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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"
The Power Of Love (note the capitals) is a curious thing. It makes one man weep, and another man sing. It can change a hawk to a little white dove. More than a feeling, that's The Power Of Love. 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, strengthening a loved one, 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".
Don't 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.
Silly Rabbit Romance Is For Kids has this as its Aesop.
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. A more passive but no less impressive display of the Power of Love is it's ability use the Red String Of Fate to reunite the reincarnating lovers.
Not to be confused with The Power of Heart, which is mostly a tone-downed and less effective version of this, or The Powerof Rock, which is just awesome, or The Power of Sex, which... yeah.
Examples
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Anime and Manga
- Van from Gun X Sword runs on this, and damn, is he a Badass as a result. William Wo claims this is his motivation, but he is massive subversion of this.
- Yu Yu Hakusho. Messing with Yukina is a wonderful way to get your ass handed to you by Kuwabara. Yusuke is this way as well if you mess with Keiko, although not to the degree Kuwabara is.
- Yusuke is generally stronger than Kuwabara though, so it all evens out.
- Sora's crest in Digimon Adventure. She's a quicker learner than Yamato, thankfully.
- The crest passes onto Miyako after Sora.
- The power base of most lead Magical Girls, going all the way back to Codename: Sailor V, the prequel to Sailor Moon.
- Sailor Moon deserves an example entry all by itself really. Let's see, the Power of Love...
- Cures brainwashed boyfriends and daughters from the future
- Restores broken transformation broaches and creates the Spiral Heart Moon Rod (picture above)
- Powers most of Sailor Venus' attacks (Venus Love Me Chain, Venus Love and Beauty Shock)
- Redeems more than a few villains over the course of 5 seasons
- And that just the main characters!
- And this is stated literally in the credits Theme Song from the Sailor Moon movie (dubbed version), Promise of a Rose: "You've got to believe in the power of love..."
- Subverted HARD in the ending episode of Mahoromatic. After Mahoro's violent death is witnessed by Suguru, all he can focus on is the fact that she is not going to always be with him, as she promised. This warps him, and it's stated that "meeting Mahoro just made me more miserable". The epilogue episode deals with Suguru's end as a bounty hunter, fixated on destroying any members of Management he can find. Management is the organization that, in it's dying grasp, caused Mahoro to destroy herself and her opponent. Suguru was never told that Mahoro didn't have much time.
- 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...
- In the first Pokemon movie, Ash is turned to stone by a stray attack from Mewtwo and Mew. It is the tears of Pikachu and the other Pokemon that return Ash to normal.
- 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.
- Weaponized by Kalch of Lifeforce Restless before he actually gets the power to do something...
- This is most prominent when Mioji is fighting the Sentori while it was in a powered up state due to the moon being held in a solar eclipse by Orion, who had already taken out Grif and Moki with relative ease. Kalch's love for and want to protect Mioji materialize into an armor and weapon that allow to completely own Orion and send him plummeting to Earth before returning safely himself.
- And then again when the Sentori posseses Mioji. And this time he had The Power of Love and his actual power.
- 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 Won't 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, she only grows a little. 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 involved?)
- 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.
- To say nothing of the movie, in which Anthy evidently needs to be kissed to activate her sword drawing powers at all. The Power of Love indeed.
- Used all over the place in Princess Tutu. From Fakir's "she changed me" epiphany 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 his Rival'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.
- And then brilliantly and controversially subverted when Simon refuses to bring Nia back to life, as it would make him no better than her father, Big Bad number one. Basically, he loves her so much that he won't bring her back. It's complicated.
- As Leeron said, "love changes the universe." He's referring to the fact that sexual reproduction is one of the basis of human evolution and evolution is one of the biggest theme of the series.
- 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, even if he is unconscious of any power besides it being the most powerful normal monster in the game at this point with no summoning requirements or limitations or adverse effects.
- 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.
- Played straight and subverted Berserk. The lead character, Guts hacks 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. Played straight since the end of the Retribution Arc where Caska becomes Guts' Morality Chain and also the one thing that prevents him from giving into his Enemy Within.
- 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 stubbornness) 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.
- In the Angel Eater arc of Ah My Goddess, Keiichi is revealed to be the only human capable of supporting (and fighting alongside) one of the goddesses' angel symbiotes because of the love (including familial-type love and friendship as well as romantic love) he receives from the goddesses he lives with.
- Touch. For Minami, Katsuya and Tatsuya can and will do anything.
- Daimos runs on this trope. The reason why Kazuya continues to fight on and win is derived from his love to Erika. Sometimes, when Humongous Mecha is not enough to win, there's always this thing to make him win.
- Cruelly, horrifically subverted in Naruto. Hinata finally, truly declares her love to Naruto, and charges Pain, warming up the best she's got to strike him down... and Pain reverses gravity in her face, then proceeds to stab her (somehow managing to fail to kill her).
- Then Naruto is so enraged by her apparent death that for the first time ever he transforms into his 8-tailed form (just one stage away from fully releasing the 9-Tailed Beast) and overpowers Pain's seemingly invincible attack before reverting to normal.
- Played straight in the Ga-Rei manga, where Kensuke is flatly told that he needs the Power Of Love to draw out the true strength of his sword. Naturally, he only remembers this during the final battle of Kyubi arc, where his love gives the sword the power to cut dimensions, freeing the Love Interest Kagura.
- In Kashimashi Girl Meets Girl Hazumu would have died if it weren't for the power of love. His,or should I say her,heart had to link with someone she truly loves,or she would die..
- The anime screwed this up. Hazumu seemed to have linked hearts with Yasuna in the last episode,but in the ova they broke up and she hooked up with Tomari. This cannot happen in the manga, as both Yasuna and Hazumu should die if their love is broken somehow. Then again,the anime creators may not have known about this at the time the ova was released.
- Dragonaut The Resonance is an example of how NOT to use The Power Of Love in a story.
- Rozen Maiden subverts this trope TWICE, when Suiseiseki tries to convince Souseiseki to stop fighting but instead is forced to see her die because of ignoring these arguments and later when Suiseiseki tries to win her Rosa Mystica back, but ends up getting killed trying to do so.
- One Piece. Luffy wouldn't do half the shit he does if it wasn't for the love of his crew.
- It's also how Garp (and Nami) can hurt Luffy; out of sheer love. Word Of God is that Garp's punches hurt Luffy despite his rubber body because they hit his soul.
- In the Violinist Of Hameln the only thing keeping Hamel from turning into a Mazoku and killing all is Flute.
- Segumi from Aquarion is guilty of this over the top, She calls this out "There is no limit to the power of the love that I feel!" before shooting forth a new move, Infinite Light of Explosive Love.
- Fushigi Yuugi. Pretty obvious considering Suzaku symbolizes love.
- In Monster, Franz Bonaparta falls in love, and decides to give up on his experimentations with eugenics and brainwashing for the sake of his interest's children. How noble.
- Rave Master. Shiba has been preserving and fighting for 50 years for one girl. Haru's doing pretty much the same thing, and for the very same girl.
- Also Sieg Hart, who dedicated his live to guarding that same girl for 50 years and continued to do so even long after death.
- "Without love, it cannot be seen".
- Kyouran Kazoku Nikki is relying on this to placate one of the potential World Destroying Children of Enka into not doing it by letting them experience loving family life.
- Full Metal Panic to a smaller extent. During his duel with Gauron in Khanka, Sousuke had trouble operating the Lambda Driver until Kaname told him exactly what will Gauron do to her if he loses (she was wrong about one thing: those are what Gauron would do to Sousuke, by the way). He won.
Kaname: Just think of this! If you lose, the bad guys are gonna rip off all my clothes, play around with my body and KILL ME when they're done! Imagine those happening to me!... You'd hate it, right?
Sousuke: Right...
Kaname: Does it make you mad?
Sousuke: I guess so...
Kaname: He's trying to do these things to me! You can't let him do that, can you?
Sousuke: NO!!!
- Later, in The Second Raid he became increasingly lethargic and distracted from being separated from her, eventually going AWOL and aimlessly wandering the streets of Hong Kong while his teammates are getting their asses handed to them by Yui Fan in the penultimate episode. He even fell into a Heroic B So D from Gauron convincing him that Kaname is dead. When she appeared and proved that she's very much alive, Sousuke had gone and curbstomped Amalgam's troops all by himself despite being outnumbered five-to-one. Next, he had gone AWOL again and accompanied her back to Tokyo then gone to Merida and used some rather strong language (for him, anyways) to show Mithril's leaders that either they assign him to her again on a permanent basis or he hands in his resignation (knowing full well that Al won't let anyone else use the Arbalest). Next day, at school Sousuke does one of his anthics and Kaname is pissed as usual. But instead of beating him, she breaks down in tears and extracts a promise from him that he won't leave her again.
- The 7th Diary Holders of Mirai Nikki are an Anti Villain couple who fight with incredible teamwork thanks to their love for one another. The 2nd, Yuno Gasai, seems to run off of the power of creepy stalker love; she gets even stronger when it's reciprocated!
- In Blade of the Immortal, do NOT screw with Rin or Manji. Neither will hesitate to kill you for the other.
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.
- Hell, it allowed Barry Allen to break the Anti-Life Equation's hold over Iris Allen in Final Crisis. They're kind of built of this trope.
- 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 after leveling up by confessing his love for Ramona.
- The Star Saphires were recently revealed to be fueled by love. That is to say: insane, possessive, destructive love. The entity that provides their power is called The Predator.
- Ultra Boy is saved from The Blight by The Power Of Love in the Legion Of Super Heroes issues right before Legion Lost.
- The New Zealand comic Footrot Flats features a scene where the main character, the Dog, finds himself able to walk on water due to his love for Jess, the neighbour's dog *
this phrase used to avoid the perhaps-inevitable misunderstandings resulting from the phrase "neighbour's bitch" . After this initial success, he demonstrates that there is no such thing as The Power Of Lust, by sinking as soon as he moves from "Love can work miracles!" to "I'm coming baby!"
- The finale of Abnett & Lanning's run on The Authority depended on this. To go with the Class 2 Apocalypse, there's a horrific and intelligent virus floating around that ends up infecting Apollo, prompting Midnighter to look desperately for a cure. He's called north, eventually finding an island, which turns out to be a giant, Swamp Thing-like Century Baby named Gaia. In return for his help, she gives him an apple, and tells him to remember Avalon, the isle of apples: "The fruit of immortality... of love..." Two pages later, Apollo's fine. Yeah, that's a Crowner.
Fanfiction
- One Harry Potter fanfiction had this to say about the Power Of Love:
"...What was that last part?" Sirius asked.
"Remus and Tonks got married?" Harry repeated innocently.
"No, the other last part. The one about Voldemort killing you," Sirius clarified.
"Oh, well he killed me and I had a nice chat with Dumbledore’s soul who informed me that just because I was imagining things it didn’t make it not real and then I Got Better."
Sirius just stared at him.
"It gets better," Harry grinned. "Apparently I only survived because of the power of love."
Sirius groaned. "For the record, when you’re telling this to other people, try to come up with an explanation that sounds more Bad Ass."
- This was also a generally-held theory about how Harry would defeat Voldemort.
Film
- 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.
- Disney's Beauty and the Beast where the Beast turns into a Prince when Belle tells him she loves him.
- And the theme song from the movie was sung by Celine Dion. See below.
- The monsters in The Deaths of Ian Stone feed on human fear, but the most powerful one, Ian Stone, draws power from love.
- This is pretty much the whole Aesop of Disney's Enchanted, right down to True Loves Kiss.
- The Fifth Element, where the five central elements in the universe are earth, fire, wind, water ... and life.
- In Krull, the Power of Love manifests itself at the climax as the ability to throw fireballs. It Makes Sense In Context.
- 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. However, the Power of Logic is also implicated: She loves Neo. She was told by the oracle that the man she loved would be the One; therefore, Neo is the One. The One would not be dead; therefore, Neo cannot be dead.
- In The Naked Gun, Frank's power of love break's Jane's Mind Control.
- In Next, the precognitive abilities of Nicolas Cage's character only allow him to see up to 2 minutes into his own future, except, for no apparent reason, for one recurring vision that presages the arrival of his eventual love interest. Once he's finally met and slept with her, he can see further ahead than ever before.
- 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.
- Perhaps the quintessential example of this trope is The Princess Bride, wherein the depth of the protagonist'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 (mostly) in the first place, though this produces the scream that allows his rescue.
- In the film version of Stardust, Yvaine's love for Tristan allows her to go supernova and incinerate Lamia.
- Because of her love, Tristan now "possessed the heart a star" and got bonus immortality too.
- This is basically what ultimately saved Luke Skywalker's life, prompted Darth Vader's Heel Face Turn, and brought down The Empire in Return Of The Jedi. In this case, love does much more than "just" redeem.
- 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.
- While love doesn't actually accomplish anything supernatural in the Aladdin films, the fact that genies can't cause people to fall in love puts Love on the same level of greater-than-phenomenal-cosmic-power as Life or Death.
- Santo contra La Hija de Frankenstein: Santo's girlfriend is hypnotized and ordered to cut out his eyes and deliver them to Dr Frankenstein. She gets as far as holding the knife over the helpless luchador's face before this trope snaps her out of it.
- to defeat the glove, All You Need Is Love.
- In GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra, during the film's climax the Baroness is able to subdue the nanites that are controlling her because her love for Duke is stronger than the nanites' influence over her mind. Looks like love > technology!
Literature
- In Poul Anderson's A Midsummer's Tempest, the Power Of Love drives the magical rings that Oberon and Titania give Prince Rupert and Jennifer. Unfortunately, along comes a Vamp with a Love Potion and then they must soldier on without the magic.
- In Jim Butcher'sThe Dresden Files love is literally poison to the White Court, a species of vampires who feed on human lust, fear, and/or despair.
- 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.
- The last part of this is a cleverly hidden deconstruction; Harry is an unremarkable wizard caught up in circumstances that are extraordinary by even magical standards and the old magic his mother protected him with via her love only does so much. Because Harry is also a normal human being compared to the soul-torn sociopath Voldemort, he does have one concrete, tangible advantage that ends up making a huge difference. It's the fact that his "power of love" is nothing more than his basic social skills allowing him to befriend and entrust others, while being befriended and entrusted back, whereas Voldemort's allies are all power-hungry sadists and sycophants who can't be trusted as far as they can be thrown. The number of times the unconditional (non-romantic) love his friends have for him have inspired them to help him, often with events that he would never have been able to handle on his own, are quite numerous.
- On the other hand, love is the reason for Severus Snape's decision to betray Lord Voldemort who never could neither understand nor detect this decision because it was motivated by love.
- The ultimate example of how love is his power is near the finale of the story when Harry, to protect his friends, allows himself to be killed. His love for them was so great that he gave up his life, and in so doing destroyed the Horcrux embedded within his soul, leaving Voldemort vulnerably. Voldemort could not imagine somebody killing themselves for another and so didn't realize the significance of the sacrifice.
- Bellatrix Lestrange is implied to genuinely love Voldemort. It's likely big V doesn't even realize this.
- 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..."
- 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.
- There is an interesting use of this trope at the climax of Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn series. Just when it seems as if the Big Bad Storm King is about to be unleashed on the mortal world, The Hero Simon finally understands why he's been receiving Prophetic Dreams about the creature's backstory as the Sitha prince Ineluki. It is to prepare him for the realization that the reason for Ineluki's desire to destroy existence is how brutally he suffered in life trying to defend his people from the depredations of mankind. This revelation allows him to do the one thing that doesn't feed the Storm King's power — forgive him, which weakens him just enough for Miramele to kill his physical host.
- A central theme in The English Patient is the question of whether love can transcend national boundaries in wartime. The short answer? Yes. The long answer? Yes, but the results aren't always pretty, and don't necessarily last.
- Tom Holt's The Portable Door. The only way to get the swords out of the stones to get a hold of the keys on the end is to have two people who are in love pulling them.
- An even more bizarre version comes from You Don't Have to be Evil to Work Here. Screwing with True Love actually causes the entire Universe to go a bit out of whack, and maths stops working properly.
- Subverted in the Succubus series by Mead. The heroin is a succubus, feeding on lifeforce through sex. Everytime she has sex. It means that she cannot sleep with the one she loves, ever, because that would shorten his life.
- The Power of Love was a particularly troubling notion to the Legalists during the Warring States Period, as it could inspire people to defy the government in favour of getting a better deal for their families. Hence, The Book Of Lord Shang advises taking measures to keep peasants occupied with nothing more than farming, and to prevent them from having more than a subsistence living. In case you haven't guessed, Shang Yang was very much Neutral Evil.
- In Andre Norton's Year of the Unicorn, Gillian's love manages to inspire Herrel to take on the rest of the Were-Riders.
- In the book Once Upon a Marigold, Marigold's love for Crispin heals him of his arrow wound. The doctor on-scene even outright states this.
"I've heard of laughter being the best medicine, but it seems love is even stronger medicine!"
- In the Prydain Chronicles, this is used to make the Pelydryn illuminate the night sky so that it appears to be noon, resulting in a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming.
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 (non-romantically, but that doesn't change the fact that he saved the world with a yellow crayon).
- 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 original personality 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 some reason, Cylons can only reproduce if they're in love. They have all the equipment, but it just doesn't work otherwise.
- 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...
- In Babylon Five, the power of love was critical to Sheridan's return from the dead at Za'ha'dum.
- Subverted in the finale of the first series of Being Human. George THINKS the reason he was pacified when Nina saw him transform is true love but, as he muses about their 'connection' the next day, it cuts to her rubbing huge scratches on her arm, implying that it's not so much love as that she's now a werewolf and he's fixated on her the same way Tully was fixated on him.
- The court scene in "Right Ho, Jeeves" (the TV episode, not the novel which covered a different story) was interrupted by the arrival of Madeline Basset, who used the Power of Love to keep Bertie out of jail. Going into a story about how he broke into a house and "stole" a picture of her because he was "so madly in love with her," she has the whole courtroom moved to tears in about ten seconds.
- To clarify for those not familiar with the show, they weren't actually in love at the time, which makes this an interesting subversion of sorts, although Madeline spends the entire series convinced Bertie loves her; He spends it trying not to get engaged to her again.
- Whitelighters' powers in Charmed are triggered by love.
Music
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."
- In Dungeons And Dragons 4th Edition, this is actually a feat in the new Divine Power supplement.
- Guess the reason why the Emperor has managed to stand for 10,000 years connected to the Golden Throne guiding mankind, making miracles from time to time, sealing the warp fissure at Terra from hordes of daemons and powering the Astronomican (ok, he receives a lot of helps of the sacrified psykers on this one, but still...), yes, he must really love the human race despict many of his own servants are such bastards.
- Although to be honest it seems it was his excess of love for his son Horus which make him end in his current state, neverless, he still managed to sacrifice his son for love to mankind, oh wait, that sound a bit familiar...
- It's been mentioned in the fluff that the Emperor's existence connected to the Golden Throne is one of unending agony. He must really love humanity to deny himself the sweet, sweet release of death. For 10,000 years.
- The emperor has no actual control of the Golden Throne himself, he can't just decide he's done with it and switch it off to commit suicide. Whether or not he has a genuine love for humanity that keeps him going is pure speculation, and major plot points that may come to a head in the next edition are that the emperor suffering in the Golden Throne may very well be hindering humanity, and that he may, in fact, know this and want out; maintaining the Astronomicon and other things that involve active effort could just be the lesser of two evils.
- It would be best to pray that the Power of Love does NOT work in the WH 40 K universe, seeing as Nurgle is there. Eldritch Abominations are horrifying enough without the Power of Love backing them up.
- Magic The Gathering compares The Power Of Love to the power of rhinos.
Love is like a rhino, short-sighted and hasty; if it cannot find a way, it will make a way.
- The Virtue of Compassion in Exalted.
Theatre
- Surprising, given the style of the play, but in the final scene of Rent, death is converted to Disney Death by a love song.
- Richard 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.
- In Damn Yankees, Joe manages to thwart the devil partly because of his unswerving fidelity to his wife.
- In Brigadoon, Tommy asks if "a stranger like...well...me" could choose to stay in Brigadoon. Mr. Lundie replies: "A stranger can stay if he loves someone here—not jus' Brigadoon, mind ye—but someone in Brigadoon enough to want to give up everythin' an' stay with that person. Which is how it should be. 'Cause after all, lad, if ye love someone deeply, anythin' is possible." Fiona comments, "I think I like that part best," clearly anticipating the show's happy ending.
Video Games
- The full name of Touhou's Marisa Kirisame's "signature" Kamehame Hadoken is "Love Sign: Master Spark". (The spell is actually Blue Maged from Yuka Kazami.) The description of Love Sign: Master Spark includes "Whisper tenderly into the magical reactor, point it at someone you don't like, and release the Annihilation of Love!" There are two major reasons why Marisa would declare herself powered by love: The first is that it's part of Marisa's desire to be a "Magical Girl", even though she is technically a human witch of human blood. The second is the sheer subversiveness of declaring herself a heroine of love, even though her only motivations in any of the games seem to be to kick in the teeth of as many powerful people as she can, show up Reimu, and maybe steal even more magical powers (or anything else, for that matter,) from whatever victim she is currently harassing. It's worth noting, however, that Defeat Means Friendship in this game, and she has a lot of "friends" over years of adventuring, so there may actually be something to the name, after all.
- It is possible to get Aribeth to turn back to the light side at the end of the original Neverwinter Nights campaign using the Power of Love
- 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...
- 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). Naturally, it's the default Arcana of the resident Love Freak Idiot Hero, Heart Aino.
- In Super Robot Wars: Original Generation and Super Robot Wars: Impact, 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.
- In OG 2, each character that is in love with another character will receive a bonus from the character they are in love with, even if that character is not in love with them ;_;.
- 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.
- Also parodied in this victory quote:
Marta: There's no victory without love!
R.Emil: So you lose if there's no love?
R.Emil: We can lose next time...
- In Drakengard 2, The Hero receives 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!"
- It's implied that The Power Of Love is what allows Beast to break reality, bring himself back from the dead, and go to Hollow Bastion to save Belle.
- 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 that right 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 LeFwee to save Bentley.
- Hell, Lucas's signature PSI attack in MOTHER 3 has the default name of PK LOVE. Fits perfectly with the game's theme.
- In Fire Emblem: Seisen no Keifu, having a character attack an enemy with their lover standing beside them can activate a critical hit, going so far as to do a little spinning heart animation before the actual attack sequence.
- Welkin from Valkyria Chronicles has this as his hidden potential.
- Fated Passion. In this attack, Jaster and Kisala's love for each other can cause the whole galaxy to explode. At 22 AP.
- It's strongly implied by the many endings of Brass Restoration that the only way for Ryo to recover emotionally from losing his arm and being unable to fulfill his dream of being a drummer is to find a girlfriend.
- In King's Quest IV, Rosella assassinates an evil, hateful fairy by shooting her with one of Cupid's arrows of love.
- In both installments of The Sims, pleading with the Grim Reaper appears to be a game of chance, but in reality it depends on the relationship values. If two sims love each other enough, there's literally no way to possibly fail at this. One can even keep a vampire sim through the day if he's married to a human, let him dust, have his love plead, rinse and repeat until nightfall.
- The opening narration for Super Paper Mario introduces it as a story "of love", and the Void created by the Chaos Heart is finally destroyed at the end by Tippi/Lady Timpani and Count Bleck/Blumiere renewing their vows of love towards each other.
- Not to mention that the Pure Hearts are physical embodiments of love themselves.
- Hagspawns
usually always look like this◊. Gann, the female protagonist's love interest from Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer however, looks like this◊. Why? Because his mother and father actually loved each other.
- In Final Fantasy VI, both Shadow and Relm can equip an accessory called the Memento Ring, an item which protects against instant death attacks due to a departed mother's love. Some hidden cutscenes reveal that Shadow is Relm's father.
- During Galuf's fatal duel with Exdeath in Final Fantasy V, Exdeath chides the poor man, telling him that "all the hatred in existence would never be enough to defeat me." Galuf's response is "this... isn't anger... isn't hatred... it's..." While he never manages to actually say it, it is heavily implied that he was spurred on to fight by love for his granddaughter, Krile. Exdeath is completely baffled by this.
- In the DS remake of Final Fantasy IV, the augment system is introduced, allowing the player to grant varied abilities and buffs to their characters. One of the abilities on offer is the native-to-Palom-and-Porom Twincast, wherein two characters begin casting on the same turn and get a (near, in one case) exclusive spell cast depending on the combination of characters casting. Rosa and Rydia? Faith, which increases all allies' magical power. Kain and Cecil? Bubble, which doubles all allies' HP. Cecil and Rosa? Ultima, strongest attack magic in the game bar none, apparently pure weaponized Love Power.
- Another possible Pokemon example is Return, which increases in power up to be a pretty strong attack depending on how much the Pokemon likes it's trainer. It also has Pokemon that only evolve when they really like their trainer, and the opposite move, Frustration which does most damage when they absolutely hate the trainer.
- Also, canonically, Gardevoir bears infinite devotion towards its trainer and would sacrifice itself for them rather than see them hurt. The happiness-detecting power they had before also became a full-fledged psychic bond. Seeing its trainer in danger is what causes a Gardevoir to unleash their full power.
- Another nonromantic example: in Silent Hill 3 the power of Harry Mason's paternal love for Heather aka Cheryl aka Alessa reborn kept the "god" of Silent Hill's Order dormant in her body since said "god" needs pain and hatred to grow. It's one of the major reasons Claudia has Harry killed.
- Umineko No Naku Koro Ni: "Without love, it cannot be seen."
- In Tales of Monkey Island: Rise of the Pirate God, to solve the final puzzle of the game, Guybrush needs to use Elaine's wedding ring at the Crossroads in order to come back to life for good. This is because the spell he used earlier to open a portal back to the mortal world requires one to "gather a guide, an anchor, courage, and sacrifice in a ring at the center of the Crossroads".
- In Luminous Arc 2, it's the basis behind the Final Bond Roland can form with one of his love interests, depending on the player's dialogue choices throughout the game. With Althea, it saves her from her self-inflicted sword stab and sealed away her Beast Fiend side. With Fatima, it guides back her soul to her body after doing a realistic-looking suicide to calm down a crazy Althea. The strength of Roland's love for one of them pretty much saves them.
- Yeto and Yeta create the Snowpeak Ruins' Heart Container while they're all cuddly. An extraordinary amount of Recovery Hearts are generated from the sequence as well, but most of them won't be necessary.
Webcomic
Web Original
- This is, ultimately, what the web animated series Broken Saints is all about, and what drives its Earn Your Happy Ending.
Mama Tui: "All things must die, Shandala. We cannot change this. But you can bring the heavens to your heart in life. Give yourself to those that need. If you do this, then the world is truly blessed... for it has known your love."
- In Draw With Me, this is what compels the boy to break through the glass, and later the girl to cut off her hand.
- 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.
- Another subversion comes from Emma Babineaux and her high school crush J.R. Rizzolo. She appears to cause a Heel Face Turn in John, and as the two of them embrace and kiss, John impales her with a sword and shoots her in the head. Ouch.
- Sesame Street is something so pure, so innocent, so nice and so filled with love, happiness and forgiveness, that The Nostalgia Critic can't bring himself to bash it in his malicious, sardonic, evil way. He actually breaks down crying.
- JLA Watchtower/DC Nation — the Titans, led by Arsenal and Nightwing, challenge Hades, God of Death, to retrieve Omen and Troia. Hades plays dirty including killing off both Dick and Roy, and finishes it off by sending out a zombie horde against the heroes. Clan Arrow's response was to grab Eros's love arrows and start shooting. When things REALLY started to go badly, out comes an army of the heroes' fallen friends, relatives, and loved ones - including the fallen Nightwing and Arsenal - to start kicking undead butt.
- In the Colour My Series, it's implied that the protagonist's coloring powers are based off of love. Or, rather, the two go hand in hand.
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.
- "You miscalculated. I love Zuko more than I fear you."
- 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.
- Ron Stoppable got his Bad Ass Chunky Updraft in the Grand Finale of Kim Possible because the aliens grabbed an unconscious Kim and gloated that she'd be a great trophy.
- Clone High had a whole episode parodying this trope as well as the power of rock. During the climactic scene where they tried breaking down the wall with love, one of the characters said "But guys, love is just an abstract concept! It can't break down stuff!"
- In the cartoon pilot, PJ Sparkles basically runs on this trope. She's transformed into a Magical Girl due to her strong desire to love someone, and can do almost anything, provided she phrases it "I'd love it if X."
- In Billy & Mandy's Big Boogey Adventure, Irwin uses this to save Mandy when she is kidnapped by the Boogeyman.This was lampshaded when Grim said that it was the power of love."
- In The Fairly Oddparents Wishology Trilogy, the Darkness is defeated because Timmy realizes it just wants to be loved, so he uses Poof's warmth and innocence to turn it into the Kindness.
Real Life
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