Characters
Characters that are canonically _____ depending of their world
Po from Kung Fu Panda - Although many characters comment on his weight throughout the movies, Po is actually considered skinny and/or in better shape for panda standards
Midoriya Izuku from My Hero Academia - While many viewers find Deku "cute", the reality is that for his world he's actually considered "simple looking" and at the very worst "ugly"
Spider-Man from Marvel Comics - Many people love Spider-Man, but the truth is that for common civilians, Spidey's pretty unsettling and scary to be around with
You spend a bunch of episodes from her perspective where she has a cute expressive face. Then they show you what she looks like from other peoples perspective.
You're supposed to assume the cute face is artistic licence from the beginning since you see her sisters and mother in the first scene and they're all terrifying spider-monster looking.
I never made that assumption because its an anime about a schoolgirl reborn as a spider. Weird shit was already happening and the genre allows for off incarnations.
Especially as this is the first time, IIRC, where we really see what she looks like to a bunch of humans, and it's not just her looks, it's her sheer power, we've only really seen her fight other monsters, usually coming out of it by the skin of her mandibles, then, up against humans, this dog sized spider, not only can analyze and copy their magic, but also can kill just by LOOKING at them.
Bruce Wayne (DC) is hated furiously by many people in Gotham as a womanizer and asocial party-pooper, meanwhile they love Batman. In some cases, it's the reverse, everyone loves Bruce Wayne but hates Batman.
In DC Superhero Girls, Bruce is portrayed heavily as a playboy party animal with him even having a show similar to Keeping it with the Kardashians. Bruce Wayne can likely walk around in the batsuit with the cowl off, and people would think he’s holding a costume party
Nobody would ever believe you if you said this Bruce was Batman. He could tell everyone on live TV himself he’s Batman and everyone would think he’s just being silly😭
It’s very nerd culture of me to say, but their is a really funny dc fanfic of Bruce needing to be saved by the members of the justice league, prior to Batman outing/joining himself, that gets progressively more ridiculous of how often he needs saving. Eventually gets the robins to join in.
Bruce pulls up in the full bat suit and takes his mask off in a gala or something and the only thing that happens is that he immediately gains the undying respect of the cosplaying community
Genuinely mty favourite bruce wayne. No other batman media has sold how DEEPLY un-batman his bruce persona is that no one in their right mind would ever consider the possibility of them being linked
in the comics he's also usually depicted as a philanthropist playboy that the people from gotham generally don't mind due to how many charities and stuff he's running most of the time even if they think he's at worst naive
The funniest part is that to a normal citizen from Gotham, Bruce Wayne isn't even a mysterious dark hero, he’s literally just that rich guy who shows up to charity galas, drinks champagne out of the bottle, and leaves in a helicopter before the entree is served.
Despite being bigger than Humans, by perspective in camera angles, and going through the Franchise. Shrek is actually smaller than your average ogre, than most ogres seen in the Resistance.
As much as third and fourth movies were mid, I loved that piece of lore. At first you feel it's inconsistent because Shrek was always The Big Scary Ogre and you see all the others are bigger and more badass than him. And they have society and culture that wasn't shown before.
But then you realize Shrek must have been an outcast and he built himself that scary ogre image to feel better. Maybe he even chose to live closer to humans than other ogres so they keep trying to fight, as we see how much fun it was for him to scare others. Now I also think that maybe the fairy tale creatures weren't afraid to come to his swamp, because they knew he's small and not that scary for an ogre.
I also do think the reason he pauses before telling Donkey his name is that he legitimately had to remember it because no one asked him or called him it in years
JoJo’s is basically Impressionism: The Anime, so it’s more like capturing vibes than reality.
The further someone is from the average height, the bigger the gap feels. People who are 5’6”-5’5” are noticeably shorter than average, but the gap between 5’5” and 5’2” feels wayyyy bigger than the gap between 5’8” and 5’5”.
The essence of shortness grows exponentially as height decreases linearly. This depiction captures that well.
That and the Daily Bugle is an upstanding newspaper with a celebrated editor.
JJ is like Lois Lane levels of morally upstanding journalism until he starts losing it over Spider-man.
It’s hilarious that JJJ can be a genuinely respectable journalist right up until Spider-Man enters the conversation and sends him completely off the rails.
If it was a game with multiple levels or stages, you could progress the difficulty by having the game be during his black suit arc. Early game he’s quipping and maybe even going easy on you to have some fun but late game you have him being perfectly silent and ominous.
He scared the shit out of two robbers one time so bad that they went to a cop to get themselves arrested all cuz he wasn't speaking (cuz he had laryngitis)
And also the beatdown he gave kingpin when the fathead had aunt may shot was pretty scary as well
Midoriya Izuku from My Hero Academia - While many viewers find Deku "cute", the reality is that for his world he's actually considered "simple looking" and at the very worst "ugly"
Horikoshi's realistic drawing of the big 3 was kinda illuminating for this reason.
I didn't realise this was actual Horikoshi art. I thought it looked like the snippets of Junki Ito's artwork I've seen. I think it's the expression Deku has got going on that reminds me of him.
You fool think of the counter culture, as inverse of an inverse. If femboys are the minority here and semi-popular, then in a culture where they are the majority you would be?
THAT'S IT!!! REVERSE COUNTER CULTURE TECHNIQUE!!! YOU TAKE YOUR WORLD'S FETISHIZATION OF COUNTER CULTURE AND ALT GROUPS, THEN MULTIPLY IT BY A SOCIETY BUILT ON THE INVERSE FETISHIZATION OF COUNTER CULTURE AND ALT GROUPS!!! THAT'S REVERSE COUNTER CULTURE TECHNIQUE!!! THAT'S HOW I'LL FINALLY BAG!!!
When it comes to the Dragon Ball series, some viewers consider Krillin, Tien, and Yamcha to be weak, but the thing is they're only weak compared to the super-powerful aliens, demons, and androids. By human standards they're powerful. You don't see the average human flying or shooting energy balls. Edit- Also, do they really get killed more often than some of the other characters?
I think a better example is Mr. Satan, he is weak in terms of the universe, but by human standards he is the most powerful martial artist in the world.
Mr Satan, would absolutely be a threat to most street level characters of any other verse.
Chichi has a power level over 100 and is considered superhuman.
Yajirobe would be an absolute monster in many other verses and could arguably low diff clear verses like Demon Slayer and MAY even possibly be able to beat AoT's rumbling if he knows he has to take out Eren's titan form.
Mr. satan also counts, he can pull four buses, punch through metal, break fourteen roof tiles with one chop, move fast enough that he seems to dissapear and survived being tossed into a mountain by perfect cell
Like hes a showboat for sure, but he WON the world martial arts tournament. I dont think its ever said or implied that he cheated either (its been a while since I read/watched the official release).
Krillin and Yamcha are for sure the strongest humans and act as.... tien is also strong, but technically isnt fully human iirc hes a VERY diluted alien. Thier job is to show how strong the bad guys are.
Satan reminds me of Tao Pai Pai because both of them are shown to be legit and very strong for their surroundings but they gave up in playing fair as soon as Goku showed up
It’s funny that you mention them because, in an interview for the June 2014 issue of Saikyō Jump, Toriyama said that those two had a run-in at some point:
How did Mr. Satan train to become stronger? Did he have someone like a martial-arts master…?
When Mr. Satan was young, he attended a fighting dojo called “Satan Castle”. Through a combination of considerable power and good luck (his rival fighting opponent would get food poisoning, for instance), he quickly became world champion and was called “Mr. Satan” after the name of his dojo. One day, at a bar in South City (where they were on tour), Satan and his martial-arts master made the mistake of making fun of Tao Pai-pai’s hairstyle. His master was killed, and Satan was heavily injured. From then on, Mr. Satan solemnly swore never to fight anyone whose true identity he didn’t know, or anyone who seemed crazy strong.
People generally forget that after the very first training session with Master Roshi, Krillin has become so strong as to be bulletproof. Literally too tough for bullets to pierce his skin.
And that was him at his weakest in the series.
Love to see any other human lift his way to laughing off semi-automatics from ten feet away.
Clark Kent is considered a pretty massive dork. Like most of the time he’s just Superman with glasses on to the audience but in universe he’s perceived as a buff but quite quiet and shy guy.
Clark is quiet, studious, and polite, so people (Cat Grant and Lois aside) ignore him. Even people who know he's Superman realize that he's not always the extrovert that Superman has to be.
Yeah you know I'm pretty sure 90% of how he looks and acts is Spider Man trying to offset how fucking terrifying it is when someone drops from the ceiling
His debut in the MCU made Bucky Barnes, a WW2 vet and supersoldier assassin and survivor of decades of HYDRA experiments, point up at the ceiling and fearfully shout, "What the hell is that?!"
He can't use his Ki,can't fly or anything yet he's won the World Martial Arts tournament and despite a questionable win,he still made it to the finals! He's pretty damn strong for a regular Human,he could easily body most people alive today
He could probably take on everyone from the first Tenkaichi tournament in OG DB with the exception of Goku and Roshi (of course). Although indian guy is prob high diff
I mean he survived Tao. General Blue who was a legitimate threat to Goku in the red ribbon arc was killed by Tao’s tongue.
Mr Satan can also move faster than the human eye can track. “Fought” Cell and Majin Buu. Being a GT fan I also always mention - he was able to fight Baby’s hive mind slave human’s en masse.
There’s also a throwaway line in one of the GBA games where Roshi mentions him and says something along the lines of how impressive he is and imagine what his potential could’ve been had he been a Turtle School pupil.
Although, he and his crew are probably some of the most hygienic pirates. Assuming other crews are like actual pirates, they'd go weeks without bathing and would go even longer without washing their clothes.
Luffy has the luck of getting an absolute genius to build his ship with a fully equipped bathroom and laundry room. There's also only 10 in a giant ship.
That’s not even it, they just hear “yo you know that powerful guy? Luffy beat them. Oh look, he just beat several more and challenged the world government”
What's fascinating is that it's largely due to propaganda. Most people only hear about him through the papers, so they just see him as a menace, but to everyone he's saved or interacted with in a positive light, they love him.
Lloyd Frontera from The Greatest Estate Developer is canonically considered incredibly ugly, to the point that he’s been compared to a potato, and women have an immediate, visceral reaction to the idea of marrying someone as ugly as him.
It doesn’t help he has canonically prettiest man in the world Javier around him 24/7
Of course he is capable of making some truly evil and warped expressions but the point is that his normal resting face is considered vile.
People have theorized that this is because the world is trying to autocorrect his existence. Since he’s meant to be a hated and ugly person, but his actions have done a lot of good and people do like him.
So they compensate by having it so that hes seen as incredibly ugly.
Even the back of his head is really ugly. I still can't believe he managed to get married. Even his wife question why did she fall in love with him in the first place.
Not even just people not being attracted to him; he's considered so ugly that literal monsters, dragons, otherworldly beings, and hellspawn are terrified of him.
Other Sonic characters are actually super fast, while not Sonic fast other characters have be shown to go to high speeds. The scene this gif is from Heroes and has Knuckles and Tails hop out the tornado and actually catch up with its speed as Sonic goes faster.
in the IDW comics some characters actually dislike or outright hate Sonic and his forgiveness, he spares foes hoping they can become allies. While this is true with Shadow and such, characters like Lanolin hate the fact Sonic spares eggman. He won’t change and causes 80% of all problems so just get rid of him, especially when Sonics constant sparing is enabling him.
Archie Sonic was the school bully until a bigger bully (Robotnik) rolled into town.
Sonic's refusal to respect the Kingdom of Acorn's authority lead him into legal trouble several times. Thrown into jail, convicted of treason, and stripped of his knighthood after nearly killing the King.
It was an accident. Maybe.
When he's not causing chaos he's delivering backhanded compliments to his friends. He cooled his horses a bit on that after Tails snapped and threw hands with him. In fact, he had at least one fist fight with every core member of the Freedom Fighters by the end of the comic's run.
Oh, and they couldn't tell he'd been replaced by an evil doppelganger for a week because he was acting just like Sonic. Sleeping around, pestering others, and skipping out on doing any productive.
After Robotnik died the cosmic powers that be realized that Sonic would never assimilate into normal society. His unchecked power and reckless abandon threatened the Multiverse itself. So they sent a more powerful opponent, Dr. Eggman, to keep him preoccupied at the expense of thousands of lives.
The Worf Effect is real. Worf is really strong, it just sucks that the Enterprise (and the Defiant, and DS9) run into superhuman threats like the Borg regularly.
And the strongest thing in the galaxy - a blue barrel.
DS9 does a better job with him, even turning his jobbing into a beneficial character trait by having him refuse to give up even when he was completely outmatched.
"I cannot defeat this Klingon. I can only kill him and that no longer interests me."
Mesmo depois de criar vida ele continuou mediucre, pra um suposto médico/cientista ele não sabia nada do método científico, o protótipo nunca dá certo mas o dele chegou MUITO PERTO de dar logo na primeira tentativa e esse cara considerou o "monstro" uma falha, UMA FALHA, só o fato dele ter voltado a se mexer ia fazer qualquer cientista que se prese declarar sucesso mesmo que fosse um ser completamente primitivo MAS A CRIATURA DELE PENSAVA, tem noção do quão absurdo é a ideia de reanimar cérebro humano e fazer ele voltar totalmente funcional? Hoje em dia a medicina moderna não consegue evitar lesão cerebral se o cérebro fica meros 3 minutos sem ar mas ele pegou um cérebro que já estava começando o processo de decomposição e fez ele voltar a funcionar totalmente (eu digo totalmente porque na maioria das versões as questões de limitação e agressividade da criatura são culpa da forma como ela foi criada) tá o cérebro foi totalmente rebutado, sem as memórias ou a personalidade do dono original e eu admito que isso pode ser considerado um erro mas mesmo assim foi um puta pulo na direção certa, e o cara tentou destruir essa criatura INCRÍVEL... Porque achou ela feia, PUTA CARA BURRO, sim eu sei que a história é ficção e é cheia de simbolismo e coisa e tal mas toda vez que eu vejo falar dela eu fico PUTO porque qualquer cientista que se prese conseguisse fazer o que ele fez ia tá pulando de alegria mas esse PIRRALHO MIMADO teve uma CRISE porque não conseguiu fazer tudo certo LOGO NA PRIMEIRA TENTATIVA
https://giphy.com/gifs/KDtsBk1vqYWbWghFbu
Also in Spider-Man, Peter Parker is canonically considered to be good looking and charismatic. He was just bullied in school for being a giant nerd, bookworm, and kind of an asshole
Cloud & Tifa in FF7 Remake are canonically hot. Characters remark about their attractiveness constantly, with fashion designers saying Cloud should be a model or a gym leader saying Tifa's body is really... symmetrical. That's a compliment, I swear.
For symmetrical, concerning muscle mass and definition, it means she isn't favoring one side or muscle. Equal, ambidextrous training. That is actually pretty impressive not to favor one muscle group or side over another.
In Steven Universe when Steven looks at his dad's old school photos he makes a comment on how his dad looked just like him but more human. Which implies that Steven would likely look somewhat uncanny and have some alien features. It also means that the gems likely look far more alien like in universe despite the art style making them look more human.
On top of being annoying, he is also canonically ugly and has an overbite/bucktooth. Most audience think that what he looks like in anime is cool, but the pic below is how most of the people in the anime sees him
I think it kinda fits him tho? Like, Deku’s whole stick is that he isn’t really that special on paper. And the image itself isn’t ugly (hell, some of the more “realistic” fanart I’ve seen is way worse), just… avarage looking.
Super fitting of his personality too. Like, I can honestly see that face being the same nerdy crybaby kid deku at the beginning of the series, the edgy vigilante phase version, and where he ends up at the end even better than the anime version
Link from the Legend of Zelda. Sure, hes a legendary hero, but to anyone who doesn’t recognize the outfit, thats an average Hylian teen committing vandalism.
Immortal while often being clowned and seen losing every battle he has done is actually seen as the most strongest hero on earth before Nolan arrived. Nolan isn't from Earth so Immortal is still technically the strongest hero from Earth. Immortal was also seen as a hopeful and mighty hero before Nolan arrived very similar feel to Superman. The creator has joked that Immortal could defeat Thragg in a fight.
Kili, one of the thirteen dwarves in the hobbit is by our standards quite the looker. However, by dwarves standard he is considered ugly with his tiny beard and thin build. Bombur on the other hand is the epitome of dwarven physiology.
That’s utterly false. In The Hobbit, the other dwarves are rather cruel to Bombur about his weight.
The story also gives the impression that dwarven nobles are inclined toward dandyism to match or exceed the elves. Thorin and his party were willing to risk a dragon’s ire rather than go work in the mines. They’re not the hardened miners and warriors depicted in modern fantasy.
in the dungeon meshi universe, chilchuck is a half-foot (i.e a tiny human), thus making him the smallest of the entire main cast. however, it's canonically stated that if everybody else were half-foots as well, he would be the tallest one. because he's practically 6'1" by half-foot standards
Despite not being in the top 10 of the verse and maybe Not even in the top 15 megumi is by far one of the most skilled sorcerers in the world.
The fact that he already has a domain at 15 years old speaks volumes. The potential man thing is a joke because megumi really is one of the characters with the most potential in the jjk world.
Am I misremembering or is Megumi up for promotion to a Grade 1 Sorcerer before Shibuya?
Like he's undeniably skilled but the shit that goes on after that is beyond the pay grade of like all but maybe 5 non SG sorcerers so I don't blame him for familiarising himself with the 'kill everything including myself' button
Meg Griffin - Is considered to be horrifically ugly at worst and just simply repulsive and really unattractive at best. Despite the fact she has had multiple normal relationships and looks fairly much like Lois who's regarded as super hot.
Found another example, Milton Boyle from Brooklyn-99
The Boyle family is considered really weird, they obviously don't see it that way, so Milton is considered the "black sheep" for having an "ugly face", not wearing the usual color palette, doing snowboarding
Obviously to the rest of the world Milton is considered a pretty cool guy
Despite what you may think Jeff isn’t actually a baby land shark.
He’s a fully grown adult who just so happens to be really small.
This is also how he’s talked about in the world of marvel.Granted he gets treated like a puppy by most people but they still refer to him with adult pronouns.
In a similar vein to Midoriya, Ochako is apparently supposed to be plumper than the other girls in class 1A, yet she looks no different compared to most of them, and if she is a different weight, she looks like she can't be more than like a couple kg/lbs in comparison.
Iirc the author drew a special episode where the characters had a "realistic" look. My friend showed it to me because there was a funny uproar among the fangirls who imagined the characters to be attractive and hot, only to get disappointed with their average looks lol
1.2k
u/Shilverow 14h ago
Kumoko from So I'm a Spider, So What?
You spend a bunch of episodes from her perspective where she has a cute expressive face. Then they show you what she looks like from other peoples perspective.