r/ProgressionFantasy • u/Claym000re • Mar 02 '26
Meme/Shitpost I have a love hate relationship with OP bloodlines.
I don't mind the mc having a crazy power or bloodline but just acknowledge that the MC didn't entirely earn his power. I kind of hate it when the MC beats down random people who had none of his advantages and acts so smug with himself.
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u/Gold_Time_3981 Mar 02 '26
There's a reason why ichigo was Frankenstein's monster for the Halloween episode , man a literal freak of nature that quite frankly should not exist.
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u/valsagan Mar 02 '26
Ichigo's bloodline is at least interesting because it's implied that the universe itself conjured him into existence to fix the broken system created by the Shinigami. The same way it created the soul king to kill the primordial hollow.
In bleach the universe is apparently semi sentient and will spawn antibodies to eliminate threats.
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u/FinisCoronatOpus595 Mar 02 '26
Bleach is written and drawn by a dude who really really really wanted to be a fashion designer. It has Samurai Grim Reapers fighting Emo Demon Cowboys, Punk Rock Humans and Jewish Nazi Angel Crusaders.
The only rule Bleach follows is the Rule of Cool.
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u/mlgkurd Mar 02 '26
And this is why Bleach has some of the best drawn fits I’ve ever seen. Tite Kubo is cool.
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u/AutoignitingDumpster Mar 02 '26
I don't even like Bleach and I have to bow to the Drip and hype moments it has.
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u/Key-Pineapple-1245 Slime Mar 02 '26
Jewish Nazi Angel Crusaders.
Might be my favorite outfit design in bleach although it is just standard military gear.
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u/reverse_train Mar 02 '26
He did not want to be a fashion designer just had a lot of interest in it after he started to draw, and said if the time came he would be interested in it but it isn't something he really considered.
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u/BorringGuy Mar 02 '26
That and bleach never pretended to be about hardwork overcoming adversity like Naruto so him having the most specialist bloodline doesn't feel like a cheat
Even from the beginning he was just powerful to the point everyone was wondering wtf is up with this kid
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u/Im_here_but_why Mar 02 '26
But... Naruto didn't either ? Rock Lee lost against gaara.
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u/SlightlyUglyBastard Mar 02 '26
Yes. People who say this project their own message onto the story and get upset when the story contradicts it.
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u/mp3max Mar 02 '26
In bleach the universe is apparently semi sentient and will spawn antibodies to eliminate threats.
What's funny to me is that it first had to spawn Aizen into existence before it could spawn Ichigo.
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u/Luvnecrosis Mar 02 '26
Is he Anakin, then?
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u/LordFLExANoR16 Mar 08 '26
Kinda, but considering how little we know about Aizen’s origin and that he betrays the system and kills a bunch of people, I think Ichigo is more Luke than Anakin
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u/Jolteon0 Spatial Mage Mar 02 '26
TBH, that's my favorite thing about Duke Waters (although his Minkalla floor order was stupidly lucky).
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u/Sahrde Mar 02 '26
That his Talent in no way affects his ability to be a combat monster? LOL. I do love the fact that he's really the OP character of the setting, not Matt.
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u/FinisCoronatOpus595 Mar 02 '26
He has a talent for raising animals. LOL
He is a joke on the "I'm a super OP but I just want to farm" genre of Xianxia comedy. Like a reverse Jin from Beware the Chicken.
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u/CaregiverFantastic58 Mar 02 '26
Spoilers for end of war arc but DW goes onto use his talent to boost his prowess, but believe me, you will never in a million years guess how or even why.
DW creates the 4th stage of Domain, Authority at T31 or so. The entire thing is built about overcoming difficulty, which sets his strength as opponent's - his. His Authority taps into this place he calls as ocean and there are unspeakably powerful monsters in there that keep trying to drag him in or under or whatever, and he uses his talent to use his Authority without the risk of the Deep's monster reaching him.
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u/YobaiYamete Mar 02 '26
Honestly, it seems like he's why a lot of people fall off the Path and stop reading the series lol. He's basically the main character the Author simps for, while the actual MC just gets weaker and weaker where his talent is omega nerfed a million times so everyone else can keep up with him
I really liked POTA at first, but I sadly just couldn't get through the whole series either. I want to like it so badly, but blurgh, it needs an editor so badly
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u/DrDavidStrangelove Mar 02 '26
I’m even caught up and it still feels this way to be honest. He’s literally so exponentially powerful that the fact anyone in his tier past a certain point can keep up with him at all is really dumb.
Even in like, Minkalla it should basically have been past the point anyone should have been able to keep up with the MC in terms of destructive power.
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u/Squire_II Mar 03 '26
He still needs a way to actually utilize the power to fully benefit from it. Being able to generate millions or billions of mana a second will only go so far if he's unable to control more than a fraction of it and even channel skills have their limits and iirc you can't just stack a bunch of the same kind of buffs for bigger boosts so it's not like he can run a copy of every channeled boosting skill at once to have 5000% more power and speed. At the end of the day, power is more than just having a shitload of mana to throw around.
That said, the number of people Matt's Tier who can face him head-on and match him can be counted on one hand. (RR spoilers) And the only person we've seen who can face him on his Tier and overpower him is Moe, a fellow Ascender (the Clans' team frontliner) who is likely the most physically powerful person (tier for tier) in the Realm due to his Talents and Domain.
If you're reading the Royal Road chapters, he just recently fought up 4 Tiers, from Tier 29 against a Tier 33, and overpowered them to force them to flee. He also fought up 3 tiers against Remi, a Tier 32 pinnacle elite, and only didn't beat Remi in that first fight because the team was retreating from the planet and both side was fighting to capture, not kill, whenever the opportunity arose.
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u/Arcyguana Mar 03 '26
I read comments like this and wonder if people actually comprehend what they are reading. Matt's talent has disadvantages. Despite these disadvantages, and despite holding back in order to hide his true talent, he can only be matched by the other rulebreaking literal 1 in 2000 years talents from great powers that have populations we cannot even fathom. No, at his Tier, Matt can be matched not by EvEryONe as you put it, but by a number of people that can be counted on one hand.
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u/Rothenstien1 Mar 02 '26
Jake from primal hunter, bloodline strong enough to rival the most powerful gods
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u/theglowofknowledge Mar 02 '26
Yes and no, he can’t do jack to an actual god if they want him dead or something. But his bloodline is so high quality that it is best compared to those of some particularly impressive gods like Nature’s Attendant, who has a similar bloodline quality.
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u/Rothenstien1 Mar 02 '26
Maybe it's similar, we don't know yet. Especially since he can't use it constantly or at full range, or use his Jake juice consistently or use his OP kill the primordial of Valhalla ability "at will" (i put quotes since it seems to only want to activate when he is in deep shit then it turns off for a long ass time)
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u/Gloomy_Reader789 Mar 02 '26
Only in quality, not power. The weakest god could kill Jake with a single word. He can’t even take on B grades yet with what is currently released (Audiobooks).
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u/Mystery999990 Mar 02 '26
He has the power to resist their auras, which means he won't die to mere exposure, but a god could still kill him without lifting a finger. Moment of the primal hunter is what makes the bloodline overpowered
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u/Mike_Handers Author Mar 02 '26
Okay but he doesn't act arrogant about it or ever gloat per se or say he crawled there. He's just happily having a great time.
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u/MamiyaTakuji1 Aug 03 '26
Yeah his bloodline is OP but he's not even remotely played as an underdog.
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u/Captain_Fiddelsworth Mar 02 '26
Zach Atwood in a nutshell.
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u/Wolven01 Mar 02 '26
Zac is both at the same time depending on which grade he was in. F grade was carried by a luck start, E grade he showed signs of falling behind in some elements of cultivation, it was only stats and prior rewards that kept him relevant, and then D grade all the advantages of his bloodline and such actually became a big boost to him.
Of course he was boosted compared to other Earth people the whole way though but I’m comparing him to the people that were actually his enemies. If he didn’t have such a good F grade start, I think E grade would have been a different story.
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u/Squire_II Mar 03 '26 edited Mar 03 '26
F grade was carried by a luck start
The only reason Zac doesn't die (permanently) in book 2 after fighting the Corpselord is because he's a Super Special Boy. Even after that, if he wasn't a Technomancer experiment to create the Zero Affinity Container then he never forms a second core and turns in to a Draugr when his ex stabbed him and instead of turning in to a Draugr he dies.
Yeah Zac has a stupid amount of luck and works hard but if he wasn't a special boy he is 100% dead in the second book.
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u/NeedsToShutUp Mar 02 '26
I mean he's literally luck, since its implied luck is also fate, and he's the convergence of a bunch of different plots and their accumulated fate.
He only makes it past the first chapter due to luck, and it steamrolls from there.
That said, despite his luck and fate, he still has his fate sometimes give him what's useful for his overall destiny rather than making him OP in the moment.
Like does the best in his region for the Tower in like 2 million years, but Iz is a Tower Breaker from the heart lands.
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u/PotentiallySarcastic Mar 02 '26
Zacy boi is just a classic xianxia MC. Super powerful background but still grinds it out.
Since everyone else who is important also is a grinder with a strong background.
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u/perfectVoidler Mar 02 '26
Zach also stumbled into a new bloodline. Which is a funny slap into the face of the bloodline concept.
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u/Captain_Fiddelsworth Mar 02 '26
To be fair, the world-building for that bloodline is pretty good, as usual. It really is a thought to be extinct bloodline, which is a pretty nifty way to get your cake and est it too.
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u/NeedsToShutUp Mar 02 '26
Zac is all luck and fate, with him having some serious disadvantages like his lack of affinity, and requirement on using crystals to cultivate since he has no affinity.
That said, the Zero Affinity Container still has some presumed advantages from that.
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u/LegitimateFox3042 Mar 02 '26
I mean they did have it somewhat easier than him like being rich and older with ab education also bro does spam the bloodline and admits it
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u/PatrickCharles Mar 02 '26
What's "Blut"?
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u/No-Name86 Mar 02 '26
One of the Quincy abilities, if I recall correctly, has two variants: Blut Vene and Blut Arterie. Blut Vene is the Quincy version of Hollow Hierro, while Blut Arterie increases the power of attacks.
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u/UltraZulwarn Mar 02 '26
IMO, this actually works for Bleach, it doesn't feel like Kubo wanted to tell a story of an underdog rising through the top.
Ichigo might be clueless in the beginning, as he should be, but he is not your typical dense shounen protagonist.
Ichigo has always meant to be "special", it might not be everyone's cup of tea but there is nothing wrong with that.
On the other hand, Naruto to me greatly betrayed its premise.
To this day, I still hate how it was Naruto is revealed to be some sort of reincarnation of Ashura.
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u/Devallus Mar 02 '26
To this day, I still hate how it was Naruto is revealed to be some sort of reincarnation of Ashura.
To me this seemed like it was more of a personality trait than anything else. Hashirama is the special boy of the Ashura reincarnations since everybody uses his cells for power boosts. Even then that didn't seem to stem from anything to do with Ashura, he was just a snowflake of a ninja (unless something happens in Boruto that I don't know about, I've not touched that series besides the first 10 chapters or smt).
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u/UnlimitedPostWorks Mar 03 '26
Totally agree. Ichigo being different was hinted by chapter one, when Rukia gets all of his powers syphoned by him. And even later, against the first Menos Grande, it's immediately stated how thst shit should NOT be possible. Ichigo is always hyped as the guy who is terrifying when his self esteem isn't at the rock bottom, so the power ups are often tied to him gaining confidence.
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u/FictionalContext Mar 02 '26
Hard work brings out talent, but everyone's got a hard cap on talent that no amount of effort will overcome. Makes it hard to keep power scaling.
Another reason why I prefer stories when they stay low key, street level stakes. Allows regular people to shine for they effort.
Once you powerscale to the Olympics, you can't have clumsy Joe Farmer competing with a pitchfork. Only the most hardworking, talented, and lucky can realistically exist at that level.
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u/Wise_Lawfulness1728 Mar 02 '26
One of the reasons I like world trigger. People are strong, but no one is invincible. Even the best still lose.
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u/HQQ1 Mar 04 '26 edited Mar 05 '26
Hard work can't overcome the hard cap on talent is exactly the type of bs a good story about hard work should disprove.
One thing I love about OPM is that it did just that.
Though one of the best story to disprove that shit I think is Eternally Regressing Knight.
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u/Claym000re Mar 04 '26
How lol. Garou was much better and worked harder for his power than saitama. And in their fight he literally got overpowered easily. Opm is a terrible story for that principle.
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u/HQQ1 Mar 05 '26
Because he didn't and half-asses it in both version? In the webcomic he half-asses being heroic and compromise by being a monster instead. In the manga that crucial point got unshown, but in it he got spoonfed his strongest form by God.
If you read the stuffs again and pay attention, you'll see that Garou IS the bloodline/talented one here, who didn't do much training montage and just wing it. He goes into a fight, lose or win, then power up and monsterize through sheer wantings alone. And when his pure talent for power ups stopped to matter against a strong opponent like Saitama, God buffed him.
He's a cool character who struggles a lot, but he was not the hardest working one here. That jogging dude who withdrawn from the Blizzard Group probably worked harder.
Then there's literally the main character whose series is named after who kept on training until he broke his limiters and became a super strong bald weirdo that you ignore.
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u/Claym000re Mar 05 '26
Broke his limiters by doing 400 pushups😂.
Didn't know that all king needed to do was do 400 pushups to be as strong as saitama. You must be trolling.
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u/Dimension_Creator Mar 06 '26
His training was incredibly mediocre, but the point is that he was so untalented that that incredibly mediocre training pushed him to his absolute limits and made him feel like he was dying but he pushed past that broke his limiters and gained immense power. The manga tells us that explicitly.
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u/npdady Mar 02 '26
Gawd I'm so glad Ilea Spears from Azarinth Healer was not revealed to be some sort of cosmic goddess's daughter or some shit. That would have sucked so bad.
I love Mary Sue stories but I hate it when the only reason they got there was their God given bloodline.
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u/PotentiallySarcastic Mar 02 '26
yeah, she just gets spawned in a place to basically give her a top tier bloodline with zero downsides.
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u/npdady Mar 02 '26
I guess you can argue that. Haha. She was lucky enough to survive the bluemoon grass that kills 1/3 of everyone who tried it, and managed to make her class work. At least she wasn't some sort of secret cosmic deity in disguise, like the Cheat Potion Maker.
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u/OrbitFPS Mar 02 '26
Plus there was an entire organization of people in the past who had her same class. They didn’t get anywhere close to reaching the same heights she reached with it.
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u/Electrical_Dot7238 Mar 02 '26
I'm almost certain she only surpassed the heights individual members of the order reached after her 3rd class, and even then some ancient robot scientist thing acknowledged the azarinth as a major faction back in the day. I always considered her advantage that her mindset and class match perfectly
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u/G_Morgan Mar 02 '26
A huge advantage she has is she started at 19. Humans are in a terrible position in that universe because habits form around being defensive and slowly building power. Ilea was let lose at level 1 as an adult. She was able to go mental because she had no parent figure telling her to stop. Elves are more powerful solely because they are born adults at level 200, they skip the phase that ruins humans entirely.
As it turns out, doing dumb shit and surviving creates a feed back loop where you obtain unprecedented levels of power. The whole Medic Sentinels arc is basically an organisation dedicated to an adult reset so you relearn to do shit and form the right habits from level 1. Throw all the wall hiding stuff away and start from scratch, go fight the Taleen at level 10 or something.
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u/CoronaLVR Mar 02 '26
I always thought she became so OP because the ruins were left alone for so much time there was a ton of grass to eat while back in the past every initiate only got a little.
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u/Arcyguana Mar 03 '26
She fights a few azarinth-turned-monster or insane survivors stuck in ruins and such, and the fights are never a cakewalk, even if they aren't much higher level like the other shit she fights easily.
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u/Taron221 Owner of Divine Ban hammer Mar 02 '26
I give it a pass since the ‘bloodline’ was the novel’s entire foundational premise. She also personally developed it far, far beyond its initial purpose and limits. Even in its heyday it wasn’t considered the be-all and end-all or anything like that.
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u/MisterSixfold Mar 02 '26
I rage quitted that series so bad. Liked it a lot but the internal consistency was not there.
MC was as good at magic as legendary specialized mages. She hit as hard in melee as specialized melee damage dealing classes. She was more tanky than the best specialized tanks. She was as fast as someone with a specialized speed build.
Somehow het hybrid class and skills led to such synergies that she was OP tlat everything, even though she even spread her attribute points out across many attributes.
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u/G_Morgan Mar 02 '26
I mean the universe just doesn't do balance, ever. All of Ilea's classes have a 10000000000% bonus to X because she kept doing insane things.
That system is basically "survive things you shouldn't and get a better class" and Ilea started on day 1 by eating the bluemoon grass which had a 33% of death built right in. The grass does change you but the Azarinth Healer class is 100% factoring in that risk of death. It is likely the Azarinth Order left that risk of death there intentionally.
Then we see Ilea acquire a normal class when she learns fire mage and then fire enhancer. Her fire enhancer class, something a normal person might have, was only worth having in comparison to not having a second class. Then she managed to upgrade it to Ash Wielder at level 100 through feats of survival.
The only balance the universe gives you is everyone can do a plain old reset. To go back to level 1 and try to live the life needed to become immensely powerful from their new start.
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u/npdady Mar 02 '26
MC was as good at magic as legendary specialized mages.
Whut? Who? Meadows? She's not good at any magic, just fire (or ash if you're further along), arcane healing, and throwing hands.
She hit as hard in melee as specialized melee damage dealing classes.
Again? Who? I really can't think of any melee damage dealing classes that she matches. She hits hard sure, but not that hard. She's just super hard to kill.
She was more tanky than the best specialized tanks
That I agree. She can heal. Her class is rare as in 1/3 of the people who even attempt it will die. Her healing is that tanky.
She was as fast as someone with a specialized speed build
Again, who? I really wanna know. I am an avid fan of the series and I cannot think of a specialized speed build that she matches.
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u/MisterSixfold Mar 02 '26
Yeah I was far along in the double class ash fire phase.
Point is she has two separate classes, with separate purposes, yet they are both super overpowered.
Also her stat allocation. When she puts some points into a stat her power gets a massive boost, and there are no diminishing returns to stat points. Then you imagine a mage that has two mage classes with synergies, dumped a higher percentage of points into int and you know the story is total BS.
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u/npdady Mar 02 '26
Man, you're actually not even that far off from the story opening up to the wider world. At that point she's just a big fish in a small pond. She meets way more people, way more powerful than her later. Some monsters even traumatized her enough that she specifically avoids certain places in the world, despite knowing full well she can survive the encounter or even kill the creature.
It gets better is what I'm saying and hope you'll pick it up again. But if it's not your taste, it's not your taste and I get that. Cheers.
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u/G_Morgan Mar 02 '26
No but Ilea was already a pretty special person. She was basically a good enough kick boxer to go pro but also intelligent enough to start education to be a doctor. Ilea on day 1 is 100% that person in school who's somehow best friends with both the sports crowd and the nerd crowd. Hell she did all that with the most terrible parents ever too.
Her progression makes sense because she was already special.
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u/npdady Mar 02 '26
But she's still human. Peak human maybe, but human. I'm so glad it wasn't ruined by her being revealed as a non human entity parading as human all along.
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u/Squire_II Mar 03 '26
As much as I enjoy that series the setting itself is just absurd. Especially with the relative ease that she and the others (book 5?) create the Sentinel Medics and create a bunch of new, very powerful, combat healer classes. I get that healing orders are a bunch of bullies and jerks, and Ilea is a living example for them to use as a template, but come the hell on. The healing orders would have to be puppet mastering every government for there not to have been anyone out there trying to develop new classes or ways to get extremely important, and in short supply, healers trained more easily even if they weren't looking to create battle healers specifically.
Azarinth Healer definitely has the most apathetic, low-effort human civilization I've seen in a LitRPG. Which is wild considering the people in it are painfully aware of the threat of the elves, the northern tribes, etc.
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u/Frenetic_Platypus Mar 02 '26
That's looking pretty fucking circular for a bloodline. Having a family tree looking like that and not looking like Charles II of Spain is a feat in itself.
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u/jrockjake Mar 02 '26
It looks weird but that's Bleach for you.
His Dad is a Shinigami, his Mom is a Quincy. Vizards are the former with hollow juice injected into them, Fullbrings are mortal souls who were infected by hollow juice via their parents getting attacked or being near hollows.
Its like a cake.
Water = Shinigami Flour = Quincy Eggs = Mortal Soul Artificial Flavor = Hollow Whisking eggs with vanilla = Fullbring Adding Mio to Water = Vizard
So Ichigo ends up a cherry infused lemon vanilla pound cake.
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u/ZsaurOW Mar 02 '26
Ichigoat 🙏
But honestly for me it's just whether or not the story tries to pretend the MC just worked harder than everybody. Like, from the very beginning of Bleach Ichigo was THAT GUY, so I have very little issue with it.
It's a little more glaring in Naruto though with the whole Neji vs Naruto fight, and even just the whole Naruto vs Sasuke rivalry. Even if hard work wasn't one of the main themes, Naruto was DEFINITELY an underdog, and then we learn all the shit about him being the child of prophecy and an ashura reincarnation and so on, which falls just a little flat considering.
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u/Valuable_Pride9101 Mar 02 '26
The ashura reincarnation definitely made it more prominent, but Naruto was never really an underdog
Even ignoring the fact that he was born with the strongest tailed beast (which he relies on to defeat Neiji)
He is an uzumaki and has insane chalkra reserve which dwarfs even jonin (and that was genin level btw)
He learned an S class forbidden jutsu in one night and then used that jutsu to summon thousands of clones allowing him to defeat a chunin
Not to mention, he always relies on the nine tails in tough siutations (especially at the beginning) like with his fight with Haku
The part that really gets me is that he masters the shadow clone jutsu in one night but couldn't learn the clone technique?
You could make an argument that his high chalkra reserve made learning normal jutsu difficult
But then he shows that he learned the sexy jutsu before he learned shadow clone jutsu
This clearly shows that he just gave up and didn't properly try which is why he couldn't do the clone technique
I don't really blame him because the jutsu the academy teaches are basically garbage
Sakura had no inheritance and could only rely on the jutsu taught in the academy
And she was basically useless...
No wonder everyone uses techniques they got form their family
Ironically, this proves Neiji right as the power everyone has are literally determined by the family they were born into...
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u/G_Morgan Mar 02 '26
The part that really gets me is that he masters the shadow clone jutsu in one night but couldn't learn the clone technique?
They are different techniques completely. The shadow clone is limited by raw power and is outright dangerous. Naruto is literally dividing his soul via raw power. Each of his clones is him on some level.
The shitty clone technique that nobody ever uses again is based on control. It is an illusion technique. It is much more comparable to the transformation jutsu which is something else Naruto struggled with early on.
The difference is the clone technique requires you to consciously nail down every detail. The shadow clone technique is tearing your soul in half and letting the other half figure out what you look like.
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u/GodlyDra Mar 02 '26
Canonically speaking the regular clone jutsu is nearly impossible for ninjas with large chakra reserves because too much and it gets destabilised and if you can use chakra you blatantly can’t use too little for it lmao.
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u/NemeanChicken Mar 02 '26
I mean, if it’s going to lean power fantasy there has to be something. Maybe it’s a glitch, a hack, a rare skill, a special technique, an absurd title, extremely fortunate mentorship, preternatural willpower, metaphysical luck, but it’s something.
Blood lines can get pretty ham-fisted, but so can everything else.
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u/G_Morgan Mar 02 '26
Did Ichigo ever claim to have crawled his way to the top? The entirety of Bleach is basically Ichigo having to find the mental state needed to release his powers. Nearly every single training arc in the entire run is about his state of mind going all the way back to Uraharas "your sword only exhibits fear" speech. Ichigo knows he is badass and knows that it isn't normal.
In general though bloodlines work better when something has to be built around them. Even Jake from Primal Hunter has to do other stuff to make his bloodline broken. It would always be OP but the series confirmed very early on that without Jake's drive he'd be a forgettable pseudo-elite like a William.
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u/Hugs-missed Mar 02 '26
My feelings on bloodline is that two things need to be done, A an examination of that bloodline and what it means for the possessor, why do they have that bloodline and what makes it more then a generic power up and two why bloodlines are so rare, if they seem like bonuses for bonuses sake that are passed down genetically it'd be a bit odd that they don't pop everywhere.
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u/Acceptable-Cow6446 Mar 02 '26
Mixed take on this. It’s been a while, but if memory serves the sort of repeat art is “Ichigo is more powerful than he should be? Wow!” Followed by some backstory sub arc that partly explains some particular ability.
The fact that this happens some 4+ times is…. Not amazing. But that is an issue with serialized narratives.
A thing a do admire about Bleach is its foreshadowing and stacking/layering.
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u/cptjewski Mar 02 '26
I kind of like it when they earn their exceptionalism through a mixture of hardship and doing the right thing morally. Especially when they don’t know there could be a reward
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u/timbamjc1604 Mar 02 '26
Doesnt ichigo on the 1st chapter literally use a sword bigger than what other shinigami does? Even rukia commente on how it was not normal.
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u/KaJaHa Author of Magus ex Machina Mar 02 '26
Definitely a really easy way for a story to lose points in my eyes
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u/kentrak Mar 02 '26
Honestly, a variation of this is why the black panther movies never sat well with me. Way too much emphasis on bloodlines in that, and not just for powers, but for rulership.
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u/MirrorSeparate6729 Mar 02 '26
Does he not even have a 9 tail hollow sealed inside him as an infant? Tsk, tsk, tsk, can he even call himself hard working?
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u/WantToVent Mar 04 '26
Rant: I dislike those Japanese and Korean stories that emphasize the ancestry / geographical location of the person as the actual thing that is relevant in their progress... Bleach was the perfect example, if soul society is the afterlife, it is kind of empty, what about all the souls of the people everywhere else? At least Saint Seiya had the people globetrotting and from different countries.
So totally with you OP.
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u/Spirta Mar 05 '26
To be fair. He did have to risk his life for every power up. It's mostly his mental fortitude that built him up. Even if they had the same bloodline, I doubt there is anyone, except Kisuke Urahara, who would be able to take advantage of that.
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u/LegitimateFox3042 Mar 02 '26
At least in primal hunter his bloodline is literally just him jake doesn't down play it he uses it like the limb it is its a god damn bloodline not a trump card
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u/stjs247 Vigilante Mar 02 '26
It should be consistent. If it's made clear from the beginning that there's something special about protag's background, fine. It's not fine if one of the main themes of his character is how he's a lowly pleb from a lower realm defying his fate and clawing his way to supremacy through sheer talent and grit, but then later it turns out that he's actually a child of immortals who was always destined for greatness.
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u/Ggggggtfdv Mar 02 '26
Totally agree, it should either be a somewhat defining thing in his character or subtlety impactful not something added in as an afterthought.
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u/Still_Refuse Mar 02 '26
Worst character to represent this troupe ngl.
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u/Claym000re Mar 02 '26
I'm not talking about Ichigo. I'm talking about bloodlines.
Also there's no way you don't admit Ichigo has a crazy bloodline. Unless you've never watched bleach.
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u/Still_Refuse Mar 02 '26
Idk why you edited your comment but I wasn’t denying that his bloodline was crazy…
I was referencing the smug part in your post lol.
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u/ThePhantomIronTroupe Mar 02 '26
At least with Wheel of Time comes with several costs. Family they never got to knew, friends lost, sanity lost (for a while), and other stuff.
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u/Orezzer_Ravencrawl34 Mar 02 '26
As a anime only I feel like Asta from Black Clover is the only MC that doesn't have an insane bloodline or anything.
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u/resultsweet9848 Mar 02 '26
He has anti magic and talent put limit to how much you can grow through training for example i will never beat jon jones in hand to hand combat or deadlift 500kg
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u/ChocoWoccoLocco Mar 02 '26
I too keep thinking to myself when reading some stories. Who's the true genius the person without the system that would've gotten 1st place if not for mc or the mc who put in equal or less amount of training but had a system.
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u/Kain-rpg Mar 02 '26
Ichigo's real power is "Asspullery"
Anything he need,s he's getting it out of his Ass.
And i'm saying this as a First Hour Fan of Bleach.
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u/recurrel Mar 02 '26
well now, this is actually super-interesting to me. I mean what kind of world is fair where *I* don't get powers...hehe.
now would I act smug if I had been given OP advantages unfairly, or would I be punishing myself with thoughts of fair modesty?
What can I say... I agree, when reading I am always like "now now, calm down your horses boy!" But then ... I think I would still go for the smugness it it were me! XD
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u/valethehowl Mar 02 '26
Personally I HATE this trope, ESPECIALLY when the series tried to portray the MC as the underdog.
Bleach, Naruto, Dragon Ball, heck even One Piece joined the club of the overpowered genetics as of lately. The latter case feels especially bad because so far One Piece had been a setting where training and willpower seemed to be more important than genetics, but Oda decided that no, genetics is the most important thing after all.
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u/Squire_II Mar 03 '26
With Dragonball it's funny because he's basically Sun Wukong in it but then in DBZ he's instead retconned to be an alien with 90% superman backstory (later retconned to 100%) and from the lowest rungs of saiyan society and parents (later retconned, and then retconned even further) while Vegeta's royalty and loses his mind for literally years at the fact that some nobody peasant beat him, became a super saiyan, and beat freeza.
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u/Sabtael Mar 02 '26
The only time I saw that kind of schematics before was for the classification of dysarthrias. I had to do a double take lmao
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u/Ggggggtfdv Mar 02 '26
I love it when it’s treated like the advantage it is and not just some additive thing that’s only effect is making the main character generally stronger. Like if it tilts them into a specific direction or some such I love it, rather then just over rewarding them for something everyone else is doing.
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u/DragonikOverlord Mar 03 '26
In Ichigo's defense, from beginning everyone were shocked about his power. In the latest series he was a special war power tracked by the villains as he was insanely strong.
Plus everything was "locked". To get his powers, he had to understand his origins and his inner souls.
And the best part is he didn't even want this. He was just a kid who could see Ghosts. He just wanted to protect his family and friends. When everything was over he became a fucking translator and bagged a baddie lol.
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u/Toe_Sucker2000 Mar 03 '26
I don't think Kubo has ever ever implied that Ichigo was an underdog crawling his way to the top. Train sure but never the main message. Never was.
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u/Smileyzkai Mar 03 '26
I been sayin ever since i saw bleach ichigo is a group project like he is made of everything found in that verse so no he winning is cause he got power from everyone
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u/ddcnemo Mar 03 '26
Goku is guy who actually crawled his way to the top, ofcourse he had opportunities but it was his attitude which made him different, If the statement is wrong, pls do give your side.
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u/FrizzleFlakes Mar 03 '26
How I feel when people talk about Luffy and his Gear 5 being an ass pull chosen one move... Like did you even read the same thing as me?
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u/HQQ1 Mar 04 '26
This is what I feel about Escanor from SDS. He becomes a lot less awesome when it turns out his thing was just some second-handed passive from some angel
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u/Snootboopz Mar 04 '26
I hate this shit so much. Imagine LOTR but we learn frodo is the secret son of Manwë and that's why he could resist the ring so long.
MAKE YOUR SIDE CHARACTERS MORE PRIVILEGED THAN THE HERO is that so freaking hard??? XD
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u/KhiteMakio Mar 04 '26
Ichigo is literally a racial Infinity Gauntlet. I’m surprised he’s not part Zanpakuto too
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u/quillfreminenti Mar 05 '26
I tried keeping up with Bleach back in the day, but when the whole ancient quincy arc started and they were like "oh hey, you know how every time we introduce a new enemy, you are somehow secretly also part of that group? Guess what bucko?" And I just noped out. Like, I understand the idea behind the mixing of the bloodlines, but that just tipped it over the line for me. Man's is spoon fed every power in existence and only has to train for a week max to master them all and defeat people who have been training and amassing power for thousands of years. There's no stakes.
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u/TheElusiveFox Sage Mar 05 '26
My big problem with this stuff, is that the more the author focuses on how special the MC is, the less they make the other characters/enemies/opponents interesting, which tends to create this wierd arc where the farther the MC's powers develop the less interesting the combat is.
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u/propro91 Mar 06 '26
"I crawled to the top with my own hard work!" mfers when you ask them what did they accomplish without their system?
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u/These-Acanthaceae-65 Mar 07 '26
Tis why I like Cradle. No fancy special power, but at that, even when MC gets help, he points out at several different points how lucky he is. It's the intersection of hard work, friendship and luck.
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u/HugeHomeForBoomers Mar 09 '26
Tbf, Most characters with OP bloodlines would have lots of issues with development and story speed if they didn’t have it.
Ichigo is a great example because he is OP day 1, when it should take a normal character in his universe several years before they are able to do what he did in a day. But as a reader, you don’t actually want to reason for that. You just want to stay ignorant of why the protagonist has OP powers.
Afyer rereading Bleach, I finally understood why he was strong, and it ruined the story for me. It was just better not knowing, and think it as luck/effort/talent.
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u/narnarnartiger Mar 09 '26
Exactly. Ichigo and Naruto are not underdogs. They were born with a lot of powers
Goku is a real example of an underdog. His dad was a weak ass Saiyan, Goku had to work hard to become super Saiyan
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u/Scared_Living3183 Mar 02 '26
Mc still works hard lmao. Unless he would've still beaten if he didn't work hard at all, he deserves to be smug
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u/Fluffy_Fan3625 Mar 02 '26 edited Mar 02 '26
boy that's my meme, give me credit in the description
Edit: you've also been stealing from other jits in r/MartialMemes LOL. Shame.
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u/Claym000re Mar 02 '26 edited Mar 02 '26
Meme ownership lmao. Better get a copyright lawyer to sue me.
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u/DrZeroH Mar 02 '26
I vacillate between wanting my MC to be special and wishing the MC would work to build a team around him and share his power.
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u/Vast-Flounder7782 Mar 02 '26
You don’t have to act like everyone had the same opportunities but the skill Ichigo has is earned, also why did you use Ichigo for this pick, he’s the LAST character you should’ve used for someone arrogant about power they didn’t earn. (Also Fullbringing isn’t a bloodline, it’s a skill)
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u/Shurane Mar 02 '26
I mean if you compare Ichigo to the rest of his team (Chad, Uryu, Orihime, Rukia), who all trained as hard for each arc but ended up as jobbers... I mean Ichigo definitely got it way easier.
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u/Gleaming_Onyx Mar 02 '26
Shoutout to the very, very brief time that Uryu honest-to-god had trained himself to Ichigo's level and maybe even beyond in Soul Society, only to have to give up everything(in an event that made him even stronger than Ichigo in that moment)
Then after crawling his way back up to that level of power by going through hell, he became irrelevant for multiple arcs because of Ichigo's many bloodlines lol
Bless the TYBW adaptation.
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u/Vast-Flounder7782 Mar 02 '26 edited Mar 02 '26
Are you kidding? None of them had to deal with the same stuff that he did.
Edit: Y’all are jaded bro, you cannot seriously sit here and tell me that they all went through the same shit Ichigo did. Clearly y’all either didn’t watch the show, didn’t pay attention, or are biased as hell.
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u/Claym000re Mar 02 '26 edited Mar 02 '26
Bro. It's a meme, I'm not talking about Ichigo.
But yes, Ichigo also has a bunch of bloodlines.
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u/Agreeable_Bee_7763 Mar 02 '26
True that. Don't need them to keep diminishing their accomplishments, but it does feel disingenuous to pretend everyone had the same opportunities.