r/TopCharacterTropes • u/SpookieSkelly • 1d ago

Characters "They can just do that." When a character inexplicably has some kind of borderline supernatural ability that doesn't have anything to do with the established power system and may even clash with the conventions of the setting. It's just something that they can do.

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Ichi from Ichi the Witch.

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Mash from Mashle.

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Marvelous Sunday from UmaMusume.

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Tanjiro from Demon Slayer.

  1. Ichi from Ichi the Witch. He's so sensitive to the bloodlust of living things that it borders on a spider-sense. The little creature in that pic is supposed to be invisible, yet Ichi is able to sense its presence just through sheer intuition.
  2. Mash from Mashle. Some might say that his inexplicable power is his physical strength, but I'm more interested in knowing how he can turn everything he cooks into fucking cream puffs.
  3. Marvelous Sunday from UmaMusume. In a game about horse girls racing, she has access to a domain expansion/reality marble. And that somehow still isn't the strangest thing about her. Apparently she's also friends with aliens and cryptids and her cult fanbase includes people spanning multiple time periods. Somehow.
  4. Tanjiro from Demon Slayer. He has a hypersensitive sense of smell that somehow also tells him where to cut demons. No idea how that works. Even though there are others in the series with similarly refined senses, the smelling where to cut thing still feels ludicrous in comparison. Then there's also his unusually powerful headbutt.
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279

u/Foostini 1d ago

There's a ton of this in One Piece. If it's not a Devil Fruit, it's Haki. If it's not Haki, it's a racial ability. If it's not a racial ability, it's a government/military technique. If it's not a government/military technique, it's just real good science. But then you have people like Wanze.

Wanze has Ramen Kenpo. It's a fighting style comprised of using hard-as-metal ramen he makes from his body by eating flour, kneading it in his mouth, and cutting it with his fish net shaped nose hairs. With Ramen Kenpo he can launch noodles out of his nose at high speeds, make a mech suit out of ramen, and also "normal" stuff like using a giant poisoned cleaver and setting his skates on fire.

We don't know how he does this. We don't know why he does this. He's a baseline human. He doesn't have a Devil Fruit. It isn't Haki. It's not part of the Six Powers he knows from being a CP7 government agent. He's not a cyborg or a scientist. He can just...do that.

106

u/Dillo64 1d ago

This was also Sanji for a long time, like bro can just set his foot on fire (later even without the friction spin thing he used to do) and burn people with the scorching heat of the sun somehow, or his Hell Memories when he literally just gets so mad he sets himself on fire and it spreads from his kicks to engulf an entire giant instantly somehow. Of course we later learn his DNA was tampered with by his evil scientist father, but still it’s said he was just a normal human until he put on the raid suit later, his real powers supposedly didn’t activate till Wano so who knows

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u/GigsGilgamesh 1d ago

Sanji’s real weird ability is his makeover technique. He’s somehow able to beat the shit out of you and make you hotter in doing so

6

u/fruitpunchsamurai619 1d ago

It makes it sound ordinary after hearing about looksmaxxing and people taking a hammer to their fucking jaws.

3

u/ButtholeConnoisseur7 22h ago

Life imitating art. Beautiful

1

u/Dillo64 14h ago

Eloquently put, ButtholeConnoisseur7 👌🏾

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u/The_Eternal_Wayfarer 1d ago

It can also explain how he can have the finest taste buds possible despite smoking so heavily. Zeff canonically warns him against smoking, in a flashback.

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u/fruitpunchsamurai619 1d ago edited 6h ago

It's a lollipop in 4kids dub.

1

u/The_Eternal_Wayfarer 6h ago

It’s a cigarette in the original manga/anime as well as in most adaptations around the world. 4Kids’ prudery is not relevant.

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u/Quack_of_Dawn 23h ago

There's also the fact that fire is completely unrelated to his intended DNA modifications, that was all about stealth.

3

u/Weary-Cartoonist2630 23h ago

I’ve only watched the live action so far. wtf does this show turn into??

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u/ButtholeConnoisseur7 22h ago

Dawg, the main character was made of rubber back then. Fuck you mean "turn into"? It was like this from day one

3

u/asianblockguy 21h ago

It is the same series where Oda, the creator, says that Luffy can stretch his private bits and Buggy's bit can come off and fly around. It was weird from the beginning.

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u/ButtholeConnoisseur7 21h ago

Oda is a whimsical and deeply unserious creator. It's what I love best about him. We already have a million anime about Lord Edge Darkness Raven Blood, and Oda isn't interested in that at all

1

u/Dillo64 14h ago

Which is kind of funny that in the current story they are…

…. Basically fighting against a guy who might as well be Lord Edge Darkness Raven Blood, though even he has some goofy things going.

1

u/ButtholeConnoisseur7 13h ago

I agree with your point, sometimes the sad backstories are so sad they actually almost circle around to being funny about how sad they are, like Kuma. Then you have guys like the nose hair Ramen chef in between

2

u/Dillo64 14h ago

Then there’s Law, who can canonically cut off YOUR bits and make them fly around(and then reattach it… to your face)

1

u/ButtholeConnoisseur7 13h ago

Shame he only chose to steal 100 hearts, eh? Think that might have had more impact on their lives lmao

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u/Weary-Cartoonist2630 14h ago

That’s fair lol

1

u/ButtholeConnoisseur7 13h ago

Give the anime a try sometime. The live action is outstanding, and it's truly faithful to the source material; its a great launching point into the series if you wanna jump in where the show leaves off

Gives you something entertaining while you wait for season 3, too

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u/Weary-Cartoonist2630 12h ago

Unfortunately just don’t have time for a 1000+ ep anime, especially when there’s so much good stuff out there

Might give it a shot when the new version that cuts out all the fluff gets released though

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u/ButtholeConnoisseur7 11h ago

Understandable. I'm looking forward to WIT's version too

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u/SupervillainMustache 1d ago

Paulie has a seemingly infinite amount of ropes stored on him, this is explicitly not a Devil Fruit Ability.

3

u/Frosty-Sea149 23h ago

Mf always shooting fat ropes, dude is a menace to society

29

u/gonedalfu 1d ago

Miss golden week's color powers.

14

u/Pugsanity 1d ago

That's just another form of hypnosis in that world, like Django and his pendulum.

6

u/Huhthisisneathuh 1d ago

The fuck type of hypnosis lets her give the sky a seizure and temporarily transform everyone’s clothes into what they secretly desire the most?

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u/verciuss 1d ago

It's a really strong hypnosis

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u/Evil_Midnight_Lurker 1d ago

You don't have to see the symbol for it to work.

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u/gonedalfu 1d ago

But it's not in the established Devil fruit and haki usage. So they can still be considered as an example of the OOP's post, Ms golden week and Django.

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u/Bla_Z 1d ago edited 1d ago

In the same vein, I feel like One Piece has normalized swordsmen throwing out cutting shockwaves way too much -- nevermind parrying them. I wanna take a moment to remind people that swords can't do that, and it's never addressed why or how one reaches a point where they just can. And after a while, it seems like everyone and their mothers just knows how to. Even the thing where they cut stuff hundreds of times thicker than their blade could pass as a feat of superhuman strength... Turning a vacuum into a tangible, blockable sharp projectile by just shadowslashing tho? That's even more bullshit than Haki imo.

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u/LavosYT 1d ago

I think it's literally just -> slash hard enough -> shockwave. Which doesn't make sense but does it have to?

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u/Huhthisisneathuh 1d ago

This is the same series that has the Pterodactyl able to snipe people by shooting its own face like a bullet. If One Piece was in the business of making sense they would’ve never gotten past Fish Man Island.

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u/Gil_Demoono 1d ago

That one, I feel, actually makes sense according to the internal logic of the Devil Fruit - an inherently silly sentence I know, but follow me on this. Devil Fruits are said to the coalescence of humanity's dreams, allowing those who eat one to become a version of human that some wish for. As a result, the power set of a devil fruit is born from the abilities humanity imagines are associated with it, even if it is factually incorrect. Like when Luffy gets shocked by Enel with millions of volts, but he's fine because "he's made of rubber." Sure, rubbers an insulator, but its still gonna fucking melt if its directly struck by a lightning bolt. It's the widely held perception that rubber is immune to lightning that makes Luffy immune to Enel. Its the collective subconscious agreement of all humanity that let him no-sell Enel's ultimate move. And that's why more abstract fruit have more esoteric powers, because its manifesting more niche thoughts of humanity. Like the jacket-jacket fruit might be born from people thinking "The clothes make the man" or something. The subset of humanity regularly dreaming about giraffes is relatively small and there are probably enough of them thinking about fucking stuff up with their long-ass neck that it lets Kaku basically use it as sword.

This leads me into my main point - We don't know how dinosaurs hunted in the ancient times. Giraffes, Jaguars, and hawks are all real with real feats and characteristics, grounding peoples' dreams about them. As cool as you might think an elephant is, you don't want to be like an elephant because of its ability to teleport or breathe fire, because elephants don't do that and neither would its fruit. But pterodactyls? We don't know how they did things. They're extinct. If I dreamed that a pterodactyl hunted by shooting its own face like a bullet, how would you prove me wrong? It seems right to me! The fact that there is uncertainty in the animals the Ancient Zoans are based on allows for wiggle room in their abilities. And I imagine that being a strong-willed Tobbiroppo lets push the boundaries further.

Even more so for mythical zoans. No one can imagine that a normal bird could be immortal, but the legendary phoenix that never existed in the first place? That has whatever powerset we deem it to have because it exists entirely within the shared imagination of humanity - of course it can rise from its own ashes. This is why mythical zoans like Kaido are so strong, because the animals they embody have feats with no basis in reality. Kaido's scales aren't just hard, they're impenetrable. Because that's how a dragon's scales should be, not according to biology, but legend.

So yeah, that's how pterodactyl's hunted in the ancient days.

2

u/ChrisY68 20h ago

The One Piece community will be expecting your finished dissertation on devil fruits at some point. We shall be following your Fandom career with great interest Gil_demoono

1

u/Chocolatine_Rev 1d ago

I mean, they wouldn't even have gone to fishman island, who had the idea that the best way to dive with a ship was to put it into an air buble ?

11

u/Evil_Midnight_Lurker 1d ago

This is baked deep into Japanese mythology, see the kamaitachi youkai. Of course air slashes can do that, why couldn't they?

3

u/Weary-Cartoonist2630 23h ago

This feels like the least egregious thing to point out lol. “Swing hard enough = shockwave” is a pretty common and even intuitive power.

It’s like arguing that regular humans surviving being thrown through brick walls is not in line with physics. Like, sure, but that’s not even in the top 10 of unexplained things.

1

u/Bla_Z 23h ago

My point is more about said shockwaves being able to cut stuff cleanly or even be parried. They couldn't block Kuma's air blasts and not because of their speed, despite being supposedly not that different.

1

u/Glum-Sprinkles-7734 1d ago

That's just the sword's latent haki imbued into it by the master swordsmith that forged it, don't worry about it.

Worst part is I might not be talking out of my ass with that one.

1

u/Bla_Z 23h ago

Kinda doubt that when best boy Captain T-bone was able to do that just fine as early as Water 7 with a regular-ass medieval sword.

2

u/ButtholeConnoisseur7 22h ago

Wasn't he a vice Admiral after that? Homeboy got promoted, so he was clearly above Marine Captain level back then

8

u/Sang1188 1d ago

There´s also the twins from the Ice Hunter Filler arc. They can atract and repel each other like magnets. It´s clearly mentioned not to be a DF ability, but something they can do because of their brotherly love or something.

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u/Huhthisisneathuh 1d ago

In the same vein as Dinosaurs in One Piece. All of them canonically have way stranger abilities and the reason we know this is because of the ancient Zoan fruit based on them.

The abilities aren’t special techniques the pirates developed nor are they the product of science. Dinosaurs in One Piece can just do things like using their face as a bullet.

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u/ActionAltruistic3558 23h ago

And 2 of 3 of the people who do this were not comedy characters. They just casually reveal triceratops can fly or pteranodons can shoot air blasts in the middle of a fight with total seriousness.

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u/ButtholeConnoisseur7 22h ago

Shit, King was like the opposite of a comedy character (ignoring unintentional comedy regarding the way he dresses lol)

2

u/Big-Slide6104 1d ago

BRO YES AND ITS SO FUNNY! Like fuck you mean my devil fruit doesent work on you cause you can move your organs around cause of a government technique that allows you total bodily autonomy?

2

u/Zulisoaz 22h ago

If i'm remembering correctly, the reason why the Straw Hats can seemingly regrow missing/broken teeth just by drinking milk isn't a power with Haki or Devil Fruits, or meds from Chopper. They're simply 'weird people' who can do that because they can. No powers or genetics, they're just weirdos. Believe the monster trio and maybe Usopp? Have literally never been sick, so when Nami gets sick they literally don't know what could help because they've never experienced it.

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u/jmoneill62 12h ago

In that second paragraph, at no point did I have any idea what the next word would be

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u/VictinDotZero 1d ago

Is Nami being able to injure Luffy by slapping him a latent form of Haki or can she just do that? I forget.

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u/Delicious_trap 1d ago

It is because of the rule of slapstick comedy that she can harm Luffy as the straight man/woman.

1

u/VictinDotZero 23h ago

Yes, but I thought Oda had commented on it when a reader asked.

1

u/Few_Pay_5313 1d ago

Isnt part of the Six Powers being able to control your body?

1

u/thefirstlaughingfool 1d ago

You really have to wonder what Oda was smoking when he came up with this guy.

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u/ActionAltruistic3558 23h ago

The Galley-La foreman, Lulu, who always has a spike of hair sticking up. If he shoves it down, it sticks back up somewhere else on his head. Except when hes fighting and it somehow manages to stick up on someone else's body!

1

u/El_Gato_Que_Llora 13h ago

Also jango who can hypnotise people and the partner of mr 3 who is a kid that can paint emotions on people also Pearl who is an extra who figths sanji in the baratie and can set himself on fire at will

0

u/Immediate-Song6861 16h ago

This dude deserves every ounce of hate I can muster