TVTropes Now available in the app store!
Open

Follow TV Tropes

Following

Nothing cute about it: Cute Bruiser

Go To

Raso Cure Candy Since: Jul, 2009
shimaspawn from Here and Now Since: May, 2010 Relationship Status: In your bunk
#53: Jan 15th 2011 at 10:42:15 PM

I think she just makes faces when she's actually punching. The first one of those she looks far too defensive. The second she's making ugly faces again.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick
Raso Cure Candy Since: Jul, 2009
Cure Candy
#54: Jan 15th 2011 at 10:49:16 PM

[up] An Angry face doe not ruin this trope.

IMO this one is perfect ><.

edited 15th Jan '11 10:51:06 PM by Raso

Sparkling and glittering! Jan-Ken-Pon!
DRCEQ Since: Oct, 2009
#55: Jan 15th 2011 at 10:49:32 PM

The boxing gloves really does it for her. I think the 2nd picture where she's giving a left hook goes well with the original picture with her putting up her dukes. You can clearly see the cute right boxing glove and then the cute left. As for her, I think she's still cute either way.

shimaspawn from Here and Now Since: May, 2010 Relationship Status: In your bunk
#56: Jan 15th 2011 at 10:51:09 PM

Angry doesn't ruin it. She's cute and angry in the first one of those but she's ugly and angry in the second. Her eyes are off centre and her facial proportions are off and she looks like she's suffering from some sort of facial muscle decay.

edited 15th Jan '11 10:52:04 PM by shimaspawn

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick
Raso Cure Candy Since: Jul, 2009
Cure Candy
#57: Jan 15th 2011 at 10:56:52 PM

She just has her head tilted a little bit.

edited 15th Jan '11 10:59:17 PM by Raso

Sparkling and glittering! Jan-Ken-Pon!
shimaspawn from Here and Now Since: May, 2010 Relationship Status: In your bunk
#58: Jan 15th 2011 at 11:03:49 PM

Even accounting for that. Sorry. It's my inner art major acting up. I'm sensitive to things being Off-Model.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick
Servbot Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: Yes, I'm alone, but I'm alone and free
#59: Jan 15th 2011 at 11:10:15 PM

The trope is about someone who "appears to be a kid (or a particularly small young woman), but in battle she fights like a bruiser. (It's usually a she, but occasionally a cute little boy can fill the role.)"

That picture looks like a teenage girl.

edited 15th Jan '11 11:14:05 PM by Servbot

shimaspawn from Here and Now Since: May, 2010 Relationship Status: In your bunk
#60: Jan 15th 2011 at 11:13:05 PM

teenage girl = small young woman = this trope (though admittedly an outlier of it)

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick
Servbot Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: Yes, I'm alone, but I'm alone and free
#61: Jan 15th 2011 at 11:14:58 PM

She's around the same size as the teenage boy she's punching. That doesn't exactly sound like a small woman to me.

shimaspawn from Here and Now Since: May, 2010 Relationship Status: In your bunk
#62: Jan 15th 2011 at 11:33:05 PM

True, she's not the best illustration of the trope. She is an outlier.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick
ThePope Since: Oct, 2010
#63: Jan 16th 2011 at 7:46:51 AM

They don't have to small; they have to be cute.

Small is for Pint-Sized Powerhouse.

Sackett Since: Jan, 2001
#64: Jan 16th 2011 at 10:00:08 AM

They have to be a child, or a particularly small young woman. It's the contrast between size (and cuteness) and fighting style.

Pint-Sized Powerhouse is a contrast between size and power. Related concept, but not the same thing.

DRCEQ Since: Oct, 2009
#65: Jan 16th 2011 at 10:16:33 AM

Ok, lets just go over the trope description one more time here, shall we? Emphasis mine.

Like the Old Master, the Cute Bruiser is a living, breathing, frequently painful lesson in never judging a book by its cover. She appears to be a kid (or a particularly small young woman), but in battle she fights like a bruiser. (It's usually a she, but occasionally a cute little boy can fill the role.) Bruisers tend to melee combat focused on punches and blocks. Traditional bruisers are large husky men who win fights due to their size and strength allowing them to both absorb and put out heavy damage. This contrast between appearance and combat style is what makes the character surprising.

Her Weapon Of Choice will probably be Good Old Fisticuffs, a club, or martial arts that focus on direct blows to your opponent instead of pressure points or judo throws. She will not use a bladed weapon (maybe on rare occasions, but it's not her preference), nor depend on most projectile weapons- with the exception of throwing heavy objects. When confronted with a locked door, her likely solution is to just smash it open. In short, she deals out the blunt trauma very well.

The Cute Bruiser also has some tanking abilities. She is not a Glass Cannon who depends on dodging. (Dodging is acceptable behavior, but a Cute Bruiser can take a blow if needed, and so doesn't depend on it). At the end of a fight expect her to be covered in bruises and scratches, but still with a smile on her face, (assuming the fight was won). She might even be Rock Steady, hitting like a Mighty Glacier, and standing like a Stone Wall. Might have Super-Strength as justification.

She is usually The Big Guy in a Five-Man Band, a common subversion of the usual traits associated with that character type. Personality-wise she can vary quite a bit. She might be a Boisterous Bruiser, she could share some traits with a Little Miss Snarker, or she may just stick with the apparent contradiction of an innocent Cheerful Child who can mix it up in a bar fight. If she is affiliated with a powerful villain, expect to see just how someone with her appearance got to that position.

Her appearance usually tends towards cute rather then elegance or classic beauty. This is probably because the appearance of the Cute Bruiser is supposed to generate protectiveness rather then desire. Then she turns out to not need protection at all. Check out Keet, What Measure Is a Non-Cute? and Kawaiiko. Expect there to be cries of moe and squees from some of her fans.

Always a Pint-Sized Powerhouse. Often a Badass Adorable or Little Miss Badass. Possibly a Super-Strong Child. Females with high physical strength who don't match to the Cute Bruiser trope tend to match to the Boobs Of Steel trope, although the two tropes can occasionally overlap. Compare with Small Girl, Big Gun, Child Mage and Waif-Fu which have a similar contrast between appearance and combat effectiveness but using a different combat style. Contrast with the Lady of War who is elegant in combat. When she works out enough, she can evolve into an Amazonian Beauty. When past the age of cuteness she usually disappears as a character before re-emerging in old age as a case of Never Mess with Granny.

I would have to argue that the "Always a Pint-Sized Powerhouse" can be debated, as it implies that the character absolutely has to be small in stature, when they really just need to be cute or otherwise show a deceptive appearance where you wouldn't expect them to be able to take care of themselves. (Hence the Big Brother Instinct reference.)

Lets look at the character from Ookami San. She may be a teenager, but she's still a young woman. She is a boxer, clearly demonstrating Good Old Fisticuffs as her Weapon Of Choice, and she is shown clearly dealing blunt trauma to that goon. She may not give off the best "I want to protect her in a fight" appearance, but she's still not someone you would expect to take up Boxing as a hobby. She qualifies.

edited 16th Jan '11 10:25:39 AM by DRCEQ

Ionizer Carrier of Squirrel Flu from New Jersey, USA Since: Nov, 2009
Carrier of Squirrel Flu
#66: Jan 16th 2011 at 1:57:06 PM

Suggestion: Bludgeoning Angel Dokuro-chan?

EDIT: The pic I found was broken... It showed her with Excalibolg, but she had a cute :3 face.

EDIT again: Also, apparently I fail at linking... I can't even get it to link to the the TV Tropes page... This one: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BludgeoningAngelDokuro-chan

edited 16th Jan '11 2:06:44 PM by Ionizer

Gilphon (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#67: Jan 16th 2011 at 1:59:56 PM

Just dropping in to say that I think Raso's pics work quite well, and I honestly don't see the Off-Model thing shimaspawn's talking about.

troacctid (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#68: Jan 16th 2011 at 2:12:51 PM

[up][up] You use curly brackets when there's a hyphen. {{Bludgeoning Angel Dokuro-Chan}} = Bludgeoning Angel Dokuro-Chan

edited 16th Jan '11 2:13:13 PM by troacctid

shimaspawn from Here and Now Since: May, 2010 Relationship Status: In your bunk
#69: Jan 16th 2011 at 2:23:28 PM

It shows a cute girl with a club, but it doesn't show her wielding it and from what I've seen of the show she's not really the trope. She beats people up with it for comic effect. She's not really bruiser. She doesn't actually fight.

edited 16th Jan '11 2:23:42 PM by shimaspawn

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick
Ionizer Carrier of Squirrel Flu from New Jersey, USA Since: Nov, 2009
Carrier of Squirrel Flu
#70: Jan 16th 2011 at 2:35:30 PM

[up][up] Thanks for letting me know about the curly-brackets. That should help me out as I slowly evolve from lurker to full-on troper. tongue

[up] I guess your right. I just saw "club" in the part of the description talking about weapons and thought of her.

Anyway, I'm putting my vote behind the chick with the cat gloves. By the way, maybe we can tie a "kid-gloves" pun into the caption if we go with it. Like: "When the kid gloves come off, the kitten gloves go on." or something.

edited 16th Jan '11 2:37:38 PM by Ionizer

suedenim Teutonic Tomboy T-Girl from Jet Dream HQ Since: Oct, 2009
Teutonic Tomboy T-Girl
#71: Jan 16th 2011 at 2:40:28 PM

What Gilphon said - I don't see the "ugly" at all.

Jet-a-Reeno!
Servbot Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: Yes, I'm alone, but I'm alone and free
#72: Jan 16th 2011 at 2:57:17 PM

Lets look at the character from Ookami San. She may be a teenager, but she's still a young woman. She is a boxer, clearly demonstrating Good Old Fisticuffs as her Weapon Of Choice, and she is shown clearly dealing blunt trauma to that goon. She may not give off the best "I want to protect her in a fight" appearance, but she's still not someone you would expect to take up Boxing as a hobby. She qualifies.

The parts you emphasized were pointing to related tropes that were about kids. Little Miss Snarker, Little Miss Badass, Super-Strong Child, etc., all of them were about kids or people who looked like kids. Heck the first two used to be called Badass Lolita and Deadpan Loli before we decided that the term had too much of a sexual connotation.

EDIT 1: In fact, I'm pretty sure I remembered the examples of this trope started off as being limited to cute kids and other similar characters before Trope Decay set in to include anyone with Generic Cuteness

EDIT 2: Yep. I remembered right.

edited 16th Jan '11 3:26:47 PM by Servbot

Willbyr Hi (Y2K) Relationship Status: With my statistically significant other
Hi
#73: Jan 16th 2011 at 4:46:40 PM

Pose with gloves works for me.

Ookamikun This is going to be so much fun. (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
This is going to be so much fun.
#74: Jan 16th 2011 at 8:58:29 PM

I like the kid punching the Punisher one. It's not just a "pose", since you see it in action, and the fact that she's beating up fucking The Punisher should be enough.

DRCEQ Since: Oct, 2009

ImagePickin: CuteBruiser
20th Apr '10 12:00:00 AM

Crown Description:

Nominations for replacement images:

Total posts: 96
Top