Basic Trope: The Hero is strong without having to work for it because they're special.
- Straight: Miki is The Chosen One who must eventually face Queen Sangria. Instead of training to hone her vast powers, she just naturally develops them as she gets older.
- Exaggerated: Miki actively avoids work whenever possible, yet is gifted with phenomenal cosmic powers.
- Downplayed:
- Miki coasts through her training, but she's the best in the entire school.
- The same Training from Hell that gives Miki incredible abilities gives other people crippling injuries.
- Justified:
- Miki is already on her hero's journey; the battles and challenges she faces along the way are helping to hone her abilities in lieu of focused training.
- Working harder isn't always equivalent to working smarter. Consequentially, Miki follows a training style that emphasizes efficiency of the spent effort and time, making her superior to anyone who only increases the quantity of either or both.
- Her power level doubles with each use, so she just pulls a Johnny-One-Spell with "Heroic Deed".
- The limit of Miki's powers is set by how long it'll take her powers to destroy her, which is inevitable. Focused training is more likely to shorten the amount of time she has left, and the time is better spent mitigating the damage her powers have already done to her...or at least averting There Are No Therapists so she'll be as well-adjusted as possible, considering.
- Inverted:
- Miki is The Chosen One, but must work much harder than her peers to get stronger.
- No advantage holds up against hard work no matter how insurmountable the disadvantage against privileged foes. Hard-working paraplegics are able to out-speed sports cars without so much as a wheelchair.
- Subverted:
- At first it looks like she can easily defeat Queen Sangria, but after a first-episode defeat she ends up training alongside everyone else.
- Her relatively relaxed training schedule takes its toll when her more diligent compatriots overtake her.
- Double Subverted:
- ...However, it's later revealed that her gifts just make her naturally stronger and let her breeze through the exercises.
- ...only for her to overtake them again in no time when she starts training seriously.
- Parodied: The show has a Training Montage where her friends go through Training from Hell to grow strong enough to form a Hero Secret Service, intercut with scenes of Sangria herself exercising her vast powers in preparation for their fight. Everyone wonders what super secret training Miki is going through to unlock her true power, and speculate she's pushing herself in her training, so they in turn train harder. What's Miki doing through all this time? Watching reruns of Friends and eating potato chips and cream soda.
- Zig Zagged:
- Miki doesn't do hard work and randomly switches from ultra-powerful to How Do I Shot Web?.
- A new type of power source or technique set introduced is more powerful than everything in the team's arsenal so they start training for that. Miki suddenly finds that she's Not So Above It All when she's suddenly struggling to keep up.
- How well the approach works depends on the level of scope. Someone who has power can't be bested in individual combat - however they are incredibly rare. However Badass Normals with plenty of training can be produced far more reliably and even a powerhouse like Miki can only be in one place at once.
- Averted:
- Miki works just as hard as everyone else to become stronger.
- Miki is talked long and hard about having The Gift but Roger (a 20-year combat veteran and the guy who's been training the rest of the cast) gives her a hard-core Curb-Stomp Battle every time they fight because he's got plenty of experience (not all of it in the field of being a Combat Pragmatist, although acting like one sure as hell helps, especially once she actually starts putting her own training to good use).
- Enforced: With a limited airtime period, the show producers decide to skip Miki's training montages and just show her beating up tougher and tougher monsters.
- Lampshaded: "Why aren't you training Miki? Queen Sangria attacks tomorrow!" "Oh please, we both know I'll beat her when she holds you hostage, I spontaneously grow wings thanks to The Power of Love, discover I'm actually a Dhampir, my mentor gives me a Power Crystal, or something even less fair helps me win."
- Invoked:
- Steroids.
- Queen Sangria purposely sets all her minions one rung lower on the Sorting Algorithm of Evil / Sliding Scale of Villain Threat to lull Miki into a false sense of security and complacency, so when they both fight she'll have an edge.
- The Omniscient Council of Vagueness who granted Miki her powers specifically made them increase on their own as a "fail safe" to make sure she beats Queen Sangria.
- Exploited: Since she doesn't need to train to increase her powers, Miki uses the time she would spend training to get a degree instead. Once Queen Sangria is defeated, she easily transitions to civilian life as a lawyer.
- Defied:
- Miki realizes her immense potential means she's likely to slack off, so she finds/hires a mentor or trainer to help her training be an actual challenge.
- William (The Leader) flat-out refuses to use her as the central part of any plan nor will accept having her on his team, The Gift be damned, unless she undergoes training. He is no fool, even when everybody else sings nothing but praises for the Rookie Red Ranger.
- Discussed: "I worry about Miki not training. Sure, she always wins and is stronger than everyone else, but what kind of message is that to the children? Just think how resentful the rest of her teammates are! Queen Sangria will Divide and Conquer us."
- Conversed: "Do the superheroes in this show even do anything to keep up their strength?"
- Deconstructed:
- Since she doesn't have to work for her immense powers and knows that she's The Chosen One, Miki becomes snobby and narcissistic, looking down upon those who require training. This creates a rift between Miki and the very people she's supposed to save one day, leading to others rejecting and belittling her. When the time comes for her to finally face Queen Sangria, she's overconfident and underprepared, leading to her getting trounced.
- Since Miki was doing so well without training, people significantly less skilled try following her steps. Disaster ensues.
- Miki comes to believe this trope is in play once she wins the first few fights, but once the enemies start ramping up in difficulty, she has to try harder and harder to beat them. Because she's still stubbornly convinced that she doesn't need to train despite evidence to the contrary, she eventually ends up trashed in a brutal fight, and everyone subsequently losing faith in her.
- Time after time of Miki saving the day without training causes her hard-working comrades to just give up and settle for being canon fodder until she inevitably comes to the battle. Now Miki finally has something she has to continuously maintain— her reputation and forced trump card role.
- The only reason Miki is able to do this is because she is a Half-Human Hybrid with an Eldritch Abomination empowered by having a human soul. She is not only an abomination to the rest of humanity but even to her other species. Despite their vile yet alien mindset they can't bring themselves to create another like her to counter her either making her fundamentally alone.
- Reconstructed:
- Miki feels alienated from her peers because of her immense power, so she purposely avoids training to stay near their level. Effectively, she's a super-super human who wants to be just "super". Eventually, her mentor and friends will remind her that With Great Power she must also train a great deal to save the world.
- Just because Miki doesn't get much out of hard training doesn't mean that she can't work hard in some other helpful capacity. It just means that while her friends are training, she's helping out with Habitat for Humanity or running soup kitchens or cleaning up highways—non-training work that still needs to be done.
- Played For Laughs: Miki exaggerates the fact by flaunting enemies with pictures/video/Trash Talk of her goofing off while they work to get their power... and once they're good and angry, lures them into a Defensive Feint Trap. She goes on to point out that just because she gets more power with less effort, she's neither dumb nor lazy.
- Played For Drama:
- Miki's peers come to deeply resent how she's coasting along on her natural gifts, while the rest of them simply can't match her. Several defect to Queen Sangria's side, lured by blessings of demonic power and strength, and become her loyal followers. Upon learning of this, Miki has a Heroic BSoD.
- Alternatively, Miki is training, but since she's just naturally better at completing it because she has The Gift, everyone dismisses her genuine effort as simply talent. She feels undervalued and overestimated at the same time: because without doing the training in the first place, she would have never figured out her new techniques; and if they all think she's just talent and no work, she feels they don't take her seriously.
We'd send you back to Hard Work Hardly Works, but it would conflict with our "no training" lifestyle.
