This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Zach Kaiser: I'm not sure that most of the examples describe the trope, at least the way I interpret it. I'm thinking of when an enemy doesn't bother blocking an attack because they know it will do no damage to them. Conversely, when they do defend themselves, it's because the blow will actually do damage. The real life examples seem particularly out of place. I didn't want to change in case I'm the one who's interpreting it wrong.
Such as in a recent Bleach episode: Ikkaku attacks the Arrancar repeatedly with his sword, which simply bounces of his skin. He then backs off and attacks once more, which the Arrencar blocks. Ikkaku comments that he finally blocked when he would've lost an arm if he didn't.
Space Ace: Well, the thing here is to show how Bad Ass the enemy is by having him/her soak up damage that would kill any ordinary being. Or a situation where one attacker doesn't bother to defend in order to do more damage to the opposition (and, in that way, also being more Bad Ass than any ordinary being). This works well with both real life examples, too. Ergo; the less someone defends himself, the more dangerous he is.
A good example of both functions would be the Wraith from Stargate Atlantis. They can die easily enough, but it requires one or more magazines of handgun ammo to be emptied in their chests (no-one ever bothers to go for the head in Stargate). They also need to be close by for their favoured attack method to work. As such the more scary among them (the leaders, who's scary faces aren't masked) never bother to use cover or dive away from enemy fire.
Caswin: I think Zach's right. I'm not sure if the quote at the top of the page is entirely fitting, either. (The sensei's calm, even-handed acts of self-defense may or may not qualify, but "The best defense is a good offense" doesn't seem right.)
Caswin: Cutting it. This page is about characters who don't bother fighting back because they just feel like showing off how invulnerable they are.. "The best defense is a good offense."
Tanto: The page quote is probably Older Than They Think.
Licky Lindsay: http://www.webguys.com/pdavis/karate/tikwanleep.html
Bob: Cutting:
- In the HBO series Band of Brothers, Captain Spiers, after learning they were cut off from I Company by Germans, simply runs through the enemy line to the Allies on the other side. The Germans never fire a shot at him.
- In a real-life example, the USS Johnston, an unarmored anti-submarine destroyer in WWII, charged the Center Force of the Japanese Navy, a force that included the largest battleship ever made. They were able to knock out a cruiser and a smaller battleship before being sunk.
- In another real-life, WWII Pacific Navy example the Dutch HNLMS Tromp was heavily damaged several times but never sunk (while being reported so by the enemy), earning it the nickname "Ghostship" among the Japanese. It survived the war and was scrapped when it became obsolete.
- And in yet another WWII example, the destroyer HMS Glowworm took on the German cruiser Hipper and its escorts by itself. After being battered by the much heavier guns of its opponent, Glowworm rammed the Hipper, whose crew (and those of its escorts) were caught totally off guard by the audacious move.
- Given the preceding examples, one is forced to consider the possibility that World War 2 destroyer captains were totally nuts.
- As a result of WWII experience, naval armor was considered useless and almost all armored ships were scrapped within a decade after WWII. This is, though, reasonable due to development of torpedoes, which work by shaking the ship, completely ignoring the armor, and airbombs and missiles capability to pierce armor. Nonetheless, the trend of completely neglecting protection backfired later on HMS Sheffield and USS Belknap (largely built of flammable aluminium), leading eventually to partial return of armor in form of structural protection and lightweight Kevlar armor.
- Torpedoes don't work by shaking the ship, but by opening a void (a bubble) under it, which usually breaks the keel and dooms the ship. Armor is generally ineffective against that tactic because the damage is caused by the ship's own weight versus its structural strength, and heavy armor increases the former without boosting the latter. Ships light enough to survive the bubble effect are normally small enough to be wrecked by the blast (or not worth a torpedo and easily dispatched with mounted guns).
For not being this trope. At all.
Corrolary: There was this awesome Superman comic where he was very sick and warns the bad guys to back off. Why? Because he wasn't himself and just might literally punch out their brains... Awesome. - (Lots42)
There was a scene in (IIRC) Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter where Maul decides to set down his weapon and go unarmed against a training droid, and the narrator comments that this would have struck sheer terror into a living opponent. But I'm not sure if that fits or not, plus I haven't verified. --Document N
