History AdaptationalBadass / AnimeAndManga

*** Champion Leon in ''VideoGame/PokemonSwordAndShield'' is touted to be TheAce who's never lost a battle in his home region, and while he certainly puts up a tough fight he's still below [[ThatOneBoss Cynthia]] in terms of difficulty. In ''Anime/PokemonJourneysTheSeries'' however, they double down on this by [[InvincibleHero putting him in a league of his own even compared to other Champions]]. He wipes the floor with Lance and Diantha, and was the one person who could have broken [[ThrowTheDogABone Ash's win streak]] even after he bested Wallace and Cynthia.

** In ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTwilightPrincess'', Ashei is reported to be a trained swordswoman but stays out of most of the action. In the manga adaptation, she’s fast enough to catch Link himself off guard, and later pulls a DiagonalCut on two Darkhammers.

** ''Manga/TheLegendOfZeldaOcarinaOfTime''

* ''LightNovel/FixedDamage'': In the manga, he doesn't have any trouble walking around. In the original novel, he could only hobble with a cane so slowly, a man in a wheelchair could outrace him.

* ''LightNovel/{{Shimoneta}}'': Despite being the manga's [[BigBad main antagonist]], White Peak ends up being a pushover when [[LaResistance SOX]] confronts him at the end of chapter 12. Ayame and Anna drop him with a single kick that knocks him unconscious. The anime changes things by giving him a full-length fight scene, in which, [[OneManArmy it takes Ayame, Anna, Tanukichi, and Oboro]] to finally bring him down.

** ''Anime/Persona4GoldenTheAnimation'' takes this to ridiculous levels, with Izanagi going OneManArmy on ''thousands'' of shadows the first time it's summoned; using late game moves such as ''Null Physical'' and ''Maziodyne''(the second most powerful multi-target electricity skill). [[spoiler: Magatsu Izanagi]] is, likewise, much more powerful. [[spoiler: Adachi]] uses it to defeat every persona that Yu summons (all of them really powerful, late-game personas) before it's finally stopped with a Suicide Charge by Izanagi, forcing Yu [[CombatBreakdown to resort to his]] ''[[NoHoldsBarredBeatdown bare hands]]'' to finish the fight. [[spoiler: and afterwards, under Yu's control, it takes out Ameno-Sagiri with one slice.]]

* In the original ''Anime/CuteyHoney'' series, Natsuko was mostly a DistressedDamsel and Honey's friend/potential lesbian lover. In the 2004 live-action movie, the ''Anime/ReCutieHoney'' OVA series, and the ''Cutey Honey A Go-Go'' manga, she's a badass adult policewoman with a talent for using firearms (and still is Honey's potential lesbian lover).

** Sanji also gets this in the anime and movies despite being a well-established badsss in the manga, but the Soccer featurette in particular has ''[[https://youtu.be/RCmjjRcpoLM?t=154 Sanji kick a ball around the freaking globe]]'' to get the winning goal... a feat Sanji isn't capable of in the canon. Also, in the anime of Whole Cake Island, Sanji not only fights Charlotte Daifuku and Oven ''simultaneously'', but in the Wano anime even overwhelms X-Drake in combat, most of which was not present (or at least shown) in the manga. Sanji also happily uses [[KiManipulation Armament Haki]] more frequently and visibly in the Wano anime than the manga, using it to deflect bullets and easily block X-Drake’s claw attack.

*** Ash Ketchum himself tends to be 10x more heroic and badass in the movies than he is in the show. One of the best examples of this trope for Ash is in ''Anime/PokemonRangerAndTheTempleOfTheSea'' where he [[BigDamnHeroes saves the day]], becomes literal King of the Sea and gets a GoldenSuperMode to boot. And even then, he has shades of this in regards to [[VideoGame/PokemonRedAndBlue Red, his video game counterpart]], since he's willing to get physical when needed as opposed to Red who relies solely on his Pokémon, and even gets decently far in tournaments with at ''least'' one unevolved Pokémon.

* ''VideoGame/FatalFury'' TheMovie does this to Terry Bogard himself. In the games Terry is of course a highly talented and strong fighter. The animated film takes him up a notch though as Terry survives massive explosions, destroys buildings with his [[GroundWave Power Wave]] and even [[DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu takes down]] the PhysicalGod [[WarGod Mars]], none of which Terry has done in the games. To a lesser extent Mai Shiranui gets this as well, in the games she’s TheChick and even her LoveInterest Andy Bogard doesn’t take her seriously. In the movie, as seen in [[DesignatedGirlFight her fight]] with DarkActionGirl Panni (who beat Laurence Blood) Mai is a ''genuinely powerful'' ActionGirl who can keep up and fight alongside Terry, Joe and Andy.

* AdaptationalDumbass: A minor case with Ann. When she hears the name "Futaba Sakura" in the anime, she doesn't realize that she and Sojiro "[[EveryoneCallsHimBarkeep Boss]]" Sakura are related until Yusuke points it out in a conversation after their discussion with Alibaba ends. In the game, however, she picks up on it almost immediately.

* Envy from ''Manga/FullmetalAlchemist''. In the manga and ''Brotherhood'', Envy is TheBrute and UnskilledButStrong, relying on either its shapeshifting to trick an enemy into submission, or if it must fight, the raw power it can put behind each blow. This usually results in Envy going ClippedWingAngel and getting its ass handed to it. The Envy in the [[Anime/FullmetalAlchemist first anime adaptation]] (which went off in a very different direction after it OvertookTheManga) is a DanceBattler and HeroKiller who serves as TheDragon and manages to [[spoiler:kill Ed during their final confrontation (although Ed's death doesn't stick)]].

*** Champion Leon in ''VideoGame/PokemonSwordAndShield'' is touted to be TheAce who's never lost a battle in his home region, and while he certainly puts up a tough fight he's still below [[ThatOneBoss Cynthia]] in terms of difficulty. In ''Anime/PokemonJourneysTheSeries'' however, they double down on this by [[InvincibleHero putting him in a league of his own even compared to other Champions]]. He wipes the floor with Lance and Diantha, and is the one person who can make or break [[ThrowTheDogABone Ash's win streak]] even after he bested Wallace and Cynthia.

*** Perhaps the king of this trope in the anime is Unown. In ''Anime/Pokemon3'', the species is depicted as a LovecraftLite race that can teleport people to other dimensions, allow a child to create an illusionary Entei as powerful and dangerous as the real thing, and even manipulate reality at will. In the games? [[JokeCharacter It has low stats, never evolves, and only ever learns Hidden Power]].

** In the Anime/YuGiOh anime, Kisara fights Akunadin with the Blue Eyes White Dragon and [[spoiler: dies protecting Seto. In the manga, she just gets attacked and dies.]]

** First is [[spoiler: Dracula himself. Now while Count Dracula was always pretty badass being a shapeshifting DaywalkingVampire, he still was vulnerable to conventional holy weapons and in the end got killed by two [[BadassNormal Badass Normals]] armed with knives. In ''Hellsing'' on the other hand Dracula better known as {{Alucard}} is one of the most powerful depictions of him ''ever'' (rivalled only by the ''VideoGame/{{Castlevania}}'' version) being a HumanoidAbomination who can regenerate FromASingleCell, NoSell all regular Vampire weaknesses and has thousands of souls inside him as an army. He even comes back from getting metaphysically wiped from reality. Also doubles as HistoricalBadassUpgrade since Dracula/Alucard is actually UsefulNotes/VladTheImpaler.]]

*** In Wano, like most Gifters, Batman ([[ComicBook/{{Batman}} no not that Batman]]) is a ridiculous looking, glorified [[{{Mooks}} Mook]] whose knock-off Devil Fruit power is a complete joke compared to the heroes. In the manga, he failed to touch Luffy, Zoro, and Tsuru with his bow and arrow skills. In the anime, Batman actually successfully fights Luffy, blocking the latter’s Haki-coated punch with his own Haki and forces Luffy back, which is very impressive.

* ''Anime/Persona4TheAnimation'' gives has Izanagi. In [[VideoGame/{{Persona 4}} the game]], Izanagi's just a cool-looking Persona with low-tier stat growth/elemental affinities/skills that most players will have gotten rid of by the second dungeon; but in the anime he comes off as the biggest badass of the entire bunch, regularly being the go to Persona when Yu needs to wipe out a particularly dangerous Shadow. Then again, it is possible to fuse a really badass Izanagi with skills like Primal Force, Angelic Grace, and Power Charge. ''Much'' later in the game, that is.

*** Most of the Gym Leaders. In the games and anime, their job is to, well, [[{{Jobber}} job]] to the main characters. In this manga, they're so strong that it's generally accepted that only an extreme badass can beat them all (which, coincidentally, most of the protagonists are) [[note]]In this 'verse, you don't need any badges to actually compete in the League, but having all 8 badges mean you can skip the preliminaries. This incentive guarantees plenty of challengers[[/note]]. Furthermore, being a Gym Leader also means that your side job is to protect your region from things such as, you know, various terrorist groups. So yeah, expect to see a lot more ass-whooping coming from these guys.

* The 2020 ''LightNovel/SorcerousStabberOrphen'' anime gave a major upgrade to the abilities of the titular character, Orphen. In the 1998 anime, Orphen was a skilled sorcerer but his fighting skills could best be described as being that of a LongRangeFighter who blasted his enemies with magic from a distance. And he did struggle in magical fights against some of his contemporaries in the Tower of Fangs like Flameheart and older, more experienced mages like [=McGregor=] who once studied in the Tower. In the 2020 anime, Orphen's magic is much faster and more versatile and his hand-to-hand abilities have gotten much better to the point where he's able to go OneManArmy and beat down multiple wizards in Childman's Bloody August hunting party. In fights against opponents who are roughly comparable to Flameheart and [=McGregor=] such as Hydrant and Uoar Curlaine, Orphen does significantly better. Even though Hydrant had a bit of an edge in magic over Orphen, Orphen didn't let that stop him in the least and proceeded to ''beat the shit out of Hydrant with his bare hands''. And in the fight against Uoar Curlaine, the older, more experienced sorcerer didn't even get in a single hit on Orphen before Orphen topples him in one blow.

*** In ''VideoGame/PokemonBlackAndWhite'', N, while still wanting to free Pokémon from their trainers, is a relatively tame person that releases the Pokémon he uses between battles with the player character. In ''Pokémon Best Wishes 2 Episode N'', N is a much more active character that manages to fight off Team Rocket without using any Pokémon, only summoning some to heal Ash's Pikachu after the ordeal in his introductory episode.

*** Also in the Wano anime, there’s Page One. In the manga, we really didn’t get to see much of his [[EverythingsBetterWithDinosaurs Spinosaurus abilities]] and he just got kicked around by Sanji before landing one good hit as the fight was off-paneled. In the anime, [[https://media1.tenor.com/images/b8634cafd11e77f616bf65c20e2dc63e/tenor.gif?itemid=16652179 he’s a hell of a match for Sanji]] even with the [[HenshinHero Raid Suit]], and tough enough to recover from a mighty kick that put him [[CraterPower in a crater]].

* In ''Manga/DemonSlayerKimetsuNoYaiba'', the Breathing Styles’ elemental effects are packed with greater visual flair in the anime, and even some Demon Blood Arts as well, making both the Demon Slayers and the Demons look a tad more impressive and stronger than they looked in the manga, the effects of Zenitsu’s Thunder Breathing and Tanjiro’s Hinokami Kagura attacks stick out in particular (The difference between Hinokami Kagura’s ''Clear Blue Sky'' in the anime and manga is like night and day); all that visual treat in the anime ironically works against the fact that the audience shouldn’t perceive all the elements for the Breathing Styles as happening literally.

* Quite appropriately for a show notorious for BigDamnMovie, the ''Anime/{{Doraemon}}'' movies all inevitably turn the main cast of four normal 10-year-olds and a RobotBuddy into total badasses who willingly face terrifying enemies and odds to save the timestream/the world/a foreign world/whatever. It’s even a meme in the Japanese internet fanbase how inevitable this and AdaptationalNiceGuy is. It’s especially egregious with Nobita, the ThisLoserIsYou main protagonist and basically the Japanese counterpart of [[Franchise/{{Peanuts}} Charlie Brown]], who, even with his patheticness being downplayed in newer reboots, is still a wimpy, cowardly, lazy, somewhat selfish, unmotivated kid explicitly below average in every area, yet in the movies is a total hidden badass of a KidHero who will bravely stare genocidal plant aliens or dinosaurs in the face and gladly risk his life for his new friend of the movie.

* ''VideoGame/FatalFury'' TheMovie does this to Terry Bogard himself. In the games Terry is of course a highly talented and strong fighter. The animated film takes him UpToEleven though as Terry survives massive explosions, destroys buildings with his [[GroundWave Power Wave]] and even [[DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu takes down]] the PhysicalGod [[WarGod Mars]], none of which Terry has done in the games. To a lesser extent Mai Shiranui gets this as well, in the games she’s TheChick and even her LoveInterest Andy Bogard doesn’t take her seriously. In the movie, as seen in [[DesignatedGirlFight her fight]] with DarkActionGirl Panni (who beat Laurence Blood) Mai is a ''genuinely powerful'' ActionGirl who can keep up and fight alongside Terry, Joe and Andy.

* Sometimes happens to characters in ''Manga/OnePiece''. While most of the heroes are super badass in the manga, the [[Franchise/OnePiece anime and movies]] takes it UpToEleven.

** ''Anime/Persona4GoldenTheAnimation'' takes this to [[UpToEleven ridiculous levels]], with Izanagi going OneManArmy on ''thousands'' of shadows the first time it's summoned; using late game moves such as ''Null Physical'' and ''Maziodyne''(the second most powerful multi-target electricity skill). [[spoiler: Magatsu Izanagi]] is, likewise, much more powerful. [[spoiler: Adachi]] uses it to defeat every persona that Yu summons (all of them really powerful, late-game personas) before it's finally stopped with a Suicide Charge by Izanagi, forcing Yu [[CombatBreakdown to resort to his]] ''[[NoHoldsBarredBeatdown bare hands]]'' to finish the fight. [[spoiler: and afterwards, under Yu's control, it takes out Ameno-Sagiri with one slice.]]

*** Ken is very strong in the games but still gets OvershadowedByAwesome courtesy of his buddy Ryu. In the animated movie Ken proves to be a formidable threat when BrainWashedAndCrazy and once he regains his senses, he’s the only other fighter who can fight BigBad Bison alongside Ryu, with their [[CombinedEnergyAttack combined Hadouken]] taking him down in the finale.

** In ''Anime/StreetFighterIVTheTiesThatBind'' gives this treatment to [[DarkActionGirl Dark Action Girls]] C.Viper and Juri. In the games they’re both strong, but [[AlwaysSomeoneBetter due to nature of the series]] they are still regularly bested by other members of the cast, with even DumbMuscle Abigail from ''[[VideoGame/StreetFighterV SFV]]'' beating Juri in his canon story mode. In ''The Ties That Bind'' both C.Viper and Juri are near unstoppable with Juri delivering TheWorfEffect to Cammy, Chun-Li and Guile, and C.Viper doing the same to Cammy and even surviving an onslaught from Evil Ryu. Given both characters were new at the time, it was likely just a case of CharacterShilling from Creator/{{Capcom}} to get them over to fans.

** [[spoiler: Adachi]]. In the game he was kind of a pushover, however in the anime he manages to thrash Yu quite a bit, and is in control of ''three'' Reapers to kick the crap out of the rest of the protagonists (The Reaper being a fairly powerful optional Boss in the game).
** ''Anime/Persona4GoldenTheAnimation'' takes this to [[UpToEleven ridiculous levels]], with Izanagi going OneManArmy on ''thousands'' of shadows the first time it's summoned; using late game moves such as ''Null Physical'' and ''Maziodyne''. [[spoiler: Magatsu Izanagi]] is, likewise, much more powerful. [[spoiler: Adachi]] uses it to defeat every persona that Yu summons (all of them really powerful, late-game personas) before it's finally stopped with a Suicide Charge by Izanagi, forcing Yu [[CombatBreakdown to resort to his]] ''[[NoHoldsBarredBeatdown bare hands]]'' to finish the fight. [[spoiler: and afterwards, under Yu's control, it takes out Ameno-Sagiri with one slice.]]

** ''Anime/OnePieceStampede'' does this to [[LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters loads of characters]] besides the Straw Hats with: Smoker equaling Sabo in a fight, Urouge managing to briefly overpower Luffy, Buggy helping in taking down the BigBad Douglas Bullet, and Jewelry Bonnie ''almost'' doing the same earlier [[FountainOfYouth with her power]]. Among the crew, Luffy defeats Douglas Bullet who's as strong as [[NumberTwo Rayleigh]] (albeit with help), Zoro cuts one of Fujitora's meteorites in half and later matches Crocodile in a fight, Sanji equals Rob Lucci in a fight (even making him use his SuperMode), Nami takes out Sentomaru and a dozen other Marines [[ShockAndAwe with Zeus]], and even Usopp cripples Bullet's HumongousMecha with one of his Pop Greens.

* In the 2015 Disney Manga ''Miriya & Marie'', [[CuteKitten Marie the kitten]] from ''WesternAnimation/TheAristocats'' is a mentor to Miriya (a character exclusive to the manga) and [[WiseBeyondTheirYears very intelligent.]] She's capable of [[TimeTravel time traveling]] and [[{{Teleportation}} teloporting]] by using the pink bow around her neck.