Handicapped Badass / Anime & Manga

Handicapped Badasses in anime and manga.

---

• Sora Takeuchi of Air Gear can run as well as many other AT users in the series, if not better. In a wheelchair. He's just that awesome.
• Ichikawa from Akagi is an Old Master in Mah Jong who went completely blind in his youth and uses Photographic Memory to play ongoing Mah Jong games in his head just by hearing what pieces are discarded. Akagi still beats him, but Ichikawa gets away (relatively) lightly and is still seen to be active in Ten decades later.
• Briareos from Appleseed had such extensive cybernetic surgery that he looks more like a robot than a human. He's often worried about become more machine than human, but so far his wife doesn't seem to care.
  • It's hard to think of Briareos as being remotely handicapped in his cyborg body. He's at least seven feet tall, and bulging with synthetic muscle everywhere at Mr.Universe proportions.
  • The body model, Hecatonchire, is named after mythical giants with 100 arms and heads. His significantly advanced hacking capabilities and add-on flight armor with two extra arms make the name fit pretty well.
• Attack on Titan sees several characters perform feats of badassery even when suffering what turn out to be Game-Breaking Injuries:
  • Erwin Smith is bitten by a Titan, and loses his arm just below the shoulder. Even so, he still manage to effectively use their 3D Maneuver Gear and pull off a truly epic Big Damn Heroes moment, wounding the enemy and rescuing Eren in the process. Though bedridden for over a week to recover, he continues to be a serious player off the battlefield by setting in motion and leading a plan to overthrow the government.
  • An anime-only example: Fan-Favorite Levi shows up in the finale to rescue Eren in a Big Damn Heroes moment, after breaking his ankle in the previous battle. It's considered a poorly-written case of Fanservice, as he had explicitly stated his injury prohibited him from participating in the battle and during his heroics, his injury is ignored.
    • Levi gets another example near the end of the series. After his attempt to prevent Zeke’s escape goes horribly wrong, Levi is caught in a point-blank explosion. He is so badly injured that he is catatonic for hours after the fact, and Floch assumes he’s dead upon seeing him. Despite requiring numerous stitches and bandages, losing sight in one eye, and having a mere two fingers on his sword hand, he still gathers the strength to participate in the final fight against Eren. In the epilogue, he is in a wheelchair, having used the last of his strength.
• Played with in Basilisk.
  • Hyouma Muroga from the Kouga Manjidani is a mighty swordsman and mentor as well as a foil to both his leader Danjou and his nephew/adoptive son Gennosuke - but either due to eyesight problems (original novel) or being Blessed with Suck due to Power Incontinence (anime and manga), he can't use his eyes, linked to his special powers. He still remains a really powerful fighter and excellent strategist.
  • Played straight with Koushirou Chikuma from the Iga Tsubagakure. Ironically, he is the one who defeats and kills Hyouma, since he was already blinded when they fought... and Hyouma's doujutsu powers do NOT work on a blind opponent.
  • Also, Gennosuke himself spends about half the story as one, thanks to the Seven Days Ointment that forces his eyes sealed.
  • Jubei Jimushi, who has no limbs but can still use his extra-long tongue to either handle his pipe or use a small sword. He's the one who kills Tenzen for the first time, after all. Too bad Tenzen's power is coming back from the dead...
• Berserk: Guts cuts his own arm off, in a desperate attempt to save Casca from being raped by Griffith, but it is later replaced by a metal version (that has a built-in cannon). Not long after losing the arm he loses his right eye. Also, besides the attached/built-in weapons and a magnet in the palm for holding his BFS the thing is just a regular prosthetic (fore)arm.
• Black Joke has the Ax-Crazy paraplegic Italian mafioso Runover, who pursues people with a wheelchair doubling as an armed supercar. Don't think he's helpless without it either...
• In Blade of the Immortal, Blood Knight/Determinator Shira lost his right hand. What does he do? Scrapes the flesh from his bones, then sharpens the bones in order to use them as weapons. Later, he loses his other hand and his left eye and still wants more.
• Killy from Blame! spends a majority of the manga in peak condition, but by the final chapter, had lost a leg and the sight in his right eye. This forces him to replace his leg with a piece of scrap metal, earning him the affectionate nickname "Pirate Killy". This doesn't slow him down in the least.
• Bleach:
  • A three-year-old Ukitake was afflicted with a fatal lung disease. He struggles daily with the disease, often confined to his bed, requiring a lieutenant who can manage the division for him, and has been debilitated in battle by bloody coughing fits. He has still managed to become one of the longest-serving captains, and other captains have observed that, like Aizen, Ukitake's reiatsu is unusually powerful even by captain standards. However, it's permanently channelled into keeping him alive and functioning. When he was three, his parents made a bargain with Mimihagi, the Right Hand of the Soul King. Mimhagi merged with Ukitake's lungs to keep him alive in return for Ukitake sacrificing his life for Soul Society on the day the Soul King is killed.
  • Yamamoto sacrifices his left arm in an attempt to blow up Aizen. Although it was possible for him to have the missing arm replaced by Orihime's power, he refuses and remains one-armed ever after. His killer notes that for this very reason, Yamamoto lacked the strength to be a true threat to the Vandenreich. Although Yamamoto remains the strongest Shinigami, he is no longer the man he was and cannot compete with the threat Yhwach presents.
• Subverted, in Broken Blade's case. While not necessarily the character itself that was handicapped, Girge defeated an elite troop of five with a golem that has lost its left foot and arm. It still gave other characters an awe, though.
• Bungo Stray Dogs: Saigiku Jouno is blind, and belongs to the best of the best Ability user group. It's unknown if said blindness is a result of an accident or if he was born with it.
• Jun Misugi of Captain Tsubasa has a heart problem and is forbid to play soccer. He insists to play, and despite his health, he is one of the best players of Japan, at least until his illness catches up to him and forces him to bail out.
• Inspector Kansuke Yamato from Case Closed. He lost his eye and severely injured his leg in an avalanche, but he was able to fight the thugs of the killer of the week in his introductory case and would have qualified himself as a One-Man Army had not been for Conan and Heiji's presence.
• A Certain Magical Index has Accelerator, as Awaki learns the hard way. Him getting weaker certainly didn't make her any stronger.
  • After the events of NT 9, Kamijou Touma suffers from severe PTSD, and freaks out every time something reminds him of his battle with Othinus. He can still punch your face off if you threaten to hurt innocent people or his friends.
• Chrono Crusade:
  • Rosette Christopher. A generous estimate gives her life expectancy to be no greater than thirty, but god damn if she isn't going to spend those years being as Hot-Blooded as possible.
  • Chrono also applies to a degree, as his abilities have been severely stunted and he's reliant on Rosette to use them even temporarily.
• City Hunter: Umibozu debuted almost blind, but it didn't slow him down in the slightest. He later became fully blind, and that did slow him down a little... But he can still drive a car. It also helped for one hell of a Pre-Asskicking One-Liner.
  Idiot who wanted to take our badass as hostage: "Can't you see my rifle?!"
  Umibozu: "Sorry, but I can't see it."
  [The idiot got their ass kicked]
• Code Geass has Li Xingke, who, in a world filled with Memetic Badass, still manages to stand out. His intellect matches Lelouch/Zero's, his military skill and speed match Suzaku's and his diplomatic skill is that of an emperor. He just has one problem, an Incurable Cough of Death. His final fate is unknown he is seen coughing and struggling during the final battle and is not in the Team Shot, but his Knightmare is seen in one of closing shots.
• While his primary role in Corsair is that of an extreme woobie, there is still a certain badassness about Canale, perhaps best exemplified by his effortless victory in a duel with another pirate, despite the fact that he's blind.
• Hyakkimaru from Dororo is notable in that his eyes, nose, ears and all of his limbs are prosthetics, and yet he still manages to be a badass. It helps that he has Psychic Powers which he uses to compensate for his missing parts, and that his prosthetic arms are where he keeps his swords.
• Fairy Tail: Gildarts. The man lost an arm, a leg, and a few internal organs to a black dragon and he's still one of Fairy Tail's strongest members.
• Fist of the North Star:
  • Shuh is the second deadliest master of the Nanto Seiken style next to Souther himself, despite having clawed out his own eyes.
  • Falco, the Gold Light of the Gento Kōken style, amputated one of his legs in order to spare his village Raoh's wrath. Ever since then, Falco has fought using a prosthetic leg and he still gives Kenshiro a good fight.
• Fullmetal Alchemist:
  • Most of Father's Sacrifices, since they all gave up part of their bodies when passing through the Gate. (Hohenheim is the exception, as the transmutation he performed was the creation of a Philosopher's Stone, not an attempt to revive someone from the dead.) This does not diminish their capabilities and also serves as a powerful reminder of their folly, as each loss is symbolic.
  • Ed and Al. Ed is missing a leg and arm, and Al is missing his whole body (he can interact with the physical world because his soul is bonded to a suit of armor).
  • Izumi Curtis. Missing her entire uterus and a portion of her intestine detracts in no way from the sheer aura of ass-kicking that woman emanates.
  • Roy is something of a Double Subversion. While he's unquestionably one of the series' premier badasses, his loss of eyesight to Truth comes so suddenly that he hasn't gotten a chance to figure out how to work around it, which is a bad thing when it's the Final Battle and one of the heaviest hitters just became The Load. However, he quickly gets around it by having Hawkeye, who had been almost fatally injured a while ago (via a slit throat and heavy blood loss) and couldn't take direct part in the fight, correct and direct his aim. Furthermore, his encounter with the Truth still means that he can also perform alchemy without the need of a circle like Izumi and the Elric Brothers, allowing him to form large protective barriers from the ground quickly. His Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) counterpart counts as well. In Fullmetal Alchemist: The Conqueror of Shamballa Roy is blind in one eye, as at the end of the series he lost an eye while batting Frank Archer, but is as badass as ever. If anything the Eyepatch of Power makes him seem cooler.
  • Jean Havoc is paralyzed from the waist down after a confrontation with Lust. He's considered a non-entity by the military afterward, which he exploits to provide Mustang's group with backup and weapons during the battle for Central, thanks to his family's grocery business. A picture during the closing montage shows he's learning how to walk again, thanks to the remnants of the last Philosopher's Stone.
  • King Bradley is blind in his left eye but is still reputed as a very dangerous fighter. Subverted in that he's not really blind but has to hide his eye because it marks him as a Homunculus, one of the series' antagonists. When fighting particularly skilled opponents, who usually try to get to him through the blind spot on his left side, he tends to take the eyepatch off.
    • That being said, he does lose his Homunculus eye and suffers enough injuries that he's half-dead. Despite this, he's still able to fight evenly with Scar, who's probably the second-best fighter in the whole series.
  • Lan Fan loses her arm, then comes back six months later to kick ass with an automail arm- the shortest recovery time shown in the series. She's so fresh off her rehabilitation that she nearly wrenches the prosthetic out of her socket fighting, but that doesn't stop her from saving most of the cast.
  • Paninya has both legs replaced with automail, but is able to outrun and outmaneuver both Ed and Al, to the point where Ed asks if she's an acrobat. She also packs a knife and gun in her prosthetics and she knows how to use them. Plus the mini cannon that's mounted in one of her knees. Yes, an actual cannon that can fire baseball-sized cannonballs.
  • Buccaneer, what with his crazy-awesome automail arm, one attachment being a chainsaw while the other is more of a standard hand, but with diamond-tipped claws.
• Chichiri from Fushigi Yuugi. He lost an eye in a past incident that cost him his best friend... but he's still quite the badass Kung-Fu Wizard, no da!
• Edelhi Bootsvorz from Future GPX Cyber Formula. Losing his left arm and eye in a crash during a test drive, he gained a mechanical arm and eye in order to continue his racing career and eventually became a seasoned racer. Later in the series, he gains another replacement arm and eye, which are more advanced and natural-looking.
• The martial artist and leader of the Kyosen Ryuu Sakon Daimaru from Gamaran. He's an insanely powerful warrior, capable of killing a man with nothing but his fingers and incredibly fast. Sadly, the horrible Training from Hell planned by his ambitious Jerkass brother destroyed his rationality and made him a sort of mentally retarded kid.
• Gangsta. stars Nicolas Brown, an Ax-Crazy Twilight mercenary-for-hire with a 100% success rate for jobs. He has also been deaf since childhood. His business partner/Heterosexual Life Partner Worick also sports an Eyepatch of Power.
• Ga-Rei -Zero- Ayame Jinguuji, with an awesome wheelchair and minigun prosthetic leg.
• Gohē Takeda from Ginga: Nagareboshi Gin after he loses his leg. Made even more badass by the fact that he cut it off himself!
• In the sequel, Ginga Densetsu Weed, Smith becomes this after losing his leg to a car while saving GB.
• Ace Pilot Shinomiya Ayase from Guilty Crown.
  • Her introduction sums it up rather nicely: the protagonist is told that Ayase would be his combat trainer before he sees her, and is somewhat confused to see a girl in a wheelchair, being a bit lost as for how to act around her. When she drops something, he awkwardly offers to help the poor cripple pick it up, and she smiles shyly and agrees... then when he comes near her she flips around like a ragdoll using only her arms for what is a wheelchair-bound judo throw. "Don't underestimate me", indeed.
• Clair Leonelli from Heat Guy J. He suffers from PTSD and psychotic breakdowns, and seems to suffer from (non-convulsive) seizures, but still manages to kick some serious ass. He powers through one of the aforementioned seizures to rescue his friend, and even to lead an ad-hoc army to save his hometown from a dictatorship.
• Captain Pip Bernadette of Hellsing may have lost an eye, but he fights like a demon.
• Psy Kaina of Heroman, possessor of Spike Spiegel's hair on crack. Having an ambiguous but incredibly painful leg injury doesn't stop him from riding a motorized skateboard or whaling away on a weaponized guitar to fight off the aliens.
• Sesshomaru from Inuyasha is missing one arm for most of the story. This does not make him any less of a badass. In his case, he was just so powerful to begin with that having one arm simply isn't enough to bring him down to the level of almost anyone else. He actually ends up admitting that losing his arm helped make him even stronger than before.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • Phantom Blood: In the final battle, both Jonathan and Dio. Dio is reduced to a head, yet he manages to kill Jonathan, the man who beat him a lot of times before and reduced him to this state. Jonathan, even though he is unable to breathe properly after Dio's first attack, still fights back to the point he makes Dio desperate and stops him for a hundred years.
  • Battle Tendency: Wamuu gouges out his own eyes, which just makes his Wind Mode even stronger.
  • Stardust Crusaders: N'Doul is completely blind, but his ability to see through hearing, combined with the power of his Stand, Geb, causes him to become the deadliest enemy the Crusaders have encountered up to that point. He even temporarily knocks out Kakyoin.
  • Golden Wind: Polnareff uses a wheelchair. This doesn't actually make him any weaker, in large part because his Stand doesn't need legs (And if someone knocks the chair over, his Stand helps him right on it). In fact, since he grew even smarter, he finds a way to counter and wound the main villain's powerful Stand.
  • Stone Ocean: Johngalli A. despite being blind, is a trained sniper, something his Stand only enhances.
  • Steel Ball Run: Johnny Joestar is paralyzed from the waist down. This doesn't stop him from kicking ass, as well as participating in a country spanning horse race.
  • JoJolion: Daiya Higashikata is near-completely blind, but still come close to actually beating Josuke when she relies on tactics to steal his memories.
• Ryuuto Asamiya, a.k.a. Odin from Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple, is rendered wheelchair-bound after his fight with the titular protagonist, yet is shown to be still capable of an impressive level of combat despite this. Also Takeda Ikki, a boxer whose left arm was unusable in a fight before fighting Kenichi. After the fight, Kenichi's Jujutsu master Akisame is able to repair the damage and give Takeda full use of his arm again. Akisame's "rival" and Takeda's boxing master, James Shiba lost both an eye and the use of his leg fighting Yami, but is still considered one of the more powerful master-class fighters in the series. It's eventually subverted in the case of Ryuuto, who turns out to have been merely pretending to be crippled.
  • Lugh from Yomi is blind. Though he doesn't see blindness as a handicap, specifically stating that he is strong because he cannot see, not despite it.
  • Ro Jisei, a friend of Sougetsu Ma is also blind. And though he never fights, the fact that he was able to temporarily replace Sougetsu as a member of the One Shadow Nine Fists means he has to be a badass.
• Kill la Kill:
  • Sanageyama, who blinds himself after losing a match by relying on his eyes too much, which gives his other senses a massive boost when coupled with his Blade Regalia mkII, to the point where he unleashes a Curb-Stomp Battle on Ryuko. When he dons the final form of his Blade Regalia in episode 23, he reveals that he's no longer blind and proceeds to kick more ass.
  • Nui the French faux-affable cutie, who lost an eye to a giant pair of scissors. And then loses her arms. She gets pissed off because she can't regenerate sewing skills, and proceeds to open a can of whoop-ass with her augmented replacement arms.
• Kinnikuman has Terryman, who took a bullet to the leg for the title character and decides to retire to his ranch in depression, before Kinikkuman manages to get him back in the ring. A few chapters later, however, his false leg is revealed- sending him back into depression as his fans disown him; however, we meet another Handicapped Badass- a young kid in a wheelchair, who also uses a false leg and finds inspiration in Terryman. When Terryman's own leg is stolen by Kinkotsuman, the kid grabs onto his hero's leg and holds on, despite being attacked by the evil Choujin. This gives new hope to Terryman, who gets even stronger in future chapters. There's also Warsman, who has a mechanical body that frequently malfunctions, especially if a fight begins to drag out for too long.
• Lycoris Recoil has Chisato, a superhuman savant with guns and a one woman army even as a small child who was born with a congenital heart disease, later replaced with an artificial heart.
• Lyrical Nanoha:
  • Hayate was this in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's. She sat always on her wheelchair and she could only fly and walk because of her magic powers. She later recovered from her curse and is now able to walk by her own.
  • One of the reasons why the fandom ate up the concept of Cinque in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Striker S. Enemy Little Miss Badass? Nice, but we've seen lots of that in previous seasons. Enemy Little Miss Badass who lost an eye in battle and doesn't let that little problem keep her out of the front lines? Ensemble Dark Horse.
  • Add in the fact that Nanoha herself can technically qualify due to her development being permanently stunted from nearly fatal injuries she suffered when she was twelve, and the only reason she can still walk is simply because of her Determinator nature.
  • Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha ViVid revealed that Sankt Kaiser Olivie Sägebrecht, the queen deemed second to none in combat and likely the most powerful combat mage in the setting, managed to achieve this distinction despite losing both of her arms in her early childhood. The gauntlets she always wears are actually Medieval Artificial Limbs she manipulates through constant self-targeted body control. In fact, even before she received her artificial arms, she was more than capable of foiling would-be assassins and killing them with a well-aimed rock using her legs alone back when she was still a kid.
• Gundam:
  • Mobile Suit Gundam Seed Destiny. Andrew Waldfeld has a prosthetic leg and arm, and is missing an eye, but doesn't stop him from taking down perfectly healthy Coordinator assassins. Kinda helps his prosthetic hand doubles as a shotgun, though.
  • G Gundam has Master Asia who is not only of considerable age but also seems to suffer from Incurable Cough of Death and still kicks lots of ass. Gundam 00's resident stupid, sexy Lockon loses an eye at the end of season one.
  • Gundam 0083 has Kelly Layzner, a one-armed former Zeon pilot who retooled a Val Varo to accommodate his limitations so that he could possibly fight for Zeon again, but Cima Garahau snubbed him and the mobile armor was to go to one of her subordinates. He takes it to fight Kou in the Full Vernian, and we get a sad fight between friends.
  • Mobile Fighter G Gundam also has Kyral Mekirel, who was blinded 8 years prior to the series yet is a master swordsman and assassin, and easily in the top 10 of the surviving Gundam Fighters.
  • Mobile Suit Crossbone Gundam: Ghost has Curtis Rothko^note real name Tobia Arronax, who is a blind Ace Pilot. He is able to do this because #1. he's a Newtype and #2. his cockpit is specially-designed to convert visual data into audio.
  • Skull Heart and V Gundam Side Story feature a handicapped Humongous Mecha. The "Gump" Gundam is the heavily modded Double Zeta Gundam with a pegleg and broken parts. By U.C. 130s, The Double Zeta is very outdated comparing to other Mook machines, and moreover it is piloted by a 60-year-old man. Doesn't stop it from being badass.
• Riko in Made in Abyss nearly loses an arm when she's hit by a venomous quill. She's saved before Reg can summon the nerve to amputate it, but the experience leaves her with her arm and hand being paralyzed. Considering she's in the Abyss, she's lucky to be alive at all let alone still going deeper.
• Monster: Roberto's right arm and hand are crippled after being shot by Tenma. It's strong enough to choke you so hard that your tongue pokes out, but not strong enough to actually kill you. His left, on the other hand...
• In Moriarty the Patriot:
  • Colonel Moran might have a prosthetic hand, but it doesn't impact either his sniping or his hand-to-hand combat skills.
  • Newly missing vision in one eye and being only recently recovered from a coma bed doesn't stop William from racing on horseback to Sherlock's rescue and defeating the bad guys.
• Zelik Lindemann in Mother Keeper, despite having lost his eye, ear and arm on his right side, he's still the strongest man in the slums and no one wants to get on his bad side. Even without a prosthetic arm, he's near unbeatable and could punch a cyborg to death.
• Naruto:
  • Kimimaro suffered from a particularly nasty case of Incurable Cough of Death that rendered him full-body paralyzed. As luck would have it, however, his Superpowerful Genetics gave him the ability to manipulate his skeletal structure, effectively allowing him to animate his own body. And what a dance it was: He bests, in short succession, Naruto, Rock Lee and Gaara, only failing to kill the latter two because his illness did him in at the last possible moment.
  • Subverted with Kakashi, who wears his headband over his left eye, creating a blind spot. Unfortunately for anyone who ever thought it was a handicap, said headband was actually hiding one of his strongest weapons. Twelve-year-old him might count though, as his ruined left eye had yet to be replaced when he and Obito actually managed to temporarily incapacitate the Iwa Jounin who was attacking them.
  • Nagato's body was severely emancipated and confined to a wheelchair due to the constant energy drain he was subjected to. He was also the wielder of the Rinnegan, which gave him all the prices in the Super Power Lottery. This allowed him to, for example, defeat Hattori Hanzo, one of the strongest ninjas of his generation, and purge the Hidden Rain Village from any and all Hanzo sympathizers, as well as single-handedly subject the Hidden Leaf Village, a militairy superpower, to an absolutely brutal Curb-Stomp Battle, capping it off with levelling the entire village with a single technique.
  • A, the current Raikage, lost his left (and dominant) arm after attacking an-Amaterasu-shrouded Sasuke, yet hasn't been slightly slowed down by the loss.
  • Itachi, by the time of his battle with Sasuke, was suffering from an Incurable Cough of Death that would've killed him long ago if he didn't take drugs to stay alive longer. On top of this he had also gone near blind from overusing his Mangekyo Sharingan, going completely blind over the course of the fight. And yet he still bested Sasuke, despite deliberately trying to lose in addition to all the above handicaps.
  • After their second battle in the Valley of the end, both Naruto and Sasuke lost their dominant arm. Kakashi Hiden shows that Naruto is more than capable of kicking ass even with one arm, although he gets a replacement one soon after that battle. Sasuke, however, doesn't get a prosthetic; Naruto Gaiden shows he is still as badass as ever.
  • During his battle with Madara, Might Guy used the Eighth Gate and nearly killed his enemy, severely damaging his leg in the process. However, Kakashi Hiden shows that despite a Career-Ending Injury, he's still more than a match for most ninja; just not up to his previous level of badassery.
• In the anime version of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Kushana wears armor on one arm and removes it to reveal that the whole limb is artificial. She suggests that her armored legs may be similarly mechanical, and that her body may be further maimed: "Whatever lucky man becomes my husband shall see far worse than that."
• Early in the series, Red-Haired Shanks of One Piece loses an arm to a sea monster. He goes on to become one of the four most dangerous pirates in the world. Outside of the other three, nobody screws with him. He is also one of the people the hero Luffy looks up to, and when the Supernova Kid does try to properly fight Shanks, it backfires.
  • The first chapter shows Shanks doing a couple of things of things primarily with his left hand (holding booze, eating.) He also wears his sword on the right hip, which would imply that he was left-handed. Word of God states that losing his left arm hasn't diminished his fighting ability at all. That makes no sense at all, but it's still freaking awesome.
    • According to the Other Wiki, left-handed people can develop ambidexterity much more easily than right-handed people. When you think about it, it isn't all that unbelievable.
  • While he may not be missing an arm or a leg, or even his eyesight, Whitebeard definitely qualifies, as he manages to wipe the floor with several high-ranking Marines at once, shrugging off any wound on his person, after having been hooked on life support equipment for at least a few years. He even brought down the near-unbeatable Akainu, after Akainu melted half his face. Then he single-handedly defeated Blackbeard in one-on-one combat. With half his face. And slowly dying. Blackbeard had to bring his crew to gang up and shoot and stab him until they ran out of bullets to finally kill him. It wasn't even an immediate death. And to top all that, he Died Standing Up.
  • Gold Roger. The Pirate King himself suffered from a painful and terminal illness for four years prior to his death. These were the years in which he made his final journey, conquered the Grand Line, and became the Pirate King.
  • Post Time Skip, we also have Zoro, who has lost an eye, but has gained a lot of strength, including all three types of Haki.
  • There's also Crocodile, who's missing a hand. His hook more than makes up for it, as he is the first foe that beats Luffy completely.
  • Sanji's mentor and father-figure, "Red-Leg" Zeff. He lost his leg, his main means of fighting, in an effort to save young Sanji, and though he retired from piracy to start a restaurant, and based on what we see in the Baratie arc, while he's slowed down a little, he's still capable of doing massive damage with his feet, peg leg and all.
  • There's also Admiral Fujitora. He may be blind, but because of his gravity-based powers, you don't want to fuck with him.
  • Post-timeskip, several characters are missing an arm, but they are so badass they just used their powers to replace it and keep kicking ass normally.
  • That's not even getting into the movie characters, like Shiki, who has swords for legs, and Z, who lost an arm (Which he later replaced by a huge, powerful mechanical arm) and is heavily weakened by old age, but more than capable of ripping his enemies a new one.
• Like his game counterpart, Wally of Pokémon Adventures probably suffers from a severe case of asthma. That doesn't stop him from riding a bike all the way to the top of Sky Pillar (with its collapsing floors) while fending off the powerful wild Pokémon that keep jumping him so that he can battle with Norman at the top and finally wake up Rayquaza. Him having a respirator suit certainly helped, and actually allows him to safely breathe in Rayquaza's ozone-filled room.
• In the Queen's Blade Rebellion battle-books and the 6th OVA, Tomoe qualifies, being blinded by a curse. In her case she was handicapped in a deliberate attempt to curtail her badassery, though it didn't work that well.
• PandoraHearts has Xerxes Break, an one-eyed swordsman. Prone to bouts of Blood from the Mouth, and quite open about the fact that he is dying, he's the king of the Curb-Stomp Battle. Even going almost completely blind barely slows him down for a moment. Later on, Gilbert becomes this after he cuts off his own left arm. Cue Big Damn Heroes moment.
• Going by the trailer for the third part of Rebuild of Evangelion, being unable to see out of one eye doesn't appear to have seriously inconvenienced Asuka.
• In Rosario + Vampire Season II, Hokuto makes his reappearance in a wheelchair and still manages to curb stomp Tsukune.
• Rurouni Kenshin:
  • After surviving an assassination attempt that rendered him unable to produce sweat, Shishio must avoid being in any fight for more than fifteen minutes in a row. That he never needed to go beyond these limits against anyone other than Kenshin and that Kenshin needed help to make the fight last this long cements the badass part.
  • The portrayal of Souji Okita. He battled Kenshin to an equal-draw even as he was literally coughing bloody chunks of his lungs out; had Okita been in perfect health, neither he nor Saitou would have been his match.
• Sailor Moon:
  • Hotaru Tomoe is a small, sickly little girl who can't so much as play too long outside without having seizures, but once awakened as Sailor Saturn she becomes the most powerful of the Sailor Soldiers with the ability to basically turn herself into a bomb and destroy an entire planet even though doing so costs her her life.
  • In the Manga, Hotaru's even more severely handicapped most of her body has been replaced with machines when her father turned her into a Cyborg to save her life. Haruka Tenoh (Sailor Uranus) even states that even if the outer Senshi don't kill her she will probably die soon regardless.
  • In the proposed Toon Makers’ Sailor Moon, Sailor Mercury was shown to be in a wheelchair in her civilian form and flying super chair in her Sailor form. Luckily, however the show was never greenlit and the idea was scrapped.
• Saint Seiya:
  • Dragon Shiryu. Has been blinded more than once in the series, without losing his status as one of the most capable Bronze Saints.
  • Subverted with Virgo Shaka, who like Kenpachi purposely handicaps himself (in his case, by closing his eyes despite not being blind).
  • And in Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas: Capricorn El Cid who lost his right arm; Sagittarius Sisyphus who sacrificed his sense of sight in battle; Virgo Asmita who was naturally blind; Scorpio Kardia with his degenerative heart disease; and finally Aquarius Degel whose sight (though not blinded) was also greatly damaged that he couldn't see anything farther than a few inches away clearly.
• The Goddess Vulcan from The World God Only Knows may be blind, have bad hearing and unable to walk. But her ability to control objects and move them with her mind more than compensates for this.
• Sara from Samurai Champloo, who despite (or possibly because of) being blind, is easily one of the most powerful warriors in the series, easily capable of defeating the already insanely skilled and badass protagonists in a one on one duel.
• The deuteragonist of Tokugawa no Saru is a deafblind and mute woman who can none-the-less hold her own in a fight, 'seeing' with her acute sense of touch.
• Tokyo Ghoul and its sequel, :Re.
  • Juuzou Suzuya ends up losing his right leg above the knee during the finale, but keeps on fighting until he passes out from his injuries. In the sequel, he's managed to continue serving on the front lines thanks to a prosthetic.
  • Veteran Investigator Iwao Kuroiwa is one in the sequel, having lost his left hand during the finale of the original series. He's shown to use a crude prosthetic during combat, as a substitute for his missing hand, and is widely admired for remaining on the front lines in spite of his injury.
  • Shiki Kijima from the Video Game Jail and the sequel. Horrifically scarred to the point he barely looks human, he is missing his ears, nose, and right leg below the knee. He uses a peg leg as opposed to the more advanced prosthetics used by others, and is still a deadly opponent in the field.
  • In a surprising twist, the legendary Kishou Arima is secretly one. Suffering from glaucoma due to his mixed genes, he'd already gone blind in his right eye and was slowly losing sight in his left. He compensated with his exceptional hearing, and a Attack Pattern Alpha that left his blind spot guarded by his most trusted subordinate.
• Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE-:
  • Kurogane is missing his left arm. He cut it off himself to save Fai's life because he's just that much of a badass. He does get a cybernetic replacement, but it's an imperfect fit that causes him pain and falls apart during the final battle.
  • Tsubasa also has Clone Syaoran, who's blind in one eye (his right) and still manages to fell demons, misbehaving aristocrats and Mooks by the dozen almost every time he comes up against them. He just kicks them harder to make up for having a blind side, and for the lack of depth perception from his missing eye. It's also mentioned that he took up his fighting style, which involves quite a bit of spinning, to compensate for his blind side.
  • Fai loses his left eye because C!Syaoran eats it, Kurogane turns him into a vampire and then, after the aforementioned "Arm-Hacking" incident he sacrifices the last of his magic for Kurogane's artificial arm. This makes him into a one-eyed vampire who hacks and slices his way through henchmen as if they were butter.
• In Tsukigasa, Kuroe has no trouble killing a pair of robbers even though he only has one arm.
• Until Death Do Us Part has Mamoru. Yes, he has shades that counter his blindness by showing him a wireframe model of what's in front of him, can even give him a 3D map of his surrounding and project bullet paths and such, but those get often neutralised somehow, leaving him, well, blind. It barely affects him, if at all, because he fights by sensing killing intent anyway.
• Takehiko Inoue's Vagabond has a few of these. Ito who lost three fingers from his right hand leaving only his ring finger and pinky and still manages to floor Musashi with a palm strike (without even drawing his sword!). Kojiro Sasaki who was born deaf and main rival of Musashi. Sasaki's first teacher Kanemaki Jisai lost the ability to use his right arm after getting it injured in a fight and still keeps going. Master Fudo a guy who fought Kojiro was covered in scars and in his fight with Kojiro he lost his right arm and he thought it was "less distracting". Musashi himself qualifies as he fought at one point with only one eye and in another, on one leg. And Inoue's Real is also full of these, being a manga about wheelchair basketball.
• The titular Violet Evergarden lost both her arms during the war and by the time she woke up in the hospital, she already had replacement arms made of adamant silver. Even months out of combat practice, Violet can still defeat armed enemies all on her own, using her mechanical arms to now deflect bullets.
• YuYu Hakusho has the Three Kings of Makai, all of whom suffered something that left them handicapped and then went on to conquer about a third of Makai each:
  • Centuries ago, Yomi was blinded by an assassin sent by his partner, Yoko Kurama, as punishment for being a Leeroy Jenkins. To counteract this, he grew four extra ears to allow him to "hear" his surroundings. Despite his blindness, he manages to grow in power from A to S Class, take over a third of the Makai, curbstomp his cloned son Shura in a fight, and defeat Yusuke during the hero's final fight in the series—credit to Yusuke, though, his fight drained Yomi's Badass tank, causing him to lose in the next round. The most impressive of all his feats? He manages to force Kurama into an alliance with him, by having one demon threaten to sabotage his parents' honeymoon flight, and having another demon keep track of his beloved stepbrother, all the while flaunting his superior firepower to make sure Kurama doesn't simply try to kill either demon threatening his family or Yomi himself.
  • Mukuro was born a sex slave, and only escaped by throwing enough acid on herself to leave half her body skinless and lose an arm and a leg outright. Yomi flat-out admits he would be no match for Mukuro in a straight fight, hence assembling an elite force headed by Kurama with the express purpose to wear Mukuro down before they fight and have a chance.
  • Raizen is a youkai that can only eat humans, but has refused to do so for centuries and by the time he shows up he's greatly weakened, to the point of being the weakest of the Three Kings, and has only a year left. His attack power is still far greater than either Mukuro's or Yomi's (he's only the weakest because he can't take their attacks anymore), and mere minutes before dying he almost killed Yusuke in a frenzy before recovering his senses. According to his old sparring partners, in his prime he was so powerful that Yomi and Mukuro together would have been annihilated if they fought him. Considering that in the tournament to decide the ruler of the whole Makai said sparring partners, all of whom had gone severely out of shape in the last few centuries, defeat both Yomi and Mukuro and one of them proceeds to win the whole thing, it's completely believable.
• In Yu-Gi-Oh! R, one of the Card Professors that opposed Yugi was Maico Kato, a grandmotherly old woman in a wheelchair, whose skill was rather potent.
• Yuki Yuna is a Hero:
  • Togo had an accident before beginning middle school that left her paralyzed. When she and her friends are shown to become Magical Girls she considers herself The Load and angsts, thinking she can't help due to her disability. When her best friend is in lethal danger she transforms and is shown to be quite good with guns. Her legs aren't "fixed" when she transforms, instead her costume has ribbon appendages she uses to get around.
  • All the girls get hit with this, except for Karin. Fu is the most traditional as she becomes partially blind while Yuna and Itsuki have "invisible disabilities". By the middle of the anime not only is Togo paralyzed but she's deaf in one ear as well.
  • Sonoko is supposedly one of these but her fight is never seen. She's bedbound and covered in bandages but is the most powerful Hero due to having over twenty faeries.
  • In the final episode Yuna becomes one, having lost the ability to use her legs but still fighting. Karin even more so, as in the previous episode she was fighting as a One-Man Army despite being unable to use an arm and a leg and in the final episode she goes Hero and even Mankai when she's blind and deaf.

---