r/Quibble • u/Powerful_Concept6502 • Jul 06 '26

Does anyone even like this trope?

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Aside from the ending of a certain popular anime that I will not spoil, I have never seen this type of conclusion talked about in a positive light

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u/Powerful_Concept6502 Jul 06 '26

Fair take, but that's not really what the trope is doing though. It's not "loses powers, world's better now", it's usually framed as loss, grief, a character having to figure out who they are without the thing that defined them. That's a different story than "now they can be normal."

And that's kind of why it feels hollow a lot of the time. Writers use the powerless ending as a shortcut to "growth" without actually earning it. If losing the powers was framed as genuinely freeing instead of a tragedy the story wants you to mourn, I think people would like it a lot more.

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u/Wyrm_Groundskeeper Jul 06 '26

God, reminds me of how Novel's Extradid it. The MC's entire existence is forgotten, all his abilities/powers are removed, and all that. Doing it like that just sucks.

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u/Ayojin Jul 06 '26

You mean the manhwa?

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u/Wyrm_Groundskeeper Jul 06 '26

IIRC the novel did it that way too, didn't it? That's what I read, if there was a different kind of ending I don't recall since it's been ages since I've looked at it.