for Mash to defeat. He’s the first person to walk away from our protagonist with but a scratch.
Mash is no longer an overpowered hero.
This anime is unique on my list because it takes its overpowered hero and turns him non-overpowered. (Normal powered? Powered?) Of course, Mash is still terrifying. He continues to overpower regular bad guys left and right, but the overarching goal has been set out of his reach.
I haven’t finished the “Mashle” series yet, so I can’t tell you how it’ll continue to set stakes and balance its comedy-action genre. But I love it so far, and I have faith it’ll continue to shine.
A Side Note About Powerful Heroes
A step down from the overpowered hero is the powerful hero who dominates fights but still ends up in tough spots.
They aren’t so overpowered that they’re untouchable. They might even have an overpowered “mode” they activate on occasion, but for one reason or another, they can’t use it all the time and must fight handicapped without it.
Think Aang from “Avatar the Last Airbender.” He’s one of the strongest benders in the show, yes, but without his Avatar State, I wouldn’t call him overpowered.
This is not the hero I’ve analyzed in this article. These heroes do face legitimate challenges. They’re also cool as hell to watch. If anything, they’re a blueprint for how one can write flashy heroes who dominate a combat scene without losing the viewers through lack of stakes. (The “overpowered super mode” is optional.)
Examples include Asta from “Black Clover” by Yuki Tabata and Deku in the later seasons of “My Hero Academia” by Kohei Horikoshi.
Just beware when writing these heroes: the stronger they become, the more likely they are to slide across the line into overpowered. Once the viewers/readers stop worrying they could lose any fight, you’ve gone too far.
An action story where the stakes are “will the hero be victorious?” cannot sustain itself when its hero is hugely overpowered. This is because there are no stakes. We already know the hero will wipe the floor with the enemy in some big, flashy move set. While that may be cool to watch the first couple times, it’ll get boring if that’s all there is.
So, a story with an overpowered protagonist needs to have a plot and stakes that aren’t dependent on action and combat alone. Whether it’s done through comedy, drama and intrigue, character growth, playing with stakes and point of view, or something else entirely, it depends on the author and what story they want to tell.
Thanks for reading!
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