Technician Versus Performer / Anime & Manga

• Bakuman。:
  • Discussed, describing the two categories as 'genius' types who write and draw what they want and win popularity by their natural instincts, and 'calculating' types who deliberately craft a story to appeal to the audience. The protagonists are in the unusual position of being Technician types praised for their calculating intelligence and technical skill at writing manga together, yet get bogged when trying to write something mainstream because they can't come up with an exceptionally interesting premise. This is contrasted with several of their friendly rivals such as Nizuma. He is presented as a natural genius who simply draws whatever he feels like and cranks out hits, yet is also criticized for the lack of depth in his work. Then it turns out that the Performer is a total fanboy of the Technicians' work, and later on both parties end up improving from the influence of the other.
  • The trope is still mostly played straight, since Eiji's work (especially Crow) consistently outperforms every other named character's manga, including the main pair's. But they're much closer to Eiji's level than most instances of this trope. Lately in manga Eiji also came closer to Technician side, especially with his new series, "Zombie Gun", that is far more plotted than previous. Possibly justified, as despite acting like a performer, Eiji had much more practice drawing manga than his peers by virtue of not having anything else to do as a child.
  • A straighter example would be Hiramaru compared to any of the other characters. while they all have a passion for manga and have been improving their skills for a few years, Hiramaru had no experience drawing, or even reading manga. He took one glimpse at a recent issue of Shonen Jump, learned a few tricks and decided he could try it. His first chapters got better rankings than those of Ashirogi, who debuted in Jump around the same time, and his first manga lasted longer than those of the main characters or the other rivals, except Niizuma. Not only that but he was also the first to get his manga adapted into an anime aside from Niizuma (who had already been serialized for three years when Hiramaru debuted).
• Battle Angel Alita: Discussed when Alita plays motorball; she's a skilled fighter and wins a lot of races, but (she is told) she doesn't belong with the true motorballers, who value causing spectacle and drawing in audiences above winning or even surviving.
• Battle Royale:
  • This trope is brought up in the manga, when the character Toshinori Oda remembers the time that he and the protagonist, Shuya, performed music for the class; Oda's reserved violin recital received only polite applause, while Shuya's over-the-top guitar playing had the whole class cheering for him. Oda sees this as proof that his classmates are "uncultured"; Kazuo later thinks to himself (after killing Oda) that it was because Oda was too arrogant and "put himself between the listener and the music".
  • Also when Kazuo fights against Hiroki. Hiroki is fighting with passion to save a girl, while Kazuo simply fights with pure skill with no motivation, or drive.
• Used beautifully in BECK: In the "Grateful Sound" arc, the band breaks up thanks to internal tensions set off by Ryuske's Deal with the Devil. The rival band, Bell Ame, is set to totally eclipse BECK's set. Refusing to back down, Koyuki, followed by Saku on drums, grabs a acoustic and plays a stunning and spirited cover of the Beatles's "I've Got a Feeling" in-universe band The Dying Breed's song "Fifty Cent Wisdom". The result? The factory-produced sugar-pop rival's set actually bleeds off its audience!
  • Belle Ame aren't helped by the fact that their special guest, the bishounen soup star (and love rival of Kouyuki) they have performing with them can't actually sing.
• BNA: Brand New Animal: When it comes to shapeshifting, Michiru is a Performer good at developing new forms on the fly and seemingly without thinking; while Nazuna is a Technician with only a few forms that she's practiced and refined. One of the more notable examples being their flight forms: Her first time using the form Michiru fell off a tall building and shifted into a bird without even noticing until Shirou pointed it out, while Nazuna grows angel-looking wings out of her shoulders and revealed them in a staged performance.
• Captain Tsubasa Hyuga Koujirou is a Performer who uses raw power and hot blood as he plays, whereas Ohzora Tsubasa is a devoted Technician who focuses on his skills. They clash as a result, but later Hyuga finds himself landing in trouble when he plays abroad and sees that his Performer traits are a hindrance on his playing style...
  • It could be argued that Hyuga is the technician and Tsubasa the performer in the sense that Hyuga only plays to be the best, to get noticed so to land a contract in a major club to provide his family with money, and spends countless hours in training from hell while Tsubasa plays mainly for fun, is enthusiastic and charismatic enough to have everyone behind him and seems innately gifted.
  • Tsubasa as a performer (albeit a very talented one) pit against technicians happens on a regular basis. It starts with Wakabayashi in their first encounter (thus beating the best goal keeper of all Japan for whom soccer was serious business), Misugi, Hyuga and later Santana.
    • For example, we have Tsubasa and Carlos Santana in Brazil, with Tsubasa being the performer and Santana the technician. The latter is called the "Soccer God's son" but also the "Soccer Cyborg", playing soccer at perfection but with no soul anymore due to his Training from Hell involving a huge dose of Break the Cutie. On the other hand there is Tsubasa, who always considered the soccer ball as his friend and is playing for fun. Even though Santana is clearly superior to Tsubasa, being able to even reproduce perfectly and actually improve on the way Tsubasa just scored a goal to try to humiliate him, in the end it's Tsubasa who wins the duel ^note (matches in the show usually rely mainly on two men with the rest of the team being near to useless unless the plot requires it) through his creativity and "I'll never quit" attitude, because it is too much fun to give one's best 'til the end for him. When they meet again much later, Santana's emotional damage has begun to mend, and thus while he's still mostly a technician, he has dropped a part of his arrogance and plays both to enjoying himself and to win.
• In Carole & Tuesday, Angela Carpenter is the Technician, driven to perfection by her pushy Stage Mom and her own ego, and with significant talent at her disposal. The titular duo, meanwhile, are the Performers: their main motivation is sheer passion, and they get noticeably bored and frustrated during long practice sessions. On stage, however, their dynamic is reversed: Angela's songs are written by AI and performed with considerable flair, making her more of a Performer, whereas Carole and Tuesday's songs are stripped-back acoustic numbers that they wrote themselves, make them more Technicians. Angela is consistently the more successful, but the pressure, combined with a Trauma Conga Line, forces her into a destructive downward spiral.
• Code Geass: In battle, Lelouch is the Technician to Suzaku's Performer. Lelouch is a calculating tactician who is much better suited at outwitting his enemies than taking them head-on, and the only time he can match experienced pilots in a fight with a Knightmare Frame is with a Knightmare that has an unusual control mechanism that he allows him to take advantage of his intellect. In comparison, Suzaku is no leader and a much more gifted pilot and combatant, attacking head-on and using risky maneuvers to overcome his foes.
• Chūka Ichiban! : At first glance, it seems like that it's a series that is primarily dominated by performers, given how every single notable chef has a unique style or gimmick that belongs to them, but in reality, it couldn't be further from the truth. It turns out that just excelling at only one category will not get you far, as shown in several parts in the story. In order to be a master chef, one must combine both technical skill with a unique style and performance. As without the mindset of a performer, one cannot create anything new or original which in turn will not be able to catch the attention of the people. Likewise, without the skills of a technician, one cannot bring their ideals to life, often resulting in horrible tasting food.
  • There are several examples in story where excelling in only one will not get far. For a lack of performer side, just look at the Dumpling tournament, Mao manages to create several amazing dumplings that taste incredible, however because they don't use any fancy techniques like their rivals in making them, no one is willing to even give them a try. It takes a Living Legend coming in to give his seal of approval in front of thousands before anyone even gives them a thought. Later on, there is a lack of Technician side, when one of Mao's opponent's is able to put on an incredible dance performance while cooking. This makes everyone eager to try his food, but upon tasting it, they are left disgusted due to overlooking some incredibly basic steps that a proper chef would have noticed.
  Leihua: You shouldn't hide your lack of imagination with your skills. Imagination and skill are the key abilities to making good food as a chef.
• Dragon Ball Z:
  • In a way Vegeta is the Technician to Goku's performer. Vegeta trains and fights to be the strongest fighter in the universe, he also never spars, pushes himself waaaay too hard and his pride won't allow him to ask for help. Goku trains and fights because he loves it and is willing to learn from and train with others. In the end Goku is the better fighter because he is more open to learning from others.
  • Piccolo (post-Heel–Face Turn anyway) and Goku fit with Piccolo as the Technician. While preternaturally strong, he usually ends up registering about a 7 or 8 while others spike at 10-15. But he's just so damn good and knows so many techniques (when it doesn't just come down to a planet-busting Beam-O-War) that he can hold his own with the best of them. Unless he's the one that gets picked on to prove "how much a threat" the new villain is.
  • Tien can also compare with Goku. Serious, introducing new and effective techniques every time he gets to fight, and, despite becoming unable to catch up in the arc following his introduction, he just doesn't stop training. When a mere human manages to hold Cell in place, or deflect one of Super Buu's attacks, you know his technique is the real deal.
• Briefly mentioned in Fullmetal Alchemist, where Winry and Cheska debate over whether cooking is a science or an art.
• Girls und Panzer encapsulates the divide with the Nishizumi sisters: Miho simply wants to enjoy Tankery matches as fun sporting events (Performer), while Maho has adopted her family's ethos of using traditional battle tactics to win at all costs (Technician). When they finally face off on opposite sides, it's a classic David Versus Goliath match where Miho's Rag Tag Bunch Of Misfits are outgunned in a straight fight, but Maho's tanks suffer from Crippling Overspecialization, where their practiced formations can't adapt to unorthodox tactics and Refuge in Audacity.
• Glass Mask has heroine Maya Kitajima as a Performer who pours her soul and spirit when she acts, with her rival Ayumi Himekawa as a practically perfect Technician. Lampshaded when Maya says she envies Ayumi's technical skills and grace, but Ayumi thinks Maya can reach emotional depths that she simply never will equal.
• IDOL × IDOL STORY!: The manga follows a series of wannabe idols, and it stresses that being a technician is meaningless. An idol must connect with their audience emotionally, so a successful idol is by necessity a performer. Karin Kokonoe fails to learn this lesson — even though her performance is technically flawless, it doesn't move the judges, and so she is tanked tenth out of sixteen.
• Iron Wok Jan twists this trope with Kiriko Gobancho and Jan Akiyama. Jan, the Jerkass Anti-Hero, is an inverted Performer in that he cooks to deliberately earn the hatred and disgust of the audience — to make the victory of his cuisine all the sweeter. And yet he admits that he cooks mostly because it's all that his grandfather taught him how to do before dying, and mostly seems to feel a professional pride about what he went through hell to learn. Kiriko's ideals are that "cooking is about heart"; although she's the Heir to the Dojo, she only became a cook because she wanted to, she taught herself most of what she knows, and she always tries to keep the customers and their desires in mind when she cooks. However, she is definitely a much more deliberate, no-nonsense chef than Jan. The two are both portrayed as equals in skill.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure has this dynamic with its many characters, some of which change roles throughout the series as well. To name some examples:
  • In Phantom Blood, Jonathan is the performer to Dio's technician. Dio is a highly calculating villain who uses guile and pragmatism to gain an edge, while Jonathan is a quick thinker who uses creative solutions to overcome his opponents.
  • Joseph, the hero of Battle Tendency, is even more of a performer compared to Jonathan, as well as compared to his Friendly Rival Caesar. What Joseph lacks in training, he more than makes up for in creative applications of Hamon, as well as unorthodox abilities conceived to throw his opponents off and give himself the advantage.
  • Jotaro, the hero of Stardust Crusaders, is more of a technician than Joseph or Jonathan, possessing a keen intellect that allows him to dismantle his opponents' advantages. DIO, meanwhile, has become more of a performer, using The World to halt time as a means of both giving himself a nigh-immutable advantage in combat and messing with his enemies' heads.
• Kaguya-sama: Love Is War:
  • This is the biggest difference between Kaguya and Shirogane in their Battle of Wits. Kaguya is a schemer who tends to come up with her plans ahead of time and favors being Crazy-Prepared, while Shirogane tends to prefer Indy Ploys. They end up swapping roles when they finally admit their feelings to one another, with Shirogane spending weeks planning out a Grand Romantic Gesture and Kaguya spontaneously initiating The Big Damn Kiss.
  • This also comes up when Kaguya and Fujiwara both try to help Shirogane learn a dance for the sports festival. Kaguya has him go through the motions and memorize the proper moves, while Fujiwara tells him he has to understand the feeling of being pulled.^note The dance in question was inspired by fishermen, and the move he was having difficulty pulling off was based on pulling in fishing nets.
• Kaleido Star: Sora is the Performer; Leon and May are mainly Technicians. Layla, however, has both traits despite her Defrosting Ice Queen persona. Marion lampshades this when she comments on Sora's incompetence as part of the reason she's such a crowd pleaser: knowing that she might screw up keeps the audience on the edge of their seats. Unlike Leon (too racked with guilt and angst to enjoy what he does) and May (too intent on winning to care about the audience), Sora loves her job and plays to the crowd... and sometimes too hard.
  • Heavily lampshaded later, when Katie chewed Leon and May out during the Romeo and Juliet rehearsals. She basically tells them "A selfish Romeo who only cares about his own splendor? A cowardly Juliet who seems scared and diminished? Don't make me laugh you guys, you epically SUCK!"
  • Of note: a good part of May's Character Development comes from her training to become more of a Performer, dropping the flaws that her Technician side brings her. This offers parallels with her going from a self-absorbed Jerkass to a more selfless but still Hot-Blooded Tsundere.
  • Rosetta versus Sora early in season one. Rosetta starts as a stellar technician whose act looks like a "Diavolo machine". According to Kalos, she looks so cold and mechanical when performing, that the audience gets bored despite all the skill she develops; therefore, he teams her up with Sora so Rosetta can learn how to enjoy herself more so she'll win the audience's love. When she does becomes more of a performer thanks to Sora's help, he lampshades this by saying "Rosetta has finally become a performer".
• Kill la Kill has Ryuko as the performer and Satsuki as the technician. Ryuko is accustomed to street fighting and has little experience with using her Scissor Blade, so she relies on quick thinking in conjunction with Senketsu's ever-increasing arsenal of powers to win fights. Satsuki on the other hand has been training with a katana since childhood and doesn't have any abilities on Junketsu that are unique to it, relying on her insane skill to keep up with the power creep in later episodes.
• Kitchen Princess: Najika vs. Seiya Mizuno. The latter is a professionally trained chef who can cook very technical, and often fancy-looking, dishes to perfection. The former is a homegrown cook who tries to think about what her customers like, and customizes her dishes to suit their personal tastes.
• Mazinger Z and its sequel, Great Mazinger: Koji Kabuto and Tetsuya Tsurugi have distinct ways to pilot their respective Humongous Mecha. Kouji is the Technician, who uses his weapons in a normal way -such as Mazinger's Photon-powered Eye Beam as a long range weapon-, combining them with pure brute force and Combat Pragmatism. Tetsuya is the performer who combines his own Combat Pragmatism by using Great's wide arsenal of weapons in an unorthodox way -such as shooting Thunder Break with both weapons or using it to turning his swords into Lightning rods, his surprisingly weird way of handling swords, or covering Great with Breast Burn heat energy (a movement which later would be adapted in Super Robot Wars Alpha and turned into Mazinkaisers Kaiser Nova).
• My Hero Academia:
  • Izuku Midoriya and All Might
    • A teacher-and-student variation exists between the protagonist Izuku Midoriya and his mentor, the number one hero All Might, who trains him in the use of their shared quirk, One For All. All Might is a performer. From the day of his heroic debut, saving people while laughing in the face of disaster and proclaiming everything will be all right now because he is there, All Might has inspired confidence and admiration over his career. Midoriya, meanwhile, is a technician. He's quiet, has taken notes on heroes since he could write and tends to impress people on a much more individual level. All Might's mentoring of Midoriya is hampered by this fact, as All Might took to One For All much more naturally than Midoriya has, yet fails to realize his student isn't as intuitive as he was. His teachings are less informative than they should be as a result.
    • The contrast is further shown in how All Might's teacher, Gran Torino, approaches the two of them. He taught All Might by basically subjecting him to Training from Hell and beating the crap out of him to the point the number one hero trembles in fear of the old man years later. He deals with Midoriya by giving him a few choice pieces of advice, letting the boy work out the answers on his own, then beating the crap out of him to give Midoriya a chance to test what he's come up with. Midoriya makes much more progress controlling One For All in a week with Gran Torino than he had in a significantly longer period with All Might.
  • Izuku Midoriya and Katsuki Bakugo
    • Midoriya shares this contrast with his childhood friend and bully, Katsuki Bakugo. Midoriya is timid, thoughtful, and has to constantly put in the work to catch up to his peers in using his powers. Bakugo is a hothead driven to surpass his peers who prefers to rush in headfirst and is a more naturally gifted fighter. Where Midoriya sees being a hero as cool because they help people, Bakugo sees being a hero as cool because heroes always win. The differences between them are highlighted as early as the U.A. Entrance Exam. Bakugo passes the practical exam exclusively by destroying robot adversaries for points. Midoriya makes it through exclusively by passing the Secret Test of Character, fighting a powerful foe worth zero points to save a student who got trapped in its warpath.
    • In the Provisional License Exam, in which the students are tested for the right for licenses that let them act as heroes in limited situations, the second phase is a simulated rescue mission which involves a combination of fighting off villains and rescuing survivors. Bakugo's tunnel-vision on the surface-level, action oriented side of heroing bites him hard, as he's excessively rude to the people he's supposed to be saving even as he's making appropriate calls on whether to help them or send them to aid stations. Midoriya, despite some initial stumbling, is much more well-rounded and handles both the rescue side and a simulated villain attack much better. This results in Bakugo being one of only two members of the class not to pass the exam. Later, All Might tells both of them that a mix of Technician and Performer is ideal, and that Bakugo was held back by being too focused on the surface fame of being a hero, while Midoriya is too focused on the nuts and bolts and tends to be less driven and ambitious.
  • For all that Midoriya is the technician when placed beside the inspirational All Might and attention-grabbing Bakugo, the dynamic flips when Midoriya is compared to Tenya Iida. Midoriya's natural willingness to jump into danger to help others and relative recklessness contrast sharply to Ida's by-the-book, prone to overthinking attitude. In the U.A. Entrance Exam, Ida focuses on performing the test following the rules laid out to them beforehand. The idea of attacking the giant, zero-point robot never occurs to him for a moment and only seeing Midoriya do so to save someone else makes him stop and consider that there even is a Secret Test of Character involved. As the two become friends, Midoriya's natural heroism helps inspire Ida while Ida's adversity to recklessness has helped to keep Midoriya in check.
  • This dynamic also exists between All Might and the #2 hero, Endeavor. As mentioned above, All Might's courage and charisma made him a natural hero and icon for Japan. Endeavor on the other hand has a much more controversial reputation due to his aggressive and standoffish attitude towards the public. The technical aspect comes in the fact that Endeavor has solved more crime cases than All Might, and is noted to be extremely efficient in spite of his surly personality. His son Shoto begrudingly admits that while he's a terrible father and husband, he is an exceptional hero and learning under him is the best chance he has at mastering the Fire side of his Quirk that he inherited from him.
  • The Joint Training Arc highlights this dynamic between Classes 1-A and 1-B. Class 1-A are the performers, who have caught the eyes of many Pro Heroes for internships, become stars during the Sports Festival, and regularly thrive in high-pressure, chaotic situations like the villain attacks during USJ and the summer training camp with quick thinking and resolve. Class 1-B are the technicians, as they have had relatively stable classes throughout the semesters, make good use of teamwork, forethought and planning, and regularly thrive in more organized assessments like U.A's final exam or the provisional license exam.
• Nodame Cantabile initially seems to set up this kind of conflict between uptight perfectionist Chiaki and quirky free spirit Nodame, particularly when their mentor Stresemann criticizes Chiaki's performance of Rachmanioff for lacking "sexiness." The conflict never materializes, however; Chiaki, despite his more technician-like approach to his art, regularly stuns audiences with the quality of his performances, and his technical skill is accompanied by a genuine love of and passion for music. Meanwhile, although Nodame also loves music and has a natural talent which Chiaki recognizes immediately, the fact that she takes it much less seriously and lacks Chiaki's drive proves to be a problem which hinders her performances.
  • The trope is deconstructed in Nodame Cantabile, in that neither pure technician nor pure performer is right or better for classical music. A classical musician should have the mix of both. It is also implied that there is no right mix either. Chiaki and Kuroki are more towards the technician part, while Nodame and Jean Donnadieu are more towards the performer part. All of them are celebrated, but just in different ways, and it's difficult to say who is better.
• Luffy and Zoro from One Piece qualify. Luffy (the Performer) does next to no training for his techniques, and has an impressive fighting sense gained from training with his grandfather and brothers at an early age. It's even stated in-series that his only trained move is his Gomu Gomu no Pistol, everything else he just creates on the spot. Zoro (the Technician) however is seen doing training most of the time he's at sea (when he's not sleeping or being antagonized by Nami). His techniques weren't thought up as quickly, as he takes time to create them and polish them to make them stronger (though usually it's off screen when he does) and techniques like Oni Giri were made from his efforts, it also helps that he uses a fictional style that he made of his own volition. Comparatively, they are almost equal in terms of strength and combat ability with Luffy being slightly stronger than Zoro.
  • Zoro's fight against Buggy's second mate, Cabaji The Acrobat, puts a notable emphasis on this. Cabaji, along with his swordsmanship skills, uses a variety of circus tricks against Zoro such as firebreathing and spinning tops as well as fighting Zoro while riding on top of a unicycle as opposed to Zoro who simply uses his skills as a swordsman against Cabaji. Zoro struggled with Cabaji's tricks at first, not helped with the wound he got when fighting Buggy prior, but when he managed to knock Cabaji off his unicycle and forced Cabaji to fight him without any tricks, Zoro defeats him with a single attack.
• Duck/Ahiru, in Princess Tutu, is so inherently clumsy that not even her passion for ballet can land her a leading role, but her performance does inspire a melancholy yet brilliant ballerina to find her own style rather than mimicking others. Of course, her counterpart is Rue, who though technically skilled, finds that she is lacking something..
• Played in Skip Beat! with Kyoko and Kanae. While in the beginning it seemed that both were going to develop a Performer/Technician rivalry, soon it's revealed that Kanae, while more of a Technician actress than Kyoko, is able to pull Performer-like stunts when needed... and for a while, is Kanae who loves more her selected career (Kyoko was there more for the fame-making potential she needed for her revenge, until she grows). Besides, both girls are in the Love Me team, a division for people who, while very talented, still lacks a certain quality who drives the public to likes them.
• Discussed in Smile Down the Runway. There are basically two types of fashion: i.e. "high-fashion" (technician) that has high artistic merit and eccentric designs that would require advanced techniques to pull off, and "commercial fashion" (performer) that appeals to masses. During the Geika Institute Fashion Festival, the entries are ranked based on the former, but the headmaster reminds the audience that there is really no ranks in fashion, and that the judges' rankings should not invalidate the customer's emotional experience with their favoured collections. As if to drive the point forward, the judges agree that Ayano Toh is the no. 1 contestant, as his collection showcased the highest level of artistic expression, while Ikuto is placed 11th since his designs are too "commercial". However, Ikuto is also the only other student aside from Ayano to attract buyers, meaning that 9 others who were ranked higher than him failed to connect to the audience.
• The Swan manga takes a different approach to this - heroine Masumi's originality and enthusiasm take her a long way, true...but it doesn't always triumph against her rivals, who often have superior skill on top of originality.
• The many many episodes of Pokémon: The Series have done this a few times, once with two rival restaurants, owned by sisters, one where the chef was a Mr. Mime and the other where the chef was a Sneasel. The Mr. Mime cook put a lot of flash into his cooking, turning even the cooking itself into a performance of sorts with his psychic abilities, and the presentation of the meal could not have been nicer...but the food itself was virtually inedible, as the flavor was nightmarish. The Sneasel, by comparison, was an unimpressive minimalist, cooking in the backroom and bringing out extremely ordinary-looking, even ugly-looking dishes...that turned out to be mouthgasmically delicious. While Ash and his friends helped out Mr. Mime by teaching which flavors work best and to take it a bit slower, Team Rocket helps out the Sneasel in being a bit more flashy with presentation. After a Cooking Duel and stopping Team Rocket, the two sisters made up and combined their places into one.
  • This also happens a lot with Ash in Pokemon battles. Ash is a Performer whose Pokemon are strong because of the Power of Love, and often gets paired up with Technician opponents who go for type advantages and such and aren't as inspiring to their Pokemon.
    • Ash does have a certain amount of Technician, especially in Sinnoh (taking Dawn's Spin Dodge and Ice Aqua Jet ideas, meant for contests, and turning them into valid Battle techniques, for example), though how much strategy he'll get to use varies Depending on the Writer.
    • The dichotomy shows in Froakie & Hawlucha's Doubles match against Clemont's Bunnelby & Chespin. Froakie takes the match seriously, while Hawlucha wants to make it a performance. Neither thinks much of the other's method.
  • The episode "Wired for Battle" pits Ash against a Scizor trainer who is very much technician, using his laptop to analyze other trainers and determine effective strategies. Ash, on the other hand, uses his natural Confusion Fu to defy the other trainer's expectations and ends up winning their battle.
  • "Two Hits and a Miss" features a Hitmontop trainer who relies too much on being a Performer and has to tone it down and balance it with being a Technician. Yes, Hitmontop is one of several mons that can have Technician as an ability.
  • Being a Co-ordinator requires a higher amount of Performer than being a regular Trainer, as points are lost if either your performance isn't flashy enough or your opponent's performance is flashier. Ash once tried a contest on a suggestion, leading to a matchup against Zoey. Zoey ends up winning by virtue of having more points, but just because time ran out before Ash's Pokemon could land a definitive knockout hit. She admits if it weren't for the time limit, she would have lost.
• Sword Art Online has this dynamic with two antagonists, Akihiko Kayaba and Nobuyuki Sugou. Kayaba is a Mad Artist at his core, and used groundbreaking virtual technology to force thousands of people to live inside his video game, Sword Art Online. Sugou, on the other hand, uses ALFheim Online to perform human experimentation and harvest data.
• In Star★Twinkle Pretty Cure the technician Madoka comes across a younger performer type in a piano competition. Interestingly after this encounter she wants to become a more of a performer type, although she's not sure what makes a performer (having fun) till near the end of that episode.
• Lampshaded by Aster/Edo Phoenix (a professional duelist, the performer) in Yu-Gi-Oh! GX during his duel against Jaden/Judai; he states that everyone can win a duel, but he's a professional, and his task is to grasp victory while giving his audience a good show, cue to him feigning to have taken game-ending damage only to make a powerful comeback and winning just after that.
• Yusei Fudo and Jack Atlas of Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds toy with this heavily. Yusei matches Technician in terms of his personality and behavior, having superior intelligence and generally playing to win over to excite, while Jack matches Performer, as he lacks Yusei's smarts but is an excellent showman and tends to go on emotion over thought, also boasting a significantly more slipshod win/loss record. On the other hand, their playstyles are the opposite; Yusei tends to favor rather inventive combos that make use of all manner of cards and focuses on versatility, while Jack is very blunt and straightforward and favors pure beatdown.
• Is a major part of Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V, since Yuya is training specifically to be an entertainment duelist; a fictional branch of pro-duelists whose goal is to entertain the audience instead of winning. Lots of duels are between technicians and performers, with varying results. Becomes a crucial part of Yuya's character, since Yuya sometimes tries to be the performer in situations where it's completely inappropriate and has an emotional breakdown when he's repeatedly forced to duel as a technician instead of a performer.
  • During the MCS qualifying duels, this trope is how Yuya wins and gets through to Kyuuando and Michio; both are technicians who think they're performers, and Yuya's performance shows them how to become a real performer.
• One episode of Twin Princess of Wonder Planet illustrates this trope using Altezza, who practiced hard before each Princess Party, but had yet to win one, thanks to interference from the main characters' Magical Girl powers. When the twins found out how hard she worked, they got depressed about their own laid-back, "just have fun" approach to the parties and being princesses in general. Bright, Altezza's older brother, tells the girls that they have something Altezza doesn't, but is cut off before he can tell them what it is.
• This is oddly inverted in The Cherry Project, a pre-Sailor Moon Naoko Takeuchi manga. The protagonist and newcomer figure skater Chieri learns everything she knows by copying others' technical moves, but doesn't have the "artistic grace" that semi-pro Canty has.
• Forest of Piano exemplifies this trope in the relation between friends and competing pianists Shuhei (the technician) and Kai (the performer).
• Played with in Hikaru no Go, with Hikaru (Performer) and Akira (Technician). The twist is that while Akira thinks Hikaru is good enough to play at his level from the start, that's actually not true, and it takes Hikaru years to reach a level where he can compete with him. Even then Akira is always seen as the better Go player, and Hikaru never beats him, though he comes close.
• Future GPX Cyber Formula has Hayato Kazami (performer) and Naoki Shinjyo (technician). While Hayato races with the help of an AI computer, Shinjyo has been racing for years. In the latter half of the TV series, Randoll plays the technician to Hayato's performer. Asuka lampshades this when she has a conversation with him.
• In Little Witch Academia (2017) Diana Cavendish and Akko Kagari are the Technician and Performer, respectively. Diana comes from a long, well known, powerful family. At a Festival in episode 13, she pulls off a powerful summoning, copying parts of the performance of Shiny Chariot, an entertainer witch from a decade ago. Her skill wows the crowd. But Akko, who has very little skill (she's only been using magc for maybe a couple months at this point) and can't do anything well, but wants magic to be fun, puts on a dazzling performance, using her inability to do things perfectly to instead make silly shapeshifts, eliciting laughs from everyone, even those who comment in just how bad her shapeshifting skill is, and wins the crowd. Diana's performance, while technically perfect, is sterile and cold in comparison.
• Macross:
  • Macross Plus features a literal chart graphing the performances of test pilots Guld (the Technician) and Isamu (the Performer), with Isamu's crazy stunts leading to either disaster or an amazing performance, while Guld's steady and even progression being good enough to keep up with and push Isamu.
  • Macross Delta features Hayate as the performer and Mirage as the technician; their squadron's ace actually criticizes both of them for going too far on their respective ends of the spectrum, since his own piloting is a near-perfect mix of both styles.
• Samurai Champloo features Mugen the performer, and Jin the technician. Mugen's style is entirely self-taught, and relies on creativity and unpredictability, while Jin's style is disciplined, relying on traditional moves. Played with a bit as Mugen and Jin both learn from each other. Most evident in their respective final fights.
  • Mugen, after easily being defeated by Kariya for "relying on his instincts too much", logically works out how to beat Umanosuke's unique weapon, overcoming his weakness of never really thinking about how to fight an opponent.
  • Likewise, Jin overcomes Kariya (who had, at this point, easily beaten Mugen and Jin in a 2-on-1 battle) by abandoning the orthodox style Kariya was better at, and using a highly unorthodox (suicidal) technique to fell him.
• Negima! Magister Negi Magi has the Negi and Kotaro. Negi is the technician, Kotaro is the performer. Several of Negi's teachers try to show him the value of being a performer.
• Barnaby and Kotetsu in Tiger & Bunny. Barnaby is the Technician who calculates his actions to win him the most points and garner the most fame. Kotetsu is the Performer who just goes by his instincts and puts his all into being a Hero because he wants to help people. In the second half of the series, Barnaby admits that he admires Kotetsu's sincerity and dedication to the job, though he wouldn't necessarily adopt Kotetsu's methods as his own.
• The partnership between Eiji Kikumaru and Shuuichiro Oishi in The Prince of Tennis is this through and through. Eiji is the Performer: crowd-pleasing, flashy, acrobatic, charismatic. Meanwhile, Oishi is the Technician: reliable, methodical, rational, with Nerves of Steel. Lampshaded in the manga where, in their first year, Eiji challenged Oishi to a duel since he thought he was a boring player... and was curb stomped thrice, thus deciding to become his partner instead. It's also seen the Hyoutei matches: when Eiji has to team up with Momoshirou due to Oishi being injured, he's in such an emotional turmoil since they've never played without each other that it takes him a while to recover his spirits and be able to synch better with Momoshirou.
  • Actually, almost all partnerships have elements of this (though the Golden Pair is the most blatant example). Sanada and Atobe are good examples as well: Sanada is the Technician through and through, Atobe is both Performer and Technician, and it takes them a while to work well together.
• Discussed in Candy♡Candy's Hospital arc. Candy, Frannie and the other prospect nurses are discussing nursing techniques and behavior towards patients: Candy shows Performer traits as she believes that you gotta approach the patients and help them feel good, while Frannie goes Technician and points out that the most popular nurse isn't automatically the best one and that they must be pragmatic as well.
• Rei Ryugazaki from Free! has the demeanor of a Technician, but has an appreciation for the aesthetic values of a Performer, which he wishes to incorporate into his style. He joins the swim club primarily because he sees just how much of the Performer is in them (especially Haruka), and hopes he can learn from them.
• As with many tropes of the Super Robot genre, Mobile Suit Gundam provides a Deconstruction of the usual use: Amuro (Performer) is incredibly talented but, having had to jump in the Gundam with the piloting manual and no prior training, has little experience piloting a mobile suit, while the Zeon aces he has to face are all militarily trained and experienced war veterans who know their machines inside-out. As a result, Amuro survived Char's initial onslaught with a Zaku and defeated Ramba Ral's Gouf only thanks to the superior performance of the Gundam, and is only by learning the technique through hard training and battles that, by the time the Three Black Stars (less skilled than either Char or Ramba Ral) show up, he's a legitimately good pilot. After that, it Reconstructs it: the Three Black Stars are still more skilled than Amuro, but aren't as versatile as him and last only two fights before being killed off, with one of them getting unceremoniously killed when Amuro dismantled their trademark maneuver.
• Naruto plays this trope both ways: as long as there's even a chance of a fight being anywhere close to even, neither natural strength nor self-taught ability NOR extensive skill training has a natural advantage. Some of the best examples of this are any time Naruto (the Performer) wins a fight through making up moves on the fly and sheer hard-headedness, or the victories Shikamaru (the Technician) accrues through strategy and his mastery of shadow-manipulation binding techniques. There are plenty of speeches about "ability versus technique" going in both directions, both with their merits. There are also plenty of instances where "unbeatable techniques" or "unstoppable raw power" both come to the forefront, especially as the Tailed Beasts come to the fore and need to be dealt with/are needed to deal with the problems at hand.
  • Surprisingly enough, Naruto changes roles in The Last, which comes to view in his final battle with Toneri Otsutsuki. Toneri's newly acquired Tenseigan gives him access to a lot of flashy and destructive jutsu, and is more or less evenly matched with Naruto in terms of raw power. On the other thand, while not lacking on the flashy himself, Naruto makes use of the skills he acquired from years of fighting experience along with his strength and determination, and Toneri's newly acquired abilities couldn't match up to the more battle-hardened Naruto. Case in point: Toneri's BFS lazer gets defeated by a fairly basic move (a chakra imbued fist).
• An ongoing theme in Food Wars!. Interestingly, the manga doesn't come out on a specific side, instead stating that it's necessary to be able to do both. Individual characters are all over the spectrum, from Alice Nakiri who is so obsessed with incorporating cutting-edge techniques she loses sight of the task at hand, to Megumi Tadokoro who always cooks with great care and attention, but has trouble with execution due to lacking technical skills. A particularly vile version of the Technician is Mimasaka Subaru, who is an excellent cook, but only cares about winning cooking competitions. He doesn't care about cooking good food, about pleasing diners, about respecting the skills, privacy and propery of others, and his entire schtick is based around stealing his competitors' recipes and improving on them just enough to make sure he wins.
• The two main characters in Your Lie in April are this when it comes to music. Kousei is the technician, since his mother drilled into him that he must always stick to the score and memorize it inside and out (to the point of being known as The Human Metronome), while Kaori is the performer whose wild and energetic playing greatly deviates from the sheet music.
  • This also plays a major role in the series itself, as the Performance side is the one always advocated for, as it has the greatest potential to reach others on an emotional level. This is exemplified in the second episode, in which the Head Judge marks Kaori off for deviating from the piece as-written, but the audience loves it, giving her a standing ovation.
    Mr. Kazama: Blasphemous! The tempo and dynamics are abysmal! Look, her own accompanist can't even keep up with her! She's dragged Beethoven into a back-alley brawl!
    Kousei: It's Beethoven's Kreutzer, but this piece no longer belongs to him. Here and now - she owns it. Down to its soul!
• Nagisa and Karma in Assassination Classroom. The two of them have been compared a few times and at least once by Karma himself. Karma, the Performer, is faster, stronger and more skilled than Nagisa but is too much of a showboat to be a proper assassin. Nagisa, the Technician, is quiet, looks harmless and is frequently mistaken for a girl but is capable of killing casually, is very level-headed and appears nonthreatening until he's already struck.
• In Full Moon Madoka Wakamatsu is the Technician as a more experienced Idol Singer with skills that don't come from other sources, while Mitsuki/Fullmoon is the Performer as a prospect singer who has magical help and sings with her heart. It becomes quite important later since Madoka is told that her songs are good but have no soul, causing her to almost quit music altogether.
• Yuri!!! on Ice explores this in several figure skaters — overall, it takes the view that both elements are crucial in succeeding as a skater:
  • Yuri Katsuki's ballet teacher, Minako, tells Victor that Yuri is no genius, and that his skill and success are down to constant practice and the luxury of having a nearby ice rink that was willing to let him practice alone. Yuri himself echoes this sentiment. This would seem to put Yuri firmly in Technician territory...but the narrative strongly suggests that Minako is simply wrong: Yuri does have natural talent and very strong Performer elements. Victor picks up on this immediately, telling Yuri that his ability to "make music with his body" is what immediately drew Victor to him (well, that and the drunken pole-dancing antics). Yuri Plisetsky too, remembers Yuri K for his elegant step sequences. In fact, it's technical skills (especially the jumps) that are the bane of Yuri's life, while his performance elements boost his score.
  • Victor, the in-universe star of the ice, is best know for being a Performer — in and out of the rink. He's a showman, he flirts with the cameras, and his programs are clearly designed to tell a story. His priority is entertainment, and when he worries that he has nothing new to bring to his performances, he's ready to give it up. However, his speech about how skating consumed his life so that there was no room for anything else, added to the fact that you can't get as good as Victor is without putting the work in, suggest strong Technician skills too.
  • Yuri "Yurio" Plisetsky is a Technician when being kept on a leash by Yakov and Lilia, but seems to be a more natural Performer. His coaches spend hours on technical elements and hammering out imperfections. However, the Agape program (choreographed and initially coached by Victor) had emotion rather than technical skill at its heart, and that is the program he sets a world record with. By contrast, his free skate is technically demanding to the point of being nightmarish, but doesn't inspire the same level of emotional intensity in Yurio. When he gets his own way in his self-choreographed exhibition skate, he's purely focused on putting on a show, although his technical skill is still present.
  • Other skaters in the story are presented on a sliding scale between Technician and Performer; Phichit Chulanont's ultimate goal is to put on an ice show to show the world how fun skating is, and Yuri calls him "a born entertainer", while Seung-gil Lee is entirely fixated on the technical aspect of figure skating and is constantly calculating his score as he performs.
• Shiawase Tori-mingu: Tsubasa is a birdwatching otaku who is full of memorized facts about birds, while Suzu is a Sensitive Artist who knows nothing about birds yet goes birdwatching to find emotional inspiration for her paintings. Later, Suzu is contrasted with a nature photographer named Misaki. Suzu captures the awe-inspiring feeling of birds when she paints, while Misaki captures the reality in her photographs.
• Ya Boy Kongming! has this dynamic between Eiko and Azalea. Azalea used to be performers, but under the control of Keytime productions they no longer sing their own songs and focus solely on dancing, resulting in highly polished and proficient performances, but none of the trio in Azalea finds joy in it anymore. For her part, Eiko has to work to find her own creative voice, but for her music is and continues to be a source of joy. Add in the help of a highly skilled composer and a rapper, and she shines all the brighter. It's tragic, since Azalea's lead singer Nanami longs to go back to the original honest Azalea.

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