Powers that seem lame but are very useful in Anime and Manga.
Works having their own example:
- In Aphorism, each character's power comes from a specific Japanese kanji. For example, the kanji for "change" allows someone to change their appearance; the kanji for "katana" allows the user to use... a katana. In comparison, the kanji "righteous", 正, is useless in combat. Then we learn that the way the kanji manifests itself depends on how the user chooses to interpret the word. Then she realizes that the kanji for "righteous" is drawn from the one meaning "subjugate"...
- Banana no Nana:
- The main character has the power to manipulate... bananas! In a world where there's more traditional powers like water manipulation and superhuman strength, this seems like a pretty lame power to end up with. But Nana later explains (and demonstrates) she can manipulate everything about the banana, including size, weight, and hardness. Cue the absurd, but unusually badass scene of her using the banana as a bludgeon, morphing into a shield, and then morphing it into a sword. The fight ends with the villain taking a hostage, and demanding that Nana, "drop [her] banana!", only to be defeated and sent flying by said hostage who has the power of "very strong legs".
- A maid whose power is to "do housework really fast". She uses a sword in the form of a mop so her movements are extremely fast.
- Every ninja in Basilisk has one special ability, and even though some have an ability that appears to be useless, each character uses their power to be a deadly warrior. Examples: Hotarubi has the power to summon butterflies. Jingoro has the power to turn into a small, slimy slug creature when he touches salt. Nenki has Prehensile Hair. Jubei has no arms or legs but does have a really long tongue.
- Black Clover:
- Charmy Pappitson's magic lets her produce wool. Although it may seem relatively harmless, her magic is very versatile. She can use cotton to soften landings or bind enemies by forming ropes and form sheep that serve different purposes. She can create a giant ram that pummels enemies and sheep cooks that make food that replenishes mana, which is highly useful in a setting where sufficient mana reserves are needed to cast spells.
- Rill's ability is to give life to his paintings, but he uses it to devastating effects due to his skill in painting. Also, at the hands of an elf, his magic is sufficiently boosted so much that even the monsters he draws are captain-class threats on their own rights.
- At first it seems that Grey's Transformation Magic can only be used to shapeshift. It's later shown that her magic is actually transforming matter, allowing her to change spells' attributes to make them harmless or weak to her ally's magic. She's later able to use it to heal Gauche from being stabbed with a giant stone sword by transforming the sword itself, marking her as an Arcane Stage.
- Originally, Nero thought that her Sealing Magic could only be used to open and close objects. After spending time with Lumiere, she unlocked her true potential and can use it to seal magic into objects, wounds, and body damage. Using it with Forbidden Magic allowed her to seal Zagred for centuries.
- Letoile Becquerel's Compass Magic sounds arbitrary on paper, but when she's possessed by an elf, it blocks numerous attacks, finds a hiding target using multiple clones, disrupts the flow of other people's mana to leave them vulnerable at her discretion, and the giant compass needles she fires border on an Always Accurate Attack as a more effective projectile than most others in the series. The result is a Captain-tier threat that requires both Nozel and Noelle to overcome her by the skin of their teeth.
- Although Marx Francois' Memory Magic isn't overtly strong, at the hands of an elf, it can be used to create a magical crossbow that fires bolts that erase people's short-term memories, showing the power an elf has in anyone they can possess.
- Although Owen's Water Magic is far from useless due to its healing ability, at the hands of an elf, it can form a gigantic jellyfish that gives Yami trouble, showing the power an elf has in anyone they possess.
- Bleach has Ichibei Hyosube, the Commander of the Royal Guard who is higher ranked than even Yamamoto. His power is control over the "true name" of anything, and it is he who provides everything in Soul Society with its name using his giant calligrapher's brush. By altering the true name of anything, he also alters its nature; his unreleased sword can erase half of a person or object's true name, cutting its power by half. In Shikai, he can erase something's true name completely, and thus its power as well. His Bankai can give something a completely different name and cause it to take on the properties of that name; if, for instance, he were to change an opponent's name to "ant," they would immediately become as feeble as a small bug.
- Blood Blockade Battlefront: Series protagonist Leonardo Watch's All-Seeing Eyes of God, while certainly not lame (given that they can show him anything from microscopic entities to the true names of the absurdly powerful Elder Blood Breeds), don't seem to offer him much when it comes to combat. But then Leo reminds the audience of his ability to hijack someone else's vision and scramble it to the point where they're keeling over from the nausea, or ensure they only see what he wants them to see.
- Bungo Stray Dogs:
- Motojiro Kaiji has immunity to explosions... but only if the explosion came from a bomb shaped like a lemon. Sounds lame and pointlessly over-specific compared to turning into a nearly indestructible tiger, disabling the powers of anyone you touch, or controlling an all-devouring shadow demon, but he makes it work by carrying a large supply of lemon-shaped bombs with him, which he can use without fear of injury, and by fooling his enemies into thinking he has the much more dangerous power of generating an infinite supply of said bombs.
- Similarly, Louisa May Alcott's ability lets her slow down the passage of time for herself... but only when she's alone and thinking in a room. She uses this ability to great effect as the Guild's strategist, writing and analyzing months' worth of plans in a fraction of that time.
- Akutagawa Ryuunosuke's only power is to control clothing (drawn from Rashoumon ending with the main character stealing a kimono). He has been shown to create an all-devouring monster with it, shielding himself by distorting space, create 'locks' that restrain enemies, and raise himself up in the air with it. He can also change the texture of it, making him able to kill people with clothing by making it as sharp as blades or turning it into spikes that come out of the ground. This immense creativity has made it so that the first thing noted about him is one should run away if crossed.
- On the heroes' side of things, Doppo Kunikida's ability lets him turn the pages of his handheld notebook into anything... unless it's bigger than the notebook itself. But considering the things he's made with it so far (flash-bang grenades, tasers, grapple guns, the key to stop the countdown on a bomb), it's not nearly as much of a weakness as it sounds.
- Teruko Ookura's Ability is feared enough for her to be The Dreaded, and it's withheld quite some time what it implies. It turns out that her fearsome Ability is...the manipulation of age on herself and others. What chance do your enemies stand if they're turned into a toddler, a geriatric, or both of them at rapid speeds?
- City Hunter:
- Villain Eran Dayan was allergic to men, getting hives whenever a male came near him. Initially played for laughs... In the same scene, it allows him to realize that Ryo had disguised himself as a woman, and when Ryo moves for the kill later in the arc he discovers that Eran can use his allergy to sense his presence, negating any kind of disguise and hiding technique.
- From the same arc, Ryo has the ability to make his Gag Penis retire in his body. Found out when he infiltrated Eran's manor disguised as a woman only to have Eran's Dragon check his gender by watching his crotch (a standard procedure).
- Codename: Sailor V — Early in her career, Sailor Venus unveiled the Venus Sulphur Smoke, described as a horribly stinking cloud from Venus. It allowed her to knock out a horde of enemies without risking collateral damage. Also, given what Venus' clouds are made of
, she was probably diluting the cloud.- Sailor Moon- Among the five Inner Guardians, Sailor Mercury's attack Shabon/Bubble Spray just shoots a stream of bubbles that don't do any anything but create a fog. It seems so useless but when applied properly, it almost always came in handy against villains or to create a diversion for something else. Mercury gains a slightly more useful attack later on in Bubble Spray Freeze, which freezes opponents in ice.
- Ryouta Mitarai from Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School. He's the SHSL Animator, a talent that seems banal and unimpressive compared to others until it's revealed that studying animation has granted Mitarai the ability to brainwash the people who watch the shows he helps create. This makes him extremely dangerous, and sure enough, towards the end he snaps after his Break the Cutie and pulls a Face–Heel Turn, becoming the Big Bad. It takes quite a bit of effort for the rest of the cast to get him back.
- In Darker than Black, one character can take existing water and make the immediate area briefly rain. While this seems useless, when paired with her partner who can freeze water, they become a devastating pair, since after dousing the battlefield in water he can basically freeze anything.
- Darwin's Game: Ryuji Maesaka's sigil only grants him the ability to determine if someone's lying. He doesn't think it's very useful at first, but he proves to be invaluable to the Sunset Ravens thanks to his ability to weed out liars and determine the sincerity of potential allies. It's also the most reliable way of weeding out the Greed that has disguised themselves as humans. All Ryuji has to do is ask if they're human and his sigil will see through their lies.
- The Demon Girl Next Door: Yuko initially doesn't think very highly of her Dream Walker power, but after she uses them to get a hostile magical girl and amoral fox girl to drop the Conflict Ball, she comes to the realization that her powers are a lot more dangerous than she realized. Then Yuko realizes that her relationship with Momo may be built on a lie because she's unwittingly brainwashed her in both the literal and figurative sense. Momo reassures her that she'd have come to cherish Yuko anyway, and she's never used her powers for anything but making other people happy, but a seed of doubt has been planted that probably won't be going away soon.
- Main character Tanjiro in Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba is promptly established to have a great sense of smell. This seems like an odd thing to put emphasis on, but Tanjiro takes his ability all the way into "Touhou character" levels of application. He can smell and recognize the stench of demons from far away, itself an extremely useful ability in a line of work that involves tracking down and killing the things. He is extremely hard to strike by surprise as he can smell the odor of incoming attackers, even allowing him to predict attacks from odd locations such as underground. Perhaps most ridiculously, he can somehow smell the weak points of enemies, which, combined with his training, allows him to strike with ludicrous levels of precision. Unusually for the trope, at no point is his ability mocked In-Universe — even before he becomes a demon hunter, we see him bail a man out of trouble with his keen sense of smell as he is able to determine that a vase said man was accused of breaking was actually shattered by a cat.
- Devilman: Akira Fudo was a young man of middling physical prowess until his run-in with the demon Amon. Rather than be possessed by Amon, however, Akira's kindness and empathy give him the strength he needs to not only resist Amon's influence but also take his powers and make them his own as Devilman.
- Digimon Adventure: Gomamon's only ability, Marching Fishes, simply summons fish from absolutely nowhere, and is about as effective in combat as you'd expect. But it's easily the most useful and practical of the Rookie-level Digimon's powers; Gomamon has used it to save the team from drowning, push an island to shore, and help distract an enemy Greymon. To top it off, there doesn't need to be a body of water nearby in order for Gomamon to use Marching Fishes, as shown when he summoned some fish in the middle of the desert. And they could fly.
- Digimon Tamers: MarineAngemon. When its Tamer, Kenta, met it, he dismissed it because he thought it looked too small and cute to be a Mega-Level Digimon (which were usually fierce, powerful warriors brought in for the final arc of most Digimon series), but many episodes later, MarineAngemon's heart-based powers, which were only used a few times, could heal injuries, repel evil Digimon with the power of their inherent positivity, and form defensive barriers.
- Dorohedoro:
- Fukuyama can...turn things into pies. Anything into pies. If his smoke touches a person, it's a One-Hit Kill. When Kai shows up wielding En's smoke, Fukuyama is able to temporarily hold him off in a smoke-based Beam Of War, meaning his power lets him stand up to one of the strongest magic users in the setting.
- Fujita's power is to shoot puffs of black smoke from his fingers with concussive force. He uses it very rarely because the “concussive force” is so weak as to be useless. But during a baseball game in Hole, he can cast his smoke on the balls and throw them with frightening speed to almost cripple people. When powered up with black powder, it becomes powerful enough to blow people into Ludicrous Gibs — at the cost of blowing Fujita’s own arm off as well. Ironically, Fujita never fully realizes how powerful his magic really is.
- Dr. STONE: Many of the revived humans have skills that grant them many advantages over the surviving humans. Senku's absurd intellect, Taiju's inhuman strength, Gen's knowledge of psychology, etc. And then there's Yuzuriha, who has incredible manual dexterity. Not as overtly impressive as the previously listed examples, but the applications are incredibly diverse: her skill with cloth-making is instrumental for many of Senku's inventions and ensuring the Kingdom of Science makes it through winter, the clothes she creates prove popular enough that Senku can sell them to fund the Kingdom, and most importantly, she can reconstruct other petrified humans even after they've been broken into gravel-sized chunks.
- In Genesis of Aquarion, Apollo's enhanced sense of smell allowed him to smell things like microscopic organisms (from several feet away, when inside a cockpit!) and even immaterial beings.
- In the sequel Aquarion EVOL, Andy's power is...to dig. While this seems useless at first, as all he can do is basically cut away large sections of ground to dig tunnels slightly faster than normal, he eventually is able to create instant pitfalls in solid steel, and towards the finale can even generate black holes. His love interest MIX has the opposite power, she can fill holes, and while this initially seems limited to just filling up Andy's work, she's later shown to be able to instantly repair battle damage to the Aquarion, and fill up the openings in enemy gun barrels and thrusters, causing them to destroy themselves when they fire or move.
- Ghost Hunt: Ayako doesn't even reveal her real powers usually, leading the party to view her as a phony knockoff priestess. She does have some exorcism ability, but her real power is her affinity with trees, which allows her to exorcise massive amounts of zombies. The reason? Her power drains a lot out of the surrounding area, and can only be used in an area with a holy tree grove nearby.
- Hunter × Hunter:
- A few nen abilities seem like this. Kortopi of the Phantom Troupe and his ability to copy items doesn't seem particularly useful to a Carnival of Killers. Except that things he can copy extend to entire buildings, and he can sense the positions of his copied items as well as anyone inside the particularly large ones, making him a good Enemy-Detecting Radar. It also turns out to come in handy when the Troupe needs to Fake The Dead.
- Hisoka with his Bungee Gum. The power to make his aura stretchy and sticky like gum, and the power to change the appearance and texture of thin surfaces. Those are his only specialist Nen abilities. As lame as they sound, the way he uses them makes them overkill, both because of his keen tactical mind and because his solid grasp of the fundamentals of Nen lets him use his Battle Aura as sturdy armour and an extremely effective weapon. For example, if you can create Nen blades (as many trained practitioners can), then making your aura stretchy gives you Razor Floss. He even named them in a rather cheesy manner, as they come from a chewing gum brand from when he was young. Especially since his ability opens up all kinds of opportunities for misdirection (fitting his Monster Clown magician persona.)
- Played for Laughs initially when Gon's mentor Biscuit reveals her nen ability to be...a personal masseuse. But then it turns out that it's actually a very good support ability, allowing Gon to get seven days worth of rest in only a half-hour (and she's badass enough not to need an offensive nen ability especially when she reveals her Brawn Hilda true form.)
- A minor character, Baise, can kiss a man to bestow an intense sexual desire in him of any type she desires. Because she uses this ability in combat, her preferred type of desire is masochism, which allows her to repeatedly attack the man, and as he loves it, he won't fight back. She demonstrates this power on an unsuspecting target by repeatedly stomping him in the nuts until he passes out from pure joy. The people she's demonstrating it to are understandably disturbed and horrified.
- In Iris Zero, most of the Irises have seemingly useless powers like seeing what mood someone is in that they use to do things like manipulating people.
- Jujutsu Kaisen: while more basic uses of cursed energy like enhancing ones physical abilities and establishing barriers can be used by everyone to some degree, more advanced applications follow the One Person, One Power format. In the case of Mei Mei, she got stuck with the power to telepathically control crows. Early in her career as a Jujutsu Sorcerer she deemed this ability useless and instead focused all her efforts into enhancing her physical abilities with cursed energy. Theres an upper limit to how much she could enhance her body though, so eventually she hit a brick wall where she could no longer improve. Left with no other path forward, she reassessed her crow ability and came up with a new way to use it. With Cursed Techniques there is what is known as a Binding Vow. Basically, by accepting risk you can significantly increase your power. The most powerful "risk" you can have is one where you sacrifice your own life. So, since Mei Mei has complete control over her crows, she can forcibly turn them into extremely powerful suicide bombers.
- The Law of Ueki bases its entire setting on this. Nearly every power (with precious few exceptions) is weak or weird, but with proper application can become deadly.
- After getting over her initial naivete, Nao Kanzaki becomes one of the most dangerous players of the titular Liar Game because of her honesty. This may seem like a disadvantage in a game like the Liar Game, where everyone is normally a self-serving liar willing to deceive others to satiate their own greed, but it gives her two very important advantages. Firstly, because everyone else is self-serving, this makes Nao the only player the others can reliably trust to help them, and once everyone else realizes this, she becomes a Magnetic Hero able to hold together alliances that normally wouldn't be formed because everyone is too suspicious of each other, thus allowing her and Akiyama to pull off tactics that would normally fall apart due to backstabbing and betrayal. The other advantage is that whenever she decides to deceive others herself, she can fool people more easily because nobody expects her to be able to pull it off, let alone do it in the first place. In particular, Yokoya does exactly what she wants him to do because he underestimates her, and she knows how Yokoya works and which buttons to press.
- In the anime adaptation of Medaka Box, Fude Ezumachi can change the colours of things. He manages to disable one of the most powerful characters in the series by turning their skin splotchy blue, causing their body to react as if it had been heavily bruised. He also displays the ability to make things brittle by turning them grey, can shake his enemies' confidence by turning them pink, and implies that he can use the colour red to open massive wounds that bypass any defense.
- My Hero Academia has an impressive array of these sorts of powers, along with more traditionally awesome ones.
- Mashiro Ojiro has the power of having a tail. A very strong Prehensile Tail that, in combination with his martial arts experience, makes him a very mobile and versatile Bare-Fisted Monk.
- Minoru Mineta has the ability to produce sticky balls from his scalp. Turns out, not only do they make very good traps, they're incredibly bouncy to Mineta himself, allowing him to use them as trampolines to greatly increase his mobility.
- Mezo Shoji has arm-tentacles that can replicate body parts at the end of. Not only can he replicate eyes and ears for some pretty good Super-Senses, he can replicate body parts on those body parts too, allowing him to take Multi-Armed and Dangerous up a notch.
- Hanta Sero has tape dispensers in his elbows. Said tape is incredibly strong and sticky, and he can use it both to trap people and to help him Building Swing.
- Itsuka Kendo lampshades that her Big Fist quirk doesn't look powerful, but it's how she uses it that counts. Not only are her enlarged hands strong enough to easily smash through tungsten, she can use them as fans to blow away a villain's Deadly Gas (which is the context behind the aforementioned Lampshade Hanging).
- Yosetsu Awase has the ability to fuse things that he touches together at an atomic level. This is incredible for support and immobilizing enemies. He also, along with Yaoyorozu, manages to kick off the Hideout Raid arc when he fuses a tracker she made to the back of a Nomu, which the heroes then tracked back to the warehouse where the Nomus were being made.
- Kinoko Komori has the power to grow mushrooms anywhere her spores reach. Not only is it great for a distraction, she can totally grow mushrooms inside someone's throat and lungs, which she uses to take out Tokoyami. She hasn't been seen utilizing poisonous mushrooms yet, but she also hasn't been seen in real combat, until the war between heroes and Paranormal Liberation Front.
- Best Jeanist has power over fibers. Not only can he easily restrain any opponent who wears clothes (which is pretty much all of them), he can make the threads of his own clothes so thin they're nearly invisible and strong enough to take on Nomu. Not to mention how it, as seen in the spin-off Vigilantes, carries traits of a Semantic Superpower, meaning that he can control any kind of fibers with it, as evident with how he manipulates metallic wires made from fibers to form a support structure for a collapsing building. He's the fourth-highest-ranked hero in Japan for a reason.
- Edgeshot has the ability to make his physiology flat and foldable, much like paper. He can break the sound barrier with this and turn himself as thin as a needle so he can poke holes through people including their vital organs, as he warns a thug to avoid moving around too much or there will be a health risk from the tiny pinpricks he made inside. This comes in handy when he's forced to perform emergency surgery on a dying Bakugo who tore a hole in his heart from excessive explosions and injuries sustained from Shigaraki.
- Mirko has rabbit powers. Turns out there’s a lot you can do when you have incredibly powerful legs. She’s the highest-ranked heroine introduced, beating out even the lady who can turn into a dragon.
- Uwabami's power is that she has snakes in her hair. She's leveraged their Super-Senses into a career as a heroine specializing in tracking down enemies and locating trapped civilians.
- Mirio Togata has the power of Intangibility, allowing him to pop in and out of any buildings, as well as the quirk being detrimental to him as well. But after mastering it, Mirio is able to evade attacks, punches and even quirk-based attacks by simply letting them pass through him. He can also avoid a Shoot the Hostage situation by phasing a kick through said hostage right into the hostage-taker.
- Kendo Rappa's power is the ability to rotate his shoulders more than usual. He's leveraged that into the ability to dish out punches so strong they go right through Kirishima's Unbreakable defense. Before he came to serve the Eight Bullets, he was an unbeaten death match champion.
- Gentle Criminal can make anything he touches elastic and rubber-like. By touching the air, he can make forcefields to knock enemies back and walk on air, launch himself and others skyward and ricochet all around enclosed spaces at high speeds. Do NOT take this man lightly.
- Played with with One For All. Its original user only had the power to transfer his Quirk to others, but as he could do nothing else he was thought to be quirkless. His brother All For One then gave him a power stockpiling quirk. The two quirks fused to produce One For All, which granted Super-Strength and could not be stolen by All For One since it can only be transferred willingly. While this wasn't enough for the first holder to defeat his brother, the eighth holder Toshinori Yagi/All Might was able to twice match All For One in combat, and the second time he was basically running on fumes after giving One For All to Izuku. Izuku himself has managed to unlock the All Your Powers Combined element of the Quirk that no user before him even knew existed.
- My Hero Academia: Vigilantes stars Koichi Haimawari, who can slide around at the speed of a bicycle when at least three of his limbs are touching the ground. Sounds absolutely useless, right? Think again. As it turns out, his Quirk works by him repelling force with his palms, meaning his gliding is just him controlling the direction the force is repelled. He can also invert the force so that instead of pushing things, he pulls them in, allowing him to Wall Crawl on vertical surfaces. He later learns that he can cling to walls without moving as well. Also, that bit about only moving at the speed of a bicycle? That's just his default speed, though he had trouble going too fast since he couldn't brake... that is, until Tensei Iida crossed his path and advised him on how to brake. Now, he can go fast enough to catch up with a speeding bus while also having enough maneuverability to make hairpin turns and slide through narrow alleyways without bumping into anyone. Kouichi later discovers he can outright fly with his Quirk, as he can use air as his points of contact. He was able to do it far more easily as an infant, but his mother feared for his safety and punished him every time he tried to do so until he forgot. Then he discovers he can use his Quirk to fire Hand Blasts! Basically, he can use the repelling force to fire off invisible blasts of force at opponents.
- Kyoka Jiro has extendable headphone jacks on her earlobes, and "plug" them into surfaces to sense sound vibrations running through those surfaces, or she can do this in reverse and project the sounds made by her own body into the surface. In addition to being extremely useful for scouting purposes, she has speakers built into her costume that she can plug her earphone jacks into to turn the sound of her own heart beat into powerful shockwaves. While these shockwaves don't carry well over long distances, at mid-range she can use them to damage All For One's life support system.
- Naruto:
- The title character himself once used his "Sexy No Jutsu", which transforms him into a hot girl, to successfully stun the Third Hokage (the head of his village and one of the most powerful ninjas alive) in order to steal something. The ability is generally treated as a joke.
- 680+ chapters later, Naruto uses the "Reverse Harem no Jutsu" to distract Kaguya Ootsutsuki, the mother of the Sage of Six Paths for a few seconds and then he and Sasuke attacks her with Taijutsu.
- Konan's paper jutsus seem pretty tame, especially compared to her partner. Then we, and the Big Bad, are reminded that the primary explosives in this series are made from paper tags when Konan busts out 600 billion of them.
- Among the Tailed Beasts, Kurama's unique ability is that he can sense negative emotions. His brethren have abilities like "can generate lightning" or "can control sand." However, his ability makes for a flawless Enemy-Detecting Radar, rendering it impossible for his enemies (or Naruto's, for that matter) to send spies or infiltration units or even hide, severely limiting possible strategies to use against him. It certainly doesn't hurt that even discounting that, Kurama has the most raw power and largest chakra reserves of the nine beasts at his disposal.
- Shino has the ability to use insects, which he uses for spying, camouflaging purposes as well as several reconnaissance missions.
- The title character himself once used his "Sexy No Jutsu", which transforms him into a hot girl, to successfully stun the Third Hokage (the head of his village and one of the most powerful ninjas alive) in order to steal something. The ability is generally treated as a joke.
- In Ossan Boukensha Kane no Zenkou, roughly translated as Middle-aged Adventurer Kane’s Good Deed Kane is a simple adventurer who is kind to practically everyone he meets at first. He prays daily to a shrine he created in honor of his deceased beloved friend Altena. His daily prayers to her helped elevate her to minor godhood. When he was gifted a magical pancea from that deity, he gave it away to the first person who needed it at little cost, who turned out to be Anatrea, a top-ranked adventurer and heir apparent to their kingdom. When he is conscripted to help fight the ancient evil god who has revived once more he is the only one to realize its screams were that of a child. The god, it is revealed, was worshipped at one time by both humans and monsters, granting their wishes but because of her dark appearance, humans feared and attacked her constantly. Rather than destroying the dangerous god, he hugged her, assured her that she was not alone and he would be there for her. This purified the darkness around the god and turned her into a more human form.
- Mami Tomoe from Puella Magi Madoka Magica has the power to create ribbons and control them. Sounds lame, right? Well, thanks to study of engineering and some creativity she translated it into creating muskets, a BFG called Tiro Finale◊, and, in Puella Magi Madoka Magica The Movie: Rebellion, creating a fully-functional double of herself.
- Mami also notes that Homura's power to stop time counts too; while it has very little destructive capability, it could be harnessed to do so with a bit of creativity.
- Paper Masters in Read or Die have the power to mentally control and manipulate paper, which also frequently comes at the cost of such extreme bibliomania that it can functionally ruin their lives (some can be hard-pressed to resist the urge to read or enter a bookstore when they should be, say, working, and they typically spend hundreds to thousands of dollars a week on new books for their collection). However, Paper Masters can control everything about paper and control all paper around them — leading to stunts like creating plane-swallowing dragon-beasts from masses of paper, turning a simple page into a sword that can cut through steel, and more. There's a reason why "Paper Master" is now considered a stock superpower.
- In Redo of Healer, everyone in the fantasy world believes that the healer class is the weakest and that healers cannot do anything alone. However, there's a rare variant of each class called [hero] which can take a normal class well beyond its limits. Most assume that this just means that the person who possesses the [hero] variant simply have way more potential and power than the normal version. Then the main character shows everyone that the [hero] class variant can also expand the abilities of a class categorically. Since his class is Healing[hero], he has absolute control over everything that has to do with healing and the body. He can alter his own physical attributes at will (increase strength as the expense of speed for instance), can alter the physical appearances of others, can read minds through touch or erase memories, copy physical skills, drain energy, to the point where the ability to heal becomes the ability to restructure. Hell, he was able to go back in time by using an artifact to "heal" the world, i.e. from his point of view, the world was sick so he went back in time to "fix" it.
- s-CRY-ed: Give Urizane a watermelon and his Imagination-Based Superpower lets him use that watermelon for anything.
- In Soukyuu No Shihaisha Isekai Ni Tensei Shitara Sekai No Oppai Wa Ore No Mono, the main character Hanakizawa Haruzawa is given by a goddess the power called "Double Sky Leader", which grants him the power to control breasts. While a seemingly ridiculous power and utterly useless on men, it means that he can cause breasts to suddenly move, forcing women to turn, fall, or move at his will, and can even immobilize women by making their breasts impossibly heavy. It's a power he literally describes as having control of half the world (Since half the world is female), especially since there's a large number of female knights, adventurers, and demons that regularly oppose him. Early on, he uses this power to destroy a curse that was bound to a tattoo on a woman's chest, since it was on her breasts and therefore within the domain of his powers.
- In Stealth Symphony, Slice's blood, once it leaves his body, coagulates into gold coins. This is his only innate ability, and he shows no fighting skill greater than an average human. However, he has spent his years using these gold coins to buy powerful magical weaponry he keeps on his person, as well as build a business empire so that he can influence high-ranking government officials. He currently owns at least three such magical items (one of which is even called MacGuffin), which together allows him to go toe-to-toe against the strongest combatants in the world. As the coins are physically much larger in volume than the blood they transformed from, he also sometimes deliberately sticks a bleeding hand down opponents' throats to burst them from the inside.
- In Tamagotchi! Yume Kira Dream, Yumemitchi and Kiraritchi's Yume Kira bags give them the powers of an occupation that often has no relation to the conflict they're trying to solve with the powers in the first place (for example, they transform into baseball players when they need to stop an out-of-control robot?), but they somehow work surprisingly well anyway (their baseball skills allow them to aim a ball directly at the robot's core, turning it off).
- In Tegami Bachi: Letter Bee, Heart allows you to fire Frickin' Laser Beams and kill armor bugs.
- Tiger & Bunny has Origami Cyclone, who complains about how useless his NEXT ability is. Said ability — the power to assume the appearance of anyone — is definitely not useless; it's more that it's better suited for things like espionage and covert ops than the kind of high-profile superheroics he's expected to perform (not that it doesn't eventually come in handy.)
- Magical Cat's ability to shoot water from her hands doesn't sound impressive but she more than makes up for it by using it as a conductor for Dragon Kid's electrical abilities and she's capable of conjuring blasts as powerful as fire hoses.
- Unico can work all sorts of magic for those who love him, and he's very good at making friends. He also has the power to stop wars, anywhere he goes, just by existing. This power forces the gods to intervene and try to get rid of him because he seriously messes up their plans.
- Most side effects (in-series term for special powers) in World Trigger are of this variety.
- Kikuchihara's hearing is merely five to six times sharper than a normal human, not enough to be considered Super-Senses. He used to be made fun of for this low-level side effect until his team started to dominate the rank wars. Turns out that his sharp hearing nullifies sneak attacks and makes him great at tracking.
- Yomi can multitask perfectly without losing concentration. He can control two drones at the same time without neglecting his operator duty, which enables him to hold off multiple A-ranked agents when his teammates can only delay two at a time.
