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Extraordinarily Empowered Girl
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alt title(s): EEG She is independent, with quite a bit more capability than is the norm, often up to " super-powered" or " demigod" levels.
Then there's that pesky Mission.
Essentially, a fantastic expression of "Girl Power", whatever that means for the show's target generation.
See also: Magical Girl, Action Girl, Cute Bruiser. Plucky Girl is the 'non-superpowered, but gets the job done anyway' version. If you're looking for that kind of "empowered", see Most Common Superpower.
Examples:
Anime
- Haruko in FLCL.
- Thanks to the Time Skip and some training from hell, suddenly Sakura on Naruto, able to punch down trees and cause mini-earthquakes just as well as she heals wounds or concocts antidotes. Her mentor, Tsunade, is another example, of course.
- For the setting, though, that's more being a 'normally empowered girl'. It only seems extraordinary because she was such deadweight before.
- Even for the setting, she's actually quite a bit more than "normally empowered." Few people have full on Super Strength, plus she's The Medic in addition (and she excels at both)
- Chise from Saikano is a brutal deconstruction of this. The situation eventually drives her Ax Crazy and leads her to kill every single human on Earth except for Shuji, partly as a Mercy Kill, partly as vengeance. By the end, she literally isn't human; the aforementioned Mercy Kill expends all of her energy and turns her into an Energy Being. Perhaps for her, walking an empty Earth with Shuji is the only way of achieving happiness... but it's strongly implied that she is giving him Immortality, along the lines of AM from I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream. Your Mileage May Vary on whether this is a Tear Jerker, High Octane Nightmare Fuel, or both.
- Kirika from Noir is basically a near-superhuman killing savant, rivalled only by Chloe, their expertise contrasting Kirika's partner, the Badass Normal Mireille.
- Pick a female mage from Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. You'll get anything from cagey fighters that can take down multiple Super Soldiers at once, to saviours that had faced many inter-dimensional threats head-on and won.
- She's not quite there yet, but Asuna from Mahou Sensei Negima is starting to fill this role. Full Magic Cancel, and Kanka (Mana-Ki fusion), and a giant anti-demon sword.
- Mahou Sensei Negima also has Konoka, whose pure magical power could be devastating in the wrong hands (such as her would-be kidnappers during the school trip arc), but who has only White Magic in her spell repertoire. The ability to heal anything short of death counts as "extraordinary", right?
- The rest of Negi's nakama are rising fast. Kaede (took on a dragon - blindfolded), Ku Fei (split a cliff-face with her bare hands) and Yue (despite amnesia, became a trainee magic knight in a few months) are undoubtedly EEGs.
- Elie from Groove Adventure Rave. Hobbies include being cheerful, shooting through walls, and warrior-calling.
- Yoko Litner. Just....... Yoko. Litner.
- Elle Ragu of Shadow Skill, who even takes pride in being "beefy".
- Yuki Nagato of Suzumiya Haruhi. And Haruhi herself too.
- Orihime Inoue from Bleach can reject reality depending on her emotional state.
Comic Books
Literature
- Lúthien from The Silmarillion is a half-Elven, half-Maia (think lesser god) princess who has magic powers and who succeeds in stealing a Silmaril from the Big Bad, Morgoth. When her lover dies, she dies, goes to the Halls of Mandos and sings so beautifully that the god of death relents and brings him back.
- Grace Choi of the Outsiders. She's the team's tank. Evidently, she was a child prostitute, and when her powered developed, it was not good times for her pimp.
- Jame of Chronicles Of The Kencyrath. Destined to be Nemesis, the earthly avatar of the Destruction aspect of her triune God; even in not-quite-fully-developed state, she has more power than she knows how to use. Trained in the martial arts by a three thousand year old undead Master. Able to reap souls and command the unwilling to do her bidding. Her blood, if consumed, binds the consumer to her mind, body and soul, to death and perhaps beyond.
- The Rowan of Anne Mc Caffrey's Talent series. (Yes, there is a "the" in her name.Long story.)
- To be fair, her offspring is always more powerful than she is. Whatever the sex. Damia being the worse of the lot.
- Vin of Mistborn. As one of the titular magic-users, she has superstrength, super senses, limited ability to manipulate others' emotions, limited telekinetic control of metal, the ability to sense other Mistborn or Mistings using their powers, and Combat Clairvoyance, among other abilities. That would make her formidable enough on its own, but she's also shown to be in some ways much more powerful than even "ordinary" Mistborn. This is partly because her earring is a Hemalurgic spike, and partly because she's what could only be described as a proto-god.
Live Action Television
- One of the earliest EEGs was Evie Garland from the 80s Sit Com Out Of This World, who derived her extraordinary powers from her half-alien heritage.
- Similarly, Ta'ra from the short lived series Something Is Out There.
- Sabrina The Teenage Witch used a similar formula, substituting "witch" for "alien".
- Joss Whedon has openly admitted to having a thing for this trope, noting after Firefly that he "can't seem to create [a show] without an adolescent girl with superpowers" in it. The title character of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Whedon's most well-known TV creation, for instance, was one of the most notable instances on TV of this archetype. However, she's by far not the last Whedon character to fit the trope: in addition to other Slayers seen throughout the Buffyverse (especially but not exclusively in the comics, such as Fray or Buffy Season Eight), there's also psychic Waif Fu user River Tam from his shorter-lived cult hit Firefly, though she's considerably less psychologically or emotionally stable than Buffy ever was as a result of the horrible experiments done to her at the Academy.
- He "has a thing" to the point that his Astonishing X-Men run actually regressed Kitty Pryde - in both age and personality - from the mature, confident woman she'd become in Excalibur, back to an EEG.
- Kitty Pryde's age and maturity levels have fluctuated wildly over the past decade or so, long before Joss Whedon started writing her. Although, admittedly, Author Appeal probably determined which Alternate Character Interpretation he decided to run with.
- He also wrote an arc of Runaways. Admittedly, the EEG characters weren't his creation (except the two he added), but we're pretty sure they're the reason he likes that comic enough to write it anyway.
- Even non-Slayer women in the Buffyverse may end up as EEGs. Case in point: Willow. Case in pointier: Illyria. In the Whedonverse, even Eldritch Abominations come in a convenient EEG form.
- Max of Dark Angel.
- All the main characters of Birds Of Prey.
- Isabelle, one of the main antagonists in the third series of The 4400, has demonstrated more or less all of the abilities used in the show, whereas most powered characters have only one ability.
- Claire Bennet of Heroes is indestructible (that is- you can hurt however you choose, but she grows back (not Nigh Invulnerable)), and her power is generally considered extraordinarily useful even by people who are telekinetic, pyrokinetic, empathic, and able to fly (to name a few). Super-strong Niki also qualifies, but she has enough psychological hang-ups that her power tends to be a liability rather than helpful.
- There's also illusion-casting Candace/Betty, who's a fairly villainous example, but gets slightly more mainstream (while still twisted) once you find out that she was picked on in school and originally used her powers to look pretty and get back at the popular kids.
- Cameron of The Sarah Connor Chronicles, though in her case, she's not exactly human in the first place.
Video Games
- Most of the playable cast of the Oneechanbara series, along with several of the villains, have the Baneful Blood curse, which grants them extraordinary strength which can be further increased by contact with blood, at the cost of some really ghastly side effects. Anna from Oneechanbara Vortex is an exception, and just can't compete with the other girls in terms of raw physical power, using guns and grenades to even the odds a bit.
- Name any major character from Touhou. Then again, 99% of them are youkai and the remainder practice a lot.
Web Comic
- Perhaps the most extreme example is the Reality Warper title character of the Web Comic Minus, who is basically Great Gazoo embodied as a six-year-old girl.
- Arguably, Grace from El Goonish Shive, at least when she's in her Omega fighting form, which adds flight, armor-like spines and claws capable of rending steel to her "mundane" Magical Girlfriend abilities of shapeshifting, fireproof fur, and telekenisis.
- Could also be applied to Nanase (flight, super martial arts, and a spell collection that increases faster than a D&D wizard on game day)
Web Original
- Tennyo, at the Super Hero School Whateley Academy in the Whateley Universe. She's surrounded by other mutants with superpowers, but she stands out. She's got the usual super-strength, flight, etc. She ignores gravity and inertia. She heals faster than Wolverine. She has an energy sword that lightsabers wish they could be when they grow up. She tosses energy blasts from her hands. She has a reality-distorting 'warp shield'. She can make anti-matter at will. She has a death blow that literally disintegrates an opponent and his soul. She may have teleportation (we're not sure yet). She has other powers that she's still growing into. Many of these powers are unbelievable within the setting. And she's just a teenager, who's only had these powers since summer.
- Chaka from the same webfiction is a martial arts prodigy, extremely capable, and either a master of the Indy Ploy or an impressive manipulator of bad guys. She's potentially a martial arts The One. She's less defined by girl power and more defined by the protecting other people, though.
- Cynthia Arden from The Lonely Winds
 is a psychic of rare and exceptional power in the setting. Too bad she’s also so self-involved she’s often as much of a problem to her team as she is helpful.
Western Animation
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