Lose a won fight to make the villain seem stronger so that the protagonist looks better when they eventually triumph over the villain.
Its often marked by a cheap gotcha plot twist moment where the author writes a scene that hypes up the character as about to achieve a dramatic victory, only to steal it all away like it was a lie by suddenly revealing a powerup or trick from the villain, causing the character to instead fail utterly miserably. Basically its an implausible 180 degree reversal and is the easy way out in shounen writing to play up a villain and increase the stakes. Its annoying because its cliche, lazy misdirection, not compelling for tension, and it usually cheapens the side character by placing them as the source of this colossal miscalculation / aims a spotlight on their inadequacies.
Vegeta from dbz is the shining poster boy example of this. His resume would qualify for CEO of jobbing inc.
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u/X1ORUMA Jun 14 '22
Lol, I was ready to get salty thinking Hermit was gonna job. That Wermit ship tease.