Useless muscles in Anime & Manga.
- The strongest characters in AIKI are pretty muscular... but only in the middle of the size scale. The strongest women barely have any. The trope itself is invoked when Joukyuu informs Hou Mei of why she's doing badly in a fight against an opponent who's much smaller - she's too muscular and it's slowing her down. She leaves for a time to train, returning noticeably slimmer and much faster. Averted later in AIKI-S with Cassandra, who is a literal Amazon at 8 feet tall with the physique of a bodybuilder. Her physique actually helps her go toe-to-toe against the protagonist, Joukyuu, who had so far been seen wiping the floor with everybody.
- Attack on Titan:
- Subverted with Mikasa. She is one of the most powerful fighters on the show and strong enough to carry her brother over her shoulder, among other things, but usually appears pretty tiny. That is, until you catch a glimpse of how absolutely ripped
◊ she is under that uniform. - Levi is short and scrawny but is even faster, stronger, and tougher than Mikasa.
- Subverted with Mikasa. She is one of the most powerful fighters on the show and strong enough to carry her brother over her shoulder, among other things, but usually appears pretty tiny. That is, until you catch a glimpse of how absolutely ripped
- In Beastars, an incident occurs between two students - a carnivore and a herbivore - where the carnivore had ripped off the herbivore's arm by sheer accident, despite the fact the carnivore being the same height as the herbivore and showing no muscle definition whatsoever.
- Berserk, subverts this with The Hero Guts who is ridiculously muscly, but plays it straight with others.
- Griffith as a human was a complete beanpole but still able to block and parry Gut's massive greatsword with one arm; he even sliced off Nosferatu Zodd's arm while Guts could only cut into Zodd's wrist. Though to be fair Guts was weakened.
- Casca has some muscles, especially compared to other women but she's no powerhouse, still she's able to slice men and demons apart with ease.
- Serpico has very little muscle mass and is about as skinny as Griffith in his shirtless scene, but Serpico still can rip apart demons and even duel Guts evenly (thanks to being a Combat Pragmatist).
- Isidro has some muscly arms for a kid though he's not quite ripped as Guts was at his age nevertheless Isidro can cut up Trolls and other lesser horrors.
- Slan has no muscle mass at all and she's the most powerful woman in the series, she defeated Guts with one attack, though in her case this is due to Slan being a member of the God Hand.
- Black Lagoon: Dutch, the Lagoon Company's leader, is a fairly muscular guy but gets easily overpowered by the thinner Roberta. Ultimately, the much more trim Revy is the only match for her.
- Bleach:
- Used many times due to the fact the characters use spiritual energy to fight. As a result, size can be meaningless in the face of who has the most spiritual power and the most skill to maximise their spiritual power. This can be seen in the zanpakutou and the Menos Grande. A shinigami zanpakutou can look like a completely normal sword but it's sealing enormous power and therefore cannot be used to gauge the strength of the shinigami that wields it. The weakest class of Menos Grande is the Gillian. It's also the biggest type of hollow that can be found. The strongest is the Vasto Lorde, which is no bigger than the average human.
- The most dramatic example is Yammy, the 10th Espada. He is physically the largest Espada and can keep getting bigger. As 0th Espada, he's by far the most powerful, too. However, he lacks the skill to apply his power, something that's heavily lampshaded in the manga. As a result, when he fights a captain tag-team while in his largest and most powerful form, the captains, who do know how to use skill to harness their power, curb-stomp him.
- Blue Exorcist has the titular character of Okumura Rin. Compared to other characters (like Ryuji who uses a freaking bazooka with his muscles) Rin is deceptively slender. It appears to be a family trait; Amaimon is ridiculously skinny but can break your arm with a finger poke while Mephisto can hold back both Amaimon and a berserk Rin casually and even hold a conversation at the same time.
- Claymore has this in spades. All Claymore warriors are lithe killing machines powered by Yoma blood inside them. The only exception is Undine, but it is revealed that she built up the muscle mass on purpose in an attempt to improve her own self-confidence. In the flashbacks, she is shown with her original, (seemingly) frail constitution.
- L from Death Note, who is 5'8" and weighs 110 lbs, is quite strong, and fights using capoeira. He even states at one point in the series, while in a serious fight with Light Yagami, that he is stronger than he looks.
- Dr. STONE: Kohaku is a slim girl of average height, yet she can easily take down huge, muscle-bound men like Magma and carry a huge vase full of water for several kilometers effortlessly. Senku and Chrome like to refer to her as a "gorilla" (which she, predictably, isn't very fond of).
- Dragon Ball, of course. It's justified by ki control, as well as skill and technique, taking precedence over sheer muscle mass, and it's is a recurring theme among opponents and transformations.
- Right from the beginning, Goku could destroy rocks as a child when he was still the size of a watermelon and had stubby arms like a baby. Both he and Krillin easily outpower the building-sized wrestler types that appear in the preliminaries of the Tenkaichi Budokai thanks to Roshi's training as well (although one could argue that they're fat rather than muscly).
- Tao Pai-Pai was the first lethal demonstration of this trope: he's able to kill General Blue, who is quite well-built and proved to be a constant thorn in the sides of our heroes, with nothing but a taught tongue to the temple despite being much older and slimmer than him.
- There's also very early on the contrast between Vegeta and Nappa. Nappa, who's huge and brawny appearance was used to emphasize his power and dominance over a 4ft tall man and a child not even six. Naturally, he beats them both with ease. However, as giant as Nappa is, he is less than a quarter as strong as the short, then-scrawny Vegeta: Piccolo gets his first hint of the pecking order when, after Vegeta furiously orders Nappa to stand down, the larger Saiyan frightfully obeys. Nappa is also later thoroughly beaten by Goku who, while buff, is maybe half his size.
- Some villains go with this trope: Frieza's final form is far less bulky and scrawny compared to his second and third form, and even Krillin said he looks weaker than before. This was because Toriyama wanted to subvert the expectations that villains got bigger as they got more powerful forms. But then again, when fighting Super Saiyan Goku, Frieza gets more muscle in his 100% power form anyway, ruining the idea somewhat. Kid Buu has no muscle mass but was the strongest antagonist at the end of Dragon Ball Z (not helped by his liquid-like body mass).
- Android 17 and 18 are skinny as hell, but 18 specifically was able to smash the muscle clad Vegeta through a solid rock wall with one strike of her slender arm.
- This trope is actually addressed as a plot point in the Cell Saga. Vegeta and Future Trunks had reached a certain ascended version of the basic Super Saiyan, but while it was an insane increase of power, the sheer muscle mass slowed them down too much to actually land a blow on their opponent, and increased their stamina consumption to the extent that they'd gas out after just a few minutes. Trunks made the mistake of using the ascended form against Cell and got his ass handed to him because of these weaknesses, but Vegeta recognized this and didn't use it in his own fight with him.
- Probably the most striking example, though, is Mr. Satan, who's legitimately strong, extremely muscular, and has a mustache, but happens to be in a series where ki power beats muscle power ten times out of ten.
- Videl is actually one of the straightest examples of this, as even before she learned basic ki manipulation she was at least as strong as her father Mr. Satan, despite being a slender teenage girl with none of his huge muscles. As for why Gohan doesn't accidentally snap her in half, it's probably for the same reason real-life weightlifting champions can pet a kitten or pick up an egg without crushing it. Controlling your strength to use only the amount you want to for the task at hand is not difficult.
- Chi-Chi is also very strong, despite being as petite as Videl. In the movies and anime she’s been shown to be strong enough to take down multiple alien opponents and smash up entire houses when possessed, despite Chi-Chi lacking the signature Saiyan’s musculature of her husband and eldest son.
- Beerus from Battle of Gods has very little muscle mass and looks like a sickly purple humanoid sphynx cat and he's the most powerful being in the universe. Well, he's not as powerful as Whis, who is also not very muscular.
- Goku in his Super Saiyan God form as noted by Master Roshi has less muscle mass than any of his other forms, even when he's normal, but still was his most powerful form at the time.
- Pan is just four years old when she competes in her first martial arts tournament, and she's sent up against a very muscular man. She defeats him easily, so easily that it freaks Uub out (who, unbeknownst to him, is vastly stronger than Pan). In Super Pan has Saiyan strength even as a baby.
- Most of the Dragon Ball adult male fighters, though, are actually very bulky and muscular, albeit not overly so unless powering up. Any more bulky and they would be the Giant!
- Another notable example is introduced in Super: Cabba is a Saiyan (from a parallel universe) with no visible musculature at all, looking like a scrawny teenager, yet in a tournament fight he proves to be an even match for Vegeta, not considering transformations. By this time Vegeta is a lot more bulky than described above, has been training under a Physical God for some time, and recently supposed that he was probably about as physically strong as it is possible for a Saiyan to get.
- Averted big time with Broly as he’s now canonically the strongest Saiyan and even in base form, he’s got the upper body of Charles Atlas. Hulking Out causes Broly to have more muscle mass than Goku and Vegeta combined, though he's Unskilled, but Strong to balance things out.
- Ivica Tanović, the commander of the Pied Piper Team in Eureka Seven AO, is an extremely tall and imposing man, but still looks awfully skinny for the Super-Strength feats he routinely displays.
- In Eyeshield 21, there are some effective players that doesn't have much mass, like Hayato Akaba and the Poseidons players. Also players who look strong, but their stamina and endurance just don't make it, like Amino Cyborgs.
- In Fairy Tail, size and muscle mass is hardly ever an indicator of strength, barring a few exceptions like Gildarts. The incredibly thin Sol was able to overpower Elfman with ease, and so could Mirajane.
- Fist of the North Star
- While the more powerful martial artists are muscular men, they can easily tear apart King Kong-sized thugs who are even more muscular than them; Kenshiro didn't even break a sweat killing off the much taller and buffer Zeed.
- Mamyia has a physique closer to a supermodel compared to the Heroic Build of Kenshiro or Rei, but Mamyia can still break a man's skull with her knee and wreck Mooks alongside the boys.
- In Fruits Basket, both Yuki and Kyo are skinny bishounens... but they have the strength to practically kill each other and destroy Shigure's house. Also, Kagura is an innocent-looking girl, but can rip out trees by their trunks and swing them around as weapons. Natsuki Takaya (the mangaka) actually acknowledges this in an aside from the manga: by all rights, the characters should be more muscular-looking than they are, and it's mainly a design preference that they're not (skinny bishounen and cute girls). In addition, Kagura likely derives her inhuman strength from somewhere else.
- While the men in Fullmetal Alchemist have strength proportional to their size and musculature, some of the women have a lot more. Olivier and Izumi are of average build and somewhat visible toned; the former can easily overpower her enormous younger bother, and latter seems even strong than that. Olivier's waifish younger sister Catherine has blatantly superhuman strength, though it's played purely as comedy.
- Present in Fushigi Yuugi. Even with all the superpowered warriors, there isn't a single highly muscular character. What else would you expect from a shoujo Reverse Harem anime? A specific case of this is Nuriko, whose power is super-strength yet he's skinny enough to convincingly crossdress as a woman.
- Shizuka Fujiyama, head engineer of the Daiku Maryu in Gaiking: Legend of Daiku Maryu, has no apparent musculature whatsoever, yet is able to very easily lift at least three of the incredibly heavy metal plates that the other members struggle to even lift one of.
- Played humorously in Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex when Batou jokingly tells the Major that she should switch to a male prosthetic body like his because it would give her more strength. She challenges him on the spot and he brings his fists up ready to spar. She hacks his brain and makes him punch himself out, proving she doesn't need more strength when she has her far more effective brain.
- Hunter × Hunter has tons of fun with this — the two Kid Hero protagonists are skinny 12-year-olds — and at the start of the series, Killua can bench somewhere in the range of 16 tonnes. A later chapter gleefully lampshades this- the two of them decide to go work out to keep their edge. The next panel has them waving around barbells with weights larger than their entire bodies in a rather offhanded manner while casually conversing about their current job, as a gym full of goggle-eyed bodybuilders looks on.
- Inuyasha:
- Inuyasha is pretty trim under that kimono, but he can uproot large trees and use them as weapons, pick up and carry a bolder larger than he is tall, etc. Even for a hanyo, InuYasha is incredibly strong, stronger than many full Youkai.
- His brother Sesshomaru counts as well. The very first thing we see Sesh pull in the manga is placing his hand lightly on a big, muscular man's head... and ripping it clean off without even a hint of effort. He's not any less muscular than Inuyasha (both of them do have some muscle tone, which is more than can be said of many Bishōnen), but he isn't any more so, either. Word of God states that Sesshoumaru's one arm strength alone is equal to Inuyasha's whole strength.
- This is true for all youkai and hanyou, because they are always superhumanly strong, no matter what they look like. In Inuyasha the Movie: Fire on the Mystic Island, a hanyou child effortlessly broke a branch that was as thick as a human arm.
- Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple:
- Kensei Ma. The man is probably barely 4 feet and is the eldest of the masters (barring the Old Master Hayato himself), making him very scrawny. He seems to be of the Weak, but Skilled category, but he's capable of delivering devastating punches at close range, with apparently barely any technique involved.
- Averted by Master Hayato; He's the biggest, tallest, and most muscular of all the masters, and actually is strongest of all the masters, not to mention the most skilled.
- This is the entire basis of the Kushinada Jujitsu style, which focuses on such extremely precise control of an opponent's center of gravity that the motto of the style is "100% skill no strength". As expected, all practitioners including its creator are women.
- In Koihime†Musou very few characters are drawn muscle-bound but some of the smallest characters are among the strongest. Chouhi is only as tall as Kannu's chest but can carry a battering ram plus the half dozen or so people using it with one arm. While suffering from a cold. Kyocho is similarly a very small-sized character with no visible muscle but uses a kendama with a huge metal ball that must weigh as much as she does in combat. Both easily qualify as Pintsized Powerhouses.
- Last Order: Final Fantasy VII has Zack and Cloud who despite their stature can both wield the iconic BFS and slice through steel and people like butter, Zack at one point crushes a Shrina Solider's armour with just Good Old Fisticuffs. Averted when the petite 15-year-old Tifa tries to fight the imposing full-grown Sephiroth, it doesn't last long.
- The anime Magi: Labyrinth of Magic has Morgiana. She looks like a young girl who is not particularly strong, but she is by far one of the strongest characters in the anime. Her kicks are strong enough to even destroy metal.
- The mages in the Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha universe are extremely strong physically, but it doesn't show much in their physique. In the beginning of season two, the nine-year-old Nanoha protected herself from attacks from both sides, holding the shields apart with her bare hands in a Star Wars-like double-Advancing Wall of Doom manner. Both attacks had the momentum to blow a hole in an average building and eventually made Nanoha sink ankle-deep into the concrete floor. And that's a nine-year-old girl with no excessive muscle mass. Powerhouses like Signum could probably punch holes in reinforced concrete with just those sleek, sexy hands of theirs. (This probably has to do with the series' target demographic, which prefers cute girls to muscular warriors.)
- Justified in Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid. The dragons explicitly use magic to supplement their strength while in their human forms. If they lack any mana to power themselves, then they won't be any stronger than their physique would suggest (something demonstrated during Kanna's introduction when she was only able to ineffectually pound on Kobayashi's chest).
- This is all over the place in the Tournament Arc of Negima! Magister Negi Magi Just of the eight of eighty we see get through the qualifying royales seven of them are either a slender young woman, a child, or both (physically, at least), and the other one that was an adult male wasn't at all buff. All of them completely trash all but one of the other divisions, which consisted of eighteen other people who were nearly entirely heavily muscled (if not flat-out gigantic) adult men. Many of them weren't even using any special powers like ki or magic. Anyone of above-average size or build who isn't Jack Rakan exists solely to get their ass kicked by someone skinnier and more attractive for the sake of said person looking cool.
- One-Punch Man: Downplayed to an extent. Saitama is ripped as hell, but you can't usually tell just by looking at him when his shirt is on. Garou is also very muscular, despite being fairly thin. Perhaps the best examples are the ninjas such as Sonic and Flashy Flash, who are insanely fast and strong despite being very thin and not obviously muscled. Of course, there are other characters like Superalloy Darkshine who have huge muscles and are legitimately strong. And when it comes to monsters, all bets are off, as they can look like pretty much anything and range from being barely stronger than a normal human to threats to the entire planet.
- Pokémon Adventures:
- Bruno of the Kanto Elite Four is a muscled powerhouse who trains alongside his Pokémon, always searches for the next big fight (Lorelei interferes when he faces Red, much to his chagrin before he gets brainwashed), and poses the Kanto Dex Holders no end of trouble. His disciple, Hoenn's Brawly, looks to have half the muscle he does but has the same level of strength, which he pools with his determination to outmuscle Mack's Mind Rape when Groudon goes on a Magma-assisted rampage in Mossdeep.
- On the subject of Gym Leaders, Chuck and Bruno are on the big end, the former knowing a vast array of martial arts and takes up the same Fighting Gym Leader habit of training with his Pokémon. In case you think he sucks as a teacher, one of his disciples is Blue, who while not demonstrating his talents in martial arts on-panel is hardly a slouch at commanding Pokémon. And if Brawly wasn't "scrawny" enough, then Maylene of Sinnoh manages to top that, being a skinny teenaged Pettanko who can cross blows with a Riolu - which, as we know, grows into Lucario, which is (literally) Made of Iron. You can expect to see bad things happening to Team Galactic should she have to get involved.
- Many of the Dex Holders themselves manage to perform feats of physical excellence, but the majority of them are a result of being drunk on Heroic Resolve. And then there's Sapphire, whose feats of strength and heroism speak for themselves.
- Hell, even Green may be stronger than she appears. At age 11, she once held onto her flying Jigglypuff with one hand while the other arm was hoisting up Red.
- Hareta from Pokémon: Diamond and Pearl Adventure! is absurdly powerful for a kid his age but has no muscles (probably considering he's prepubescent). At one point he flipped a Rhyperior, which is over 600 pounds and a rock Pokémon.
- While we're on the subject of Pokémon: The Series, Ash Ketchum is also quite strong for his age despite having little in the way of muscles. In "Holiday Hi-Jynx", he pulled along a raft carrying Pikachu, Misty, Brock, and a Jynx while swimming through really cold water. In "Mass Hip-po-sis", he's seen multiple times carrying the 109.1-pound hippopotamus Pokémon Hippopotas on his head. For a whole arc in the Johto saga, he's often carrying around a Larvitar, which is a 158.7-pound baby kaiju. But his ultimate feat of strength comes from the third-generation episode "Pinch Healing", where Ash throws a log in order to save a Bagon. This log is estimated to weigh 1,385 pounds.
- In Pretty Face, Rando was in a coma for a year and his muscles shrank for not using them. Strangely enough, despite this, his physical strength didn't go down at all.
- The Prince of Tennis: Toyama Kintaro was twelve years old, not even five feet tall... and was able to drive a golf ball farther than a college student with a 5-iron that he bent with his bare hands.
- Project A-Ko: The eponymous Eiko Magami looks like an ordinary schoolgirl but is a Person of Mass Destruction.
- The Quintessential Quintuplets: Yotsuba, the fourth of the Nakano sisters, is the most athletic even though she and her sisters have the same body type. During the field trip, she did several physical tasks like chopping a large amount of logs all on her own and carrying large heavy ones for the bonfire, and much later, she managed to carry her sister Miku by piggyback no less than a 500 m distance, without breaking a sweat.
- In Rage of Bahamut: Genesis it is also played straight. Amira is a young girl, but at the same time strong enough to lift an adult man with only one hand. Apart from that, she can effortlessly defeat a huge monster with only one blow. As a nephilim she is probably much stronger than any human.
- In Ranma ½, the only two characters who have really visible muscle are Genma Saotome (who is not only a Dirty Coward but actually comes off as Stout Strength and Acrofatic because his muscles and baggy gi make him pretty barrel-shaped) and Pantyhose Taro... the latter only when he takes on his Mix-and-Match Critters super-form (which, admittedly, outclasses everyone that isn't an Old Master.) Everyone else is capable of fits of Super-Strength while being, at most, leanly toned looking. Even Ryoga, while thicker-chested then Ranma, still looks pretty scrawny with just a T-shirt on.
- In Rosario + Vampire, Inner Moka is capable of taking down opponents that are larger and more muscular than her with ease. Her sister Kokoa can lift and swing a huge mace seemingly without any effort. Justified as it is a vampire's special ability: they can turn their Yoki, which is already pretty high being S-Class Youkai and all, into physical strength.
- Rurouni Kenshin:
- Downplayed with Sanosuke Sagara, a lean hand-to-hand combat fighter. Yet he's strong enough to lift a heavy zanbato and clash with muscular monk Anji. However it's downplayed because while he lacks muscles relative to the strength he can wield, his body is still well-built with plenty of muscles in his V-Cut abs and relatively quite broad arms so it's not so much muscles are meaningless but rather he's a classic example of powerlifting (aka "functional strength") over a hypertrophy approach to strength building. His fight with Anji quite averts it because Anji only lost because he surrendered after finally listening to Sanosuke's message but despite receiving so many blows he was tanking Sanosuke's attack and it was obvious that despite an overdrawn brutal battle, Anji would have won with the direction the fight was going. Anji also blatantly overpowers other opponents who are lean like Sanosuke but far smaller and less muscular than Anji. Anti-hero Saito, who can beat Sanosuke into a bloody pulp, and Shishio, who has enough power to send Sanosuke flying, are also quite slender.
- Averted with Seijuro Hiko, Kenshin's master, who seems a tall and slender man... until he takes off his coat, revealing a huge muscled body. Word of God says that some fangirls were disappointed at him not being a Bishounen.
- It's also deconstructed with Kenshin himself, who's a small slender man unlike Hiko, and thus not really suited for his style of fighting at all. By the end of the series, he's unable to fight as well as he once was because of the strain on his body.
- Played with in Sailor Moon: On one hand, while Makoto Kino is muscular, or "meaty", according to Word of God, Minako Aino is actually a shorty who not only has no problem kicking the significantly bigger Makoto across the room, but she can use a sword almost as big as her to kill the Big Bad, has destroyed multiple youma with a single kick, and can Flash Step and follow up with a kick capable of throwing larger opponents across the room (what she did to Makoto), and the latter all without transforming; on the other hand Makoto is the physically strongest of the Sailor Senshi, Minako is simply far more skilled and a bit muscular herself, simply not enough for it to show clearly.
- Of course, Saint Seiya has this in spades. Cassios and Docrates, two enormous towers of sheer muscle (Shaina's disciple and one of the Pope's acolytes, respectively) are humbled by skinny 15 year-olds Seiya and Hyoga. Most noticeable in that Cassios' fist is as large as Seiya himself, but the latter can easily stop Cassios' punch with his open palm. Without even using his Cosmo (or leverage, for that matter.)
- Played straight twice in Shaman King, first with the characters itself. Being a big guy in Shaman King is meaningless since power in the series is all about Mind over Matter, or more precisely soul over matter. Secondly with the spirit powers itself. During most of the series, when a character gained a power-up, they would start to summon building-sized spirit Battle Aura called O.S.. Then, during the final part of the series, the Big Bad says that making those gigantic things was pure waste of power. In the end, they fight with much more powerful, yet much smaller O.S.-es.
- Soul Eater:
- Generally, the manga uses the combination of a healthy 'mind, body, and soul' to define strength and point out that it's not purely down to physical power. Characters who are shown to be extremely strong physically do not always appear as such; Maka and Kid for example, though the latter has the excuse of being a god. It doesn't hurt to be muscular, however, as characters like Black Star (especially) and Stein show.
- Averted when Maka and Black Star (who while muscular, is still just a child) take on Free, a werewolf. A big and muscular adult male, Free dominated them in battle, despite the fact that he had been rusty after being imprisoned for 800 years.
- Averted with Crona and their symbiotic weapon, Ragnarok. When they first appear, they are unbeatable for Maka and Soul, and Ragnarok's huge muscles and large size certainly helped him and Crona in battle. Later the two fight Kid and seem evenly matched with him, which is actually quite impressive, as Kid is a god and the son of Lord Death, a shinigami.
- When Ragnarok loses his great muscle mass when his soul is cleansed, he and Crona are noticeably weaker, but still not to underestimated.
- Yor Forger in Spy X Family has more or less superhuman strength despite her slim and feminine figure, to the point where much of it is Played for Laughs whenever she isn't doing her assassin duties. She has performed numerous amount of feats because of strong she is, such as kicking a car driven by a terrorist off-course, kicking a man so hard he's stuck to the ceiling, throwing a ball so hard it bounces off trees, knocking out a massive cow by hitting a Pressure Point, and hitting volleyballs so hard she creates craters on the opposing team's court and sending one into outer space. She also has a case of Does Not Know His Own Strength, however, as she accidentally broke her brother's ribs when she hugged him too hard.
- ST☆R: Strike it Rich: Hina only wieghts 50kg and is less muscular than her opponents. Despite this, she is strong enough to knock out experienced fighters with one blow.
- Time Stop Hero:
- Princess Clau Belltree is a slender woman, but she is a trained knight. When the buff Kuzuno Sekai freezes time to render her helpless, it takes him over 20 minutes from his perspective to overpower her grip on her sword when he normally doesn't have trouble moving people while time is frozen.
- Swordmaster Leafa Colby is short and skinny, but she is practically invincible in combat. She can slice up giant monsters and block a strike from the muscular Ranga.
- Trigun:
- Vash The Stampede has a scarecrow physique and yet he can knock over the hulking Monev the Gale with a kick the face, wield Wolfwood’s BFG, deflect a rocket with his foot and physically carry Meryl and Milly (who's a big girl) through the desert for days. It could be a subversion though, as Vash underneath his red coat is quite muscly (we also see him work out briefly) and since Vash is a humanoid Plant he definitely has superhuman strength along with his other Plant powers.
- Like Vash, Nicolas D Wolfwood has greater strength than his average build would suggest. Wolfwood’s justification is that he’s actually a genetically modified Tyke Bomb.
- Milly Thompson while she is very tall is still by no means an Amazonian Beauty so unlike Vash or Wolfwood she has no real excuse for being able to wield her BFG.
- The strongest members of the Gung-Ho-Guns are usually the smaller and leaner ones while the bigger ones that rely on brute force are dispatched quickly by Vash and pals.
- In Urusei Yatsura, we have Asuka a small slender teenage girl who possesses incredible strength, she can effortlessly beat up men several times her size, even big beefy ones, she can also do things like tear the armor off tanks, wield huge weapons, and tear down trees, even a simple hug from her is enough to crush a person's spine. She gets it from her mother who has a similar body type.
- Kyohei and Sunako from The Wallflower. Both are very waifish, and both can easily beat down crowds of enemies when they need to.
- You're Under Arrest!: Natsumi Tsujimoto often displays Super-Strength, such as performing Effortless Amazonian Lift with her Motocomp, or acting as emergency brake with her heels for her and Miyuki's patrol car, despite having no visible muscles whatsoever.
- Yu-Gi-Oh! OCG Structures: While training to be a duelist, Gob Lintaro also worked out excessively until he became ridiculously buff, believing this will somehow give him an advantage. While dueling his crush, Ageha Yusa, she is unimpressed and points out muscle is useless since they are playing a card game. His muscles don't save him from getting beaten up and knocked down when she attacks him directly with her Traptrix monsters, which look like little girls.
- Yu-Gi-Oh! OCG Stories: Roze is shorter and skinner than Raye, but is stronger and faster, forcing Raye to rely on her Sky Striker devices to even the playing field during their fights.
- YuYu Hakusho deals with this a lot. In one of the first arcs, it's specifically shown that physical strength is different (and weaker) than spiritual strength. If you see someone who is muscular in a fight, chances are he'll be relatively weak (with the exception of Younger Toguro). Particularly addressed in the final Tournament fight, when Yusuke reveals his Spirit Cuffs, and the flashback to when he got them shows him trying to tear them apart, to no avail. Genkai comments that it measures spiritual energy, NOT physical, so knock it off. In another sense, as various characters get stronger they don't gain much in physical size; they retain the same basic body style that they start the show with.
