Mundane Utility / Anime & Manga

• In both Trigun and Cowboy Bebop, flamethrowers are repurposed as the world's most dangerous (and wasteful) cigarette lighters. The latter also has it used to broil (well, burn) meat.
  • Also in Trigun, a machine gun was once used to light a cigarette.
  • Cowboy Bebop also proves that Kill Sats can be repurposed to draw doodles.
• In Ah! My Goddess, Belldandy used her magic to renovate a run-down Buddhist temple and make it suitable for habitation, giving her, Keiichi, and her sisters a plausible reason for "Friends" Rent Control.
• Esdeath of Akame ga Kill! developed and honed the ability to use her freezing powers to literally freeze time and space, stopping all motion everywhere for one reason. So her Love Interest, the main character Tatsumi, who she has a Villainous Crush on wouldn't be able to run away from her anymore.
• Assassination Classroom: Koro-Sensei uses his wide library of powers mostly for these. Mach 20 speed is used to get some Chinese food from China itself and some ice from the North Pole, his insane Flash Step capabilities get abused a lot to both taunt his students and assist them, his solid Speed Echoes get used by leaving one of them per student to help them out individually before an exam, his regenerative powers let him offer his students the chance to take potshots at his tentacles for morale purposes, among others.
• It turns out that Attack on Titan's 3D Maneuver Gear, intended for reaching the weak points of man-eating giants, is also very useful for washing windows.
  • After unsuccessfully trying to use his ability of transforming into a Titan, Eren drops a teaspoon. As he reaches out for it, he unintentionally transforms his hand into a Titan one, which picks it up. His colleague concludes that in order to use his ability, he must have a clear goal in mind.
• Rather than using his phenomenal cosmic powers for anything especially useful ("Do you want me to die of boredom?"), Baccano!'s Ronnie Schiatto tends to employ his omniscience and omnipotence for absurdly minor tasks such as saving himself the price of a train ticket or correcting the FBI's spelling errors.
• Basquash! rides the line between this and Serious Business with the sport of Bigfoot Basketball, which is what happens when you decide to play basketball with giant mecha.
• In episode 9 of Beyond the Boundary Mirai uses her blood manipulation powers to pick a lock. In the same episode Izumi uses her force field power to create a series of small box shaped force fields along a dark path at night to use the glow from the force fields to illuminate the path.
• When he's not fighting, Sebastian on Black Butler uses his Super-Speed to clean and dust so the Phantomhive mansion is always spotless. It's implied he actually has to tone down how fast he's moving so the other servants don't get suspicious.
• Eve from Black Cat turns her fingers into eating utensils when she needs to eat. She also made handpuppets when she got bored.
• Bleach:
  • In an omake 6th Squad Captain Byakuya Kuchiki jokes that he uses his Senbon Zakura, an attack known to reduce opponents to a status where their bodies can't be identified as human, in order to give himself a haircut.
  • Another character, Ishida Uryuu, appears to use hyper-speed for sewing and handicrafts.
  • Post-Time Skip, Ichigo uses his advanced combat skills, speed, strength, and reflexes (though not his actual superpowers) developed due to war to beat up common thugs and dominate sports... for money.
  • In a filler episode, Hitsugaya uses his shikai ability, a humongous ice dragon known to freeze anything within its vicinity, to make ice on their visit to the beach (at the request of Ichigo for Ukitake who'd almost passed out from heat stroke).
  • In another omake Genryūsai Shigekuni Yamamoto used his sword Ryūjin Jakka - the most powerful Zanpakutō in all of Soul Society - to heat up ovens, stay warm and bake sweet potatoes. Shunsui Kyōraku speculated that Ryūjin Jakka resented being used for such purposes, allowing Muramasa to take control of it.
    • And yet a later omake has Yamamoto forbidding people from using their zanpakuto's bankai forms for mundane things like moving heavy objects. Mind you, that was Komamura's giant samurai. Although to be fair to Yama-jii, he's only using his shikai.
  • In the Epilogue, Orihime uses her spirit abilities to keep an eye on her son, Kazui, whenever he wanders off.
• In chapter 12 of Bloody Cross Tsukimiya uses her blood manipulation powers to make darts out of her blood to throw at a dart board.
• The setting of Blue Exorcist has plenty of supernatural forces and beings used for practical, everyday purposes.
  • One such example is the Contracts of Morinath, curses in which the target is forbidden to speak of certain things, or else the demon will emerge and punish the target. If this sounds like a non-disclosure agreement, that's exactly what most Contracts of Morinath are used for, placed on workers in organizations to prevent trade secrets and secret projects from leaking out to their competitors.
  • Rin also sometimes uses his hellfire to cook on the go. It helps that he's a Supreme Chef.
• In By the Grace of the Gods, Ryouma regularly uses his almost godly abilities for everyday purposes.
  • His slimes can do many chores far more quickly and efficiently than a person would: the Scavenger slimes are used to clean up the local public toilets when they threaten to cause an epidemic; the Cleaner slimes are essentially a laundry service that can clean anything, even Goblin Grime; and the Sticky slimes produce both a liquid that is better than mortar as well as incredibly tough thread that is also useful for crafting water-resistant fabrics.
  • He uses his magic to do things like create ice cubes for drinks, light a fire to cook food, or blow bubbles.
• Most of the cards in Cardcaptor Sakura are either very versatile or designed specifically for combat. However, there is also The Flower which Sakura uses to make bouquets, The Bubble which is used for washing, and The Sweet which makes things taste sweet.
  • This actually gets lampshaded in-story, as The Bubble was created by Clow Reed for that specific use. More exactly, to give Kerberos (a huge winged feline in his unsealed form) his daily bath without working out too much.
• A Certain Magical Index:
  • Misaka Mikoto, level 5 Electromaster... Usually uses her power of electricity to get free drinks from a vending machine.
  • Kuroko uses her teleportation to perv on Mikoto.
  • In one 4koma, Accelerator uses his power of vectors to speed up a conveyor belt sushi. Also, he has been seen using his abilities to block soundwaves whenever he wishes not to be bothered.
• A Certain Scientific Railgun:
  • The cast wants to make curry but don't have any kind of heater. So, they have Mikoto cook the food with her electricity.
  • One 4koma shows that when Mikoto and Kuroko are feeling too lazy to get out of bed, Mikoto uses magnetism to pull things to them, and Kuroko teleports them away when they're done.
  • Kinuho Wannai can use her water control to clean the swimming pool. It is hinted that she and her partner Maaya Awatsuki, who can control buoyancy, use their abilities to swim faster.
  • Shizuri Mugino, who can generate Meltdowner energy that disintegrates anything it touches, can conjure up a tiny ball of it to light her path.
• Charlotte:
  • Joujirou is occasionally seen using his Super-Speed to do things like get food from the cafeteria without waiting in line. The fact that he invariably gets injured as a result of launching himself at high speed doesn’t deter him from using it for such silly reasons.
  • Misa also uses her pyrokinesis to light a grill at one point.
• In The Circumstances Leading to Waltraute's Marriage, Waltraute, Frigg, and Freyja use The Gjallarhorn, the horn that blows to signal Ragnarok, like a telescope. Heimdallr is appalled, but he can't do anything about it.
• The Absurdly Powerful Student Council in Code Geass pulls out an old prototype Humongous Mecha to...make the World's Largest Pizza. Considering how their school festivals are called the "most open events in Area 11", where the native population, who are heavily discriminated against by the ruling Britannians, can enjoy the festival as equals, and how Student Council President Milly Ashford has a habit of declaring school festivals to relieve stress for the students after major political issues like assassinations and terrorist attacks, using the old Knightmare to make Comfort Food could be seen as a pretty powerful symbol for peace.
  • In one of the side novels, Lelouch recalls that his mother once used a mech to fend off other imperial consorts who were picking on her children. Lucky for those nobles, Knightmare Frames weren't as advanced back then.
  • Lelouch also uses his Geass to make a girl return his hat to him in R2 episode 12.
• In Codename: Sailor V, the predecessor to Sailor Moon, Minako's pen and mirror show the truth. Minako uses said pen on all her tests to churn out expert essays on things she knows absolutely nothing about. Needless to say, her Guardian Cat Artemis is livid.
  • This pops up in its sister series, Sailor Moon. Usagi tends to use the disguise pen for mundane things, such as turning into an adult to sneak into a bar or a camera woman to sneak onto a boat, much to Luna's horror. Strangely, each time she uses it for something mundane it ends up being someplace she needs to get into to stop the baddies, though it's possible she's used it off screen without this happening.
• Chaika of Coffin Princess Chaika uses her magic rifle to heat a bathtub and cook a chunk of meat. Well, technically she made the chunk of meat explode, but she was trying to cook it.
• Allen of D.Gray-Man uses his left hand, imbued with a weapon capable of wiping evil from the earth possibly granted directly by God...to cheat at cards.
• In Darker than Black, Hei's first onscreen use of his Shock and Awe powers are for the sake of fixing his landlady's TV under the guise of Percussive Maintenance.
  • Another guy used telekinetic Razor Floss to open his boss's beer bottle from across the room, and there's a child Contractor in the interquel manga series who used her teleportation ability to collect junk and build a secret hideout.
• Delicious in Dungeon:
  • What's the best thing to do when you encounter a fire-spewing trap? Use its fuel and flame, perfect for deep frying! Find a guillotine trap? It's great for cutting up the meat of large monsters!
  • Golems are creatures made of earth moved by magic to protect certain parts of the dungeon. They're also great places to plant vegetables, especially since they can take care of themselves.
  • Lampshaded twice regarding Senshi's cooking equipment. His indestructible pot was once an heirloom adamant shield that he repurposed, having more interest in cuisine than warfare. This infuriates a more traditional dwarf so badly that he doesn't tell her about his cooking knife — an Absurdly Sharp Blade of Mithril.
  • Marcille gets petrified by a cockatrice at one point. While her team tries to find a way to cure her, they use her as a pickle press.
  • Played for Black Comedy in Shuro's backstory: he snuck away from his Battle Butler a lot as a boy, so she used the "ninja art of babysitting" to look after him — i.e., summoning a horrible knife-wielding hag to hunt him down.
• In Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, Zenitsu’s superhuman sense of hearing came in very handy during the undercover investigation in the Red Light District arc, as he disguised as a cross-dressed courtesan. He didn’t quite have the looks to pass himself as a beautiful woman but could still entertain guests with his Shamisen playing skills, as his super hearing makes him be fully capable of playing any song he had heard just once, as the sounds are perfectly ingrained in his memory.
• Digimon:
  • An early episode of Digimon Adventure had Agumon using his Pepper Breath attack to light a fire as the group camped near a lake.
  • Digimon Fusion involves using Digimon attacks...for cooking!
• The Doraemon franchise, as expected with a show involving a robot cat having dozens and dozens of futuristic gadgets...
  • Doraemon: Nobita and the Windmasters have the gang finding the Village of Winds, where her citizens are trained since birth to control the flow of wind and generate mini-tornadoes, gusts, and cyclones. They use their wind-based powers for flight, fighting hostile bandits, hunting wild animals, as well as for cooking, harvesting crops, and laundry.
  • The gang gains superpowers in Doraemon: Nobita and The Space Heroes thanks to Doraemon's upgrading light, with Shizuka having the abilities to shoot jets of water from her hands. She uses her powers to take a midnight shower.
• Dragon Ball:
  • The Dragon Balls themselves, at least early on. Except for Emperor Pilaf, who wants to Take Over the World, the others want the Balls and their powers for completely silly things; Oolong wants some panties (which he got), Bulma wants a "super-cute boyfriend", (originally a lifetime supply of strawberries) and Yamcha wants them to get rid of his fear of girls. (Bulma & Yamcha later helped each other with their respective wishes, at least, until a certain Saiyan prince came along).
    • In Dragon Ball Super: Broly it's revealed that Bulma wants the Dragon Balls to make herself look five years younger without using cosmetic surgery or botox, and Goku guesses she's been using them to improve her looks for a while. Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero confirms that Goku was right.
  • Master Roshi seems to possess several fantastical items, many of which he doesn't even realize. One was the Bashousen, a magical fan that could summon wind and rain, which Chi Chi wanted to put out the flames of Frypan Mountain. It turned out he unwittingly used the magical artifact as a coaster only to throw it out when it became dirty.
  • Earlier in the series Master Roshi had Goku and Krillin put their great strength and speed to use by doing construction work and delivering milk.
  • In Dragon Ball Z, Yamcha used his superpowers to become a major league baseball player. Not that they were really useful for anything else by that point of the series anyway.
  • Ki, not only good for blasting enemies into dust, but also good for lighting fires, warming food, and being a replacement flashlight.
  • A minor example is seen in the seventh Dragon Ball Z movie, Super Android 13! Goku and Gohan are seen shopping with Chi-Chi and Goku is seen carrying enough boxes of merchandise and clothes that would crush a man.
  • In Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero Hedo reveals he modified his skin to make himself Immune to Bullets. Later in the movie Bulma hires him in part because that skin modification has potential applications for skincare and cosmetics.
• Keima from Dungeon master wants to sleep now and forever... uses the [Create Golem] skill as a crafting skill by essentially creating golems that aren't supposed to move. Using it in this way, he has created an Inn Golem, a House Golem, Floor Golems, Window Golems, etc. These are essentially golems in the shape of a house, inn, window or whatever mundane object or structure he might need. However, just because they are golems does not stop them from being a fully functional house, inn or window. He also abuses the command functionality of golems to (re)create relatively complicated machinery like analog clocks, cash registers, slot machines, and even vibroswords.
• Celty from Durarara!! has the ability to manipulate shadow and give it physical form. Her most common display of her powers? Using them to type faster.
  • She also uses said powers for practical, but still fairly mundane purposes, such as creating a shadow-helmet for her passengers, in the rare times she takes any. Considerate and safe.
  • Shinra stopped her from using her shadow powers to prepare food, though.
  • In one of the novels, Shinra is restrained for several hours after accidentally getting caught in one of Celty's shadow webs. He managed to pass the time by thinking of ways that they could use said webs for S&M.
• The Elder Sister-like One ("An Elder Sister"): The Lovecraftian-horror Chiyo can use her tentacles in many ways: forming hair, clothes, or unstoppably sharp knives, even for killing an infestation of black-magic rats.
• Eyeshield 21:
  • Sena once used his special move, the Devil Bat Ghost, to steal a letter a girl had sent to him from a teasing friend. It was even remarked as "the world's number one useless way to use a technique."
  • Another time this happened was when Kurita wanted to give his teammates a bone-crushing hug after several days of training alone, and Hiruma put a big roll of bubble-wrap in his path. He hugged the bubble wrap instead, and popped every single bubble. Suzuna's response: "Completely useless, that kind of training."
  • Hiruma himself uses his throwing accuracy to set off explosives and generally harass people.
  • And then there was the All-Star Uselessly Badass...pillow fight.
• Canti in FLCL: He (it?) is the sole character capable of defeating all of the Humongous Mecha that come out of Naota's head. What does Canti do when not fighting giant robots? Laundry. Moving boxes. Cooking. Buying groceries (and porno mags for Shigekuni...). Or, if there's no housework to be done, why not just fly with the birds?
• Fairy Tail:
  • Erza can use her Requip magic to instantly change her outfit, in addition to summoning various magic armors, swords, spears, etc. Though, she needs to bring a huge stack of luggage bags with her when the team goes out on an adventure/job request.
    • The luggage bags are actually bags of cooking materials.
  • Also, Natsu can use his fire abilities to cook food and dry clothes.
  • Lucy gets more Mundane Utility out of some of her spirits, such as haircuts from Cancer and clothes from Virgo, than she does combat. Plue seems to entirely exist for her to hold and cuddle.
  • When rebuilding the guildhall after the Phantom Lord arc, the guild master's Makarov used his Sizeshifter powers to move the lumber.
  • Juvia tried to use her water magic to make a cake for Gray for their 413 day anniversary. She ended up making a messy, sour cake instead.
• Fate Series:
  • Fate/stay night:
    • At the start, Shirou uses his powers to see patterns to sense where broken appliances need fixing. But then, at that point he doesn't know how to do anything else.
    • Rin's first order to Archer after he's summoned? "Clean up this mess". The next morning, the first thing Archer does is make tea. Damn good tea according to Rin, but still...
  • Fate/Zero: Gilgamesh normally uses his Gate of Babylon to summon dozens of disgustingly powerful weapons at once, any one of which is a match for any normal Servant's Noble Phantasm. But ultimately, its true purpose is as the gate to his treasure vault. He has a first-rate wine cellar in there, and Fate/kaleid liner PRISMA☆ILLYA reveals that he also keeps a canopy bed and a hot spring in his Gate.
  • Fate/hollow ataraxia:
    • Lancer's spear Gae Bolg is a holy artifact that reverses causality to ensure a fatal blow; he actually managed to kill Shirou with it in Fate/Stay Night. Here, he uses it in his job as a florist.
    • In a flashback to when she was alive, it's shown that Medusa used to use petrified people to hang laundry from.
    • Bazett uses her legendary weapon Fragarach's special ability to cheat at Rock–Paper–Scissors.
    • The child version of Gilgamesh uses Sha Naqba Imuru, which gives him all-seeing clairvoyance, to cheat at chess and card games.
  • Carnival Phantasm, being a Type-Moon parody series that includes skits involving the aforementioned Fate/stay night, throws in a few examples:
    • Saber works at a cafe to help out and make money to buy Shirou a birthday present. While there, her B rank Charisma comes into play, meaning that while she's an awful waitress, the customers and staff worship her and do whatever she says.
    • Caster's crafts a good-luck charm for Soichirou. It gives him actual, incredible luck. Justified as Caster's Crafting skill is exceptional (Rank A), even though (like Saber's Rank A in Riding outside of Fate/Zero) it never comes into play in the original stories. Also given to Assassin during the race for the Grail, to help his driving.
    • Caster also employs her Crafting skill to assemble and paint garage kits of Saber, resulting in a room-sized Stalker Shrine. She's even got an airbrush, a compressor and a respirator mask.
    • Unrelated to Caster's A Crafting Skill, she uses her Rule Breaker (a magical dagger and literal Game-Breaker) as her wallet's keychain.
    • Rider uses her A+ rank in Riding to accelerate a pedal bike to faster than a racing motorcycle.
    • Caren uses her Shroud of Magdalene to sort male and female chicks apart. Normally it's used to bind men until they are attacked.
  • Fate/kaleid liner PRISMA☆ILLYA: Magical Ruby try to have some fun by turning Illya's maids Sella and Leysritt into magical girls. Sella used her new powers to help with chores, while Liz used hers to turn on the television and cook her instant ramen.
• In Freezing, Pandoras typically use the Volt Texture technique to materialize their uniforms and weapons. They can also use it to instantly repair their outfits when they are damaged and even conjure clothes like gym outfits onto themselves so they don't have to waste time changing. Rana didn't know about this aspect of Volt Texture at first and instantly says it is quite convenient when she is taught how to do it. Pandoras also use their Super-Strength and Super-Speed for activities like soccer.
• In Fullmetal Alchemist, Ed and Al may use alchemy for saving Adventure Towns and fighting homunculi, but they can also use it to repair broken household items and get paid for doing so; they don't need to know how a refridgerator is made, just see what's missing and restore it to its original condition. Of course, this is probably why most people become alchemists. This is how alchemy is introduced in the Pilot, with Al fixing a radio he broke by accident.
  • Ed and Al's teacher, Izumi, however, frowns upon such uses, as when some of the neighborhood children bring her a broken toy to fix with her alchemy, she proceeds to just fix it the old-fashioned way instead while explaining that alchemy should only be used for things that can't be done with your own hands.
  • In the movie, a disgruntled physicist rants that alchemists have made his occupation worthless.
  • At least once Havoc has asked Mustang to use his flame alchemy to light up a cigarette.
  • At one point, Ed went around using his alchemy to fix objects, all while calling out his title so he can lure out Scar and inevitably the homonculi.
• Full Metal Panic!:
  • In one extended Furo Scene with Mao, Tessa and Kaname, the bathtub they are using is actually intended for deep-cleaning and de-greasing Arm Slave components. Tessa explains that a large vessel which can heat water and keep it hot makes an excellent impromptu bathtub, and being able to order people to leave her alone with it for an hour occasionally is one of the few command privileges she has.
  • The OVA The Second Raid has Mao researching Arm Slave operation patterns with the objective of making them capable of performing complex maneuvers while unmanned... by programming two M9s to dance tango. And it actually works — until during a spin the leading M9 accidentally lets go of its partner's hand, sending said partner flying into a wall.
• Fushigi Yuugi:
  • Tasuki's asked to burn some hairs with his fire powers, so he goes into his usual warm-up pose before tossing a tiny flame. Later, despite his protests that his fire-spewing steel fan is a weapon and not merely a handy device to ward off the cold, he can be seen in the background, lightly fanning Nuriko after the latter complains about the cold.
  • Tatara has Green Thumb powers, which he can use to grow Combat Tentacles... or flowers.
  • Mitsukake's Senshi power is healing, and he uses it in his work as a doctor. The drawback is that he can only use his skills one time a day, or he'll die.
• In Galaxy Fraulein Yuna, Yuna uses her superpowerful battlesuit to make sunnyside up eggs, by the heat of atmospheric re-entry!
  "If I'd known you wanted to use the most powerful combat unit in the Universe to cook eggs, I might not have let you!" El-Line.
• The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, when you discover you can travel through time what do you use this awesome power for? Making sure your sister doesn't eat your pudding. The actual owner of the time-jumping device says that he was relieved that she found it and not someone else, because he knew she would use it on frivolous things and not to severely muck up the timeline.
• Girls und Panzer: Team Anglerfish once used their Panzer IV battle tank's main cannon as an alarm clock because it was the only way to wake up Mako.
• The Arista gems in Gundam Build Fighters are solid masses of particles that are shown to be capable of limited matter generation, energy generation, facilitating mental communication, and even cross-dimensional transportation. The world at large mostly uses these particles to make plastic models move around and fight each other. This becomes a minor plot point with Nils Neilson, a Teen Genius who wonders why the technology isn't being explored for more practical uses.
• Gundam SEED DELTA Astray introduces the Gundam Astray Out Frame, whose pilot Jess Rabble uses it for photojournalism. Using a Humongous Mecha for journalism on its own is enough, but what really pushes it into this territory is that it was built off of the abandoned frame of the ZAFT prototype X12A, making it the sibling to the Freedom, Justice, and Providence from Gundam SEED proper; in other words, it's one of the most advanced combat machines in existence.
• In Harem in the Labyrinth of Another World, Michio regularly uses magic to fill a bath with hot water, and Warp to travel between cities without having to do all the traveling. He also uses his ability to change skills to pick the Sex Maniac job and have nightly orgies with all the girls in the harem.
• In Haruhi Suzumiya, Yuki is able to manipulate the fabric of reality. What do they use it for? Cheating at baseball. Admittedly, they are doing this to try and save the world. Through baseball. Yes, really. Another time she used her ability was during the track meet, where she annihilated the competition in the 4x400m relay. Haruhi doesn't question how Yuki can move in a blink of an eye.
• In HeartCatch Pretty Cure!, Erika transforms into Cure Marine so that she can use her monster-cleansing powers... to clean her room. Her fairy partner Coffret is furious.
• In Heavy Object the Mother Lady is a Space Elevator built by the Capitalist Enterprise. The main reason given for its construction? Instant orbital delivery for online orders anywhere on the planet.
• In Hetalia: Axis Powers, it's established that America has super strength. However, the only times we see this are when he's a kid and he swings a full-grown buffalo over his head, and later when he drags a full-sized SUV with ease in order to ask if he could borrow it.
• High School D×D:
  • Issei's Dress Break technique can be used to peel potatoes instantly.
  • Issei's first training camp reveals this is how newly-reincarnated devils are taught basic magic. After learning the fundamentals, Issei and Asia are left to cook dinner, and told to use magic for everything they can.
  • Akeno uses her frighteningly powerful magic to conjure a torrent of water and quickly refill the school's swimming pool. In fact, most devil magic that's not a unique ability or Sacred Gear appears to be basic utility spells (heating, freezing, ect.) ratcheted up to lethal levels.
  • Issei later gains the skill Penetrate, which allows him to imbue an attack with the ability to completely ignore any barrier, overriding the normal laws of magic so it out-prioritizes "unbreakable" barriers. He immediately applies this power to his own eyes so he can see through girls' shirts.
  • Divine Dividing's basic form is a pair of wings that function as radiators to dump any excess power stolen with the ability that the host's body can't handle. This also makes them a cheap-as-free source of flight.
• Mion, of Higurashi: When They Cry, is a yakuza heiress who's extremely wealthy. We see her using this money for two things: making a reward for the winner of a gaming competition and getting pizzas for her friends when they stay out late. (She offers to buy her disowned sister, Shion, furniture at one point, but Shion turns her down.)
• Most characters within Hunter × Hunter find at least one boringly mundane thing to use their Nen-related talents on (take Killua and Gon: antique wheelers and dealers with absolutely no experience, but plenty of Nen-sight to bridge the talent-spotting knowledge gap!). But, the king of the trope in the whole series has to be Hisoka — he can make it both very mundane, yet incredibly plot-relevant at the same time. He makes a point of downplaying a lot of what his Bungee Gum and various rubber techniques can do even in battle... until he wallops his poor opponent with it... so it's justified by him mostly emphasising mundane (yet still very creative) things outside it, too — from hoiking things like dodgeballs in the middle distance towards or away from him (or in any other direction), to hiding stuff in plain sight (several times), to band-aiding up in a hurry (several times), using it to pen haiku (yup), shoving patterns on his skin (and, you wondered how he puts makeup on miles away from a mirror and table), creating either silly or plain shapes that move as part of a private joke or just to play games (technically, the cards he can use to play tricks on or kill people with are either Nen-infused or Nen-produced all the time — making even his more "innocent" card tricks, cons and distractions something else)... loads of stuff. All of which become either very deadly or dead necessary when others least expect it.
• Interspecies Reviewers:
  • Stunk and Zel use status buffs to toughen themselves up when they attempt to have an extended session with lilim. It works, but it stops being fun when the buffs expire half an hour later.
  • Salamander girls use their flame-charged, literally hot bodies to cook meat in a fanservicey way. Zel and Crim also appreciate the way she infuses food that she cooks with mana, enhancing its flavor to them.
  • Crim's landlady Ivy, as a mandrake, uses her vines to manipulate everything in the kitchen while cooking, and sends a runner up to his bedroom to wake him and give him a request to help collect some more fire manastones for cooking with.
  • Grand Mage Demia uses her genius in inventing and developing new things to create interesting new adult entertainment options like the Gender Swap Inn. She also uses her ability to make the highest-quality magical clones to fully staff a city-sized establishment where her clones offer all sorts of interesting services. Granted, all of this is for making the money to fund her own magical and technological research since the Orc Party-dominated government isn't providing any research grants.
  • Zel finds another practical use of his time with his Demia clone - as the clones have nearly as much intelligence and knowledge as the original, he makes use of the downtime between 'sessions' to have her teach him more magic.
  • Demia combines her clones and a portal to have a salamander-cooked sausage delivered directly to her mouth while working.
  • She turns her army of magical clones towards hunting down the broken piece of Crim's halo, in archaeology/criminology "row walking" style.
  • Deathabyss's interest in aircraft led Demia to reverse engineer aerodynamics and create a flight spell she embedded into a broom for personal flight.
• I've Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed Out My Level:
  • After 300 years of accidental level grinding, Azusa discovers she now has access to ice magic so powerful it can flash freeze a small spring, and the river it is fed from. After that, she mostly uses it to preserve her food without modern refrigeration technology.
  • Laika the dragon uses her fire breath to flash-cook omelettes while shapeshifted into a human. Despite Azusa's own long experience with magic, she's a bit thrown to see it the first time.
• One of the omake yonkoma in the Inazuma Eleven Special manga has Endou using his God Hand technique to smack a fly, and again in a game of Rock–Paper–Scissors to throw a really big "Paper".
• One Inuyasha episode involved our heroes using all their awesome power to clean house, do the laundry, and go on a booze run. Miroku's Wind Tunnel does not actually get applied to vacuum-cleaner duty, but Kagome was considering it. A bit heartless if you consider that it will consume him if he overuses it.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • In Part 3, Jotaro confines himself to a prison cell out of fear of what his Stand can do (he doesn't understand it yet). While in it, he uses his Stand to pick things up for him to make it more comfortable, like beer and a radio. Ever-increasingly terrifying the other prisoners.
  • Part 4 includes a couple of Stands that are primarily utility: Pearl Jam (allows the body to undo its maladies with ingested food much more rapidly than normal; not a birth or Arrow Stand, but just awakened by Tonio's culinary zeal), and Cinderella (alters someone's features in a sort of psychic cosmetic surgery, and amplifies that someone's luck in the process).
  • Part 4 also has Josuke befriend someone with shapeshifting powers claiming to be an alien. One of the first things he does after that is use his newfound friend's powers to cheat at gambling.
  • Josuke friend, Okuyasu Nijimura, has the fearsome power to erase anything his stand touches from existence. Apparently, he sometimes uses it to wipe his ass.
  • Shigeki's Stand, Harvest, manifests and a lot of tiny, bee-like critters. He has them scramble around town, Invisible to Normals, and gather discarded coins, and later coupons and lottery tickets.
  • Part 6 has Pucci and his stand Whitesnake, with the ability to materialize Stands into disks, that he can then put into or take out of a person. It turns out this also extends to music disks too, as we see him putting a classical music CD into an unconscious Guccio, turning him into a human loudspeaker.
  • Part 7: Steel Balls and Spin are fearsome weapons used by Naples' Royal Guard. Men of the Zeppeli household, however, use them together with the Golden Ratio in their work as surgeons and executioners. Once Johnny learns how to use Golden Ratio together with his stand power he can not only do more damage in battle, he also uses it to grate cheese and brush his teeth.
• Like all swords, the Zantetsuken of Lupin III was created for the purpose of killing (Or in the hands of a talented swordsman like Goemon, causing a quick, clean and painless death). Goemon instead uses it to cut other weapons, armor, objects, and even clothes. However, he is always the first to express his distaste of cutting a "worthless object" when he does so.
• Lyrical Nanoha:
  • Suggested by Vita in one of the Sound Stages of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's when Shamal forgot to heat the water of their bath. Alas, Signum was quite vehemently against the idea of using her Laevantein as an impromptu water heater. Hayate suggests doing the same with the Book of Darkness' magic, but they agree that if they can't control it, they'll start a fire. (Given the type of spells Hayate uses later in the story, it's fairly obvious that this wouldn't have worked.)
  • In a Sound Stage of the Original Series, Nanoha (with Yuuno's help) uses Starlight Breaker as fireworks on the anniversary of Fate's joining with her familiar Arf.
  • One episode of StrikerS had Verossa use a pocket dimension so he could transport a cake without getting his suit dirty.
• V1046-R MAHORO and other characters from Mahoromatic stop being combat robots yet they still use their powers to cook, clean and search for ecchi (to trash it) because "Ecchi na no wa ikenai to omoimasu" (roughly "I think that dirty thoughts are bad").
• The Mazinkaiser Beach Episode, where Kouji and Sayaka bring their 'bots to the beach. Sayaka even takes hers swimming, and doubles up on a slap by face-planting the most powerful robot on the planet halfway into the ocean floor. With its legs sticking out.
• Mei Company involves a Cleanup Crew who use their abilities for this. Super strength to clear rubble, water control to clean things, and fire control to incinerate trash.
• Tohru from Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid uses her ability to fire massive Wave Motion Guns to keep the laundry dry by dispersing rain clouds. She also uses her Perception Filter power to sneak into Kobayashi's workplace and watch her work without anyone (Kobayashi included) noticing her presence... and then uses her invisibility to trip Kobayashi's boss several times in a row for abusing his authority to harass Kobayashi, foist his own workload on her, and viciously reprimand her for the most trivial of mistakes.
  • Deconstructed when she tries to cook food using her fire breath and predictably ends up burning it to a crisp. She didn't use the stove because "it lacks firepower."
  • While trying to come up with a proposal to improve labor conditions at work, Elma used clairvoyance to memorize all her coworkers' schedules and keep everything within the established budget.
• In the season four premiere of the anime adaptation of My Hero Academia, we see a short clip of Denki Kaminari using his Quirk to charge everyone's phones. Kyoka Jiro is also seen using her sound-amplifying, jack-plug-shaped earlobes as earbuds at several points in the manga and anime.
• Koichi Haimawari in My Hero Academia: Vigilantes uses his quirk, which lets his move across the ground at bike-speed while having three points on contact to the ground, to remove litter from the street and help people with directions, while Kazuho Haneyama uses her Leap Quirk to add flair to her guerilla street concerts. As quirk use outside of hero work is illegal, the two are treated as vigilantes by the police.
• My Lovely Ghost Kana is at one point seen chilling a beer in her cleavage.
• My Monster Secret: Akane stole Karen's halo to mess with her... and promptly discovered that she could use it as a lightbulb in the student council room. 20 years later, Karen still hasn't figured out where her halo went.
• Mai Tokiha of My-Otome uses her ability to create flaming rings to...cook. Meanwhile, the robot warrior Miyu doubles as a spiffy eggbeater.
  • Which was a Shout-Out to My-HiME's Cooking Duel episode, where Miyu whipped up eggs in less than two seconds, much to Mai and Shiho's surprise.
  • Not to mention the ending scene of My-HiME has Akira using her awesome Ninja skills to slice an apple.
• One of the hallmarks of Naruto filler is the characters turning their fantastic ninja powers to boring everyday tasks — Naruto using his absurdly powerful Rasengan jutsu to mix noodles or power a boat, for example.
  • In canon, there's the Byakugan's potential to cheat at card games.
    • Also canon is ninja cheating at a Goldfish Scooping Game by using chakra to reinforce the rice paper.
  • Also see D-rank missions, which consist almost entirely of this trope. To put it simply, kids that are trained with years of ninjutsu put their skills to... finding a lost cat (albeit a surprisingly crafty and ferocious cat).
  • In the Forest of Death, Naruto jumps into the river with Shadow Clone Jutsu, and forces several fish to the surface. Sasuke tosses kunai at them, and starts a fire with Fire Ball Jutsu.
    • And before that, in the written exam Sasuke used his Sharingan to cheat on the Chunin Exams written test while Neji used his Byakugan, and nearly everyone else used some variation of their skills (except Naruto, who managed to win by doing absolutely nothing). On the other hand, the test was actually about the Genin's ability to gather information without being caught, which is very much a ninja skill.
  • In Shippuden, Naruto's Shadow Clone Jutsu is revealed to be an inversion. It was originally created to help the user train, study, or spy, since everything they learn is instantly learned by their creator. Naruto was able to use them in straight up fights due to his abundance of chakra.
  • Deidara frequently uses his explosive clay creatures as transport.
  • Naruto's Super Mode which calls on the uncorrupted Ninetails chakra is used as a flashlight, which is then properly lampshaded.
  • In the Sunny-Side Battle! OVA, Itachi decides to make Sasuke the perfect sunny-side up eggs. After repeated failures, he gets frustrated and breaks out the mangekyo sharingan... things just get more surreal from there.
  • In the sequel series, Chouji's daughter uses her clan's Dangerous Forbidden Technique (which turns fat into chakra) to slim down.
• Negima! Magister Negi Magi has several examples of this, the most notable being Kaede's introduction. She reveals that she's a Ninja by summoning a bunch of clones to make the search for food go faster and using her throwing knives to catch fish.
  • Later on, she does the classic "Ninja-Quick-Change" bit to switch to her school uniform and get a student discount at the theater. Unfortunately the fact that she is six foot tall and rather well endowed for a 15 year old caused the ticket seller to dismiss her efforts as 'cosplay'.
    • Even later on, she successfully gets a discount by using her body manipulation technique to make herself look younger.
    • Another character uses temporary magic pills that cost more than the tickets are worth to get the child's discount on the theater tickets.
  • Haruna uses her artifact to create multiple copies of herself so she can finish her doujinshi before the deadline.
  • Heck, Negi uses this almost continuously early on, constantly infusing himself with magic so he can keep up with the girls as they sprint to school. It's more obvious after he temporarily seals his powers which makes him totally unathletic. He also tried to help Asuna do her paper route faster by giving her a lift on his flying staff, but it didn't quite work out, as her latent Anti-Magic ability screwed it up.
  • The whole Library Island arc took place because the Baka Rangers wanted to find a magic book that increases the intelligence of whoever is holding it...so they could pass their finals without having to study.
  • Then there was the time that Chisame used her Artifact to make herself the #1 Internet Idol.
• In Night Wizard, Eris uses her Lunar Robe to carry her lunch.
• Season 3 of Ojamajo Doremi (Mo~tto) had the girls baking goods on the side.
• Magical Girl Ureshiko from Oku-sama wa Mahou Shoujo likes to use her powers for various tasks. Among other things, she uses them to start a troublesome vacuum cleaner. It doesn't go quite so well. Later she stops an ice cream from falling to the ground.
• Shizuku from Omamori Himari is a water-demon, capable of extensive control over water. In her first appearances, she uses her abilities to perform nigh-undetectable espionage (since she can 'blend in' to any amount of water), create a torrential downpour from previously-clear skies, summon powerful whirlpools, and create spikes of ice for combat. Her enormous strength, and the titular Cat Girl's fear of water, meant that she was able to overpower the protagonists easily. If Yuuto's charisma hadn't made her think twice, she could've ended the entire series in the second episode. In her next appearance, she's using her water-control to cook, clean, and do the laundry with inhuman speed and skill to impress Yuuto.
  • Amusingly, it seems fairly likely that this Mundane Utility causes Himari more pain and consternation than any of her whirlpools or jagged ice-spike attacks.
• One Piece,
  • Zoro vigorously complains about using his swords to drop a heated rock into a soup pot. At one point he also uses santoryuu (three-sword style, with one in his mouth) to clean the floor with three mops. Robin uses her extra limbs to read more easily and carry pieces of Island Cloud out while digging a hole in Skypiea, Luffy's rubber powers allow him to eat more by stretching his stomach, Ace lights Sanji's cigarette, Magellan's favorite food is poison, Rocinante uses his silence powers to get uninterrupted naps, and Wapol's cover story shows he made a living by using his powers to turn trash into toys and selling them, becoming a millionaire in the process.
  • Flashbacks also show Robin using multiple limbs to do things like wash dishes before the World Government got on her case.
  • Invoked with the Clima Tact, a Weather-Control Machine built for Nami by Usopp. On top of the far more useful weather control aspects, Usopp also packed it full of useless gimmicks to be used for party tricks, and the manual even describes the more useful aspects in a party trick context.
• One-Punch Man:
  • Genos at one point uses his Hand Blast power (which can effortlessly destroy a building) to dry dishes.
  • Saitama is a big enough aversion to be worth mentioning. While his powers are superior to anyone else and make him totally unbeatable, they don't work to make his ordinary life easier at all — to the point that it's illogical. He can destroy any opponent with one punch and easily outdo the Super-Speed and Super-Reflexes of characters specifically focused on that... but he can't kill an ordinary mosquito. He loses to other characters at video games — all his powers mean is that he sometimes breaks the controller. This is apparently because he has bad technique, so it maybe makes sense, but clearly his Super Reflexes aren't helping. And while he has enough Super-Toughness not to be hurt by a hit that sends him impacting against the Moon, he somehow manages to get painfully scratched by a housecat he rescues. (And possibly to suffer a bite from that mosquito.)
• In the 12th episode of PandoraHearts, Gilbert — AKA 'Raven', one of the most powerful members of the monster-hunting organization Pandora — removes one of his white gloves and touches the forehead of his master, Oz Bezarius, to unseal the terrible demon hiding within him, empowering Alice - a young, amnesiac girl - with the terrifying strength of the monstrous 'B-Rabbit', a 10-foot tall black rabbit with a Sinister Scythe and a mouthful of razor-sharp fangs... in order to enable her to win at armwrestling, since his favorite hat is the stakes.
  "Hey... Gil..."
  "No matter what, I had to get my hat back!"
• Stocking in Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt can turn her stockings into katanas. She uses it in one episode to help her make a sandwich.
• Essentially the point of Patlabor. It's a Real Robot Genre show where Humongous Mecha are more commonly used for heavy industrial work (e.g., construction and demolitions) than in military applications.
• Pokémon: The Series:
  • There is Meowth's Running Gag of Imagine Spots of trying to impress Team Rocket's boss, Giovanni. In these fantasies, the best "use" Meowth can come up with with their prey-for-the-week would be, well...as one of many examples (or else it will take all day to list them all), Meowth once imagined a Bagon, known for its hard head, to be used for breaking coconuts open.
  • Brock's Croagunk is an impressive fighter, all right; not that it was involved in many battles. Its Signature Move Poison Jab saw more use as a way for Croagunk to stop Brock from hitting on girls.
  • Tracey, on the other hand, had Pokémon that are better suited for his hobby as a watcher (Venonat and Marill, who are sensitive to sight and sound, respectively).
  • In Get Along, Little Pokémon, we have a guy who use his pack of Magnemite as a power supply for nearby cities and his Jolteon as their watchdog.
  • Pokémon are frequently seen being used for non-combat related purposes, thanks to their variety of skills. In one of the earliest episodes in the series, we see a Pokémon Center running on a Pikachu-powered generator. Not to mention that every Pokémon center has Chanseys on the staff, whose Healing Shiv powers make them perfect nurses.
  • One episode featured a Zorua that used her illusionary powers to masquerade as a human actress in a movie her Trainer was filming.
  • Apparantly Froakie's Frubbles and Piplup's Bubble Beam can double as shampoo and styling gel.
• Powerpuff Girls Z has a house cleaning episode in which the girls (at least one or two of them) use their magical transformations to get the job done in a hurry.
• In Promare, Governor Foresight's Humongous Mecha has a disintegration beam, an incredibly destructive punch that can split the ground open, and large-scale freezing powers. Foresight claims their intended purpose is for terraforming other planets—the disintegration beam was designed to turn mountains into arable farmland, the ground-splitting punch was to find underground sources of water, and the freezing was to defend against solar phenomena and volcanic activity, expressing disappointment that he has to expend energy to use them for mere battling.
• Psychic Squad:
  • In a supplemental 4-panel strip, Mio, who has an ability to create portals to wherever she wants, shows how she often uses her ability to teleport her arms and face behind her head so that she can fix the back side of her hairdo.
  • Also shown when Minamoto is getting Kaoru to help him cook, and she's cutting onions with Psychokinesis so her eyes don't water. Discussed when they discover that Kaoru is actually in good physical shape, despite being a Psychokinetic, and therefor not really needing to exercise much in daily life.
• In Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Kyouko uses her magic to enhance a pair of binoculars so she can spy on Sayaka. Either that, or she just wanted to change their appearance to this◊, it's a bit unclear.
  • A common meme among Madoka fanworks consists of situations where Homura uses her time-stopping powers to fulfill her lust for Madoka by peeping or molesting her. One fan yonkoma featured her using the "Groundhog Day" Loop she created to save Madoka to win billions by playing lottery and betting on horse races, then use all of her money to solve everybody's main dilemma.
  • An audio drama has Sayaka suggest that Homura use her time-stopping powers to help her and Madoka with their English test by stealing the answer sheet. Of course, everyone shuts down the idea and Homura even says that she does not use her powers for trivial things. When Homura and Madoka are walking home together, Madoka expressed how she'd probably get a bad score even if she studied, so Homura offered to use her powers the way Sayaka suggested, but Madoka refused as it would've been cheating and reminded Homura not to use her powers for trivial things.
• Ranma ½:
  • Saffron, The Phoenix King, is given unbelievable fire- and light-emitting powers because he's supposed to function as his subjects' "power plant," providing them with heat and light so they can carry on with their everyday lives (while he perches quietly on his throne.) Unfortunately, the latest incarnation is quite the Spoiled Brat, and interrupting his maturation process resulted in a psychotic personality with zero control over his powers and is all too happy to use them destructively.
    • Possibly lampshaded, in that Ranma points out, after hearing about this, that the Phoenix People could just get ordinary heating and lighting installed, what with their considerable wealth and bevy of magical eggs that reduce people to mindlessly obedient slaves. Then again, he could have simply been venting, due to believing that his chance at a cure was being threatened with destruction over something so mundane.
  • In general the show provide the inversion of this trope with mundane abilities used also for martial arts.
• Rurouni Kenshin:
  • Kenshin has been seen using the sharp edge of his one-of-a-kind reverse-blade sword to cut firewood on occasion.
  • This trope is also subverted when he goes looking for the heir of the sword's maker: he uses one of the man's kitchen knives to slice up a daikon in the most Mundane Made Awesome way possible, and then reveals that he was testing the blade.
  • In the anime Kenshin at one point finds himself attending a fancy dinner party. Rather than use his nigh-unbeatable swordplay in battle, he picks up a knife and performs the: Hiten Mitsurugui Rui - Steak style- to cut up a steak.
• An episode of Ryuusei no Rockman entitled "Rockman Delivery Service" is pretty much that. Subaru mistakenly receives a giant pile of packages in the mail and uses his Rockman powers to set it all right.
  • Also, in the second video game to the series Geo/Subaru uses his powers to open a locked door from the other side.
• In The Savior's Book Café Story in Another World, "God" gives Tsukina The Power of Creation, Healing Magic and Defense Magic with the skill and mana level of an expert, and she uses all of this to run a Book Café on the outskirts of a thriving kingdom.
• Sgt. Frog: Keroro sometimes elicits Keronian technology to complete his chores. A non-technological example would be Koyuki whipping out her ninja moves to do perfectly normal things, like Bunshin no Jutsu at the fashion store to try on five outfits at once. And the crescent end of the Lucifer Spear is revealed to be... a key for unlocking Moa's gigantic diary.
• In Shakugan no Shana, Shana says that she hardly ever bothers with bathing or changing clothes because Alastor's flames can instantly cleanse her body and clothes without any harm to her. However, when Yuji's mother draws her a bath, she finds that bathing the old fashioned way is more enjoyable. Similarly, Margery has Marchosias cure her hangover with his powers. At one point, Marchosias refuses to cure her hangover to teach her to stop using him as an excuse to get drunk.
• Shaman King:
  • Ryu at one point uses his Over Soul to form a giant thumb to hitchhike with.
  • In an early chapter, Yoh plans to channel the ghosts of dead student prodigies to take his tests, commenting that as a shaman, he doesn't need to learn anything else. Manta is frustrated since he works hard for his grades.
• In Shina Dark, a mage uses an ice-based attack spell to conjure a giant pointy ice shard...so it can be chipped apart to make sno-cones. He even complains afterward, "It's not like I studied magic for something like this, you know..."
• Slayers:
  • In the first movie, Lina uses fire magic to light a campfire. Also, in the first series she heats a pool of water with a fireball so she can have a bath. This backfires, though, when her traveling companions hear the blast, think she's under attack, and come running to her rescue only to find her completely naked. Lina, being Lina, reacts as expected and they get a fireball in the face for their trouble.
  • Lina uses magic like this a lot – a special spell to catch more fish, for instance (which she warns the reader not to use because it's so effective that if too many people do it too often all of the world's fish will go the way of the dinosaur).
• The princess in Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle is a master of taking powerful weapons, sacred artifacts, and even an ancient book of incredibly powerful magic and using it all to just try and make her room perfect for sleeping.
• In Super Dimension Fortress Macross a soldier once lit a Zentraedi's giant cigarette with a Valkyrie's gunpod.
  • The penultimate episode had the Macross being used as the world's biggest Christmas tree. Read that again: a spaceship Humongous Mecha decorated with Christmas lights.
• Takopi's Original Sin: Takopi's gadgets are rarely used how he intended them to be. The infinite length of the Patch-It-Up Ribbon is used by Shizuka to hang herself, and the preservation abilities of the Memory Box are instead used to preserve Marina's corpse.
• In Talentless Nana, there exists superpowered individuals called the "Talented". Their powers are effectively limitless and have the ability to bend or get around space, time, and physics, such as time-travel, prophetic dreams, and immortality. Though they're supposed to be training to use them to fight the mysterious "Enemies of Humanity" plaguing the world, more often than not they use their Elemental Powers in schoolyard brawls, use their teleportation to get to class on time without spending too much effort, and other decidedly unexciting but practical applications.
• In one Tenchi Muyo! manga chapter, Ryoko uses her energy blasts to fry fish. The fish is destroyed by a third party before anyone can see if this simple form of cooking gets around her normal Lethal Chef tendencies (though it would be lethal to anyone standing too close to the fish being cooked).
• In To Love Ru, Yami and Mea demonstrate that, yup, Voluntary Shapeshifting can make cooking and cleaning pretty cool.
  • Lala is gifted with alien technology and is constantly making gadgets which give little concepts like conservation of energy and mass the middle finger. The gadgets she makes are mundane things like a hairpin for instant clothes, or a bottomless soap dispenser. (Incidentally, the biggest reason she hadn't been allowed to revolutionize Earth technology is due to her habit of cutting corners in QA, only for the gadget to go wrong in the most perverted way imaginable.)
• Toriko introduces the Melk knife, which is capable of cutting mountains in half. It is mainly used for cooking. Since this whole series revolves around food, that doesn't qualify by itself, but Komatsu has been seen using it to julienne cabbage and cut the poison out of fish, which definitely doesn't require that sharp a knife.
• Loran does this a fair bit in ∀ Gundam, he's used the Turn A to do clothes washing, and to help out on a farm. For reference the Turn A can fully regenerate itself and its pilot, while its' most powerful attack spans a distance of 600 million miles, destroying any advanced technology on the way.
  • This is referenced in Super Robot Wars Alpha Gaiden when he and Milia use their mecha to wash everyone's laundry. Then Kouji comes and tries to use the Mazinger's Breast Fire to dry them, which ends up burning some of them.
• In the Ultra Series cartoon OVA M78 Love and Peace, some of the monsters and aliens would use their powers for mundane tasks. There's notably Jirass the chef whose fiery breath is used for lighting a stove, and Alien Baltan the hairdresser who uses his Power Pincers to give his customers haircuts.
• Uncle from Another World, an isekai parody, has the titular Uncle come back to Japan from the fantasy world he was trapped in after a coma with all the amazing supernatural powers that isekai protags usually get. He uses them to do stuff like not pay the extra shipping fee after online shopping and making Youtube videos.
• The main girls of When Supernatural Battles Became Commonplace mainly use their respective powers for mundane things, like rewinding time to heal scratches, since there aren't any supervillains to fight.
• In Witch Hat Atelier, Coco practices her Pyreball sigils by using them to cook. Her master, Qifrey, encourages this, as he himself learned water magic as a means to wash clothes and dishes without actually touching them because he hated getting wet.
• Yashahime: Princess Half-Demon shows Towa. She is a half-demon living in the modern times. As a half-demon, she is far stronger than a human could ever be. She uses this power to win one sports trophy after another. Her whole room is covered with such awards. Later, it turns out that she even keeps her powers very low against humans because she could easily injure them badly.
• In YuYu Hakusho, Minoru "Doctor" Kamiya uses his powers to give himself plastic surgery and then work in a clinic.
• In Zone of the Enders: Dolores, i, Dolores and James spend time Locked in a Base in a Snowstorm with an enemy pilot they shot down. Honest to a fault, they decide to pay for the power and resources used during their time there with a necklace worn by the pilot. Dolores decides she should get a job to pay the pilot back for the pendant. Incidentally, Dolores is a Humongous Mecha. She's a sweetie.

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