It's schale scans 😭It's alive!Thanks for update, mischievous fox scanlations.
has yet to face reality.![]()
Pretty sure there are actually quite a few manga in this trope where the hero recognizes the mc's worth later, but how would you make their fight 'interesting'? The whole trope relies on the setting that the MC is op and artificially boosts the party parameters or competency. Realistically, a small fry whose existence is reliant on the MC won't be able to reach MC's level to provide an 'interesting' fight just because of some realization. Smarter characters who can actually see past their initial bias would more likely give up instead of fighting the mc which some stories have where the party members disband and even go back to being a villager.These manga really need to find a new hook besides the overconfident scumbag hero. It's so cliched now that it's impossible to make it interesting or fun. "I'm the best because I'm the best so whatever I say is right and anything anyone else tells me, even in the face of massive supporting evidence, must be wrong because I'm the best and can't be wrong."
Just once I want the scumbag hero to actually maybe recognize that the guy he kicks out is legitimately a threat to him because he's competent so that their eventual fight actually feels interesting rather than "how is this useless trash heap standing up to me? It can't be because I'm the best and I make the best choices so kicking him out was right because he had to be worthless since I thought so!"
Pretty sure there are actually quite a few manga in this trope where the hero recognizes the mc's worth later, but how would you make their fight 'interesting'? The whole trope relies on the setting that the MC is op and artificially boosts the party parameters or competency. Realistically, a small fry whose existence is reliant on the MC won't be able to reach MC's level to provide an 'interesting' fight just because of some realization. Smarter characters who can actually see past their initial bias would more likely give up instead of fighting the mc which some stories have where the party members disband and even go back to being a villager.
The Strongest Tank's Labyrinth Raids - from a top of my head. Hero forced to acknowledge that he made a mistake and somewhat reconcile with MC.These manga really need to find a new hook besides the overconfident scumbag hero. It's so cliched now that it's impossible to make it interesting or fun. "I'm the best because I'm the best so whatever I say is right and anything anyone else tells me, even in the face of massive supporting evidence, must be wrong because I'm the best and can't be wrong."
Just once I want the scumbag hero to actually maybe recognize that the guy he kicks out is legitimately a threat to him because he's competent so that their eventual fight actually feels interesting rather than "how is this useless trash heap standing up to me? It can't be because I'm the best and I make the best choices so kicking him out was right because he had to be worthless since I thought so!"
The Strongest Tank's Labyrinth Raids - from a top of my head. Hero forced to acknowledge that he made a mistake and somewhat reconcile with MC.
But that mostly with mechanics of that world.
Your proposed number 2 and 4 seems contradictory. You said that the hero party struggles mightily without MC, may or may not try to get stronger without MC but fails. Yet somehow in part 4 they are even with the MC who has artificially scaled up the party so far? Usually stories like this outright state the artificially scaling through the adventurer ranking standards; with MC it would be around S-SS or whatever the story choose to call it and without MC, it is about D-C. If the hero party fails to improve beyond their D-C rank and can somehow match an S-SS rank MC + his party, that would be really bad writing tbh. But yes, as I and GreC_89 mentioned, there are stories where MC's former party had a moment of realization, know they screwed up bad, lost a great opportunity and teammate, and gives up fighting MC so not all of them goes on an ego-trip.It's simple: the hero and the MC are relatively on par with one another. The problem I have is that the setup and play out is always the same:
1) Hero thinks the MC is useless, kicks him out.
2) Hero party then struggles mightily. Other party members may or may not point out that they didn't struggle this much with the MC there, and may highlight the ways the MC made things easier for them, but the hero refuses to believe it because "I'm the hero. I'm the best. I have to succeed because I'm the best and that loser can't possibly have contributed anything."
3) Hero party continues to fail until they are eventually brought into direct competition/conflict with the MC (and often his new party). This starts the fight between the two.
4) Hero is dominated by the MC, but starkly refuses to see how or why it could happen. Instead he just has a nutty breakdown over being outclassed as he gets the floor wiped with him. This demonstrates that the MC is not only not useless, but is unquestionably far strong and actually the best
You could fix this easily:
1) Hero thinks the MC is useless, kicks him out.
2) Hero party struggles mightily, and the Hero recognizes "oh shit, it turns out he did more than I realized and I might've made a mistake to get rid of him." This may or may not be overtaken by the hero deciding that he just needs to get stronger and finding that he can't, but that recognition is important
3) Hero party continues to fail and they end up in competition/conflict with the MC and it starts the fight.
4) The fight is even. The Hero gets angry because he can't win and it bothers him that he's not the best, but it's more of a frustration and less of a separated-from-reality "this can't be, because the world revolves around me" angle. It may also be that the hero struggles because he just brute-forced all his problems and has never had to plan anything. The fight ends up even but the MC triumphs because he's smarter, more adaptable, and possibly because he has a better relationship with his party members (if the parties fight each other and it's not just 1 on 1.)
I just hate that there's not even an attempt to make it different. Every hero is pretty much cut and paste identical with the only difference being whether they also show the hero to be a scumbag sex pest to the female party members so that his actions can also have been motivated by jealousy/lust.