Martial Arts and Crafts: Difference between revisions

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In shows which feature martial arts heavily, there are a lot of different styles found in [[The Verse]]. This is [[Truth in Television]] somewhat as there have been many martial arts developed throughout history often based on local needs. For example [[wikipedia:Okinawan kobudo|Okinawan weapons]] were developed from household and farm implements.

*** There was also a Martial Arts Marriage Contest,\ in the second movie.

** It also seems that every mundane task in [[The Verse]] gets not only a martial art, but specific fighting moves in Anything Goes. Crouch of the Wild Tiger, anyone?

* In ''[[Cromartie High School]]'', Masked Takenouchi masters the art of pillow-jutsu, in which he softens a pillow by beating it with a stick according to the desires of the pillow user. [[What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?|He takes out a whole bike gang with this type of combat.]]

* The chainsaw-fu that protagonist Fumio in ''[[Saitama Chainsaw Shoujo]]'' uses on her classmates was originally meant to aid her when she inherited her grandfather's lumber company.

* The ''[[Naruto]]'' filler brings us Ninja Chefs and Ninja Postmen. Self-explanatory, really.

** In canon, they have Ninja Medics, Ninja Puppeteers, and at least one Ninja [[Art Initiates Life|Painter]].

* As a variation, in ''[[Lone Wolf and Cub]]'', one story deals with a samurai <s>postman</s> messenger.

* ''[[Gunnm]]'' gives us hypersonic knitting. Yeah.

* Leave it to ''[[Samurai Champloo]]'' to have some of the best swordsmen in Japan use their skills.... To play baseball. Yeah it was only once, and the game was a compromise, but COME ON MAN!

* In ''[[The Long Kiss Goodnight]]'', the protagonist become really good in the kitchen shortly after a car-crash. She thinks her memories are starting to return after six years of amnesia, and that her great skill with knives mean she used to be a chef. She's right about the first part.

* ''[[Shaolin Soccer]]'' is centered on this trope. Stephen Chow's character believes that martial arts can be used for every day tasks. To promote the usefulness of kung fu, his [[Ragtag Bunch of Misfits|ragtag group]] of former shaolin monks use their kung fu superpowers to play soccer. We also see kung fu used to trim trees, park cars, and fetch objects from high shelves. Tai Chi is also used to cook.

* In ''[[Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon]]'' one of the protagonists comments on the princess' calligraphy skills, comparing it to swordplay. She tries to [[Obfuscating Stupidity|act dumb]], but [[Action Girl|her secret]] is clearly out. Tiny [[Anvilicious|anvils]] begin to rain as she goes on to comment on how her name looks like "sword".

* In ''Kung Fu Dunk'', the main characters uses a [[Dangerous Forbidden Technique|special martial arts technique]] in the finals of a basketball game to ''travel through time'' in order to make the winning basket. In the same vein, his [[Mentors|Masters from Kung Fu School]] show up to play after the most of his team is incapacitated by the opposing one. [[Hilarity Ensues|Projectile weapons are thrown, over-the-top slow motion is used and pressure points are hit]].

* Examples from classic kung fu movies:

** ''[[Shaolin Soccer]]'' was somewhat predated by the 1983 Hong Kong movie ''The Champions'', where Yuen Biao and Dick Wei use Football-Fu on each other.

** Jet Li repeatedly does Kung Fu Healing People in the ''Once Upon a Time in China'' series.

** Almost anywhere you find a training scene in an old kung fu movie there's likely to be something like this -- the 'student learns some kind of Everyday Skill Fu and eventually gets bored of it, protests to the master and is finally shown what the meaning is' routine. Some examples are Jackie Chan learning Martial Arts Walnut Cracking in the original ''Drunken Master'', Chin Kar Lok being taught Noodle Cooking Fu by Lau Kar Leung in ''Operation Scorpio'', and Austin Wei in Shaw Bros' classic ''Five Superfighters'' unknowingly being taught Kung Fu Labouring.

** Everything is kung fu.

** The Next Karate Kid included the 'Kata Waltz'.

* ''[[Gymkata]]'' featured the deadly combination of ninjitsu and... ''gymnastics''. It also completely fails at both. To be fair, pommel-horse fu is scary... if you're within two and a half feet of a pommel horse.

* ''[[Dreadnaught]]'', a 1981 Hong Kong film directed by Yuen Woo Ping, may prove to be the [[Trope Codifier]]. This martial arts comedy (with dashes of horror) contains all of the following kung-fu applications: Medical treatment, Lion Dancing, being fitted for a custom-made suit, and a kung-fu serial killer using Chinese Opera motifs. But the biggest example from this movie is Yuen Biao's character, whose family's unorthodox ''laundry'' methods turns out to be the fabled Eagle Claw. He didn't even know it was Kung Fu until Master Wong Fei Hung saw him using it, and he ended up using it to defend himself against the aforementioned serial killer. Chris O'Donnell's laundry scene in ''Batman Forever'' is a shot-for-shot homage of Yuen Biao doing his laundry work in this movie.

 

 

== Literature ==

** A throwaway one-liner in some supplementary material indicates that in the Discworld's equivalent of Wales, "choral singing has been elevated to the level of a martial art".

* Deconstructed in the ''Age of Discovery'' trilogy by Michael Stackpole and done entirely seriously. A true Martial Artist may achieve true magic and potential immortality by completely mastering his style. But then again, so can a basket-weaver once he completely masters basket-weaving.

* Ambient magic in ''[[Circle of Magic]]'' books ''is'' this trope. Ambient magic is when people have magic that reacts to certain activities -- such as gardening, metalworking, dancing, making clothes, you name it. Anything to do with that activity, that ambient mage draws power from it. Most of the time, ambient mages just work away at their own crafts, but when you get in a fight... well, [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|just watch out, okay?]]

== Live-Action TV ==

* A variation appears in an episode of ''[[Sliders]]'' on a world where they have "seers" for every imaginable field -- medical work, law enforcement, even politics. (But presumably ''not'' gambling.)

* John Belushi's famous series of Samurai sketches on ''[[Saturday Night Live]]'' in the 1970s, in which he portrayed a samurai running various mundane businesses (Delicatessen, Tailor, Hotel, Bakery, etc.) and speaking only (fake) Japanese.

 

 

== Tabletop Games ==

** Among the many martial arts presented by this [[Tabletop RPG]], there's "Dreaming Pearl Courtesan Style" for fighting while being refined and social, "Citrine Poxes of Contagion Style" for fighting with medicine and poisons, and "Prismatic Arrangement of Creation Style" for combining sorcery and martial arts. "Laughing Wounds Style" includes fetish gear as a form armour, and uses whips and chains as a form weapon. Popular among lesbian stripper ninjas, as is Pearl Courtesan. Let's not even mention some of the [[Fan Work|fanmade]] Martial Arts.

** And of course Second Edition canonised Martial Arts ''Sailors'' (Seafaring Hero Style), Martial Arts '''Orgies''' (Orgiastic Fugitive Style) and even Martial Arts '''''Psychiatrists''''' (Border of Kaleidoscopic Logic Style, one of the most powerful in the game).

** The Quicksilver Hand of Dreams Style, which involves the manipulation of dreams and imagination and the imposition of same upon concrete reality, and the Obsidian Shards of Infinity Style, which can best be summed up as Martial Arts '''''[[Alternate Universe|Parallel Universes]]'''''.

* The ''[[Diana Warrior Princess]]'' [[Tabletop RPG]] includes the ancient numerology-based martial art known as The Way of the Exploding Grid, or Su Doku.

** ''Complete Warrior'' [[Drunken Master]] prestige class. 'Nuff said.

** In ''D&D'' versions 2 and up you can really get creative if you felt like it. This troper remembers making an elf fighter who carried a big ass sword... and never used it for anything other then intimidation. Instead, he specialized in the simple throwing dart as his weapon of choice and had the non-weapon proficiency "wild fighting". Imagine a pointy-eared [[Conan the Barbarian|Conan]] dropping his sword and throwing darts at people. When your 7 or so darts per attack deal 1d3+2 damage (and HP in the second edition was not as padded as in its future incarnations), landing even 2-3 of those darts could seriously mess someone up.

== Video Games ==

* ''[[Fruit Ninja]]'', well, the title says it all, really. The game is about using your cool katana to chop up fruit.

* ''[[Disgaea]]'': Chaos Fire Style Kitchen Fist, [[Verbal Tic|Boom!]]

* In ''[[Dwarf Fortress]]'', civilian miners can be drafted into the military in an emergency, and are actually quite useful. The game uses their (quickly trained) mining skill instead of a weapon skill, their attributes are often much higher than your slower-working carpenters and masons, and pickaxes are fearsome [[The Dev Team Thinks of Everything|organ-lacerating]] weapons.

** No, that honor has to go to the sociopathic teddy bear [[Played for Laughs]]. NMS, by the way, has ninja bookkeepers. Not just bookkeepers who are ninja, but people ''trained in the art of ninja bookkeeping''. Both bookkeeping with ninja skills, [[Ambiguous Syntax|and]] keeping ninja books. *stage whisper*: They really only call it that to make the extremely elderly bookkeepers feel better about not reliably being [[Badass Grandpa|Badass Great-Great-Grandparents]].*/stage whisper*

* Thief, in ''[[8-Bit Theater (Webcomic)|Eight Bit Theater]]'', has a squad of Law Ninja. They kill anyone that violates his forged contracts. They also wear [[Highly-Visible Ninja|bright red]] and [[Conservation of Ninjutsu|are, as Thief describes them,]] [[Red Shirt|"inherently disposable"]].

** The [[McNinja|French ninjas]] of "Le Restaurant des Ninjas" run their restaurant without being seen. Everything from directing patrons to their tables, to delivering [http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff1100/fv01082.htm menus], [http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff1100/fv01093.htm food] (including [http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff1200/fv01110.htm desserts], [http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff1100/fv01083.htm drinks] (including [http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff1100/fv01090.htm refills]), and the [http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff1200/fv01112.htm bill], all while being completely stealthy. Well, ''[http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff1100/fv01081.htm almost]'' [http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff1200/fv01113.htm completely]. They're so effective at hiding, [http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff1100/fv01079.htm they hide their restaurant.]

** Ninja accountants appear on-screen in [http://www.goats.com/archive/011119.html Goats].

** Oddly, this plays into a real life example, with [http://ninjanewyork.com/ Ninja New York], an actual ninja-themed restaurant in which your servers will appear from nowhere, and you might just get assassinated.

 

 

* Chaka, at [[Super-Hero School]] Whateley Academy in the ''[[Whateley Universe]]'', has the superpower of Ki control, and has invented new [[Martial Arts and Crafts]] at the drop of a shuriken. When given detention, she invented (on the fly) martial arts mopping (instant cleaning by attuning her Ki with the mop), martial arts linen folding, martial arts grime scrubbing... She has used her martial arts skills for healing problems beyond medicine, like Doctor Heavy's inability to turn off his local 8-G gravity field (she turned it into a local 0-G field by accident). And she has developed all kinds of martial arts weapons for herself, including sewing needles, forks, playing cards...

* ''[[Fighters High]]'' sports this as an essential part of the eponymous school's culture. Within the first 10 minutes of the first episode, we've seen the school's cook face off against a student, blasting him into a wall using a fireball generated via spatula.

 

 

== Western Animation ==

* ''[[Kim Possible]]'' of course has the standard Mountain Temple Ninjas, Monkey Ninjas, and [[Mighty Whitey|Aristocratic Englishman Monkey Ninja]]. It also has Embarrasment Ninjas. Dr. Drakken speculates that in that field it pays to specialize. And don't forget [[Square Race Round Class|Sumo Ninja.]]

{{quote| ''(a ninja throws a dagger with a piece of paper at the Turtles' table, landing smack in the middle; Raphael picks it up)''<br />

'''Leonardo:''' What is it, a threatening note?<br />

'''Raphael:''' Worse than that... it's the check! }}

** Cases such as the latter double as [[Awesome Yet Practical]], because it really is an effective system.

 

* When there wasn't anyone to spy on or assassinate, the [[Ninja]] worked as gardeners.

** After Tokugawa Ieyasu became shogun (and started the centuries of seclusion) the ninjas of the time found their job opportunities, i.e. assassinations, were running out. The shogun, not wanting a bunch of well-trained killers angry at him, made a large chunk of them into his personal spy network, answering only to him and the Emperor of Japan. To hide their ''real'' job they often worked as carpenters and gardeners in the homes of their lords.

** They did this as a "social stealth" tactic as well... no one looks at the peasant gardener.

*** [[Monty Python's Flying Circus|NOBODY expects the]] [[A Worldwide Punomenon|Spinach Infiltration!]]

* A lot of weapons started out as agricultural and gardening tools including scythes, flails, and even kunai! In fact, the French Revolution was mostly fought with farming equipment.

** In fact, save for obvious exceptions such as swords and firearms, most weapons have mundane predecessors. The spear and bow were originally hunting tools, for example, and axes and hammers were and still are construction tools.

 

{{reflist}}