Girl with Psycho Weapon

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Ahhh! Chainsaw! The great communicator!

"She obviously has that to compensate for her small penis." —MikeJ, reviewing Starship Troopers 3

"There's just something about oversized sharp objects that really bring out the craziness." —Jason Miao

Sometimes you'll come across a girl, often cute and sweet-looking... but she'll be brandishing some sort of scary weapon at you in a murderous fashion! EEEEEK! Run for the hills!

Most commonly the weapons are knives, but other psycho weapons are also common (not only in anime, but increasingly in movies, too), such as chainsaws or other instruments of pain and destruction.

She's usually also Yandere, or, failing that, Cute and Psycho.

Compare Grotesque Cute, Small Girl, Big Gun, Glacier Waif, and Ax Crazy.

Examples of Girl with Psycho Weapon include:

Anime and Manga

• Higurashi no Naku Koro ni is built off of this trope, to the point where some call it "the Killer-Loli anime". The series features the iconic, Ax Crazy Ryuugu Rena, a.k.a. "Cleaver Girl". (The weapon, depending on who you ask, is either a cleaver, a hooked machete, or a billhook/cleaver.) The machete is, mostly, used to find cute things. Mostly. The Sonozaki family has an elaborate torture room that is put to good use, while Shion favors her taser. And even Rika wields a large butcher knife at one point. A syringe also makes a few appearances as a weapon, although it's never actually used for ill -- it's always either an antidote for the show's slow-acting Hate Plague or a hallucination (except for when one was used to kill Tomitake). Rika's weapon of choice, however, seems to be a mop , as seen in the Atonement chapter. This is even her weapon in Daybreak, a fighting game.
• Nina from Code Geass starts as the Shrinking Violet with a crush on Euphemia Li Britannia and after she finds she died, she puts the 'psycho' back in Psycho Lesbian by creating a nuclear weapon to kill Zero along with Tokyo. After the Time Skip, Turns out she suceeds on the second part.
• In Haruhi Suzumiya, Asakura Ryouko wields a knife in a menacing fashion - despite the fact that she can alter reality and could probably make Kyon's head explode just by thinking about it.
  • And she does all this while smiling pleasantly.
• In an infamous scene from a chapter of Azumanga Daioh, Osaka thought she'd wake up Yukari-sensei by banging on a frying pan, but since she was half-asleep herself at the time, she took a knife out of the cupboard instead, with the result that Yukari woke up to see a groggy-eyed, knife-wielding Osaka standing in the bedroom doorway.

Yukari: W-what? Osaka: Oh, you're awake? I screwed up.

• • Even funnier in the manga, where she just says "That's too bad." (Referring back to the fact that she's always wanted to try the frying-pan thing, but imagine being in Yukari's position and hearing that...)
    • It's amazing Yukari managed to get any sleep the next night.
• Yamato Nadeshiko Shichihenge: Because Sunako resembles Sadako so closely, it's not surprising how creepy Sunako looks with a knife in her hand. Most of the time it's only there to chop fish with... but it looks creepy nonetheless.
• Every angel (especially the main character) in Bludgeoning Angel Dokuro-chan wields a dangerous weapon, usually with extremely violent and gory results.
  • The title character Dokuro uses her giant spiked club Excalibolg on Sakura to splatter him into tiny bits...repeatedly.
• Kaede Fuyou of SHUFFLE! is best known (although it was originally treated as a spoiler) for snapping on her love rival, Asa Shigure, with a boxcutter. She doesn't succeed. It is revealed that she's done this before, on the very Unlucky Everydude she's chasing after, when she thought he was to blame for her mother's death; a part of her devotion to Rin comes from her guilt over this incident.
• Skuld in Ah! My Goddess tends to build these to threaten Keiichi with, from the ubiquitous "Skuld-Bombs", to the home-built chainsaw, "Texas Murder" (Murder-kun in the original). This being played for comedy, Amusing Injuries are the worst that can happen.
• An extremely unusual instance of this trope occurs in Trigun. Milly is generally a very large, quiet, cheerful woman. However, when danger looms, she pulls out a freaking enormous gun from underneath her voluminous cloak.
  • Considered it's non-lethal, she can cut loose with unfettered blasting without it ever actually being psycho. But the appearance is there, and certainly cowed a saloon-full of leering thugs in her introduction. Her typically genial smile probably came across as Dissonant Serenity to them.
  • Milly's gun only counts as nonlethal because its mode of damage dealing involves high velocity blunt force trauma powerful enough to leave targets on the floor in terrifying amounts of agony. Also powerful enough to flip a car.
• Hibana from Deadman Wonderland and Renji's her giant whip-sword, as well as all the female Deadman.
• Chachazero from Mahou Sensei Negima, a Perverse Puppet who seems to have been built with a constant, innocent smile is somewhere over a foot in height and carries a knife over twice that size.
  • Though calling that "a knife" seems like an understatement, considering the damn thing is longer than she is tall. (She does actually carry a knife too, one that isn't bigger than her head... or body.)
• Leena Toros from Zoids is the Humongous Mecha variant. She likes to act cute and sweet, but when her signature (and often only)) attack is a Macross Missile Massacre...
• The Yandere Belarus from Axis Powers Hetalia is sometimes seen with a knife in her hands...
  • Hungary likes to wield a frying pan, but only when she's very pissed off.
• Gasai Yuno from Mirai Nikki, to go along with her Ax Crazy Yandere tendencies. People who get between her and her Yuki-kun have a tendency to disappear. Well, not disappear exactly, more... Be replaced by a mangled corpse and a puddle of blood.
  • Ironically, she has so many psycho weapons that she doesn't have an iconic one.
  • She seems most comfortable with knives, but has also demonstrated extreme skill with axes, handguns, and even, on occasion, a grenade.
• Due of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Striker S. Weapon of choice? A clawed glove straight out of A Nightmare on Elm Street that she loves to lick bodily fluids off from.
• Kitsu Chiri from Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei. Weapon of choice: The knife, switching to a shovel later on (her name is, amongst other things, a pun on the act of burying something).
  • There's a couple of instances, like the Alternate Universe mystery episode and in one Zan episode (the one introducing Oora), in which nearly every girl in the class would qualify.
• Nekoko from Kannazuki no Miko attacks with a giant syringe the size of her body.
• Senjougahara Hitagi from Bakemonogatari. Who knew a utility knife and mechanical pencil could be such useful weapons?
  • They've got nothing on the stapler, though.
• Saitama Chainsaw Shoujo—Betcha can't guess the main character's Weapon of Choice.
  • Also Haruna from Kore wa Zombie Desu ka?.
• Kokoa of Rosario + Vampire Season 2 turns a small bat named Kyou into any weapon she feels like having. On the front of the second volume she is seen carrying some kind of saw-sword or something .
• Probably every girl in Kämpfer could quality, but Shizuku (chained daggers), and Akane (single gun) are the most notable.
• There's perhaps an unfortunate lack of female Meisters in Soul Eater to wield Psycho Weapons. But we do have Maka Albarn, with her scythe Weapon Soul Eater. Kim's Weapon Jackie does not look too dangerous as a lantern. Until she starts using her as a flamethrower. Or an explosive at close range. The crazed smile on the lantern's side should have been a hint, one thinks. And then there's Patti wielding pistol Liz with potentially deadly enthusiasm.
  • And then you have Crona, whose gender hasn't been decided on by the creator. His/Her weapon is quite literally psycho. It's fueled by madness (as it is made of Crona's black blood), and can rip out of Crona's back into either a muscular humanoid or draconic form. Both of which are anchored to Crona's spine. Yecht.
• The "Princess" in Princess Resurrection is seen using a different one of these every single issue.
• Black Lagoon: Hansel and/or Gretel, when the current Hansel wields the axe (Since they switch personas, if one of them is a girl, it'd be this - at the very least, it'd be Cute Boy With Psycho Weapon). Also Sawyer the Cleaner, a cute-looking gothic woman whose weapon of choice is a chainsaw.
• Rin Kagamine from Vocaloid owns a giant roadroller that she likes to squish people with.
  • And Kiku Juon's Signature items are 2 giant cleavers.
• Many, if not all, of the Otherworld characters in the Black★Rock Shooter-verse uses one of these as their Weapon of Choice. The list includes Black Gold Saw (King Saw), Dead Master (Dead Scythe), Srength (mechanical gauntlets almost as big as she is)...Even the eponymous character has one in the form of the Rock Cannon (As an added bonus, she has a Katana as well).
• Most Pandora in Freezing special mention goess to Satellizer's Nova Blood a giant razor and Chiffon's Anti-Nova Trial form a giant clawed gauntlet.
• Both Erika Furudo and Bernkastel wield a giant scythe in Umineko no Naku Koro ni. The only difference is that Erika's is blue while Bernkastel's is black, not to mention Beatrice and the 7 Stakes, and the Siestas' unhealthy obsession of arrows that never miss.
• Two examples crop up in Highschool of the Dead, one playing this fairly straight, one subverting the trope hardcore.
  • Saeko Busujima is known to be a kendo expert and had practice later on in the afternoon that the outbreak occurred, so nobody's really surprised at the fact that she's wielding a bokan at the time. It's not until later we learn that she rather...enjoys being able to wield her full strength and skill without remorse or worry, and becomes very excited when the main hero gives her a proper sword and effectively tells her to have at it.
  • Saya Takagi gets her first kill while cornered in a supply closet, and the only thing she can crab at is a power drill. The subversion is that, while she doesn't hesitate (since she, y'know, doesn't want to get eaten), she has a complete breakdown over the situation, so the psycho part isn't so much Axe Crazy as it is post traumatic stress disorder.
• In Bitter Virgin, Kazuki wields a pair of scissors and on several occasions has attempted to stab Hinako as she sees her stealing Daisuke from her. When Yuzu asks her about said scissors, Kazuki casually replies they are for "protection from perverts".
• All of these psycho weapon-wielding girls are predated by Mariko Shinobu from Oniisama e.... When at her lowest for her parents's scandalous divorce, she finds a boxcutter in her room and almost slits her wrists with it. The next day, she takes it to school, and when the Alpha Bitch Aya mocks her due to her horrible family situation, Mariko snaps so badly that she slashes Aya's arms, clothes and back with the cutter. These events get Mariko kicked out of the Sorority... and start the "rolling snow ball" that concludes with the dissolution of said Sorority.
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica: Kyouko's huge spear, Mami's Tiro Finale.
• Erza in her flashback wielding two BFSES.
• Tenten in Naruto with her temporary Jidanda: one oversized Spiky Ball of Doom.
• Saya's Katana.
• Pokémon: Jessie likes that bazooka of hers a little too much...
• Durarara!! gives us a literal example: the mostly-stable Sonohara Anri wields Saika, a demonic sword which is itself quite insane.
• In Cube X Cursed X Curious the girls ARE the weapons and some are not particulary stable.

Film

• Quentin Tarantino wrote one of these girls (Gogo Yubari) into Kill Bill. She used a wakizashi on a perverted salaryman with very gory results and battled the Bride with a saw-bladed meteor hammer.
• Fans of Takashi Miike's work may remember a little film named Audition. Asami Yamazaki is gentle and soft-spoken - but what she does with razor wire and acupuncture needles in the last twenty minutes will make even the most hardened horror fan cringe. The appearance of a previous boyfriend in a dream sequence shortly before gives some idea of what she will do to prevent her lovers from leaving her.
• At the end of Serenity, River uses a sword and axe taken from the Reavers to wipe out every Reaver in a hallway during the battle on Mr. Universe's moon.
• The Japanese revenge-porn movie The Machine Girl is built entirely on this trope; Ami, the title character, is an adorable Japanese schoolgirl with a comically oversized machine gun fitted over the stub of her severed left hand. Before the injury, she wielded a kama sickle.
• In High Tension, when the protagonist Marie's best friend Alex is abducted by a depraved serial killer, Marie fights psycho with psycho by wielding a butcher knife, a club wrapped in barbed wire, and even a circular saw in her efforts to get her friend back. In fact the saw is an industrial concrete/steel saw, a tool that can be used to cut through reinforced walls. You could probably take on the Terminator with one of those things.
• The quiet female protagonist gets this way when she and her grandfather are terrorized in the movie Axe.
• The entire point of Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers.
• Elliot Page dons Wolverine Claws in Super.

Literature

• Yamasaki Asami, the psychotic serial killer from author Ryu Murakami's book Audition, on which the Takashi Miike movie above is based, fits this trope to a T. Not only does she paralyze her victims using a syringe injected straight into the skin under the tongue, but she removes a man's foot with a wire saw and would have gotten the other foot too if she hadn't been killed.
• Rats Bats and Vats does this as part of the Spoiled Brat Virginia "Ginny" Shaw's getting better.
• Discworld:
  • Death's adopted daughter in The Light Fantastic:

Ysabell was standing in the archway, smiling faintly. She held a scythe in one hand, a scythe with a blade of proverbial sharpness. Rincewind tried not to look down at his blue lifeline; a girl holding a scythe shouldn't smile in that unpleasant, knowing and slightly deranged way.

• • In later Discworld books, her daughter Susan has much the same effect, despite being decidedly un-deranged. She does still have a Sinister Scythe, after all, and there's something more chilling about her variety of sanity.
  • Of course, due to the level of Retcon in the early Discworld books, when we properly meet Ysabell in Mort, just two books later, she's a perfectly normal (normal enough, anyway) girl, albeit a bit spoiled.
• Mitsuko Souma in Battle Royale uses a kama (Japanese sickle) as her signature weapon in all three versions of the story.
• In the story Dark Red Mind, the fourth wall cutting Kaitlyn Wernher is a slight example of this trope. Upon first glance, she just seems like an exceptionally cheery twenty year old woman. But it's all a mask. Mentally, she's severely crazy, completely insane and totally fucking bonkers. As for her weapon, she doesn't need one. Her superhuman power is cutting. She can fucking split anything she looks at in half.

Tabletop Games

• In Warhammer 40,000, the Sisters of Battle (an entire army of Nuns With Guns) feature large numbers of women carrying gigantic flame-throwers, fully automatic armour-piercing rocket-propelled-grenade launchers, and guns which melt tanks...as a basic troops choice, but this being Warhammer 40,000, this is nothing to raise a brow at. The true psycho-weapon carriers are Sisters Repentia, entire squads of women wearing three strategically-placed scraps of parchment and carrying eight-foot-long chainsaw swords, driven on by an armoured woman with a barbed cat-o-nine-tails in each hand.
• While women carrying big, scary looking weapons is fairly common in Exalted, the Maiden of the Mirthless Smile is probably the one with most of this.

Theatre

• In Ruddigore, when Robin, as Sir Ruthven Murgatroyd, has kidnapped Dame Hannah, she draws a small dagger to defend herself with, but what makes him cringe in terror is when seizes a much larger dagger from an armored figure and tosses the smaller one to him.

"Now then, it's one to one, and let the best man win!"

Video Games

• Champions Online has the Harajuku Twins: Elegant Gothic Lolita Rin wields a truely Sinister Scythe with a bat-wing-shaped blade in one hand and Genki Girl Shizuko carries a gatling gun with a teddy bear sitting on the barrel/s.
  • Oh, and the two are good girls! They aid players in battle for one hour, after being summoned with a certain "henchman device". Buying that device also unlocks their weapons.
• "Conclusion of Blood," the bad ending from the Visual Novel School Days involves Kotonoha Katsura using a saw as a murder weapon, and so does the anime ending.
• Aversion: Dragon Age has Leliana, a heroic equivalent who first shows up trying to talk down the bad guys while dressed in the robes of a priestess (I may add that no priestess has been seen so far in the game with any sort of lethal weapon) and jumps in on your side with a long knife when things go south.
  • Played almost straight in Dragon Age II with Merrill. While only carrying a simple staff of any kind, she is a Blood Mage who works together with demons, which in the world of Thedas is considered the second highest kind of evil abomination, only surpassed by mages that have become permanently possessed by demons.
  • Female elven warrior Warden. Two-handed broadsword. Run.
• The eponymous character from American McGee's Alice slices and dices everyone and everything with her wicked kitchen knife. Until she needs to kill faster and more efficiently, that is. This is a literal psycho example, since she's really locked up in an insane asylum and all this is a battle for her sanity.
• In Heavenly Sword, the supporting heroine, Kai, is an adorable girl who seems not all there in the head. She wields some sort of giant reloading crossbow. She also won't hesitate to threaten an enemy's 'weak point' for 'massive damage'.
• Touhou character Sakuya Izayoi seems to be this, to an extent.
  • Elly and Komachi also fit the trope.
    • Flandre Scarlet fits as well, because she is actually a little girl wielding Laevatein.
• In Yume Nikki, Madotsuki can use a kitchen knife, which causes some characters to move away from her if equipped, and is only effective against characters are harmless anyway (Uboa can't be stabbed, and the Toriningen take multiple hits, and will almost certainly get you first). She has 24 effects/items that she can use in total, but judging by the Fan Art, the knife is easily the most remembered.
  • Most protagonists player characters in Yume Nikki fangames. Urotsuki from Yume 2kki in particular uses a CHAINSAW, and other ones use a pipe, a club with nails in it, an axe, and more.
• Baby Bonnie Hood from Darkstalkers, who is modeled after Red Riding Hood, has a whole arsenal of weapons in her basket (which she also uses as a weapon).
• Sapphire and her chainsaw. Played for laughs in one of the funniest moments of the third game.
  • She's also proficient with axes.
• Tira from Soul Calibur uses a weapon that's crazy in itself, being a bladed hula hoop sort of thing.
• Each Little Sister in the BioShock (series) games wields an ADAM-harvesting syringe as big as herself - but the real danger comes from the Big Daddy that protects her.
• Krusche Elendia of Ar tonelico isn't a psycho per se, but being a Wrench Wench as she is, her weapon of choice is a chainsaw.
• Alfimi from Super Robot Wars is an adorable Emotionless Girl who pilots a Humongous Mecha an Eldritch Abomination styled after a Japanese demon wielding a katana. In her ultimate attack, she smiles cheerfully while impaling the enemy and wiggling the sword inside the wound, which is even more disturbing when she does it in Endless Frontier EXCEED without her mecha.
• The Bella Sisters in Resident Evil 4. Imagine the earlier Dr. Salvador fight, but with female Spanish maids. As in plural. Something of a subversion as male Ganado aren't any less Ax Crazy than the females.
• Cute Witch Evie from Vindictus gains the ability to wield an increasingly large, elaborate, and frightening-looking Sinister Scythe (some versions of which are larger than she is).
• Lady in Devil May Cry 3 sports the "Kalina Ann," a modified rocket launcher that is topped off with a bayonet.
• Presea Combatir of Tales of Symphonia fame wields a battleaxe.
• Dark Souls has Maneater Mildred who suddenly attacks the player with a giant meat cleaver.

Web Comics

• Little Red Riding Hood from Ever After uses a saw (the second little pig's, given to her by the surviving one) as her signature weapon.
  • Another Red, this time from No Rest for The Wicked, wields a psycho weapon - an Axe, and is one of the more psychologically unstable characters in the series.
• Mell Kelly of Narbonic has an alarming tendency to get her hands on such weapons, which, coupled with her nature, makes her one of the scarier (in a funny way) characters of the series.
• Oasis from Sluggy Freelance is a very sweet girl until something comes between her and Torg or she spots a Hereti Corp employee. Then the knives come out.
  • At one point, however, Torg makes her agree not to use violence anymore, so while she'll still attack Hereti-Corp employees when Override B-1 kicks in, she won't arm herself beforehand while she's lucid, resulting in the use of pencils (and notably a laser cannon she's been told is "the biggest Sharpie they make") as Psycho Weapons. It is AWESOME.
• Lily from After Lily wields her psycho weapon (a knife) as early as page 4 with very... bloody results.
• Kanaya (grimAuxiliatrix) from Homestuck wields a chainsaw. And is perfecty fine with using it to CUT OFF TAVROS' LEGS WHILE HE'S SLEEPING.
  • Arguably a subversion, in that she's much more therapist than psycho, to the extent that she's the trolls' Team Mom if not the most level-headed of them all. Which may not be saying much. Trolls sure are weird. She did have a pretty good reason for cutting off Tavros's legs.
    • And then it's played straight. (Her victim does have it coming.)
  • Subverted also in that, in a Mythology Gag reference to Problem Sleuth, the chainsaw often turns into a tube of lipstick. And then double subverted when she coolly applies the lipstick, which is still covered in her chainsaw victim's blood.

Web Original

• Not just girls, but Protectors of the Plot Continuum Agents in general, tend to be unbalanced. They also tend to have a thing for pointy objects, BFG's, flamethrowers, and Death Rays.
• Don't piss The Nostalgia Chick off. Lord MacGuffin learned this when she pointed a gun at him, and Lupa nearly got stabbed in the chest because she had Todd's "affections".
• Jade Sinclair (Generator) of the Whateley Universe loves this trope. There's her cabbit... that turns into a Killer Rabbit and once slaughtered around a dozen badguys in one fight. There's her Hello Kitty compact, which flies... and knives pop out of the sides to become a sinning top of doom. There's 'Spinner', which is basically a lawnmower blade spinning at high speed without the lawnmower engine or housing getting in the way. There's the big athame that she turned into a spinning blade. The railroad spikes. The bear trap. There's a reason she's on the page for Crazy Awesome.
• Windows 98 SE-tan aka "Secchan" is usually depicted with a can opener which she uses to castrate all men.

Western Animation

• Clare from Titan Maximum wields a serrated BFS made of aggregated diamond nanorods.