This is speaking in general terms

characters outside this description can still hit, and characters inside it can still miss

But in general, one of the coolest traits a hero (or villain, honestly) can have is to have put in the work

Someone who is a badass and powerful/skilled because they worked at it and did the ten thousand hours

They’re a badass because they fucking earned it

But, paradoxically, I also like it when in their darkest hour, the hero discovers a hidden power they never knew about

everyone is like “how did you do that!?” And the hero is like “ ”

I reconcile this because, in my mind, discovering an unknown power you have is not an upgrade

It’s an obstacle

A challenge

You have to learn about it and figure out where it came from and master it

You gotta control it

Because then

And only then

You have put in the work

...I wonder if this is why sentai and magical girls tend to fall a little flat for me

By genre convention they usually tend to get their power granted to them at the start of the story by an outside source

magical girl series where magical girls are real but the protagonist is using shenanigans to fake being one

like Spider-Man Fake Red

I can’t think of any magical girls who spent months studying and training to learn their magical transformation spells

But if there are that would rule

it is a minor recurring goof in kamen rider ryuki

that the main character, on account of just having been given his powers from an outside source

has no fucking clue how they work, and keeps fucking it up

he attempts to use another guy's card to summon their gun, and gets really surprised when it summons their gun to them, not him

That’s fun

Luffy is fun in this context because at first it looks like he's a Goku-style naturally strong Combat Freak.

And then later you learn more about what happened between the first chapter and the second and it's like, oh, no, hold on, the reason he's so freakishly strong is that he spent ten years wrestling bears in the jungle to get ready for his pirating career.

Yeah Luffy at the start of his adventure has already had his big training arc

Every gum-gum attack is something he needed to develop and practice over the course of years because it turns out fighting with a rubber body is hard

Anyway noe I’m trying to imagine a magical girl who can transform because she practiced it until she passed out every day for a month

The transformation sequence is stock footage because she’s done it so many times that it’s all rote by now

Kamen Rider Build might be a bit more your speed than other Kamen Riders? Because like, you literally see Build developing his own upgrades. He puts in the work and the work is mad science that he THEN uses to punch badguys.