In Fist of the North Star, Mamiya was doomed to die because of seeing the Death Star, a star only seen by those fate has decided need to go. Rei, dying from his wounds after fighting Raoh, uses all his remaining time to fight Yuda, the cause of Mamiya's misfortune, out of desire to do right with her and make his last moments count. Not only does Rei defeat Yuda, but as he dies, Mamiya realizes she cannot see the Death Star anymore, her fate changed by Rei's sacrifice. Truly one of the most awesome, heartwarming and heartbreaking moments in a series stuffed to the gills with them.
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.
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..."
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.
Hell, the Power of Love even caused them to change their chant: "This hand of mine is burning red! Its loud roar tells me to grasp happiness. ERUPTING!!! BURNING!!! FINGER!!!!! SEKIHA 'LOVE LOVE' TENKYOKEN!"
Not to mention summoning the King of Hearts to blast a heart shaped hole in the Big Bad. Just... Watch it.
In the Mewtwo backstory Ambertwo says that Pokémon tears are said to be full of life.
Subverted in Mewtwo's forgotten backstory. His tears did nothing to save his four best friends.
Then again, Mewtwo's tears might have done nothing because he's a clone, and not a real Pokemon. Or because he cried by himself, whereas there were many Pokemon who cried for Ash.
Ash was turned to stone, while Mewtwo was the only one still alive.
Also Meowth, while usually a pitiful battler who loses to even the weakest Pokemon, romance seems to bring out a greater strength in him. With "Fury Swipes of Love", he singlehandedly took down Ash's Infernape and Staraptor, Jessie's Seviper and Yanmega, and Dawn's Togekiss...because he was in love with Glameow. He also defeated a Persian with a one-hit swipe to earn his childhood girlfriend (even if it was all in vain).
Pokémon Special: Ruby does this with Sapphire before the final confrontation with Kyogre and Groudon. He pushes Sapphire out of the way and traps her in a safe place just so she would be safe and prevent the risk of her being taken over by the Red and Blue Jewel used to control Kyogre and Groudon. Reason why: she's the girl of his dreams from so long ago.
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.
In Special 25, Natsuki says that she realized that people cannot live alone after seeing Shizuru's love for her and Mai and Yuuichi's love for each other.
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.
Hey, it's an improvement over his original idea for how to learn that technique and thus beat Kenshiro: learn/know sadness by killing Yuria. Thank gosh he apparently didn't like nuclear fallout killing people before he could.
Played straight in Kenshiro's case. When love meets with tragedy, it becomes sadness. When sadness meets injustice, it becomes righteous rage... and when righteous rage meets Hokuto Shinken... you're already dead. Also summed up perfectly here.
One episode of Magical Project S has a group who gains their power from their devotion to their husbands *
well, five husbands and one husband-to-be, since one of them was in an Arranged Marriage
. 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.
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 he 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?)
In other words, the power of love drives this weapon of mass destruction.
'Love' is slightly too general a description. The Ventral Tegmental Area (A10) of the brain is a dopamine receptor that provides the reward system for numerous things, among them the bond between a mother and child. It's not 'love' in general that allows the pilots to synchronize with the Evangelion series, but rather their longing for their mothers whose souls are trapped within the units themselves. It would be more accurate to say that the Evangelions are controlled by depression and loneliness, something the cast of Eva has plenty of.
Rebuild 2.0 showed this spectacularly: usually, it's Yui's parental love of Shinji is what drives Unit 01 berserk. This time, it's Shinji's love of Rei and we're not talking about simple berserking: he literally broke Unit 01's Restraining Bolt out of sheer willpower. Asskicking ensues.
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 D.N.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 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. Well, that and Hot BloodedHeroic Willpower.
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, as well as threaten the very integrity of the universe. 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.
The fact that love is one of the mayor sources of Hot Blooded wilpower doensn't hurt, either.
Yu-Gi-Oh!: Considering Seto's history with Kisara, Kaiba's power to Screw Destiny in his duel with Isis comes from the Power of Love, even if he is unconscious of it.
The Power of Love may also be what has actually allowed Kaiba to get the three Blue-Eyes White Dragons. Considering that Kisara's inner spirit was a White Dragon-God, a spirit stronger than the Pharaoh's three Egyptian Gods, and that the High Priest Seto had a relationship with Kisara, it wouldn't be surprising.
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 and invoked by other characters 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.
Pretty much every other arc in Ah My goddess involves the power of love playing a role, in a recent chapter of the Manga for example, Belldandy's is on the brink of death after having all of her power drained out of her by a demonic machine. Fortunately, the power of love stored within the ring Keiichi gave her protects and re-energizes her.
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.
Finally played absolutely straight, with Uzumaki Kushina's love for her son saving Naruto from his own darkness. "You belong here" never sounded so wonderful.
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.
It gets worse during the Naraku arc...This is what powers Kagura's abilities as the White Priestess, giving Byaukei and her "escorts" power. Kensuke once again uses the cutting dimensions power. Michael literally says, "Kagura! It's time to use the power of love!"
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..
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.
Of course the other explanation is that Garp has access to Haki, which nullifies Devil Fruit's resistance to certain attacks, and Nami has Rule of Funny on her side. Oda mentioned that the punches "hurt [Luffy's] soul" before he revealed the existence of Haki, so neither possibility can really be ruled out.
Of course, Nami may have latent Haki abilities that spike when she gets emotional, since everyone has the potential to use Haki.
Boa Handcock uses her beauty and the power of her Mero-Mero no Mi (Love Love fruit) to make anyone turn to stone just for her. Luffy's obliviousness to her looks, and later her love for him, keep him from turning to stone.
In the Violinist of Hameln the only thing keeping Hamel from turning into a Mazoku and killing all is Flute.
Tsugumi 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.
In the OVA, it was stated that Apollonius split Aquarion into 3 because the love between Celiane and Apollonius could destroy the world, a third person was needed to prevent that.
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.
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, all it takes is Kaname's arrival (and her delivery of an epic Get A Hold Of Yourself Man) to snap Sousuke out of his half-a-season-long Heroic BSOD, giving him the wherewithal to not only immediately curbstomp five enemy mechs including the Big Bad, but then confront his ultimate superiors in Mithril to demand reinstatement as Kaname's bodyguard... informing them that he never sold his soul to them and if they don't like how he works then they can just pay him less.
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 creepystalkerlove; 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.
Subverted in Durarara!!, with the Saika (demon blades that have a zombie-like effect upon the people they stab). They constantly claim to be powered by the love that they have for humanity, but their actions are obsessive and violent.
Also subverted by the fact that it's Anri's inability to feel love that allows her to keep control of Saika.
Lampshaded in Franken Fran, when Fran and Veronica go see a movie very, very, very loosely based on a previous chapter, where a girl who had been sick with leukemia tells her man-dog (long story) "My leukemia has magically been cured, somehow! The doctors said it was the power of love!" This, among other things, causes Veronica to throw a chair at the screen, yelling that the movie was crap.
In SHUFFLE!, Primula is saved via Lycoris/Nerine and Rin's love for her.
In the game, Primula's storyline includes her wiping Rin's mind so he won't miss her when she leaves. The next time he sees her, the memory is miraculously restored. The Devil King gives some elaborate theory as to why this could have happened, but in the end says they might just as well call it... That's right. Primula stays.
The World God Only Knows plays with this a little. Evil spirits take up residence in girls through "gaps in the heart" (basically emotional issues they're going through), and Keima exorcises them by getting the girls to fall in love with him. But love isn't the only way to capture the spirits, and is in fact the most dangerous method of drawing them out, since screwing it up can cause the girl to get even worse. However, love is still the most potent method, and is more beneficial to the girl in the long run.
In Tenshi Ni Narumon, this is probably the reason why Yuusuke was able to catch Noelle's hand when she turned into a full angel in the final episode and stopped being able to touch him.
Also a reason why only Mikael can touch Raphael, who is an angel and is supposed to be untouchable to humans (well, Mikael isn't a human himself but he did lost his halo and yet still could see and touch him, while when Noelle lost hers she couldn't even see Raphael anymore).
Geez, there's even an episode named like that - episode 19.
Subtly played straight in Ah! My Goddess, the love of a goddess is a literal source of power which in one case, allows Keiichi to support an angel, something that only a goddess should be able to do, because he's received love (both romantic and otherwise) from multiple goddesses.
The goddesses' powers also stem from love. The moment a goddess's powers begin to grow is the moment they first fall in love.
The Power of Love was defeated by the Giant Sakura Tree in Da Capo S.S. The tree actually successfully prevented two people from loving each other. Only Aisha's horror at the power she now wields convinces her to kill the tree again.
In Dragon Crisis!, Ryuji and Rose use the Power of Love to win the final battle with Onyx by kissing each other and creating a giant pink heart in the sky that disintegrates Onyx.
In Fairy Tail, Meldy does a Heel Face Turn when she reads Juvia's mind and is overwhelmed by Juvia's love for Gray.
In the second season of Saiunkoku Monogatari, Shusui is mind-controlled by Hyou Ruka, and Ryuuki and Jyuusanhime encourage Ran Shuuei to break her out of it through the power of his unrequited love for her. Shuuei acts on their advice by invoking Shusui's love for Kou Shouka instead. It works, but he is subsequently called out for having no shame.
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.
Flash-type speedsters rely on this trope to keep them from being absorbed by the Speed Force (the aformentioned speedster heaven). It doesn't necessarily need to be romantic - the paternal bond between Max Mercury and Bart Allen is a beautifulexample of such*
I know what Geoff Johns wrote, but frankly he's never shown himself to be well informed on the pair, so nyah
- but yes, the three main Flashes rely on their wives for it.
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 AgeGreen 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. In the sixth book, Gideon steals it after learning Ramona has left Scott. What a dick! Ramona gets it back when she returns.
In the movie, it's subverted, as the love is tainted - Scott's double-timing Ramona and Knives. Gideon shatters the katana with one good swing from his Cane Sword. When Scott does a second run using his extra life, he instead gains "the Power of Self-Respect" (demonstrating that you can't have love if you don't have self-respect), which he uses to take out Gideon before resolving his romantic issues.
Veteran Green Lantern enemy Star Sapphire and the Star Sapphire Corps that recently succeeded her were fueled by love. If uncontrolled(as can happen when all the power is consolidated into a single person), it is of the insane, possessive, destructive sort, which is why the entity that provides their power is called The Predator, but they run on all kinds of love(be it between a man and woman or a mother and her child or so on and so forth) and the Predator is actually the one that is corrupted by its hosts, not the other way around.
One Star Sapphire used Soranik Natu's love for Kyle Rayner and channeled it to bring him back to life.
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!"
From Ninja High School Jeremy uses this to bring back his friend, Cute Witch turned dark, Mimi. (The story also a bit of a homage to Dark Phoenix so take that as you will)
Referenced in a classic Stan Lee/Jack KirbyFantastic Four story line, when Reed Richards, alerted by the Watcher, takes on the Silver Surfer. When Sue Richards asks the Watcher how Reed can take on the "all-powerful Silver Surfer", the Watcher answers, "All-powerful? There is only one who deserves that name. And his only weapon—is love!"
Others point out it was because he spent several months being toughened up while trapped on Anti-Mobius, where all of his 'friends' were evil and he was pretty much on his own.
Defied in X-Campus. Magnus claims he will show them the greatest power of the world. "Love?" asks Storm. "Magnetism".
In one Buffy the Vampire Slayer comic, a spell that kept Buffy asleep could only be broken by the kiss of someone who was in love with her. One of her Slayers, Satsu, did it.
" 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 Badass."
This was also a generally-held theory about how Harry would defeat Voldemort.
In the Gears of War fanfiction, Phalanx, this seems to be developing between Gordon and Irene, and Word of God has it that it will become more prevalent throughout the story.
Totally screwed around with in With Strings Attached. When George confronts the mind-controlled Paul, he cautiously attempts to snap Paul out of it by mentioning his wife Linda. Paul's response: “Who's Linda?” However, Paul reveals later that he had thrown off the mind control within fifteen minutes and was faking it, so the trope never even got a chance to operate.
Ridyr's TRON: LegacyFan Fic''Survivor's Tale'' plays this card for everything it's worth. First, in the arena "Rinzler" and Yori recognize each other during an Involuntary Duel To The Death and it leaves enough of an opening for her to perform a move that knocks them both out. Second, Clu tries to have her executed, but she invokes "This isn't who you are" and stops Rinzler dead in his tracks. Thirdly, after she's been repurposed, Tronzler is able to set her free, even when he can't free himself. Lastly, Yori is asked by a cloaked figure in the back of the tavern if she could ever forgive Rinzler. She admits that while she would find it hard to forgive his actions, she will always love him, no matter what he calls himself. That's when the stranger reveals himself as Tron and the pair are finally reuinited.
This trope is quoted word for word in the Harry Potter fanfic HERMIONE AND GINNY VERUSES THE SPACE WIZARDS by Harry, after Ginny and Hermione have sex, combine their powers and free the other wizards so they can fight the evil Spacewizard Griz'nakh.
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. Sometimes The Power of Creepy Probably-Incestuous Love.
This is also apparent in Back to the Future 3, when Clara Clayton transforms herself from a quiet schoolteacher to a full on superwoman, who can scale trains in motion, in order to catch up with Doc before he goes back to 1985.
There are few places where TRON shows off its Disney origins, but this and The Power of Friendship overrides even the nastiest brainwashing. In the first, the title character pulls his "counterpart" (equivilent of "wife") Yori out of a repurposed state. In the second... A good, solid look from Flynn pulls him back from twenty years of enslavement.
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.
The Secret Of NIMH: As the page quote by Nikodemus proves, only when her children were in mortal danger did Mrs. Brisby's love and courage become a tangible force, with the Stone as a foci. Even more explicit is the Stone's inscription "You can unlock any door, if you only have the key." According to the Theme SongFlying Dreams, "Love is the key."
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.
And the fact that the sensation of Trinity kissing him makes Neo realize that despite the Matrix input, he isn't actually dead, so it makes sense.
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.
Technically, it's the Power of Change that causes people to, well, change color. The conversion happens when the one-dimensional citizens of Pleasantville do something unexpected or uncharacteristic. For the most of the supporting cast, this was when they had sex, which didn't exist in their world before. The two main characters, coming from the real world, had a harder time gaining color, but likewise changed when they did something they normally wouldn't do *
"They" being David and Jennifer from the outside world, not Bud and Mary Sue, the Pleasantvillians whose identities they assumed. Jennifer's big change would probably have been in-character for Mary Sue
.
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.
The dark is generous, and it is patient, and it always wins - but in the heart of its strength lies weakness: one lone candle is enough to hold it back.
In the Expanded Universe, Qui-Gon Jinn explains that love, a connection to others, is a prerequisite for becoming a Force Ghost.
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.
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.
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!
In the denouement to A Matter of Life and Death, the protagonist wins a second chance at life by virtue of love being the most powerful force in the world of the living, and therefore triumphing over the power of the celestial jury.
Parodied in Scary Movie 3. Upon hearing Cindy and George express their love for each other, the corpse of Tabitha turns into a beautiful little girl and says that their love has broken the curse and she won't ever have to kill again. "Really?" asks Cindy and Tabitha turns back into a corpse and admits "Nah, I was just screwing with you."
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World subverts the trope. Scott gains a weapon called The Power of Love from proclaiming his love to Ramona in the climax. The weapon isn't strong enough, so he dies. On his second attempt, he instead proclaims that he's fighting for himself and gets The Power of Self-Respect, which is vastly superior.
Averted in Dance of the Dead, after the students (well, MOST of them anyway) manage to escape the school and the zombie infestation, Jimmy and Lindsey share a passionate kiss in front of the school, at the exact same time as the building explodes. The timing would indicate that it's the passion between the two rekindled young lovers that is causing the explosion, but it's really just the metric ton of C4 Coach Keel set up around the perimeter.
In Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Spock dies. In the subsequent film, Kirk essentially says, "Screw the rules, and screw everything else. I'm going to save him." (His exact words are, "The word is no. I am therefore going anyway.") Cue stealing a starship, committing mutiny, destroying said starship, stealing a Klingon starship, and performing a dangerous Vulcan ritual that had never in the millenia-long history of the race ever, ever worked, all to get Spock back. You can argue to hell and back about whether Kirk's actions in the film are motivated by romantic love, but it's definitely love of some kind. And it works.
And debate the nature of Kirk's love all you like, but the rest of the crew were definitely not in romantic love with Spock, yet all risked their careers and lives to save him, despite Kirk reminding them only he and Mc Coy really had to go.
In Ernest Scared Stupid, trolls can be killed by milk (mother's care). Trantor becomes more powerful and that milk can't stop him. Only thing Ernest can do is to defeat him by unconditional love by hugging and dancing.
In Rio, the power of love is what gives Blu the power to fly.
In Peter Pan, Wendy asks if she can give him a "thimble" and then whispers to Peter:
"This belongs to you, and always will."
And kisses him. This actually makes the guy BURST INTO FLIGHT WITH A HUGE SMILE ON HIS FACE, and his feelings for Wendy allows him to come back and beat Hook (with the help of the Darling siblings and the Lost boys chanting "Old! Alone! Done for!" towards Hook).
In Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files love is literally poison to the White Court, a species of vampires (specifically, the Raith family) 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.
On the other hand, love is the reason for Severus Snape's decision to betray Lord Voldemort, who could neither understand nor detect this decision because it was motivated by love.
Voldemort's blindness to the emotion also leaves him vulnerable to the Malfoy family's betrayal. It's patently obvious to anyone watching (ie. Dumbledore, Harry..) that any of those three would sell him down the river in a heartbeat to save the other two.
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 vulnerable. Voldemort could not imagine somebody killing themselves for another and so didn't realize the significance of the sacrifice. More than that, his willingness to die for them provided everyone in the castle with the same type of protection his mother gave him..
Bellatrix Lestrange is implied to genuinely love Voldemort, but it's an obsessive love rather than a pure one. It's likely he doesn't even realize this.
Word Of God states that the reason that Molly Weasley was made to kill Bellatrix Lestrange was to show that a mother's love is far more powerful than an obsessive, fanatic love.
At it's basic core, The Power of Love in Harry Potter means the abillity to care about another person, even more then about yourself. This is what Harry has and Voldemort lacks, and this is why Harry is always surrounded by close friends and reliable allies, that would die to protect him, and why Voldemort only has groupies and vultures with him, held in line with fear. And in the end, this is what sealed Voldemorts fate.
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.
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.
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.
Simon: "No... I will fear you, but I will not hate you."
Camaris: "Forgiven... yes, let all be forgiven..."
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 heroine 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 Andre Norton's Year of the Unicorn, Gillian's love inspires 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!"
Why? Rand thought with wonder. Because each time we live, we get to love again. ... If I live again, then she might as well!
This is all over The Bible, with the most obvious being 1 John 4:8, which simply states "Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love." That's right, God, the omnipotent force behind the entire universe, that God, IS Love. The Power of God IS the Power of Love.
In L. Jagi Lamplighter's Prospero in Hell, Miranda learns how the Sibyl acts as the instrument for the love of one of The Powers That Be.
In Kate DiCamillo's The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, what Edward learns.
In L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables series, this is what saves Gilbert from dying of typhoid fever, though in a non-magical way. Heartbroken over Anne's rejection and sick as a dog, he gets a letter from Anne's friend informing him that Anne is not getting married to Roy Gardner (her beau of two years) and advises Gilbert to "try again". He remarks to Anne later that the doctors were amazed at the speed of his recovery after that.
In Space Beasts, The Power of Love is what drives the plot. The Prophecy that sets the plot in motion states, "If a virgin human male loves a humanimal female with all his heart and he loses his virginity to her, then the universe will be altered and all intelligent beings will become equal."
Charles Dickens tended to like this trope, but particularly in the case of Little Dorrit, when Love triumphs over parental abuse, economic swindles, psychological imprisonment, and hidden wrongs.
In Robert A. Heinlein's Time Enough for Love, the subject of love is debated extensively by the characters. It is Lazarus Long's opinion that love is the only thing that could make life worth living for thousands of years, and being loved can go so far as to cause complex computers to become self-aware.
Emily Elizabeth's love is what caused Clifford the Big Red Dog to become so big, even though he was the runt of the litter. The Expository Theme Tune of the Scholastic animated version lays it out— "Clifford needed Emily, so she chose him for her own / And her love made Clifford grow so big that the Howards had to leave their home."
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".
Also remember season five Arc Words: Death is [Buffy's] gift, but love is [her] power.
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.
More recently a Dalek sleeper agent android guy overcame his Dalek programming by thinking of a woman he fancied.
And then in the series five finale, Rory's love for Amy keeps him sane through nearly two thousand years of nothing but standing next to a box and protecting it.
Something of a recurring theme in Season 5: In "The Lodger", the reason that the Pilot Program couldn't use Craig as a pilot was because he didn't want to leave England...because he loved Sophie. Prompting the Doctor and Amy to shout, "KISS HER!"
The Doctor: "The planet's about to burn! For God's sake, KISS THE GIRL!!!"
Appears in the sequel episode to "The Lodger," "Closing Time", after Craig is able to overcome the Cybermen process of turning him into their leader byhearing his son crying and in need of him. It is so strong it feeds back into the rest of their circuits and undoes their emotional inhibitors, which makes their heads explode. Doubles as Papa Wolf moment as well.
"I blew them up with love..."
"No, that's impossible, and also grossly over-sentimental and over-simplistic. You destroyed them because of the deeply ingrained hereditary trait to protect one's own genes, which in turn triggered a... a..." *everyone is staring at him* "Yeah. Love. You blew them up with love."
River Song takes this Beyond the Impossible in the series 6 finale - she collapses history itself simply to tell the Doctor how much she loves him.
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...
Phil of the Future: Phil and Keely. They are from two different centuries. Yet they end up together.
In Babylon 5, the power of love was critical to Sheridan's return from the dead at Za'ha'dum. When John Sheridan says, "I'll never leave you, Delenn, not even if the whole universe stood between us," he damn well means it.
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.
Jeeves and Wooster: The court scene in the episode "Right Ho, Jeeves" 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. It is also expressly stated to be the greatest of all powers, stronger than the power of three. Or the power of sue.
In The Wanderer the mere presence of the Knight's ladylove, even though she's unconscious, gives him the power to defeat his Big Bad brother.
Made fun of in Point of No Return on Supernatural: When a character asks how the Winchesters propose to stop the End of the World, a suicidal Dean snarks back "Well, we're working on the Power of Love." "Yeah? How's that going?" "Not good." Ironically, while it might not save the planet, it was enough to make Dean change his mind about surrendering to the (less evil than the alternative) bad guy.
Even more ironic The power of love, i.e. the Winchesters' bond, ends up saving the day.
Saves the day in at least two episodes of The Outer Limits. In "Caught In The Act," Hannah's love for her boyfriend gives her the strength to disobey and eventually expel the alien possessing her. In "Paradise," four women volunteered to be surrogate mothers for a dying alien. Only one succeeds, because she was in love with the man she had sex with in order to get the sperm.
On Smallville, Clark unconsciously floats under his own power, completely in-character, awake, without any ambiguity, for the first time in his entire life...while dancing with Lois, telling her that he loves her.
Seems to have been making an appearance in V-2009 with, of all people, Lisa, who has been slowly turned away from her nature and the control of her mother and set onto the road of becoming human.
Tragi-hilarously played straight and simultaneously averted in the Talking Heads monologue Bed Among the Lentils - too complicated an example to explain here, though it does give the nice line: "We met it with Love! he'll cry, as if love is some all-purpose antiseptic... which to Jeremy, I suppose it is..."
On Alphas, one villian actually uses a version this as a weapon. she manipulates the body chemistry of her victims, increasing their feelings of affection, effectively addicting them to her. She then kills them by withdrawing her love.
In the Haven episode "Roots", the key to pacifying the homicidal hate-powered plants is rekindling the love between members of a pair of Troubled families who'd been feuding for generations.
In Days of Our Lives an unfortunate accident, triggered by an aggression attempt, puts Kayla in front of a strong explosion that, somehow, manages to shatter her inner ears and her voice box while leaving the rest of her body mostly intact. While she later gets her hearing back thanks to an expensive, experimental surgery, her seemingly crushed voice box gets in perfect working order on its own accord, when Kayla is exchanging her wedding vows with her husband-to-be.
Merlin's endless devotion to Arthur, Guinevere and Gaius has led him to practically move mountains in their name, achieving everything from calling lightning down from the sky to destroy an enemy, to mastering a difficult spell that allows him to take the form of an old man, to offering himself up as a sacrifice in order to spare their lives. A line from the Great Dragon all but states that his power is rooted in love, when discussing his relationship with Morgana:
"She is the darkness to your light, the hate to your love."
Also the plot of "Sweet Dreams" with Arthur being freed from a spell by True Love's Kiss.
To prevent Guinevere from becoming Queen of Camelot, Morgana instigates the famous Arthurian Love Triangle by enchanting Lancelot and Guinevere to kiss on the eve of Gwen's wedding to Arthur, planning for Arthur to catch them at it and banish Gwen from Camelot. What she didn't count on was Arthur loving Guinevere so deeply and completely that he would forgive her and marry her anyway.
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. Epic Love Maneuver!
Harry and the Potters' third album is titled "Harry and the Potters and the Power of Love" which is entirely based upon Half-Blood Prince.
Where is Aryeon "the Human Equation" one of the main 'characters' is Love, there is a Track called "Day 11: Love." and Love is one of the major themes of the album.
The ANIMa from Bliss Stage create a Humongous Mecha and it's weapons entirely out of, as Word Of God has it, "weaponized love." Most stats revolve around relationships with the other PC's.
In Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, this is actually a feat in the new Divine Power supplement.
The infamous third-party 3.5 sourcebook The Book of Erotic Fantasy has a more easily-accessible version of the Resurrection spell. The somatic component is kissing the recently deceased, and it only works on someone who you love.
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.
Jolee: Love doesn't lead to the dark side. Passion can lead to rage and fear, and can be controlled, but passion is not the same thing as love. Controlling your passions while being in love, that's what they should teach you to beware, but love itself will save you, not condemn you.
And in the sequel, the Power of Love is what gives Hiro the strength to overcome the Star Dragon and travel to the Blue Star to be with Lucia.
The full name of Touhou's Marisa Kirisame's "signature" Kamehame Hadoken is "Love Sign: Master Spark". (The spell is actually Blue Maged from Yuuka 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.
With people like Remilia (power over fate), Kaguya (power over the eternity and the moment) and Suika (power to manipulate density), it's only a matter of time until a literal power of love incident breaks out.
Marisa also has "Love Sign: Non-Directional Laser". Indicating that she uses "Love Sign" to refer to...spells that she steals from other people (Master Spark from Yuuka, Non-Directional Laser from Patchouli). Spells of her own creation are placed in categories like "Magic Sign" and "Light Sign".
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.
In both the original Neverwinter Nights and the first Knights of the Old Republic, the most foolproof way of getting your love interest to turn back after her Face Heel Turn is to tell her that you love her. (Sorry, female characters have to do it the hard way).
But it's equally possible that a female Player Character can get this invoked on her. There was a cut ending from KOTOR that involved a heavy dose of it.
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.
If you're on a New Game Plus, the Prinny commentary will lampshade this.
Note to Self: Love is not a battle stat.
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 Batman Gambit to make Laharl into a good person and to unite the Netherworld and Celestia.
"Power of Love" is also the name of Flonne's technique that heals everyone in the eight adjacent cells.
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). Naturally, it's the default Arcana of the resident Love FreakIdiot Hero, Heart Aino.
In fact, this arcana is statistically so balanced that any character can use it skillfully without any major stat dampeners. This will leave you out of a few perks like extra power, healing, speed- In fact, the Extend force is just a normal cancel without using up your super bar.
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 Official Couples from their respective games would get the ability "Love Love" which doubled the effects of items.
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 X2 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.
The entire MOTHER franchise revolves around Empathy!
The lyrics in one of EarthBound Zero's songs are "Love is the power, love is the glory, love is the beauty and the joy of spring. Love is the magic, love is the story, love is the melody we all can sing!"
Hell, Lucas' signature move in MOTHER 3 is PK Love!
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. That's for the gameplay side. On the plot side, his love for Alicia is what convinced her to not let the Valkyria power overtake herself and win the war in conventional means - a possible hidden anti-nuclear warfare message.
Rogue Galaxy's 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.
The exact phrase is even used in one of the routes.
In King's Quest IV, Rosella assassinates an evil, hateful fairy by shooting her with one of Cupid's arrows of love.
In at least The Sims 2, 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.
And completing the Romance Sidequest with either Gann or Safiya will give you a bonus feat.
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.
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.
In Final Fantasy VIII,The Power of Love is what allows the heroes to travel through Time Compression, where only Ultimecia can technically exist, so that they can beat the crap out of her. While it's not specifically stated, it's probably also what enables Rinoa to find and save Squall after he gets lost in Time Compression after the final battle.
Canonically, in Pokémon, Gardevoir bears infinite devotion towards its trainer and would sacrifice itself for them rather than see them hurt. The happiness-detecting power it had before also became a full-fledged psychic bond. Seeing its trainer in danger is what causes a Gardevoir to unleash its full power.
An interesting take on this trope comes in the form of Attract, which has a 50% chance of immobilizing a Pokémon of the opposite gender each turn after affliction.
Then there's the move Return, which becomes more powerful based on how much the user likes its trainer.
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 it needs pain and hatred to grow. It's one of the major reasons why Claudia has Harry killed—to evoke Heather's hatred.
Umineko no Naku Koro ni has the recurring Arc Words "Without love, it cannot be seen." Multiple characters offer their take on what this really means, ranging from the romantic to the bloodcurdling to the outright metafictional.
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 from The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess 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. Also, Fanadi the fortuneteller seeks out Pieces of Heart when asked to find "love". This implies that Heart Containers, and probably Recovery Hearts, are formed from the very essence of love.
At the end of Dragon's Lair 2: Time Warp, Dirk the Daring apparently brings Princess Daphne back to life with True Love's Kiss.
This is the only way to stop being a shinigami in Suika. And it can't be unrequited love, either.
Square Enix's iPhone RPG Chaos Rings uses this trope a lot. 4 couples are kidnapped to fight in the Arc Arena. All 4 couple's stories involve them inevitably falling in love. In the ending, it is revealed that the purpose of the battle arena was to pick the strongest couple, now with the best Power of Love has to propogate the human species and save the world against a Cosmic Horror. It also gets reflected in the battle mechanism, where a couple attacking together is inevitably stronger than a solo attack, and has less chances of missing.
In the game Mischief Makers, a major enemy attacks you with literally hurtful words; words like "sad," "fear," and "hate" are actually being shot at you. You beat the enemy by grabbing the words, shaking them until they become positive words like "happy," "courage," and "love," and then throwing them back.
In Ōkami, Amaterasu is able to defeat Yami, the God of Darkness due to a particularly awesome instance of this trope.
A prevalent, if not the most prevalent, theme of the Tokimeki Memorial series, a Dating Sim franchise known for being at the extreme end of the idealistic side of the Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism. The Power of Love is extremely strong in there, creating true and sweet romances that last forever, helping out the few depressive characters out there, and making Long Distance Relationships work.
Mr. Karoshi has a girlfriend and getting in contact with her, causes Mr. Karoshi to be happy, being able to jump higher. It's also averted as it turns all spikes into flowers, which could be a problem in a game where you have to kill yourself to win.
Alpha Centauri deliberately invokes this with the Children's Creche colony facility, with the description noting that aside from providing children with security and education, the fact that parents' children are close at hand will drive them to fight to the death to protect them (in-game, this means that all defending units in that colony will fight at Commando-level morale, giving them major defense bonuses).
Webcomic
Played scarily straight and lampshaded in thisThespiphobia page.
In thisBeaver And Steve story arc, love comes from another dimension populated with evil hearts that want to take over the earth.
Subverted in this8-Bit Theater strip, where Black Mage explains that his Hadoken spell is literally powered by love, in the same sense that a car is powered by gas. I.e., 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. Basically Black Mage has managed to use the Power of Love to cross the Moral Event Horizon. Also, he got the spell by sacrificing nine orphans to a god of evil.
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.
Not to mention the time when Haley had started speaking gibberish and breaks out of it when she tells Elan she loves him. She had been honestly trying to tell the truth and overcome her mental problem for some time, but finally managed it when her cynicism told her that Elan was going to leave her "just like everyone else" if she didn't recover right now.
In Yu Me Dream, 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.
Banai: It probably means the same thing it meant when you married Lily. That love is one of those annoying things that somehow manages to transcend destiny, Nature, and whether or not you were born with horns on your head.
The Gunnerkrigg Court interlude comic City Face is described by its author as "a story of how love can save the world." Literally, as it turns out: pigeon love and the resulting pigeon babies prevent humanity from bringing about The End of the World as We Know It.
Done perfectly straight, and with a combo of Crowning Moment of Awesome, with Dex Garrit, who (as he's immune to all magic) is apparently on his deathbed... untilthishappens.
As with many things, the exact nature and significance of love in Megatokyo is ambiguous, but magical girls appear to draw their power from it, and it's widely known to be a force to be reckoned with:
Largo: Dude, I'm battlin' zombies and all I got is luv pow3r from a n3wb magical grrl. Help me out here.
Clerk: All ya got? That's enough, mate.
The power of obsessive adoration, meanwhile, is a separate matter altogether, albeit possibly connected.
Parodied in this series of Cerintha and the End of the World filler strips.
In Homestuck, Big Badass Wolf Bec's love for Jade is so strong that when he sacrifices his body to save her and inadvertantly imbues the Big Bad with his own strength and form, said Big Bad is tormented by the feelings of loyalty that were transferred, and can not bring himself to kill Jade when he finds her.
As of the End of Act 5 flash, he killed the Courtyard Droll in an act of vengeance, and then laid Jade on her Quest Bed after CD managed to kill her in an explosion.
Hilariously mentioned and subverted in And Shine Heaven Now after Marian (a parody of the Mary Sue trope) attacks the I-Jin of Jeeves and musses up his hair, which he points out is unlikely:
Marian: It's not unlikely at all. You're an enemy of Integra. So there's no way you can beat me. Because I have the most powerful thing in the universe on my side - the power of true love!
iJeeves: Indeed. [slices Marian in to pieces] As a tactic, it leaves something to be desired.
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.
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.
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.
In one of the possible endings of Today I Die, love gives the protagonist strength to survive.
In Mall Fight, Eric brings Connor back to life with this trope.
Western Animation
Ma-Ti of Captain Planet had "heart" as his element, considered to be a warped version of this, which garnered a lot of ridicule for how little and ineffectively it was used, as well as how ridiculously it was named. However, it is actually an awesome power, probably the best when you think about it. He has mind-control and the ability to summon potentially deadly animals as his powers, which he could use for very mischievous purposes if he wasn't so kind-hearted.
Jake and Rose from American Dragon Jake Long. Jake wished that Rose was never taken by the Huntsclan, but then she remembers everything when she sees the photo of her and Jake from a dance.
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, and seeing as Aang won in the end, it probably paid off.
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.
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.
Very frequently throughout the series, love seems to be the one thing that is more powerful than the fairies' magic. So much so, in one episode, Timmy wished to have parents that couldn't care less. The spell worked too well, and the only way Timmy was able to undo it was to put himself in danger, causing his parents' love for him to cancel out the magic.
When Link's spirit is severed from his body in an episode of the 80's The Legend of Zelda cartoon, Zelda is the only one who can see his spirit because of this.
In an episode of El Tigre, Zebra Donkey dies but is brought back as a zombie when Manny and Frida steal Sartana's mystic guitar. Sartana eventually takes it back and tries to destroy Manny for stealing it. Zebra Donkey manages to get his hooves on it and destroys it, knowing full well doing so will destroy him as well. Manny, Frida and the rest of the kids gather around Zebra Donkey's ashes and the pieces of the mystic guitar and tearfully sing his theme song as Manny plucks one of the guitar's strings. Zebra Donkey is returned to life... or, undeath, rather.
Inverted in an episode of Super Secret Secret Squirrel, where the titular protagonist overcomes Queen Bea's love potion with the power of hate.
In Adventure Time, Finn defeats the Lich King with a sweater imbued with the Power of L-L-Liking-Someone-A-Lot.
In the Batman The Brave And The Bold episode "Mayhem of the Music Meister!", the titular villain uses his voice to hypnotize people into submission. When AQUAMAN holds Black Canary (immune to the power of the Music Meister's voice thanks to earplugs) so Green Arrow can punch her, his feeling for her prove so strong that he's able to shake off the Mind Control for long enough to hit AQUAMAN instead.
