Cute Bruiser

She'll leave you cat-atonic (even if she's supposed to be the big bad wolf).

Atrocitus: You appear feeble.
Supergirl: I punch above my weight.

— Injustice 2

Like the Old Master, the Cute Bruiser is a living, breathing, and frequently painful lesson in never judging a book by its cover.

She appears to be a kid, but in battle she fights like a bruiser. Bruisers tend to melee combat focused on punches and blocks. Traditional bruisers are large husky men who win fights due to their size and strength allowing them to both absorb and put out heavy damage. This contrast between appearance and combat style is what makes the character surprising.

The Cute Bruiser's Weapon Specialization will probably be Good Old Fisticuffs, a club, a hammer, or martial arts that focus on direct blows to your opponent instead of pressure points or judo throws. They'll only rarely be using a bladed weapon (unless it's a BFS of some variety) or depending on projectile weapons, with the exception of throwing heavy objects. When confronted with a locked door, her likely solution is to just smash it open. In short, she deals out the blunt trauma very well.

The Cute Bruiser also has some tanking abilities. She is not a Glass Cannon who depends on dodging. (Dodging is acceptable behavior, but a Cute Bruiser can take a blow if needed, and so doesn't depend on it.) At the end of a fight, expect her to be covered in bruises and scratches, but still with a smile on her face (assuming the fight was won). She might even be Rock steady, hitting like a Mighty Glacier, and standing like a Stone Wall. Might have Super-Strength as justification.

She is usually The Big Guy in a Five-Man Band, a common subversion of the usual traits associated with that character type. Personality-wise, she can vary quite a bit. She might be a Boisterous Bruiser, she could share some traits with a Little Miss Snarker, or she may just stick with the apparent contradiction of an innocent Cheerful Child who can mix it up in a bar fight. If she is affiliated with a powerful villain, expect to see just how someone with her appearance got to that position.

Almost always a Pint-Sized Powerhouse. Possibly a Super-Strong Child, in which case she may be a Glacier Waif. When she works out enough, she can evolve into an Amazonian Beauty; a Cute Bruiser typically has toned muscles, but her muscles are always on the leaner side. If she retains her cute looks well into adulthood, even after she becomes a mother, she becomes an Action Mom. When past the age of cuteness she usually disappears as a character before re-emerging in old age as a case of Never Mess with Granny. If she deliberately plays up the "cute" aspect to get people to drop their guard, this can overlap with The Fake Cutie. Despite what this entry may suggest, this is not an Always Female trope; a young boy who can punch far above his weight would also qualify.

Super-Trope to Girly Bruiser. Overlaps with Badass Adorable, Little Miss Badass, and Small Girl, Big Gun (when firearms are present).

Compare Child Mage and Waif-Fu, which have a similar contrast between appearance and combat effectiveness, but using a different combat style. Contrast with the Lady of War, who is elegant in combat. Also compare Kicking Ass in All Her Finery when the Cute Bruiser is not only kicking ass, but doing so in her most opulent clothing.

---

Example subpages:

• Anime & Manga
• Comic Books
• Live-Action TV
• Video Games
• Webcomics
• Western Animation
• Real Life

Other examples:

Asian Animation

• Happy S. of Happy Heroes is the leader of a group of Ridiculously Human Robots who are all pretty adorable and has Super-Strength powers that he sometimes underestimates. Needless to say, he packs quite a wallop when he fights monsters.
• Kung-Fu Girl (Tee Yang's alter-ego) from Kung Fu Wa wears a mini-dress, has pink skin and flowing pink hair and is incredibly good at beating the crud out of enemies with Super Natural Martial Arts.

Card Games

• In Tarot Motifs, Strength is often depicted as a young girl holding up a beast.

Comic Books

• Gordon in Xs Omnibus counts as one. He's seen as a very cute and squishy cat but those muscles are NOT ones you want to mess with.

[[folder:Fan Works]]

• Child of the Storm has Diana, who is a Pretty Princess Powerhouse - small enough at 12 (prior to a growth spurt) to be snuggled teddy-bear style by the admittedly very tall Carol, quite petite, and lady-like... and also a young Wonder Woman and adept practitioner of Pankration, who takes out one of the Mabdhara in one blow at the Battle of London. For context, it previously took an orbital strike from targeted space-junk, being rammed by the Tumbler at about 1/3 the speed of sound and then hit with its demolition charges, and finally, having the main Chicago power-line channelled into its innards by Harry Dresden to take one out, that's pretty impressive - especially since this one is implied to be more powerful.
• Hanala Jarva of the Uplifted series certainly qualifies. She is small, pretty and inexperienced. Yet she will not hesitate to kill anything that harms her crew, or her later lover Joachim Hoch. It's telling when a disenchanted Waffen SS Officer is the least violent member of the couple.
• The Gunslinger Hero: Flintlock: Ochako has started to turn into this, when during the USJ, she was given a shotgun with capture rounds that she used to great effect, even hitting someone with it as a literal bat. She really turns into one during the Sports Festival’s second event, Ochako takes an extreme liking to one of the opponents’ weapons, based on an Electrohammer from Star Wars. She uses the weapon to great effect after stealing it from that opponent.
• In "Honey and Magic", Matilda Honey is basically this to the rest of Hogwarts once she demonstrates her existing magical skill. Despite the fact that she was using what should have been accidental magic, her friends comment that she's showing a level of power and skill they'd expect to see from Dumbledore rather than from someone who's only just officially learnt about magic.
• Paul of With Strings Attached always was known as the Cute Beatle. He doesn't look particularly strong either, having lost some weight during his “depression era.” But given that he once lifted an estimated 90 tons of solid rock statue....
  • He's not much of a bruiser, since he won't actually hit anything that's alive.
    • Though he came close once.
• In the Expanded Universe of The Incredibles, one of the late Supers, Stratogale, was specified as having the powers of Flight, Super-Strength, and the ability to speak to birds. Rise of the Galeforces fleshes her out through a lot of Character Development, under the fanmade name of Sarah Squall, and gives her a role as one of the main characters of the fic. Essentially, she is the Tomboy to Violet's Girly Girl, being outgoing and straightforward as opposed to introspective and idealistic the way Vi is. To get a good idea of how awesome she is, her Establishing Character Moment in the first chapter involves her tying GLaDOS's cables into a knot.
• My Hero School Adventure Is All Wrong As Expected: Komachi's Quirk, Homomorphic Chimerization, allows her cells to copy any enhancements made to a person's body by their Quirk as long as it doesn't change her basic body shape. By the time the story has started, she's copied so many her bones are like titanium and her skin is as tough as Kevlar. To paraphrase Hachiman, she's a "T-Rex squeezed into the body of a little girl". However, she has no control over the process, so she suffered many cases of Sensory Overload throughout her childhood as her sight and hearing and even tastebuds suddenly changed from day to day.
• The development of Terry Pratchett's female Assassins, who in the canon are nothing much more than names, descriptions and cameo appearances. In Nature Studies, regard the slight, freckled and girlish Johanna Smith-Rhodes, who has a winning way with animals. To wit, the sort of venomous and generally dangerous fauna that would get her fan-mail from Steve Irwin. She also has a direct way of dealing with obstructive Palace Guards blocking her way to Vetinari. She teaches Natural Sciences, Zoology and Animal Management to student Assassins and has the capacity to organise some really interesting nature trails for her pupils, in which they learn that Nature is a thing to have wonder and respect for.
• Elsewhere, the characters of Assassins Miss Alice Band, Jocasta Wiggs, and Madame Deux-Epées are similarly expanded upon in the works of A.A. Pessimal.
  • Not one but two Cute Bruisers graduate from the Assassins' School and go on an extended backpacking holiday in Klatch and Howondaland in Gap Year Adventures. Parts of the continent are still recovering.
• Mariko Aratani from the Lucky Star fanfics Holiday Vacation and Lucky Star: After Story is a dead ringer for this. For instance, in Chapter 25 of After Story, she stood up to a robber using only her fists.
• Mortality Watson definitely. You can picture Martin Freeman, and, like his BBC counterpart , he will not hesitate to KILL (or torture) a criminal if Holmes's life is on the line.
• Chloe Cerise of Infinity Train: Blossoming Trail is a ten-year-old girl armed with a pipe and she knows how to use it, mostly to knock someone across the head with it, whether it be the Erlking, Temple Guards or the abomination known as Delirium.
• The KanColle / Halo crossover For Earth And Her Colonies has its main character UNSC Harvest, despite the actual vessel being twice as long as an Iowa-class battleship and with an overall armor scheme thicker than the front face of Yamato's main battery turrets. However, because shipgirls themselves are spiritual constructs, and Harvest considers herself a frigate, the result is a girl no taller than a normal destroyer who can take on the Biggest Bads of the setting with ease.
• Momentary Weakness: Milly, eldest of the royal children, inherited Mythra's personality, an Aegis constitution, and Rex's dedication to training. She is therefore far more skilled at ten years old than most of the soldiers at the palace, and proves it when she decides to take over their training for the day.
  "He..." The guard gasped, trying to get his breath. "He puts his own daughter through that?!" Water skins were being passed around the training grounds after she let them take a break, though she was still hopping about checking in on the soldiers.
  "Like I... like I said. Paragon's daughter. Daughter of an... phew, an Aegis... they're not like us." His colleague had taken her helmet off, mopping her dark hair back.
  "At... at least the drill is over..." He took some relief in that, watching as that blonde demon passed out little bowls of dried fruit and mixed nuts for them to snack on.
  "She'll be sparring with us next."
• This Bites! gives us Conis from Skypiea, who manages to acquire Super-Strength due to oxygen saturation (since she used to live at a much higher altitude). While she can duke it out in close combat when needed, she's actually a gunner, so she puts the strength to a different use: leisurely carrying enough guns to lay waste to an entire island.

Films — Animated

• Maruti in The Return of Hanuman is a little boy who is very strong and able to lift a house. It's justified since as the title of the film suggests, Maruti is the reincarnation of Hanuman, a Hindu god.
• In Turning Red, Abby is very much cute and since she acts as a bouncer for the group's red panda racket, and knocks down Mei with a single punch, they're aware that she's probably the strongest of the four.

Films — Live-Action

• Another princess is Cindy Collins in Zoom: Academy for Superheroes. Bonus points given that at one point she actually wanted to wear a pink princess outfit, with pointed hat with tassel included, as her combat uniform.
• Last Action Hero, where Jack Slater's teenage daughter subdues a mook in her bedroom with her bare hands and hardly breaking a sweat, all the time faking sounds of anguish and pain to keep his fellow mooks from interrupting.
• Jason Lane from Superman Returns manages to throw a piano when Lois is under imminent threat.
• Raven in Cecil B. Demented. She's one of very few sprocket holes who escapes the police alive at the end, and in the beginning she punches a guy out.
• Monica Keena, in a number of roles. She's cute, she's sweet, and she's definitely petite, but piss her off, and you're going down. Just ask Freddy fucking Krueger and Jason goddamn Voorhees. You don't fuck with a chick from Brooklyn.
• Zoë Bell. Described in the script for Death Proof as "Cute-as-a-bug's-ear Kiwi stuntwoman". In one particular moment, she beats Stuntman Mike with a six-foot steel pipe she picked up off the side of the road, while he's still in the car.
• Gogo Yubari from Kill Bill is a decidedly psycho version of one of these. Her introduction scene involves her gutting a sarariman like a fish with a wakizashi blade, and she fights the Bride with a meteor hammer.
• What happens if you put together a team consisting of Kristin Wiig, Elliot Page, Drew Barrymore, Zoe Bell, and others?
  Babe Ruthless: Let's go apeshit.
• Kitty Pryde. In X-Men: The Last Stand, this cutie even made The Juggernaut her bitch!
• Sonja Stromberg from Doctor in Distress (1963) is a pretty young girl but is much stronger than she looks and knows how to fight men who look much stronger than her. Her sister Helga is just the same according to her.

Literature

• Keira in An Outcast in Another World is relatively short, and like most Elves, has a slender frame. She also wields a greatsword almost as big as her, is extremely strong, and will destroy you if you're not careful.
• Lisbeth Salander of the Millennium Series is described as being five feet tall and weighing ninety pounds, and at one point she beats up two bikers.
• Sally Kimball of the Encyclopedia Brown books, a 10-year-old known to be the prettiest girl and best athlete in her grade, who can beat up any guy, any size; hence, she's the bodyguard of the titular Non-Action Guy.
  • A similar character named Mary Evans appears in Sobol's Secret Agents Four.
• Juliet of Artemis Fowl, especially in the third book.
• Arya Stark at the start of A Song of Ice and Fire, before becoming an increasingly sociopathic Dark Action Girl.
• Karrin Murphy from The Dresden Files. Despite being five-nothing, blonde and adorable, she can chip a man's molar with one punch. There's nothing supernatural about her strength, though, as she's been studying aikido since she was eleven.
  • The Denarian Tessa fits this trope — when she's not a disgusting half-mantis demon.
    • Absolutely, Tessa.
  • The Fey Ladies, the youngest of the Three Queens, are pretty, young women with the third largest punch of their court, Summer or Winter. YMMV on Maeve, though.
  • Ivy, the Archive. Several members of the White Council are under the belief that she has the power equal to one of the Faerie Queens. It's heavily implied that they are severely underestimating her.
  • Warden Commander Luccio, the senior-most combat wizard in existence, considers Harry this. She also counts as this, once she is trapped in the body of a cute twenty-something co-ed.
• Monster, a Hulk parody that showed up in the McGuiness issues of Batman/Superman comics. A cute eight year old girl that can transform into a muscle-bound brute at will. Batman is soundly horrified at the concept of taking her into combat; he might have recruited a few fairly young and inexperienced sidekicks himself, but at least they were all out of high school.
• Luisa from Sho-shan y la Dama Oscura. She's described as a 15 years old girl, with curly blonde hair, dressed in a Lolita fashion and even that she knows how to defend herself. Add the fact than when she was 4 years old she managed to escape from an hospital with her sister, attacking a lot of doctors on the process.
• Kirsty in Terry Pratchett's Johnny Maxwell Trilogy. In Johnny and the Bomb, she even took down a soldier thanks to her karate training (granted, she caught him by surprise after successfully playing a scared girl).
  • In Only You Can Save Mankind she does the same to an armed alien whose species specializes in close combat.
• In the Mistborn trilogy, Vin, who is barely over five feet tall is one of the most powerful of the titular Mistborn, including the use of pewter which gives her super stamina and strength. This is often used to her advantage, as her opponents are less likely to see her as a threat.
  • Although, surprisingly, the drawbacks of being so petite are also commented on and even shown. Because Pewter scales with physical strength, Vin is nowhere near as strong as a person with comparable allomantic ability and a larger build. Also, her speed is negated if she is forced to grapple and her short stature also limits her reach.
• Percy Jackson and the Olympians has the Goddess Artemis, the Token Mini-Moe. A twelve year old girl in appearance, she holds up the sky and fights Atlas on equal footing, who is said to be one of the strongest Titans. She's sort of a Ensemble Dark Horse for a reason.
• Ali from The Red Vixen Adventures. Ex-pirate bodyguard with a troubled past, and four and a half feet of black and white furry fury.
• Downplayed in Cassandra Kresnov. Sandy and other GIs are shorter than average, and Sandy explains that combat myomer doesn't handle well in large volumes - if she were a foot taller, she'd suffer chronic tension and be unable to control her own strength.
• Urban Dragon Arkay is so petite she could pass for a teenager, or even a child. She could also punch through a brick wall if properly motivated.
• The Avenger: Nellie Gray is a five foot tall woman who looks like "a porcelain doll" but is able to use jujitsu to throw around men three times her size.
• There are plenty of Cute Bruiser characters at Super Hero School Whateley Academy, since these are future superheroes (and supervillains and superpowered people trying not to be either). Of the main characters, Tennyo and Phase fit this trope. But the best match is probably Desidera, codenamed 'Diz Aster', an 11-year-old girl who's at Whateley because there's no other place safe to hold her. She is a PK supergirl who can apply 8 tons of force at a mere touch. And she can't turn it off. She does everything with 8 tons of force. Typing. Opening the door. Changing clothes. She can't leave her room without putting on a special power armor suit whose sole purpose is to 'use up' her PK force and keep her from destroying everything she touches.
• Saga of Notting Cove. Characters comment on her cuteness and she easily defeats a character known for being ridiculously strong. She's also the youngest of the cast.

Music

• Noodle of the band Gorillaz. Being the product of a Super-Soldier project, she has mastery of all forms of weaponry as well as hand to hand combat.
• The kid boxer in Audioslave's video for "Doesn't Remind Me."

Podcasts

• Sid from Sequinox is the most physically combative of the team, and she is also a delightful teenage girl.

Pro Wrestling

• Several of the comedy-based wrestling promotions in Japan feature Kaicho Ramu, whose gimmick is that she is a little girl, possessed by a demon, and strong enough to casually suplex and chokeslam adults. She actually started when she was 6 years old and (as of 2009) is 8 or 9 years old. (She should be about 11-12 years old as of December 15, 2012 now.)
• Riho (born June 4, 1997), now formerly of the Ice Ribbon promotion, has a similar gimmick, minus the possessed-by-a-demon thing. She started when she was 8 years old on May 29, 2006, and 15 years old now (as of December 15, 2012).
• WWE's Bayley is an adorkable kid-friendly babyface wrestler whose offence is based around power moves.
• Alexa Bliss' original Face gimmick is that of a Plucky Girl who loves glitter and sparkles. She proved very popular with younger fans and became a Token Wholesome, but pulls a Face–Heel Turn to become Hotter and Sexier. Once she returns to being a Face years later, Alexa is given a Closet Geek character.
• Liv Morgan. She began as a Tomboyish Plucky Girl, then gets a Girliness Upgrade in later gimmicks but never loses the Plucky-aspect of her character.

Tabletop Games

• In both Vampire: The Masquerade and Vampire: The Requiem, vampires don't age after being turned. So, in theory, if someone was Embraced four hundred years ago as an eleven-year-old girl, she could have all the awesome might of the most powerful vampire elders and look quite harmless. Similarly, it's noted in a few supplements that due to nutrition, most people were much shorter than modern average a long time ago, so that "short" vampires accorded respect by vampires you believe to be stronger than you should be afforded every courtesy...
• In the Pathfinder RPG, there is a feat called Childlike that allows Halflings to appear to be human children, without impairing their ability to be ass-kicking adventurers. On the other hand it also has massive Squick potential...
• Halflings and Gnomes might lack the above-mentioned feat in Dungeons & Dragons, but that still doesn't prevent their womenfolk from being cute or capable of smashing people in the face. Especially in 4th edition, where they lack the traditional Strength penalties that prevent them from being good at melee classes — halflings, with their Dexterity bonus, actually make pretty good Bare Fisted Monks.
• Nako, who appears in all but one Free RPG Day Starfinder adventure so far. Party tank, ship's gunner, obscenely high Strength score, totes a weapon bigger than she is, goes around geared up like a Space Marine? Yes to all of the above. She's also a three-foot-tall, candy-apple-red skittermander.
• Given the free form nature of character creation, it's easy to build such a character in Mutants & Masterminds. Canon examples include teen superheroes Nereid, a rare male version in Whoop-Ant, but most especially Changeling, who's a Voluntary Shapeshifter that prefers the form of a teenage Genki Girl.
• One of the sample Powers in Nobilis is Rook Catchfly, the Power of Eternity, who is stuck forever at ten years old. She's a cheerful type who loves showing people how beautiful the world is. She's also Aspect 4 in a system where peak human physical and mental capability is Aspect 2, and her Tarot card in third edition specifies that it's probably a good idea to be polite to all little girls you meet until you're certain they can't bludgeon the Marine Corps into unconsciousness with a bear while outsmarting Stephen Hawking.

Visual Novels

• Tomoyo Sakagami of CLANNAD is a quiet, somewhat soft-spoken young lady who aims to be student council president. She also used to (and still can) beat up gangs of delinquents with her bare hands and can deliver upwards of 500 kicks in a matter of two to three seconds with enough force to lift her targets off the ground and keep them there.
• Bakumi Moriyama of Crimsoness, a high school girl who, after one bad day, goes on a rampage and destroys everything in her path, including a crocodile, a demonic statue, and a door. The game ends with her splitting Earth in half with her BARE HANDS.
• Shikikargura from Visual Novel Princess Waltz is about half the height of the other princesses and carries no weapon. Don't think that makes her weak.
• Ohtori Chihaya, in Rewrite, looks like your average high-school girl (albeit quite adorable). She also can lift more than six times your average adult male's lift capacity, without breaking a sweat. And walk out of several falls that would cause anyone else serious injury.
• The titular character of Tsumugu Logic, an 18-year old teen who normally doesn't get aggressive and is generally a pleasant person to have around, is shown to be capable to overpower three trained guards all by himself. The one who sent them visibly shows surprise at that, and the visual novel style doesn't quite let us see what exactly goes down, but the description says enough. It should also be mentioned that his family has a vague relation to crime to begin with.
• Celeste from Tyrion Cuthbert: Attorney of the Arcane is cheerful and sweet, but also a seasoned mercenary who even hardened criminals are wary about fighting.

Web Animation

• Dreamscape: Anjren's a cute, expressive girl, but don't underestimate her, she can kick some serious ass! Especially when she activates her Powered Armor.
• DSBT InsaniT: Martha's cute, friendly, and also especially strong when in her element.
• Gorilla Girl: Jenny Silverback might be a small girl, but she has the strength and the temper of a gorilla.
• RWBY: In a World of Action Girls, there were bound to be a couple of these.
  • The main protagonist, Ruby Rose, is the youngest member of the main cast at 15. She's about half the size of her weapon, which is a scythe/sniper rifle combo she designed herself. She's also more passionate about weapons than people.
  • Nora Valkyrie is this and Girly Bruiser. She's a Genki Girl with a heart motif who almost never stops grinning, even when told she's at risk of dying. Her weapon is as unsubtle as she is; a grenade launcher/hammer combo which, like Ruby's weapon, can propel her through the air. The grenades it fires also have hearts on them.
  • The one character who fits the spirit of this trope most is actually Yang Xiao Long, Ruby's older half-sister. She's a Lightning Boisterous Bruiser who uses a boxing-like style augmented by wrist gauntlets with incendiary shotguns built into them. She's not the brightest or most graceful fighter in the world but her immense strength and ferocity in combat are usually more than enough to get the job done. That is not all: if her hair gets damaged in any way, her standard response is to activate a Super Mode where her eyes flash red and she becomes even stronger, faster and crazier in battle. She's also the Team Mom of RWBY and the resident Ms. Fanservice along with Pyrrha Nikos.

Web Videos

• Tamara (the character) from The Nostalgia Critic is short and baby-faced (Critic even calls her Ayra Stark), but her beating the shit out of Critic is why he offers her a job in the first place.

---