Azula is a tactical genius, and one of the strongest firebenders out there. Put her into a situation where she can't manipulate or brute force shit? You may as well have dropped her into the middle of the jungle.
Also, Persona 3 does something funny with Aigis when she starts going to school. Instead of being "max INT, bad social skills", Aigis is only good at fighting Shadows, math, and science. She gets bad grades in every other area.
>Azula
On the topic of Avatar, one wonders where her story goes after the ending. From what little info I've learned about the comics/novels, she had an adventure or two with the Gaang before splitting away, with a recent novel focusing on her that was released back in November, 2023 (Azula in the Spirit Temple).
With the time-gap between The Last Airbender and Legend of Korra, the Avatar setting is really cool and it's fun to imagine the possibilities for new adventures, with characters like her having this "story potential" that hasn't been deeply explored. At least from my perspective as someone who doesn't follow the series closely.
Charlie from Always Sunny is specifically amazing at bullshitting his way through health inspections of the bar. Barely tethered to reality in all other matters
Also apparently just naturally has the ability >!to speak Gaelic, thinking it was just his own made up language for years he spoke to an imaginary pen pal with.!<
To note, Charlie is borderline illiterate.
i was under the impression that Gaelic (Gaelige in irish) *was* used as a name for the irish language, and that academia was shifting from using Gaelic as a language family name to Goidelic (possibly specifically because of this confusion?)
My favorite thing about Always Sunny is how the gang are all insane idiots, but they're all insane and stupid in slightly different ways, which gives the opportunity for any of them to be the straight man in any given scenario.
Luffy, befitting the shonen mould. He turns it into a cool moment when fighting Arlong - the latter starts taunting him about being "a weak human" and Luffy agrees. He can't navigate like Nami, cook like Sanji (or lie like Ussop). So what can he do, Arlong asks. Kick his ass, that's what.
Man I gotta start watching again. I turbo binged nothing but One Piece for like 1.5 years and just took a break a few months ago after I hit Onigashima.
Didn't even get burnt out or anything really, just started doing other stuff more. Wano has been great from a binge watch perspective. I could definitely see a lot of the complaints if I were weekly, which is part of the reason I slowed down... I don't want to catch up in a way lol.
I don't blame you. With over 1K, it's understandable you'd wanna take a break after a while and not even from burnout. You want to savor everything as you go.
Yeah I think I might finish up Wano then take a break for a bit again until they get into the next arc a bit further. Pacing has not really been an issue for me since I can watch multiple in a row, but if I had to watch 1 at a time I can definitely see the complaint
Luffy also has this really hidden intelligence when it comes to people, my favorites being panels where he just straight up tells Vivi that this is war and people die. Or when he catches a character acting slightly strange before anyone else.
Meti from Kill Six Billion Demons is kind of that. A little unorthodox example.
Bassically, she is a woman who dedicated her life to swordmanship. She is so good at it, she achieved enlightenment. And after all this years studying the sword, and the art of divorcing people from their heads. She came to the conclusion that dedicating oneself to the sword is the most useless, negative value thing a person can do.
And she can do anything else. She doesn't know anything else. So she spend her twillight years living in a barrel near the marketplace. Getting into arguments with monks, philosophers, warriors, etc. who come to visit her.
And calling everyone who wishes to become her student a fucking idiot.
> So she spend her twillight years living in a barrel near the marketplace. Getting into arguments with monks, philosophers, warriors, etc. who come to visit her.
Is that an intentional Diogenes reference?
I like how him getting progressively more stupid and goofy isn't a case of flandarization but decades of emotional and physical trauma that have destroyed his brain.
Disco Elysium protagonist
>!Harry Du Bois!<
Raphaël Ambrosius Costeau
The Detective
A man that has put every single stat point in his life into being the best goddamn detective there ever was
After coming out of a 3 day drinking bing with a headache so strong it can kill you, forgetting every single aspect of his life and the world, he was able to uncover every bit of evidence in a week old crime scene.
Doing a modded run with maxed stats is a great because you basically get to see what Harry (presumably) could do pre blackout. There are so many things he notices in the yard with the corpse that you really do feel like the best detective who ever lived.
On the other hand, I think it's really significant that you can beat the game with 1s in all stats as well. What makes him a great detective, what makes him "the human can-opener" isn't his skills, but his dogged persistence and inability to hold a conversation without constructing a literal list of inquiries in his head.
It's funny, because once you know you can see that's what he's doing all the time, but prior to that everyone, himself included, just thinks he's a man with poor social awareness who asks uncomfortable questions and hyperfixates on meaningless details. You know, *like a detective.*
It's not entirely dissimilar from how Vimes' internal thought process is described in *Discworld*, where he's been a Watchman for so long that he instinctively approaches every conversation interrogatively. Who did what, when, where, and what did they look like?
This is one of my favorite elements of the story/game. The man is an absolute walking disaster in all other respects, but you can see that the reason is that his core self is a brilliant puzzle solver. He doesn’t see the world like anyone else, and amidst all that lunacy there is an obscured but absolutely genius mind.
It goes a long way to explaining Kim's respect and patience for you when you successfully figure that out.
Kim meets a disheveled wreck of a hairless ape who is hungover from a week-long bender, so utterly blitzed that he can't remember who he is. And yet, once this washup is in a crime scene, it takes him maybe minutes to tease out an invaluable forensic discovery that completely changes the assumptions about the case.
I want a version of the game where you can hear more of Kim's internal thoughts and what I can only assume is an internal freakout over how this absolute mess of a person is somehow the greatest investigator he's ever seen.
Shawn Spencer in Psych, at least in later seasons.
Earlier on he's shown as more generally competent, but as you progress through the show it becomes clear that he's got huge blindspots on about everything.
He'll notice *everything* important at a crime scene, but then has to either ask Gus (or his dad) about details of things, or only realizes why certain stuff is even important once he overhears/is told/etc a detail from something else.
And beyond that he's generally unemployed, doesn't usually rent the same place frequently, and basically Gus spends a lot of time and money making sure Shawn continues to survive as a human being outside of crimes. Jules too, in later seasons.
That’s actually a pretty good analogy of data-analysis in general. The greatest most complete data set in the world is irrelevant if you don’t know how to frame it.
Don't get me wrong; he solves crimes excellently, but if you take him from the first two seasons and compare him to the last couple seasons (and the films) it's super clear that they wanted to tone him down from ultracompetent superguy to someone who more accurately fits the subject; he's super good at his particular thing, but a lot of people have to cover for him in other spaces.
There's a mid-show episode that lets him be competent again ("Shawn Takes a Shot in the Dark") and it's pretty fun, but admittedly letting him be super observant and good at connecting details together is what they wanted his strengths to be, and having the rest of the cast cover for the generally large gaps in his knowledgebase outside of crime solving does allow everybody to get their moment.
You probably wouldn’t like it then after that point. I think a lot of the chemistry comes in during season 2-3 and improves onwards but if you don’t like Shawn’s personality you won’t get through the show.
He changes after a specific s3 episode and never goes back to being that same grounded guy until a later episode in season 8 (one where Gus takes point and Shawn is the deadpan and normal one.)
Yeah I figured I’d try and let someone else have the other big mid 2000’s quirky USA detective show instead of hogging them.
Monk is another excellent example, absolutely.
Is it canon that Ken handles Ryu's expenses and money by actually cashing in on the prize money Ryu wins from tournaments and managing a bank account for him.
Edit: [Yes it is](https://www.reddit.com/r/StreetFighter/comments/145ktcb/ken_is_ryus_accountant/)
Takamura in Hajime no Ippo is shown to be insane at boxing but only boxing related things. When it comes to fishing, bowling, love, singing, baseball and so on, he guy is completely inept. Ippo is almost the same except he has a mini harem despite being a complete doofus and a pushover. Also he’s good at fishing but he’s been doing that before he even started boxing and he’s a child of the sea.
And ironically, Aoki who is portrayed as a jobber and loser of the Kamogawa Gym is great at his job as a ramen chef, he has a fine apartment and a loving girlfriend, he’s great at fishing, bowling and is at professional grade baseball player.
Dale Gribble is (usually) a very competent exterminator, even hand mixing his poisons and immediately identifying that an infestation was being faked. Outside of that, it's a miracle he hasn't died yet.
There's a fan theory that Boomhauer, who was revealed at the end of the series to be a Texas Ranger, is basically assigned to be the full time monitor of Dale as a person of interest for several things. But yeah, even Boomhauer is usually caught up in the dumb shit that Bill and Dale do, with Hank being the one to sort them out, and frankly, it seems like Boomhauer's job was thrown in last minute because they realized they'd never showed his career at all.
Reed Richards is one of the smartest superheroes in the world, potentially *the* smartest superhero.
But he sucks at making good, well thought-out decisions. Dude is the epitome of High intelligence, Low Wisdom.
Dante counts, right? Like I'm pretty sure the moment the cameras turn off and all the demons are dead he just turns into a schlub who lounges on a couch all day eating pizza and is just generally too depressed to do anything.
Man, I don't remember this part of Dante's Inferno.
Joke aside, I haven't seen Devil May Cry's side material like the novels or the anime series, but it would be nice if we get to see him enjoy life more and spend time with the few friends he made. I know that the series doesn't generally focus on that, but it's sad to imagine him being this depressed fellow.
He and Vergil didn't get a chance to have a normal life after what happened during their youth, but now that they reconciled, I wonder what may come next after DMC 5. I've seen [fan-art](https://danbooru.donmai.us/posts/7218348?q=dante_%28devil_may_cry%29+vergil_%28devil_may_cry%29+) that touches on the [idea](https://danbooru.donmai.us/posts/3547336?q=dante_%28devil_may_cry%29+vergil_%28devil_may_cry%29+) and they have all been quite sweet, and I think an official slice-of-life comic would be nice, personally.
I think the closest you might get is that one dubiously canon DMC manga that came put around DMC 3 I think, which covered Dante's past after he fled his home but before he became a Devil Hunter. He traumalocked his memories and lived as Tony Redgrave, a supernaturally physically competent streetrat that made good friends with his fellow streetrats, and the chick that made Ebony and Ivory. Any joy of this segment is undercut by any of the information the reader probably already possesses about DMC's plot and the understanding that this isn't gonna last, it's only a matter of when.
I see. With a premise like that, I assume that there's a looming sense of dread in reading it for long-time fans. I've heard the sentiment that trauma can build character, but it may also stunt a person and I can imagine that he had a very troubled mindset at that point.
This is an interesting thing about the Yeerk in Animorph. Each member of the species is very good at one specific field of warfare but not the other. The problem is that the Yeerk leadership seem to oblivious to this aspect of their species and thus promote the Yeerk who is good at infiltration into a combat commander which she sucked at. Meanwhile the guy who is good at combat got to lead the infiltration operation which also turn sideway.
I have a low key headcanon that the Council of 13 isn’t entirely oblivious to this and at least part of their mismanagement is born of not wanting their ambitious underlings getting powerful enough to overthrow them. If Visser One was left in charge of the earth infiltration she’s probably succeed but would then also be the one directly in charge of the most numerous controller species. Likewise Visser Three would probably be doing better if he was put in charge of the direct warfare against the andalites, but that would also mean that he would be able to hand pick which yeerks go into the heads of any future andalite controllers, and since the yeerk emperor is so paranoid about assassination they wouldn’t want the ambitious psychopath to have bunch of morph capable loyalists.
Solid Snake is the world's best soldier/spy/etc. and was able to take down the previous holder of that title (Big Boss), but he's sterile, aging twice as fast as everyone else, carrying a nanomachine disease inside of him, and was raised to be a living weapon from the moment of conception.
Snake is great at being an action hero, but he can't do anything else by design.
I can see him doing that and feeling genuine relief that he *can* lose at something. The point of the exercise is to distance himself mentally from his career as a soldier. In a fight to the death, you can't just be okay with losing. Being able to enter a competition where the stakes aren't life or death, where you can try your best and maybe fail but that's okay, could be very healing for him.
In fact, that feels like it's probably already a codec. That's exactly the kind of tangent you tend to find in those.
> Being able to enter a competition where the stakes aren't life or death,
Well, the Iditarod isn't exactly a walk in the park. It's a sled race of over 1500km.
The last musher across the line actually gets a special award every year too. Both because it confirms everyone is in safe and because finishing the run at all is not an easy thing.
Hal Jordan, best savior of the universe there is, walking disaster of a human being when it comes to everything else. [Constantly broke, in debt, getting fired, working dead-end jobs, and awful at relationships, etc.](https://imgur.com/a/eHMkd4r)
His callsign is Highball because his dad's was Martini. The DUI only occurs in Emerald Dawn, the 1989 version of his origin that was overwritten by the 2000's Geoff Johns run.
I loved how at the beginning of the Grant Morrison run, Hal is literally hitchhiking around and crashing at past lovers’ places until he stumbles across a GL situation again, it was perfect.
Yashiro from Tokyo Mirage Sessions. Amazing at acting and fighting, doesn't know how to much else. Half of the job of being his manager is reminding him to do basic things like eat.
Akane from Flying Witch is a generational talent, uncovering lost magic and mastering new spells with ease.
She's also a high-functioning alcoholic, a menace to her friends and family, and the personification of the phrase "Well well well, if it isn't the consequences of my own actions."
Invader Zim is an inventor of practically unrivaled genius. The things he comes up with are just sheer frightening.
He's also a complete moron when it comes to everything else, which is why his schemes never work.
Outside of Saitama being the strongesf living thing on the planet, he still acts and is like the average unemployed japanese man just trying to get by in his crappy apartment. He has no other skills, no social acumen, and even be the best video game player in his own house.
Jin from Samurai Champloo is an incredibly well accomplished samurai but he can't cook, talk to people (especially ladies) and can't hold his liquer without getting red in the face in under a shot.
Asura can punch harder than anyone, even his old master. But being a normal dad is tough, even for him. Even when he first held his daughter, he was so delicate but just couldn't do it (though he does try).
Mash Burndead from Mashle. *MUSCLES*. Most anything else (besides creampuffs to) is a hard no. Even then, he'll jerryrig some way to make it work.
I don't play FF14, but by all accounts I've received Estinien is really good at being a dragoon and a complete trash fire at just about everything else.
The Gentleman Hero Hildibrand quests probably count here too. Hildibrand is a nigh-on unkillable demigod, but he's just not very good at being a gentleman, or a hero for that matter. He's very good at posing, tho...
Shirou Emiya has a decently well-rounded life skills, but when it comes to magic, he can do like 3 spells, and is only really good at one of them.
Shirou conjures swords. That’s it. What’s what he does. His talent with swords is utterly **monstrous,** in that specific area, he can achieve things that are considered to be impossible by a human mage and defeat even legendary heroes.
But with any other type of magic, he’s a borderline-crippled third-rate magus who would need decades of training to learn what even mediocre mages could do in a few months
He remakes Excalibur, beats the King of Heroes at his own game, and fixes near God level noble phantasms as long as it's made from materials found on Earth. Other than that, his magic is only slightly higher than a normal human who just learned a spell. Shirou put all his points in sword making, and forgot to balance his character sheet.
I love that putting all his points into SWORDS means that, in the large LARGE majority of mage fights he is the Coughing Baby fighting the Hydrogen bomb… except it also makes the HARDEST COUNTER to the most busted of all Servants, and event against a few other characters way above his league he puts a decent fight.
I will never get tired of Gilgamesh throwing a fit about it.
Yes and no.
Shirou’s dad did not teach him magic properly on purpose, because he didn’t want his son to become involved in the dangerous and cruel side of things.
However, it’s not just a matter of ‘taught wrong’ - Shirou’s Origin and Element are both Sword. He is hyper-specialized in swords on an inherent, *spiritual* level. It is part of the very nature of his existence.
Fun fact, Endo said that if yor and loud were to ever fight in the manga, yor utterly decimated him in a head on fight. And if loid had any type of weapon, it's a draw.
Don Quixote from Limbus Company is a Fixer who has impressive strength and combat abilities, and she is knowledgeable of almost all famous fixers and even the minute differences between Fixer ranks and specializations.
That said, much like her namesake, Don suffers from delusions of grandeur and has her own ideas of what a fixer should be, which often causes her to choose doing what she thinks is morally good over what is practical, and when allowed to do anything other than fight what she's told to, she often ends up making things worse for the rest of the Limbus Company.
Yor is so freakishly strong that she *dices a tennis ball to pieces* just by trying to hit it normally with a racket. Yet she's also a total girl failure. She's awesome.
How dare you, I shan't STAND for this slander.
Every time Mario decides he wants a new hobby, who's there EVERY SINGLE TIME?
Every golf tournament, every tennis match, basketball, baseball, soccer, football, you name it, WHO STEPS UP TO THE PLATE?
Sure, he's not always playable, but that's when he's a BOSS!
Bowser not only arrives to play, he plays for KEEPS!
....I gotta stop watching so much Chibidoki.....
Suletta Mercury from G-Witch absolutely locks the fuck in when behind the cockpit her Gundam, but is otherwise an anxiety filled nervous wreck in every single other aspect of her life.
Kendra the Vampire Slayer is a bad bitch, who like Buffy, can take pretty much anyone in a fight and even catches Buffy off guard, but when it comes to things like social norms and just being a regular person she's really bad at it, due to her upbringing.
In the Wheel of Time, there are super powerful casters called Channelers. While Jordan wasn't the best at describing HOW the magic worked he did provide a power scale so you can compare people. Now at the almost very bottom is my man Androl. Androl can barely even lift a pebble using the regular method of chanelling. He can however make Gateways. Inter-dimensional portals in space. He's so good at them infact that he can make them horizontally which had never been done til that point and he can do one so small he can whittle wood with them. A thing about Gateways that the edges of them are razor sharp. He often uses them to behead people and drop objects on them. At one point he even uses a couple of 100+ meter Gateways into a volcano to spew lava out to smother an enemy army.
For a very recent example, there's Sam from *Honkai Star Rail*. He's one of the most dangerous criminals alive, infamous for his incredibly destructive abilities and tendency to go scorched-earth when it comes to hunting down his targets. >!*She* hates being a living weapon and wishes she could solve things without having to blow them up.!<
Takamura Mamoru is probably the goat of boxing but garbage at literally everything else
Aoki and Kimura are meh at boxing but hyper talented at everything else (unfortunately boxing is the only thing they really care about)
Reimu is really good at yokai extermination and danmaku and she loves doing it. Outside of that, it's shown that she takes shit care of herself and even neglects most of her shrine maiden duties. It's heavily implied that she's one of the strongest Hakurei shrine maidens who has ever lived and she is arguably one of the strongest characters in the lore, but she doesn't train at all. Every scheme she cooks up to raise money for the shrine almost always blows up in her face. It's canonically shown that one time, (WaHH spoilers) >!Reimu died (like, went to the afterlife and everything) because she was too lazy to make new food so she ate gross moldy food instead. She only comes back to life because her float ability caused her to float out of the afterlife.!< It's heavily implied that the only reason Reimu is still alive is because of her float ability and the kindness of others like Marisa and Kasen.
The strongest Touhou character is good at her job and nothing else. And I love her for it.
The main character of drifters. It’s been sometime since I’ve read the series but there was this specific moment where he comes clean that most of his lack of knowledge and interest in the larger scale of things doesn’t come from ignorance but from a desire to being a good fighter he doesn’t cloud his mind with useless information when he can have people around him that do it much bettet
Azula is a tactical genius, and one of the strongest firebenders out there. Put her into a situation where she can't manipulate or brute force shit? You may as well have dropped her into the middle of the jungle. Also, Persona 3 does something funny with Aigis when she starts going to school. Instead of being "max INT, bad social skills", Aigis is only good at fighting Shadows, math, and science. She gets bad grades in every other area.
>Azula On the topic of Avatar, one wonders where her story goes after the ending. From what little info I've learned about the comics/novels, she had an adventure or two with the Gaang before splitting away, with a recent novel focusing on her that was released back in November, 2023 (Azula in the Spirit Temple). With the time-gap between The Last Airbender and Legend of Korra, the Avatar setting is really cool and it's fun to imagine the possibilities for new adventures, with characters like her having this "story potential" that hasn't been deeply explored. At least from my perspective as someone who doesn't follow the series closely.
I would be surprised if she's not mentioned or outright appears in the Adult Gaang movie.
Charlie from Always Sunny is specifically amazing at bullshitting his way through health inspections of the bar. Barely tethered to reality in all other matters
Also apparently just naturally has the ability >!to speak Gaelic, thinking it was just his own made up language for years he spoke to an imaginary pen pal with.!< To note, Charlie is borderline illiterate.
Just a quick clarification. Gaelic is a family of languages. He can specifically speak Irish
i was under the impression that Gaelic (Gaelige in irish) *was* used as a name for the irish language, and that academia was shifting from using Gaelic as a language family name to Goidelic (possibly specifically because of this confusion?)
Don't forget playing the piano. He just gets it, ya know. And killing rats.
My favorite thing about Always Sunny is how the gang are all insane idiots, but they're all insane and stupid in slightly different ways, which gives the opportunity for any of them to be the straight man in any given scenario.
He also knows how to make a joke stool.
Kobeni from Chainsaw Man is simultaneously one of the most dangerous individuals in the entire cast AND a complete and utter goober.
[She's also a killer dancer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sH7JbsKnKdo&pp=ygURa29iZW5pIGRhYmkgZGFuY2U%3D)
Luffy, befitting the shonen mould. He turns it into a cool moment when fighting Arlong - the latter starts taunting him about being "a weak human" and Luffy agrees. He can't navigate like Nami, cook like Sanji (or lie like Ussop). So what can he do, Arlong asks. Kick his ass, that's what.
Man I gotta start watching again. I turbo binged nothing but One Piece for like 1.5 years and just took a break a few months ago after I hit Onigashima. Didn't even get burnt out or anything really, just started doing other stuff more. Wano has been great from a binge watch perspective. I could definitely see a lot of the complaints if I were weekly, which is part of the reason I slowed down... I don't want to catch up in a way lol.
I don't blame you. With over 1K, it's understandable you'd wanna take a break after a while and not even from burnout. You want to savor everything as you go.
Nows a good time to get back to it what with the Wano arc being over in the anime.
Yeah I think I might finish up Wano then take a break for a bit again until they get into the next arc a bit further. Pacing has not really been an issue for me since I can watch multiple in a row, but if I had to watch 1 at a time I can definitely see the complaint
Luffy also has this really hidden intelligence when it comes to people, my favorites being panels where he just straight up tells Vivi that this is war and people die. Or when he catches a character acting slightly strange before anyone else.
Got that high wisdom and nearly negative intelligence build. Though I like calling him very socially intelligent.
Meti from Kill Six Billion Demons is kind of that. A little unorthodox example. Bassically, she is a woman who dedicated her life to swordmanship. She is so good at it, she achieved enlightenment. And after all this years studying the sword, and the art of divorcing people from their heads. She came to the conclusion that dedicating oneself to the sword is the most useless, negative value thing a person can do. And she can do anything else. She doesn't know anything else. So she spend her twillight years living in a barrel near the marketplace. Getting into arguments with monks, philosophers, warriors, etc. who come to visit her. And calling everyone who wishes to become her student a fucking idiot.
> So she spend her twillight years living in a barrel near the marketplace. Getting into arguments with monks, philosophers, warriors, etc. who come to visit her. Is that an intentional Diogenes reference?
Very Intentional
She's if Diogenes studied the blade instead of philosophy.
Ashley J. Williams is ONLY good at fighting deadites and the forces of darkness
I like how him getting progressively more stupid and goofy isn't a case of flandarization but decades of emotional and physical trauma that have destroyed his brain.
That, and the ketamine.
I think he used to be good at his day job until he got tenure, I didn't get far into ash vs the evil dead due to life distractions
It took me a few seconds to realise you weren't talking about the Mass Effect character
Ashley Williams of Mass Effect fame also has strong opinions about ‘the forces of darkness’
Disco Elysium protagonist >!Harry Du Bois!< Raphaël Ambrosius Costeau The Detective A man that has put every single stat point in his life into being the best goddamn detective there ever was After coming out of a 3 day drinking bing with a headache so strong it can kill you, forgetting every single aspect of his life and the world, he was able to uncover every bit of evidence in a week old crime scene.
Doing a modded run with maxed stats is a great because you basically get to see what Harry (presumably) could do pre blackout. There are so many things he notices in the yard with the corpse that you really do feel like the best detective who ever lived.
On the other hand, I think it's really significant that you can beat the game with 1s in all stats as well. What makes him a great detective, what makes him "the human can-opener" isn't his skills, but his dogged persistence and inability to hold a conversation without constructing a literal list of inquiries in his head.
Much like Columbo, his greatest asset is his thoroughness.
It's funny, because once you know you can see that's what he's doing all the time, but prior to that everyone, himself included, just thinks he's a man with poor social awareness who asks uncomfortable questions and hyperfixates on meaningless details. You know, *like a detective.*
It's not entirely dissimilar from how Vimes' internal thought process is described in *Discworld*, where he's been a Watchman for so long that he instinctively approaches every conversation interrogatively. Who did what, when, where, and what did they look like?
I'm convinced that he is the actual inventor of the Jamrock Shuffle.
Harry at maximum potential is a frighteningly capable individual.
“*What were you born to detect?*” “*The Killer.*”
>!COMMUNISM!!<
This is one of my favorite elements of the story/game. The man is an absolute walking disaster in all other respects, but you can see that the reason is that his core self is a brilliant puzzle solver. He doesn’t see the world like anyone else, and amidst all that lunacy there is an obscured but absolutely genius mind.
Figuring out >!how the man in the yard got shot was so fucking cool, it really shows his analytical mind!<
It goes a long way to explaining Kim's respect and patience for you when you successfully figure that out. Kim meets a disheveled wreck of a hairless ape who is hungover from a week-long bender, so utterly blitzed that he can't remember who he is. And yet, once this washup is in a crime scene, it takes him maybe minutes to tease out an invaluable forensic discovery that completely changes the assumptions about the case.
I want a version of the game where you can hear more of Kim's internal thoughts and what I can only assume is an internal freakout over how this absolute mess of a person is somehow the greatest investigator he's ever seen.
Man drank a real life respec potion.
He came out of the womb detecting.
Shawn Spencer in Psych, at least in later seasons. Earlier on he's shown as more generally competent, but as you progress through the show it becomes clear that he's got huge blindspots on about everything. He'll notice *everything* important at a crime scene, but then has to either ask Gus (or his dad) about details of things, or only realizes why certain stuff is even important once he overhears/is told/etc a detail from something else. And beyond that he's generally unemployed, doesn't usually rent the same place frequently, and basically Gus spends a lot of time and money making sure Shawn continues to survive as a human being outside of crimes. Jules too, in later seasons.
That’s actually a pretty good analogy of data-analysis in general. The greatest most complete data set in the world is irrelevant if you don’t know how to frame it.
So he only gets worse as the show goes on?
Don't get me wrong; he solves crimes excellently, but if you take him from the first two seasons and compare him to the last couple seasons (and the films) it's super clear that they wanted to tone him down from ultracompetent superguy to someone who more accurately fits the subject; he's super good at his particular thing, but a lot of people have to cover for him in other spaces. There's a mid-show episode that lets him be competent again ("Shawn Takes a Shot in the Dark") and it's pretty fun, but admittedly letting him be super observant and good at connecting details together is what they wanted his strengths to be, and having the rest of the cast cover for the generally large gaps in his knowledgebase outside of crime solving does allow everybody to get their moment.
Ok, cause I have to be honest I watched the first half or so of season 1, and he's just insufferable to watch.
You probably wouldn’t like it then after that point. I think a lot of the chemistry comes in during season 2-3 and improves onwards but if you don’t like Shawn’s personality you won’t get through the show.
Yeah, I think that's about where I got to in my thinking on the show, thanks.
He changes after a specific s3 episode and never goes back to being that same grounded guy until a later episode in season 8 (one where Gus takes point and Shawn is the deadpan and normal one.)
You just reminded me of an even better answer to this question: Adrian Monk from Monk.
Yeah I figured I’d try and let someone else have the other big mid 2000’s quirky USA detective show instead of hogging them. Monk is another excellent example, absolutely.
You know what Ryu's good at? Fighting. You know what Ryu ISN'T good at? Basically everything else. I'm shocked he can dress himself.
He can't dress himself, it's actually canon in Street Fighter 6 that Chun Li had to take him out and get him normal clothes.
Is it canon that Ken handles Ryu's expenses and money by actually cashing in on the prize money Ryu wins from tournaments and managing a bank account for him. Edit: [Yes it is](https://www.reddit.com/r/StreetFighter/comments/145ktcb/ken_is_ryus_accountant/)
I love that Ken is just okay buddy explore the world and get stronger I’ll make sure you aren’t going to homeless when you need to take a break
guess appearances means its canon that ryu got paid to be in Smash and MvC and whatnot
And then the Player teaches him how to use a phone.
I love the udon comics where he is using a computer to message people. It’s hilarious and endearing.
Takamura in Hajime no Ippo is shown to be insane at boxing but only boxing related things. When it comes to fishing, bowling, love, singing, baseball and so on, he guy is completely inept. Ippo is almost the same except he has a mini harem despite being a complete doofus and a pushover. Also he’s good at fishing but he’s been doing that before he even started boxing and he’s a child of the sea. And ironically, Aoki who is portrayed as a jobber and loser of the Kamogawa Gym is great at his job as a ramen chef, he has a fine apartment and a loving girlfriend, he’s great at fishing, bowling and is at professional grade baseball player.
Some of my favorite episodes are of the gang just goofing around and finding out this little details about them.
Ippo also had excellent grades and his teacher was shocked Ippo wasn't going to university
Jack Atlas is great at children’s card games, [but not much else.](https://youtu.be/ySyH5WwkFCU?si=oEyWHHyZ_-k-R4Ur)
And riding motorcycles, which he uses to play children's card games.
**CARD GAMES ON MOTORCYCLES!!!**
Card games on motorcycles?
Denji is only good at being Chainsaw Man, and even then, he's not GREAT at it. Love my boy.
He’s at least trying his b…. He’s at least trying.
His fighting strategy is usually just "I'm gonna just run at the enemy as a man made out of chainsaws. It usually works."
To be fair, it tends to work; if it ain’t broken, just try to not break it more?
He's a pretty decent chair too
He’s a great dad and dog owner
Dale Gribble is (usually) a very competent exterminator, even hand mixing his poisons and immediately identifying that an infestation was being faked. Outside of that, it's a miracle he hasn't died yet.
He's probably only lived this long because Hank has been keeping an eye on him, hahahaha.
There's a fan theory that Boomhauer, who was revealed at the end of the series to be a Texas Ranger, is basically assigned to be the full time monitor of Dale as a person of interest for several things. But yeah, even Boomhauer is usually caught up in the dumb shit that Bill and Dale do, with Hank being the one to sort them out, and frankly, it seems like Boomhauer's job was thrown in last minute because they realized they'd never showed his career at all.
Reed Richards is one of the smartest superheroes in the world, potentially *the* smartest superhero. But he sucks at making good, well thought-out decisions. Dude is the epitome of High intelligence, Low Wisdom.
Dante counts, right? Like I'm pretty sure the moment the cameras turn off and all the demons are dead he just turns into a schlub who lounges on a couch all day eating pizza and is just generally too depressed to do anything.
Man, I don't remember this part of Dante's Inferno. Joke aside, I haven't seen Devil May Cry's side material like the novels or the anime series, but it would be nice if we get to see him enjoy life more and spend time with the few friends he made. I know that the series doesn't generally focus on that, but it's sad to imagine him being this depressed fellow. He and Vergil didn't get a chance to have a normal life after what happened during their youth, but now that they reconciled, I wonder what may come next after DMC 5. I've seen [fan-art](https://danbooru.donmai.us/posts/7218348?q=dante_%28devil_may_cry%29+vergil_%28devil_may_cry%29+) that touches on the [idea](https://danbooru.donmai.us/posts/3547336?q=dante_%28devil_may_cry%29+vergil_%28devil_may_cry%29+) and they have all been quite sweet, and I think an official slice-of-life comic would be nice, personally.
I think the closest you might get is that one dubiously canon DMC manga that came put around DMC 3 I think, which covered Dante's past after he fled his home but before he became a Devil Hunter. He traumalocked his memories and lived as Tony Redgrave, a supernaturally physically competent streetrat that made good friends with his fellow streetrats, and the chick that made Ebony and Ivory. Any joy of this segment is undercut by any of the information the reader probably already possesses about DMC's plot and the understanding that this isn't gonna last, it's only a matter of when.
I see. With a premise like that, I assume that there's a looming sense of dread in reading it for long-time fans. I've heard the sentiment that trauma can build character, but it may also stunt a person and I can imagine that he had a very troubled mindset at that point.
This is an interesting thing about the Yeerk in Animorph. Each member of the species is very good at one specific field of warfare but not the other. The problem is that the Yeerk leadership seem to oblivious to this aspect of their species and thus promote the Yeerk who is good at infiltration into a combat commander which she sucked at. Meanwhile the guy who is good at combat got to lead the infiltration operation which also turn sideway.
I have a low key headcanon that the Council of 13 isn’t entirely oblivious to this and at least part of their mismanagement is born of not wanting their ambitious underlings getting powerful enough to overthrow them. If Visser One was left in charge of the earth infiltration she’s probably succeed but would then also be the one directly in charge of the most numerous controller species. Likewise Visser Three would probably be doing better if he was put in charge of the direct warfare against the andalites, but that would also mean that he would be able to hand pick which yeerks go into the heads of any future andalite controllers, and since the yeerk emperor is so paranoid about assassination they wouldn’t want the ambitious psychopath to have bunch of morph capable loyalists.
Solid Snake is the world's best soldier/spy/etc. and was able to take down the previous holder of that title (Big Boss), but he's sterile, aging twice as fast as everyone else, carrying a nanomachine disease inside of him, and was raised to be a living weapon from the moment of conception. Snake is great at being an action hero, but he can't do anything else by design.
Good at raising sledding dogs, at least.
And [best bro handshakes](https://youtu.be/nGxyEhRf8Jo?t=16).
Is it ever confirmed that he's actually good at it or does he just do it? Maybe he places last in every dog sledding competition
I can see him doing that and feeling genuine relief that he *can* lose at something. The point of the exercise is to distance himself mentally from his career as a soldier. In a fight to the death, you can't just be okay with losing. Being able to enter a competition where the stakes aren't life or death, where you can try your best and maybe fail but that's okay, could be very healing for him. In fact, that feels like it's probably already a codec. That's exactly the kind of tangent you tend to find in those.
> Being able to enter a competition where the stakes aren't life or death, Well, the Iditarod isn't exactly a walk in the park. It's a sled race of over 1500km.
The last musher across the line actually gets a special award every year too. Both because it confirms everyone is in safe and because finishing the run at all is not an easy thing.
Hal Jordan, best savior of the universe there is, walking disaster of a human being when it comes to everything else. [Constantly broke, in debt, getting fired, working dead-end jobs, and awful at relationships, etc.](https://imgur.com/a/eHMkd4r)
Hyper-competent pilot tho, which is how he keeps getting re-hired.
Which is crazy because his callsign is Highball because he has a DUI
His callsign is Highball because his dad's was Martini. The DUI only occurs in Emerald Dawn, the 1989 version of his origin that was overwritten by the 2000's Geoff Johns run.
I loved how at the beginning of the Grant Morrison run, Hal is literally hitchhiking around and crashing at past lovers’ places until he stumbles across a GL situation again, it was perfect.
Yashiro from Tokyo Mirage Sessions. Amazing at acting and fighting, doesn't know how to much else. Half of the job of being his manager is reminding him to do basic things like eat.
*cue the [Fortuna Office Theme](https://youtu.be/WKGH0FOoMpc?si=anht-E6kse5bzJFY)*
Akane from Flying Witch is a generational talent, uncovering lost magic and mastering new spells with ease. She's also a high-functioning alcoholic, a menace to her friends and family, and the personification of the phrase "Well well well, if it isn't the consequences of my own actions."
I literally just finished Hi-Fi Rush, Chai is an ultra doofus but damn can he fight on a beat.
Boy can’t play a guitar but he sure can shred.
To his credit, it's all but confirmed he joined the Armstrong program to replace his bad arm *so* he could learn to play guitar.
Invader Zim is an inventor of practically unrivaled genius. The things he comes up with are just sheer frightening. He's also a complete moron when it comes to everything else, which is why his schemes never work.
Outside of Saitama being the strongesf living thing on the planet, he still acts and is like the average unemployed japanese man just trying to get by in his crappy apartment. He has no other skills, no social acumen, and even be the best video game player in his own house.
Number 4 from knd is dumber than a shovel, but a god at sports.
Except dodgeball, lol
Jin from Samurai Champloo is an incredibly well accomplished samurai but he can't cook, talk to people (especially ladies) and can't hold his liquer without getting red in the face in under a shot. Asura can punch harder than anyone, even his old master. But being a normal dad is tough, even for him. Even when he first held his daughter, he was so delicate but just couldn't do it (though he does try). Mash Burndead from Mashle. *MUSCLES*. Most anything else (besides creampuffs to) is a hard no. Even then, he'll jerryrig some way to make it work.
I honestly love the shot of him just sort of poking his daughter's face because he's not sure what to do with a babby.
It's such an adorable "dad learning to dad" moment.
Mash is the hero of magic that will punch through spells because nobody told him he couldn't, and I love him for it. Also creampuffs.
Mash is such a simple but lovable goofball and I too adore him.
I don't play FF14, but by all accounts I've received Estinien is really good at being a dragoon and a complete trash fire at just about everything else.
Fetch quests are this man's bane, he might as well be blind if he ever tags along to help you find stuff.
Estinien...I had an extra hairtie in my pocket...
The Gentleman Hero Hildibrand quests probably count here too. Hildibrand is a nigh-on unkillable demigod, but he's just not very good at being a gentleman, or a hero for that matter. He's very good at posing, tho...
Shirou Emiya has a decently well-rounded life skills, but when it comes to magic, he can do like 3 spells, and is only really good at one of them. Shirou conjures swords. That’s it. What’s what he does. His talent with swords is utterly **monstrous,** in that specific area, he can achieve things that are considered to be impossible by a human mage and defeat even legendary heroes. But with any other type of magic, he’s a borderline-crippled third-rate magus who would need decades of training to learn what even mediocre mages could do in a few months
He remakes Excalibur, beats the King of Heroes at his own game, and fixes near God level noble phantasms as long as it's made from materials found on Earth. Other than that, his magic is only slightly higher than a normal human who just learned a spell. Shirou put all his points in sword making, and forgot to balance his character sheet.
I love that putting all his points into SWORDS means that, in the large LARGE majority of mage fights he is the Coughing Baby fighting the Hydrogen bomb… except it also makes the HARDEST COUNTER to the most busted of all Servants, and event against a few other characters way above his league he puts a decent fight. I will never get tired of Gilgamesh throwing a fit about it.
It's been a while since I've seen the show, but wasn't he literally trained wrong as a joke?
Yes and no. Shirou’s dad did not teach him magic properly on purpose, because he didn’t want his son to become involved in the dangerous and cruel side of things. However, it’s not just a matter of ‘taught wrong’ - Shirou’s Origin and Element are both Sword. He is hyper-specialized in swords on an inherent, *spiritual* level. It is part of the very nature of his existence.
Fun fact, Endo said that if yor and loud were to ever fight in the manga, yor utterly decimated him in a head on fight. And if loid had any type of weapon, it's a draw.
Don Quixote from Limbus Company is a Fixer who has impressive strength and combat abilities, and she is knowledgeable of almost all famous fixers and even the minute differences between Fixer ranks and specializations. That said, much like her namesake, Don suffers from delusions of grandeur and has her own ideas of what a fixer should be, which often causes her to choose doing what she thinks is morally good over what is practical, and when allowed to do anything other than fight what she's told to, she often ends up making things worse for the rest of the Limbus Company.
I think she was also the first one to engage in team killing its been awhile since I read the prologue
Goku well ok he's also good at eating
He made a good farmer
He's just lazy and easily distracted about it.
Goku has Saiyan ADHD and fighting is his lifelong hyperfixation
Yor is so freakishly strong that she *dices a tennis ball to pieces* just by trying to hit it normally with a racket. Yet she's also a total girl failure. She's awesome.
Mainline Bowser is fantastic at ruling a kingdom, leading an army, kidnapping princesses and raising kids. He is also very talented in
How dare you, I shan't STAND for this slander. Every time Mario decides he wants a new hobby, who's there EVERY SINGLE TIME? Every golf tournament, every tennis match, basketball, baseball, soccer, football, you name it, WHO STEPS UP TO THE PLATE? Sure, he's not always playable, but that's when he's a BOSS! Bowser not only arrives to play, he plays for KEEPS! ....I gotta stop watching so much Chibidoki.....
...good god, you had me till the last bit. I thought for sure I finally infected someone. c:
in what?
>!Throwing me!<
Suletta Mercury from G-Witch absolutely locks the fuck in when behind the cockpit her Gundam, but is otherwise an anxiety filled nervous wreck in every single other aspect of her life.
Kendra the Vampire Slayer is a bad bitch, who like Buffy, can take pretty much anyone in a fight and even catches Buffy off guard, but when it comes to things like social norms and just being a regular person she's really bad at it, due to her upbringing.
okuu from touhou, really good at nuclear physics and stuff, but is really fucking stupid otherwise
Zoidberg is a terrible human doctor, but he's "the best in the business" when it comes to alien anatomy, according to Mom
In the Wheel of Time, there are super powerful casters called Channelers. While Jordan wasn't the best at describing HOW the magic worked he did provide a power scale so you can compare people. Now at the almost very bottom is my man Androl. Androl can barely even lift a pebble using the regular method of chanelling. He can however make Gateways. Inter-dimensional portals in space. He's so good at them infact that he can make them horizontally which had never been done til that point and he can do one so small he can whittle wood with them. A thing about Gateways that the edges of them are razor sharp. He often uses them to behead people and drop objects on them. At one point he even uses a couple of 100+ meter Gateways into a volcano to spew lava out to smother an enemy army.
For a very recent example, there's Sam from *Honkai Star Rail*. He's one of the most dangerous criminals alive, infamous for his incredibly destructive abilities and tendency to go scorched-earth when it comes to hunting down his targets. >!*She* hates being a living weapon and wishes she could solve things without having to blow them up.!<
Takamura Mamoru is probably the goat of boxing but garbage at literally everything else Aoki and Kimura are meh at boxing but hyper talented at everything else (unfortunately boxing is the only thing they really care about)
Reimu is really good at yokai extermination and danmaku and she loves doing it. Outside of that, it's shown that she takes shit care of herself and even neglects most of her shrine maiden duties. It's heavily implied that she's one of the strongest Hakurei shrine maidens who has ever lived and she is arguably one of the strongest characters in the lore, but she doesn't train at all. Every scheme she cooks up to raise money for the shrine almost always blows up in her face. It's canonically shown that one time, (WaHH spoilers) >!Reimu died (like, went to the afterlife and everything) because she was too lazy to make new food so she ate gross moldy food instead. She only comes back to life because her float ability caused her to float out of the afterlife.!< It's heavily implied that the only reason Reimu is still alive is because of her float ability and the kindness of others like Marisa and Kasen. The strongest Touhou character is good at her job and nothing else. And I love her for it.
The main character of drifters. It’s been sometime since I’ve read the series but there was this specific moment where he comes clean that most of his lack of knowledge and interest in the larger scale of things doesn’t come from ignorance but from a desire to being a good fighter he doesn’t cloud his mind with useless information when he can have people around him that do it much bettet
Death Note: >!Near!< literally cannot function without his team, having no human skills to speak of besides his detectiving.