So the latest arc showed that 99% of Negi's strength and endurance's based on his magic, and with it sealed he's barely at "mildly athletic". Given that, is the picture really correct?
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If what you say is true that would mean it's a justified trope, which is still a trope. Either way the picture is just too damn good to pass up, it illustrates the trope perfectly.
Legs of Justice
Does anyone think there should be an explanation on how muscle and other factors actually can affect strength and fighting performance, in the Truth in Television section? Reading the Truth in Television section, it seems like it implies that building muscle cannot actually allow you to have anything but strength.
For example, saying that it "isn't about looking good, but being good" when it comes to soldiers and that almost all bodybuilders can't be soldiers? Although that has a lot of truth to it, a Heroic Build does not automatically equal that you can't have speed, agility, etc.
It all depends on how someone trains in my opinion. For example, I know a 230 pound natural bodybuilder/powerlifter; who is strong, can do full-leg splits, can sprint very fast, and has a lot of endurance in fights (he's a boxer).
In terms of training, there are also many things to take into consideration. For example; body types like ectomorph, mesomorph and ectomorph; and that a lot of people are a mixture of two types. Once a person figures out what their body type is, they can train in specific ways to augment things like strength, speed, etc. Additionally, you can build muscle for both strength and fitness styles.
Also, having muscles can actually help in a fight (To an extent). Look at the trope My Kung-Fu Is Stronger Than Yours. If a skinny guy and a buff guy fought each other and they were equals (as in they are evenly matched and both hit each other the same amount of times in similar areas), then it is a possibility the buff guy will put a lot more harm on the skinny guy. Why? If someone trains in weight training, to build muscle, but maintains their speed, flexibility, agility, etc. while learning to fight...then they can have large muscle which provide more strength to their blows. It's a simple equation: speed = pain, but speed + strength + mass = even more pain.
However, the Square-Cube Law can come into play. In this case, if the muscles and bones are dense enough (and people who train properly should have dense bones, as they are needed to support the muscles they are building), they can withstand some to most of the damage of falls in fights. Falls off buildings are another matter, obviously.
There are many more factors to anything that modifies your body. It's not accurate to imply that having muscles = sheer strength, and that you can't have anything else (like speed or flexibility).
Of course, I'm biased, since I love working out and fighting...but I have actually done the research on all of this. I don't just work out only for strength.
- Sorry for the Anviliciousness of this post.
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You can train for it, sure, but being fast, agile and flexible is a LOT easier to do when you don't have that extra muscle, and, as I pointed out in the article, it's easily possible to impressive strength without all that bulk (Bruce Lee was strong as a bull and wasn't exactly gigantic).
Edited by somerandomdude ok boomer
That HERE COMES THE SCIENCE BIT thing made me laugh.
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Sorry, but I just deleted that whole section of the article. The first paragraph repeated stuff from elsewhere in the article in slightly more detail, and the second and third paragraphs were a combination of inaccurate and irrelevant information used in a misleading and "mis-informative" way.
The discussion about energy was irrelevant because the kinetic energy of a moving object that hits you doesn't matter as much as the energy transferred, or, really, the force of impact. (Example: If you and someone else are both in a moving vehicle, any punches you exchange won't have "more energy" for all practical purposes since you both are in an inertial reference frame.)
The discussion about force was also faulty. Yes, F=ma but this doesn't describe the force "caused" by something accelerating, it describes the force required to make something accelerate. Either way, irrelevant.
I think the trope name is misleading and should be renamed. I think it should be renamed to Muscle SIZE is meaningless. Because the trope name confuses me and makes me think that a man without muscles can beat a man with muscles, and that's just ridiculous.
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I can assure you that almost nobody else is going to take it that literally because, yes, it is ridiculous. It's obviously meant to mark a difference between large/small muscles, not between muscles and no muscles at all.
Well, unless you're the Anthropomorphic Personification of Death. And then you probably wouldn't need the muscles anyway, because who would be stupid enough to fight a skeleton in a cloak? Those things are just terrifying.
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