Female Fighter, Male Handler

Sydney Bristow: [activates earpiece] Who am I talking to?
Michael Vaughn: Your invisible friend.
Sydney Bristow: Good. Where are you?
Michael Vaughn: Satellite relay station back in L.A., watching you from a 200-mile orbit.
Sydney Bristow: My guardian angel.

— Alias, "Parity"

She's a badass. She kicks ass, does lots of dangerous stunts, and saves the day. He... isn't (as much of) a badass, but he supports her by tending to her wounds, telling her to kick the right ass or do the right thing in general, providing moral support, and/or providing indirect assistance in her action time.

He may be her friend, lover, superior, liege, squire, etc. But in all cases, this guy handles his badass female associate. For bodyguard and liege cases, Bodyguard Crush may or may not be involved. This may change into a Battle Couple if the male develops combat prowess of his own.

This is often done as an opposite image of the more popular and traditional "male fighter, female handler", and/or part of male fantasy of having women fight (especially when this trope is a norm in a particular work). Also darker interpretations of this will (have the male) treat the female as mere weapons rather than real persons.

Expect lots of this occurring in World of Action Girls, perhaps as a way to balance the genders. Related to Mistress and Servant Boy. Compare Strong Girl, Smart Guy, Violently Protective Girlfriend, Magical Girlfriend, Equippable Ally, Human Weapon, Battle Harem, Bodyguard Babes. Contrast Lady and Knight. See also Male Band, Female Singer, a musical version of this, where the main band member is the girl and the rest are the "handlers."

A Sub-Trope of Action Duo.

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Examples

Anime & Manga

• Black Lagoon has the UST-ridden pairing of Rock and Revy. Revy is a nihilistic gunslinger with a hair-trigger temper, while Rock, a former white-collar worker, is a Non-Action Guy adept at planning and negotiations. Following the U-boat arc, he becomes somewhat of a moderating influence on her.
• Blood+: While Hagi can fight, he acts more as a guardian and confidant for Saya while she does a majority of the fighting.
• The Organization in Claymore is composed of 47 female Half-Human Hybrid warriors and a handful of male liaisons, each of whom is responsible for overseeing and managing several warriors at once. Notable in that in-universe, only females can be turned into Half-Human Hybrid and still function normally (relatively, at least) to be fighters; males will immediately turn into monsters when they use the powers from the hybridization.
• In all versions of Cutie Honey, it's Honey who gets in the battlefront against Panther Claw, being helped by the journalist and Non-Action Guy Seiji Hayami.
• Elemental Gelade: Edel Raids are all women, their human partners all men.
• Freezing: Male Limiters act as support for female Pandoras who fight alien Novas.
• In Ghost Sweeper Mikami, Reiko Mikami is the one who hunts and slays ghosts and supernatural monsters, being aided by her assistant Tadao Yokoshima.
• In Gunslinger Girl, each fratello unit is composed of a young cyborg girl and her older male field handler. Supposedly young boys can be cyborgs as well but none ever appear. The girls are conditioned to imprint upon their handlers, to both follow their orders without hesitation and to defend them with their lives if necessary. While their handlers are all police or military veterans who can also fight, their main job is training and commanding the girls who are effectively Super Soldiers in comparison. In fact some of the handlers were forced to retire due to disability, but find new work with the Agency because their cyborg is more than capable of making up the difference.
• In Seishi Kishimoto's Kurenai Ookami to Ashikase no Hitsuji (or Crimsom Wolf for short), every human has a "wolf" inside them, and a "sheep" to hold it back. Ayame and Yuuka are two twins whose job is to hunt down humans whose wolf is about to overtake them and kill it (putting said human in a vegetative state). However, being the way they are, both lack a sheep and need to link themselves to a calm and docile person who will act as their "sheep". During a fight, the sheep can increase pressure to weaken them or release it to make them more powerful but stays behind. Ayame chooses the male protagonist, Youichi, the weak-willed son of a Buddhist monk.
• Negima! Magister Negi Magi: Negi Springfield may be the mage, but his power is mostly used to allow the girls who have made a 'pactio' with him to defend him. He eventually starts to defy this by undergoing Training from Hell to become a much more competent Kung-Fu Wizard who takes on several threats alone (making the girls, who wanted him to choose one and become a fully-fledged Battle Couple, irked).
• Otome Youkai Zakuro: Half-spirit girls led by army lieutenants fight evil spirits.
• PandoraHearts: Human boy Oz contracts a 'chain' called Alice.
• Polyphonica: Dantists are all men, their spirits are all women.
• Rosario + Vampire: Ordinary guy Tsukune is the only one who can remove his Magical Girlfriend Moka's Power Limiter rosary. Later seasons have them shifting to a Battle Couple as Tsukune Took a Level in Badass.
• Rozen Maiden: Several Rozen dolls fighting the Alice game are dependent on Jun as their medium.
• Samurai Girls. Protagonist Muneakira can power up girls into Master Samurai by kissing them.
• Sekirei: Ordinary High-School Student Minato Sahashi finds that he is one of the few who can become masters of Sekirei, girls who fight in a competition by the MBI corporation.
• Shikabane Hime (AKA Corpse Princess): Shikabane hime are undead girls contracted with monks. Monks all being men is quite common IRL, but no explanation is given (at least in the anime) for why only girls can fight shikabane.
• Steel Angel Kurumi: Nakahito ends up with three battle androids doting on him, calling him Master and protecting him from the bad guys.
• Yumeria: Ordinary teenager Tomokazu needs to sleep and dream so that an Amazon Brigade can fight nightmare creatures in his dream world.
• Flower Knight Dakini: Dakini is a badass that can bat lasers back and slice opponents in two with her sword, but is still a child. Eiden, who became her friend and decided to tag along with her, helps her learn about the world while keeping her from breaking down.

Comic Books

• The eponymous Barb Wire is a tough Action Girl who lives in a region that closely look as a post-apocalyptic future. Her brother instead is a Gadgeteer Genius (and also blind) who invents most of her weapons and metahuman restraining devices.
• In an out-of-continuity comic, Invisible Woman briefly joined S.H.I.E.L.D., due to feeling underappreciated in her own team. She turned out to be quite a badass superspy, what with her invisibility powers and force fields and whatnot. Her handler was Nick Fury himself.
• In Sin City, Dwight often employs the female assassin Miho to kill the various mobsters and hitmen they go up against so he can focus on his plans.
• This is the main relationship between Princess Diana of Themyscira aka Wonder Woman and her Love Interest Steve Trevor. Even when he's already a skilled fighter and a military man, he has nothing to do against supernatural powers Diana has, being usually her handler and supporter.

Fan Works

• A theme of the Discworld tale The Graduation Clas by A.A. Pessimal is the canonical expansion of the Guild of Assassins to recognise and train women, for the very first time in its history. The first three official Lady Assassins, as named in the canon (plus one OC) are seen through their early life histories, what they did to get noticed by the Guild, and then their recruitment and training. On graduation, the Guild then puts out a press release with iconographs, which the Ankh-Morpork papers republish. the picture shows a smug-looking Lord Downey, the Guild Master, who is seated, flanked by Johanna Smith-Rhodes, Joan Sanderson-Reeves, Miss Alice Band and Emmanuelle les Deux-Epees. The caption to the picture is Downey's Angels.

Films - Animated

• Scarlet Overkill is a Dark Action Girl one of the most famous villains in Minions. Her husband Herb is an Evil Genius Non-Action Guy who serves as her handler and inventor for her gadgets. Also counts for the minions, whose objective in most of the movie is to serve a villain like Scarlet.

Films - Live-Action

• In ...All the Marbles, a pair of female tag team wrestlers have a male manager.
• Million Dollar Baby: The film follows the story of a waitress turned boxer who rises through the professional ranks, guided by her male trainer/manager.

Literature

• In the Divergent series of books, Four serves as Tris' trainer and guide as she grows stronger under Dauntless training.
• Lisbeth Salander of The Millennium Trilogy sometimes requests help from Mikael Blomkvist, such as informations of electronical devices.
• Played with in Scrapped Princess: Zefiris, being an Artificial Intelligence, is not technically female, but she fuses with the very-much-male Shannon to grant him the powers of a D-Knight. Their personalities occasionally grate on each other, but for the most part, Zefiris considers Shannon her master and he wields her power against his enemies.
• A Song of Ice and Fire has Lady Brienne and her squire Podrick. She's one of the best warriors in the seven kingdoms, and he does what squire typically do: tend to her wounds, help her with her armor, tend to the horse. He's not that good at it right now, but he's more than willing to learn.
• Unbreakable Machine-Doll plays with it. The main character mage boy tries to personally contribute to the fights and a few times even protects from harm the eponymous fiercely loyal magic sentient human-girl puppet lent to him, but it's an unconventional way of operating the familiars (not all of which are humanoid) in the setting, as indicated by other characters' reactions. The mage does empower her with spells, yet in terms of raw power falls far behind her.

Live-Action TV

• Alias: Most of the drama in this show revolves around the complicated relationship between the protagonist, secret agent Sydney Bristow, and her male CIA handler Michael Vaughn.
• Arrowverse
  • Arrow: In the season eight 2040 flash-forwards, Mia Smoak and William Harris (aka William Clayton) are estranged siblings who come together to locate their missing parent. Mia was taught archery and martial arts by Nyssa Al-Ghul and as an adult, she moonlights as an above-average cage fighter. William is a billionaire tech mogul. When they work together, Mia is the one who goes in the field while William is the Guy in the Chair, reversing their parents' roles. In one particular episode, they actually go undercover with Mia as the cage fighter and William as her manager.
  • Batwoman (2019). Luke Fox acts as Mission Control for both Batwomen, partly because he's Black and Nerdy but also because he's more familiar with Bruce Wayne's tech than they are; both women having taken up the mantle after discovering the Batsuit. However he eventually becomes a superhero as well.
  • In the first season of Legends of Tomorrow, Rip and Sara have this dynamic. While he is a capable fighter, he doesn't hold a candle to assassin skills.
• Hughie learns to accept this role in The Boys after some Character Development. He spends some time insecure, then gets toxic when he gets his hands on temporary V, but ultimately realizes that strength isn't limited to kicking ass.
• In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, each (female) Slayer is assigned a (male) watcher to act as a trainer and mentor. Giles, Buffy's Watcher, is The Obi-Wan and cares for her well-being as well as helping her develop into an empowered, fully realized young woman. Others on the Watchers' Council are more arrogant, seeing their Slayers as disposable and replaceable tools.
• This is the main plot of Charlie's Angels and its adaptation: Charlie Townsend has his own special ops group consisting of three women (who he calls "angels") and one man, Bosley, that he intended as their handler.
• Continuum started out like this: Upon arriving to the present, Kiera's implants contacted the prototype of the future police comm system in the barn of Alec Sadler, its inventor. During the first season Alec was her Voice with an Internet Connection.
• Zoe and Wash in Firefly fall into this. Zoe is Mal’s right hand woman and is usually at his side on the front lines. Her husband Hoban Washburne, while capable of using a gun when the need arises, is usually on the sidelines piloting the ship and staying out of the line of fire.
• Killing Eve: Features an unconventional darker version between the psychopathic assassin Villanelle, and her handler Konstantin Vasiliev. Konstantin recruited and trained Villanelle, and the two have a complex pseudo-father-daughter relationship. However, as the series goes on it becomes increasingly clear that Konstantin has no real control over Villanelle, and she contemplates killing him several times before seemingly doing so in the season one final.
• The School Nurse Files: Eun-young, the School Nurse is an Action Girl that wields a Sword and Gun while In-pyo is the classical Chinese teacher that supplies her with mana.

Professional Wrestling

• Jim Cornette's initial role as the manager of Sherri Martel, though she ended up firing him for incompetence.
• Following the footsteps of her legacy, the beginnings of Charlotte Flair had nonetheless that her father, the retired legend Ric Flair, as her manager.
• During a time, Carmella had James Ellsworth as her handler, being the one who helped her in fights, being the Gender-Inverted Example of what women do as companions or managers of male wrestlers.
• Tenille Dashwood in Impact Wrestling has Kaleb (with a K) as her wrestling and social media manager.

Video Games

• In Assassin's Creed III: Liberation, Gerald Blanc serves as the handler of Aveline de Grandpre, the Assassin who goes out and does the heavy lifting. Gerald tries going out into the field once to impress Aveline but finds it way too dangerous for his taste.
• Beyond: Two Souls: On her Somalian CIA mission, Jodie plays the role of an One-Man Army, and her handler is her CIA colleague Ryan Clayton. The information he gives her isn't completely true, which leads to tragic consequences.
• Fate/EXTRA:
  • Saber and Caster are both this to the male protagonist. Inverted for Archer and the female protagonist.
  • Downplayed in the case of Shinji and Rider. Rider loves treasure so much that she often rushes off to find it above Shinji's wishes.
• In Fate/Grand Order, every female Servant is this to the male protagonist by default. This relationship is particularly noticeable with Mash Kyrielight, who is endlessly loyal to the protagonist, who in turn takes care of her. Particularly after they learn that she has less than a year to live.
• KanColle: The game has you organizing historical warships, anthropomorphized as girls, in order to combat the menace of the seas. Played with in that "you" ("Admiral") are a Non-Entity General which theoretically can be anything (and fanarts like to speculate unorthodox portrayals of the "Admiral"), but most of the time, they're portrayed as (adult) male.
• Adam Malkovich to Samus Aran in Metroid: Other M. Too bad their relationship is handled poorly.
• Pokémon X and Y: Female Meowstic's are more combat-oriented, while Male Meowstics go for a supporting role.
• In Soul Series, Sophitia fell in love and married Rothion, a blacksmith, and got two children (who became the new protagonists of Soul Calibur VI). Sophitia is a known fighter in the series, but Rothion aided her by forging her weapons from holy ore given to him by Hephaestus.
• In the Tomb Raider reboot, various male characters sometimes brief Lara on her mission objectives throughout the game.
• BloodRayne II sees Action Girl Rayne receiving intelligence and briefings from her Non-Action Guy Brimstone contact, Severin. In addition to some Ship Tease, he's one of the only people who manage to keep up with her in Snark-to-Snark Combat.
• I=MGCM features the "passive" player protagonist Tobio Hakari, who is the only guy in this game. He has to guide and take care of 12 heroines who are chosen as magical girl warriors in his Mentor Mascot form.

Visual Novels

• Fate/stay night:
  • A somewhat odd example in that Shirou the protagonist has the King Arthur (aka Saber) for his Servant (i.e famous myth fighter on behalf of him)—except that here, Arthur is female. Inverted with Archer, who's the fighter to Rin Tohsaka's handler.
  • Soichiro Kuzuki, a male teacher at Shirou's school, has a female Servant, "Caster". She's highly loyal to him, despite being a terrifying, ruthless enemy.

Webcomics

• Skadi: The titular heroine's male companion (and slave) Diseasoid mostly serves as her squire and pack mule.
• Lon from Invincea and the Warriors from Hell is hastily appointed as Invincea’s squire so that she can participate in a tournament, and in spite of his many protestations he seems to have accepted the mantle, if only to make Invincea happy.

Western Animation

• Jem: Jem's boyfriend Rio is the road manager and engineer for Jem and the Holograms.
• Josie and the Pussycats: Alexander is the band's manager, and Josie's sort-of boyfriend Alan is their roadie.
• Kim Possible: The titular character is an Action Girl with two male sidekicks (Ron and Rufus) and a male handler (Wade) who provides her with mission info and various gadgets.
• Totally Spies!: Sam, Clover, and Alex have an older male handler, Jerry Lewis.
• Wander over Yonder: Wander is the handler to Sylvia, his best friend and tough Sapient Steed.

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