Loved overpowered anime characters as a kid? You may have been using them as a coping mechanism.
Is it just me, or does everyone have this memory? You’re a kid, goofing around with your cousins, and some uncle or aunt wanders over to tell you to enjoy it while it lasts, because being a child is the best time of your life.
I never gave it much thought back then. Looking back, I think they were already feeling the weight of adulthood, the same crushing pile of responsibilities that’s landing on us now.
But for a lot of us, childhood wasn’t the easy part. And if you grew up quietly obsessed with overpowered anime characters, that obsession may have been doing more work than you realized.
THE SHORT ANSWER
If you were drawn to overpowered (OP) anime characters as a kid, especially calm, untouchable ones like Sesshomaru from InuYasha or Hiko Seijūrō XIII from Rurouni Kenshin, it may have been more than taste. Researchers call the urge to become like a favorite character wishful identification, and research on children and media describes kids using their favorite heroes to shape who they are and to cope with everyday life. For a child with little control at home, a hero who could never be pushed around was a safe place to put that feeling.
When Home Felt Out of Your Control
Childhood is a landscape mapped entirely by other people’s rules. For a long time, you don’t realize you’re powerless; you simply live inside the boundaries you’re handed. But for plenty of kids growing up in the late ’90s and early 2000s, home wasn’t a soft sanctuary. It was a masterclass in navigating instability.
That instability wore different masks depending on the house you lived in.
For some, it was a parent who kept chasing the next get-rich-quick scheme, and the humiliating cycle of watching them ask a grandfather or an uncle to patch over the monthly shortfall. For others, it was absence: both parents working day in and day out, and a quiet, hollow house where a small mind worked out early that survival required loneliness. And for many, it was a high-decibel home, where an alcoholic parent’s verbal routine forced you to shrink into a corner. You learned to wear self-deprecation as armor, because the world outside couldn’t mock you if you’d already made yourself the punchline.
The last of those has a name in public-health research. Experiences like growing up with a parent who misuses alcohol are called adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), and they are far more common than most of us assume. In CDC survey data from 2011 to 2020, 63.9% of US adults reported at least one ACE, and adults aged 25 to 34 were the age group most likely to report four or more: 25.2%, roughly one in four.
Whatever the specific texture of your reality, the result inside your head was the same: a paralyzing loop of script-doctoring. You replayed every confrontation, rewriting your own weakness into endless what-ifs and should-haves.
Looking back, I remember all the times we used to watch SpongeBob or DragonBall Z on TV with the volume down to just the first two blocks. Even without the sound of SpongeBob laughing his high pitched annoying laugh or when Goku screamed himself to become the Super Saiyan, we felt the laughs and the excitement.
Our one ear was always sharpened to our father’s footsteps, ready to run to the TV because the remote was broken perpetually in our house. On some days we used to make it just before he entered the room and on some days, we used to get our asses whooped.
The Blueprints of Stillness: Why Overpowered Anime Characters Felt Safe
When your real world feels out of your control, your mind drifts toward characters with an infinite aura: figures who move through chaos with a cold, untouchable grace. They don’t win by shouting. They win by being impossible to move.
| The reality at home | The overpowered sanctuary | What it gave a powerless kid |
|---|---|---|
| A parent chasing get-rich-quick schemes; money always running out | Hiko Seijūrō XIII (Rurouni Kenshin) | Discipline and total, quiet control: the steadiness the house didn’t have |
| Parents always at work; a quiet, empty house | Eightron (DT Eightron) | A way out, and a protector who always came when called |
| Shouting at home, bullies at school | Sesshomaru (InuYasha) | A boundary nobody could cross, held without ever raising his voice |
Sesshomaru (InuYasha): The Boundary That Never Moved
Consider Sesshomaru from InuYasha. He didn’t need to raise his voice to command a room; his presence was the baseline everyone else had to adjust to. To a neurodivergent kid struggling to decode the social groups at school, or a kid who’d had ink splashed across his shirt by a class bully, that kind of calm looked like a superpower in its own right.
Then there’s his sword. In InuYasha: The Final Act, the 2009–10 series that finally finished the story, Sesshomaru manifests Bakusaiga [→ anime swords post · optional], a blade that isn’t inherited or stolen but grows out of his own body, after he has handed the technique he worked so hard to perfect over to his brother’s sword. It was the ultimate daydream weapon. You didn’t want to destroy the world. You just wanted an unyielding boundary against the people who talked down to you, and you wanted it to come from somewhere inside you.
Hiko Seijūrō XIII (Rurouni Kenshin): Stillness in a Room Full of Noise
The same logic applied to Hiko Seijūrō XIII, the thirteenth master of the Hiten Mitsurugi style and Kenshin’s teacher in Rurouni Kenshin (known in some markets as Samurai X). In a world full of frantic, shouting swordsmen, what defined him was how still he stayed. He never looked like he was trying. To a kid watching a parent fumble promise after promise, that looked like the most enviable thing in the world: complete control, and nothing to prove.
DT Eightron: A Way Out of the Empty House
In the more obscure corners of our childhoods sat shows like DT Eightron, a 1998 series from Sunrise, the studio behind Gundam. Its hero, fourteen-year-old Shu, grows up in Datania, a domed city run by a computer program whose “reset system” strips children of their emotions so they’ll work like drones. Shu dreams of seeing the ocean, so he escapes and joins a band of underground rebels, and whenever they’re in immediate danger, an eight-year-old hacker named Dolly can summon Eightron, a powerful, mysterious guardian. For a kid alone in a quiet house, that was the whole fantasy in one premise: a way out, and a protector who always answered.
In those solitary hours, you weren’t a kid hiding from a parent’s fumbled promises or an empty house. You were a warrior in a larval state, waiting for your turn to be invincible.
Was It Really a Coping Mechanism? What the Psychology Says
As far as I know, nobody has studied kids who worshipped Sesshomaru. But you’re not the only one who felt the pull. AnimeTok creator Tony Weaver Jr. told HuffPost that anime gave him characters he “could lean on when I wasn’t strong enough to be myself yet.” Two well-established ideas from psychology explain why that pull was so strong.
The first is wishful identification: the desire to become, or act like, a media character. In 1996, communication researcher Cynthia Hoffner interviewed children aged 7 to 12 about their favorite TV characters. How intelligent a male character seemed predicted how much kids wanted to be like him, and for boys, how strong he seemed predicted how close they felt to him. SAGE’s Encyclopedia of Children, Adolescents, and the Media notes that children pick favorite heroes and use them to shape their own identities, and that how much they lean on those heroes to cope with growing up and everyday life depends on their stage of development.
The second is escapism, and here the research gets genuinely useful. Frode Stenseng, a researcher at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, splits escapism into two kinds. Self-suppression is running from painful thoughts and feelings. Self-expansion is escaping toward something: new experiences, new sides of yourself. Studies using his model link self-suppression to lower well-being and self-expansion to higher well-being, and he has since applied the same model to gaming and online streaming.
Fans usually call the appeal of OP characters a power fantasy. For a powerless kid, it was closer to a shelter than a fantasy, and most of us were firmly in self-suppression mode. We weren’t building anything; we were getting through the night. The point of looking back as an adult is to turn that same pull into the second kind.
The Shift: From Revenge to Protection
There’s a minor canon event that happens as you grow older: the shift from loving Superman’s built-in invulnerability to understanding Batman’s brutal, self-inflicted discipline. You realize the true hero isn’t the one born without a ceiling. It’s the one who builds his own armor within the limits of being entirely human.
But the real evolution happens when the childhood resentment finally burns off.
When I look back at those late-night anime blocks through a more mature, stoic lens, I don’t see simple escapism. Those overpowered archetypes were a psychological shield that kept our core intact when we had zero real-world leverage to protect ourselves. Even Sesshomaru makes the turn: the demon lord who spends the early series coveting his brother’s sword slowly becomes the quiet protector of Rin, a human orphan who travels with him.
As an adult, that old conditioning morphs into a very functional kind of resilience. It’s the exact muscle memory I call on when I’m grinding through a brutal boxing spar. When I lose a round to a younger, faster, more athletic kid, my ego wants to revert to that childhood powerlessness. Instead, you lock back into the stoic baseline. You check the ego, keep your hands up, and focus on the earned progression of the work. It’s no accident that Hajime no Ippo, a series about a bullied kid who finds boxing and earns every inch of his strength, hit so many of us so hard.
And the daydream changes. You stop wanting the sword for revenge against the past. You want the strength so that no one around you ever has to feel as powerless, or as small, as you once did.
Space to Breathe: Why Adults Still Need Their Own Territory
To maintain that level of internal resilience, you have to protect the environment you build it in. Processing the noise of your past needs physical territory to ground your adult identity, and a lot of it comes down to how much space you can claim in your life, whether that’s a clean desk in the corner of your bedroom or a room where your work stress can’t follow you in.
Without an intentional sanctuary, somewhere you can stop performing, the mind stays adrift. Your escape hatch might be a boxing ring, a messy workbench, or an evening spent snapping bricks together away from a screen. What matters is that it’s a domain where the rigid adult world is switched off for a while.
The Art of Moving Forward: Looking Back Without Living There
There’s a massive temptation in modern culture to treat nostalgia as a permanent residence, a cozy, continuous loop where we can hide from the demands of the present. But looking back endlessly is a stagnation trap.
Used well, nostalgia does the opposite. Research led by psychologists at the University of Southampton has found that nostalgia tends to surface when we feel low or lonely, and that it lifts mood, raises self-esteem and strengthens our sense of connection to other people. Their studies also found that nostalgic memories often follow a redemption arc, where a hard scene gives way to a triumph. That’s the version worth keeping: nostalgia as fuel, not as a hiding place.
The fumbled investments, the empty rooms and the high-decibel arguments happened. The coping mechanisms were necessary to get you across the finish line. But a stoic life requires radical acceptance: you accept the environment that shaped you, you thank the armor that kept you safe, and then you willingly lay it down.
We don’t look back at our childhood heroes to escape today’s reality. We look back to thank the kid who survived the uncertainty, so that we can finally step out of the corner and build something that lasts.
FAQ
Is it normal to have used anime as a coping mechanism as a kid?
It’s a very human response. Children often imagine being like a favorite character, which researchers call wishful identification, and research on children and media describes kids leaning on favorite heroes as they work out who they are and cope with everyday life. For a child dealing with stress at home or bullying at school, a calm, powerful character can offer a feeling of safety and control that real life isn’t providing.
Why do people like overpowered characters?
Overpowered characters offer what fans call a power fantasy: the experience, through someone else, of never being pushed around. Part of the appeal is that they give a feeling of control to viewers who may not have much of it in their own lives. The calm, stoic kind, like Sesshomaru or Hiko Seijūrō, add something extra: control without anger, which can be deeply reassuring to anyone who grew up around shouting.
Is escapism through anime healthy?
It depends on what you’re escaping toward. Norwegian researcher Frode Stenseng’s model separates self-suppression escapism, which avoids painful feelings, from self-expansion escapism, which seeks positive experiences and growth. Studies using the model link self-suppression to lower well-being and self-expansion to higher well-being. Rewatching a favorite show to recharge is different from using it to avoid every hard feeling.
What is wishful identification?
Wishful identification is the desire to become, or act like, a media character. It has mostly been studied in children and teenagers, who look to characters as role models while they’re still working out who they are. In Cynthia Hoffner’s 1996 study of 7- to 12-year-olds, how intelligent a male character seemed predicted how much kids wanted to be like him.
Why do so many anime fans love Sesshomaru?
Sesshomaru pairs overwhelming power with total composure. He rarely raises his voice, never looks rushed, and over the course of InuYasha he slowly becomes protective of Rin, a human orphan who travels with him. That mix of untouchable strength and quiet loyalty is a big part of why he became a fan favorite [→ Morally Grey Characters · when live], especially for viewers who wanted a protector more than a fighter.
What should I do if old childhood memories start resurfacing?
If looking back is stirring up more than nostalgia, such as trouble sleeping, old anger or memories that feel heavy to carry, talking to a doctor, counselor or therapist can help. You don’t need to be in crisis to deserve support.
A NOTE FROM US
This is a personal essay, not clinical advice. If it stirred up something heavy, you don’t have to carry it alone. In the UK, Samaritans are free to call any time on 116 123; in the US, you can call or text 988.
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Sources
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2023). Prevalence of Adverse Childhood Experiences Among U.S. Adults — Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, 2011–2020. MMWR, 72(26).
- Hoffner, C. (1996). Children’s wishful identification and parasocial interaction with favorite television characters. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 40(3), 389–402.
- Heroes, identity, and parasocial interaction. In J. J. Arnett (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Children, Adolescents, and the Media (Vol. 2, pp. 376–377). SAGE, 2007.
- Stenseng, F., Rise, J., & Kraft, P. (2012). Activity engagement as escape from self: The role of self-suppression and self-expansion. Leisure Sciences.
- Stenseng, F., Falch-Madsen, J., & Hygen, B. W. (2021). Are there two types of escapism? Exploring a dualistic model of escapism in digital gaming and online streaming. Psychology of Popular Media.
- Stenseng, F., Steinsholt, I. B., Hygen, B. W., & Kraft, P. (2023). Running to get “lost”? Two types of escapism in recreational running and their relations to exercise dependence and subjective well-being. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 1035196.
- Wildschut, T., Sedikides, C., Arndt, J., & Routledge, C. (2006). Nostalgia: Content, triggers, functions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91(5), 975–993.
- Sedikides, C., Wildschut, T., Arndt, J., & Routledge, C. (2008). Nostalgia: Past, present, and future. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 17(5).
- “Anime Helped Me Cope Through A Rough Year — And It Gave Me A Community Too.” HuffPost, December 2022.
Varun · Founder, Funcle Yeti
Varun writes about nostalgia, hobbies, and the things we loved before we learned to be embarrassed about loving them. He started Funcle Yeti after noticing how many adults around him were quietly rebuilding the collections they’d given up at fifteen — and how few could explain why it helped.
He is not a psychologist. Every clinical claim on this page comes from published research, linked inline. If you spot one that’s wrong, tell him.
Illustrations generated with AI in the Funcle Yeti house style. Charts produced by Funcle Yeti from cited data.