The Power Of Love - Television Tropes & Idioms

alt title(s): Power Of Love

"There are worlds beyond and worlds within which the explorer must explore, but there is one power which seems to transcend space and time, life and death. It is a deeply human power which holds us safe and together when all other forces combine to tear us apart. We call it the power of love."

—closing narration of the Outer Limits episode "The Borderland"

"Love is a very powerful force. Even more so when it's focused into a coherent beam of destruction."

—Black Mage of Eight Bit Theater

"According to my research, about 70% of a hero's power is absorbed from this thing you call 'love'."

—Mao, Disgaea 3

The Power Of Love (note the capitals) is a curious thing. It makes one man weep, and another man sing. It's also an occasionally useful Deus Ex Machina. Even more than The Power Of Friendship, the power of True Love can be applied in dire situations to make things better. Unlike The Power Of Friendship, though, it can be applied in Fan Fic to make things profoundly disturbing.

Common applications of The Power Of Love include activating an Empathic Weapon, freeing a loved one from mind control, and converting a Real Death into a Disney Death. Even when the power of love is not literally and directly responsible, the scene is often set such that the audience is left with the impression that it was "really responsible".

Dont You Dare Pity Me can sometimes be overcome by the Power Of Love; however, it may take time, and the love itself must be purified of any pity it does contain.

The Green Eyed Monster may come into play. In more idealistic shows, it is an enemy of true love. However, more cynical shows may treat it as normal, and even let it overcome Cannot Spit It Out.

In these cynical times, this often feels like a supreme rip-off. It depends on where you, and the scene in question, fall on the Sliding Scale Of Idealism Versus Cynicism. More conventionally, Love Redeems evil. When it's not turning you evil, that is. Or, less often, supporting said baddies.

True Loves Kiss definitely falls under this trope.

Examples

Anime and Manga

Sora's crest in Digimon Adventure. She's a quicker learner than Yamato, thankfully.
The power base of most lead Magical Girls, going all the way back to Codename: Sailor V.
In Suzumiya Haruhi, this is what saves the world from divine puberty.
In G Gundam, fighting alongside his girlfriend allows the main character to turn his ultimate attack, Sekiha Tenkyoken, into "Sekiha Love Love Tenkyoken," which is strong enough to obliterate the Big Bad.
- Not to mention summoning the King of Hearts to blast a heart shaped hole in the Big Bad. Just... Watch it.
In Kannazuki No Miko, apparently "no one" can overcome the brainwashing power of the Orochi, but Souma manages to through his love for their target, Himeko. Of course, he picked the wrong kind of series to love her in...
- A bigger example would be Himeko and Chikane, who invokes The Power Of Love to Screw Destiny and return to each other despite the will of the gods.
  Chikane: Even if the Gods of Death would block my way, they absolutely won't stop my love for you.
In the first Pokemon movie, Ash is turned to stone by a stray attack from Mewtwo. It is the tears of Pikachu and the other pokemon that return Ash to normal.
- This is also an example of Swiss Army Tears.
Reversed and slightly subverted with Nova and Hikaru's relationship in the second season of Magic Knight Rayearth. Nova's hatred for Umi and Fuu is driven by the fact that Hikaru loves them so much, and her similar utter devotion and adoration of Hikaru is prompted by Hikaru's intense self-hatred that she's had since being forced to kill both Zagato and Princess Emeraude at the conclusion of the first season.
Just about everything in Eureka Seven is powered by love...even some of the Humongous Mecha!
Ditto Simoun, although that's a different kind of love entirely.
Kurau in Kurau Phantom Memory appears to gain a lot more strength with the help of Christmas, her Rynax-pair.
In Mai-HiME, the show's Mons are powered by The Power Of Love. Literally. Toss in Synchronization, Anyone Can Die and There Can Only Be One and this begins to feel a lot less idealistic than you first thought...
A slightly cynical variant comes from Fist Of The North Star: in the final battle with Kenshiro, Raoh, the Big Bad, uses a technique that is powered by his love for Yuria and sorrow over her impending death.
One episode of Magical Project S has a group who gains their power from their devotion to their husbands. In order for them to be defeated, Sasami has to invoke the Power of Love between herself and Ryo-Ohki to free herself from their binds.
In the last episode of Martian Successor Nadesico, the Official Couple finally getting over their Will They Or Wont They and sharing True Loves Kiss is what allows the crew to make their getaway with the series Mac Guffin. Naturally, there's a Techno Babble reason for this, but one suspects Inez came up with it just to finally get the two of them together.
Penguin Musume Heart contains one of the more unusual uses of love power. When Sakura is losing her one-on-one sumo match with her rival, Marie, her little sister takes the initiative to shoot her in the head with a tranquilizer called the Love Drive that absorbs the love of everyone in the arena into her. Somehow this makes Sakura giant and half-naked. For fairness, Marie is given a Love Drive too, but since she doesn't get much love, no effects. Then her Quirky Miniboss Squad says that they do love her. Giant naked catfights ensue.
In the Sonic X anime, Chaos energy is defined as "the power enriched by the heart". So when Eggman or Chaos tried to use the power of the seven emeralds selfishly or cruelly, the effect was rather... disturbing. When Sonic used them, however, he used them out of the desire to help people (and his friends gave them to him specifically because they cared), which meant me was able to transform into Super Sonic.
- Also possibly a contributing factor to Chris Thorndyke's ability to escape from Eggman and rip the Emeralds out of an active 'Badnik after witnessing Sonic attacked and hurt by aforementioned'Badnik. (Okay, it's never explicitly stated, but how many twelve year olds do you know who can break out of solid metal restraints without some kind of powerful motivator being invovled?)
Wedding Peach is practically overflowing with it.
According to the manga, and implicitly within the TV series, "love" is the control medium for Evangelion units; specifically, the pilots synchronize via the A10 nerve in the brain, the one that's active when experiencing feelings of love and affection. The series as a whole is pretty much devoted to kicking around and brutalizing this concept.
Yoshiyuki Sadamoto said it best: In other words, the power of love drives this weapon of mass destruction.
In Revolutionary Girl Utena, you can apparently make swords out of love or something. Needless to say, Love Hurts.
Used all over the place in Princess Tutu. From Fakir's "she changed me" epithany to Rue's confession that frees Mytho's heart from the Raven's blood poisoning it, to the fact that the fate of the main character is supposed to be confessing her love and "turn into a speck of light and vanish" when she does.
Subtly but constantly used in Chrono Crusade. Early in the series, Rosette stops Chrono from losing himself in demonic rage when he thinks she's dead. Joshua stops Fiore from becoming a completely mindless doll by mistaking her for his sister and reminding her of her own. Later, Rosette saves Joshua in a similar way. And Rosette even comes back from the dead partially because of her love for Chrono and partially through simple stubbornness. To top it off, she's aided in it from Chrono's former love. This is only some of the examples.
This is how Daisuke of DN Angel transforms into his alter-ego, Dark. It's implied that Satoshi's transformation may be triggered similarly.
In the Hayate The Combat Butler manga, Church Militant Sonia requests a kiss from Wataru if she rescues Saki, who had just been kidnapped. Wataru pays in advance. Next page, Hayate (on bike) catches up to the flaming wreck of the kidnappers' car: a giant cross driven through the hood, the men tied up nearby, and Saki unhurt but confused.
In Zoids: Chaotic Century, Van Flyheight was down and about to be shot by hisRival's Geno Saurer's Wave Motion Gun, which would instantly kill him. Then Fiona gets up, merges with the Team Pet which happens to be a Mechanical Lifeform, and warps into Van's Humongous Mecha, and then a hologram of her kisses Van, thus starting a full regeneration of Van's Humongous Mecha, and activates its ability to disperse charged particles, thus rendering Raven's Wave Motion Gun completely useless, and allows Van to stab the Geno Saurer in its mouth, causing it to explode.
In Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, Simon and Nia's love for each other is what allows Simon to follow her to the dimension of the Anti-Spirals—and that's only the most blatant of this series' many examples of love giving the characters strength and determination.
- As Leeron once said, the Gunmen are literally powered by love, or rather humans' ability to reproduce if you wanna get technical.
Yu-Gi-Oh: Considering Set's history with Kisara, Kaiba's power to Screw Destiny in his duel with Isis, and essentially every time he duels with the Blue-Eyes White Dragon, comes from the Power of Love.
Noein features this at the climax and ending of the story where the love of the two main characters overcomes Noein, the antagonist, and his not-so-benevolent plans.
Berserk has the lead character, Guts hack off his own arm to free himself to try to save his lover Caska from his best-friend-turned-traitor-turned-demon-god Griffith. Subverted when one of Griffith's minions tackles him, holds him down, and forces him to watch helplessly as Griffith rapes Caska.
Subtly played in Skip Beat!: The president of LMA Productions, Lory Takarada, firmly believes that the main force who drives artistes to the spotlight is the need of love and being loved, and runs his company under this belief with apparently astounding results. This is mostly seen in some of his decisions, e.g. creating the Love Me division for talents who lack that drive, like Kyouko (who is fueled by a mix of desire of revenge and sheer stubborness) and Kanae (whose need of individual recognition is so strong it buries any love feelings, even the non-romantic ones). Lory even consistently refused to cast his best male actor, Ren Tsuruga, as a romantic lead, because he knows that Ren had never been in true love, and because of that he couldn't express it convincingly on screen. When Ren manages to get such a role over the president's objections, and finds himself with difficulties to act for the first time in his career, Lory shamelessly points it out. Good luck Ren realizes he is in love just in time to get his character.

Comic Books

The Power Of Love allowed the Flash to come back from an otherdimensional speedster heaven that no one had ever returned from. Several times.
How did the climax of Phoenix: Endsong get missed? Not only did ThePowerOfLove allow Emma Frost (although grudgingly), Cyclops, and every X-Man to restore Jean Grey to herself, White Phoenix Jean then turned around and literally saved all of them from being sucked into a Shi'Ar black hole generator. 'Nuff said.
For a split second, it looks as if this trope is going to be averted in the Justice Society of America arc Princes of Darkness—Jade's The Power of Love speech to Obsidian fails to halt his evil rampage—but it's really only a set up for their father, the Golden Age Green Lantern, to come in and deliver it successfully.
In the fourth Scott Pilgrim book, The Power of Love is manifested as a giant flaming katana, which Scott yanks out of his chest.

Film

The Fifth Element, where love is the key to unlocking the titular element's power.
- This troper always read the movie as claiming that love WAS the Fifth Element.
In The Matrix, it appears that Neo's transformation into The One is sparked by Trinity telling his mostly-dead body that she loves him.
A more cynical and indirect usage: In the film Ultraviolet, the heroine weeps over a dead boy, causing him to come back to life — because her tears infected him with vampirism.
Uniquely literal example: in the movie Krull, the Power of Love manifests itself at the climax as the ability to throw fireballs. Seriously.
Perhaps the quintessential example of this trope is The Princess Bride, wherein the depth of the protaganist's love for the eponymous Princess saves him from certain death, grants him access to Charles Atlas Superpowers, and confers on him the ability to produce a death wail that can not only be heard across an entire kingdom but also identified as a scream caused by one losing their true love. Partly subverted in that the machine is able to kill him in the first place, though this not only produces the scream that allows his rescue..
Don't forget Disney's Beauty and the Beast where the Beast turns into a Prince when Belle tells him she loves him.
This is pretty much the whole Aesop of Disney's Enchanted, right down to True Loves Kiss.
In the film The Naked Gun, Frank's power of love break's Jane's Mind Control.
The monsters in The Deaths of Ian Stone feed on human fear, but the most powerful one, Ian Stone, draws power from love.
In the film version of Stardust, Yvaine's love for Tristan allows her to go supernova and incinerate Lamia.
In Pleasantville, it's The Power Of Love (or just plain old Auto Erotica) that changes the entire TV show from black and white to colour.
- Technically, it's the Power of Change that causes people to -well- change color. It's just that most people did this by having sex, which didn't exist in their world before. The two main characters, coming from the real world, had a harder time gaining color.
The trope takes its name and first sentence from the Huey Lewis and the News song of the same name, which was written for and featured in Back To The Future. The film provides many examples of The Power Of Love.

Literature

In the Harry Potter series, love is said to be the source of the force which saved Harry from Voldemort in his infancy, and is cited as the secret power he has over You-Know-Who. In the seventh book, however, it is made clear that it is mostly a mother's love for her child, and other non-romantic types of love, that actually have concrete magical power. Romantic love has a role only for its psychological effect.
In A Wrinkle In Time, Meg is able to save her little brother Charles Wallace from being possessed by IT through the power of her love for him.
- She suspects that if anyone ever offered love to IT, IT would shrivel up and die. Not sure whether that's a subversion or not....everyone else will be fine, but poor IT.
In The Fangs of K'aath, the power of love in the heroes is able to repel the minions of the titular demon as if they are physically burned and cancel out a magic poison at the book's climax.
Quite a few of David Eddings' novels have the goddess Aphrael. Her "real" form is an adult woman, but she always appears to everyone as a eight year old girl. This allows her to use The Power Of Love on everyone. When a cute young girl asks to sit in your lap, no one can refuse. Once she sits in your lap and gives you a kiss, she will get her way on everything she wants.
To quote Virgil, "Omnia vincit Amor".
- "Et nos cedeamus Amori..."
In The Dresden Files love is literally poison to the White Court, a species of vampires who feed on human lust, fear, and/or despair.
Supervillainess Sahar, in the Whateley Universe. She has a psychic ability to - once she's seduced a Psi - get so close that she can learn to copy that Psi's best 'knacks'. This makes her a ruthless femme fatale, until she falls in love with a mark, Zenith. She doesn't know how to handle that. So it takes a different kind of love - friendship - to get her to finish her Heel Face Turn. And she gets Zenith back.
A Double Subversion in Wizard's First Rule. The subversion is in Kahlan's power which uses a person's love to make them a slave to her will. This completely destroys a person, with no possibility of reversal, and causes her to be hated and feared, despite being the de facto ruler of the land. The double subversion comes in the climax, where Richard's love for Kahlan protects him from her power, allowing them to get together.

Live Action TV

In the sixth season finale of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Xander literally saves the world from Dark Willow by standing in front of her and telling her repeatedly that he loves her.
- It should be noted that this isn't romantic love. But having the show's only 'normal' character saving the world from the most powerful dark witch ever by way of a yellow crayon? I am not making this up.
  - It's a little different though; in this case Xander is reminding Willow of who she really is by presenting her with the most powerful (surviving) figure in her "real" life and her connection with him. He was sort of "bringing her back to herself".
Doctor Who: In "Fear Her", we meet an alien quite literally powered by a combination of love and heat — such that the Olympic torch serves as the perfect agent for restoring its strength.
A very strange and freaky example: In Jekyll, Claire is told that the Hyde personality first emerges when the host falls in love — pure, unrestrained love, the type you are likely to kill over. And, thanks to the Hyde personality, likely are going to.
For unknown reasons, humanoid Cylons in Battlestar Galactica are normally incapable of having children with humans (and incapable in all cases of having children with each other). Also for unknown reasons, falling in love will fix the problem.
Villain example: In Juuken Sentai Gekiranger, Mele is driven by and draws strength from the love she holds for Rio, the main villain. And with all the Character Development and Pet the Dog moments they get, it hardly comes as a surprise to anyone when, in the end, Rio discovers that he also loved Mele all along, and both do a Heel Face Turn to defeat Treacherous Advisor-turned-Big Bad Long. In the second round of said fight they sacrifice themselves as a Redemption Equals Death, after Long turned out to be immortal. It didn't take the second time either; Love may conquer all (twice), but some people just won't stay dead...

Music

Subverted in the Glass Hammer song Junkyard Angel
Not exactly the epitome of this trope, but this page wouldn't be complete without it.
In case you don't get the opening two sentences of this article.
Alive with the Glory of Love, by Say Anything. About the singer's grandparents surviving the Holocaust to be together again.
Played straight in Nightwish's Ghost Love Score, essentially a ballad about two lovers who separate and reunite, but amped-up to insanely epic power metal proportions.

Tabletop Games

The ANIMa from Bliss Stage create a Humongous Mecha and it's weapons entirely out of, as Word Of God has it, "weaponized love."

Theater

Surprising, given the style of the play, but in the final scene of Rent, death is converted to Disney Death by a love song.
Wagner's version of the Flying Dutchman trope allows the character - traditionally cursed to sail forever, to be saved by the power of love. Pity the love interest is a total Mary Sue. Good music, though.

Video Games

City Of Heroes has one mission where the reward is a temporary power; a wedding ring, filled with the love of a woman for her dead husband, that can give you resistance to all kinds of damage for a limited time.
Subverted in Disgaea. Love Freak Flonne points out that an Alternate Universe Overlord couldn't possibly defeat the Anti Heroes, because his power of love is divided among his ten (still very massive) copies. Oh, how very, very wrong she was...
- Of course, Flonne isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer. Regardless, at the end of the game the Power Of Love does factor in: After Master Lamington turns Flonne into a flower, Laharl goes insane. depending on your actions, Laharl will not kill Lamington, and Flonne will be healed. It was all one big Xanatos Gambit to make Laharl into a good person. The entire game was so that the son of the Devil would be a good person.
- Spoofed in Disgaea 3. Mao is entirely aware of the trope and tries to exploit it, but quite frankly has no idea how. His servant Almaz spends a good deal of time politely informing him that Love Does Not Work That Way.
One of the arcana powersets in the fighting game Arcana Heart is Partineas, the arcana of Love. It revolves primarily around projectile attacks (and defense). One super, in fact, had this troper quoting Black Mage (above).
In Super Robot Wars: Original Generation, The Power Of Love grants Bad Ass Kyosuke and faux-Bottle Fairy Excellen (she acts the way she does to relieve some of the tension that comes with war) their super-powerful combination attack Rampage Ghost, complete with witty banter. The move is not available until about half-way through the game, when it becomes obvious that Kyocellen is the Official Couple.
- And then there's the fact that Excellen refuses to call it anything but "Love Love Attack".
- Also present throughout the franchise is the Love (Ai) Seishin, which gives almost every useful Status Effect in the game all at once, for comparatively little SP cost. The only people to get it are one person per Official Couple, usually.
- Then somewhat subverted with Ring Mao and Irm Kazahara, one of Banpresto's original official couples. Irm's Ace Bonus reduces the Love Seishin's cost down to the point it costs less to cast it than cast one of the Seishins that's just a part of it. Irm and Ring, however, have not gotten along very well for quite a while and really don't have any genuine shipping sequences in OG 2, where Ring becomes a recurring member of the group.
  - They still get a Love bonus, though. In fact, theirs is bigger than the bonus some of the more overt couples get.
The full name of TouHou's Marisa Kirisame's "signature" (Actually Blue Maged from Yuka Kazami Kamehame Hadoken is "Love Sign: Master Spark". Whether it actually runs on the Power of Love is uncertain.
In Tales of the World:Narikiri Dungeon 3, certain characters, who are OfficialCouples from their respective games, like say Lloyd and Colette for example, would get the ability "Love Love" which doubled the effects of items.
In Tales Of Symphonia: Dawn Of The New World, there's Decus. He uses The Power Of Love AGAINST The Player, and it powers his Hi-Ougi, Storm and Stress, as seen here.
In Drakengard 2, The Hero recieves a kiss from the Staff Chick and this activates his Super Mode for the final boss fight.
Kingdom Hearts : After Sora comitted "suicide" to save Kairi, who was locked within him, his heart is changed into a heartless. Kairi, however, recognizes him and just by yelling his name and hugging him, she somehow manages to return him to normal. Sora later explains to Kairi: "I was lost in the darkness, couldn't find my way. As I stumbled through the dark, I started forgetting things: My friends, who I was... the darkness almost swallowed me. But then, I heard a voice. YOUR voice. The light of our hearts broke through the darkness. I saw this light. And I think, THAT'S what saved me!"
In Final Fantasy X-2 it's explicitly Yuna's love for Tidus which kicked of the quest and got her to that point that allows Bahamut to do his thing. Not to mention thatright before the climactic boss battle, Yuna convinces her Nakama to let her give the power of love a shot at stopping him. You still have to kick his ass though.
In Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves, Penelope utilizes the power of love to gain mad sword fighting skills against Captain Le Fwee to save Bentley.

Webcomic

Subverted in 8-Bit Theater where Black Mage's Hadoken is literally powered by love: the spell consumes love, causing a net reduction in the amount of love in the universe. Every time he uses it the divorce rate goes up measurably.
In Order of the Stick, Haley becomes able to pick a lock when Elan encourages her. [1]
Love makes the world go round. And has been known to provide a +2 circumstance bonus to certain skill checks.
This B Movie Comic strip and the associated rant.
In The Inexplicable Adventures Of Bob, the fate of Woobie Destroyer Of Worlds Galatea, here and here.
Fiona's decision to attempt to go back into the Dream World to find Lia, especially considering Sadako had banned Fiona from the Dream Land, as well as the possibility that Fiona may never return to the real world if she finds Lia.

Web Original

Brutally subverted in Survival Of The Fittest in the case of Galen Neilson and Nadine Willowbrook of version 3. The couple meet up with one another ingame, and the romantic exchange which follows leads the reader to believe that they will stand together to the end. Moments later, everything disintergrates and the pair end up murdering each other. Graphically.

Western Animation

Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go!: Sprx is turned evil by the Object of Hate, and Nova tells him she loves him to bring him back.
In Transformers: Beast Wars, Blackarachnia defected from the Predacons to save her own skidplate, but the power of hers and Silverbolt's love brought her to the Maximals and made her part of the team, despite her intial reluctance. Of course, since Blackarachnia was the Dark Action Girl for most of the series, this is slow going, but eventually, it does bring her around.
- Later, she's Mostly Dead until Silverbolt winds up facing the uber-powerful Rampage... At which point she's brought back to life in a new form and kicks Rampage to the curb, which is not an easy task.
Subverted in Avatar The Last Airbender, when the power of love prevented the protagonist from getting powerful enough to defeat evil, temporarily got him killed, and had the greatest city of the world conquered by the bad guys. Then again, a wise old guy told Aang he made a good choice, so it'll probably pay him off in the end.
- Oh, it did. In spades.
- Also, Katara brought Aang back from the dead using love. Okay, fine, it was water from the Spirit Oasis, but still...
Parodied in the Futurama episode "Love and Rocket", which features a very literal power of love: when a whole load of chalky Valentines heart-shaped candies are dumped into a supernova, it causes a wave of "mystical love radiation" that is powerful enough to destroy "three gangster planets and a cowboy world", but causes (or at least enhances) a wave of Valentines-inspired romance on Earth (which is far enough to see the radiation without being destroyed by it).
In the Evil Con Carne episode "H.C.C.B.D.D.", Major Doctor Ghastly reveals during Hector's birthday party that the most powerful force in the world is the power of love. When he objects that his organization was founded on hatred, she promptly cuts the party short and screams at everybody to get back to work with as much hate as possible... 'cause she just loves him like that.
This is essentially how Spider-Man defeats Venom in the season 1 finale of The Spectacular Spider Man. Though it's with the love of his friends, uncle, and aunt, but it still technically counts because Gwen Stacy is one of his friends, and everyone knows what part she plays.