Magic Knight / Anime & Manga

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• Black Clover: Although the Clover Kingdom's military force are called the Magic Knights, most of them fight as regular mages with spells and serve a 'knight' role by defending the kingdom from threats. There are some who fight like actual Magic Knights, however. Asta, despite having no magic whatsoever, wields swords with Anti-Magic that can cut through spells, deflect magic, and dispel curses. Yami uses Dark Magic to cover his katana in darkness and launch blasts. Charlotte fights using Briar Magic to transform her sword into a bush of thorns. Noelle becomes one when she uses Water Magic to create an armor and lance, which she can use to pierce spells and cast spells herself.
• Bleach: Shinigami are a military of ghostly warriors who protect the balance of souls between world and save humans from hollows. Although their primary focus is on channeling their power through their weapons, they do have the ability to use kidou. Those shinigami that manage to become kidou masters are therefore known for their ability to fight with both magic and weapons in battle. Level 90s kidou has such a mystique among shinigami that anyone who is capable of using it is extremely powerful. Yamamoto, Aizen, Urahara, Tessai, and Hacchi are the only Kidou Masters who have so far used such powerful kidou. Aizen, Urahara, and Hacchi have further developed their own customized high-level kidou techniques.
• Buster Keel!: Amongst the many types of adventurers, there are also Magic Warriors (symbolized by a Flaming Sword badge) and Magic Fighters (fiery fist badge), warriors who can both use weapons and magic powers of different sorts. Examples include Blue, one of the protagonists (water magic + crescent-bladed axes), Allbra (lightning magic + barehanded techniques) and Yancy (wind magic + axemanship).
• A number of magicians in A Certain Magical Index are proficient in melee combat, like Kaori, Acqua of the Back and Knight Leader. Some espers would count as well, like Saiai (whose ability enhances her strength and durability).
• Delicious in Dungeon has Laios. He has tried to learn magic in the past several times but his sister ended up being a very lousy teacher, going mostly by "instinct" that he couldn't understand at all. Marcille is more by the book, which proves to be far more successful and he is able to conjure basic healing and maybe even petrification curse removal in under a week of training.
• Fairy Tail:
  • Erza Scarlet uses Requip Magic that's known as "The Knight", which allows her to summon various magical weapons and armors to her side for battle.
  • Kagura of Mermaid Heel is a swordswoman who also knows how to perform powerful Gravity Magic.
  • Gajeel Redfox is the Iron Dragon Slayer whose magic also allows him to create various weapons, such as knives, blades, clubs, chainsaws...
• Wales/Magic Knights from The Familiar of Zero.
• Fullmetal Alchemist has several characters who use alchemy in combat, several who are martial artists — and several who are both: the protagonists Edward and Alphonse Elric, as well as Izumi Kurtis, Scar and Alex Louis Armstrong.
• In Inuyasha there is the miko Midoriko. She was one of the most powerful mikos ever, and unlike the other mikos of the anime, she did not fight with a bow and arrow, but with a sword and armor. At the same time, she also had powerful spiritual powers to fight youkai.
  • Most monks like Miroku qualify to a degree. Because they can fight with weapons as well as use their spiritual powers.
• The magic system of Jujutsu Kaisen naturally lends itself to this, since the most common application of Cursed Energy is reinforcing yourself or another physical object to both resist damage, increase power and affect Cursed Spirits. Therefore, even with an apparently weak Cursed Technique, many sorcerers are able to get by through physical strength and speed alone, and pretty much every character is some form of Magic Knight or Kung-Fu Wizard. Even so, a couple of examples stand out:
  • Yuta Okkotsu, the second strongest sorcerer alive, usually fights with only a simple katana and rarely has to use anything besides his massive Cursed Energy reserves to reinforce his body and blade to ludicrous levels. He can crack concrete, slice through vehicles and blast waves of raw Cursed Energy to vaporize dozens of Spirits at once. Yuta is also in possession of a Guardian Entity, Rika the Queen of Curses, and eventually manages to master his Technique as well, allowing him to copy anyone else’s technique for five minutes at a time.
  • Megumi Fushiguro and Suguru Geto both consciously defy becoming a Squishy Wizard through mastering close-quarters combat, despite specializing in summoning magic which grants them access to powerful familiars able to fight for them. Megumi can store a number of weapons in his shadows and prefers short swords, while Geto was in possession of a Curse with similar properties and his preferred weapon was Playful Cloud, a powerful relic.
  • Kento Nanami’s Technique, Ratio, pretty much requires him to get into melee to be effective, since his power means he can basically always score a critical hit against his opponents regardless of their defences. He uses a cleaver-like blade wrapped with black-and-white paper bandages for most of his fights.
  • Mei Mei explicitly mentions she once believed her technique, Black Bird Manipulation, to be weak and offensively useless, so she trained her body to the limit to be able to handle herself in combat – indeed, she is quite dextrous with a massive long-axe against Spirits and humans alike. That was before she discovered she could compel her crows to perform a binding vow with their own life, briefly making their Cursed Energy near-boundless – and, when such a supercharged projectile collides with its target…
  • Atsuya Kusakabe and his pupil Kasumi Miwa both lack an Innate Technique and only possess moderate amounts of Cursed Energy each. They are both practitioners of the New Shadow Style, a swordsmanship technique which creates an area of effect that nullifies other Techniques and simultaneously reinforces the user’s own strike. Both of them use a katana (though Miwa tends to lose hers quite often).
• The protagonist of Kanzen Kaihi Healer No Kiseki is a defensive variant: because he's initially given a whooping hundred points in Recovery Magic (for reference, thirty is an accomplished professional and fifty is enough to be a master), he puts all his fifty free points in Evasion, reasoning that a Healer who cannot be hit won't be a liability to his comrades and can focus on keeping them alive instead of worrying for himself. Unfortunately, everyone else thinks a good Healer should minmax, and assume he's useless, so no party wants him.
• Ashley from Lapis Re:LiGHTs is one in both creed and battle. She hails from Dortdgard which has a strong chivalric tradition and is studying in Flora Girls' Academy to train her magic and how to use it in combat as well.
• Almost all mages in Lyrical Nanoha are capable of some form of close combat or other. Fate and her weapon's Scythe form being a prominent early example. Later, the practitioners of the Belkan style of magic are literal Magic Knights (and are even called such), focusing mostly on physical power boosted by magic. Taken even further with the Wolkenritter, who are Made of Magic on top of being Belkan Knights.
  • The only exceptions (so far) are Hayate (the single, strongest Glass Cannon currently exist in universe) who followed Squishy Wizard rule for not having defensive and melee skills whatsoever (except in the game).
    • It's possible that if Hayate were to try to enhance her physical body, that she'd tear herself to pieces. Her magic has control issues such that her smallest spells require evacuation orders.
• CLAMP's Magic Knight Rayearth is a possible Trope Namer. The three protagonists are all gifted with elemental magic and evolving swords and use both extensively in their mission. The video game adaptation refines their roles to balance the gameplay (Hikaru is a Glass Cannon, Umi is a Fragile Speedster, and Fuu is a combination of The Medic and Stone Wall, plus their elemental specialties). In Part II we also have Lantis, a powerful sorcerer/swordsman who has the title of "Cail" which, in Cephiran, means "magic knight but not the legendary Magic Knights."
• Magi: Labyrinth of Magic shows that physical strength also improves the magical powers. So Aladdin is asked at the school in Magnostadt to physically train there. In fact, his magical powers actually improve enormously. However, he is still not as strong as Alibaba or Morgiana, and in a fight he prefers to use magic rather than weapons.
  • Mastering a dungeon and making his djinn his ally is exactly what this trope entails. Because that's how an already good fighter gets the magical powers of a Djinn.
• In Negima! Magister Negi Magi the magic knight is a magical brawler who makes use of quick melee attacks, or quick magic attacks. Negi becomes this after learning martial arts from Ku Fei, and learns better magic attacks from Evangeline, and Rakan. His father Nagi is the best Magic Knight around.
  • Kotarou despises mages because of their squishiness, so he encourages Negi to choose the Magic Knight path instead.
  • Kamo calls Setsuna by the trope name here after he sees her using spell tags to form a defense.
  • Ariadne Knight Yue is somewhere along the lines of Magic Cavalryman, since her training is based on broom riding for combat. Her sword and armor is also of more textbook appearance of this class compared to Mage Samurai Setsuna and Mage Brawler Negi.
  • Evangeline A.K. McDowell is an odd case. During her initial appearance, she is described as a typical western mage and requires Chachamaru to cover her while she prepares the big spells. Recent appearance however shows her to be a terrifying magic brawler, capable of executing deadly magically powered up melee skills to complement her bombardment ones. She did say early on that as you improved the differences between magic knights and mages grew insignificant, after all.
• A great lot of the cast in Prism Ark.
• This seems to be the standard for the Magical Girls of Puella Magi Madoka Magica; the loadout seems to be the ability to materialize weapons, boosted physical attributes, a unique ability, and rarely-used energy blasts. To be specific: None of the main five cast spells that are directly offensive. They all summon weapons from Hammerspace and either strafe with bows, rifles and guns, or fight melee. Homura is the most triumphant example, using a magical time machine and Hyperspace Arsenal to unleash an unholy payload of bullets and bombs she stole from the Yakuza and the military...
• In Rain, the titular Rain vowed to become the World's Strongest Man after a gang of brigands murdered a childhood friend and her grandmother while he was powerless to stop it. To this end, he not only became a Master Swordsman, he even mastered magic. He also wields an Infinity +1 Sword and absorbed the lifeforce and power of a dragon, granting him an Anti-Magic shield as a bonus. He's one of the best (if not the best) warrior in the world and he's a lot better at magic than most dedicated mages. While he's not the only Magic Knight in the series, few if any of the others approach him in ability.
• Sieg Hart, in Rave Master manages to take out 1000+ mages by taking advantage of their preference for long range fights and beating the crap out of them with a magic absorbing sword rather than waste his own magic abilities on them.
• Ashram in Record of Lodoss War. Most of the time (OVA and TV series) he's just a normal (if badass) knight, but in "Legend of Crystania", he gets possessed by an evil god...
• Rune Soldier Louie — supposedly pure mage with a questionable magical aptitude but makes up with his lack of competence as a mage being what he looks to be: a brawny fighter.
• Sailor Moon:
  • Despite being a senshi, Sailor Uranus is strong physically and often prefers to bash rather then magically attack, the enemies. Has a magical sword as add-on weapon.
  • The manga makes Venus one: with the others she's prone to physically attack the enemy with melee weapons (usually her chain, but has been shown summoning an energy sword and actually killed Beryl with a stone sword) or just kick it into oblivion, and as Sailor V she regularly bashed the Monster of the Week before finishing it with a magical attack, or, in one exception, just beheaded it with a katana.
  • Tuxedo Mask is one in the manga as well; he gains some powerful attacks to go alongside his swordsmanship, unlike his first anime counterpart.
• Every Holy Knight in The Seven Deadly Sins can use at least one, inborn type of magic unique to them, and many also learn other spells outside of that.
• Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE-:
  • Fay looks the part of a Squishy Wizard but is a capable fighter even when he swears off using magic.
  • Later in the same series, the replacement Syaoran is a strong melee fighter, and then turns out to be a very powerful mage as well (the other Syaoran had no magic.) Turns out he was hiding his magical ability from Fai so as not to trigger Fai's hidden time-bomb curse.
• CLAMP uses these characters in Fuuma and Kamui in X/1999 also.

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