< Combat Pragmatist

Combat Pragmatist/Anime and Manga

  • Jagi from Fist of the North Star made a career out of doing this. Be it spitting needles, using a gun, or making a hole in an oil tanker and lighting the leaking oil on fire with him on top of said tanker.
    • This translates into the video game, in which his move set involves using a shotgun, setting oil barrels and gasoline puddles on fire, throwing needles, chaining his opponent to a cinder block, using pillars and random junk as weapons, pistol-whipping, and the aforementioned oil tanker trick.
    • Jackal was no novice at this either. His primary offense was throwing Dynamite, with concealed blades and other such dirty tricks.
  • Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha
    • Nanoha Takamachi has no problem shooting people in the back, magically freezing them so they can't resist her attacks, et cetera. It's worth noting that every dirty tactic she uses on someone else is a tactic that was once used on her. (And her attacks tend to be non-lethal anyway, so she has almost no worries about killing her rival in battle.)
    • Deed tends to take her enemies by surprise, often by jumping out to suddenly attack, attacking from behind, or getting up from supposedly being unconscious for a sneak attack.
    • The very first thing we see Curren do on-screen is shank Hayate In the Back.
  • Most of Go Nagai's characters have absolutely no trouble using cheap, dirty tricks to win their fights and nowehere they show they know of, feel concerned about or bound to rules of fair play and sportmanship. Given what is in stake when they fight, it is unsurprising. Several examples are:
  • Section 9 from Ghost in The Shell is probably one of the least heroic teams of protagonist police officers. As they are fighting terrorism and organized crime, and the government and judical system is completely corrupt, they have the policy to kill any armed suspects on sight and only try to make arrests when it's relatively safe and any other mission objectives have been secured.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam: As the original bearer of the White Devil name, Amuro Ray is a textbook example, basically doing anything and everything in his power to kill his enemy. He has no qualms shooting distracted opponents, sacrificing various armaments, and ambushing opponents. He even takes this to the logical conclusion, using the Gundam as a decoy in order to rush to the enemy cockpit and take out Char.
    • Char was no slouch either: the first thing he did after realizing that his Zaku's standard weapons were useless against the Gundam's armour was to repeatly kick the Gundam over the cockpit to stun the pilot, and, after being forced to retreat, he brought mecha-sized axes that could damage the Gundam and an anti-ship rocket launcher (good enough to pierce the armour of those five batteships at Loum, good enough to kill the Gundam). His other tactics include force the Gundam to re-enter atmosphere out of the White Base (the only reason it didn't work was that the designer had equipped the Gundam for just that, use strategically placed bombs to drive an enemy battleship to block the hangar of Luna II, and infiltrate the headquarters of the Federation to destroy the new mobile suits before they could be deployed.
    • The cake for the original series goes to both a group of Zeon soldiers who nearly destroyed the Gundam by jumping it on jetpacks and jetbikes and place demolition charges (the Gundam survived because they had only time bombs, and the crew managed to defuse them just in time), and M'kuve, who used the same trick on much larger scale (he was the supreme commander of the Zeon invasion force, he had the resources) to down the White Base.
    • Mobile Suit Gundam Wing: In the final story arc, Zechs Merquise (previously a Worthy Opponent and thus a major subverter of this trope) has become the leader of the space rebel group White Fang. Treize Khushrenada, leader of the Earth's military, proposes a one-on-one duel in order to decide the conflict. Zechs' response? Fire his space fortess's Wave Motion Gun, saying that a simple duel won't resolve the underlying causes of the war (for the record, it misses).
    • Mobile Suit Gundam AGE: The UE may have set the record for combat pragmatism in Gundam. They camp enemy hangars, shoot down supply crates, don't hesitate in killing off defenseless foes, promote infighting in their enemies, back off when faced with superior opposition... their effectiveness in battle is as much due to their intelligence as their advanced technology.
      • Second generation Flit doesn't care about beating his opponents in mobile suits, as demonstrated when he responded to Desil's challenge by unleashing a full AA barrage from his battleship. "This is war. The manner in which I defeat you is meaningless."
  • Real Bout High School
    • Asuka Kuronari. Sure, she's a ninja, but she proves almost suicidally determined to come out on top against Kyoichi Kunugi, who has her hopelessly outclassed throughout the fight. That is, until she starts crying her eyes out, telling him her pathetic life's story and deploying a smoke bomb while he's distracted, allowing her compatriot Xiaoxing the chance to attack him.
    • Xiaoxing herself, as well; her entire fighting style revolves around using Instant Knots to tie her opponent up, thereby incapacitating them.
    • Kunugi often uses the Hannibal Lecture to disarm opponents (figuratively speaking) while confusing them with illusions and violently seizing every opening in their defense.
  • Ranma ½:
    • Ranma Saotome does this whenever he battles an opponent that is clearly more powerful than him. When facing his rival Ryoga, who'd been powered up by the Mark of the Gods, he resorted to using the "Saotome Desperation Techniques", which were basically just creative ways to make his opponent look away from him so could attack them while they were distracted ("What's that behind you?!", "Look, there's 500 yen on the ground!", etc.). When he was getting his butt kicked by prince Herb, a man with an irrational hatred of breasts (due to be being cursed by a naked girl while he was distracted by her boobs), Ranma repeatedly flashed his breasts at him, until the guy was so overwhelmed with anger that his accuracy was shot to heck. The man is the heir to the Saotome Anything-Goes School of Martial Arts for a reason.
    • Strangely enough, the other two key elements of his personal style (alongside this) are Beat Them At Their Own Game and Honor Before Reason.
    • Then there is the a twist on this with the "Saotome Ultimate Desperation Technique: Crouch of the Wild Tiger" which is getting on your knees and saying "I'm sorry" constantly. Lampshaded by Cologne on how stupid it is till Akane shows up and it gets used well.
    • KODACHI. KUNO. She is, without a doubt, the dirtiest fighter of the series. She has weapons that can instantly turn lethal at will. She'll use her ribbon to grab and immobilize her opponent or throw objects at him/her. She bends the rules like mad and uses cheap tricks such as trying to shake Ranma's hand with tacks between her fingers and paralysis gas and pills in food and flowers, trying to put her opponents at a disadvantage even before a match. She will do anything it takes to win and sink lower than the Titanic to achieve victory.
  • Joseph Joestar from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Part 2 gleefully declares himself to be "a master at cheating". He's the main character, too. His grandson and son (born in that order) inherit some of his skill and his main character privileges.
  • Askeladd in Vinland Saga is more than willing to just have his men stick an opponent full of arrows then fight him one on one.
    • Thorgrimm as well.
  • Kiritsugu Emiya of Fate/Zero wants to save people, but came to understand that saving some means sacrificing others and decided that at least he could save the many by sacrificing the few, and became an expert in killing mages with extremely low-blow tactics. This leads to personality conflicts with the "knight of the sword", Saber, who he summoned as a servant in the Fourth Holy Grail War and who greatly believes in fighting in an upright fashion.
    • To a lesser degree Archer, who grew up to learn the same lessons Kiritsugu did, and grates on Saber and the Fifth War's Lancer with his combat pragmatism.
    • One Crowning Moment of Awesome of Kiritsugu involved using C4 explosives to bring down a magically defended building. Practical indeed.
      • And he considered this worryingly soft of himself because he put in a bomb threat to get the civilians out about fifteen minutes before. Even though his target would most likely never even get said warning from the hotel staff let alone bother to think it was dangerous.
        • This is the raison d'être of the Assassin class. They're unfit for fighting so they make extensive use of their Presence Concealment skill while targeting Masters instead of their Servants.
  • Lone Wolf and Cub's Ogami Itto has been known to kill his quarries with a sword... or spears or naginatas... or his own bare hands... or any other damn thing within his reach, from a wooden board split in two with a knife hand strike to a proto-gatling gun.
    • It's lampshaded heavily how dirty he fights. If he's facing someone with similar skills, you can expect him to use some kind of trick. This includes throwing his sword (quite dishonorable and unthinkable for a samurai) and using his own and only child as a bait.
    • Of course, Yagyu Retsudo is equally pragmatic either in battlefield as in politics. He just has to do it undercover in order to not losing face (which Ogami also uses in his advantage).
  • Saitou Hajime in Rurouni Kenshin, who explains this to an idealistic youngster by stating that in a real fight, there is no such thing as fair.
  • Rakan of Mahou Sensei Negima occasionally classifies. Lifting skirts up to flee from a fake dimension, plus stealing the girl's panties certainly does.
    • A flashback shows Rakan defeating Eishun by distracting him with a bunch of naked women.
  • Honorable mention must go to Gantz's Masaru Kota. When threatened by a much larger bruiser what does he do? He catches the bastard with his pants down (quite literally -- he ambushed him on a toilet) and beats him to kingdom come. Can't get more pragmatic than that.
  • Berserk's Guts is no honorable swordsman. He's willing to let opponents beat him up so that he can blast them with his Arm Cannon at point-blank range, bites an opponent's sword in one fight after Griffith jumps on his sword, and actually prefers to kill opponents with long-ranged weapons rather than engaging in melee combat.
    • And this doesn't even mention things like his willingness to take innocents hostage if he thinks that it'll give him an advantage, which fits the concept of "fighting dirty" much better than anything mentioned there. At one point, he uses a small child, hanging by his clothes on his sword, as bait to distract a swarm of vicious, homicidal "fairies" into chasing him into a barn where he blows them up. The kid doesn't get hurt, either.
      • At one point, Guts is training Isidoro (a young boy who seems to believe Berserk is a SHONEN manga) and Isidoro nearly pulls off a sneaky attack using his speed and smaller size to his advantage. Isidoro berates himself for trying something so dishonorable, but Guts praises the pragmatism of the attack, telling Isidoro that he needs to use every advantage he has.
  • Vagabond has Miyamoto Musashi who ironically embodies this trope more so than merely being a swordsman; more specifically he is described as "flexible and unfettered," taking the opportunity as it comes. Notably demonstrated in fighting the Yoshioka at Ichijouji, as he takes the opportunity of showing up an hour early and from the mountains instead of the road, allowing him to severely wound their leader right at the beginning. He may have defeated Inshun, Shishido Baiken (his Dual-Wielding was to overcome the different mechanics involved in the chain and sickle), and the Yoshioka brothers (defeating the second brother's attempt to clinch and set up a killing blow by gutting him with his own wakizashi on instinct), but this is the defining fight for him. It's also a defining fight for the Yoshioka as they try and almost succeed at this, but can't quite "reach that far" and he mostly succeeds at fending off their attempts. (The closest they ever come to actually killing Musashi is when Nanpo Yoichibe tackles him to the ground and holds him down, but it fails since his cohorts hesitate to simply stab Musashi to death through Yoichibe.)
    • In general the Yoshioka leadership failed to prepare themselves and their followers for the essential fact that instead of dueling it was kill-or-be-killed.
  • Yaiba from the eponymous manga firmly believes in this trope. Well, his mentor is Miyamoto Musashi after all... that explains a lot of things...
  • Full Metal Panic!! - Sousuke, Sousuke, Sousuke. Being raised on guerilla warfare and land mines does not an honorable fighter make. Apart from pulling the Indy stint no less than three times and inducing two of the most painful looking crotch stomps known to man, he also once saw it fit to use guns and tear gas in an official martial arts spar...and when that was barred, a hand grenade.
  • Rokudo Mukuro from Katekyo Hitman Reborn He pretty much uses 90% of the techniques listed in the Fighting Dirty trope. It might be a contributing reason (other than being a Bishonen) to why he's so popular.
  • Ryo Narushima of Shamo has this as his signature. This is part of him being The Unfettered.
  • In Kenichi the Mightiest Disciple, they take the titular character to visit another martial artists to learn 'tactics' which amounts to pragmatic fighting. The lesson doesn't really take.
    • Also, Fake!Loki counts as well -- during his fight with Kenichi, he pulled a tazer, among other nasty tricks (Although they didn't work well at all). The real one is even more so.

"An honest person is another name for a fool!"

  • Slayers has Xelloss. Gaav states that Xelloss's specialty is to attack someone in the physical plane from the astral plane, which would best be characterized as a sneak attack (as Gaav demonstrates). Also, in Xelloss's battle against Valgaav he uses some very dirty tricks, one of the most notable being when a stray blast put a team mate in danger (Filia), he rescues her then immediately drops her on Valgaav.
    • And then there was his cheap shot on Lina to get his hands on Galvayra...a pressure point shot to put her out? Practical.
    • Lina's fond of this herself. Just watch her first three "fights" in Mipross Island in the first movie.
  • Most characters in Blade of the Immortal, except the truly bushido believing Samurai (and sometimes not even those), are like this. The sympathetic villain Anotsu even based his entire sword school Itto Ryu on this concept, saying that the only thing which matters in a fight is that you win and survive but not how. His main goal at the beginning of the series was even to destroy other schools who, in his view, only teach fancy moves by making their students hit immovable practice targets.
  • Afro Samurai has no trouble with breaking most of the rules of bushido if they'll save his life. One of his trademark moves is using an enemy as a Human Shield. He'll use innocent bystanders, too.
  • In Fushigi Yuugi, this is typically Tasuki's first instinct. His first line of attack is a fan that shoots fire, and he's not above combining it with a Dynamic Entry. Nor is he above taking hostages, or attacking while his opponent is talking or otherwise distracted. On the rare occasion he's put Honor Before Reason, he explicitly regrets it.
  • Jet Black from Cowboy Bebop is something of a master of this trope, utilizing head butts, glass bottles, the element of surprise, and his own spaceship to deadly effect; in one instance he is able to turn the tide of battle against a much better trained opponent by stopping a bullet with his own bionic arm.
  • Bleach:
    • Ichimaru Gin has the philosophy of striking like a snake in battle. His signature style involves ambush tactics as a result. The anime even takes this a step further and has him throw dust into Hitsugaya's eyes when they fight.
    • Ganjuu knows he's not strong enough to defeat Yumichika, so uses every dirty trick in the book hoping that Yumichika will drop his guard because it's so obvious they're not equals in battle. It's his only chance, it allows him to target Yumichika's hair with a firework, and it works.
    • Kyoraku lives by this philosophy. He even lectures his allies to remember that when people go into war both sides are evil so there's no point in trying to be honorable about it.
    • Starrk, when he gets serious, will use tactics like shooting his opponents as soon as they get distracted and pretending to run out of ammo to lure enemies out of hiding. He's not Kyoraku's Evil Counterpart for nothing.
    • Iba tries to teach Ikkaku that he should be more this way when Ikkaku throws a fight to protect his ideals.
    • Ginjou, while training Ichigo, slashes his eyes to force him to fight blind. He also deliberately invites Orihime onto the battlefield because he understands that if Ichigo has someone to protect, he'll be more determined in his fighting.
    • Ulquiorra, Tsukishima and Ginjou all understand what it means to fight an archer. They immediately go for Uryuu's bow-hand and injure it beyond use.
    • Kira Izuru thinks there's no honor in war; in his POV, War Is Hell so the most merciful way to handle it is to live by this trope to bring peace soon. His zanpakutou's power is designed to help him achieve this.
    • Momo Hinamori knows she lacks physical strength, but she has very strong spiritual power which gives her high proficiency in Kidou. She is therefore more than willing to secretly lay a Kidou net around the battlefield to ambush the enemy and then set fire to her trapped foes.
    • The members of the Vandenreich are all about this. They attack earlier than the agreed day on the Declaration of War. They don't wait til the smoke clears before shooting you. They attack you while you're in the middle of Calling Your Attacks or transforming.
  • Revy from Black Lagoon often assumes this role when she's not going for absolutely mind-boggling combat stunts. When a neo-Nazi corners her and goes on a speech about how mighty his Luger is, she shoots him in the gut, yells at him for wasting all his time talking, and then shoots him in the head.
    • And on a larger scale we have Balalaika of Hotel Moscow, who fights her mob wars like military operations. Her men smashed the Washimine Group special forces-style, complete with snipers, frag grenades, flash-bangs, explosives and whatnot and suffered no casualty; the only loss from Hotel Moscow is the ex-KGB and his men, who is not part of Balalaika's ex-airborne troops and who she never likes anyway.
  • Despite often winding up in unfair fights anyways, most of the cast of Fullmetal Alchemist pull dirty tricks in at least one big fight, if not all of them. Ed is a good example--in one fight he gets a foe to drop his guard by shouting to his brother (who has not just sneaked up behind him), and in another he realizes that the ninja he is fighting gets sloppy whenever her master is insulted and milks it for all it's worth. The first time he "beats" Alphonse while sparring he throws a towel in his brother's face and knocks him to the ground before he can react, while injured heavily enough that Al is afraid to hit back.
    • Wandering emperor Ling uses this tactic on Envy by throwing sand into his eyes when the homunculus, after snaring him, offers a sadistic choice on how he should kill him. Envy shouts at him in shock and anger on his cheating trick, but Ling counters that all the years of constant assassination attempts on him had made him willing to use any dirty trick in the book to live and run his country.
    • Major General Armstrong is also a big proponent of pragmatism, although on a more abstract scale. She considers racism a luxury she cannot afford, because she needs varying viewpoints to evaluate the best course of action. She will also pursue any technology or any form of alchemy that will give her troops an advantage in combat.
      • Just on abstract scale? Pfft. During Sloth's raid into her base, her first reaction is sack him with anti-tank recoilless rifle. When that failed to stop him (and at that point, Sloth is pretty much The Juggernaut), she opts to freeze him using northern cold climate. Practical indeed.
  • Pretty much everyone in Darker than Black, but particularly Hei. He attacks from ambush whenever possible, and is particularly fond of electrocuting his enemies through anything handy, be it a pool of blood, a car, or a well-thrown choke wire. If he's in a bad situation, he ninjas away, and at one point even jumped off a building so he could come back a few minutes later and attack his opponent when he wasn't expecting it. His lack of compunctions about cheating is one of several reasons for the Fan Nickname "Chinese Electric Batman."
  • When not participating in sanctioned matches, the protagonists of Pokémon Special have demonstrated pragmatic strategies like attacking the opposing trainer directly or even destroying their opponent's Pokeballs.
    • Villains do it too, though sometimes more in the Kick the Dog territory...
  • In Medaka Box, the Abnormal Munakata turns out to be a combat pragmatist, though strange; he starts out fighting with multiple swords pulled out of Hammerspace, and once he determines the way Zenkichi fights(barehanded, by the way), he pulls a gigantic mace out of nowhere. When Zenkichi catches it with his shirt, Munakata pulls out pistols.
  • You wouldn't expect it from Hellsing, which might be better titled "Blood Knights Come to London" (Call forth your demons, regenerate your legs! FIGHT BACK! and of course Gentlemen, I love war...) but then we recall Bernardotte giving a little speech on how humans fight vampires, complete with demonstrations. And the memorable assertion that claymore mines are just things, they have no killing intent.
  • Just about everybody in One Piece, but considering it's about pirates it's to be expected.
    • Most notable on the heroic side is Usopp. His fighting style revolves around playing dead, distracting his enemy with horrible phrases or noises, smoke screens, oil slicks, etc. The first opponent he defeated by playing dead, hiding, dousing him in high proof alcohol, setting him on fire, and pounding him with a hammer until he stopped moving. It was played for laughs.
    • Usopp has also defeated another opponent by discovering her fear of spiders and attacking her purely at the psychological level. He renders her unconscious, foaming at the mouth, using supplies he scrounged up and never having to deal any physical damage.
    • Luffy himself bites, hits people in the crotch, takes human shields, and has hit more women than Ike Turner.
  • Touma of A Certain Magical Index shows shades of this; he's perfectly willing to punch women full on in the face, use psychological warfare and throw a shovel full of dust into the eyes of another. This is entirely justified as most of his opponents have won the Superpower Lottery like you wouldn't believe, while all he has is an Anti-Magic fist.
  • Holyland points out several times the differences between sparring in the tournament or training context and fighting on the tough streets where one has to do whatever it takes to win.
  • Kyou Kara Ore Wa!!!!: being a manga about school delinquents pretty much every character tried something dirty at least once. That said, the protagonist Takashi Mitsuhashi outclassed everyone: when fighting a supposed yakuza and a street gang, he feigned being stabbed to beat the enemy scared by his willingness to fight even when dying, and then convinced his best friend to cancel his debt; when facing a bear (it was actually a man in a suit, but Mitsuhashi didn't know), he suddenly kicked it in the crotch with all his might; when facing a huge American wrestler who could shrug his every punch or kick, Mitsuhashi got him in a chase until he was tired before slugging him; he routinely uses people as weapons and baits, especially if he's supposed to help them. In fact, when he stormed a delinquent-filled school, his allies fully expected him to use them as expendable baits to get at the enemy leader (they were OK with that, as long as he got at the enemy leaders. He slugged him in front of his henchmen). And don't even try martial arts or knives: he's still stronger and faster than any martial artist he faced but one he outsmarted, and when a guy tried throwing knives at him he caught all weapons with a ping-pong racket.
    • As of chapter 238, Mitsuhashi has been topped by the current foe, Kitagawa: he brought a gun to a fistfight. Partially subverted when he's scared by Mitsuhashi's ally Takasaki and miss him three times at point blank.
  • Puella Magi Madoka Magica: Homura Akemi is this with good reason. Given the nature of her powers, she doesn't have any real offensive capabilities and has to resort to stealing conventional weaponry from the local Yakuza and the military. She also makes her own bombs.
  • Almost everyone in Claymore have no hesitation to fight four on one, strike without warning or play dirty. The only person who does insist on fighting fair is a young and naive Claymore whose idealistic mindset ends up driving her to become the Big Bad.
  • The crew of the Outlaw Star.

Jim: Hey Gene, let's beat this guy.. even if it means fighting dirty.
Gene: You got it. The fun's just getting started.

  • Air Gear is made of this trope, so far it's easier to count the amount of times the protagonists have bested their opponents without recurring to cheap tricks than an actual straight fight, to give an example, in a battle aboard jets (yes, the kind that fly at supersonic speed, don't ask) Kazu and Agito/Akito team up against two opponents, each team combines their respective strongest attack and charge head-on, but turns out Kazu and Agito/Akito where just an illusion and their opponents fell to the sea because there was nothing to clash on.
  • Why does a Medical angeloid seem so sure when challenging a Battle angeloid to a fight in Heaven's Lost Property? The answer is simpler than you would think.
  • Balsa The spearwielder in Seirei no Moribito. When injured and outnumbered she rushed one of her attackers, and smashed him in the head with rock in one swift motion, before collapsing moments later.
  • Kore wa Zombie Desu ka?: Mystletain Kick, IS NOT A KICK. It consists of Haruna bisecting the opponent with her Chainsaw Good.
  • Mylene from 009-1 is a very effective Action Girl and has no qualms about using all the tactics she can when she fights. The way she beats Egg is notable. She reveals that her earrings allow her to track and dodge incoming bullets and takes them off. Egg in turn tells her that his eyes allow him to read her next move and agrees to fight their next duel at night. Mylene wins and reveals that she lied — her super sensitive hearing is built into her body.
  • Phaia from Spunky Knight has no problem doing this especially if the enemy did it first after a Lady of War drugged her with an aphrodisiac with "unique" results and had her on the ropes, Phaia promptly lactated in her eyes long enough to almost kill the enemy, forcing her and her gang to retreat.
  • In Sailor Moon, we have Eudial, who, in her battles against the Sailor Senshi, discarded magic or complicated plans and used guns that could extract an Heart Crystal faster than the Daimons that she brought with herself only to provide cover for her escape, flamethrowers capable to overpower Sailor Moon's attacks , and even a few dozens machine guns! The latter served to show why you don't just shoot the Sailor Senshi: the machine guns shot and hit Sailor Neptune until they ran out of ammo, and, while battered, she wasn't even bleeding.
  • No Name from Sword of the Stranger gives a lesson on combat pragmatism during his first fight sequence. He uses his sheathed katana to toss a cooking pot filled with boiling water at the aggressor, and then ends up killing another guy without even having to DRAW HIS SWORD.
    • He doesn't have a monopoly on the trope though, as pretty much everyone but Luo-Lang qualifies to some degree or another. Luo-Lang is exempt because he's like a foot taller than everyone else, and hops around like Yoda on crack.
  • This suddenly becomes abundant in Fairy Tail during the X791 arc. Raven Tail resorts to holding a child hostage and getting outside interference in battles to beat Lucy, while Fairy Tail slips Jellal into their team disguised as Mystogan. Mavis allows this because he's one of the strongest mages shown thus far, and she wants Fairy Tail to win.
  • Ganta from Deadman Wonderland starts out as a kid who's never been in a fight before, but in his first fight, he shoots the ceiling to bring it down on his opponent. In his second fight, he ricochets a projectile into the back of his opponent's head, then headbutts her. Yeah, he knows how to use his environment.
  • Habara of Daily Lives of High School Boys, despite being a reformed bully, still has absolutely no understanding of the concept of fair play. She doesn't punch, she gouges. She was even ready to bash her friends Yanagin and Ikushima's heads in with a large piece of rock when they prepared to fight each other. Cue an "Oh Crap" reaction from both girls.
  • Code Geass has a few examples.
    • Lelouch gladly exploits every possible advantage to win his battles, including causing a devastating avalanche at one point to bury a sizable portion of the enemy force (and the town below). His idea of a fair duel is to bring in allies and drop the terrain out from under his enemies.
    • Luciano Bradley also uses these tactics, except he does it because he's a Complete Monster sadist who likes to torture his victims and commit murder on a grand scale, not out of any need to do so.
  • Zagi Fenrir of Jyu-Oh-Sei. His favorite strategy in a one-on-one fight is to deliberately drop his sword, blind the enemy with his cape, and then kill them with a hidden blade. This is about as honorable as his fighting gets; he also might decide to slaughter an entire Ring of people without warning just because they happen to be in his way. Other characters try to call him out on this, to which he responds with scorn.
  • Elfen Lied has several examples, because most fights are high risk, they'll do anything to win.
    • Lucy uses numerous tactics, often throwing nearby objects at her opponents in rapid succession. If an opertunity presents itself that distracts her opponents, she will seize it and move in for the kill.
    • Bando dips into Crazy Prepared territory, getting his fight with Lucy in a place where he set up, hid traps, and cleared of debris for her to throw.
    • The Unknown Man displays himself to be Badass, by taking down two ittle girls and a puppy (he got the drop on the diclonius). When confronted with a man his own size, he opts to beg, all the while reaching for his weapon. He prefers to use that weapon rather than get into a fair fight.
    • The Agent just witnessed an entire squadron of troops, and some dicloni wiped out by Lucy (several squads). So she just waits at the side for Lucy to start torturing her opponents, before using the remaining half of a cloned Dicolnius to tear off one of Lucy's horns, and then shoot the other off which knocks the girl out, being the only human to ever defeat her.
  • Ciel Phantomhive in Black Butler prefers to let his demon handle the fighting. This is only sensible, as Ciel is a child and the demon is Nigh Invulnerable with Super Speed and capable of ripping people apart with his bare hands and killing with accurately thrown dinner knives, among other things. Ciel also carries a hidden revolver and uses it when necessary. Sometimes simple ways are the most effective. However, friendly competitions are where Ciel's willingness to do anything to win really gets to show. In such situations he has, among other things, faked an asthma attack, tampered with draws from a hat, poisoned the opposing team's food, and executed perfectly a complicated plan in which the penultimate step involved him getting hit on the head hard and for real.
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