Power Misidentification / Anime & Manga

Power Misidentification in Anime and Manga.

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• Ayakashi Triangle:
  • Matsuri's arm goes numb after punching Sosuke, who claims to drain life on contact. After tangling Sosuke up with a rope, Matsuri attacks with a sword thrust, only to fall over when his leg is hit by Sosuke's actual power: a floating mouth he can manifest some distance from his body.
    Sosuke: You're too gullible for your own good, Matsuri Kazamaki. I lied about being able to devour the haku of those I touch. It's done in a different way. Jinyo are the ayakashi that are most similar to humans. So you shouldn't trust me so easily.
  • After Matsuri gets back on his feet for round two, Sosuke tries several more lies about the same attack (that it could absorb Matsuri's wind, can't be defended against, or can make several of them at once). Matsuri sees through all of them by carefully analyzing Sosuke's actions and his surroundings (Sosuke can't eat the energy human ninjutsu is made from, the mouth is actually a massive weak point, and the other mouths he makes are all fake that don't disturb the air like the real one).
• Black Clover: As Gauche notes, he's seen Transformation Magic used by others to transform themselves but he's never seen Grey's Transformation Magic, which transforms other things. She uses it to heal Gauche from being stabbed by transforming the giant sword itself. Owen notes that it isn't simply recovery and her magic reassembled his very tissue, making him think that Grey's magic may not be transformation.
• Bleach:
  • Played with by Aizen, who claimed that his Zanpakuto's Shikai ability allowed him to control moisture, one of the abilities of which could let him create illusions. In reality, illusions were always the true power of his zanpakuto, and he lied about their potency and scope. He can control basically all of a person's senses with it, which let him fake the moisture powers (amongst many other things).
  • Two involving the Quincy members of the Vandenreich's ability to steal a Shinigami's Bankai.
    • When Chojiro Sasakibe gets his Bankai stolen and is mortally wounded, he uses his last breaths to warn the Shinigami. However, he apparently misinterpreted what happened to him, as he told them his Bankai was sealed. The Shinigami arrogantly believe that they can break a seal on their powers with brute force, and are completely caught off guard when their Bankais get stolen.
    • When it is discovered that Ichigo is immune to getting his Bankai stolen, Yamamoto assumes that the Quincies have to understand a Bankai's true potential to steal it (Ichigo's Bankai is relatively new and constantly growing, so no one knows its full potential), and since he's been constantly improving his, he should be immune as well. He is proven wrong when Yhwach steals his Bankai. It turns out the real reason why Ichigo was immune was because he is part Hollow (Hollow energy is toxic to a Quincy) and part Quincy (Quincies are somewhat immune to each other's powers).
• A Certain Magical Index:
  • Kaori Kanzaki can swing her sword once and make seven slashes. Touma Kamijou assumes her sword is magical, thus the attack is something his Anti-Magic right hand, Imagine Breaker, can block. When he tries it, his hand gets mutilated. She reveals the real way she made those slashes was that she was controlling non-magical Razor Floss like a marionette.
  • Shokuhou "Mental Out" Misaki is renowned as Academy City's most powerful Telepath, capable of completely altering peoples' memories, personalities or perception of their surroundings, as well as implanting commands to be triggered later. It's revealed much later that she achieves this through precise application of an ability to control moisture — she is capable of other things (like creating ice) but rarely explores them because her power is already so complex that she needs props and numbered techniques just to focus on a particular task.
  • Because almost everybody in Academy City is unaware that magic exists, they tend to assume magicians are espers. For example, when Sherry Cromwell intrudes into Academy City and summons an earth golem to evade arrest, Kuroko Shirai and Mikoto Misaka assume that rival cities have started developing espers too.
  • Touma's Imagine Breaker is often mistaken for an esper or magical ability. It is neither of them, and is apparently of divine origin.
  • Touma is able to dodge or block supernatural attacks no matter how fast they are, which makes him assume he has Super-Reflexes. A few characters speculate and the author confirmed that he really has a Spider-Sense for psychic, magical, and divine energy which allows him to react before the attack is properly fired. The proof is that his so-called reflexes don't activate when he is attacked by mundane methods like guns or martial arts, which often leads to him getting hurt.
  • When Accelerator starts getting his ass kicked by Amata Kihara despite his Attack Reflector powers, he assumes Amata's metal gloves have some kind of Anti-Magic feature and manages to pull them off. Amata continues to beat him up and says the gloves don't do anything; what he's doing is turning Accelerator's powers against him by pulling his punches right before they connect, causing his punches to get attracted to him.
  • Gunha Sogiita, the seventh Level 5 esper, does this all the time with his own powers. He doesn't actually have a clue how his Combo Platter Powers work at all, and when he tries to come up with an explanation he's always wrong. Nobody else is sure exactly how his powers work either, but his own guesses are incompatible with how esper powers actually work in this universe.
  • Theodosia Electra performs spells by lighting matches that only last as long as the match burns. She claims her powers come from drawing on the story of The Little Match Girl, but she is lying and her power really comes from the Norse Mythology story of Skírnir's Staff, which channels flames for a variety of effects.
  • Richard Brave wields a Flaming Sword that he claims is Lævateinn, the legendary sword from Norse Mythology that can reduce everything to ash. It seems to live up to its namesake, but Stiyl Magnus figures out it's a trick. The sword has ordinary flames, so Richard sprays his target with invisible ink to form runes that when activated by ultraviolet light, make the target extremely flammable, thus making the sword seem powerful.
• A Certain Scientific Railgun: The Doppelganger of the Dream Ranker Arc invokes this by faking her artificial muscle-slime-mold hybrids as the theoretical soul possession her researchers built her to test via inserting them into inanimate objects on the microscopic level and forcibly controlling to fake her "possessing" them with her "soul". This forced them to avoid attempting to destroy her and instead capture her, which bought her the valuable time she required to destroy all traces of the project's data that led to her creation before she finally dealt with herself.
• The protagonist of Charlotte believes that his power is to possess another person for five seconds. However, he later finds out that his actual ability is stealing the powers of other superpowered individuals; the five-second possession is just a side effect.
• When Rolo was first introduced in Code Geass R2, many assumed that his Geass actually allowed him to stop time, but it quickly turned out that he merely paralyzes and freezes people's perception in a certain radius around him. This revelation blatantly contradicts details that would only make sense if he really was stopping time or teleporting (like Knightmare Frames in motion stopping in place along with their pilots, or disappearing from radar).
• Darker than Black: Unbeknownst even to him, Hei's Shock and Awe contractor powers actually involve quantum manipulation of matter, which makes him the keystone of the two factions' plans to destroy or alter the Eldritch Location of Hell's Gate. It's also revealed that he's not actually a contractor himself: he absorbed his sister's powers, giving him the abilities of a contractor with none of the drawbacks.
• Fairy Tail: Racer pretends his magic gives him Super-Speed, but it actually slows down time within a certain distance of him. This makes a functional difference—a projectile fired beyond his range doesn't slow down before hitting him—but Racer does it more because he's obsessed with being fast.
• Fate/kaleid liner PRISMA☆ILLYA:
  • The heroes are initially led to believe that Beatrice's Berserker card is Thor, granting her access to Mjönir. It's when their attempt at defeating Beatrice by replicating Thor's death (being poisoned and then taking nine steps backwards) ends up failing that they realize that this isn't Thor, but actually his son, Magni, who has all of the abilities of Thor while also being able to lift Mjölnir without a need for the belt Megingjörð and the gauntlet Járngreipr, as well as lacking a weakness due to Magni's cause of death being unknown.
  • The heroes also believe Darius Ainsworth is using a Pandora card to channel her abilities, since he is using Pandora's Box in his scheme. They are shocked to learn he is actually being assisted by the actual Pandora, who never died and lived to the present day.
• Hoshin Engi:
  • Yozen fights against Baron Younin, one of Chou Koumei's followers who claims to wield the same transformation magic as Yozen but without restrains, allowing him to transform into people stronger than Yozen or into people he never personally met before, such as Yozen's master. Turns out, his actual power resides in his paope "Kami no Miezarute" (The Invisible Hands of God), which hypnotizes the victim with a flash of light and uses memories fished from their brains to make them hallucinate strong opponents.
  • During the battle inside the Kingo Islands, Entenkun, wielder of the ice-based Spatial Paope Kanpyojin, fights Fugen Shinjin, whose paope allows him to melt the ice instantly. Entenkun erroneously believes he's using a fire elemental paope and summons a blizzard with powerful squalls, so that molten ice instantly freezes back, but the Fugen clarifies that his paope isn't merely elemental based, but can control and manipulate atoms to form any reaction and promptly dissolves the snow storm.
  • Yozen's transformation power has always been considered a Sennin power that all Sennin could learn and exploit. As pointed out by Chotenkun, it's actually a proof of Yozen's true nature as a Youkai Sennin.
• This happens quite often in Hunter × Hunter due to the series' aversion of Explaining Your Powers to the Enemy forcing fighters to operate with whatever information they can figure out about their opponent either beforehand or during the fight.
  • A noteworthy example is Kurapika, who is a Conjurer who creates chains with special properties. Due to the chains being Nen constructs, he can summon and dismiss them at will, as well as render them invisible when needed. But for the majority of the Yorknew Arc, he keeps them active and visible to trick the Phantom Troupe into thinking he's a Manipulator instead. In fact, the only reason the Phantom Troupe discover the truth is due to having someone who can read minds steal the information about Kurapika's abilities from Gon and Killua, the only people besides Kurapika that know the truth about his Nen abilities.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders:
  • During the Crusaders' battle against J. Geil, J. Geil intentionally performs this trope by lying about how his Stand, Hanged Man, works. He claims that the Stand is a Mirror Monster inhabiting a "world inside the mirror" that allows it to appear in any reflection. Eventually, Kakyoin comes to the realization that this isn't the case, and that Hanged Man's real power is that it's actually a spark of light that has to physically jump into reflections in order to attack. Then in Golden Wind it turns out there is a Stand that works the way J. Geil says his did.
  • When the Crusaders first encounter DIO, it seems that his Stand, The World, has the power of teleportation or Flash Step. It's not until Kakyoin throws a clue before his death at DIO's hands (shooting an Emerald Splash at a clock's face) that the heroes manage to figure out DIO's real power: Time Stands Still.
• Medaka Box:
  • Miyakonoujo Oudo forces people to bow down to him. A theory ensues that his Abnormality, "Weighted Words", is some kind of hypnosis, but when he then starts levitating computer equipment, that theory changes to controlling gravity. Oudo remarks that the heroes read too much battle manga; his true power is simply transmitting and controlling electromagnetic waves.
  • Kumagawa Misogi can suffer any sort of injury, then stand back up with the injury gone without a trace. Everyone starts thinking that he has some sort of super-healing ability, but soon enough, he proves this wrong. In his own words, such a positive ability can't be born from his negative character. His Minus, "All Fiction", destroys the flow of causality and makes reality become "nothing". His injuries weren't healed, they "never happened". He then demonstrates the scope of his ability by making his opponent Zenkichi's eyesight become "nothing".
• Byakuren and Cochrane from Musuko ga Kawaikute Shikataganai Mazoku no Hahaoya have Swap Teleportation powers, but everyone mistook it for regular teleporting because they were always swapping places with the air. It's only after Byakuren's death and Burial at Sea that people realize the truth, as Cochrane attempting to kill Drake by warping him to the bottom of the ocean leaves behind a Drake shaped mass of water (complete with fish) in his place.
• In My Hero Academia, it's mentioned that it's fairly common for this to happen, to the point where getting your Quirk changed in the government records is pretty easy. The school also mentions that they can request a costume change if they discover that the Quirks work differently than believed.
  • The public assumes All Might’s Quirk gives him Super-Strength, but the secret is more complicated: his Quirk, One For All, is the power to “stockpile” power and pass it on to another individual. All Might is so strong because he has the accumulated strength of One For All’s seven previous wielders plus himself. He also received the Quirks of those previous wielders, which would’ve given him a major case of Combo Platter Powers if he’d known One For All could do that.
• Naruto:
  • When introduced, the Power Copying abilities of Kakashi's Sharingan are apparently so strong that not only can he copy Zabuza's water techniques in real time as they're being performed, he can finish them before Zabuza does. After initially panicking at Kakashi's ability to "see into the future", Zabuza figures out that it's just a trick — Kakashi is a Jack of All Trades who already knew some of the same techniques as Zabuza, and used his Sharingan to hypnotize him into using ones that he could pretend to copy.
  • In their final match against each other, Kisame launches a blast of water against a blast Might Guy made after unlocking the 7th Gate. Kisame assumes Guy used a ninjutsu whose chakra his water could drain, but he actually made a purely-physical shockwave that shoots right through the water.
• Omamori Himari: When Himari fights Kuesu, she destroys Kuesu's spellbook, thinking this will depower her. Kuesu reveals that she memorized all the spells and the books acts as a Power Limiter, so destroying it only made her stronger.
• One Piece:
  • When Luffy first fights Franky in Water Seven, Franky's ability to breathe fire is initially taken to be a Devil Fruit power of some kind. This is proven wrong when Franky shows himself able to go in and out of water without issue, which Devil Fruit users can not do. Franky soon after reveals his nature as a cyborg.
  • While it's established early on that Absalom has the power to turn invisible, he also seemingly has another ability that lets him fire powerful blasts from his hands. As it turns out, said hand blasts come from Arm Cannons that he made invisible.
  • During the Time Skip, Brook realized he misidentified his own powers: he'd long assumed it just let his soul return to his body to Auto-Revive a single time (which took so long his body had since been reduced to a skeleton). Further training led him to discover he could separate his body and soul at will, and manipulate the latter's ghostly powers to his advantage.
  • Trebol, of the Donquixote Pirates has the ability to emit adhesives from his body and has used it to appear incredibly fat, when he is in fact skinny as a twig, by surrounding himself with the stuff and coloring it like flesh and clothes. He does this to make himself appear to be gel-like in consistency and make people think he is an invincible Logia user rather than a Paramecia user with a weak point where his real body is.
  • "Thousand Arms" Charlotte Cracker, is initially believed to have the power to multiply his limbs. During his fight with Luffy, however, it's revealed that his true power is creating and manipulating biscuits. The 'Cracker' that Luffy fought was actually a biscuit Mini-Mecha, and he was using his biscuit creation powers to add more arms.
  • Charlotte Katakuri's Mochi Mochi no Mii (Mochi Mochi Fruit) is initially assumed to be a Logia type because Katakuri can transform his body into mochi in order to dodge and absorb attacks, while also displaying a weakness to a specific substance, liquids to wash away the mochi his body generates, which are typical attributes of Logias. In reality, Katakuri's fruit is a Paramecia type, but with the extra label of being a "Special Paramecia" due to the fact that it acts exactly like a Logia despite not being an Element like regular Logias.
  • The World Government deliberately had all records of one Devil Fruit changed to identify it as a weaker, less desirable type to prevent its true power from being used while they tried to capture it. Specifically, the Five Elder Stars hid it as the Paramecia Gomu Gomu no Mii (Gum-Gum Fruit), Luffy's Devil Fruit. Luffy's true power is the Mythical Zoan Hito Hito no Mi, Model: Nika (Human-Human Fruit, Model: Nika), which not only gives him rubber-like properties but also strength, freedom and joy (which combine into outright weaponized Toon Physics) when Awakened.
• Negima! Magister Negi Magi: In the epilogue chapters, women are being attacked by a masked figure, instantly stripped naked, and molested. While investigating, Yue Ayase assumes the assailant is using a The Nudifier spell and applies Anti-Magic wards to protect herself. The assailant is unmasked to be Paio II, who reveals that she simply uses Super-Speed to strip her victims. This makes the anti-magic wards useless and Yue gets stripped and molested.
• Overlord (2012): When facing a group of high-powered (relatively speaking) enemies, Sebas completely destroys the lich in a single stroke (for unknowingly using the same title as Ainz). One of the group steals his gloves, claiming that Sebas can't pull off his moves again. Unfortunately, the gloves had nothing to do with it: Sebas (like all Nazarick's people) is simply stupidly over-leveled for the world.
• Parasyte: Kana Kimishima has an unexplained ability to sense the presence of the Parasites, but she has no idea they exist. The first one she sensed was The Hero Shinichi Izumi. She automatically assumes that she has the power to sense her soulmate and falls in love with him, ignoring the fact that he already has a girlfriend. Shinichi tells her about the Parasites and her power's true nature, urging her to run if she senses one because other than him, they are dangerous. She brushes his warnings off and tries to sense his presence again, but follows the signal to a random Parasite who kills her.
• Talentless Nana: Mishima Koharu believes that her Talent is simply a telepathic link with her twin sister. In actuality, her real Talent is to create realistic illusions—her "twin sister" being one of them, which Mishima herself believes to be real.
• Time Stop Hero:
  • Kuzuno Sekai defeats Clau Belltree and her entourage by freezing time and stripping them naked to embarrass them into surrendering. He lies and claims he stripped them via "Disarmament Magic".
  • When Sekai uses his time freeze to strip and disarm Swordmaster Leafa, she thinks he has Super-Speed.
  • When he uses his time freeze to move himself or others to different locations, they often assume he can teleport.
• YuYu Hakusho: Kurama assumes Karasu has the power to make anything he touches explode and tries to counter by fighting at a distance. Karasu reveals his real power is to make invisible bombs that he can control and levitate, meaning you aren't safe no matter the distance.

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