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Waif Fu
Also? She can kill you with her brain.
"Start with the part where Jayne gets knocked out by a 90-pound girl, 'cause... I don't think that's ever getting old."
— Wash, Serenity

The ability of a tiny, hundred-pounds-when-soaking-wet actress to throw muscular opponents three times her size across rooms and through walls. Often coupled with a flimsy explanation at some point about how the character took self defense classes. It's possible to be much stronger than one looks, but it can rapidly get silly if that strength doesn't appear in more mundane contexts, or the fighting style isn't suited to a lightweight character regardless of strength. Throw in empowerment as a reason, but it's usually so the audience doesn't complain when she kicks the butt of someone much bigger, stronger and supposedly more experienced in combat than she is. This ability can be immediately lost if she needs to be kidnapped or protected; she can be incapacitated by holding her close and lightly grabbing her wrist.

More generally this is a trope of casting or design. Some female characters who are said to be physically strong (especially if you're nearing the Big Guy level) usually have some kind of "magic" super strength rather than actually being muscular at all.

Compare She Fu. Used by the Action Girl, Faux Action Girl, Hot Amazon, Cute Bruiser, Robot Girl, Little Miss Badass, and Lady Of War. Very common among characters of the Mary Sue variety. Not to be confused with Waifu, which is completely different.

Examples

Anime and Manga
  • Sakura of Naruto learns it from Tsunade, who also breaks the ground with simple punches - Tsunade in her true form is actually a frail elderly woman with even less muscle size than Sakura.
  • Yachiru of Bleach is able to carry her captain, Zaraki Kenpachi, without much trouble despite her being about 34 pounds fully clothed. Zaraki on the other hand weighs in at a Tyson'esque 238 lbs. This is however justified by the fact that she clearly isn't a normal little girl.
    • Ururu, the little girl that helps out at Urahara Kisuke's shop also deserves a mention here. When the Arrancar first invade the real world, she snaps and starts kicking ass much to everyone else's shock. She also showed off some of her skills back during Ichigo's Training From Hell.
  • Slender fifteen-year-old Kaoru Konoe of Gate Keepers has the ability to heft battle tanks and throw buses for hundreds of yards, thanks to her Gate powers.
  • Shinobu in Urusei Yatsura displays low-level super-strength when sufficiently provoked. This developed from what was originally comic relief slapping and hitting.
  • Asuka of Neon Genesis Evangelion displayed this trope in the manga version. After bumping into a gang member in an arcade, she manages to easily kick him out the way and hold her own against several other big, burly men alone, with backflips and all. Admittedly she used the "Look over there!" trick first. She never displays these moves again in the series, apart from a brief moment near the end of the same book.
  • In the case of Gally (or Alita, depending on who you ask) from Gunnm/Battle Angel Alita one would argue that her being a Full Conversion Cyborg justifies this... except that the vast majority of her opponents are as well, and are almost invariably much bigger than she is (frequently by a factor of 10 or more) and often just as advanced or nearly so.
    • In her defense, she's a master of Panzer Kunst - a fighting style designed for taking on cyborgs - and has repeatedly demonstrated the ability to analyze and out-think her opponents.
      • Its not really very much of a problem. In the later arc, Gally/Alita has shown that she can literally overpower quite a few opponents larger than herself without thinking too much. For example, once Sachamudo was put off balance, she literally just tears him apart like an animal.
  • The Little Miss Badass of Mahou Sensei Negima, Evangeline A. K. McDowell, fits this well. During the Tournament arc, she tosses around all her opponents with ease using Aiki-jujitsu, a real martial arts technique, and strings. Using the two, she completely pins down Setsuna, who is one of the strongest characters in the main cast. Justified in this case, as she is 500 years old, and has been learning the art for the last 100 years or so.
    • It's even implied that she learned the art from the man who originated it.
    • One can argue that the Swordswoman/Demon Slayer Sakurazaki Setsuna counts as a practitioner in her own right, given that she is shorter than average and has a build best described as wiry (Eva-chan, having stopped aging the night before her tenth birthday, is one of the few in class smaller than their Cute Shotaro Boy teacher). Chinese Girl Ku Fei is also a bit of a twerp, yet beats on most of the various Martial Arts Club Captains (simultaneously) for her morning workouts.
  • The most skilled swordfighter in Blade Of The Immortal is not Manji, the main character, or Anotsu, the main villain, but Makie, a skinny, waif-like former prostitute who killed sixty wolves in one night at the age of ten.
  • In episode 18 of the Tenchi Muyo OVAs, Sasami—armed only with a staff she apparently kept in her hair—effortlessly defeated an armed and highly trained Galaxy Police operative, despite being no more than 12 years old and having shown no martial prowess whatsoever at any prior point in the series.
    • Isn't Sasami Really Seven Hundred Years Old and her soul is merged with the goddess Tsunami's? Sasami has more excuses for busting out previously unrevealed powers than anybody else on the show.
      • Sasami is Really Seven Hundred Years Old only in the most technical sense - she spent close to 690 of those years in suspended animation. She could have easily lived that time unaided, but it would have undoubtedly been incredibly boring even in the massively luxurious spaceship.
    • It's All There In The Manual. Sasami does possess martial arts prowess, it just wasn't mentioned in the OVAs before — after all, her mom is the head of Emperor's security and uncontested martial arts champion of the whole Jurai Empire. And it was mentioned in the supplements that Sasami DID train with Misaki, so she could take out a couple of GalPol mooks even without Tsunami's powers.
  • Nicely avoided in the anime Noir, adding credibility to a show with a implausible body count in most of its fight scenes. The whisper-thin ur-waif Kirika is one of the two most lethal human beings on earth. However, the writer never has her indulge in waif-fu. She always uses weapons to make her kills—including, in one case, a plastic high school ID card, never her hands or feet, and rarely shows more strength than might be plausible for her body frame.
    • It still doesn't explain how she handles the recoil from her Beretta M1934 with those thin arms of hers.
      • A Beretta M 1934 fires .380 ACP, a fairly small round, typically used for backup guns only. The only common rounds weaker are .32 ACP and .22 Long. Much less recoil than a .45, or even a 9mm, usually.
  • Nagato Yuki of Suzumiya Haruhi has combat skills and power belied by her schoolgirl appearance, this is due to her reality-hacking powers. (this fanfic describes her as "Agent Smith's niece.")
  • The titular heroine of the anime Solty Rei is a young robot girl with a Mysterious Past, seemingly defenseless and who "adopts" a bounty hunter who "saved her life" - who is able to take out a fifty-foot mecha piloted by two Mooks in the second episode. With one punch to it's fist, which was in the process of trying to punch through her to her adopted protector. You don't want to mess with her.
    • And don't forget her very next move, where she hurled it into the stratosphere.
  • Although skilled primarily in the use of firearms, the child assassins from Gunslinger Girl are capable of punching a guy in the face hard enough to break his neck. Justified in that they're cybernetically enhanced to the point of having superhuman strength/speed/reflexes and being virtually bulletproof save for their eyes.
    • While they are fast and strong, Triela's training scene implies that they are not really that skilled. Triela's the best hand-to-hand, and a burly instructor kicks her butt comprehensively. He then asks for (and gets) two weeks to teach her properly. After which she kills a trained assasin with a two-finger strike.
  • Averted in The Daughter Of Twenty Faces. Although the titular 90-pound heroine Chiko is an Action Girl, her action mostly involves acrobatics and escape, not fighting people directly. Her trainers even point out that she can't hope to fight big burly men directly in hand to hand combat and if she must fight she has to rely on using their momentum against them and the like. Being explicitly told during training to aim directly at the groin area also helps.
    • Her fighting becomes more waif fu-like later in the series though.
  • Anita of the ROD TV Series is very strong, capable of stunning a "vampire" by throwing a book into his face breaking his nose from 20 feet away without using her paper powers. She can knock out grown men 3 times her size; and her fighting style was developed by animators via "observing monkeys and the Chinese Royal Acrobats." This is likely due to her being created in a lab by the British Library.
    • Anita was actually the only paper sister in that episode who could use her paper powers because they are simplistic and do not require the paper to take shape and are therefore immune to the subtle sound vibrations that permeated the castle grounds. Didn't she kill that "vampire" by the way?
    • Anita does this trope again and is also shown to be a walking "Got Milk?" advertisement when she plays sports at school and throws a scorching fast ball across two fields into the catchers mitt.
  • Meow from Kazemakase Tsukikage Ran is a very slender young lady, who barehandedly takes out entire gangs of armed mooks if sufficiently provoked. She still often plays the role of damsel in distress to the protagonist though, if the plot so desires.
  • Gender inverted in the manga and film Tekkon Kinkreet. The two boys, White and Black, are only skinny, unassuming ten-year-old boys, but they manage to take down grown, gun-wielding adults with nothing more than a length of pipe and some incredible jumping skills.
  • Technically, all female fighters in Ranma 1/2 save Cologne, as they're small, slender Japanese teenagers —and Akane and Ranma themselves are the tiniest of the bunch. Made explicitly obvious when they take on the humongous Dojo Destroyer and Pantyhose Taro.
  • In the first episode of Pokemon, Misty pulls Ash out of the water with a fishing rod, throwing him over her head in the process. A massive case of Fridge Logic.
  • Sapphire from Princess Knight handwaved for 1950s readers by her having an extra "male heart."
  • In Tora Dora, Taiga's doll-like appearance doesn't prevent her from handing out megaton punches.
  • Ayumi from Hatsukoi Limited has the build of an ordinary schoolgirl and the kicking power of a martial artist. Even the thug-like Misao is impressed with her kick.
  • Eri Kisaki of Detective Conan, in her first appearance, literally throws a muscular opponent three times her size across rooms and through walls. Her daughter Ran is also skilled in karate, but she's more of a Cute Bruiser variety.
  • A 15-year-old schoolgirl named Saya Otonashi may not be particularly intimidating, but there's a very good reason she's often mistakely referred to as Blood The Last Vampire.
  • Intentionally averted in Ouran Highschool Host Club. Haruhi, dressed as a boy, tries stopping two guys messing with some girls. Of course, she's quite short and rather thin, so five seconds later they chuck her into the ocean, and she can't swim either. The host club and Tamaki especially get really pissed at her for it. Some cry values dissonance or worse while others call it realistic and a good message.
    • Hunny is a good male example; looking like an elementary student, he's a fierce fighter who once took down six or seven armed and armored private police officers with no weapons, and they didn't even stand a chance.

Comic Books
  • In a late chapter of Bone, Thorn effortlessly lifts a Vedu warrior (easily twice her weight) over her head and throws him, presumably aided by her powers as the Awakened One. Then a squadron of 15 Vedu warriors appears and beats the tar out of her.
  • Canon Immigrant X-23. Well, what do you expect from an Opposite Sex Clone of Wolverine?
  • Cassandra Cain, aka Batgirl II. You could fit her in a backpack with a little folding, and she's been known to flip seven-foot-tall five-foot-wide monsters around by their teeth.
    • This depends on who's drawing since she is sometimes drawn with Muscles.
  • Given the vagaries of comic book art, just about any unpowered female will probably use this at one time or another, as quite a few artists simply refuse to draw women who look like they could carry a milk carton, much less win a fight. Combined with a tendency toward hyperthyroidism in male portrayal, this led to some especially egregious examples of Waif Fu in the 90s.
  • Lois Lane has a military brat background which helps explain why she can get away from the occasional mugger on her own but it was carried to ridiculous levels in one story when she singlehandedly storms a guerilla base commando style to save a Brought Down To Normal Clark.

Film
  • Fiona from the first Shrek film.
  • Leeloo from The Fifth Element, as well as pretty much any character Milla Jovovich has portrayed since.
  • DOA: Dead Or Alive
  • Wong Fei Hung's skinny old aunt in Drunken Master.
    • Also, the whole Eighth Drunken God's being the most bad-ass and being a woman flaunting her body, with moves such as "putting on make-up" and "pretty girl looks in mirror".
      • Although in some versions of the actual myth, "she" is actually a man in drag.
  • Jen Yu from Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, most memorably in the restaurant scene in which she owns everyone *and* the restaurant itself.
  • Pulled off rather believably in Doomsday. When Eden Sinclair (played by Rhona Mitra) gets into close combat, she either dodges most attacks from opponents bigger than her (rather than parrying them) and/or uses some kind of weapon that's realistically useful against a stronger opponent.
  • Pretty much every martial arts film starring 5'3" Cynthia Rothrock. Generally justified as Rothrock is a multiple World Karate champion (although technically in forms and weapons demonstrations, not matches), and in most films will get the stuffing beat out of her by much larger bosses or Dragons before eventually emerging victorious.
  • One of Sandra Bullock's early roles, in Demolition Man. She takes out one of the big strong super-violent thugs with a single kick. And how did she learn this move, living in the ultra-pacifistic society that has outlawed violence? She watched a Jackie Chan movie.
  • Short Round from Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom. On his road to the mine cart, the tiny kid beats the crap out of numerous opponents, including extremely robust thugs.
  • Another male example: In Star Trek III, Sulu beats up a security guard about twice his size who called him "tiny". Sulu tells him "don't call me tiny."
  • Three Ninjas. Despite the fact that the main characters were kids and not girls, they used the style. And one of the sequels had a girl who excelled at Waif Fu to the point that she curbstomped one of the ninjas in a tournament fight.
  • Chocolate (2008). Zen, a small Thai autistic girl whose Disability Superpower is to absorb martial arts from movies and TV shows. The entire movie is her beating up hundreds of people larger than her with muay thai. The actress supposedly spent 2 years learning enough muay thai to make it look realistic. The film handled her smaller size well - often, she uses it to her advantage by taking the fight into narrow spaces where her opponents have trouble moving.
  • Kate Beckinsdale's Selene in the Underworld series. Her counterpart in the prequel, Rhona Mitra's Sonja, howver, is a Faux Action Girl.
  • The Angels in the Charlies Angels film series use martial arts to defeat whole roomfuls of enemies. In the TV series, the Angels rely on more realistic tactics, but Drew Barrymore doesn't like guns.
  • The teen/tween in the archive in Blade. She looks about 12 or 14 and she kicks Blade so hard he falls back. She even plays helpless, scared and cute when he first sees her, then kicks him through some Soft Glass.

Literature
  • Kiki Strike of Kiki Strike.
  • Lieutenant Karrin Murphy in The Dresden Files fits this trope by being highly skilled in Akido, using her enemy's weight and momentum against them.
  • Mariel of Redwall. She's a mouse, probably aged about twelve in the first book, and has been kept as a slave for quite a long time, yet she's able to beat up seabirds with nothing but a length of knotted rope.
    • A lot of the Dibbuns, most prominently Baby Dumble, who was fighting crows in diapers. Or Bragoon and Saro, who left home to kick ass when they were still Dibbuns and don't come back 'til they're old, after which they kick more ass before dying epicly.
  • True, but slightly subverted in R.A. Salvatore's Cleric Quintet with Danica Maupauissant. She's described as "barely topping 5-ft and 100 lbs., with a mop of bouncing strawberry-blonde hair." And she kicks the tails of everyone. Priests of Oghma, who are very accomplished wrestlers, and most are three times her size at least, make her wrestle them before they tell her where to find what she wants in the Edificant Library. She always wins. The reason this is slightly subverted is that she's a Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition Monk. Loosley translated: Shaolin monk on crack.
  • Nellie of The Avenger. Weighs maybe a hundred pounds sopping wet, tosses men more than twice that weight easily, thanks to her extensive knowledge of jujistu and other martial arts. Her job is made easier by the attitudes of the 1930s making it hard for male opponents to realize how effective a combatant she could be.
  • Vin in Mistborn is a tiny teenaged girl who, by the time the trilogy ends, has taken out just about everything nasty the Crapsack World can throw at her. Justified because she is one of the titular mistborn, and as such possesses powers including but not limited to superhuman strength, speed, senses, telekenetic control of metals, and a Jedi-like ability to see the immediate future.
  • Bast the Wood Elf John Ringo's Council Wars series who's about five feet tall and looks like a fourteen-year old girl although she's not. Justified in that she's a genetically engineered killing machine with about a thousand years of combat experience.

Live Action TV
  • The quote above comes from the Firefly movie Serenity, where River's martial-arts-killing-machine programming by The Government manifests when she receives her activation signal (a "Fruity Oaty Bars" commercial) at the Maidenhead bar. She proceeds to wipe the floor with everyone in the bar, including resident Big Guy and Badass Jayne, who takes a shot at restraining her but gets a painful Groin Attack and a serving tray to the head that knocks him flat for his trouble. She is only deactivated when her brother Simon speaks a code-phrase that serves to knock her out.
    • And that's not even mentioning what she does to the Reavers at the end of the movie.
    • Or the episode War Stories where she shoots three bad guys, with her eyes closed.
    • Also, in the comic Better Days, she kicks an Alliance commando in the teeth while he's sneaking up on her. Without looking.
  • The classic example, Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Justified in that she's the Slayer.
  • Scully from The X Files often fell into this trope, seemingly capable of holding her own in a throw-down until the writers needed her to be kidnapped (usually when they needed Mulder to suffer).
  • Max from Dark Angel, although she was a transgenic trained-from-birth Super Soldier.
  • Happened to Lana on Smallville complete with the (very brief) explanation that Luthor got training for her. - Also called "Lana Fu"
  • In the Doctor Who episode The Mind Robber, Zoe gets the super-powered Karkus to work for her by defeating him in hand-to-hand combat, despite being much shorter, having no powers, and showing little tendency towards physical combat before. One explanation is that they're in a dimension where Your Mind Makes It Real, and Zoe does have a very good mind.
    • Alternatively, she had seen the Karkus is comic book form and knew he didn't truly exist, so he had no power over her. The Doctor had never heard of him, so he wasn't able to fight the Karkus the same way, but he could confidently claim that the Karkus' "anti-molecular ray disintegrator" gun was complete rubbish and couldn't possibly work, at which point it ceased to exist.
    • The titular character in the episode The Doctor's Daughter displays this.
  • Cameron Phillips in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Justified by the fact that she is a Terminator. Cameron is played by Summer Glau, the same actress who played the "90-pound girl" mentioned in the above quote.
  • Fiona from Burn Notice is a small girl and no stranger to combat, but this trope is averted as she is a Combat Pragmatist. On one occasion she was supposed to take down a large man to interrogate him later. She tried using a stun gun but he disarmed her in the attempt. She managed to get it back while he was trying to wrestle her down. After the narration explained that stun guns will shock you if your target is holding onto you, Fiona proceeded to stun the guy anyway.
  • This happened all the time in DS 9, with Kira and Jadzia knocking down Klingon or Jem Haddar warriors twice their weight.
    • Justified, at least in Kira's case - she joined an anti-Occupation resistance cell at the age of 14. (Also, Jadzia might have picked something up in her 300 years of living.
  • Echo, Sierra and November from Dollhouse depending on what imprint they're loaded with.
Music
  • In "Game of Death", an animated short featuring the band Gorillaz, Noodle (a 10-year-old girl) effortlessly throws Russel, who is extremely large.
    • Justified because she is a government-made super soldier.

Table Top RPG
  • Most Tabletop Games systems make little or no statistical distinction between males and females during character generation, Dungeons And Dragons being a prime example. Sex aside, a decently leveled midget (dwarf, halfling, gnome…) will be able to easily trash whole groups of giants (orcs, ogres, gnolls…) with their bare hands.
  • Warhammer 40,000's Eldar, despite being thinner than the average human, are as strong as a power-armoured Space Marine. This is explained partly by different muscle configuration, but Gav Thorpe's rationale explains it completely: the idea of an Eldar warrior punching through terminator armour is completely and undeniably awesome.
    • Same with the Kroot. Also that's only stinging scorpion, the rest of the eldar are Glass Cannons

Video Games
  • Sakura Kasugano: Her Waif Fu is stronger than yours! See her (with a minor assist by the ever-lovin' blue-eyed Thing) SMASH puny Hulk and Peter Griffin!!
    • Her rival, Karin Kanzuki, is out to prove that her Waif Fu is stronger than Sakura's. Canonically, she succeeds, but decides that the real importance lies in the thrill of the fight.
    • Those two have a real Laura/Nellie thing going on.
  • In the Soul Calibur series of games, petite pre-teen Amy can apparently block blows from weapons delivered by enormous men wielding axes, swords and maces.
  • Used to hilarious excess in The Misadventures of Tron Bonne. After declaring how she'd been taking self-defense courses since the last time they met, police woman Denise proceeds to manhandle Tron's Humongous Mecha by judo throwing it around town.
  • Tales of Symphonia's Presea Combatir. That axe has got to weigh more than she does...
    • Also Colette from the same game. You don't see as much as it with her as you do with Presea, but if you can watch her pick up a huge, muscular man that probably weighs twice as much as her without ANY effort whatsoever, then say she isn't strong, you're insane. Granted, she has angel powers, but still, it's damn impressive.
      • Granted, Exspheres are supposed to give a ridiculous boost. That's why Presea got one in the first place; so she'd be able to use her father's axe and work while he was ill.
      • Karol from Tales of Vesperia too. Granted he's male and the trope is slightly subverted at the beginning. But throughout the game you can give him swords that are BIGGER THAN HIS ENTIRE BODY and he can still wield them!
  • Etna, Jennifer, Yukimaru, Sapphire...Oh to hell with it; just about every female character from the Disgaea series. Most of the male ones too. Muscle is entirely optional
  • Nessiah, from Yggdra Union, is one of the exceedingly rare male examples of this trope. Not only is he tiny—he's stuck in a set of heavy chains that should by all rights make any form of combat impossible. And yet he manages to thrash the player's entire army with ease. The fact that he's a mage isn't even an excuse, as most magic-users in Yggdra Union have very low attack stats to match their lack of physical strength.
  • To an extent Wander from Shadow Of The Colossus. He runs and swims like a pansy but when the shit goes down he's still climbing up and stabbing Colossi that are as tall as skyscrapers without any real problems.
  • Tohsaka in Fate Stay Night. Look at her twig arms and mediocre height and tell me, do you honestly believe she could pull off the admittedly awesome things she does in hand to hand combat? Also Saber, but to her credit when she isn't buffing herself with magic strength she's actually a good deal weaker than either Shirou or Tohsaka. It'd be even harder to believe otherwise from her considering she's about five feet tall and weighs ninety pounds.
  • Ciel usually just chucks swords. Okay, kinda believable. But then she lugs around a gun that weighs more than she does, and it doesn't seem to slow her down that badly? Uh, okay. At least Arcueid is a vampire and has magical super strength or something. Actually, Arcueid admits outright that most of her strength has nothing to do with muscle mass and only considers herself as 'athletic' without it, enough to dodge Shiki's knife if he were to try something.
  • Konoko, the slightly-built protagonist from Oni, makes a habit of beating up on burly stormtrooper types.
  • Just about any fighting game allows even the smallest girl to throw the biggest and fattest man. An eggregious example would be the Dead Or Alive series where you can kick/punch/throw a character into a wall (or right through it, breaking the wall) from quite some distance, or down to a lower stage, defying the laws of physics.
  • King Of Fighters series has Hinako Shijo, a half-Russian Japanese schoolgirl... who is a sumo wrestler!

Web Comics
  • Megatokyo has several examples.
    • Ping, who is a robot girl.
    • Miho. In addition to various improbable acrobatic feats such as dodging an electric ray, disabling it, instantly vacating the scene in a matter of seconds, and walking quite calmly on telephone lines, she also grabbed a car by the hood and crushed it by flipping it over with one hand.
    • Yuki as well. Although she has not displayed excessive strength or combat skills she also can walk normally on telephone wires (until she realized where she was and promptly fell). She also apparently possesses the power of teleportation which she used to steal, among other things, a whole rent-a-zilla...twice. She also defeated a small horde of Zombie Rangers by throwing appliances at them. Including a washing machine. A remarkable feat, considering most conventional weapons would most likely have been unequal to the task.
      • It has recently been directly stated that Yuki is indeed a Magical Girl, as always suspected. Very likely Miho is one as well.
  • Rain from the webcomic Triquetra Cats. even before getting her magic powers she is still a black belt champion in 9 different martial arts (including one not normally taught to humans) despite being a 14 year old girl with the build of a 10 year old girl
  • Tristan from Angel Moxie. This is unexplained at first; later she discovers she's the reincarnation of the Warrior, one of the Power Trio destined to save the world.
  • One of the main female characters of the Polish Kokoart, Kitty, shows her powers at Waif Fu many times. The first time it's in the 13th and 14th strip ([1] and [2]) where after being insulted by calling her "nuts" by the main character, Cherry, she chases him and his friend. Cherry ends up in hospital (2 arm fractures) after being hit with a truck. When the friend (stil unnamed after 3 seasons of the comic!) tells her that the truck was maybe just little too much, she responds "The truck was by accident".
  • In Schlock Mercenary characters are trained in martial arts aboard a 31st century starship. This becomes much more sensible (eight years later, go figure) when an angry mob sets upon a girl engineer whom readers even mistook for a child when she was introduced. She holds a green belt in shotokan karate and her clothing is a standard issue set of powered armor. There were pieces on the ceiling...
  • Sluggy Freelance Oasis .

Western Animation
  • Gwen from Ben 10 is a ten-year-old girl, yet still capable of holding off the Monster Of The Week on her own if needed, thanks to some martial arts lessons.
  • Starfire from Teen Titans, who was as strong as the much bigger, cybernetically-enhanced Cyborg. Interestingly, this was explained as not being a superpower inasmuch as an ability of her species.
    • Robin is closer to fulfilling this trope, as he is explicitly a slim, adolescent Badass Normal who can toss around a super-strong giant made of concrete as if it were styrofoam.
      • He was trained by Batman. Go figure.
  • The heroes of the SatAM Sonic The Hedgehog cartoon were realistically limited for the most part; but Sally Acorn periodically managed to jump-kick or toss a seven-foot robot in a way that a three-foot rodent probably shouldn't.
    • I submit that it is her diminutive height which gave her this ability. Muscles equally as strong as a full size human moving bones only half as long?
  • Jade Chan of Jackie Chan Adventures through some yet-to-be-discovered law of physics is able to bring down people fairly easily at times. One time she brought down a strong government agent in one kick that her uncle was having trouble with. She brought the big sumo Tohru down in one kick as well, causing the house to shake. Despite all this she still has to be contained by the villains and/or Jackie. This is probably due to her being the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama.
  • Kim Possible calls on "sixteen kinds of kung fu" and a lot of cheerleading practice to batter armies of henchmen twice her size.
    • But she is literally shown to be just that strong.
  • Toph of Avatar is a little, BLIND 12-year old. She routinely kicks everyone's tails. In fact, the only fight she's ever in where she loses is against the protaganist, and that's only because she had never fought an Airbender before. Hell, the only time she ever really gets injured is by Zuko, when she walks up on his camp, and is caught by surprise by his firey defense. It's true that she almost never makes direct contact with those she fights, and uses Earthbending instead, but still. Hell, she's the most powerful and talented Earthbender in the entire Avatar universe.
    • Let us not forget the final episode where she not just metal bends the bridge door of a fire nation's zepplin, she wraps it around herself as a second layer of skin and becomes Iron Loli
  • Arguably Valerie from Danny Phantom. Aside from being stated to be a ninth degree level black belt (despite being only fourteen), she routinely kicks powerful ghosts' butts on a daily basis. At one point she engaged combat on her own battle suit, possessed by a ghost (and managed to hold herself in said battle pretty durn well).

Web Original
  • Ninjai. That is all.
  • Bing a Super Hero School full of mutants, Whateley Academy has several examples, including:
    • Toni Chandler (Chaka) is fourteen, female and slender, but her superpower is control of Ki, and the ability to pull extra Ki out of the Earth. In the short story "Duel Damsel", she challenges a superstrong upperclassman who looks like a blond Sasquatch, because of what the guy did to her friend. She pummels him without even using her most powerful techniques. She's also beaten an unstoppable super-werewolf, clobbered people wearing power armor, taken out a superpowered ninja...
    • if you must mention Chaka, you must mention Chou Lee. Bladedancer isn't even a mutant, just a "baseline" imbued with the Tao, trained in awesome Wudan martial arts skills, and a wielding a sentient sword that can cut anything. She's taken down the same aforementioned ninja, people in armor, demons, cyborgs, random attackers, and just about everything she's fought since she arrived at Whateley.
    • Ayla Goodkind (Phase) is 5ft tall and weighs anything from nothing to several tons according to her mood. This mutant ability allows her to toss around opponents many times her size.

Real Life
  • Because they don't hold anything back in a fight, animals (of either sex) can be incredibly strong for their size. A 25-pound monkey will nearly always beat a 150-pound man in an arm-wrestling contest, and a dog the same size can pull its owner to the ground by yanking hard on the leash.
Unnecessary Combat Roll
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