Glass Cannon / Anime & Manga

---

• AIR: Yaobikuni-no-mikoto and Kannabi-no-mikoto, the last winged beings, are this. The former takes down plenty of soldiers with a single whirlwind but dies from a couple of arrows. Then the latter cuts through an entire mountain range with one slash, but her powers (and combat skills in general) are so crude and simple that once you get past her powers after she leaves herself open, she has perfectly ordinary durability and pain tolerance — which is even more of a problem than it sounds, since being a winged being apparently requires some level of concentration on her part. Any reasonably serious injury will distract her so much that she essentially loses any meaningful ability to fight back against whoever injured her, leaving her entirely dependent on her first-strike capabilities. There's a reason why the soldiers are easily able to kill her.
• Shin Kazama of Area 88 fits the type. He deals a nasty blow to Saki's head during a temporary psychotic rage, but Mickey floors him with one punch.
• Attack on Titan: Eren's Attack Titan form is very strong even by Titan standards, packing a devastating punch. However, his body is surprisingly frail like a typical Titan and Gorn typically ensues as he breaks and sometimes completely severs his limbs from the force of his own attacks. Eren manages to get around this when he gained his hardening ability and he learned to master it in Titan form, using it to great effect for both defense and offense, though still remaining vulnerable wherever he hasn't hardened.
• Musashi Miyamoto from Baki the Grappler is an almost textbook example. He is a master swordsman who is perhaps the only person in the world who can match Yujiro Hanma. Yet his physical strength and durability are regularly portrayed as sub-par, often being injured by much weaker opponents. This is somewhat subverted by the fact that he can block attacks with his sword. This is exaggerated even further when he uses his 'abstract cutting' and fights without his sword, increasing his offensive power, but no longer even being able block attacks.
• Shiki, The Dragon and (sort-of) Squishy Wizard from Black Cat. His normal attacks do more damage than anything this side of The Hero, the Big Good, and the Big Bad's final moves, but he goes down with one pistol-whip from Train.
• Bleach:
  • Ikkaku's Zanpakuto is unpredictable, dangerous, and incredibly powerful. However, it breaks easily because its Shikai is a wooden spear, and the overpowered force of its Bankai makes itself brittle. Ikkaku refuses to use it correctly and has been chastised for that by Iba. It's heavily implied that the misuse of his own power is why his Zanpakuto keeps breaking so easily; the creator of the Zanpakuto, Nimaiya, openly tells Renji and Ichigo that Zanpakuto which are not correctly used will break easily. Ikkaku himself is not this trope, having immense stamina and the ability to shrug off wounds with sheer willpower.
  • Chojiro Sasakibe is said to rival the Captains in strength (and has a Bankai that Captain-Commander Yamamoto himself recognizes as immensely powerful), but his first on-screen fight (such as it is) has him as one of the three Vice-Captains that a bare-handed Ichigo knocks out with a single punch. Apparently, for all his strength he has a glass jaw.
  • Ran Tao from the anime filler Bount Arc is a very skilled spell user, but her stamina is heavily compromised by her extreme age.
  • The Fullbringers as a whole, though it’s also justified in-story. They have similarly powerful semantic superpowers like the other spiritual beings in the series (Soul Reapers, Hollows/Arrancars, and Quincies)… but being living humans, they lack the Super-Toughness those beings have with no means to compensate. So they wield abilities that can give Captain-class Soul Reapers a fight, but go down with one strong hit.
• Buso Renkin: Papillon's Back-Powder Buso Renkin, Near-death Happiness, has enough firepower to blow large holes in concrete, and dismember regular humans, but his disease means that he suffers from a severe lack in stamina compared to the other homunculi.
• Captain Tsubasa:
  • The Japanese National Team. They've got excellent scorers in Tsubasa, Aoi, and Hyuga as well as great GK's like Wakabayashi and Wakashimazu, but one of their biggest flaws is how easily their defense can be torn and the rival teams can try their luck at scoring. And since the two Waka GK's are prone to Game Breaking Injuries...
  • Single player version: Jun Misugi. Excellent strategist, very dedicated, great at teamwork, marvelous scorer... and with pathetic stamina due to being formerly ill. Hence why he's seen more often than not in manager positions and doesn't play until it's mandatory.
• A Certain Magical Index/A Certain Scientific Railgun:
  • Accelerator is a strange example. Normally he's Nigh-Invulnerable thanks to his ability to redirect all vectors and thus ignore all harm; he casually mentions that the only reason a nuke would be dangerous to him is because he might suffocate from lack of oxygen. However, when faced with Touma's Anti-Magic right hand, he suddenly turns into a frail teenager with no fighting skills who needs to use overpowered ranged attacks to try to kill Touma before he gets close again. This is especially problematic for him because he generally prefers close-range fights; his ranged attacks are generally more complicated and harder to use than his simple Touch of Death.
  • Mikoto, while technically a Kung-Fu Wizard, suffers this problem at higher levels. While she's athletic and has both martial arts training and real fighting experience, her powers are far more oriented towards offense than defense. If someone has the ability to survive her massive assault, she finds herself at a serious disadvantage, and is little more than a tough teenager. When she is forced to undergo the Level 6 Shift and is turning into an angel, she does little more than stand in one place throwing ludicrous amounts of electricity at her problems. Once Touma breaks through her last barrier, the entire Shift collapses.
  • Many supernatural opponents, especially on the Magic side, end up like this, either with or without Touma's right hand involved. Most magicians are implied to be wearing magic clothing that looks perfectly ordinary but actually protects better than armor; that's useless against Touma's hand. The Science side, on the other hand, doesn't have that because they're One Person, One Power; people like Mitsuko Kongou might be able to output enough power to destroy a tank battalion, but if they get attacked they can do little besides run.
• Chainsaw Man has the Control Devil AKA Makima, who wields a Story-Breaker Power-level — Compelling Voice — that lets her brainwash almost anyone, regardless of their power-level, into becoming a slavishly loyal minion. However, the Control Devil is a rare case of a Devil whose body is identical to a human's, meaning any damage that would be lethal to a normal person is lethal for them too. While they usually get around this weakness using an ability gained from a Contract with the Japanese Government that transfers their wounds to unlucky bystanders, Once Denji figures out this contract only applies when her opponent considers themselves to be attacking her, he beats her with a single hit by as he considering himself to be acting in self-defence rather than intentionally bringing harm.
• Death Note: Light Yagami and all other Death Note users definitely qualify. They can kill anyone whose face and name they know, but are no more bullet resistant than anyone else.
• Marcille of Delicious in Dungeon is a powerful mage who becomes capable of standing toe-to-toe with the Lunatic Magician, the creator of the dungeon, for a brief period of time before overexerting herself. Keep in mind, she was the only person in the party capable of even slowing the Magician down. She's also pretty weak physically and not able to take many hits.
• Wisely of D.Gray-Man can be considered this compared to other Noah (they are all physically superhumans anyway). His power allows him to One-Hit Kill anyone by crushing their brain with a mere glance. However, when he indirectly received an attack on his head he was stunned for the rest of the arc. Besides, he declares himself as "not a fighter".
• Kaioken in Dragon Ball Z allows Goku to multiply his strength and speed at the cost of significantly lowering his stamina.
  • Frieza is this for the majority of the series until late Dragon Ball Super. He has insane natural power, but absolutely no stamina for longer fights when facing someone on his level. Part of the reason being he has never had any reason to train himself prior to facing Goku, as he always could just rely on brute strength to kill anyone that stands in his way early on in their "fight". It isn't until pre-tournament of power does he start to make efforts to fix his stamina issue, eventually succeeding in doing so.
• May Chang from Fullmetal Alchemist has quite a few different ranged attacks with her alkahestry, but is one of the least durable characters, partly the result of being a young girl.
• Getter Robo: In general, most of the Getter Robo mecha tend to take very visible damage in the course of battling. In particular, Armageddon and Shin VS Neo have plenty of lavishly-detailed battle damage marks and scars forming as the Getters get crushed and even get their arms ripped off. While they can exhibit very impressive and outright terrifying offensive potential, the Getters tend to get beat-up far more than many traditional Super Robots.
• Gundam:
  • Mobile Suit Gundam 00: Tieria Erde's Gundam in The Movie, the Raphael, is equipped with Big Friggin' Wave Motion Guns that can also function as Attack Drones. However, due to said Gundam not being equipped with real GN Drives as well as the lack of resources used while it was being created, all defensive capabilities were sacrificed in favor of its offense. His earlier Gundam Nadleeh qualifies as well: it's essentially a Fragile Speedster with the Exia's close-combat attack power. Naturally, it's only used in emergency as it's a Dual Mode Unit, its other form being Gundam Virtue.
  • The GN Arms from the first season, too. Lockon absolutely owned everyone with it until Ali incapacitated him with a single well-aimed shot at his beam cannon. Then it turned out the Gundam piloting the exoskeleton is tougher than the actual exoskeleton! Another example of this trope is the Gadessa: its main weapon is a Wave-Motion Gun with ridiculous range... and not much armor. It still has a backup weapon and a beam saber but its defensive capabilities are nowhere near those of the others, as Lockon took it out in the final battle with a point-blank burst from his Gundam's sidearm after Playing Possum to lure it close.
  • Even seen in Mobile Suit Gundam MS IGLOO during the gravity front. Zaku's are portrayed as having tremendous and devastating firepower...but one direct hit from a tiny tank or missile team can still one shot them. Fortunately, it seems that even non new type mook Zeke's can Dodge the Bullet.
• Hajime no Ippo:
  • Minor character Eleki Battery who fought Kimura is definitely one. He has enough power to knock Kimura down in one blow, however, all Kimura needed to do was land one hit to his body to knock him down.
  • Also Ryuichi Hayami, who's got very good counters and speed as well as strength... but one well placed punch and he's out. This gets so bad that, when Kobashi manages to deal him a REALLY well-placed hit in the jaw, the injury he sustains forces him to retire.
• Hello! Sandybell: Jirobi is a gun-toting mafia leader who's Covered in Scars and has the wealthy Kitty Shearer kidnapped. However, once he's found by the French police he runs away like a Dirty Coward while leaving his minions to shoot at them, and Sandybell manages to pursue him by jumping on his car.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • Diavolo's Stand in Part 5, King Crimson, is one of (if not THE) most powerful Stands in terms of raw striking power, with an A rank in Power and Speed. However, it has an E rank in terms of durability. This is why Diavolo tries to end his fights with a single strike, as he can't survive an extended assault.
  • By part 6, Jotaro's Stand, Star Platinum, has degraded from Lightning Bruiser to this. It maintains its legendary speed and strength, and it has a much bigger range than in part 3; but Jotaro's age combined with the strain inflicted on him when he uses its time stopping power resulted in its durability dropping from rank A to E.
  • Stand users in general, with a few exceptions like DIO, aren't any tougher than those without powers; so anyone with a particularly potent offense is going to fall into this if they start taking direct hits. Most noticeable with Iggy in Part 3, who has a very powerful stand with a wide range of abilities, but is still a small dog with all the fragility that one would expect. This leads to him being mortally injured from a few strong kicks.
• Megumin from Konosuba was built around this concept, and then some. She can (and feels a need to) nuke an area once per day, but doing so drains her to the point where she is too exhausted to even move for a while. Likewise, that Explosion spell is the alpha and the omega of her spell selection.
• In The Legendary Moonlight Sculptor, the main character Weed considers his non-combat title-class to be this, he calls his class a "glass sculptor" as his unique attacks do a lot of damage, but because he is a crafter class, he cannot equip heavy armor, and does not receive the ordinary damage reducing skills of, say, a warrior.
• Lyrical Nanoha:
  • Fate's Sonic Drive form introduced in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS. It improves on her original Sonic Form by giving her a lot of oomph to complement the speed increase, boosting her magic powers to astounding levels and letting her access Bardiche's Riot Zamber form. But much like the original Sonic Form, all of this comes at the cost of armor, so all it'll take is one good hit to make her fall. Not that it proves to be much of a detriment; so far, only Erio has managed to land a hit during a mock battle in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha ViVid, where it indeed wiped out most of Fate's Hit Points.
  • Hayate has also shades of this: her spells range from nuclear explosion to... bigger nuclear explosion, but it comes with looooooong casting time and inability to take hits. She even said Caro would win against her in one-on-one. This is counterbalanced by the fact that Hayate almost never fights one on one; even without her other allies, most of the time she still has Reinforce with her, who can separate and hold off a target with a slew of not quite as powerful, but quite a bit faster spells while Hayate prepares her Wave-Motion Gun.
  • Lutecia Alpine is an S-rank summoner who, in StrikerS, is capable of summoning insects that rival Caro's powers, but has hardly any moves with which to protect herself. However, as of ViVid, she appears to have developed the magical capabilities to fight alone well enough to enter the tournament alongside Vivio and her friends.
  • The Numbers from StrikerS are very powerful, but they can't take hits that well and most of them seem to not have defense skills. Their teamwork makes them dangerous, but if you're strong or skilled enough to take one after another down, then it's not a problem. In the Grand Finale, all Numbers are defeated by one or a few hits.
  • Micaiah Chevelle from ViVid has a Barrier Jacket (or Knight Clothing) which is designed to give her immense speed for minimum defense. This speed supports her extremely powerful sword attacks greatly, but her lack of defense becomes a lethal disadvantage against Lightning Bruiser Miura who has melee versions of Nanoha's Starlight Breaker.
• My Hero Academia:
  • Izuku Midoriya: due to obtaining his Quirk, One For All, later in life, he has no idea how to moderate its insane power at first. Because of this, he has to shatter the bones in whatever limb he uses it in. As a trade-off, the immense power it produces can demolish entire buildings, topple giant robots, and create massive gusts of wind. He leans away from this as his control improves, allowing him to restrict the damage to just one of his fingers and later spreading the power throughout his body evenly to give himself a much smaller boost to his strength and speed without hurting himself. But he still has to carefully moderate how he's using One For All, lest his concentration breaks and he accidentally uses its full power and hurts himself again.
  • Seiji Shishikura is a pretty extreme glass cannon. His power, "Meatball," allows him to reshape the flesh of anyone he comes in physical contact with, which pretty much instantly immobilizes them. He can even detach chunks of himself and shoot them at others, which will adhere to them. In his introduction, he effortlessly inflicts one-hit KOs to at least a dozen heroes. However, if he so much as takes damage, anyone he's shaped into meatballs will revert back to normal. That is, for him to be effective, he cannot be hit by any attack, no matter how small.
  • Kaminari's power is the ability to discharge an enormous amount of electricity into the surrounding area. The problem is, once he does this, the power basically fries his brain and turns him into an idiot, meaning that he gets one shot before becoming totally useless for the next hour or so. And he's not any physically stronger than a normal human, making him something of a sitting duck. Later on, he starts to train specifically to avoid this issue.
• Alyssa of My-HiME has the ability to cause devastation on a large scale with her Child, Artemis, but unlike other Himes, does not have an Element to protect herself, instead relying on Miyu's assistance.
• Itachi Uchiha is basically this in Naruto. Despite having three of the most powerful attacks in the entire manga, Itachi's base arsenal lacks versatility. Not only that, a sufficiently strong character could One-Hit KO him if they got close (though since Itachi is one of the fastest characters in the series, this is extremely difficult) to him. His stamina is particularly low as well, meaning he can't fight for extended periods. Those three powerful attacks? They cost more than 30% of his total chakra, meaning he can't spam them like his brother Sasuke can. This is likely a result of the fact that he is dying from a serious illness during the events of the series, and was likely more of a Lightning Bruiser when he was healthy (indeed he is referenced as single-handedly defeating armies years before the events of the series). Subverted by the fact that one of his techniques gives him a giant exoskeleton that turns him into one of the most durable characters in the series but he can only maintain it briefly. Completely subverted to the point he arguably becomes a Stone Wall after his reincarnation. Not only is he immortal and virtually indestructible, but he also has endless chakra reserves meaning that he can maintain that giant exoskeleton indefinitely and spam all the extremely powerful techniques he could previously use only sparingly. His physical strength too appears to increase dramatically or at least be restored to the level it had been when he was healthy, with him easily overwhelming a Naruto who had access to almost all of the Ninetails' chakra with kicks alone.
• Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind:
  • Justified and deconstructed with the resurrected God-Warrior. Because it hatched prematurely, just as the Ohms were charging at the humans, it was only able to fire off several powerful beams at them before disintegrating. Unfortunately, the humans were depending on it to defend against the Ohms. Had it not been for Nausicaä's intervention, the humans would have been completely eradicated.
  • A less justifiable case comes from the Tolmekian airships. For all of their guns, a whopping four of them don't stand a chance against a single Pejite interceptor, forcing Nausicaa and her band to escape with Kushana in tow.
    Mito: These are some flimsy ships...
• In Negima! Magister Negi Magi, Chachamaru has what may be the strongest offensive attack in the series, a killsat artifact so devastating that she struggles to find practical usage for it. However, it's also slow and offers no defensive advantages whatsoever, meaning that after disabling Fate with it temporarily she ends up cut in half by Quartum with absolutely no way to defend herself or any real ability to negate the damage. The only thing going for her defensively is that she has less vital points than an actual human.
• Lala-Ru from Now and Then, Here and There can completely destroy Hellywood with her water powers, but she's very physically weak and easy to subdue. Also, said powers deplete her lifespan each time she uses them and she dies after Hellywood's destruction.
• One Piece:
  • Nami's Clima Tact can make very dangerous lightning attacks, and while they take some time to charge up, her offensive power with these makes her one of the most dangerous Straw Hats. She is one of the very few people who can hurt Luffy with a regular punch, though it is because she "beats up his spirit". Her durability, however, is very puny and no better than that of real life human.
  • King Elizabello II of the Prodence Kingdom's signature attack, the King Punch, can make a hole in an enemy fortress wall, though it takes an hour to charge so he needs to be protected while preparing it. When tried out in an arena, it basically destroyed it, and would have killed the audience if a Barrier Warrior hadn't been standing by. Unfortunately, he's nothing special in terms of toughness, getting one-shotted by the same barrier warrior immediately afterwards. With a punch, at that.
  • Zunesha is as mighty as you'd expect a giant elephant like him to be, being able to decimate entire fleets of ships with one swipe of its trunk. However, its one thousand plus years of life also made its body weak and not very durable; concentrated cannon fire from Jack's ship onto Zunesha's leg was almost enough to bring him down.
• Genos, the "Demon Cyborg" from One-Punch Man. He can annihilate entire mountains with his Arm Cannon, but he often fights people who are way out of his league and so he often winds up looking like a piece of modern art. Good Thing We Can Rebuild Him.
• Ouja No Yuugi: the magic-wielding strategists are powerful, but fragile glass cannons, and have to be protected by their generals on the battlefield.
• Ash's Pikachu in Pokémon: The Series has powerful electric attacks, especially by the standards of its species. It can take out grass-type Pokemon who can resist electric attacks and even the occasional ground-type, who are supposed to be immune to electricity altogether. However, Pikachu is still a very frail Pokemon and is easily overpowered numerous times throughout the anime.
• Lillidan Crauser of The Prince of Tennis. He is extremely powerful, able to curb-stomp a bloodshot Kirihara using even greater violent play than him. However, he lacks stamina and defense. Considering this it comes as no surprise that Devil Akaya completely trashes him in a matter of minutes.
• Ranma ½:
  • The Big Bad of the final arc has powers bordering on a Person of Mass Destruction and he can tank Ki Attacks, but a rather pampered life has lead him to be rather weak against physical attacks. Of course, this is just compared to the completely Made of Iron fighters in most of the series (he was called a wuss for being moderately injured by a boulder... being thrown by tornado winds that were drilling into the ground and altering the course of an underground river).
  • Akane Tendo as well. Though she can dish out punches with the best of them, she has nowhere near the healing speed or toughness of any of the other characters; while she is too skilled to be The Load in an actual fight, she is still regarded by some as a Damsel Scrappy because she insists on getting into a fight, but somebody (mainly Ranma) usually has to keep an eye on her because she can't take the hits they can.
• Ranpo Kitan: Game of Laplace: Akechi can dish out a lot of damage due to his correspondence karate, but breaks bones after hitting tougher and older opponents.
• Ryu from Ryu's Path has many powers (even being hailed a messiah by the people) and is a skilled gun user, but still passes out from hunger and blood loss like ordinary humans do.
• Sk8the Infinity: Cherry Blossom is one of the best and most agile skaters in S and possibly the most intelligent of all, but unlike other adults such as Joe, Shadow or Adam, Cherry has shown little skill and physical resistance being quickly injured and rendered unconscious by the hit Adam gave him with his skateboard. Temporarily leaving him with an arm in a cast and a time in a wheelchair.
• King from The Seven Deadly Sins is capable of dispensing incredible attacks with his Morph Weapon. However, he is a massive Squishy Wizard as he can't even physically beat an old man with a bad back in unarmed combat.
• Hisashi Mitsui from Slam Dunk is one of the best 3-point scorers in Japanese HS basketball. But around 3/4 of an intense game, he's almost completely knocked out and unable to merely walk outside the basketball fields.
• Space Battleship Yamato has the Super Battleship Andromeda. All the ships in the Andromeda fleet have double wave motion guns but still get easily destroyed just by the force of the White Comet's vortex.
• Super Dimension Fortress Macross: Destroids. They're the conventional ground mech's used by the UN Spacey, and carry significantly more armaments than Variable fighters, yet seem just as vulnerable to hits. Their lack of agility combined with this basically renders them mostly ineffectual in most combat engagements against faster Zentradi vehicles.
• In the anime version of Tiger Mask this turns out to be the weakness of Tiger the Great: he's both incredibly strong and skilled, both in legal techniques and fouls, but having easily overwhelmed his opponents he has never got used to serious hits, and when Tiger Mask snaps and start fouling back he can't take the beating.
• In Tokyo Ghoul, this is the defining characteristic of the Rinkaku Ghouls. Their kagune possess incredible striking power, but the cellular structure is brittle and easily damaged.
• In the first season if Yu-Gi-Oh! (where the card game was the least like its Real Life equivalent) both Zombie and Machine-Type Monsters were described like this, incredibly strong on offense but really bad at anything else, especially defense. (Of course, the actual game isn't like this at all, at least not all the time.)
• In Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V, Shun Kurosaki is not only a skilled duelist, but very strong, skilled, and agile in hand to hand combat. However, he's laughably easy to knock unconscious and gets injured frequently. His English voice actor Matt Shipman has commented on this shortcoming a few times.
• Raizen from YuYu Hakusho is a Downplayed example. In comparison to Yomi, Mukuro, and his former sparring partners he's this, as despite his overwhelming power his constitution is weakened by centuries of self-imposed starvation. However, as an Upper S-Class demon he's still a Physical God strong enough to No-Sell most weaker opponents, as shown in his first "fight" with Yusuke.

---