Artificial Limbs in Anime & Manga.
- 3×3 Eyes: The Juuma known as Jia Zhi Gu (Prosthetic Arm Insect) can take the form of a fully functional arm on a person besides the summoner, which is first seen when Yakumo uses it to give Hahn a new left arm. When activated, Jia Zhi Gu can turn said arm into a massive scythe-like appendage for battle and when used by Yakumo it takes the form of a set of bladed limbs and wings attached to his shoulders. For the bad guys, Spazug wears a monstrous bug-like to replace his missing arm, with the bonus of having a shield ability to repeal magic attacks.
- In Basquash!, Iceman Hotty has some made by Thousant after getting his left arm and leg cut off by Price.
- Battle Angel Alita features similar levels of cybernetic enhancement as well as ordinary robotic limbs depending on how badly damaged a body is or (at least in the Scrapyard) how deeply into debt one is willing to go. Also in the sky city Zalem/Tiphares above the aforementioned pit all adults have their brains uploaded into, and replaced by, microcomputers without their knowledge.
- In Berserk, the main character, Guts, loses his left forearm to a monster during the hellish ordeal where his friends in the Band of the Hawk are sacrificed so that their band's former leader, Griffith, can become one of the evil Godhand. His forearm is replaced by a Steampunk prosthetic which quadruples as a gunpowder cannon, a repeating crossbow mount, and improvised club.
- Although the aforementioned hand's microcannon is reassuringly fictional in medieval history, the hand itself is more real than you might expect. Although the author of Berserk claims the resemblance to be purely coincidental, a German mercenary named Götz von Berlichingen had a very similar prosthetic hand 500 years ago. Really.
- Also, the hand's only function is to look more human, and act as a cover for the cannon. The arm was lost right below the elbow, so he can still bend it, but the fingers don't work. There is a magnet in the palm, to help Guts hold his BFS. Oddly enough, possibly for convenience's sake, the fingers do still bend and function like living fingers sometimes. Following the acquisition of the Berserker Armor, however, the hand has begun acting like a live human hand, most likely due to the armor's supernatural influence.
- Bleach:
- Kukaku Shiba has a Bamboo Technology wooden prosthetic arm. However, in the manga, she has no such replacement.
- Gigai are prosthetic bodies to allow shinigami to interact with mortals and (mod) soul pills act as prosthetic minds to control gigai or bodies while their normal occupants are performing shinigami business.
- Karl and James from Blood+ receive Schiff limbs after being amputated.
- In the sequel to Brave10, it turns out there are two characters with fully functional artificial hands Hanzo (who lost his to Isanami when he tried to control her at the climax of the first manga) and Jinpachi (lost before he joined the Braves).
- Kazuhiko from Clover has his famous roboclaw.
- Combattler V: Hyoma Aoi — The Hero of the Five-Man Band — got replacement arms after The Dragon Garuda shot his original arms off. Unlike from other examples of this trope, they did not grant him super-strength and they did not work perfectly at all. Several times they stopped working momentarily in very inopportune moments (such like when he was driving his car or fighting in his Humongous Mecha).
- Cowboy Bebop:
- Jet Black has a cybernetic arm replacing one he lost in a police investigation gone wrong, although he became old-fashionedly defensive at Faye's recommendation that the current tech made organic limb replacements fairly easy. Jet chooses to keep the arm as a reminder of his mistake. Surprisingly Jet's arm is depicted as synthetic, but made of soft yielding materials almost leathery in nature. It's also nowhere near bulletproof and doesn't grant him any kind of superhuman strength.
- Spike's replacement eye. The flashback where we see him actually get his eye definitely implies it's much more than glass. He's lying naked on a lab table surrounded by machines and men in lab coats, with needle-like claws holding his eyelid open.
- Subverted in Cynthia the Mission. Minor villain Bridget has a prosthetic arm that LOOKS real, but it turns out it's just camouflaged to look like a real one, while underneath it's similar to a modern-day prosthetic arm with a lot of grip power. Just before she is killed, it's replaced by a much more advanced model.
- In Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, most of the characters have some artificial limbs in order to be better fighters on enhance their senses.
- In Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, the swordsmanship master Jigoro Kwajima has a peg-leg, a wood construction, which is likely one of the reasons for his retirement, a Breath of Thunder adept has their legs as the basis of their strength, which is pure speed, without them Jigoro is effectively crippled.
- Bandou of Elfen Lied gets cybernetic eyes and a cybernetic arm. The arm can stand anything short of a Desert Eagle's recoil.
- In the final chapter of the manga he returns with a prosthetic body from the chest down after getting killed by Lucy.
- Nana has all her limbs severed, and has prosthetics for limbs that she moves with four of her six vectors.
- Just a bit of clarification, her vectors aren't just moving her limbs, they're holding them in place since they're not actually connected to her body. As a Running Gag, she'll sometimes loose her concentration and drop a limb right in front of some poor bystander (usually Mayu).
- Mariko gets a prosthetic right arm similar to Nana's limbs after her original is blown off.
- As a result of a human transmutation experiment Gone Horribly Wrong, Edward Elric from Fullmetal Alchemist lost, literally, An Arm and a Leg. His childhood friend Winry was able to manufacture him "automail" replacements. Notably, the attachments of nerves and muscles is actually mentioned, and mentioned to be extremely painful, taking years to recuperate (it took Ed, as a child, only one year, in defiance of his mechanic's 3-year prediction). Also, the automail frequently breaks under sufficient strain — Winry occasionally asks Ed if he breaks his limbs on purpose just to annoy her.
- There's also Lan Fan, who gets an automail limb to replace the one she cut off so she and Ling Yao could escape from Bradley, and recuperates in six months; since she's not an alchemist who saw the Gate like Ed, hers has a permanently-attached blade. The dangers of engaging in strenuous activity (such as combat) with automail before your body has fully adapted to it is demonstrated by Lan Fan bleeding from the attachment point and almost having her automail arm ripped out of its socket.
- Paninya and Buccaneer also have automail limbs with built-in weapons. Paninya's legs have a blade and a short-barrel cannon in them, while Buccaneer has two different automails that he can switch between for his right arm. His standard one is a combined chainsaw and jaw clamp, while his backup limb has actual fingers allowing it to be used in non-combat roles but also has razor-sharp claws and a much stronger grip than biological hand.
- And Winry's dog Den.
- Additionally, there have been several occasions where it's been a problem how much a metal limb conducts heat. While in Briggs, Ed almost suffered major frostbite, while Buccaneer has his made from a less conductive metal and uses the exhaust from the motor in his to keep it warm. Ed also has the opposite problem in deserts, when the metal in his automail limbs gets uncomfortably hot.
- There's also mention of automail needing maintenance, in the form of oiling and such to prevent rust, and has to be adjusted slightly when Ed grows.
- Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, and its source material, carry the concept forward. Instead of passé clunky mechanical limbs, the sufficiently wealthy or connected can have their whole body replaced with a super-realistic and super-strong artificial construct. One's brain is removed, and placed in a life-supporting enclosure, and swaps from body to body are possible even in non-sterile environments. Two of the series' main characters, the Major and Batou (anime only), are such full cyborgs.
- In the manga a page is also devoted to explaining the fact that most people have their entire bodies replaced, due to the exact problem of the arm falling off the body if too much pressure is exerted. Most people in their line of work prefer to have the added insurance. The whole conversation is in reference to a rogue army leader who only had his arm and his leg replaced.
- The Manga implies, but does not state outright, that the Major became a full-body replacement cyborg unexpectedly at a relatively young age, perhaps due to an accident. In the Alternate Continuity Ghost in the Shell: Arise, it's revealed that she was literally born into a cyborg body — her brain was transferred into one while she was still a fetus.
- Gunsmith Cats: Several of Rally Vincent's most implacable opponents all use prosthetic hands, thumbs or legs... mostly because Rally shot off their original hands, thumbs, or legs.
- Heavy Metal L-Gaim: Desert bandits' chief Lilin after an encounter with Daba's Lightsaber. And later, Giwaza after squaring off against Nei Mo Han.
- In Hellsing, Seras Victoria gets a shadow-based replacement arm when she becomes a full-fledged draculina.
- In this proposal short film
for Hidari, the titular figure dispatches a few henchman with a massive Power Fist-like prosthetic arm. After doing a Rocket Punch which ejects the arm, Hidari gets another prosthetic only this one has a chainsaw attachment. - Hoshin Engi:
- Taikobo loses an arm in a battle and he's given an artificial one to replace it. It features a number of abilities including stretching (to work as a Grappling-Hook Pistol), a squirt gun, and a Rocket Punch.
- Kou Tenka ends up injured against the Maka Yonsho to the point that he needs prosthetic knees and elbows (read: flesh grafts to replace the destroyed tissue) and said grafts are visible for the rest of the story.
- Ginkotsu of the Band of Seven in Inuyasha starts out with a heavily prosthetically amplified body and ends up as torso attached to a Feudal style tank. Arguably, the Band of Seven and Kikyou have prosthetic bodies which store their souls.
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
- Battle Tendency: When Joseph gets his arm sliced off by Kars during the last battle, he gets a replacement after it was over.
- Golden Wind: The Mysterious Backer is revealed to be Polnareff, now having a humanoid prosthetic for his arm and metallic prosthetics for his legs after they were severed off in a past fight with Diavolo.
- Karakuri Circus: Narumi receives Arlequin's detached left arm after he goes missing. During the battle of Sahara, his remaining limbs are replaced by the parts of the puppets used by fallen Shirogane.
- Koharu of The Last Saiyuki is quadriplegic, and her limbs are instead those similar to a ball-jointed doll. They don't work as limbs, but she does have a Disability Superpower that allows her to move around.
- In Legend of the Galactic Heroes, prosthetic technology has advanced to the point that artificial limbs are virtually indistinguishable from real limbs, which benefited many soldiers who were wounded in action, most notably August Samuel Wahlen, an Imperial admiral.
- Lyrical Nanoha:
- The existence of cybernetic prosthetics are mentioned in the passing when discussing the Combat Cyborg program in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS.
- Magical Record Lyrical Nanoha Force has the short-lived Infected, Diego, whose Chrome Greet Reacted form grants him a pair of cybernetic arms that get ripped off by a pissed Veyron.
- Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha ViVid reveals that the gauntlets that Sankt Kaiser Olivie Sägebrecht always wore were actually crude prosthetic arms to replace the ones she lost in early childhood. She manipulated them through self-targeted body control.
- At the end of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Detonation, Nanoha herself ends up getting a replacement right arm when it gets blown off from being at point-blank range of an enemy robot's self-destruct.
- In Mardock Scramble, Medium the Fingernail of the Bandersnatch Company replaces the hand the lead blew off in the first film with a mechanical one in the second.
- Gundam:
- Prosthetic technology in the Universal Century seems bizarrely primitive. 0080 has a wheelchair-bound owner of a tech company indicate they've had trouble scaling mobile suit technology down to human scale, while Kelly Layzner from 0083 compensates for his missing arm by designing his mobile armor's cockpit. Dayrl Lorenz in Mobile Suit Gundam Thunderbolt starts off the series with two crude prosthetic legs as they were blown off at the knee during the Zeon invasion of Earth. He gets prosthetic arms when he loses one to Io Fleming and the Full Armor Gundam and has the other amputated to make him pilot the Psycho Zaku. It makes piloting other suits much harder, though.
- Andrew Waltfeld shows up in Mobile Suit Gundam Seed Destiny with a fully functional prosthetic arm. Which conceals a shotgun. How exactly it's able to function with sufficient dexterity to pilot mobile suits and aircraft yet also be hollow so as to fit a a shotgun underneath it is never explained.
- Louise from Mobile Suit Gundam 00 gets one of these in Season 2 as their lost arm cannot be regenerated due to the particles in the beam rifle shot that blew it off inhibiting cellular mitosis. The replacement looks and handles like the original one and doesn't appear to have any special features aside from above normal physical strength and a circuitry-like line where it's attached to their forearm stump. When she gets caught in the 00 Raiser's first Trans-Am Burst, the damage is fixed and she can get her arm regenerated.
- In Mother Keeper, Zelik gains a metal prosthetic arm which makes him a bit more powerful though the prosthetic ended up being very short lived as it was destroy in the first fight.
- Aramusha gets a prosthetic arm and eye due to injuries in the Empty Earth arc of Mythic Quest. They're pretty common already in the futuristic world, though this particular set doesn't have any synthetic skin and has many extra jack-ins for enhanced computer-interfacing powers.
- My Hero Academia:
- Shota Aizawa, aka Eraser Head, gets an artificial leg after self-amputating the original to save himself from a quirk-eraser bullet. His prosthesis is shown to be a black one that somewhat resembles the anatomy and bone structure of a real foot.
- Ectoplasm, one of the pro heroes who is a U.A. teacher, lost both legs and uses prosthetics. Unlike Aizawa, he wears lightweight prosthetics that resemble traditional peg legs.
- In Naruto, Chiyo's right arm is artificial and controlled through her puppet jutsu. She can use it to create a chakra shield similar to the puppets in the likeness of her son and daughter-in-law, but it's also vulnerable to getting clogged.
- Obito lost his right arm and leg, but they were replaced with implanted cells from the First Hokage. As a result, he can regrow the limbs mid-battle, which has resulted him frequently sacrificing his right arm.
- And now Naruto also sports an artificial right hand, having lost it during his final duel with Sasuke. Like Obito, his hand is made of cloned cells from the First Hokage. Sasuke on the other hand opted not to get one after losing his own left hand during that duel. He does however have ways of generating a temporary replacement as needed, such as a partial Susanoo via his Sharingan or a metal arm via the Asura Path of his Rinnegan.
- Princess Kushana from the movie version of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind is both an example and a partial aversion because, despite her having one mechanical arm and two mechanical legs, she's never depicted as having super-strength or super-speed. The most unusual thing she ever does is to detach one hand to illustrate that it's artificial and not merely armour covering her hand. In that scene, she hints that more intimate areas of her body needed similar replacements.
- One Piece:
- Franky. He's a cola-powered cyborg, having rebuilt his limbs and much of his body from the wrecks of his old battleships aka Battle Frankys.
- Bartholomew Kuma, who's also a cyborg, albeit much more advanced, and Crocodile who has a hook for a right hand (which is covering a poisonous hook underneath that; and if that's broken, a knife pops up to replace it). And lastly Movie 10 villain Shiki, who cut off his legs to escape from prison and replaced them with swords!
- During the Time Skip, Aokiji lost half his leg during his duel with Akainu. Thankfully, due to his Devil Fruit powers, he now has an ice prosthetic to replace it. And if the prosthetic is broken, he can just instantly make another one.
- Harry MacDougall in Outlaw Star got an artificial arm after a nasty run-in with Gene Starwind. Unfortunately, he goes Ax-Crazy at one point, rips it off, and beats on the door of the Outlaw Star with it. Later on, he gets an artificial body. Earlier in the series, we see that Hilda has an artificial arm too.
- In Rave Master, after cutting off his own arm to admit his defeat against Haru, Shuda replaces it with a metal one.
- Squalo from Reborn! (2004) has a fake left hand. He cut off his real hand to better understand the previous Sword Emperor.
- Rebuild World:
- The Shell-Shocked Veteran hunter Colbert has his left arm replaced with a prosthetic after he'd had both his arms torn off by monsters, since he could only afford to re-grow the right arm.
- During a hospital stay after losing one of his arms, Akira uses a temporary medical cyborg arm for part of the process of connecting the nerves of his culture-grown replacement arm to his body, prior to transplanting it.
- Shichiroji of Samurai 7 has an artificial arm with a grapple.
- Sgt. Frog: Zoruru, who not only has a robot arm and leg, but an entire half of his body and head too.
- Prosthetic limbs are an important plot point in Texhnolyze.
- In Tokyo Crazy Paradise, Asago gets a prostheses after having her right arm cut off in a fight; she chooses to get an artificial limb instead of reattaching her arm to cut down on rehabilitation time.
- Trigun: Vash's left arm was shot off by his twin brother, forcing him to get a replacement. It converts to a gun when he wants it to.
- Kurogane of Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE- has, in the manga, recently required a prosthetic arm from the technologically advanced world of Piffle after he sacrificed his own arm to save Fai. Despite being a rush-job and therefore not covered in synthetic skin, it appears to work just as well as his organic arm. However, he has recently admitted that the arm does not fit him right and causes him pain. Hard to conceal bleeding when your boyfriend is a vampire. In ×××HOLiC, it is mentioned that the gang eventually makes their way back to Piffle to get Kurogane's prosthetic arm fixed up properly.
- The eponymous Violet Evergarden from Violet Evergarden has a pair of these due to her losing her original arms in battle.
- In The Vision of Escaflowne, The Dragon Folken has a pretty nifty-looking right arm given to him by the Big Bad to replace the one that got eaten by a dragon.
- Snark of The Voynich Hotel has two prosthetic arms. She is still quite the capable chef with them, mostly because they are actually demon claws she sold her soul for.
- Yami no Aegis: Tate has a metal arm with which he can deflect bullets. It's also his primary weapon.
- Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds: The Godwin brothers both have robotic left arms. Rex lost his while escaping from Satellite, and Rudger cut off his own arm, with the Dragon Head Mark, to give to Rex.
