Welcome back to this series. It's been a while. Now that I'm doing book reviews by request only, you can expect more posts like this one, about the craft of writing itself.
Here I explain the appeal of a protagonist being "overpowered". That is, possessing overwhelming ability that would supposedly remove all conflict and tension from a story, and why an author would want to do this intentionally. There can be many reasons for this, as the index at the bottom of the post will show.
Today's topic is "I Swore an Oath".
A character may possess outstanding ability in a field that enables them to conquer any threat and overcome any challenge, but they refrain from doing so because of an oath they made. This shifts the tension from "can they resolve conflict X at all" to "can they resolve conflict X without breaking their oath"?
This enables the author to present the character as something other than an underdog and still show them struggling. It also provides context for a deeper conflict than "defeat the bad guy". It brings up questions such as "is this victory more important than the oath", which naturally has a different discourse depending on the context. Cheating in a sports tournament after promising to play fair would be different than a duel to the death, and this is without considering the results of such a contest. The sports tournament could involve prize money needed for a loved one's medical bill, for instance, and the duel to the death could be a matter of slighted pride.
For the purpose of illustration, I will reference Ruroruni Kenshin. This is a classic anime from the 90s, long before the isekai genre rolled in. I watched this every day on Toonami. Good times.
Anyway, the central character here, Kenshin Himura is a superlative swordsman. He has killed so many people during a recent war that he became known as "Hitokiri Battosai", in other words, the man-slaying master assassin. With his ability to kill basically anyone he wanted, he helped win that war and overthrow an oppressive government. Then he watched his benefactors become the new oppressors. This, plus other personal tragedies, have led him to swear an oath to never kill anyone ever again.
At the start of the story, he vastly outclasses every opponent faces. The first time the audience sees him fight, the fight ends in his favor very quickly. His first notable opponent, Sanosuke Sagara , is so notable for being able to endure more than one hit (in fact, it took a flurry of hits to bring him down). It is not until later in the story, when Kenshin fights Saito, that he is truly challenged when fighting seriously. Is this boring? Not at all.
This is because the tension of these fights is never "will Kenshin defeat the villain". Defeating the villain is, in fact, a secondary concern. What he actually wants to do is protect others, typically his circle of friends at the Kamiya Kasshin-ryu dojo. The tension lies on how he can do this without breaking his oath.
That first villain I mentioned, Kenshin broke the fingers of his left hand to prevent him from holding a sword (the guy already had the thumb of his right hand broken by someone else). As for Sanosuke, Kenshin wore him down and then befriended him. A third instance, late in the story, after the fight with Saito, is crippling an opponent by exploiting a physical weakness through clever dodging. When he can't do this, and thus feels pressured into reaching for a lethal solution, that's when the tension gets really high.
What I refer to is the conflict with Udo Jin-e, Kenshin's fellow man-slayer from the recent war. When he clashes with Kenshin, the result is the opposite of what the audience has become used to. It is Kenshin who is overwhelmed, and Jin-E is disappointed.
Jin-E doesn't want to fight the weak. That's not why he has continued to be a man-slayer in the years since the war's conclusion. He knows that Kenshin is holding back, and so he provokes Kenshin into taking him seriously. He kidnaps Kaoru Kamiya, Kenshin's love interest in the main narrative, to force a second and more serious confrontation, and when that proves insufficient, he subjects her to a hypnotic technique that paralyzes her lungs. If Kenshin does NOT kill Jin-E, then Kaoru will suffocate.
This is the highest point of tension for the series thus far, and still, it is NOT about whether Kenshin will defeat Jin-e. The way the author has constructed the series and this particular event, it is clear that Kenshin will definitely win if he fights seriously. He knows it, Kaoru knows it, and Jin-E himself knows it. All three of them also know that fighting seriously will break Kenshin's oath, which will have terrible consequences for him personally.
The question then shifts from the straight-forward and simple "can Kenshin defeat Jin-E" to the more complex and interesting "what is more important to Kenshin? His mental wellbeing/his metaphoric soul, or Kaoru's life?" The resolution to this scenario is likewise a matter more complicated than a simple defeat.
All of what I have written is exclusively about the fight scenes in isolation. None of the above includes the context of the setting: the Meiji Restoration, the anti-sword law, western influence etc. The series has no need to position Kenshin an underdog in any given fight. It doesn't need to spawn incrementally stronger enemies to maintain narrative tension. It can produce all the tension it needs while allowing Kenshin to be a master swordsman, and all because of the oath.
Index of the Appeal of Overpowered Characters series:
The Appeal of Overpowered Characters - Part 1 - No Need for an Underdog
The Appeal of Overpowered Characters - Part 2 - The Meaning of the Fight
The Appeal of an Overpowered Protagonist - Part 3: What is Gained
The Appeal of an Overpowered Protagonist - Part 4: Super Combat Power does not Create
Brian Wilkerson is an independent novelist, freelance book reviewer, and writing advice blogger. He studied at the University of Minnesota and came away with bachelor's degrees in English Literature and History (Classical Mediterranean Period concentration).
His fantasy series, Journey to Chaos, is currently available on Amazon as an ebook or paperback.
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