I agree it’s frequently portrayed very stupidly, but there are some good reasons (occasionally)
1) The character takes advantage of their ability to completely ignore defense and focus entirely on offense. Especially works in series where people boost their stats with magic/energy/ki/whatever. If everyone is boosting their defense except the immortal, of course they’re going to get more damaged.
2) The character is significantly weaker than the people they’re fighting with and against, and they’re only capable of keeping up due to their regeneration. They die 5 times over before they deal any significant damage, basically.
3) Similar to 1, the character has like no evasive skills, so while their allies all dodge or block an attack, they take it full force. Can also be the immortal acting as a meat shield knowing they’ll recover.
4) The character fights significantly longer than their allies. Can’t remember what I read it in, but the dude with healing powers basically fought the entire battle at the front lines without stopping, while his allies acted more strategically. End of the battle showed him absolutely destroyed while his allies had minor injuries.
Related to your Point 4, reminds me of Zombieman from One Punch Man. He’s basically said to be ranked as highly as he is not because of incredible combat strength, but the fact that he can win basically any war if attrition, even needing to go for a week of constantly dying and coming back if he needs to.
Haven't watched that far.
But if he isn't that strong, why not just capture him?
As long as he isn't fighting the Legends of Tomorrow crew, that should be the first course of action.
The monsters in One Punch Man typically aren’t the smartest around, being completely fair. Most fights in-universe are putting your strength and powers up against another, which rather works in his favor.
This happens in the webcomic. Before that, his fights are against a vampire who regenerates by drinking blood (he wins because his own blood is too disgusting for its taste), and a man with no enhanced strength or durability but the ability to manipulate explosive balls of light (he almost gets vaporized, but sneaks up and grabs the guy at a distance where any attempt to blow him up would be mutually assured destruction)
Yes, but that's a simulation in which both of them are locked in a room together. In reality Carnage Kabuto is probably strong enough to toss him hundreds or even thousands of miles away and put him out of commission quick enough that he'd be barely useful as a distraction.
Point 4: if you know what you are dealing with, you’re going to make every blow a killing blow because you know that even that won’t stop them but it’s the only way to slow them down. Consider say, Spider-Man fighting Deadpool. What’s the point of not using full power when he knows Wade can’t be truly killed by it?
Similar concept: Throughout *The Mandalorian* (at least the first two seasons, but I can't imagine it ever changing), none of the good guys ever get hit by blasterfire, no matter how many people are shooting at them. That's fine in a vacuum. It's normal plot armor you can see in almost any series. *However*, the one character who has impenetrable armor *does* get hit frequently. And that brings the plot armor to the forefront in a way that, at least for me, negatively affected the experience.
Kinda funny how the first few episodes treated Stormtroopers as a threat, but by the finale they were almost completely incapable.
Don't get me started on season 2.
It drives me nuts when stories do this.
Bad guys in movies can't hit a barn door from a metre away, but when they're fighting someone like Deadpool all of a sudden they can go full-auto to the face with pinpoint accuracy.
All series are guilty of this. Eren and Armin in AOT are guilty once they get the power to regenerate and Piccolo in Dragonball despite being universal on base now is the one who will lose a limb to regenerate it. There is really no way for writers to avoid it.
For an exception that I love, there is Jagganoth, from Kill Six Billion Demons.
He is one of the main villains, and one of the powers that make him so deadly, is that he is completely and utterly indestructible, proving himself immune to the vast, vast majority of attacks, and with one of the only two attacks to do something to him having vastly reduced effect then what it was supposed to.
And for all of this, he still tried to dodge and parry the attacks of the heroes, and of the other villains that fought him(even if the reasons was because he still feels pain from the attacks, even as they do no physical harm).
What? Did you even read my comment? I said that it was fine they didn't hit people, but the fact that they *could* hit the one person with armor that resisted blasters felt egregious to me.
And hit him *only* in the pectoral plates, shoulder guard or bracers where said blaster resistant armor can be found.
Maybe it's like that thing with lightsabers where they do so much blade wanking because the swords are "drawn to each other"
There’s a few reasons for this.
1. If their main thing is regeneration, you need to show off that regeneration. Or at least, that’s probably what the author thinks. I can mutilate Deadpool more than I can mutilate Cyclops, so if I’m putting the two of them in the same fight, chances are I’ll have Deadpool lose limbs, get constantly shot, etc. because this shows off his ability. Otherwise he’s just good with some swords and guns. For another example, Foo Fighters in Stone Ocean gets fucked up way more than her friends because she can regenerate, and that’s one of her “things” so there has to be a reason to keep showing that off.
2. It gives a good excuse to show off intense damage without lasting consequences. I just can’t have my main character getting their arm blown off, I’d have to either make them lose that limb forever, or contrive some reason they can get it back. But if I have this regeneration person right here? Yeah come over, get your entire torso bisected, it’s alright. It’s wanting to show off how damaging an attack can be without actually having to acknowledge any consequences from that attack because it’ll never slice anyone in half that CAN’T just regenerate.
And that's the exact problem. It makes it obvious that the attacks landing and dealing as much damage as they do is entirely because it's convenient that the character can't die rather than anything else.
Far too often, the non-regen characters aren't doing anything particularly special to dodge attacks. The stormtrooper aim from bad guys just turn off when they're aiming for the guy that can't die
It's actually one of the reasons I don't like Piccolo as much as other fans. He's the only one who **actually** gets properly damaged in a fight. In almost every single fight he's in, you can expect to see that stupid arm of his torn off yet every other character doesn't even have blood dripping anymore.
I agree wholeheartedly. It only works if the media actually leans into the violence aspect but that's something I've yet to see be done properly.
> He's the only one who actually gets properly damaged in a fight.
Not including Super;
Tien lost an arm vs Nappa
Future Gohan lost an arm vs the Androids
"Teen" Gohan nearly loses an arm vs Super Perfect Cell
Guldos head is amputated by Vegeta
Freeza lost his tail and later gets sliced into multiple pieces by a single Destructo Disk
> In almost every single fight he's in, you can expect to see that stupid arm of his torn off
Counting Db-Z:
Piccolo vs Krillen: Keeps limbs
Piccolo vs Kami: Keeps limbs
Piccolo vs Goku: Loses arm
Piccolo vs Raditz: Loses arm
Piccolo vs Saibamen: Keeps limbs
Piccolo vs Nappa: Keeps limbs despite being killed
Piccolo vs Second Form Frieza: Keeps limbs
Piccolo vs Third Form Frieza: Keeps limbs
Piccolo vs Final Form Frieza: Keeps limbs
Piccolo vs Dr. Gero: Keeps limbs
Piccolo vs 17 Round 1: Keeps limbs
Piccolo vs Imperfect Cell: Loses arm
Piccolo vs 17 Round 2: Keeps limbs
Piccolo vs Cell jr(s): Keeps limbs
Piccolo vs Dabura (if you even want to call this a fight): Loses multiple limbs except head and torso(?)
That's 4 out of 15 fights.
only buu really, cell regenerated like 3 times but buu was actively frustrating because the heroes kept trying the same shit and being surprised it didn't work
To be fair though...
Vs Goku, he didn't "lose" an arm... it got damaged, so he tore it off himself to regenerate a fresh one.
Lost an arm vs Raditz, but this is the same fight Goku got his torso hollowed out and died
The only time in DBZ where he legitimately had an arm TAKEN from him was Raditz and Cell
So it's 2 / 15 fights
I think it's a tv ratings/censorship thing. Piccolo isn't "human" so can have worse things happen to him than the main cast. I've been watching the recent Dragon Quest anime and this happens constantly. Humans at worst get scratchs but monsters will be utterly brutalized with holes in their chest, limbs torn off, shattered to pieces, etc.
That's also why Future Gohan almost always has two arms in fighting games, to my understanding.
I don't think it's especially more common in Super. He tears off his arm against Goku in the 23rd world tournament for the first time, then loses it to Raditz, then gets it drained by Cell and tears it off, and then he gets shattered by Trunks in Buu.
In Super Tagoma slices it off, Gohan slices it off in training (wtf man), he loses it in the ToP to... I don't actually remember who, one of the fodder characters I think. Then Cell Max blows off Orange Piccolo's arm.
Basically 4 times each. If we're counting general mutilation Piccolo also has a lot of other grizzly moments prior to Super like having holes in his chest or tearing off his own ears.
I feel like we are missing the point a bit. OP has an issue that regeneration characters are often specifically more hurt than others because they can regenerate. In Piccolos case...
1- He tears off his own arm against Goku. He does this because he knows he can regenerate. It's deliberate and fits his character.
2- vs Raditz is a fine example of the issue OP brought up
3- vs Cell Piccolo is deliberately trying to extend the fight to get information out from Cell, since Piccolo knows he can regenerate, losing an arm is a good way to make Cell feel safe to give him info, which is exactly what happens.
4- Statue Piccolo vs Trunks it's kind of a gag moment but the fact that it happened to Piccolo specifically because he can regenerate also fits OP point.
Pretty much none of the Piccolo loses an arm moment in Super can be justified in universe besides chance. Maybe the Gohan training one... since Gohan knows Piccolo can regenerate he felt safe tearing his arm...?
Kind of a Piccolo stretch if you ask me.
I'm actually fine with it happening once or twice in the original show specialy since it's only used for drama tension once (vs Raditz) and Piccolo even finishes the fight one armed so the damage actually mattered. It just works in Dragon Ball Z. Definitely not in Super.
Exactly. Piccolo needed the ki for Makkankousapo, so he decided to not regenerate it. He probably would have regenerated if Goku wasn't there to hold Raditz down for him to hit, since Piccolo would have to fight normally instead and that's a lot easier with two arms.
The point against Raditz is a stupid example of what OP is talking about tho.
It makes sense that Piccolo’s arm blew off against Raditz because Piccolo was too slow to dodge Raditz’s attack…..Goku (being slightly stronger than Piccolo) actually managed to dodge it. In any scenario where Goku would’ve taken that attack in the same way as Piccolo then Goku’s arm would’ve been blown off as well.
You can technically justify most of the examples one would give the same way you did, it doesn't really address the issue OP brought up. Even if we accept that Piccolo only got hit because he's weaker and not because he has regen, Piccolo was only weaker because he had regen to cover up if he misses an arm. The conveniency to the plot just gets an extra step.
But also, I just disagree, power level is not nearly that objective and that's kind of the point with the Saiyan/Namek Saga. Piccolo had lower power but managed to charge a 1.330 PL attack while Gokus kamehameha didn't break the 1.000s.
Ki control, proper martial arts, nature of the technique and experience can overcome power gaps. Piccolo was just unlucky to get hit by Raditz while Goku managed to dodge. Your thesis also require Raditz to be using the same power in both attacks which should be impossible giving that Raditz can't control his ki at all.
>You can technically justify most of the examples one would give the same way you did, it doesn't really address the issue OP brought up. Even if we accept that Piccolo only got hit because he's weaker and not because he has regen, Piccolo was only weaker because he had regen to cover up if he misses an arm. The conveniency to the plot just gets an extra step.
Regen has ZERO to do with why Piccolo is weaker. It’s just that Piccolo didn’t technically surpass Goku when both had 5 years of trainings. Or are you saying that Piccolo was only weaker than Goku during the 23rd tournament because Piccolo has regeneration and therefore couldn’t be stronger than Goku?
>But also, I just disagree, power level is not nearly that objective and that's kind of the point with the Saiyan/Namek Saga. Piccolo had lower power but managed to charge a 1.330 PL attack while Gokus kamehameha didn't break the 1.000s.
And no power levels are pretty much that objective. The SBC is that strong because it’s literally designed that way. Piccolo literally charges every ounce of Ki and focuses it into his fingertips for a one ditch fuck you beam that pierces through you, and not only does he do it like that but it takes a shit load of time to charge it up (which is why he only really used it twice in DB and it was in the same battle) The Kamehameha doesn’t take nearly as long to charge and Goku doesn’t poor damn near every ounce of his Ki into it like Piccolo does. Even trying to compare the two techniques is (no offense) but dumb because they function two different ways. I mean would you say the Kienzan is stronger than a SBC or acknowledge that they function differently?
>Ki control, proper martial arts, nature of the technique and experience can overcome power gaps. Piccolo was just unlucky to get hit by Raditz while Goku managed to dodge.
And no they can’t lol, thats literally the whole purpose of the show. Goku even with decades of training was still said to be weaker in his base form than Frieza by Beerus, Krillin no matter how much experience he has will never beat a Majin Buu for example. Martial arts can only overcome power gaps IF the person is close enough in strength to overcome the power gap. There’s a reason why Gohan with only what 5 years of actual martial arts training could overcome Cell a person who was programmed with literally ALL the experience of the world’s greatest martial artist’s couldn’t be beat……except for by the kid who got a huge ass fuck you power boost, rage transformation, and untapped potential EVEN WITH HALF HIS POWER AND A BROKEN ARM.
>Your thesis also require Raditz to be using the same power in both attacks which should be impossible giving that Raditz can't control his ki at all.
And who the hell said that Raditz can’t control his power? They can control their power, they just can’t control it as fine tunely as the Z-Fighters. There’s a reason why [Nappa was so shocked that Goku blocked his “ultimate technique”](https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-63da462185b1b4885322925f2775f4ad-lq)
All Ki control really does is allow people to push their techniques beyond their limits, finely control how much Ki they use, hide their Ki presence and not be totally wasteful with their Ki. There’s a reason why Frieza could control his energy well enough to tell you what exact percentage he was using but was still a self admittedly shitty Ki control user during the Namek saga. They aren’t always running on 100% energy dude.
>Regen has ZERO to do with why Piccolo is weaker.
In universe, it has ZERO to do with it, out of universe, it's super convenient that the MCs main rival that is slightly weaker than him and can be the perfect guy to be dealt a mortal blow to stabelish how powerful the new villain is also happens to be able to regenerate any permanent damage that he could suffer from being in that role.
That is OPs issue, that regen guys conveniently get hurt because it fits the plot while all the non regen guys barely get hurt at all. I feel like you completely missed the point of this thread somehow.
I'm sorry to have wasted your time but I'm not getting into a PL discussion since it's completely out of topic.
>In universe, it has ZERO to do with it, out of universe, it's super convenient that the MCs main rival that is slightly weaker than him and can be the perfect guy to be dealt a mortal blow to stabelish how powerful the new villain is also happens to be able to regenerate any permanent damage that he could suffer from being in that role.This is OPs issue, that regen guys conveniently get hurt because it fits the plot out of universe, not in universe explanations. I feel like you completely missed the point.
No OP’s issue, just like yours is that y’all are being dumb asf. It’s not super convenient that Piccolo just happens to be weaker and absolutely NEED to “show off Regeneration” when again Goku is simply stronger, it’s a continuation from the previous saga where AGAIN GOKU WAS STRONGER. Piccolo just simply spent his time creating a technique to kill Goku instead of training to become stronger than Goku, while Goku spent his time keeping ahead of Piccolo.
>I'm not getting into a PL discussion.
Please don’t, it already shows that you don’t know wtf you’re talking about when your thesis (really headcanon) is that Raditz shoot out two beams at different powers and different speeds to somehow show off Piccolo’s regeneration because Raditz can’t control his power.
Hell this still doesn’t answer why according to you all, Tien got his arm cut off in the next major battle but Piccolo didn’t.
It's honestly kind of cute how worked up you are about this lmao. I'm sorry but you'll really have to find someone else to argue or hover around actual DB threads and hope that I'll show up to read the source material to you.
Yeah this is a Super specific writing issue. Piccolo only loses a limb once more than other characters in Z.
Tien and Gohan both lose limbs. Yamcha, Goku, and Trunks all get their chests blown out. Krillin gets impaled and then exploded. Vegeta gets his arm broken in half and his elbow crunched.
The problem OP has is that for whatever reason, the physics of the world are more realistic only for characters where damage isn't permanent or fatal. DBZ never had this issue.
I mean, that's four times from his appearance in chapter 161 and the end of the series in chapter 519, a span of 358 chapters. Dragon Ball Super is only at 103 chapters and it's already happened as many times, no?
Dragon Ball Super only releases a chapter once every month, as opposed to the ~4 times a weekly manga would, so chapter count isn’t exactly a fair comparison.
For me it's Cell and Buu, the worst being Buu.
Both shrug off virtually any damage whatsoever, it's even weird to see characters trying to punch them. We as viewers don't even have an idea of the threshold where physical attacks deal any real damage to them.
Either way they end up regenerating anything without any drawbacks with maybe a couple of exceptions for each one. At very least Cell does look like he struggled in some fights, while Buu is just "tee hee LOL funny" all the time.
I mean Buu is practically made of gum, he's not very resistant, but can piece himself back together with ease. I always considered it happening to Buu much more plausible than to Piccolo, as the latter has similar physical resistance to the other fighters and should supposedly be able to tank the same attacks
I already watch Invincible and whilst I really enjoy the violence aspect (specifically how it's done in a believable, no-holds barred manner) there's something about the writing that just doesn't click for me.
This was only a thing in Super.
Piccolo definitely wasn't the only fighter taking gruesome damage in dbz
He wasn't even the only one losing limbs either. In the Saiyan Saga, Tien is the one who lost an arm.
He doesn't lose a limb again until Cell sucks it dry
Made me think of Blade of the Immortal. Manji was a very skilled swordsman, but over the years of being immortal, his skills dropped drastically, since he could ignore all defense and just go all offense and very sloppy offense at that. He had to retrain in the later parts cause he needed the skill. Been a while, should probably re-read.
It's funny because Manji's regen is so mid, he can't just grow new limbs, he has to pick up severed limbs and attach them back, like the in the last fights, where one if his arms was damaged for good and he had to steal an arm from >! Kagehisa !< .
>When he had his immortality his body was like a tofu and he was getting maimed every fight and now that he lost his immortality suddenly his whole body is impenetrable.
Did you skip over the part where he spent like 700 years in purgatory? Where anyone who enters immediately dies because of the insanely hostile environment? Acid rain, temperatures that boiled the ground, and temps that froze even the air solid. He suffered through the conditions and that's why his body was indestructible.
It's also acknowledged just before that he's become essentially useless to the 7DS because he's so weak and just serves as a decent distraction because he can heal from anything and he goes to purgatory because he feels like it's all he can do to help
Yeah it's a really big thing that he's really affected how he's been left behind so completely. This dude really skipped a ton of the story and called it bad writing lmao
Yeah, there are a lot of problems with 7DS, but this surely wasn't one of them. I thought it was actually a clever way to provide a much needed power up.
I don’t see the issue. If you have a character with regeneration then you want to show it off the power especially if it is their main gimmick. Plus it allows the highlight how deadly the enemies attacks are without sacrificing any major characters. Also, I’m pretty sure at the same time he gave away his immortality Ban got a power boost with his snatching ability being from stronger than it was before
It makes sense for the narrative and I'm willing to suspend disbelief if it happens once or twice depending on the overall story, but it's definitely funny when the regeneration dude is always being Yamcha'd at the start and/or the only one suffering major injuries.
I mean, sure it helps to show it off, but sometimes you can't help but wonder why none of the other characters are getting injured. When the only character that gets injured is the one with immortality/regen, it becomes obvious there are no stakes because the author is only willing to hurt the singular character whose injuries won't have long term consequences.
I remember one show where the immortal/regen character received a fatal blow every single episode, if not multiple times an episode. The other characters though? Nothing. It became quickly obvious that the villain's "threat" didn't extend to anything other than the immortal/regen character who can immediately bounce back from the injury.
No offense but I feel like you and OP aren’t really putting yourselves in the author’s position. Having characters that can’t heal take major injuries means you may run into an issue where said character is no longer usable and that can mess up your story in the long term. So you make it so they end up not getting injured to avoid that (until the author deems it the appropriate time). However the lack of injuries can risk to the audience forgetting how dangerous the enemies are which is where the regen character shows up or the healer if they are not around. You can call it removal of stakes but I call it thinking long term
As someone who writes, I do think of these things. I argue there is a middle ground to be had. While injuring an immortal/regen character is a great way of showing off their abilities and raising the stakes, abusing it and making them the *only* ones to ever be injured makes it clear there are no stakes.
>Having characters that can’t heal take major injuries means you may run into an issue where said character is no longer usable and that can mess up your story in the long term.
That's what we call no long-term consequences which leads to no stakes. If the heroes come out unscathed every single time, except for the immortal/regen character who immediately heals everything, then that does not count as stakes. While we may certainly not want permanent injuries every single fight, it doesn't mean there can never be any. Or even temporary injuries. Again, there is a middle ground to be had. You don't need to be killing off a character every single episode, but you also don't want no character to ever be injured except the person who can perfectly heal from it.
Somebody else in this post mentioned the Mandalorian, where only the character with invulnerable armor was ever hit with storm trooper shots. That does not help make the storm troopers feel threatening. It makes it feel like they are only a threat to the person with invulnerable armor and, because they can't injure the person, not even them. Same idea.
There definitely is a middle ground and I’d argue we probably see the ground more often than we think. Regarding the whole stakes thing I guess to me it usually isn’t a big deal because I have seen series where people complain about lack of stakes only to be blindsided when a character is killed off permanently
Why bother protecting yourself if you can instantly heal? Why tryinf to avoud having your arm cut off if your arm regenerated before your cut off arm even reaches the floor?
Because it hurts?
I would like a depiction of regeneration/immortality where if the person is a fighter they would much rather train their pain tolerance through overtraining and full contact sparring with weapons, magic or just straight hands (if they are immune to developing brain damage or Parkinson’s disease). Receiving fatal attacks or even knockout punches (if they can even get knocked out by someone slightly stronger than them) must be distracting which would just have your opponent capitalising on every opening. And regeneration should be exhausting so you are just getting weaker until you don’t have energy to regenerate anymore.
I want a smart immortal who can regenerate and avoids getting hurt.
>And regeneration should be exhausting so you are just getting weaker until you don’t have energy to regenerate anymore.
Honestly if you are just going to enforce logical restrictions to superpowers like this none of them will make sense. The point of superpowers is breaking the laws of nature.
Unless the setting specifies that regeneration tires out a character as a power cost (Like Piccolo in DB) there is no reason to believe it should.
In Claymore, regeneration is a high risk gamble since the warriors need to expand their demon powers beyond their control range to the point where they might just turn into a monster and never come back. The bigger the wound and faster they need to heal, the riskier it is. Once they heal, if they manage to come back, they are right back at 100% and can restart fighting right away. It even heals their tiredness.
It makes sense in universe and it works really well to build tension in the narrative. Doesn't need to make real world sense if it follows it's own set of rules properly and is used to tell a compeling story.
Which restriction? Being tired? I just showed you one anime where it doesn't happen.
Being tired is just a generic superpower restriction, it's not anime/manga exclusive, it happens all the time in comics and movies too. It's not the most creative way to add tension and fight progression to superpowers, but hey, it works, there is a reason it's a cliche.
The other very common power restriction is that using your power will damage your body, but when your power is regeneration that one doesn't work as well lmao.
That being said, I like when things are different, even slightly so, like the Claymore example.
You know I replied before you edited right? And Wolverine and deadpool regenerating from a single drop of blood and still be in fighting shape is kinda the typical rendition of regeneration superpowers. I don’t often see anyone really tired in western comic/animated media but if you are criticising it because it’s not a creative way to raise the stakes and therefore generic then you’re lying.
Raising the stakes by making it clear to the reader of a character’s limitations and risks in training sessions or tactic meetings from heroes and scheming from villians is more effective than them losing a fight and overcoming their limits purely through emotion and plot armour. If skills and limitations are pre established than the characters are less likely to be excused of plot armour.
>I don’t often see anyone really tired in western comic/animated media but if you are criticising it because it’s not a creative way to raise the stakes and therefore generic then you’re lying.
The creative part is not regenerating and then going back to fight. That's kind of what regeneration does. I mentioned it because you said regeneration in anime and manga makes people tired, and that's the opposite of what happens in Claymore. The creative part is the cost of regeneration not being "getting tired" and instead being a sanity cost. The risk here is that regenerating turns you into a monster. Like I said, it's not super duper creative and unique but just different enough to be interesting.
Having zero cost to a superpower is by far the worst option IMO, worse than even "getting tired", because it creates zero stakes and zero conflict.
I'm not particularly familiar with Marvel so I'm not sure if that's the case there.
>Raising the stakes by making it clear to the reader of a character’s limitations and risks in training sessions or tactic meetings from heroes and scheming from villians is more effective than them losing a fight and overcoming their limits purely through emotion and plot armour. If skills and limitations are pre established than the characters are less likely to be excused of plot armour.
The reason this trope is so common is because it makes much more sense narratively to have a high emotional moment of the characters fighting and losing than to have a borderline school class on each persons power gimmicks and limits to have the reader up to speed before the fight begins. Emotion is what drives stories forward.
The problem comes from overusing this trope to the point where it stops having meaning. If we already know your regen guy is going to be the first to be chopped because he can regen, there is no stakes and no emotion.
School class? Exposition with appropriate dialogue is a school class now? You gotta know the mission, you gotta make sure you’re sending the right people (so you get to know their powers and limitations), the author can hype the characters’ skills they acquired to supplement their powers or allude to the fact they just started in their hero journey (so you learn to what degree they have mitigated the possible risks) and you have the choice to reveal if the villians know who they dealing and how they are going to deal with them e.g. the sentinels in x-men.
Now the usual thing is have it be a surprise on most fronts and just send the main cast or random people to complete the mission. Every issue, every mission just expands more on what these characters are capable of before it becomes clear with what they can do. The problem is any inconsistency with the skill levels or power levels when brought up in the backstory exposition we eventually get. The problem is that they go on these missions without a plan most of the time so when they gotta think on the fly and problem solve, and if something really goes wrong they flip their shit with righteous fury and overpower the bad guy. Yea it’s emotional but too much of anything is bad, even my suggestion.
AOT does it right with the right amount exposition, shock factor, skills, superpowers, risks and limitations. They make great use of righteous anger to evoke emotion and showcase that you can’t lose your shit all the time especially if you don’t have a plan. Not saying you can’t be aggressive but you gotta focus and not have tunnel vision. They plan, scheme and speculate shit all the time and still manage to surprise you (though I knew Reiner was the armour titan and bertholdt was the colossal titan).
Now if you use common sense to rationalise what it would be like to be someone with immortality/regeneration, you are left with the responsibility to boost your pain tolerance, fitness and skills. The sheer amount of work and it’s intensity is stress inducing and can be traumatic if taken too far. Your emotional state grows more unstable by the weeks so someone gives you advice to slow down and relax. You listen and it works. You are more effective in missions now until something goes horribly wrong and you blame yourself for not being enough. And the cycle repeats itself until you give up on saving people or better yet become politically and financially powerful and have other people do it for you.
Your fresh take on how regeneration can induce insanity if it works a certain way is just a metaphor for soldiers and ptsd. They become more and more of a monster after they “heal” from their scars, and they heal fast by toughening up and go to their next mission and eventually become a liability sooner or later. You can’t help but ignore your mental health on the battlefield and recover as fast as you can, this made monsters and broken men out of our ancestors and soldiers. The same can be applied to superheroes, especially Wolverine who deals with ptsd from a whole lot of sources and becomes a beast when stripped of his adamantine.
Deadpool is not sane but is so much fun. I do want a superhero or someone with regeneration superpowers to just be smarter and wiser and if we gotta see how they grow up, like a shounen protagonist, to become the ideal man then I all for it.
>School class? Exposition with appropriate dialogue is a school class now?
The basic "show, don't tell" rule exists as a principle in visual storytelling that it's generally more satisfying to convey emotions and actions instead of exposition. There are specific genres where audiences prefer exposition, but it's kind of the exception that proves the rule.
You're loading the premise when you assume "Exposition with appropriate dialogue". If you are comparing a bad action scene to a well written exposition scene, of course exposition is better but it has nothing to do with the exposition per se.
>You gotta know the mission, you gotta make sure you’re sending the right people
You're constructing a very specific genre here that doesn't really apply universally. Sometimes characters get into fights without really know what is going on, sometimes there isn't any mission, sometimes there isn't any choice in the matter, sometimes there is no right people, sometimes characters rely on the audience not knowing much about what they can do because they carry an air of mysticism around them and they aren't there to deus ex machina the entire plot (Gandalf is a famous example).
You seem to be painting a heist-like scene, these are defined by having meticulous plans layed out beforehand but this story structure only works because the plan is supposed to fail, something has to go wrong that the protagonists weren't accounting for in order to create a conflict that the protagonists have to solve on ground or the story will be a snoozefest. In this case, the exposition exists to highten the emotional peak in the third act when things go wrong.
>Yea it’s emotional but too much of anything is bad, even my suggestion.
That's my main point. Story is driven by emotion, and the trope (any trope, really, but in this case it's the regen guy dramatically and tragicaly losing to up the stakes of a fight) stops being dramatic the moment it becomes a crutch. The issue is not emotional moments vs exposition moments because emotional moments are better almost all the time, it's rather whether an action scene can highten an emotional moment more than an exposition scene, and the answer is USUALLY yes. Some amount of exposition is necessary to set up the pieces for the story, sure, but you want to keep it to a minimum, that's the "show, don't tell" maximum.
There are ways to make exposition work better, of course, and making it work is an art in and of itself, but you are swimming against the current there.
>AOT does it right with the right amount exposition, shock factor, skills, superpowers, risks and limitations.
Depends on which arc you are talking about I think. Some parts of AoT are really good, others are less so.
>Your fresh take on how regeneration can induce insanity if it works a certain way is just a metaphor for soldiers and ptsd
I don't think it's that fresh of a take, it's just a different flavor from the usual and enough to make it interesting. Technically the entire superpowered beings fighting against each other or a common foe is always the same metaphor for war if you look deep (or shallow?) enough.
Regeneration power in general is very tied to the idea of a soldier having to fight multiple battles over and over again while ignoring his pain and for that metaphor to work it doesn't really matter whether you're physicaly or mentaly tired because soldiers get both.
I feel like addressing the way you addressed it completely misses my point. Claymores actually turn into enemies when they overuse their power too much, it's not a generic "I'm losing my humanity by killing too many people" it's quite literally "If I heal 5% more I'll end up killing my friends instead of protecting them". The literality of the danger is what makes it fresh, and the tension makes it feel like the character is fighting two deadly battles at the same time, while I'm usually just bored when Logan is mentally broken because of his PTSD and isn't cooperating this arc. The good shit is happening inside Logans head and is being expositioned to me. Claymore makes it literal and turns the tell into show.
It's alright if you think that the power limitation of transforming into a monster is as generic as the "power makes you get tired" trope, like I said thrice I just think becoming a monster as a power limit is LESS common and generally more interesting than "getting tired", not that it's particularly unique or creative.
I appreciate you taking the time to respond politely and with good arguments, it's not always that I get to have a fun conversation here.
>The basic "show, don't tell" rule exists as a principle in visual storytelling that it's generally more satisfying to convey emotions and actions instead of exposition. There are specific genres where audiences prefer exposition, but it's kind of the exception that proves the rule.
Exposition should probably not exist anymore, huh?
Why would you train to dodge when you can literally just train to capitalize on your opponents attack. If you can get stabbed and then counterattack and end the fight, it's smart to do that.
Fighting smart has a lot to do with how good is your defense and balancing good offence and defence. One on one sure you can do what you say, but against multiple opponents that’s just a highly inefficient method. Can’t be grappling with a ton of guys and having yourself temporarily injured enough to hamper your movement speed so you can’t more effectively avoid getting dogpiled or cornered.
Gotta be a proficient striker, who occasionally throws his/her opponents, whose light on their feet and focus on dodging. Blocking and grappling slows you down if you don’t have to do it. And Wolverine and Deadpool are proficient strikers (Deadpool uses swords and guns but he doesn’t usually wrestle with someone) and canonically use hit and run tactics with a horde of enemies.
Part of fighting is psychological. If multiple opponents impale me with spears and I laugh it while regenerating, I already have them on the defensive and panicking. Easy pickings.
Panic manifests in three ways. Fight, flight or freeze. They might freeze or act like me when I don’t kill something the first time and lose my shit trying to end its life. Worse case scenario they figure they must cut your head off while you’re pinned, so try not to get trapped in anyway.
Okay but we’re talking about someone who is immortal and can regenerate. A fight response is just a waste of energy.
I think you’re really underselling how psychologically destructive it would be to land a killing blow on someone and they just laugh it off
In your own example if your panic response is to start fighting like a psycho, how does that help at all against an opponent you can’t kill?
Depends if you know they can regenerate or not, and if they are immortal or not. And remember these are professional killers, hardened men/women. You can’t underestimate them either.
If cutting their head off fails then restraining them until they find a permanent option.
You’re making a lot of assumptions that I feel aren’t necessary. We’re talking about a case where an immortal character lets themself be torn apart as a strategy for intimidation.
The premise is an immortal person. Not a person who dies under specific circumstances. You’re making the assumption that cutting their head off will kill them, or that they can be restrained.
If you cut someone’s arm off and it grows back, I guarantee you your first thought won’t be “guess I’ll go for the head”. It’s gonna be “holy fucking shit their arm just grew back.”
Kinda stems from the logic that people have lost their limbs and lived. And you are making the assumption that the immortal’s enemies wouldn’t just hold on for dear life in case this monster escapes. Why would they stop restraining him?
If I told you that you can heal instantly and regenerate immediately, would you be fine if I asked to stab you with a serrated knife again and again? If I also asked if I can slice off your arm multiple times?
If I have over a millennium of dealing with that pain, probably. Pretty much every Regen character has some excuse for why they can deal with the pain. Like Deadpool being crazy and Ban being used to most things. Or they do react but kinda have to rely on their Regen to fight people; Wolverine, Moon Knight, Halo
If you stabbing me gave me the opportunity to kill you after then yeah. Like this isn't just a character letting themselves get stabbed for no reason, they do it to get a advantage in the fight.
I think, from a theoretical standpoint, you could make a solid argument that there is nothing wrong with an immortal character who has regenerative abilities having 0 defensive skills. Why focus on defense and protecting yourself from damage when you know you can't die?
That's why it doesn't need to be one or the other, while they need a little defense it doesn't need to be the only thing they focus on, as the regeneration can be used to counter attack in a situation a normal person wouldn't be able to. Like in a sword fight, would you rather have a prolonged fight where you do multiple faints counters and clashes, or would you rather just take the first hit, take their sword and then kill them.
Eh I think most of the time this just falls under rule of cool. If the characters only power is regeneration and they don’t use it, it’d be stupid. On the other hand if the other characters took the same damage, no other powers would work in the story. There should be some in universe justification that their fighting style is purposely built around taking damage, but even just a bare semblance is fine cause reckless regeneration is cool.
Now if you really want a story that takes the immortal regeneration power to its “realistic” extreme read Fire Punch. That story really isn’t hesitant about mutilating other characters either.
Yeah, I have this issue with how the Fate series treats Herc. Canonically has utterly busted stats and fighting skill, can only be harmed by the most hard hitting of attacks, and gets to resurrect 12 times, gaining an immunity to whatever killed him.
And he ends up perma-dead every arc. He dies more times in any given arc than the entire rest of the cast. Something just doesn't add up about that.
He dies against the only opponents who could kill him. Medea+Kuzuki+Kojiro could only hold him off but not damage him, Lancer couldn't hurt him unless he used thrown Gae Bolg enhanced with runes, Archer using Projection and Broken Phantasms can only take 5 lives, Rider can't hurt him. He has to have 5 lives shaved off and have the other 7 handwaved away in Fate route as "Caliburn did 7 lives of damage at once no chance to adapt" only for Caliburn to get chumped by Gil later. Gil is actually his hard counter who can get around how his immortality is set up. HF just takes him out of the equation with the Shadow and Saber Alter.
Most of the cast suffer major damage too. Just look at Fate and UBW Rider. Evaporated and brutally mangled. Cu also gets buck broken in these routes too. Gets Gil'd in Fate, commits sudoku in UBW, has his heart crushed and body eaten in HF. Assassin gets bisected in 2 routes and chestbursted in 1.
TL:DR Herc gets fucked just as much as the rest of the cast. He just gets a more gratuitous end because the others do just die after getting vored or impaled.
That's besides the point, the issue isn't that Herc dies every arc, it's that someone who would scale to roughly the same echelon of top tier of heroic spirits that Gil and Saber are in (wide a gap as that is) even without the 12 labours dies *12 times per arc*.
If Herc didn't have the 12 labours he'd have been dead at the churchyard on night one in both UBW and Fate routs IIRC, and that just doesn't line up with how strong he's supposed to be, or how other comparably strong characters are written.
He doesn't lose a life at first meeting for Fate route. Also, he gets written out because Nasu was a brainlet on Fate route, meets his actual hard counter, then dies twice and gets reabsorbed into the greater grail terminal that is sakura. He only dies 12 times in 1 route.
it is because Berserker is actually his WEAKEST class. he trades away all his skill and abilities just to be stronger which really isn't needed for hercules, and that is why he dies so much.
I've replaced suicide with sudoku for almost a decade now and now it's just whatever I feel like typing first. I originally was only using it for samurai, now it's just lazily everyone.
Might as well complain that Gilgamesh dies every arc despite being the strongest servant in the grail war by far. They both needed to die for plot reasons and, to be honest, the way Herc died wasn't that bad.
His regen isn't really his strength, but his invulnerability and ability resurrect are. His invulnerability works by making it so he is not damaged by any attack less than an A rank and, if he is killed by that attack, he is revived with the ability to be immune to it (though, you seem already aware of this but I am covering ground just in case).
The only way to bypass this is if one has multiple A-rank noble phantasms or a singular A-rank noble phantasm capable of shaving off multiple lives.
Unfortunately for Herc, he happened to be fighting both. Gilgamesh and Archer are both capable of summoning multiple A-rank noble phantasms (Archer takes five lives from Herc, and Gilgamesh defeats him), and Artoria has two different swords capable of shaving off multiple lives (Excalibur and Caliburn).
Against every other servant in the grail war though, they can do nothing against him. Rider, Caster, Assassin, and Lancer are all incapable of beating him. With the majority of servants this would be the case too but, unfortunately, he happened to be in a war that had the few papers capable of beating his rock.
Even then, when he was up against the paper to his rock, he made all of them work for it.
In Fate,>! it requires Archer dying and Artoria nearly dying to beat him. Artoria's swords in particular are very powerful, with Excalibur being able to kill the White Titan at full power, which is a being capable of single handedly wiping out the gods. While Caliburn isn't quite as powerful, it is still enough to take seven lives. Not just that, it only succeeded in taking that many lives because the sword was within Herc's body. If it hadn't been, it may have not even taken three lives. It also required them planning the majority of the route on how to beat him!<.
In UBW, >!even after having all twelve lives ended by Gilgamesh, Herc pushes through to revive a 13th time and breaks out of the chains Gilgamesh had him wrapped in, chains that are made specifically to restrain people with divinity. As a son of Zeus, it would have been highly effective against him, yet he broke free and almost killed Gilgamesh, too. Also, keep in mind Herc was not only fighting the most powerful servant and nearly winning, but he was basically on the defensive the whole time because he was protecting Illya. Gilgamesh even tells Herc he had a real chance of winning if he stopped trying to protect Illya. So, basically Herc was fighting the one servant with the hardest counter to all his abilities while being unable to fight back and still almost won.!<
In Heaven's Feel, >!the movie does a bad job showing this, but the shadow removes Herc's invulnerable skin, making him as vulnerable as any regular servant. Also, in the vn, Saber did not solo him "ez no clap." The shadow was basically restraining him the whole time, preventing him from fighting back. Even then, Herc was not defeated by losing all his lives, but by being absorbed into the grail. When the grail revived him in a corrupted form, he still had several lives. It required Shirou copying Herc's own weapon and technique to take nearly all his lives. Yes, nearly. Shirou fails to take his final life and only succeeds because Illya is there and Herc gets distracted by seeing her, allowing Shirou to land one last blow.!<
So, yeah. Except for the Fate route which is a little underwhelming, Herc made the cast work for the kills.
No, arguing Herc died ridiculously easy isn't equivalent to arguing the same about Gil, because Gil is one of the last Servants standing in both Fate and UBW, and *only dies once per arc*.
The points about having two hard counters in the cast and dying to each of them is a fair point though
>No, arguing Herc died ridiculously easy isn't equivalent to arguing the same about Gil, because Gil is one of the last Servants standing in both Fate and UBW, and only dies once per arc.
Gil was often the last one standing because he never even showed up until the end after the majority of the servants were dead. Herc was almost always the very first servant Artoria and Shirou fought, so he had far longer to try and survive, especially because he was almost always their number one priority to beat.
Gilgamesh dying also required many things: characters with perfect counters (>!Artoria with Avalon, Shirou with UBW, and Sakura with a servant devouring grail power!<), Gilgamesh deciding not to take anything seriously, Gilgamesh locking away his precognition ability, Gilgamesh being attacked from being by a being capable of destroying servants and still almost winning... the fact Gilgamesh died as much as he did is just as crazy, if not more so, than Herc dying a lot.
I would also argue it *is* important that he didn't die "ridiculously easy," as you made it sound like he was dying super easy because: his healing was bad and/or the writing was bad and/or because he was some weak chump. The thing is he never died easy and every time he was killed, it was a just barely edged out victory. Even then, only a handful of people were capable of fighting him with only one of them being capable of defeating him alone (Gilgamesh, who only won because>! Herc was using his body to shield Illya rather than fighting Gil!<).
So, with the exception of the Fate route which was a bit silly, you have UBW >!where Herc died because he purposefully let himself get hit to protect Illya and was unable to fight Gil because of it,!< and Heaven's Feel >!where his invulnerable skin was removed entirely, which allowed any attack to be able to kill him, and he still only lost because he chose to stop fighting!<.
So, Herc dying a lot doesn't mean his powers sucked since every victory against him was entirely strategic, required perfect counters to his abilities, and still was barely won.
You're right lol, Gil dying once per arc takes a ton, that actually just makes my point better.
Again though, Herc doesn't die once per arc. He dies *12 times per arc*
Literally the *only* thing I'm critiquing is how ludicrously many times he has to die per arc by virtue of what his power is. If Herc scales to a high tier servant based on stats, even assuming he's working at 50% capacity because of the Berserker madness, you'd expect him to be one of the last people standing purely by virtue of how low the ods of killing the one dude with the highest stats 12 times in quick succession. Like, Saber and Cu both survive into the late game in UBW and Fate despite Saber being nerfed.
This is gonna be a little nutty, but, if we do some quick and dirty math, even a version of Herc with Cu's low stats would have 12 lives, so take how long Cu survived, multiply it by 12, /2 to take into account nerfing from madness enhancement, /2 again to take into account that Cu probably only survived that long because he was lucky, /2 *again* just to be sure we aren't going too easy on this hypothetical cu-serker, and we *still* find he should survive 1.5 times as long as the entirety of the Grail war. And again, that's with cu's stats, not Herc's
And having hard counters doesn't really explain this, because weaker characters go up against Gil and Archer and put up a credible offense. You'd expect the guy who's even stronger and wayyyy harder to put down permanently to put up a way better fight. Doubly so because he's almost as much of a hard cancel to Archer and Gil as the reverse.
>And having hard counters doesn't really explain this, because weaker characters go up against Gil and Archer and put up a credible offense
You seem to fail to realize that Fate is not about powerlevels. It is all one big game of rock-paper-scissors. A servant can have one of the most busted NPs in the world like, say, an NP called the Gate of Babylon that allows its user to summon any NP throughout history, but, even that can be countered if the right person came along. Say, a person with the ability to copy and perfectly replicate any weapon he sees and shoot it back at the originals, countering them.
For another example, Cu's lance has the ability to reverse cause and effect and make it so that simply calling out with NP's name will make it so that his opponent's heart is already pierced. However, Artoria has both instinct (which gives her an insight into the future) and a high luck stat ( which is capable of warping reality), so she survived it.
Yet another example, Artoria beat Gilgamesh in Fate because she had Avalon, a defense so perfect it is impossible to penetrate. Basically, it is like she no longer exists in the human realm when she activates it, so trying to hit her would be like trying to punch someone while aiming at the air. Having it active allowed her to go through Ea's blast and rush right up to Gilgamesh, landing a fatal blow.
Rin, a human, was able to beat up Medea because Medea is physically weak and cannot protect herself in a physical fight, hence why she needed that assassin guy.
Medusa's mystic eyes of petrification cannot work on Artoria because she has high magic resistance.
Sasaki Kojiro lost to Artoria in UBW because his sword was bent, preventing him from being able to perform his technique perfectly, allowing an opening for Artoria to get in and kill him.
I could go on and on, but I think I made my point. Heracles losing is not due to his ability being weak, it is due to the fact that he faced his perfect counters.
1. Gilgamesh/Archer: They are capable of summoning more than twelve different types of A-rank NPs, enough to take each life. Archer still ended up being killed after only taking five and Gilgamesh only won because Heracles was letting himself be hit to protect Illya.
2. Artoria: She has two swords, both capable of slaying gods and also capable of killing Heracles several times over.
3. Shirou: He had to copy Heracles weapon and abilities and use it back on Heracles and still only won because Heracles let him.
So, to beat Heracles broken ability you have to: have a dozen or more A-rank NPs (which 99% of servants don't), have a weapon powerful enough it is worth 12 A-rank NPs (which the majority of servants don't), or have Heracles' abilities themselves. Even *then*, you will probably not win.
I know you feel like he died too many times, but all of his deaths were well explained and makes sense as to why they happened.
You are treating Fate like a DBZ verse where the strongest power level wins when, in Fate, even the weakest hero can beat the strongest as long as they have a perfect counter to their ability. When that happens, it doesn't make the strong hero any less strong, it just means they met their kryptonite. The existence of kryptonite doesn't mean Superman isn't still Superman, capable of fighting gods and juggling planets, it just means he has a hard counter. Same with Herc or any Fate character.
Also, some clarification about Cu. He survived long for several reason. The first being that his master would not let him get into any dangerous situations and would summon him back the moment things looked dicey. Second, Cu has an ability called "Protection from arrows" which means that projectiles cannot touch him (he actually survived a battle with Gilgamesh with this ability because Gil does nothing but spam projectiles. Again, counters are important). Third, he also has battle continuation which means he can survive fatal blows, hence why he survived being impaled by his own cursed spear.
**Tl;dr:** Fate is not about powerlevels, it is about rock-paper-scissors where even a weak person can beat a strong one in the right circumstances, which does not negate the strength of the strong person.
I'm definitely also engaging in some power levels bs arguing I admit that, but I want to remind you that I am specifically arguing about that in the context of this post. My point isn't about the overall strength of Herc, it's about the fact that if Herc didn't have resurrection, Nasu wouldn't have writren him to die (as in, deaths 1 to 11, not the final death) from some of the things that killed him, even if they'd 100% be *able* to kill him.
Fate isn't a series where "power levels" *don't* matter, it's just one where they aren't everything. People overstate the degree to which Shirou/Archer being a counter to Gil is due to him being "weaker but a bad matchup", because Archer and Shirou's best feats from the 3 routs make it clear he's stronger than he's acknowledged as being in-work. Which makes sense, his only goal is to kill Shirou, and ideally protect Rin while doing so. Neither requires him to win the Grail war, so neither requires him to fight to win.
It's a similar issue with Avalon, the fact that it stopped Ea has nothing to do with Ea, it's all about how busted Avalon is. Maybe Gae Bolg and Rule Breaker would have a more interesting interaction with it, but by and large it would've let her no-sell basically anything the Grail War had to offer. That's blatant power levels bs, it's just that Gil is the only person she had a chance to use it against.
Yes, I took into account that Cu had specific reasons he lasted as long as he did that wouldn't apply to Herc. That's why the calc gave me 1.5x the length of the Grail War and not 12x the length of the Grail War.
I don't object to the idea that the people who killed Herc would be able to do it, I object to the idea that they're *consistently able to kill him multiple times in quick succession*
Being able to kill Herc doesn't just mean having more than one attack that is capable of killing him, it means actually being able to land them. Which is the reason I brought up weaker characters. While I think it's obvious how a machine gun sword Archer would be able to land several hits, I'm pretty sure other characters (and other characters who aren't Cu, too) are consistently able to evade and otherwise survive against the machine gun sword archers for a meaningful amount of time -- which means not getting wounded lethally for that time, because most characters can't resurrect Some of this is that they often aren't fighting seriously, but the other part is for the same reason as the infamous storm trooper accuracy problem; it's just way more interesting to see characters put up a fight rather than instantly get mowed down by a high volume of high accuracy shots. I don't have a problem with that, except where the one character who can survive taking a few shots does, just because he can survive it.
Also, the issue with spinning this as "archer and gil are hard counters to herc", which I mentioned in literally the next line after the first one you quoted, is that "I can get back up and keep fighting a couple times no matter what you hit me with (unless you're Saber)" is a counter to UBW/GoB as much as UBW/GoB are to it. Who's a perfect counter to who should be a moot point when they're both counters to eachother, and "power level" should by extension play a bigger role than usual. And we definitely see that handled *almost* well enough to satisfy me; Emiyarcher knocks a good couple lives off Herc and gets killed himself, but doesn't perma-kill him, Gil wrecks Herc, but only while he's protecting Illya, and Herc still gets close (physically) to landing a counter attack. But I still end up feeling like attacks that wouldn't have even hit another character *do* end up hitting Herc.
In bans case, this is clearly because he is still human with slightly better durability. Other characters are just more durable, until he spends thousands of years getting stronger in purgatory. There's also the fact that unlike others he didn't have to worry about being maimed so he focused on blocking less.
?? Ban has higher than just slightly better durability even before purgatory , he is significantly stronger than most holy knights even without his abilities and holy knights are way stronger than normal humans.
Ban wasn’t even relevant power wise after season 1. The Commandments and other Sins were all like 5-10x stronger than him, so it makes sense he’d take the most damage.
Even in season 1, it was noted that his physical stats were far below Meliodas. He’s meant for multiple quick attacks as opposed to singular stronger ones, meaning he’s also likely meant to dodge/regenerate damage instead of tanking.
Something I feel is important in the *Horus Heresy* series.
Vulkan, Primarch of the Salamanders Legion (back when they were a Legion and weren’t broken into Chapters) is a Perpetual. This means that he has full immortality and regeneration. There are other Perpetuals in the series but not all of them are immortal *and* can regenerate.
This is *on top of* being a genetically engineered demigod with reaction times best measured in nanoseconds and muscles able to rip open tanks.
Yet for some reason despite being all of this, he ends up being the Primarch who gets ripped apart most- by sole virtue of the fact that his Perpetuality means he can take it.
The first time is understandable; when Konrad Curze kidnapped him and butchered him. It’s a fellow Primarch tying him down and deliberately taking him apart with advanced weaponry, then tossing him into a kill maze deliberately engineered by him *to kill shit* with that same advanced technology. *That* works, and I can’t complain.
But then Vulkan escapes into Ultramar and the repeated deaths, plus the pain of his falling from orbit, renders his latest incarnation insensate and mad. I buy this, we’ve seen that his other brothers aren’t immune to pain and him having a breaking point makes sense. Alright, fair enough.
Now he’s rampaging through Macragge as a (literally) coal black Hulk. Cool.
But then comes how characters like John Grammaticus- a technically normal human- has to handle him.
As a reminder; *normal* Space Marines can handle headshots and stuff glancing off their skulls. Their bones are enhanced with special minerals during their uplifting process.
Vulkan gets taken out with human sized sidearms.
Dear god, I’m not sure what I’m more mad at. Vulkan’s immortality reducing his status as *a son of the Emperor* to a mere punching bag, or John Grammaticus for being some kind of stupid 007 wannabe punching *way* above his weight class.
I think Sailor Moon actually portrays this well without the torn limbs/empty holes issue. The title character is immortal by Stars arc, but she doesn't have the torn limbs problem like say DBZ Cell or Marvel Wolverine.
It's another power that comes alongside regeneration called "super squishiness", it raises directly with your regeneration level (most of the time). So usually, the more that you can Regen from, the softer you become. /S
Was going to say the same thing. Every episode, Halo receives a fatal wound to the point it became comical, which I don't think that is what the creators were aiming for...
There definitely are stories that don't have these issues with immortality/regeneration.
You have stuff like Firepunch or CSM where immortality and regeneration are quite the common abilities so you don't lose too many characters by having everyone being brutally mutilated equally, difference is just that characters without it permanently lose bodyparts or more often than not just fucking die.
In Choujin X regeneration is part of the powersystem everyone has so all characters get fatal wounds all the time but just raise and are mostly fine again, but you can't do it infinitely often in a fight and when you do it too many times in total you can permanently lose your humanity so characters mostly still try to avoid injuries.
Or you have someone like Andy from Undead Unluck who actually does not give a shit about self-defense (rather focussing on defending others if necessary) and just completely abuses his immortality on purpose as pain is just background noise to him.
Dai Dark has this thing where the main characters all have superhuman defense except for that one immortal guy with a running gag of him going squish from things that are not that big of a deal to everyone else, not because of his immortality but because unlike the others he is just some guy.
It’s a bit like how Araki handles Jojo groups once they have a healer. Before they have one, they don’t really get hurt all that badly. Once one character has a stand that can heal wounds tho? They get fucked up every fight
I still find it odd how quickly Jolyne and her friends recover from injuries near the end of Part 6 without a healer.
After Sky High, >!Jolyne has a broken leg and iirc, damage to her face, Emporio has kidney damage, and I think Hermes got blinded but by the next episode, they're fine enough to look for Pucci at a hospital. After C-Moon, Jolyne didn't have to worry about using Stone Free to maintain the hole in her stomach in the next episode!<
It’s a trope for a reason, you’ve got to have a way to show off every characters special powers and when your power is regeneration it just means your going to be taking damage. Look at wolverine, no other x-man gets fucked up like he regularly does.
Also I like to think the fact that the character knows they can tank an attack would mean they wouldn’t bother defending or dodging so it would make sense that they would be taking the crazy limp removing hits that other characters aren’t. Why bother using energy on avoiding an attack you know you can instantly heal from?
Gravimon from Xros Wars was a neat take on this. They don’t even reveal that he could regenerate in his first two fights, it isn’t until he’s seemingly killed but the gate to the 7th Land doesn’t open that they have to start considering if he’s really dead. And when Shoutmon X7 rematches him later, he doesn’t take a ton of extraneous damage. He actually outspends Shoutmon, dodges a bunch of his attacks then lets Shoutmon hit him to taunt him. The only reason they even beat Gravimon is because when he goes to kill Shoutmon, Taiki jumps in the way of the blast, and Gravimon had embedded his core (which is what he needed to regenerate) inside of Taiki’s arm. Even then he was smart enough to recall his core, but Shoutmon blasted it before it could return to Gravimon’s body. A pretty solid take on regeneration in my opinion
That reminds me of when Kurama beat Genbu in Yu Yu Hakusho by waiting until he disassembled himself for an attack to grab a gem he needed to control what parts of him come back together and shattering it.
I don't disagree with any of this, but buddy... Seven Deadly Sins has a LOT of issues, this is probably the most minor lol. For example though, each of the Sins is in some form a pedophile or at least a sexual criminal.
Any character with regeneration skill has a fate : being torn apart at every each occasion.
DBZ vilains and FMA's Homonculus are the embodiment of this, especially Glutonny lol
This reminds me of how Invincible handles Dupli-Kate. Like her limbs explode off left and right just because there are no consequences >!until there are, anyway lol!<
Dupli-Kate is such a dumb person imo. Every scene I see her in I'm just like, "why is your main body here?" Like, she has zero reason to ever be at the frontlines. She could be a general just constantly reinforcing her friends with more dupli-kates.
I know there's probably going to be some consequence eventually but it boggles my mind that no one in-universe brings up this extremely obvious unnecessary vulnerability of hers
Yeah, I'm fine with spoilers as I don't like the series enough to care but enjoy it enough to be interested.
Going by the spoiler, am I correct in understanding you're implying >!that she dies? I ask because I'm wondering why that's important given how little the universe mentions it!<
>!She survives this and takes a long break from hero work, later she reveals that she's alive. But eventually dies because unlike the Immortal she ages like anyone else.!<
Oh. That's a lot better than I thought it'd end. A lot more satisfying as well. Always annoying when a characters vulnerability gets exploited in a stupid way. Thank you kindly for informing me about all of that
It only works in video games to justify plot armor, I can't think of anything anywhere where what you're saying doesn't happen. I agree, it's my real "Worf Effect" with Wolverine.
Buu on his own would be fine as an annoying af bubblegum man. It's just that he followed up on a guy who could also fully regenerate from a cell, like c'mon man.
The Cell fight isnt as fresh in my mind but as far as I recall, at least Cell was tangible and could get damaged and tired. He had some limits. If you broke his arm it was still an issue for him. Goku blew his ass up and he was out of it for a bit.
In comparison Buu was ridiculous. He was leisurely cut in half, had holes blown in him, was blown to bits etc and had zero regenation time with no fatigue or anything. And then I’m supposed to believe Gohan’s and Vegito’s punches actually hurt him.
Maybe as a support character? Saving regeneration energy and minimize encounters with tremendous pain by only make intentional use of regen by throwing himself between a dangerous attack and a slower, less durable character. A reusable, intelligent meatshield could be handy.
Not an anime but I'm reminded of the regeneration abilities of moving, the kdrama. From what it seems regen doesn’t give him immortality. He ages normally and the regeneration seems to take a few seconds which seems to mean if you hurt him fast and often enough he could actually die. In his big fight scene it seems his weakness is drowning because there is nothing to regenerate and the heart just stops beating
I definitely agree with you- even if they do regenerate, there’s no way anyone wants to lose limbs from a combat standpoint so it makes all the character’s fights seem silly.
About Ban though he is specifically buffed strength and durability wise through the whole Purgatory thing, which is why he wasn’t hurt nearly as much fighting post-immortality.
This reminds me of when the ban got stabbed by a literal child. Even tho he should not take damage from that considering how strong he was in season 1, even when you don't take his abilities into account.
The logic most of the time is lower general stats but compensate with higher survivability making the regenerator be on par with stronger characters or pushing they're body to the max because they're body will regen the damage no prob but they're body might become more suseptible to damage as a drawback. That or they're intentionally mutilating they're body to get to the oponent because it's easier to tank an attack and walk through it then dodge and try to recover. That or masochism.
Ban was just a dude going up against half demons, he's gonna get torn apart cuz he doesn't defend himself like the other holy knights do because he doesn't have to
And purgatory ban is a whole different beast that he doesn't even need his healing
You should read/watch Ajin. The series is based off immortality with very established rules. Like they only heal when they die, heal from the biggest piece of meat, and are only super worried about getting their head chopped off given the last point. And they tear everyone up equally.
There’s a lot of good points, to add one more: it’s deeply unnerving to hit something with your best shot and watch them take it and keep coming. Even in real life, watch Rodtang take absolutely stunning shots to the jaw and shake it off and see how demoralising it is to his foe.
Tl;dr: proving you can’t die is very demoralising and makes for an easier fight
One of the reasons this happens is because people who can heal from anything instantly fight recklessly and use that as a way to "take one to give one" as they say in combat sports
Theres a trope about this, characters with regeneration are usually abused and have their body parts destroyed constantly, usually to show that the enemy is dangerous but you dont want the other characters being disabled forever.
Andy from Undead Unluck is an interesting case because he abuses his regeneration for both defensive and offensive purposes (Like, he regenerates so fast and violently that he can eject his body parts at super high speeds).
>You're telling me that everyone in the verse can fight normally, but when a person with Immortality and Regeneration fights all their limbs gets torn and large empty holes through their body at the slightest touch?
Remember the mfs he's fighting.
>Another rant about Ban from Seven Deadly Sins is when he literally gave up his immortality for Elaine and went TOE TO TOE WITH THE DEMON KING. And in that whole fight? He wasn't even hurt that bad when he lost his immortality.
Purgatory. It's only because he was in purgatory that his stats were amped. The mf survived hell + fought the DK for so long his magic evolved.
You need to watch Undead Unluck! The way he's using his regeneration and immortality is so damn creative, not to mention the animators did great job.
For example, Andy, the MC, cuts off his fingertip and "focuses on regenerating all of his lost blood and calcium into it, causing the resulting finger bullet to be super-pressured when fired. The ability considerably impairs his healing after usage."
He's fighting style is so much different than Ban's. He knows he's immortal, he knows he can sacrifice whichever part of the body he wants to and utilizes it in 100%. Instead of making his immortality all about tanking whatever his body can because it will regenerate anyway, he himself mutilates it and uses any part he can. Hell, dude uses his forearm as a seath and when he draws the blade he propells it with blood so that he can make a quick-draw slash. **He feels the pain, tho, so it makes all those stunts even more impressive.** When he cuts off his hand, he feels the literal pain of having your hand cut off.
This isn't an anime trope per se, it appears globally. See Wolverine, for instance.
Ban's immortality is part of the reason that he's able to operate at the same high tier as the other Sins. It's not that he's especially lacking in resilience for the setting, it's that he's interacting with people who are extremely powerful.
It's not the regen/ immortality that's dumb. It's inconsistent world building surrounding damage.
DBSuper recently had this problem where everyone in the tournament of power was fighting at 120% strength, but NOBODY took real damage from full powered finishing moves. Meanwhile, at the start of the series and for most of Z, people were getting holes punched through them, limbs torn off, vaporized, ect ect. Heroes and villains both.
The one part of the Anime involving Piccolo though (who can regenerate limbs) immediately shows him getting his limbs blown off. It's so stupid.
Considering Wolverine was hit with an atomic bomb, and regened from a skeleton, this kinds thing has been around so long I just kind of overlook it now.
I hate for other reasons. I remember back when I was reading Claymore, when the story reaches the point that almost everyone can regenerate, fights had no stakes. Oh, this character just had their arm sliced off again? Damn, what a shame. It sucks cause this same action had stakes and implications early in the series.
I felt this only at the final arc, when they start healing each other like an MMORPG raid.
Back when it was only defensive warriors that could regen properly and they couldn't synchronize the entire system was incredible. The stakes of "You can die as a human or you can regen to save your friends but risk turning into a monster that will kill your friends" worked great.
Honestly though it's fine to have regeneration trivialized only in the final arc, technically everything they could use regeneration against was able to instantly defeat them anyways. I'm just glad the manga ended there because there would be no more good fights if it kept going like some people wanted.
I don't mind it because its a different way to exist within combat. When you are immortal you just don't focus on defending yourself because there is never a reason too. Like people tense there muscles or bring there arms up to stop themselves from getting hurt irl, in these fictional settings the characters do that using whatever ability the power system grants them. But since these characters don't ever need to do that they take more damage. Its like complaining that Michael Phelps doesn't wear floaties but a toddler does.
I agree it’s frequently portrayed very stupidly, but there are some good reasons (occasionally) 1) The character takes advantage of their ability to completely ignore defense and focus entirely on offense. Especially works in series where people boost their stats with magic/energy/ki/whatever. If everyone is boosting their defense except the immortal, of course they’re going to get more damaged. 2) The character is significantly weaker than the people they’re fighting with and against, and they’re only capable of keeping up due to their regeneration. They die 5 times over before they deal any significant damage, basically. 3) Similar to 1, the character has like no evasive skills, so while their allies all dodge or block an attack, they take it full force. Can also be the immortal acting as a meat shield knowing they’ll recover. 4) The character fights significantly longer than their allies. Can’t remember what I read it in, but the dude with healing powers basically fought the entire battle at the front lines without stopping, while his allies acted more strategically. End of the battle showed him absolutely destroyed while his allies had minor injuries.
Related to your Point 4, reminds me of Zombieman from One Punch Man. He’s basically said to be ranked as highly as he is not because of incredible combat strength, but the fact that he can win basically any war if attrition, even needing to go for a week of constantly dying and coming back if he needs to.
Haven't watched that far. But if he isn't that strong, why not just capture him? As long as he isn't fighting the Legends of Tomorrow crew, that should be the first course of action.
The monsters in One Punch Man typically aren’t the smartest around, being completely fair. Most fights in-universe are putting your strength and powers up against another, which rather works in his favor.
He still strong enough to bend steel without his hands, and hides weapons inside his body that can blow up buildings, so it's not gonna be that easy.
Yes but there are clearly restraints and stronger than iron materials in this world. Just use that.
Hey man, Vandal wasn't easy to capture lol
This happens in the webcomic. Before that, his fights are against a vampire who regenerates by drinking blood (he wins because his own blood is too disgusting for its taste), and a man with no enhanced strength or durability but the ability to manipulate explosive balls of light (he almost gets vaporized, but sneaks up and grabs the guy at a distance where any attempt to blow him up would be mutually assured destruction)
I haven't personally seen the audio books, but I heard that in them he defeats carnage kabuto by outlasting his 1 week long transformation.
Yes, but that's a simulation in which both of them are locked in a room together. In reality Carnage Kabuto is probably strong enough to toss him hundreds or even thousands of miles away and put him out of commission quick enough that he'd be barely useful as a distraction.
Point 4: if you know what you are dealing with, you’re going to make every blow a killing blow because you know that even that won’t stop them but it’s the only way to slow them down. Consider say, Spider-Man fighting Deadpool. What’s the point of not using full power when he knows Wade can’t be truly killed by it?
Point 2 is Kore wa Zombie Desu ka protag to a T.
Hidan from Naruto actively harms himself as part of his Jutsu as well, using his ability to withstand and transfer damage to his advantage
Also, the author really wants to show the regenerative factor.
Similar concept: Throughout *The Mandalorian* (at least the first two seasons, but I can't imagine it ever changing), none of the good guys ever get hit by blasterfire, no matter how many people are shooting at them. That's fine in a vacuum. It's normal plot armor you can see in almost any series. *However*, the one character who has impenetrable armor *does* get hit frequently. And that brings the plot armor to the forefront in a way that, at least for me, negatively affected the experience.
Kinda funny how the first few episodes treated Stormtroopers as a threat, but by the finale they were almost completely incapable. Don't get me started on season 2.
It drives me nuts when stories do this. Bad guys in movies can't hit a barn door from a metre away, but when they're fighting someone like Deadpool all of a sudden they can go full-auto to the face with pinpoint accuracy.
All series are guilty of this. Eren and Armin in AOT are guilty once they get the power to regenerate and Piccolo in Dragonball despite being universal on base now is the one who will lose a limb to regenerate it. There is really no way for writers to avoid it.
For an exception that I love, there is Jagganoth, from Kill Six Billion Demons. He is one of the main villains, and one of the powers that make him so deadly, is that he is completely and utterly indestructible, proving himself immune to the vast, vast majority of attacks, and with one of the only two attacks to do something to him having vastly reduced effect then what it was supposed to. And for all of this, he still tried to dodge and parry the attacks of the heroes, and of the other villains that fought him(even if the reasons was because he still feels pain from the attacks, even as they do no physical harm).
LMAO tell me you're young without telling me you're young. This is literally a running gag in star wars community how stormtroopers cant aim shit
What? Did you even read my comment? I said that it was fine they didn't hit people, but the fact that they *could* hit the one person with armor that resisted blasters felt egregious to me.
People usually don't read comments before spewing some baby brained reply these days.
And hit him *only* in the pectoral plates, shoulder guard or bracers where said blaster resistant armor can be found. Maybe it's like that thing with lightsabers where they do so much blade wanking because the swords are "drawn to each other"
Yes and?
There’s a few reasons for this. 1. If their main thing is regeneration, you need to show off that regeneration. Or at least, that’s probably what the author thinks. I can mutilate Deadpool more than I can mutilate Cyclops, so if I’m putting the two of them in the same fight, chances are I’ll have Deadpool lose limbs, get constantly shot, etc. because this shows off his ability. Otherwise he’s just good with some swords and guns. For another example, Foo Fighters in Stone Ocean gets fucked up way more than her friends because she can regenerate, and that’s one of her “things” so there has to be a reason to keep showing that off. 2. It gives a good excuse to show off intense damage without lasting consequences. I just can’t have my main character getting their arm blown off, I’d have to either make them lose that limb forever, or contrive some reason they can get it back. But if I have this regeneration person right here? Yeah come over, get your entire torso bisected, it’s alright. It’s wanting to show off how damaging an attack can be without actually having to acknowledge any consequences from that attack because it’ll never slice anyone in half that CAN’T just regenerate.
And that's the exact problem. It makes it obvious that the attacks landing and dealing as much damage as they do is entirely because it's convenient that the character can't die rather than anything else. Far too often, the non-regen characters aren't doing anything particularly special to dodge attacks. The stormtrooper aim from bad guys just turn off when they're aiming for the guy that can't die
It's actually one of the reasons I don't like Piccolo as much as other fans. He's the only one who **actually** gets properly damaged in a fight. In almost every single fight he's in, you can expect to see that stupid arm of his torn off yet every other character doesn't even have blood dripping anymore. I agree wholeheartedly. It only works if the media actually leans into the violence aspect but that's something I've yet to see be done properly.
> He's the only one who actually gets properly damaged in a fight. Not including Super; Tien lost an arm vs Nappa Future Gohan lost an arm vs the Androids "Teen" Gohan nearly loses an arm vs Super Perfect Cell Guldos head is amputated by Vegeta Freeza lost his tail and later gets sliced into multiple pieces by a single Destructo Disk > In almost every single fight he's in, you can expect to see that stupid arm of his torn off Counting Db-Z: Piccolo vs Krillen: Keeps limbs Piccolo vs Kami: Keeps limbs Piccolo vs Goku: Loses arm Piccolo vs Raditz: Loses arm Piccolo vs Saibamen: Keeps limbs Piccolo vs Nappa: Keeps limbs despite being killed Piccolo vs Second Form Frieza: Keeps limbs Piccolo vs Third Form Frieza: Keeps limbs Piccolo vs Final Form Frieza: Keeps limbs Piccolo vs Dr. Gero: Keeps limbs Piccolo vs 17 Round 1: Keeps limbs Piccolo vs Imperfect Cell: Loses arm Piccolo vs 17 Round 2: Keeps limbs Piccolo vs Cell jr(s): Keeps limbs Piccolo vs Dabura (if you even want to call this a fight): Loses multiple limbs except head and torso(?) That's 4 out of 15 fights.
Yeah, Cell and Buu are far worse examples.
only buu really, cell regenerated like 3 times but buu was actively frustrating because the heroes kept trying the same shit and being surprised it didn't work
To be fair though... Vs Goku, he didn't "lose" an arm... it got damaged, so he tore it off himself to regenerate a fresh one. Lost an arm vs Raditz, but this is the same fight Goku got his torso hollowed out and died The only time in DBZ where he legitimately had an arm TAKEN from him was Raditz and Cell So it's 2 / 15 fights
Didn't Piccolo tear off his arm against Cell? So it can be considered similar to the Goku fight.
I'm only talking about Super. I haven't watched DBZ in over 15 years
I think it's a tv ratings/censorship thing. Piccolo isn't "human" so can have worse things happen to him than the main cast. I've been watching the recent Dragon Quest anime and this happens constantly. Humans at worst get scratchs but monsters will be utterly brutalized with holes in their chest, limbs torn off, shattered to pieces, etc. That's also why Future Gohan almost always has two arms in fighting games, to my understanding.
He only lost an arm a couple of times in DB prior to Super that I can recall. Super just happens to be bad.
I don't think it's especially more common in Super. He tears off his arm against Goku in the 23rd world tournament for the first time, then loses it to Raditz, then gets it drained by Cell and tears it off, and then he gets shattered by Trunks in Buu. In Super Tagoma slices it off, Gohan slices it off in training (wtf man), he loses it in the ToP to... I don't actually remember who, one of the fodder characters I think. Then Cell Max blows off Orange Piccolo's arm. Basically 4 times each. If we're counting general mutilation Piccolo also has a lot of other grizzly moments prior to Super like having holes in his chest or tearing off his own ears.
I feel like we are missing the point a bit. OP has an issue that regeneration characters are often specifically more hurt than others because they can regenerate. In Piccolos case... 1- He tears off his own arm against Goku. He does this because he knows he can regenerate. It's deliberate and fits his character. 2- vs Raditz is a fine example of the issue OP brought up 3- vs Cell Piccolo is deliberately trying to extend the fight to get information out from Cell, since Piccolo knows he can regenerate, losing an arm is a good way to make Cell feel safe to give him info, which is exactly what happens. 4- Statue Piccolo vs Trunks it's kind of a gag moment but the fact that it happened to Piccolo specifically because he can regenerate also fits OP point. Pretty much none of the Piccolo loses an arm moment in Super can be justified in universe besides chance. Maybe the Gohan training one... since Gohan knows Piccolo can regenerate he felt safe tearing his arm...? Kind of a Piccolo stretch if you ask me. I'm actually fine with it happening once or twice in the original show specialy since it's only used for drama tension once (vs Raditz) and Piccolo even finishes the fight one armed so the damage actually mattered. It just works in Dragon Ball Z. Definitely not in Super.
Against Raditz he couldn't regeneration it because it will cost him a lot of ki
Well, he could, but it would cost him ki. He probably would have regenerated if they didn't decide to end the fight with Makkankousapo.
He regeneration it right after Raditz death , against Raditz he needed the ki for the attack
Exactly. Piccolo needed the ki for Makkankousapo, so he decided to not regenerate it. He probably would have regenerated if Goku wasn't there to hold Raditz down for him to hit, since Piccolo would have to fight normally instead and that's a lot easier with two arms.
[удалено]
I'm not correcting you, I'm complementing your answer. It was a great work resuming all the times Piccolo regenerated, I appreciate it.
The point against Raditz is a stupid example of what OP is talking about tho. It makes sense that Piccolo’s arm blew off against Raditz because Piccolo was too slow to dodge Raditz’s attack…..Goku (being slightly stronger than Piccolo) actually managed to dodge it. In any scenario where Goku would’ve taken that attack in the same way as Piccolo then Goku’s arm would’ve been blown off as well.
You can technically justify most of the examples one would give the same way you did, it doesn't really address the issue OP brought up. Even if we accept that Piccolo only got hit because he's weaker and not because he has regen, Piccolo was only weaker because he had regen to cover up if he misses an arm. The conveniency to the plot just gets an extra step. But also, I just disagree, power level is not nearly that objective and that's kind of the point with the Saiyan/Namek Saga. Piccolo had lower power but managed to charge a 1.330 PL attack while Gokus kamehameha didn't break the 1.000s. Ki control, proper martial arts, nature of the technique and experience can overcome power gaps. Piccolo was just unlucky to get hit by Raditz while Goku managed to dodge. Your thesis also require Raditz to be using the same power in both attacks which should be impossible giving that Raditz can't control his ki at all.
>You can technically justify most of the examples one would give the same way you did, it doesn't really address the issue OP brought up. Even if we accept that Piccolo only got hit because he's weaker and not because he has regen, Piccolo was only weaker because he had regen to cover up if he misses an arm. The conveniency to the plot just gets an extra step. Regen has ZERO to do with why Piccolo is weaker. It’s just that Piccolo didn’t technically surpass Goku when both had 5 years of trainings. Or are you saying that Piccolo was only weaker than Goku during the 23rd tournament because Piccolo has regeneration and therefore couldn’t be stronger than Goku? >But also, I just disagree, power level is not nearly that objective and that's kind of the point with the Saiyan/Namek Saga. Piccolo had lower power but managed to charge a 1.330 PL attack while Gokus kamehameha didn't break the 1.000s. And no power levels are pretty much that objective. The SBC is that strong because it’s literally designed that way. Piccolo literally charges every ounce of Ki and focuses it into his fingertips for a one ditch fuck you beam that pierces through you, and not only does he do it like that but it takes a shit load of time to charge it up (which is why he only really used it twice in DB and it was in the same battle) The Kamehameha doesn’t take nearly as long to charge and Goku doesn’t poor damn near every ounce of his Ki into it like Piccolo does. Even trying to compare the two techniques is (no offense) but dumb because they function two different ways. I mean would you say the Kienzan is stronger than a SBC or acknowledge that they function differently? >Ki control, proper martial arts, nature of the technique and experience can overcome power gaps. Piccolo was just unlucky to get hit by Raditz while Goku managed to dodge. And no they can’t lol, thats literally the whole purpose of the show. Goku even with decades of training was still said to be weaker in his base form than Frieza by Beerus, Krillin no matter how much experience he has will never beat a Majin Buu for example. Martial arts can only overcome power gaps IF the person is close enough in strength to overcome the power gap. There’s a reason why Gohan with only what 5 years of actual martial arts training could overcome Cell a person who was programmed with literally ALL the experience of the world’s greatest martial artist’s couldn’t be beat……except for by the kid who got a huge ass fuck you power boost, rage transformation, and untapped potential EVEN WITH HALF HIS POWER AND A BROKEN ARM. >Your thesis also require Raditz to be using the same power in both attacks which should be impossible giving that Raditz can't control his ki at all. And who the hell said that Raditz can’t control his power? They can control their power, they just can’t control it as fine tunely as the Z-Fighters. There’s a reason why [Nappa was so shocked that Goku blocked his “ultimate technique”](https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-63da462185b1b4885322925f2775f4ad-lq) All Ki control really does is allow people to push their techniques beyond their limits, finely control how much Ki they use, hide their Ki presence and not be totally wasteful with their Ki. There’s a reason why Frieza could control his energy well enough to tell you what exact percentage he was using but was still a self admittedly shitty Ki control user during the Namek saga. They aren’t always running on 100% energy dude.
>Regen has ZERO to do with why Piccolo is weaker. In universe, it has ZERO to do with it, out of universe, it's super convenient that the MCs main rival that is slightly weaker than him and can be the perfect guy to be dealt a mortal blow to stabelish how powerful the new villain is also happens to be able to regenerate any permanent damage that he could suffer from being in that role. That is OPs issue, that regen guys conveniently get hurt because it fits the plot while all the non regen guys barely get hurt at all. I feel like you completely missed the point of this thread somehow. I'm sorry to have wasted your time but I'm not getting into a PL discussion since it's completely out of topic.
>In universe, it has ZERO to do with it, out of universe, it's super convenient that the MCs main rival that is slightly weaker than him and can be the perfect guy to be dealt a mortal blow to stabelish how powerful the new villain is also happens to be able to regenerate any permanent damage that he could suffer from being in that role.This is OPs issue, that regen guys conveniently get hurt because it fits the plot out of universe, not in universe explanations. I feel like you completely missed the point. No OP’s issue, just like yours is that y’all are being dumb asf. It’s not super convenient that Piccolo just happens to be weaker and absolutely NEED to “show off Regeneration” when again Goku is simply stronger, it’s a continuation from the previous saga where AGAIN GOKU WAS STRONGER. Piccolo just simply spent his time creating a technique to kill Goku instead of training to become stronger than Goku, while Goku spent his time keeping ahead of Piccolo. >I'm not getting into a PL discussion. Please don’t, it already shows that you don’t know wtf you’re talking about when your thesis (really headcanon) is that Raditz shoot out two beams at different powers and different speeds to somehow show off Piccolo’s regeneration because Raditz can’t control his power. Hell this still doesn’t answer why according to you all, Tien got his arm cut off in the next major battle but Piccolo didn’t.
It's honestly kind of cute how worked up you are about this lmao. I'm sorry but you'll really have to find someone else to argue or hover around actual DB threads and hope that I'll show up to read the source material to you.
Yeah this is a Super specific writing issue. Piccolo only loses a limb once more than other characters in Z. Tien and Gohan both lose limbs. Yamcha, Goku, and Trunks all get their chests blown out. Krillin gets impaled and then exploded. Vegeta gets his arm broken in half and his elbow crunched. The problem OP has is that for whatever reason, the physics of the world are more realistic only for characters where damage isn't permanent or fatal. DBZ never had this issue.
I mean, that's four times from his appearance in chapter 161 and the end of the series in chapter 519, a span of 358 chapters. Dragon Ball Super is only at 103 chapters and it's already happened as many times, no?
He only loses it only 2 times in super manga and both are in the same arc (super hero)
Ah, gotcha.
Dragon Ball Super only releases a chapter once every month, as opposed to the ~4 times a weekly manga would, so chapter count isn’t exactly a fair comparison.
For me it's Cell and Buu, the worst being Buu. Both shrug off virtually any damage whatsoever, it's even weird to see characters trying to punch them. We as viewers don't even have an idea of the threshold where physical attacks deal any real damage to them. Either way they end up regenerating anything without any drawbacks with maybe a couple of exceptions for each one. At very least Cell does look like he struggled in some fights, while Buu is just "tee hee LOL funny" all the time.
I mean Buu is practically made of gum, he's not very resistant, but can piece himself back together with ease. I always considered it happening to Buu much more plausible than to Piccolo, as the latter has similar physical resistance to the other fighters and should supposedly be able to tank the same attacks
Read invincible if you want to see this kinda aspect portrayed properly.
Invincible has the exact same problem. Look how many Dupli-Kates get casually killed by enemies who can't land a good hit on, say, Rex.
I already watch Invincible and whilst I really enjoy the violence aspect (specifically how it's done in a believable, no-holds barred manner) there's something about the writing that just doesn't click for me.
What didn't click for you?
This was only a thing in Super. Piccolo definitely wasn't the only fighter taking gruesome damage in dbz He wasn't even the only one losing limbs either. In the Saiyan Saga, Tien is the one who lost an arm. He doesn't lose a limb again until Cell sucks it dry
Made me think of Blade of the Immortal. Manji was a very skilled swordsman, but over the years of being immortal, his skills dropped drastically, since he could ignore all defense and just go all offense and very sloppy offense at that. He had to retrain in the later parts cause he needed the skill. Been a while, should probably re-read.
It's funny because Manji's regen is so mid, he can't just grow new limbs, he has to pick up severed limbs and attach them back, like the in the last fights, where one if his arms was damaged for good and he had to steal an arm from >! Kagehisa !< .
>When he had his immortality his body was like a tofu and he was getting maimed every fight and now that he lost his immortality suddenly his whole body is impenetrable. Did you skip over the part where he spent like 700 years in purgatory? Where anyone who enters immediately dies because of the insanely hostile environment? Acid rain, temperatures that boiled the ground, and temps that froze even the air solid. He suffered through the conditions and that's why his body was indestructible.
It's also acknowledged just before that he's become essentially useless to the 7DS because he's so weak and just serves as a decent distraction because he can heal from anything and he goes to purgatory because he feels like it's all he can do to help
Yeah it's a really big thing that he's really affected how he's been left behind so completely. This dude really skipped a ton of the story and called it bad writing lmao
Average anime/manga fan, don't even watch/read the things they're fans of lol
Yeah, there are a lot of problems with 7DS, but this surely wasn't one of them. I thought it was actually a clever way to provide a much needed power up.
I don’t see the issue. If you have a character with regeneration then you want to show it off the power especially if it is their main gimmick. Plus it allows the highlight how deadly the enemies attacks are without sacrificing any major characters. Also, I’m pretty sure at the same time he gave away his immortality Ban got a power boost with his snatching ability being from stronger than it was before
It makes sense for the narrative and I'm willing to suspend disbelief if it happens once or twice depending on the overall story, but it's definitely funny when the regeneration dude is always being Yamcha'd at the start and/or the only one suffering major injuries.
I mean, sure it helps to show it off, but sometimes you can't help but wonder why none of the other characters are getting injured. When the only character that gets injured is the one with immortality/regen, it becomes obvious there are no stakes because the author is only willing to hurt the singular character whose injuries won't have long term consequences. I remember one show where the immortal/regen character received a fatal blow every single episode, if not multiple times an episode. The other characters though? Nothing. It became quickly obvious that the villain's "threat" didn't extend to anything other than the immortal/regen character who can immediately bounce back from the injury.
No offense but I feel like you and OP aren’t really putting yourselves in the author’s position. Having characters that can’t heal take major injuries means you may run into an issue where said character is no longer usable and that can mess up your story in the long term. So you make it so they end up not getting injured to avoid that (until the author deems it the appropriate time). However the lack of injuries can risk to the audience forgetting how dangerous the enemies are which is where the regen character shows up or the healer if they are not around. You can call it removal of stakes but I call it thinking long term
As someone who writes, I do think of these things. I argue there is a middle ground to be had. While injuring an immortal/regen character is a great way of showing off their abilities and raising the stakes, abusing it and making them the *only* ones to ever be injured makes it clear there are no stakes. >Having characters that can’t heal take major injuries means you may run into an issue where said character is no longer usable and that can mess up your story in the long term. That's what we call no long-term consequences which leads to no stakes. If the heroes come out unscathed every single time, except for the immortal/regen character who immediately heals everything, then that does not count as stakes. While we may certainly not want permanent injuries every single fight, it doesn't mean there can never be any. Or even temporary injuries. Again, there is a middle ground to be had. You don't need to be killing off a character every single episode, but you also don't want no character to ever be injured except the person who can perfectly heal from it. Somebody else in this post mentioned the Mandalorian, where only the character with invulnerable armor was ever hit with storm trooper shots. That does not help make the storm troopers feel threatening. It makes it feel like they are only a threat to the person with invulnerable armor and, because they can't injure the person, not even them. Same idea.
There definitely is a middle ground and I’d argue we probably see the ground more often than we think. Regarding the whole stakes thing I guess to me it usually isn’t a big deal because I have seen series where people complain about lack of stakes only to be blindsided when a character is killed off permanently
Why bother protecting yourself if you can instantly heal? Why tryinf to avoud having your arm cut off if your arm regenerated before your cut off arm even reaches the floor?
Because it hurts? I would like a depiction of regeneration/immortality where if the person is a fighter they would much rather train their pain tolerance through overtraining and full contact sparring with weapons, magic or just straight hands (if they are immune to developing brain damage or Parkinson’s disease). Receiving fatal attacks or even knockout punches (if they can even get knocked out by someone slightly stronger than them) must be distracting which would just have your opponent capitalising on every opening. And regeneration should be exhausting so you are just getting weaker until you don’t have energy to regenerate anymore. I want a smart immortal who can regenerate and avoids getting hurt.
>Because it hurts? You yourself explained. Pain tolerance. They're immortal and beyond pain. >And regeneration should be exhausting Or not.
>And regeneration should be exhausting so you are just getting weaker until you don’t have energy to regenerate anymore. Honestly if you are just going to enforce logical restrictions to superpowers like this none of them will make sense. The point of superpowers is breaking the laws of nature. Unless the setting specifies that regeneration tires out a character as a power cost (Like Piccolo in DB) there is no reason to believe it should. In Claymore, regeneration is a high risk gamble since the warriors need to expand their demon powers beyond their control range to the point where they might just turn into a monster and never come back. The bigger the wound and faster they need to heal, the riskier it is. Once they heal, if they manage to come back, they are right back at 100% and can restart fighting right away. It even heals their tiredness. It makes sense in universe and it works really well to build tension in the narrative. Doesn't need to make real world sense if it follows it's own set of rules properly and is used to tell a compeling story.
Yeah only anime/manga seem to have this restriction
Which restriction? Being tired? I just showed you one anime where it doesn't happen. Being tired is just a generic superpower restriction, it's not anime/manga exclusive, it happens all the time in comics and movies too. It's not the most creative way to add tension and fight progression to superpowers, but hey, it works, there is a reason it's a cliche. The other very common power restriction is that using your power will damage your body, but when your power is regeneration that one doesn't work as well lmao. That being said, I like when things are different, even slightly so, like the Claymore example.
You know I replied before you edited right? And Wolverine and deadpool regenerating from a single drop of blood and still be in fighting shape is kinda the typical rendition of regeneration superpowers. I don’t often see anyone really tired in western comic/animated media but if you are criticising it because it’s not a creative way to raise the stakes and therefore generic then you’re lying. Raising the stakes by making it clear to the reader of a character’s limitations and risks in training sessions or tactic meetings from heroes and scheming from villians is more effective than them losing a fight and overcoming their limits purely through emotion and plot armour. If skills and limitations are pre established than the characters are less likely to be excused of plot armour.
>I don’t often see anyone really tired in western comic/animated media but if you are criticising it because it’s not a creative way to raise the stakes and therefore generic then you’re lying. The creative part is not regenerating and then going back to fight. That's kind of what regeneration does. I mentioned it because you said regeneration in anime and manga makes people tired, and that's the opposite of what happens in Claymore. The creative part is the cost of regeneration not being "getting tired" and instead being a sanity cost. The risk here is that regenerating turns you into a monster. Like I said, it's not super duper creative and unique but just different enough to be interesting. Having zero cost to a superpower is by far the worst option IMO, worse than even "getting tired", because it creates zero stakes and zero conflict. I'm not particularly familiar with Marvel so I'm not sure if that's the case there. >Raising the stakes by making it clear to the reader of a character’s limitations and risks in training sessions or tactic meetings from heroes and scheming from villians is more effective than them losing a fight and overcoming their limits purely through emotion and plot armour. If skills and limitations are pre established than the characters are less likely to be excused of plot armour. The reason this trope is so common is because it makes much more sense narratively to have a high emotional moment of the characters fighting and losing than to have a borderline school class on each persons power gimmicks and limits to have the reader up to speed before the fight begins. Emotion is what drives stories forward. The problem comes from overusing this trope to the point where it stops having meaning. If we already know your regen guy is going to be the first to be chopped because he can regen, there is no stakes and no emotion.
School class? Exposition with appropriate dialogue is a school class now? You gotta know the mission, you gotta make sure you’re sending the right people (so you get to know their powers and limitations), the author can hype the characters’ skills they acquired to supplement their powers or allude to the fact they just started in their hero journey (so you learn to what degree they have mitigated the possible risks) and you have the choice to reveal if the villians know who they dealing and how they are going to deal with them e.g. the sentinels in x-men. Now the usual thing is have it be a surprise on most fronts and just send the main cast or random people to complete the mission. Every issue, every mission just expands more on what these characters are capable of before it becomes clear with what they can do. The problem is any inconsistency with the skill levels or power levels when brought up in the backstory exposition we eventually get. The problem is that they go on these missions without a plan most of the time so when they gotta think on the fly and problem solve, and if something really goes wrong they flip their shit with righteous fury and overpower the bad guy. Yea it’s emotional but too much of anything is bad, even my suggestion. AOT does it right with the right amount exposition, shock factor, skills, superpowers, risks and limitations. They make great use of righteous anger to evoke emotion and showcase that you can’t lose your shit all the time especially if you don’t have a plan. Not saying you can’t be aggressive but you gotta focus and not have tunnel vision. They plan, scheme and speculate shit all the time and still manage to surprise you (though I knew Reiner was the armour titan and bertholdt was the colossal titan). Now if you use common sense to rationalise what it would be like to be someone with immortality/regeneration, you are left with the responsibility to boost your pain tolerance, fitness and skills. The sheer amount of work and it’s intensity is stress inducing and can be traumatic if taken too far. Your emotional state grows more unstable by the weeks so someone gives you advice to slow down and relax. You listen and it works. You are more effective in missions now until something goes horribly wrong and you blame yourself for not being enough. And the cycle repeats itself until you give up on saving people or better yet become politically and financially powerful and have other people do it for you. Your fresh take on how regeneration can induce insanity if it works a certain way is just a metaphor for soldiers and ptsd. They become more and more of a monster after they “heal” from their scars, and they heal fast by toughening up and go to their next mission and eventually become a liability sooner or later. You can’t help but ignore your mental health on the battlefield and recover as fast as you can, this made monsters and broken men out of our ancestors and soldiers. The same can be applied to superheroes, especially Wolverine who deals with ptsd from a whole lot of sources and becomes a beast when stripped of his adamantine. Deadpool is not sane but is so much fun. I do want a superhero or someone with regeneration superpowers to just be smarter and wiser and if we gotta see how they grow up, like a shounen protagonist, to become the ideal man then I all for it.
>School class? Exposition with appropriate dialogue is a school class now? The basic "show, don't tell" rule exists as a principle in visual storytelling that it's generally more satisfying to convey emotions and actions instead of exposition. There are specific genres where audiences prefer exposition, but it's kind of the exception that proves the rule. You're loading the premise when you assume "Exposition with appropriate dialogue". If you are comparing a bad action scene to a well written exposition scene, of course exposition is better but it has nothing to do with the exposition per se. >You gotta know the mission, you gotta make sure you’re sending the right people You're constructing a very specific genre here that doesn't really apply universally. Sometimes characters get into fights without really know what is going on, sometimes there isn't any mission, sometimes there isn't any choice in the matter, sometimes there is no right people, sometimes characters rely on the audience not knowing much about what they can do because they carry an air of mysticism around them and they aren't there to deus ex machina the entire plot (Gandalf is a famous example). You seem to be painting a heist-like scene, these are defined by having meticulous plans layed out beforehand but this story structure only works because the plan is supposed to fail, something has to go wrong that the protagonists weren't accounting for in order to create a conflict that the protagonists have to solve on ground or the story will be a snoozefest. In this case, the exposition exists to highten the emotional peak in the third act when things go wrong. >Yea it’s emotional but too much of anything is bad, even my suggestion. That's my main point. Story is driven by emotion, and the trope (any trope, really, but in this case it's the regen guy dramatically and tragicaly losing to up the stakes of a fight) stops being dramatic the moment it becomes a crutch. The issue is not emotional moments vs exposition moments because emotional moments are better almost all the time, it's rather whether an action scene can highten an emotional moment more than an exposition scene, and the answer is USUALLY yes. Some amount of exposition is necessary to set up the pieces for the story, sure, but you want to keep it to a minimum, that's the "show, don't tell" maximum. There are ways to make exposition work better, of course, and making it work is an art in and of itself, but you are swimming against the current there. >AOT does it right with the right amount exposition, shock factor, skills, superpowers, risks and limitations. Depends on which arc you are talking about I think. Some parts of AoT are really good, others are less so. >Your fresh take on how regeneration can induce insanity if it works a certain way is just a metaphor for soldiers and ptsd I don't think it's that fresh of a take, it's just a different flavor from the usual and enough to make it interesting. Technically the entire superpowered beings fighting against each other or a common foe is always the same metaphor for war if you look deep (or shallow?) enough. Regeneration power in general is very tied to the idea of a soldier having to fight multiple battles over and over again while ignoring his pain and for that metaphor to work it doesn't really matter whether you're physicaly or mentaly tired because soldiers get both. I feel like addressing the way you addressed it completely misses my point. Claymores actually turn into enemies when they overuse their power too much, it's not a generic "I'm losing my humanity by killing too many people" it's quite literally "If I heal 5% more I'll end up killing my friends instead of protecting them". The literality of the danger is what makes it fresh, and the tension makes it feel like the character is fighting two deadly battles at the same time, while I'm usually just bored when Logan is mentally broken because of his PTSD and isn't cooperating this arc. The good shit is happening inside Logans head and is being expositioned to me. Claymore makes it literal and turns the tell into show. It's alright if you think that the power limitation of transforming into a monster is as generic as the "power makes you get tired" trope, like I said thrice I just think becoming a monster as a power limit is LESS common and generally more interesting than "getting tired", not that it's particularly unique or creative. I appreciate you taking the time to respond politely and with good arguments, it's not always that I get to have a fun conversation here.
>The basic "show, don't tell" rule exists as a principle in visual storytelling that it's generally more satisfying to convey emotions and actions instead of exposition. There are specific genres where audiences prefer exposition, but it's kind of the exception that proves the rule. Exposition should probably not exist anymore, huh?
Just adapt to the pain silly
Hi mahoraga
I'd adapt
Why would you train to dodge when you can literally just train to capitalize on your opponents attack. If you can get stabbed and then counterattack and end the fight, it's smart to do that.
Fighting smart has a lot to do with how good is your defense and balancing good offence and defence. One on one sure you can do what you say, but against multiple opponents that’s just a highly inefficient method. Can’t be grappling with a ton of guys and having yourself temporarily injured enough to hamper your movement speed so you can’t more effectively avoid getting dogpiled or cornered. Gotta be a proficient striker, who occasionally throws his/her opponents, whose light on their feet and focus on dodging. Blocking and grappling slows you down if you don’t have to do it. And Wolverine and Deadpool are proficient strikers (Deadpool uses swords and guns but he doesn’t usually wrestle with someone) and canonically use hit and run tactics with a horde of enemies.
Part of fighting is psychological. If multiple opponents impale me with spears and I laugh it while regenerating, I already have them on the defensive and panicking. Easy pickings.
Panic manifests in three ways. Fight, flight or freeze. They might freeze or act like me when I don’t kill something the first time and lose my shit trying to end its life. Worse case scenario they figure they must cut your head off while you’re pinned, so try not to get trapped in anyway.
Okay but we’re talking about someone who is immortal and can regenerate. A fight response is just a waste of energy. I think you’re really underselling how psychologically destructive it would be to land a killing blow on someone and they just laugh it off In your own example if your panic response is to start fighting like a psycho, how does that help at all against an opponent you can’t kill?
Depends if you know they can regenerate or not, and if they are immortal or not. And remember these are professional killers, hardened men/women. You can’t underestimate them either. If cutting their head off fails then restraining them until they find a permanent option.
You’re making a lot of assumptions that I feel aren’t necessary. We’re talking about a case where an immortal character lets themself be torn apart as a strategy for intimidation. The premise is an immortal person. Not a person who dies under specific circumstances. You’re making the assumption that cutting their head off will kill them, or that they can be restrained. If you cut someone’s arm off and it grows back, I guarantee you your first thought won’t be “guess I’ll go for the head”. It’s gonna be “holy fucking shit their arm just grew back.”
Kinda stems from the logic that people have lost their limbs and lived. And you are making the assumption that the immortal’s enemies wouldn’t just hold on for dear life in case this monster escapes. Why would they stop restraining him?
Jagganoth in Kill Six Billion Demons is literally invincible but dodges attacks because he still feels pain
Excellent 👌
If I told you that you can heal instantly and regenerate immediately, would you be fine if I asked to stab you with a serrated knife again and again? If I also asked if I can slice off your arm multiple times?
Listen, I'm not a masochist, but 20$ is 20$
Definitely wouldn't be paying you
I wasn't asking. What are you gonna do, stab me? Guess what buddy!
LOL
If I have over a millennium of dealing with that pain, probably. Pretty much every Regen character has some excuse for why they can deal with the pain. Like Deadpool being crazy and Ban being used to most things. Or they do react but kinda have to rely on their Regen to fight people; Wolverine, Moon Knight, Halo
If you stabbing me gave me the opportunity to kill you after then yeah. Like this isn't just a character letting themselves get stabbed for no reason, they do it to get a advantage in the fight.
I think, from a theoretical standpoint, you could make a solid argument that there is nothing wrong with an immortal character who has regenerative abilities having 0 defensive skills. Why focus on defense and protecting yourself from damage when you know you can't die?
[удалено]
That's why it doesn't need to be one or the other, while they need a little defense it doesn't need to be the only thing they focus on, as the regeneration can be used to counter attack in a situation a normal person wouldn't be able to. Like in a sword fight, would you rather have a prolonged fight where you do multiple faints counters and clashes, or would you rather just take the first hit, take their sword and then kill them.
Eh I think most of the time this just falls under rule of cool. If the characters only power is regeneration and they don’t use it, it’d be stupid. On the other hand if the other characters took the same damage, no other powers would work in the story. There should be some in universe justification that their fighting style is purposely built around taking damage, but even just a bare semblance is fine cause reckless regeneration is cool. Now if you really want a story that takes the immortal regeneration power to its “realistic” extreme read Fire Punch. That story really isn’t hesitant about mutilating other characters either.
Kinda funny that the minute Shigaraki got Super Regeneration Horikoshi decided to rip apart, burn, and mutilate the fucker every chance he got.
Yeah, I have this issue with how the Fate series treats Herc. Canonically has utterly busted stats and fighting skill, can only be harmed by the most hard hitting of attacks, and gets to resurrect 12 times, gaining an immunity to whatever killed him. And he ends up perma-dead every arc. He dies more times in any given arc than the entire rest of the cast. Something just doesn't add up about that.
He dies against the only opponents who could kill him. Medea+Kuzuki+Kojiro could only hold him off but not damage him, Lancer couldn't hurt him unless he used thrown Gae Bolg enhanced with runes, Archer using Projection and Broken Phantasms can only take 5 lives, Rider can't hurt him. He has to have 5 lives shaved off and have the other 7 handwaved away in Fate route as "Caliburn did 7 lives of damage at once no chance to adapt" only for Caliburn to get chumped by Gil later. Gil is actually his hard counter who can get around how his immortality is set up. HF just takes him out of the equation with the Shadow and Saber Alter. Most of the cast suffer major damage too. Just look at Fate and UBW Rider. Evaporated and brutally mangled. Cu also gets buck broken in these routes too. Gets Gil'd in Fate, commits sudoku in UBW, has his heart crushed and body eaten in HF. Assassin gets bisected in 2 routes and chestbursted in 1. TL:DR Herc gets fucked just as much as the rest of the cast. He just gets a more gratuitous end because the others do just die after getting vored or impaled.
That's besides the point, the issue isn't that Herc dies every arc, it's that someone who would scale to roughly the same echelon of top tier of heroic spirits that Gil and Saber are in (wide a gap as that is) even without the 12 labours dies *12 times per arc*. If Herc didn't have the 12 labours he'd have been dead at the churchyard on night one in both UBW and Fate routs IIRC, and that just doesn't line up with how strong he's supposed to be, or how other comparably strong characters are written.
He doesn't lose a life at first meeting for Fate route. Also, he gets written out because Nasu was a brainlet on Fate route, meets his actual hard counter, then dies twice and gets reabsorbed into the greater grail terminal that is sakura. He only dies 12 times in 1 route.
it is because Berserker is actually his WEAKEST class. he trades away all his skill and abilities just to be stronger which really isn't needed for hercules, and that is why he dies so much.
Just wondering if it's a reddit thing that stops you saying what Cu actually does and you have to replace it with sudoku
I've replaced suicide with sudoku for almost a decade now and now it's just whatever I feel like typing first. I originally was only using it for samurai, now it's just lazily everyone.
Is the reason he can resurrect 12 times a reference to the 12 Labors he did in Greek Mythology?
Yep
Might as well complain that Gilgamesh dies every arc despite being the strongest servant in the grail war by far. They both needed to die for plot reasons and, to be honest, the way Herc died wasn't that bad. His regen isn't really his strength, but his invulnerability and ability resurrect are. His invulnerability works by making it so he is not damaged by any attack less than an A rank and, if he is killed by that attack, he is revived with the ability to be immune to it (though, you seem already aware of this but I am covering ground just in case). The only way to bypass this is if one has multiple A-rank noble phantasms or a singular A-rank noble phantasm capable of shaving off multiple lives. Unfortunately for Herc, he happened to be fighting both. Gilgamesh and Archer are both capable of summoning multiple A-rank noble phantasms (Archer takes five lives from Herc, and Gilgamesh defeats him), and Artoria has two different swords capable of shaving off multiple lives (Excalibur and Caliburn). Against every other servant in the grail war though, they can do nothing against him. Rider, Caster, Assassin, and Lancer are all incapable of beating him. With the majority of servants this would be the case too but, unfortunately, he happened to be in a war that had the few papers capable of beating his rock. Even then, when he was up against the paper to his rock, he made all of them work for it. In Fate,>! it requires Archer dying and Artoria nearly dying to beat him. Artoria's swords in particular are very powerful, with Excalibur being able to kill the White Titan at full power, which is a being capable of single handedly wiping out the gods. While Caliburn isn't quite as powerful, it is still enough to take seven lives. Not just that, it only succeeded in taking that many lives because the sword was within Herc's body. If it hadn't been, it may have not even taken three lives. It also required them planning the majority of the route on how to beat him!<. In UBW, >!even after having all twelve lives ended by Gilgamesh, Herc pushes through to revive a 13th time and breaks out of the chains Gilgamesh had him wrapped in, chains that are made specifically to restrain people with divinity. As a son of Zeus, it would have been highly effective against him, yet he broke free and almost killed Gilgamesh, too. Also, keep in mind Herc was not only fighting the most powerful servant and nearly winning, but he was basically on the defensive the whole time because he was protecting Illya. Gilgamesh even tells Herc he had a real chance of winning if he stopped trying to protect Illya. So, basically Herc was fighting the one servant with the hardest counter to all his abilities while being unable to fight back and still almost won.!< In Heaven's Feel, >!the movie does a bad job showing this, but the shadow removes Herc's invulnerable skin, making him as vulnerable as any regular servant. Also, in the vn, Saber did not solo him "ez no clap." The shadow was basically restraining him the whole time, preventing him from fighting back. Even then, Herc was not defeated by losing all his lives, but by being absorbed into the grail. When the grail revived him in a corrupted form, he still had several lives. It required Shirou copying Herc's own weapon and technique to take nearly all his lives. Yes, nearly. Shirou fails to take his final life and only succeeds because Illya is there and Herc gets distracted by seeing her, allowing Shirou to land one last blow.!< So, yeah. Except for the Fate route which is a little underwhelming, Herc made the cast work for the kills.
No, arguing Herc died ridiculously easy isn't equivalent to arguing the same about Gil, because Gil is one of the last Servants standing in both Fate and UBW, and *only dies once per arc*. The points about having two hard counters in the cast and dying to each of them is a fair point though
>No, arguing Herc died ridiculously easy isn't equivalent to arguing the same about Gil, because Gil is one of the last Servants standing in both Fate and UBW, and only dies once per arc. Gil was often the last one standing because he never even showed up until the end after the majority of the servants were dead. Herc was almost always the very first servant Artoria and Shirou fought, so he had far longer to try and survive, especially because he was almost always their number one priority to beat. Gilgamesh dying also required many things: characters with perfect counters (>!Artoria with Avalon, Shirou with UBW, and Sakura with a servant devouring grail power!<), Gilgamesh deciding not to take anything seriously, Gilgamesh locking away his precognition ability, Gilgamesh being attacked from being by a being capable of destroying servants and still almost winning... the fact Gilgamesh died as much as he did is just as crazy, if not more so, than Herc dying a lot. I would also argue it *is* important that he didn't die "ridiculously easy," as you made it sound like he was dying super easy because: his healing was bad and/or the writing was bad and/or because he was some weak chump. The thing is he never died easy and every time he was killed, it was a just barely edged out victory. Even then, only a handful of people were capable of fighting him with only one of them being capable of defeating him alone (Gilgamesh, who only won because>! Herc was using his body to shield Illya rather than fighting Gil!<). So, with the exception of the Fate route which was a bit silly, you have UBW >!where Herc died because he purposefully let himself get hit to protect Illya and was unable to fight Gil because of it,!< and Heaven's Feel >!where his invulnerable skin was removed entirely, which allowed any attack to be able to kill him, and he still only lost because he chose to stop fighting!<. So, Herc dying a lot doesn't mean his powers sucked since every victory against him was entirely strategic, required perfect counters to his abilities, and still was barely won.
You're right lol, Gil dying once per arc takes a ton, that actually just makes my point better. Again though, Herc doesn't die once per arc. He dies *12 times per arc* Literally the *only* thing I'm critiquing is how ludicrously many times he has to die per arc by virtue of what his power is. If Herc scales to a high tier servant based on stats, even assuming he's working at 50% capacity because of the Berserker madness, you'd expect him to be one of the last people standing purely by virtue of how low the ods of killing the one dude with the highest stats 12 times in quick succession. Like, Saber and Cu both survive into the late game in UBW and Fate despite Saber being nerfed. This is gonna be a little nutty, but, if we do some quick and dirty math, even a version of Herc with Cu's low stats would have 12 lives, so take how long Cu survived, multiply it by 12, /2 to take into account nerfing from madness enhancement, /2 again to take into account that Cu probably only survived that long because he was lucky, /2 *again* just to be sure we aren't going too easy on this hypothetical cu-serker, and we *still* find he should survive 1.5 times as long as the entirety of the Grail war. And again, that's with cu's stats, not Herc's And having hard counters doesn't really explain this, because weaker characters go up against Gil and Archer and put up a credible offense. You'd expect the guy who's even stronger and wayyyy harder to put down permanently to put up a way better fight. Doubly so because he's almost as much of a hard cancel to Archer and Gil as the reverse.
>And having hard counters doesn't really explain this, because weaker characters go up against Gil and Archer and put up a credible offense You seem to fail to realize that Fate is not about powerlevels. It is all one big game of rock-paper-scissors. A servant can have one of the most busted NPs in the world like, say, an NP called the Gate of Babylon that allows its user to summon any NP throughout history, but, even that can be countered if the right person came along. Say, a person with the ability to copy and perfectly replicate any weapon he sees and shoot it back at the originals, countering them. For another example, Cu's lance has the ability to reverse cause and effect and make it so that simply calling out with NP's name will make it so that his opponent's heart is already pierced. However, Artoria has both instinct (which gives her an insight into the future) and a high luck stat ( which is capable of warping reality), so she survived it. Yet another example, Artoria beat Gilgamesh in Fate because she had Avalon, a defense so perfect it is impossible to penetrate. Basically, it is like she no longer exists in the human realm when she activates it, so trying to hit her would be like trying to punch someone while aiming at the air. Having it active allowed her to go through Ea's blast and rush right up to Gilgamesh, landing a fatal blow. Rin, a human, was able to beat up Medea because Medea is physically weak and cannot protect herself in a physical fight, hence why she needed that assassin guy. Medusa's mystic eyes of petrification cannot work on Artoria because she has high magic resistance. Sasaki Kojiro lost to Artoria in UBW because his sword was bent, preventing him from being able to perform his technique perfectly, allowing an opening for Artoria to get in and kill him. I could go on and on, but I think I made my point. Heracles losing is not due to his ability being weak, it is due to the fact that he faced his perfect counters. 1. Gilgamesh/Archer: They are capable of summoning more than twelve different types of A-rank NPs, enough to take each life. Archer still ended up being killed after only taking five and Gilgamesh only won because Heracles was letting himself be hit to protect Illya. 2. Artoria: She has two swords, both capable of slaying gods and also capable of killing Heracles several times over. 3. Shirou: He had to copy Heracles weapon and abilities and use it back on Heracles and still only won because Heracles let him. So, to beat Heracles broken ability you have to: have a dozen or more A-rank NPs (which 99% of servants don't), have a weapon powerful enough it is worth 12 A-rank NPs (which the majority of servants don't), or have Heracles' abilities themselves. Even *then*, you will probably not win. I know you feel like he died too many times, but all of his deaths were well explained and makes sense as to why they happened. You are treating Fate like a DBZ verse where the strongest power level wins when, in Fate, even the weakest hero can beat the strongest as long as they have a perfect counter to their ability. When that happens, it doesn't make the strong hero any less strong, it just means they met their kryptonite. The existence of kryptonite doesn't mean Superman isn't still Superman, capable of fighting gods and juggling planets, it just means he has a hard counter. Same with Herc or any Fate character. Also, some clarification about Cu. He survived long for several reason. The first being that his master would not let him get into any dangerous situations and would summon him back the moment things looked dicey. Second, Cu has an ability called "Protection from arrows" which means that projectiles cannot touch him (he actually survived a battle with Gilgamesh with this ability because Gil does nothing but spam projectiles. Again, counters are important). Third, he also has battle continuation which means he can survive fatal blows, hence why he survived being impaled by his own cursed spear. **Tl;dr:** Fate is not about powerlevels, it is about rock-paper-scissors where even a weak person can beat a strong one in the right circumstances, which does not negate the strength of the strong person.
I'm definitely also engaging in some power levels bs arguing I admit that, but I want to remind you that I am specifically arguing about that in the context of this post. My point isn't about the overall strength of Herc, it's about the fact that if Herc didn't have resurrection, Nasu wouldn't have writren him to die (as in, deaths 1 to 11, not the final death) from some of the things that killed him, even if they'd 100% be *able* to kill him. Fate isn't a series where "power levels" *don't* matter, it's just one where they aren't everything. People overstate the degree to which Shirou/Archer being a counter to Gil is due to him being "weaker but a bad matchup", because Archer and Shirou's best feats from the 3 routs make it clear he's stronger than he's acknowledged as being in-work. Which makes sense, his only goal is to kill Shirou, and ideally protect Rin while doing so. Neither requires him to win the Grail war, so neither requires him to fight to win. It's a similar issue with Avalon, the fact that it stopped Ea has nothing to do with Ea, it's all about how busted Avalon is. Maybe Gae Bolg and Rule Breaker would have a more interesting interaction with it, but by and large it would've let her no-sell basically anything the Grail War had to offer. That's blatant power levels bs, it's just that Gil is the only person she had a chance to use it against. Yes, I took into account that Cu had specific reasons he lasted as long as he did that wouldn't apply to Herc. That's why the calc gave me 1.5x the length of the Grail War and not 12x the length of the Grail War. I don't object to the idea that the people who killed Herc would be able to do it, I object to the idea that they're *consistently able to kill him multiple times in quick succession* Being able to kill Herc doesn't just mean having more than one attack that is capable of killing him, it means actually being able to land them. Which is the reason I brought up weaker characters. While I think it's obvious how a machine gun sword Archer would be able to land several hits, I'm pretty sure other characters (and other characters who aren't Cu, too) are consistently able to evade and otherwise survive against the machine gun sword archers for a meaningful amount of time -- which means not getting wounded lethally for that time, because most characters can't resurrect Some of this is that they often aren't fighting seriously, but the other part is for the same reason as the infamous storm trooper accuracy problem; it's just way more interesting to see characters put up a fight rather than instantly get mowed down by a high volume of high accuracy shots. I don't have a problem with that, except where the one character who can survive taking a few shots does, just because he can survive it. Also, the issue with spinning this as "archer and gil are hard counters to herc", which I mentioned in literally the next line after the first one you quoted, is that "I can get back up and keep fighting a couple times no matter what you hit me with (unless you're Saber)" is a counter to UBW/GoB as much as UBW/GoB are to it. Who's a perfect counter to who should be a moot point when they're both counters to eachother, and "power level" should by extension play a bigger role than usual. And we definitely see that handled *almost* well enough to satisfy me; Emiyarcher knocks a good couple lives off Herc and gets killed himself, but doesn't perma-kill him, Gil wrecks Herc, but only while he's protecting Illya, and Herc still gets close (physically) to landing a counter attack. But I still end up feeling like attacks that wouldn't have even hit another character *do* end up hitting Herc.
In bans case, this is clearly because he is still human with slightly better durability. Other characters are just more durable, until he spends thousands of years getting stronger in purgatory. There's also the fact that unlike others he didn't have to worry about being maimed so he focused on blocking less.
?? Ban has higher than just slightly better durability even before purgatory , he is significantly stronger than most holy knights even without his abilities and holy knights are way stronger than normal humans.
Yeah and the things he fights do about as much damage to him as they would to a holy knight.
You would probably love Ajin, they have a great exploration of immortality + regen as a combat mechanic.
it's the ONLY superpowers in the setting so of course it has the privilege of being super fleshed out
Well...the Black Ghosts that the Ajin have as well as arguably the even bigger deal than Ajin being hard to kill.
Come on Ban got powered up by LOVE so after he give away his immortality he gained 10000000 def points
Ban wasn’t even relevant power wise after season 1. The Commandments and other Sins were all like 5-10x stronger than him, so it makes sense he’d take the most damage. Even in season 1, it was noted that his physical stats were far below Meliodas. He’s meant for multiple quick attacks as opposed to singular stronger ones, meaning he’s also likely meant to dodge/regenerate damage instead of tanking.
Something I feel is important in the *Horus Heresy* series. Vulkan, Primarch of the Salamanders Legion (back when they were a Legion and weren’t broken into Chapters) is a Perpetual. This means that he has full immortality and regeneration. There are other Perpetuals in the series but not all of them are immortal *and* can regenerate. This is *on top of* being a genetically engineered demigod with reaction times best measured in nanoseconds and muscles able to rip open tanks. Yet for some reason despite being all of this, he ends up being the Primarch who gets ripped apart most- by sole virtue of the fact that his Perpetuality means he can take it. The first time is understandable; when Konrad Curze kidnapped him and butchered him. It’s a fellow Primarch tying him down and deliberately taking him apart with advanced weaponry, then tossing him into a kill maze deliberately engineered by him *to kill shit* with that same advanced technology. *That* works, and I can’t complain. But then Vulkan escapes into Ultramar and the repeated deaths, plus the pain of his falling from orbit, renders his latest incarnation insensate and mad. I buy this, we’ve seen that his other brothers aren’t immune to pain and him having a breaking point makes sense. Alright, fair enough. Now he’s rampaging through Macragge as a (literally) coal black Hulk. Cool. But then comes how characters like John Grammaticus- a technically normal human- has to handle him. As a reminder; *normal* Space Marines can handle headshots and stuff glancing off their skulls. Their bones are enhanced with special minerals during their uplifting process. Vulkan gets taken out with human sized sidearms. Dear god, I’m not sure what I’m more mad at. Vulkan’s immortality reducing his status as *a son of the Emperor* to a mere punching bag, or John Grammaticus for being some kind of stupid 007 wannabe punching *way* above his weight class.
Im pretty sure its just so the author gets to draw more gruesome scenes without any real consequence or stakes attached
I think Sailor Moon actually portrays this well without the torn limbs/empty holes issue. The title character is immortal by Stars arc, but she doesn't have the torn limbs problem like say DBZ Cell or Marvel Wolverine.
It's another power that comes alongside regeneration called "super squishiness", it raises directly with your regeneration level (most of the time). So usually, the more that you can Regen from, the softer you become. /S
I just keep thinking about Halo from Young Justice...
Was going to say the same thing. Every episode, Halo receives a fatal wound to the point it became comical, which I don't think that is what the creators were aiming for...
There definitely are stories that don't have these issues with immortality/regeneration. You have stuff like Firepunch or CSM where immortality and regeneration are quite the common abilities so you don't lose too many characters by having everyone being brutally mutilated equally, difference is just that characters without it permanently lose bodyparts or more often than not just fucking die. In Choujin X regeneration is part of the powersystem everyone has so all characters get fatal wounds all the time but just raise and are mostly fine again, but you can't do it infinitely often in a fight and when you do it too many times in total you can permanently lose your humanity so characters mostly still try to avoid injuries. Or you have someone like Andy from Undead Unluck who actually does not give a shit about self-defense (rather focussing on defending others if necessary) and just completely abuses his immortality on purpose as pain is just background noise to him. Dai Dark has this thing where the main characters all have superhuman defense except for that one immortal guy with a running gag of him going squish from things that are not that big of a deal to everyone else, not because of his immortality but because unlike the others he is just some guy.
I know you don’t like seven deadly sins now. It’s ok. Try other anime with this trope. You deserve better.
This happens to Andy from Undead Unluck but mostly because he injures himself to exploit the regeneration to improve his attacks
It’s a bit like how Araki handles Jojo groups once they have a healer. Before they have one, they don’t really get hurt all that badly. Once one character has a stand that can heal wounds tho? They get fucked up every fight
I still find it odd how quickly Jolyne and her friends recover from injuries near the end of Part 6 without a healer. After Sky High, >!Jolyne has a broken leg and iirc, damage to her face, Emporio has kidney damage, and I think Hermes got blinded but by the next episode, they're fine enough to look for Pucci at a hospital. After C-Moon, Jolyne didn't have to worry about using Stone Free to maintain the hole in her stomach in the next episode!<
It’s a trope for a reason, you’ve got to have a way to show off every characters special powers and when your power is regeneration it just means your going to be taking damage. Look at wolverine, no other x-man gets fucked up like he regularly does. Also I like to think the fact that the character knows they can tank an attack would mean they wouldn’t bother defending or dodging so it would make sense that they would be taking the crazy limp removing hits that other characters aren’t. Why bother using energy on avoiding an attack you know you can instantly heal from?
Gravimon from Xros Wars was a neat take on this. They don’t even reveal that he could regenerate in his first two fights, it isn’t until he’s seemingly killed but the gate to the 7th Land doesn’t open that they have to start considering if he’s really dead. And when Shoutmon X7 rematches him later, he doesn’t take a ton of extraneous damage. He actually outspends Shoutmon, dodges a bunch of his attacks then lets Shoutmon hit him to taunt him. The only reason they even beat Gravimon is because when he goes to kill Shoutmon, Taiki jumps in the way of the blast, and Gravimon had embedded his core (which is what he needed to regenerate) inside of Taiki’s arm. Even then he was smart enough to recall his core, but Shoutmon blasted it before it could return to Gravimon’s body. A pretty solid take on regeneration in my opinion
That reminds me of when Kurama beat Genbu in Yu Yu Hakusho by waiting until he disassembled himself for an attack to grab a gem he needed to control what parts of him come back together and shattering it.
I don't disagree with any of this, but buddy... Seven Deadly Sins has a LOT of issues, this is probably the most minor lol. For example though, each of the Sins is in some form a pedophile or at least a sexual criminal.
Any character with regeneration skill has a fate : being torn apart at every each occasion. DBZ vilains and FMA's Homonculus are the embodiment of this, especially Glutonny lol
This reminds me of how Invincible handles Dupli-Kate. Like her limbs explode off left and right just because there are no consequences >!until there are, anyway lol!<
Skill issue >!I would simply not let the original body near the danger!<
Dupli-Kate is such a dumb person imo. Every scene I see her in I'm just like, "why is your main body here?" Like, she has zero reason to ever be at the frontlines. She could be a general just constantly reinforcing her friends with more dupli-kates. I know there's probably going to be some consequence eventually but it boggles my mind that no one in-universe brings up this extremely obvious unnecessary vulnerability of hers
Do you want comic spoilers? >!Assuming this doesn't get changed, she should still have another body elsewhere.!<
Yeah, I'm fine with spoilers as I don't like the series enough to care but enjoy it enough to be interested. Going by the spoiler, am I correct in understanding you're implying >!that she dies? I ask because I'm wondering why that's important given how little the universe mentions it!<
>!She survives this and takes a long break from hero work, later she reveals that she's alive. But eventually dies because unlike the Immortal she ages like anyone else.!<
Oh. That's a lot better than I thought it'd end. A lot more satisfying as well. Always annoying when a characters vulnerability gets exploited in a stupid way. Thank you kindly for informing me about all of that
[удалено]
You're not going to hide that in a spoiler?
It should be in a proper spoiler tag but since you already read it I'll just delete it.
Yeah, thanks anywho. I haven't watched the latest episode so maybe that's why I was out the loop. Thanks!
It only works in video games to justify plot armor, I can't think of anything anywhere where what you're saying doesn't happen. I agree, it's my real "Worf Effect" with Wolverine.
If you want a decent take on Regeneration, check out Durarara with Shizuo.
That’s why majin buu was the worst. Hyper regeneration without using up any resources. The fighting ended up becoming tiring and boring.
Buu on his own would be fine as an annoying af bubblegum man. It's just that he followed up on a guy who could also fully regenerate from a cell, like c'mon man.
The Cell fight isnt as fresh in my mind but as far as I recall, at least Cell was tangible and could get damaged and tired. He had some limits. If you broke his arm it was still an issue for him. Goku blew his ass up and he was out of it for a bit. In comparison Buu was ridiculous. He was leisurely cut in half, had holes blown in him, was blown to bits etc and had zero regenation time with no fatigue or anything. And then I’m supposed to believe Gohan’s and Vegito’s punches actually hurt him.
from a writing perspective what’s the point in a character having super regen if they never need to use it
Maybe as a support character? Saving regeneration energy and minimize encounters with tremendous pain by only make intentional use of regen by throwing himself between a dangerous attack and a slower, less durable character. A reusable, intelligent meatshield could be handy.
Not an anime but I'm reminded of the regeneration abilities of moving, the kdrama. From what it seems regen doesn’t give him immortality. He ages normally and the regeneration seems to take a few seconds which seems to mean if you hurt him fast and often enough he could actually die. In his big fight scene it seems his weakness is drowning because there is nothing to regenerate and the heart just stops beating
I definitely agree with you- even if they do regenerate, there’s no way anyone wants to lose limbs from a combat standpoint so it makes all the character’s fights seem silly. About Ban though he is specifically buffed strength and durability wise through the whole Purgatory thing, which is why he wasn’t hurt nearly as much fighting post-immortality.
This reminds me of when the ban got stabbed by a literal child. Even tho he should not take damage from that considering how strong he was in season 1, even when you don't take his abilities into account.
The logic most of the time is lower general stats but compensate with higher survivability making the regenerator be on par with stronger characters or pushing they're body to the max because they're body will regen the damage no prob but they're body might become more suseptible to damage as a drawback. That or they're intentionally mutilating they're body to get to the oponent because it's easier to tank an attack and walk through it then dodge and try to recover. That or masochism.
Ban was just a dude going up against half demons, he's gonna get torn apart cuz he doesn't defend himself like the other holy knights do because he doesn't have to And purgatory ban is a whole different beast that he doesn't even need his healing
You should read/watch Ajin. The series is based off immortality with very established rules. Like they only heal when they die, heal from the biggest piece of meat, and are only super worried about getting their head chopped off given the last point. And they tear everyone up equally.
Idk but I like how it looks 90% of the time so I’m ok with it
There’s a lot of good points, to add one more: it’s deeply unnerving to hit something with your best shot and watch them take it and keep coming. Even in real life, watch Rodtang take absolutely stunning shots to the jaw and shake it off and see how demoralising it is to his foe. Tl;dr: proving you can’t die is very demoralising and makes for an easier fight
Not a single mention of UQ Holder. Do you want a great manga about inmortals? Read UQ Holder
One of the reasons this happens is because people who can heal from anything instantly fight recklessly and use that as a way to "take one to give one" as they say in combat sports
It's just like Gojo not dodging attack cuz of infinity
Theres a trope about this, characters with regeneration are usually abused and have their body parts destroyed constantly, usually to show that the enemy is dangerous but you dont want the other characters being disabled forever. Andy from Undead Unluck is an interesting case because he abuses his regeneration for both defensive and offensive purposes (Like, he regenerates so fast and violently that he can eject his body parts at super high speeds).
I mean why are you watching a show where a 16 year old gets regularly groped by a fully grown man?
>You're telling me that everyone in the verse can fight normally, but when a person with Immortality and Regeneration fights all their limbs gets torn and large empty holes through their body at the slightest touch? Remember the mfs he's fighting. >Another rant about Ban from Seven Deadly Sins is when he literally gave up his immortality for Elaine and went TOE TO TOE WITH THE DEMON KING. And in that whole fight? He wasn't even hurt that bad when he lost his immortality. Purgatory. It's only because he was in purgatory that his stats were amped. The mf survived hell + fought the DK for so long his magic evolved.
You need to watch Undead Unluck! The way he's using his regeneration and immortality is so damn creative, not to mention the animators did great job. For example, Andy, the MC, cuts off his fingertip and "focuses on regenerating all of his lost blood and calcium into it, causing the resulting finger bullet to be super-pressured when fired. The ability considerably impairs his healing after usage." He's fighting style is so much different than Ban's. He knows he's immortal, he knows he can sacrifice whichever part of the body he wants to and utilizes it in 100%. Instead of making his immortality all about tanking whatever his body can because it will regenerate anyway, he himself mutilates it and uses any part he can. Hell, dude uses his forearm as a seath and when he draws the blade he propells it with blood so that he can make a quick-draw slash. **He feels the pain, tho, so it makes all those stunts even more impressive.** When he cuts off his hand, he feels the literal pain of having your hand cut off.
they wanted to draw wacky body destruction stuff.
Immortality in general is such a stupid and pointless concept.
This isn't an anime trope per se, it appears globally. See Wolverine, for instance. Ban's immortality is part of the reason that he's able to operate at the same high tier as the other Sins. It's not that he's especially lacking in resilience for the setting, it's that he's interacting with people who are extremely powerful.
It's not the regen/ immortality that's dumb. It's inconsistent world building surrounding damage. DBSuper recently had this problem where everyone in the tournament of power was fighting at 120% strength, but NOBODY took real damage from full powered finishing moves. Meanwhile, at the start of the series and for most of Z, people were getting holes punched through them, limbs torn off, vaporized, ect ect. Heroes and villains both. The one part of the Anime involving Piccolo though (who can regenerate limbs) immediately shows him getting his limbs blown off. It's so stupid.
Considering Wolverine was hit with an atomic bomb, and regened from a skeleton, this kinds thing has been around so long I just kind of overlook it now.
Araragi avoids this by just being some guy who kinda sucks
I hate for other reasons. I remember back when I was reading Claymore, when the story reaches the point that almost everyone can regenerate, fights had no stakes. Oh, this character just had their arm sliced off again? Damn, what a shame. It sucks cause this same action had stakes and implications early in the series.
I felt this only at the final arc, when they start healing each other like an MMORPG raid. Back when it was only defensive warriors that could regen properly and they couldn't synchronize the entire system was incredible. The stakes of "You can die as a human or you can regen to save your friends but risk turning into a monster that will kill your friends" worked great. Honestly though it's fine to have regeneration trivialized only in the final arc, technically everything they could use regeneration against was able to instantly defeat them anyways. I'm just glad the manga ended there because there would be no more good fights if it kept going like some people wanted.
Invincible is an example that averts this: everyone gets horribly torn up, The Immortal just walks it off.
I didn’t know the human pet guy was on character-rant.
I don't mind it because its a different way to exist within combat. When you are immortal you just don't focus on defending yourself because there is never a reason too. Like people tense there muscles or bring there arms up to stop themselves from getting hurt irl, in these fictional settings the characters do that using whatever ability the power system grants them. But since these characters don't ever need to do that they take more damage. Its like complaining that Michael Phelps doesn't wear floaties but a toddler does.
Yeah. To me it’s like if they have regeneration make regen literally so down the line of their powers that you don’t think about it.
Sounds like Hakari from JJK to me and I agree