Examples of David Versus Goliath in anime and manga.
- The basic premise of Angelic Layer revolves around Misaki coming to terms with being small and choosing a small Angel. Hikaru, naturally, never fights anyone smaller than she is; they're all bigger, heavier, and initially have a strong upper hand.
- Nagisa vs. Takaoka in Assassination Classroom. The former is a teenage boy who's small even for his age and has just a few months of assassin training, while the latter is a muscular adult who's a veteran soldier. Nagisa wins thanks to psychologically rattling his opponent.
- Deconstructed to absolutely horrifying degrees in Attack on Titan. Humanity are the underdogs in every way to the Titans, and this usually means a very gruesome death. On the other hand, the trope is played absolutely straight with Mikasa and Levi Ackermann, both coming from family line with Superpowerful Genetics. This allows them to devastate the ranks of normal Titans and even present a credible threat to the more dangerous Human-controlled ones. On the outside world, this is pretty much what non-Marley nations are when they're up against Marley, that is until technological improvements starts to level the playing field.
- Battle Angel Alita:
- Alita is a female cyborg 5 foot tall and that doesn't appear to be more than 20. She routinely defeats foes many times her size (however, her battle style being designed to handle larger foes, said foes' overconfidence, and the fact that her bodies are most of the time advanced combat models are important factors). In almost every important battle she fought, she was stated as Weak, but Skilled (and lost to more skilled and stronger opponents), and the 2 important battles she was stronger, one she only won because her flesh-and-blood opponent though it'd be appropriate, and the other she toyed with her opponent until her body was hijacked by the superpower she was stealing her power source, and got punched to pieces. She survived and may get better...
- Sechs taking on the Jovian seeded team by him/herself and putting up a fight (the first form of said "team" was about 500 meters wide, and got larger), Zazie and her relatively weak body (and tons of guns) fighting in the ZOTT semifinals and finals (where 2 superpowers try their latest MDW, and those LOST before the finals), and Caerula Sanguis fighting a cyborg with Chinese Swords.
- Asta from Black Clover is very short, standing at 155 cm (5'1"), and fights against the tall and beastly Vetto, whose brute strength has to be sapped by Asta's anti-magic sword before he defeats him with Finral and Vanessa's help. This trope happens again when faces off against the tall, imposing Dante. Even moreso when Dante uses his Body Magic to turn gigantic and muscular when Asta fights him alongside Yami.
- Diva's Chevaliers in Blood+ are more powerful than Saya's as the former receive much more blood.
- Touma in A Certain Magical Index. Seriously, complete invulnerability to all supernatural powers sounds awesome, but let's think about this. A. It's his only power. B. Against non-powered opponents, if anything it works again him by influencing his luck. C. It doesn't protect him from the effects of said powers such as shrapnel. D. Using this ability means he can't use any sort of weaponry and therefore has to get into punching range of his opponent. E. It's only a single limb, not his entire body. Opponents so far: An esper with extremely potent electric abilities. An essentially all-powered magician able to draw on what is apparently the entirety of magical knowledge. A Reality Warper who can literally kill with a thought or do anything he thinks of. Accelerator, who can not only take a nuke head on but hit you back with it even harder. Fiamma of the Right, a magician who has an undodgeable and always lethal attack and can level cities without effort. The Archangel Gabriel, second most powerful angel in existence who can end all life on Earth in minutes. Basically, a partial immunity to their abilities on his side and street fighting skills. David Versus Goliath much? And naturally, any opponents who don't rely entirely on these abilities tend to crush him. Kanzaki and Tsuchimikado, basically, who go for a wide range of abilities instead of relying on the raw power of whatever their ability is.
- Shiage is an even bigger underdog in his fights against superpowered enemies, he doesn't have any superpower at all. He becomes very interested in magic when he learns of it, but is quickly told that he can't use magic: while he's a Level 0, he's still an esper, and therefore incompatible with magic. Sucks to be him.
- While most fights with the outclassed characters in Dragon Ball results in a straight up Curb-Stomp Battle, the exception occurs at the end of the Saiyan Saga. Son Gohan and Krillin end up having to stop Vegeta when Goku wasn't able to. Krillin and Gohan were no match for Vegeta's flunky Nappa (who Goku flattened), and even though Vegeta is injured out from his fight with Goku, he still has enough fight the two of them can't even scratch him. However, despite the odds, they manage to narrowly win after hitting him with leftover energy from Goku's Genkidama and Gohan using the artificial moon Vegeta created to turn into an Oozaru and injures him enough to force him to (barely) retreat.
- In fact, Dragon Ball is one of the ultimate subverters of the trope. Vegeta, Freeza, Majin Buu and Beerus were either small characters or their final forms were not their largest. Not to mention Goku as a kid, who for most of his childhood looked like an eight year old, took down characters much bigger than him, especially Great Demon King Piccolo.
- Eyeshield 21:
- The titular Eyeshield 21 vs. just about anyone he goes head to head with, especially Shin and Agon. In reality, however, neither Agon or Shin are especially tall, Sena's just that short.
- A better example would be the lanky Mizumachi vs the stout Komosubi. Their entire challenge is about who is more stronger between a tall end a short guy.
- Fist of the North Star: Kenshiro isn't exactly a small guy, but he usually takes on huge people, sometimes twice his size, and wins handily most of the time (keeping in mind that Raoh is also bigger than him).
- Soccer manga and anime Giant Killing is basically about this: the protagonist is a coach whose mission is to bring a bottom-feeder Japanese team (for which he played in his professional career and was an idol before moving to an English team in the same situation) up to top contender level. The term "Giant Killing" redirects here because it is a common saying for this trope as applied to association football.
- Kuroko's Basketball: Kuroko versus Murasakibara. To put this into perspective, Kuroko is 168 cm (5'6") and 57 kg (~126 pounds). Murasakibara is 208 cm and 99 kg (6'10" and 218 lbs). It's like pitting an adult against a child. If that wasn't bad enough, Murasakibara is physically the most gifted player in the league by an enormous margin, while Kuroko is unarguably the weakest starter Serin has, possibly the weakest player, physically, in the series. In real life, a mismatch of that degree wouldn't just be sad, it'd be outright dangerous for the smaller player. Nonetheless, Kuroko wins their one-on-one by using their disproportionate strengths and his lack of presence to make Murasakibara forget that he's being marked, and then ducks into the path of his movement to draw a foul as Murasakibara turns around carelessly.
- Repeatedly for the eponymous character of Lyrical Nanoha. Fate: More experienced. Reinforce: More powerful. Vivio: More powerful. Thoma: ...Yeah. Bonus points for all of them being taller than her (in Fate's case, a little bit).
- Nanoha's Expy Miura also tends to face Goliaths, all of them (Micaiah, Vivio and Erie) happen to be much taller than her. Both, Micaiah and Erie are much older and more experienced than her and they are also Inter-Middle favorites with a pretty good Inter-Middle record history. Micaiah is a One-Hit Kill expert, while Erie is a Beam Spam specialist, but Miura manages to defeat both of them with a very strong Finishing Move while she's on the edge of defeat. And her other opponent, Vivio, is only a little more experienced than her, but Vivio is also the main character of ViVid, who should be protected from Plot Armor. Even that isn't enough to make Miura fall. It does help that Miura is a Lightning Bruiser, while her opponents are either a Glass Cannon, a Fragile Speedster or a Squishy Wizard; with her being tough, fast and strong, she can endure most of their attacks until she retaliates with fast and powerful moves.
- ViVid tends to avert this trope in general. Characters who are weaker or less experienced than their opponents cannot win against them.
- Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans has Tekkadan versus Gjallarhorn. Tekkadan are a rag-tag band of Child Soldiers, while Gjallarhorn is the dominant military power in the solar system, yet in the first season Tekkadan is able to continually rack up victories against them. The Season 2 comes and this trope gets played very realistically. Tekkadan joins forces with a group of revolutionaries within Gjallarhorn to take on Gjallarhorn's largest fleet, which is bigger and more powerful than both of them combined. They make a valiant effort but end up getting crushed and sent on the run for the remainder of the series.
- Whenever Izuku "Deku" Midoriya has to fight a supervillain in My Hero Academia; while monstrously strong, Midoriya doesn't have complete control over his Quirk, and even if he did he's still a scrawny teenager going up against villains in their twenties and thirties who are a few heads taller than him. The most notable examples would be his fight against Muscular (who almost crushed him to death until a distraction gave Midoriya a chance at a Heroic Second Wind) and Overhaul (who had used his Quirk to morph himself into a building-sized Kaiju; Midoriya only won that fight because the little girl he was protecting had a Quirk that could heal the damage he causes to his limbs when using One For All at 100%, allowing him to cut loose without risk of crippling injury).
- Negima! Magister Negi Magi, Negi's fight with Jack Rakan. Negi was training most of the series to defeat a Knight of Cerebus named Fate Averruncus, and through some circumstances, he's fighting Jack, a character so overpowered that not only does Fate actively avoid fighting him, but considerable humor is made from how invincible he is. For the most, Negi is losing, Jack No Selling everything he does, Negi only surviving because Jack only wants to test him, not kill him, but he does manage to fight to a draw by prodding Jack's ego and causing him to use an attack that Negi uses his new Energy Absorption trick that he came up with to take the power from and injure him enough that with the power he has left after putting everything into his Titan Slayer Spear move, he and Jack end up KO'ing each other.
- One Piece has the protagonist Monkey D. Luffy do this constantly when he takes on foes who are renowned for their might.
- One-Punch Man:
- Parodied constantly when the main character Saitama goes up against creatures many times his own size, quite often reaching Kaiju proportions, nevertheless keeping him the overdog of every fight he's in because he defeats every opponent with no real effort. Some fights involving the stronger S-class heroes are portrayed like this as well.
- Played straight with Saitama's fight against Crablante, as it was before he had his powers. Same goes for Mumen Rider vs. The Deep Sea King.
- In many Pokémon: The Series battles, Ash's Pikachu is the David to Goliaths that include Dragonite, Tyranitar, Metagross, Regice, etc. Either Pikachu will pull off an underdog victory, or he'll go down after a grueling fight.
- In Journeys, any battle in Galar where one side doesn't Dynamax their Pokemon automatically has this result. Ash's Lucario faced this twice — in the third match against Bea it Mega Evolves to stand a fair chance against Gigantamax Machamp, while some Aura training beforehand allows it to beat Raihan's Gigantamax Duraludon even when a change of tactics left it unable to go Mega.
- The battle between Yellow and Lance in Pokémon Adventures is this, her small, underleveled Pokémon against his powerful dragon Pokémon.
- Referenced by name in Robotech where it compares the battle between the SDF-1 and the Zentraedi fleet to this.
- In ∀ Gundam, this sums up the tense stand-off between Earth-bound humanity and the Moonrace. Which wouldn't be so bad except that the Moonrace is a technologically advanced society while the people on Earth have at best little more than World War I technology. Even though biplanes, artillery and concentrated attacks do some damage, it's not until the Turn A steps into the picture and the discovery of mobile suit caches from the Dark History that they actually stand a chance. We later find out that every single fight in the series is a David to the Turn A's Goliath since it's essentially the most powerful mobile suit ever built.
- Thorfinn versus Thorkell in Vinland Saga, with no clear-cut victor in either of their two fights, though Thorkell concedes the second fight after Thorfinn tears out his eye.
- Yu-Gi-Oh!: Generally, this trope comes in whenever there is a duel between Yugi and his expies against Kaiba and his expies. Kaiba, Kaiser, Jack, Kaito, Reiji and Revolver usually use monsters with high ATK, but none of them is Unskilled, but Strong — they are highly skilled. Yugi and his expies usually use monsters that are weaker in battle, but they use more combos to overcome their powerful foes. In the end, the winner is who is more skilled or manages to exploit the weaknesses of the other.
- And speaking of Yugi, there's his duel against his own Super-Powered Alter Ego, Atem. At this point, Atem has the power to top-deck whatever card he needs, and he possesses the three Egyptian God Cards, even having all of them on the field at once. Yugi destroys all three in one turn by turning their powers against themselves.
- In Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, Manjoume's duel against his Corrupt Politician (and complete jerk) of a brother Chosaku clearly fit the Trope, but whether it was a straight example or an inversion is hard to determine, because it's hard to say who was David and who was Goliath. Chosaku was using a deck full of powerful Dragon beatsticks, while Manjoume had a deck full of monsters will only 0 Attack Points, and seeing as Manjoume won, the obvious answer is, the Trope was played straight. On the other hand... Seeing as Manjoume had built his deck using a careful and clever strategy, while Chosaku was sloppy and used almost no strategy other than "hit him with everything you have", you might argue that the opposite was true, and that Manjoume was more of a Goliath here than his Small Name, Big Ego brother ever could be.
- Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V gives the straightest example the franchise can give with the Big Bad Zarc not only being the World Duel Champion but also has the power of a god due to fusing with his dragons vs Rei, a pro duelist armed with four cards meant to counter Zarc's power. Despite all odds, she was able to defeat Zarc, kick starting the series.
