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Badass Adorable / Western Animation

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Take that, Michael Bay!

"Okay, okay, I surrender! You can stop behaving in a way counter-intuitive to how you superficially appear!"
— Mitch on Meap, Phineas and Ferb, "The Chronicles of Meap"

  • All main six kids in The Adventures of Blinky Bill become cute badasses after the Extraordinary Excursion in season 2. How they survived all that despite being kids. Just so badass.
  • Adventure Time:
    • Special credit goes to Kid Hero Finn who is adorable, and powerful enough to power a machine that can flip the Earth.
    • Jake is no slouch, either. He's a shape-shifting dog who's super flexible and makes the cutest faces.
    • Knowing how badass Marceline usually is (she's a 1000 year old vampire who plays an axe-shaped bass guitar, come on!), seeing her as a little girl offering to fight in Simon and Marcy is just adorable.
    • Flame Princess. Can defeat legions of deadly hoards, yet you'd totally hug her if she wouldn't accidentally burn you to a crisp.
    • Princess Bubblegum is the sweet, polite ruler of the Candy Kingdom, who is made of sugar. She also wouldn't hesitate to rip off your limbs and literally stomp on your heart if she needed to.
    • Prismo is unbelievably sweet, but he can alter reality and grant a potentially infinite number of wishes of any kind to anybody.
  • American Dad!
    • Steve is normally calm, but has a short temper and has beat people much tougher than him on several occasions.
    • Reginald Koala who's a CIA agent like Stan but is currently a koala though his previous past as a human was as a street bum.
  • Dot Warner from Animaniacs is a cute little girl in a pink skirt with a flower in her ears and she's just as devastatingly annoying as her brothers. She also carries cute and plain little boxes that hold her.. pets.
  • Rigodon from Around the World with Willy Fog. He's an anthropomorphic cat in a suit and cute as a button. He's a sweet, good, friendly fellow and a loyal servant. But he can kick some serious ass. He used to be a circus artist, so he's very fit, and if anybody threatens Mr. Fog, Princess Romy or his friend Tico, he'll fight vigorously. One of his most badass moments happens when he single-handedly saves Romy from the suttee when he's massively outnumbered and knows he could be killed in the process.
  • Atomic Betty's title character is an adorable 12-year-old girl who also happens to be an intergalactic defender and space captain who fights extraterrestrial supervillains and saves the universe from destruction on a weekly basis.
  • Atomic Puppet
    • Pauline is a cute and sassy 12-year-old girl with pink hair and an encyclopedic knowledge of superhero comics, but that doesn't stop her from being a Badass Normal able to help Joey and AP take on most of the bad guys, or even save Joey on certain occasions. Then there was the time she became Sword Sister, in which she gains a Cool Sword that can drain power and shoot lasers, though it did end up driving her crazy.
    • The main duo themselves could arguably count. Joey's a scrawny Nice Guy while AP's a talking sock puppet, but when they're together, they're Atomic Puppet — a superhero duo able to kick the asses of any evildoer who comes to Mega City. Not to mention, the latter used to be Captain Atomic, one of the greatest and most powerful superheroes in the show's world.
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender has five:
  • The Wattersons from The Amazing World of Gumball are absolutely adorable cats and rabbits (and a goldfish),who survive all kinds of bizarre situations and are the most likely to save the day whenever something threatens all of Elmore,or the world.
  • Yes, Marion from Bounty Hamster is played for laughs and he's a cute little hamster like creature. He's also capable of kicking some serious butt when he needs to.
  • Clam from Camp Lazlo is an innocent-looking goofball, but he's also a talented genius with immense physical strength. He walks on water, for corn's sake!
  • The main trio on ChalkZone:
    • Rudy Tabootie is a sweet, adorable ten-year-old boy who also constantly saves ChalkZone from whatever dangers it faces with the use of his magic chalk which can do anything.
    • Evoked with Snap- Rudy originally envisioned the feisty white and blue humanoid chalk drawing to be a superhero, and he's already got an adorable design. While Snap seemed to be unaware that he was a superhero until "Superhero Snap", he's had many moments of badassery, most notably in "Snap vs. Boorat".
    • Penny Sanchez is a cute, nerdy girl who's managed to have a number of badass moments herself, such as in "Chalk Queen", "Double Trouble", and "Taffy" (among others).
  • Code Lyoko has Aelita, who looks so lovable and sweet, and can kick butt on Lyoko, starting in Season 3. Sissi, while not able to go to Lyoko, has her adorable moments, but if XANA messes with any of the students—yes, even Ulrich—in Kadic Academy, you can bet she can defend them.
  • Codename: Kids Next Door:
    • Any of the kids. Especially Numbuh 3/Kuki who is absolutely friggin adorable most of the time and is the team's sweet ditzy Genki Girl, but when she does get angry, epic asskicking usually ensues.
      Mr. Boss: Quick! RUN LIKE LITTLE GIRLS!
    • Sonia. Normally she's a sweet, shy little girl who looks like she doesn't belong in a organization that fights evil adults. Then, you threaten to places her somewhere dark... and then you can only watch in horror as she beats you within an inch of your life.
      Sonia: (smiles sweetly) What? I don't like the dark!
  • Courage the Cowardly Dog: Courage himself fits the trope to a T, despite having some pretty ugly features like his hideous teeth and over-the-top wild takes. He is an adorable pink dog who always manages to save the day despite his fearful demeanor. His infant self from "Remembrance of Courage Past" happens to be just as adorable.
  • Danny Phantom:
    • Danielle who looks like an adorable little tomboy and is constantly in danger due to her unstable form, proves even if she doesn't possess as much power as Danny himself, she can still dish out the damage when needed. Not many people can go and one up Vlad Plasmius.
  • Dexter from Dexter's Laboratory is about a foot tall, a nerd, and knows martial arts.
  • Sara Spencer from Dinosaucers. With her Secret Scout Ring, her physical abilities have been enhanced.
  • Dogtanian from Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds is an adorable young pup. However, he's also an excellent swordsman and, on several occasions throughout the series, is shown to be capable of beating older and more experienced opponents.
  • The Dragon Prince has Rayla. A nice, if sarcastic, teenage elf who is also a trained fighter and assassin.
  • Drawn Together: Ling-Ling is an adorable creature that can also effortlessly tear his opponents to shreds.
  • Peter Puppy from Earthworm Jim who transforms into a uncontrollable giant monster if you inflict physical pain upon him.
  • Ed, Edd n Eddy:
    • Among the titular Eds, Ed himself best represents this trope for them, as he possesses a formidable amount of physical strength, to which he uses it to help or support his own best friends in almost any situation, while still having a heart that's as comparable as that from a puppy (no matter the breed).
    • While the Kanker Sisters are normally a Terrible Trio of half-siblings who are often very amorous towards the Eds (practically speaking), May has proven herself to be the least malicious among them (especially supported by the fact that her crush on Ed is the most genuine from them), and even then, she's still able to kick butt whenever she can, whether she's with her sisters or not.
  • The Fairly OddParents!:
    • Timmy Turner has confronted bullies, aliens, and the Darkness ever since his Fairies showed up.
    • Poof, at times, especially in episodes with his Anti-Fairy counterpart, Foop.
  • Felix the Cat isn't necessarily the fighting type, but when push comes to shove, he can and will fight back, and he pretty much always comes out on top, with or without the Magic Bag.
  • Bamm-Bamm Rubble from The Flintstones is probably one of the earliest examples from western animation. Much of the comedy with him centers around him being a baby with Super-Strength who would BAMM BAMM you if he got his hands on you.
  • Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends:
    • Eduardo is a cute purple friendly monster, but never hurt someone he likes.
    • Mac can easily take you on if you harm his friends, and is probably one of the cutest ones in the entire show.
  • Futurama:
    • Nibbler falls under this category. There's practically a whole episode devoted to how adorable the crew find him (much to Bender's chagrin), and in as the series progresses, it is revealed that the Nibblonian race was already 17 years old at the time of the big bang, and are charged with protecting the Earth from the evil Brainspawn and also that Nibbler himself had a fairly big part to play in getting Fry cryogenically frozen for 1000 years in the first place.
    • Nibblonians are race of Badasses Adorable. As ancient, super-intelligent beings, they resent being considered cute. However, they purr like cats and make noises like puppies. One of their leaders remarks that sometimes he fears they are indeed cute. In addition, they can kill and eat animals of any measure in one bite. Nibbler himself gets fed up with it in season six:
      Leela: If you want to be treated like a fellow crew member, fine, but no more purse rides, and no more dressing you up in your cute little sailor suit.
      Nibbler: I keep telling you, that's my real naval uniform.
  • Ch'p from Green Lantern: The Animated Series. He may look like just a cute little squirrel, but he kicked Hal Jordan's butt without giving Hal a single chance to fight back.
  • Grojband has the members of the titular band themselves, a gang of young and aspiring rock musicians who deal with all sorts of insanity in every episode as they score musical gigs and play songs. In the span of 26 episodes, they've become superheroes, competed in motor racing, defeated all sorts of foes ranging from the leader's evil sister to zombies to a Black Knight to a giant killer robot to a child-eating sewer monster, completed a "Fantastic Voyage" Plot and a Journey to the Center of the Mind, been to Hell and back, and saved the world from being destroyed by aliens in the Grand Finale.
  • Charlie Morningstar from Hazbin Hotel is a very cute, pretty, and sweet girl who also happens to be the 3rd most powerful being in all of Hell.
  • Jumpy Ghostface from Hero: 108 is a cute, daydreamy rabbit, but he still knows how to kick ass in several ways.
  • Hijitus:
    • Doesn't Oaky look like a cute baby? Well, have a care, because he always carries two very big guns.
    • Hijitus himself counts as this, as he can transform himself into Super Hijitus.
  • Ding-A-Ling Wolf from Hanna-Barbera's Hokey Wolf. In one episode, he witnessed a robot trying to strangle Hokey and what did he do? He grabbed a massive stick and beat the living crap out of the robot. Keep in mind this is an adorable wolf cub with Puppy-Dog Eyes and an innocent personality.
  • Toothless from How to Train Your Dragon has a cute appearance and spends several portions of the film acting like a cute cuddly pet. But he's also, to quote his character sheet, "a Night Fury, a Lightning Bruiser phantom dragon nicknamed 'the unholy offspring of Lightning and Death.'"
  • In Jackie Chan Adventures, Jade is a ten year old cutie who has broken into a top-secret high-tech government facility, and otherwise bypassed their security on multiple occasions, gone toe-to-toe with Demon Sorcerers, Oni Generals, evil chi wizards, and other assorted villains, and once beat up a Section 13 agent over twice her size!
  • Heloise from Jimmy Two-Shoes is an Ax-Crazy Enfant Terrible who beats and murders anyone who sets off her Hair-Trigger Temper...but she just looks so darn moe while doing it.
  • During an episode of Justice League, "Kids Stuff", Superman, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman and Batman all get changed to kids for reasons too complicated to explain here. The Justice Kids, Batman in particular, are very adorable.
  • KaBlam!:
    • June appears as a cute tomboyish little girl, yet get her mad and take cover.
    • Loopy, though her temper isn't as fiery.
  • Kaeloo: The eponymous character is adorable, but also has the ability to turn into a giant moster when angered.
  • Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness. Peng the snow leopard cub is a Nice Guy who doesn't like fighting but he has The Gift on par with his uncle.
  • The Legend of Korra:
  • Looney Tunes:
    • Bugs Bunny. How many bunny rabbits do you know who can stare down the barrel of a shotgun and casually ask "What's up, Doc?"?
      Garth: Did you ever find Bugs Bunny attractive when he put on a dress and played girl bunny?
      Wayne: No.
      (cracks up laughing)
      Wayne: No!
      Garth: Neither did I. I was just asking.
    • Also, Speedy Gonzales is a cute, cheerful little mouse who is incredibly strong for his size.
    • Even Tweety, the sweet little canary has his moments, especially when he has to defend himself against Sylvester.
    • Even the Road Runner gets his rare moments. For example, near the end of the cartoon, "Hip Hip-Hurry!", he manages to trip Wile E. Coyote just as the latter is gaining up on him.
    • And what about Hippety Hopper, the baby kangaroo? He's very cute and playful, but whenever Sylvester tries to take on the so-called "giant mouse", Hippety Hopper kicks his butt, all the while just having fun! If he can kick a grown cat's butt while just having fun, imagine what Hippety Hopper could do if he wasn't playing!
    • The duckling in "A Corny Concerto", most likely a child version of Daffy Duck. An adorable little black feathered duck who blows a hawk out of the sky when it carries off some baby swans whose company he wanted to join.
  • The Mask:
    • Stanley Ipkiss is friendly, nice, sweet, kind and is adorable at times but he is a Papa Wolf as he cares very much about Milo which Pretorius learns the hard way.
    • The Mask is more adorable than Stanley as he is confident and unafraid who is a charming man who does get most women attracted to him despite how things went at first. He also cares about his friends which he is a sweetheart to them. He can also act like a child at times which makes him even more adorable but he is a powerful Reality Warper and intelligent genius as he uses both of these things to fight off the supervillains who attack his friends and the people who live in Edge City with him therefore showing he is a dangerous man when on a task to be a superhero.
  • In Metalocalypse, Toki Wartooth is a rather dark take on this, overlapping with Cute and Psycho. He's a handsome young Norwegian with an adorably childlike personality and interests and a very Woobieish backstory, who also plays guitar for the most brutal death metal band on the planet. He's also capable of seriously messing up someone who wears past his usual cheerful demeanor.
  • In The Mighty B!, you've got Happy Walter Higgenbottom. He's a little blue dog with one of his ears torn in half. Normally, he's loves to laze around, but when push comes to shove, he's got Bessie's back, and he can be very dangerous when pressed.
  • The titular duo of Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur. The former is an excitable, dorky, bespectacled young heroine who makes great use of her gadgets, smarts and friends' help to defeat supervillains much older than her. The latter is a big, badass dino who acts like an adorable playful puppy out of battle.
  • ¡Mucha Lucha!: Pulgita saves her brother The Flea from The Masked Toilet and She can beat everyone who came across her.
  • My Life as a Teenage Robot: The tiny wind-up toy robot Killgore. No one takes him seriously due to his size, but not only does he manage to capture The Hero, he also manages to rebuild a gigantic, world-destroying machine by himself.
    • The main protagonist herself, Jenny. She has a multitude of weapons & powers which she uses to save her town and the Earth on a regular basis, but also has the personality of and physical resemblance to a bubbly teenage girl.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic has loads of this to go around, what with how cute, tiny, multi-coloured ponies are living in a world full of monsters. It applies to practically all the main characters. Any badass who is a pony is automatically this. One presumes that it's inherent to Equestria's military (Consider a brightly-coloured Unicorn war hero).
  • Captain Barnacles Bear and Kwazii Cat of The Octonauts qualify. Barnacles has Super-Strength and Kwazii has the agility of a cat (as you'd expect of a cat). And they are both so cute!
  • OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes:
    • K.O. himself has practically all the adults in the series cooing over how adorable he is, with his big eyes and bright smile. He's also an aspiring hero who takes several levels in badass throughout the series, and is particularly impressive when you remember that he's a 6-to-11-year-old boy.
    • K.O.'s close friend Dendy is another example, being a very cute little kappa girl. Unlike K.O., she's not much of a physical fighter, but her badassery comes from being a brilliant technician and hacker who's saved her friends with her skills on numerous occasions.
    • A villainous example would be Fink, Professor Venomous's minion who, despite having rat-like attributes, looks like a very cute green-haired girl. She's also a very competent fighter, especially when she uses a glorb to enter her Turbo mode.
  • Mort from The Penguins of Madagascar. Mort is usually rather cute and pathetic, but he has been known to beat Skipper at arm-wrestling, uproot whole trees and smash things with them, and beat up gorillas (though the last one was a result of one of Kowalski's experiments accidentally making him extremely large and muscular). Private may also qualify. Despite being very "cute and cuddly" he's been shown to be an excellent fighter, able to fend of Skipper's attacks while training blindfolded in one episode. And all without breaking a sweat.
    • In general, all the penguins invoke this trope to keep up their identity as zoo animals. Private is just more adorable than the others.
  • Pibby, a cute preschool character who can kick ass after witnessing her home and friends getting destroyed and chased by zombie-like creatures.
  • The eponymous heroes of Powerbirds qualify. What else do you call two budgies who can transform into superpowered pint-sized crimefighters?
  • The Powerpuff Girls:
    • The Powerpuff Girls are described on their own page as "Cute Flying Bricks".
    • Specifically Bubbles who is far and away the most adorable of all of them. Only one time does she ever truly get angry. After taking a level in badass she becomes more than a match for both sisters, easily beating them up by herself.
    • Blossom and Buttercup take it to the Cute Bruiser category.
  • Ready Jet Go!: Sean, Sydney, and Jet are innocent, young, and cute, but they take a level in badass in the show's movie: Back to Bortron 7. They race towards Jet's parents' intergalactic travel writers meeting, and Sean actually does a perfect somersault over Jet's aunt.
    • We also have Mindy, a 4 year old that in one episode, reveals that she takes jiu-jitsu lessons. Enough said.
  • Rigby from Regular Show is small and feisty raccoon who can pull through in some seriously reality-defying situations. He's also a decent fighter for someone his size.
  • Colleen from Road Rovers. She has no actual superpowers. You know those big concrete blocks that they have in parking lots to keep people from driving onto walkways or into the side of the building? She broke one of those like it was nothing, after a monster threw it at her. You know those 2 big, rabid-looking cano-mutants that used to act as Parvo's main goons? They run off in terror when she reminds them of the first time they met (she beat them up on top of a train). She also routinely beats the crap out of the doberman who has super strength and extra-sharp unbreakable claws. She also beat up a pack of werewolves, because they drooled on her and ruined her hairdo. She also turned into a large werewolf capable of piloting a helicopter.
  • Rocko from Rocko's Modern Life can be a real asskicker in some occasions when he gets mad.
  • Rocky the Flying Squirrel is a boy scout in a squirrel skin and flying goggles. An upstanding and beloved citizen of Frostbite Falls, Minnesota for his vast heroics with his pal Bullwinkle J. Moose. A member of the Lightfingers Five Minus Two ("Buried Treasure" story) even lampshades this:
    He's rough on rats!
  • Rugrats:
    • Tommy Pickles. He's constantly standing up to Angelica and is the bravest baby in the show.
    • Cowardly Lion Chuckie's very adorable with his messy red hair, freckles, and glasses, and despite his shy nature he's had his share of badass moments as well. Like when he summons the courage to stop the wedding in the second movie. And he successfully (if a bit haphazardly) pilots Robo-Reptar with the help of the other babies. What follows is a great and crazy climax which culminates in his final fight with Jean-Claude (who is piloting Robo-Snail), and he beats him. Meek little Chuckie, who was still suffering from his mother's death, beats a fully grown man in a giant robotic snail, and makes it in time to halt the wedding.
  • The titular character of Rupert, an Animated Adaptation of the British comic strip Rupert Bear. He's a young bear boy who goes on a lot of adventures and has even tangled with criminals, pirates, and all sorts of monsters.
  • The 5th season of Samurai Jack introduces Ashi, who was initially one of the titular character's enemies, especially since it was revealed that she's one of the Daughters of Aku, but after her redemption when Jack saved her and told her the truth about her old life, she became much more benevolent than she was initially modelled as before, and even then, she was still able to fight others with her combat skills, which includes both her mother the High Priestess and her father Aku.
  • She-Ra: Princess of Power: Loo-Kee is a short, fuzzy creature who wears brightly colored clothes and typically exists to explain an episode's And Now You Know moral to the audience. He is also quite willing to perform a commando style raid on a notorious evil prison to save his friends and family, crossed the barrier between Etheria and Eternia, and made a fool of Skeletor.
  • Sidekick has Eric Needles, Trevor Troublemeyer, Vana Glama and Kitty Ko, who happen to be small, big-eyed, adorable-looking tweens who've defeated plenty of adult supervillains and saved Splitsboro by themselves on more than one occasion.
  • Maggie Simpson from The Simpsons. She shot Mr. Burns. Also, when the whole town failed to confront the mobsters who were threatening to murder Homer Simpson, Maggie shot all of them from her bedroom when they arrived at the house. Homer didn't see her do it, but when he heard those gunshots and saw those mobsters fall to the ground, he said "I must have a guardian angel with a rifle." The irony is, this approach might have put her into some sort of Enfante Terrible Anti-Hero category if not for how obvious it was that her targets deserved it.
  • The titular Sofia the First. Regardless of her age and the target audience, Sofia has been in a lot of adventures that involve saving the day, from restoring Elena into her rightful throne, getting rid of Shuriki, a quite dangerous sorceress, and stopping the evil Vor.
  • South Park.
    • Butters Stotch. Often overlaps with Badass Unintentional, as so many of his actions are done with the most innocent and childlike of intentions.
    • Stan Marsh, particularly in the episode “Whale Whores”.
    • Kenny McCormick has sacrificed himself to save his friends and the world on multiple occasions, and is an adorable 10 year old in an orange parka. Comes off cuter when you don't know what he's saying though. It becomes more prominent when you see his superhero persona as Mysterion.
    • Ike Broflovski. His most badass moment is when he becomes part of a jewel heist planned by Obama and McCain as part of the "Presidential Crime Syndicate" to steal the Hope Diamond by blowing up a jet containing dummies of the Syndicate and altering hospital records to declare everyone involved legally dead.
  • SpongeBob SquarePants. Yup, he's an adorable little guy who's saved the day a couple of times.
  • Steven Universe has the Crystal Gems, who are all adorable in one way or another, and fight to protect Earth. As of Sworn to the Sword, we can also add Connie Maheswaran, who is a sweet, nerdy twelve-year-old human who - after some sword training with Pearl - proves capable of beating multiple Holo-Pearls in thick fog, and is given a sword the same size as herself (the sword of Rose Quartz) for the revised opening credits.
    • Steven Quartz Universe himself is angling for this category by being a cute, bubbly little boy with Super-Strength and an ever-increasing grasp of his own gem abilities.
    • Lapis Lazuli also counts, being a barefoot, ethereal-looking Gem who's scarcely taller than Steven and wears an outfit with a ribbon on it. She can manipulate and control the entire planet's ocean at once, even while injured.
    • Peridot is an Adorkable Action Survivor who managed to outpace pursuers behind enemy lines, jury-rig a wrecked space ship into a death trap, fix a communications tower that took three-gem fusions to destroy, and at one point kidnap Steven out of his own home with nothing but her wits and the technological prosthetics she came with. And then she discovers her metal powers.
  • Starfire on Teen Titans is a gorgeous, bubbly, incredibly sweet girl with odd speech mannerisms who loves to issue hugs to her friends and super-powered beat-downs to her enemies.
    • Same goes for Beast Boy; goofy, none too bright and the comic relief of the team; he can also turn into some of nature's most dangerous animals.
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012) has the titular turtles as examples of this trope due to the fact that they each have very cute designs in addition to being skilled ninjas.
    • The show's incarnation of April O'Neal can also be this.
  • ThunderCats (2011):
    • The Cute Kitten Trickster Twins the Thunderkittens can outwit giant trolls by dosing themselves with a fruit that induces Super-Speed and leading them straight into carefully laid tripwire.
    • The Lilliputian Plant Person Emrick is a swordsman who counts a bird many times his size as his lifelong nemesis. The bird is as tall as a human, while Emrick would fit in one's hand.
    • The Drifter is an ever-smiling Rascally Rabbit who dances circles around highly-skilled (and highly agitated) swordsmen, all without much in the way of weapons himself.
  • From Titan Maximum, we have Clare the deadliest assassin in the solar system. She looks seven (Gibbs assures Jodi she's really 24) and acts the same with a love of all things cute, especially bugs and frogs. Unless she's killing someone.
  • There was a Tom and Jerry cartoon where Jerry got a bulldog about his size. Tom made the mistake of picking up said dog, tossing it up and down like a ball and giving an "Ah, how cute!" chuckle.
    • "The Milky Waif" had Jerry taking care of a deserted little baby mouse (Nibbles in the shorts, Tuffy in the comics). When Tom swats the little mouse in the fanny, Jerry loses his shit and beats the tar out of Tom.
  • Total Drama has many examples, but the best example by far is Izzy. She is an absolutely adorable The Cutie Genki Girl with a Motor Mouth and endearing child-like Cloud Cuckoo Lander personality. She also defeats Chef, who is at least three times her size and purely muscle, in hand-to-hand combat multiple times to the point that it becomes a RUNNING GAG throughout the first five seasons. She is also on the run from the RCMP for unknown reasons, a secret Demolitions Expert which she uses to her advantage many times throughout the first two seasons, and becomes an Impossible Genius who discovers the secret to time travel during the third season when a blockage in her brain clears up (though reverts to her old self soon after because it would be an absolute Story-Breaker Power, and Status Quo Is God). She has the best survival skills of any Total Drama character ever without a doubt. The only reasons she never wins are that her instability scares the other characters into voting her out, and the occasional Non-Gameplay Elimination due to the government showing up and forcing her out.
  • From Transformers: Animated:
    • Professor Princess. A tech genius on a quest to rid the world of violent toys by blowing them up with her toy-themed weaponry. Her mount is a flying robot horse named Powdered Sugar. She has a doctorate. Professor Penny Princess is her real name.
    • Sari rolls with the Autobots and was actually a useful human sidekick (though she probably considered them her sidekicks). Highlights include saving Bumblebee and Prowl from space barnacle infestation and tormenting the Constructicons when they crashed the Autobots' hideout until they left. Goes double after "Transwarped."
  • Transformers: Prime:
    • Bumblebee carries this role, carrying over his characterization from the live-action films. He is bright yellow and partners with Raf, the youngest of the human companions; but easily plows through waves of Decepticons, being second only to Optimus Prime in body count. Even more so when in the third season finale he stabs Megatron through the Spark(!) Bad Ass Boast: "You took my voice. You will never rob anyone, of anything, ever again."
    • Raf. He smashed a cute but deadly Scraplet to pieces when it threatened Bumblebee.
  • Kitty Katswell from T.U.F.F. Puppy. She is one of her agency's top spies and has mastered every martial art on Earth. It helps that she's a cute cat and voiced by Grey DeLisle.
  • The Van Beuren Studios cartoons had some instances of these:
    • Their main mascot, Cubby Bear, is adorable looking, and as we see in shorts like "Goode Knight", he can kick butt if he needs too.
    • When one of their brothers is threatened, the other two kittens in "Rough on Rats" give the evil rat one heck of a beatdown during the climax!
    • Felix the Cat retains this trait in the handful of his shorts produced by the studio. He even sword fights the villain of "The Goose That Laid The Golden Egg"!
  • Wild Kratts:
    • The titular brothers, Chris and Martin, are a pair of Keets upon discovering new creatures and have plenty of endearing moments, with Martin in particular having a lot of energy and being somewhat childish at times. That said, while they do say they aren't much of fighters, that doesn't make them weak, as they save the day multiple times, and when they activate Creature Power Suits, they can prove to be good fighters who can mess up the villains' plans, especially if either brother is hurt while the other brother is around.
    • The Smart Girl of the Wild Kratts Crew, Aviva, is a sassy and caring inventor who is easily endeared by cute animals, down to putting on Puppy-Dog Eyes at some points. But she is also the same girl who not only can kick ass in her Creature Power Suits and save the day (even saving the brothers a few times before), she is also a competent fencer, as she can battle Zach in a fencing match without needing to activate a Creature Power Suit.
  • The Winx Club all six of them are cute girls who are superpowerful, and kick major ass.
  • Omi from Xiaolin Showdown is a small, yellow kid with Black Bead Eyes who kicks ass on a daily basis and is initially more experienced than the other monks. Particularly in the episode "Sizing-up Omi", where he shrank down to an incredibly small size (and that's saying a lot) and had a voice higher than usual, yet he was able to win a showdown against a giant cyclops. Even when he was turned into a Cute Kitten he could kick ass.

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