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I think that usually in these types of stories, the male hero has to have adventures, training, etc. in order to live up to his destiny. All Cinderella needed was a nice set of clothes and a ride to the ball.
Yes, it surely happens, but it doesn't seem all that noteworthy to me. Can you think of a male Cinderella story where the male protagonist kind of just has awesomeness and acclaim dropped into his lap? I'm not denying that they exist, but I suspect they are obscure.
Barsoom? John Carter just goes to Mars and is instantly crazy strong? Starts off awesome, and mostly just has to learn the new culture (and, I guess, be taught a gearing trick on the fliers)? Although he had the backstory to back it up as a soldier...
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In the original Puss in Boots tale, the youngest son does exactly fuck all and ends up married to the princess because his cat was magical.
I feel like a lot of European fairy tales do some variation on this. The protagonist is just some random dude, but he is kind enough to give money to a beggar who turns out to be a wizard, or he captures a magical animal which he releases in exchange for wishes. Using his newfound power he then goes on to improve his life.
Though Puss in Boots is kind of extreme even then, considering the cat does basically all the work.
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It depends a lot on the specifics. In some stories, the drama occurs in large part because the hero is unwilling to accept his fate, but once he does it is smooth sailing. Or he struggles until some incident happens that awakens his latent powers (Eragon is one such character, but it is not an uncommon trope). A lot of books from the late 90's and early 2000's open with the protagonist being stuck in some terrible situation and saved due to reasons entirely outside of his control (The most famous example being Harry Potter). You can still have an interesting story like this, but it is undeniable that the main characters did not have to put in effort in order to get saved. Even in stories that execute the trope well, the protagonist continues to receive opportunities due to his innate talent and birthright. In Harry Potter this is executed well and often in creative ways. Take The camber of Secrets, which has a lot of fun with how people idolize celebrities. But in more lazily written stories, such as The Sorcerer's Apprentice basically every important event of the movie happens due to his inborn talents, and it appears that when he overcomes ultimate evil in the final showdown (resulting in him getting the girl) it is completely down to fate rather than any kind of earned competence.
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Sword Art Online?
Lol, I was trying to avoid light novels and just focus on the west as a challenge. But if you include the wish fullfilment isekai which somehow sells like hotcakes, it becomes so obvious that this is a popular trope even among men.
I am sure there must have been a lot of low-brow power fantasy published in the west too. I at the very least remember a lot of suggestive cover art featuring some variation of a muscular barbarian standing on top of his slain enemies, carrying a scantily clad girl.
I, too, remember '80s movie posters.
I posit that a protagonist that is 'born awesome and talented, and even in his darkest moments he cannot keep himself from being competent' is by definition a man.
(By contrast, I posit that a protagonist that is 'born beautiful and virtuous, and even in her darkest moments she cannot keep herself from being valuable' is a woman.)
So, while we're on the topic of Eastern media, I submit Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid as being a male Cinderella story that features a man protagonist [complicated by the fact "he" is female; this is played completely straight with the Lucoa/Shouta relationship though].
(Elsewhere in this thread, I discuss Onimai, which is a female Cinderella story that features a female protagonist [complicated by the fact "she" is male]. It's very explicit about that last part.)
The 'muscular barbarian standing on top of his slain enemies carrying [her as a] scantily clad girl' image is the root of how Tohru sees Kobayashi (and how Lucoa sees Shouta, to the point of explicitly offering him this[1], and on the opposite side how Mihari views Mahiro [though in a more implicit way, which is how she can get off to [what sounds like] him getting off, while still being repelled by actually grabbing his male-ness]).
[1] Which is also why men [including Shouta himself, of course] tend to find that uncomfortable- because that creates, in large degree, a demand for future 'muscular barbarian does the thing' whose results aren't even directly measurable; and leads to instant existential anxiety about "seller decides it no longer wants that future" on the demand side that is fundamentally not resolvable. (Kobayashi's situation is a bit more stable, for she is already established and Tohru has already accepted that what Kobayashi does qualifies as 'muscular barbarian [carrying her]'.)
Actually, most mid to late '00s Western cartoons have this going on; usually Lauren Faust/Craig McCracken works feature characters that have similar inversions, but I remember it being more than just them.
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