Supernaturally Delicious and Nutritious

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Hamilton: Let me say this as clearly as I can. You can not beat me. I am a part of them - the Wolf, Ram, and Hart. Their strength flows through my veins! My blood is filled with their ancient power!
Angel: (who, for the record, is a vampire) Can you pick out the one word there you probably shouldn't have said?

A subtrope of Weirdness Magnet and Horror Hunger; it turns out that someone is literally delicious. Either their blood is, or their Life Energy is far more appealing than most people. Vampires are going be lining up the block, demons give the boutique two clawed thumbs up, and The Heartless are going to come out of the woodwork. Needless to say, this is going to complicate someone's life considerably. It can also be a danger to everyone else if this acts as a Rare Candy and powers the monster up considerably.

Occasionally, it's the very act of having powers to combat these forces that attracts them, because Magic Is a Monster Magnet. If this person doesn't have any powers to speak of, anyone who has them as their Protectorate had better be prepared for a lot of protecting.

A variant of this is simply that supernatural beings find this literally pleasant to be around. They're not so much wanting to eat them as... er... "eat" them. Or at least bask in the scent or energies and make their life complicated. Often it's a little of column A and a little of column B.

Do not confuse with Magically Delicious, which is about commercial advertisements.

May be inverted by Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth, also compare with Cannibalism Superpower, To Serve Man.

Examples of Supernaturally Delicious and Nutritious include:

Anime and Manga

  • In Bleach, the more powerful you are, the more tasty you are to Hollows. This is more of a concern for people who have just enough power to say I See Dead People, but can't fight them.
  • The Virus in Venus Versus Virus especially wanted to eat people who could sense them, such as the main characters. This put a lot of stress on the new girl; which would shift her into her Anti-Virus Super-Powered Evil Side; who would usually easily trounce this. But then she would find her partner "smells absolutely irresistible" and try to....taste her until her normal personality kicked back in. Not played for laughs.
  • Kouta from Kanokon is the supernatural Chick Magnet version. He smells particularly pleasing to spirits... but rather than putting his life in jeopardy, it results in him aquiring an Unwanted Harem consisting of a powerful fox-spirit, and a slightly-less-powerful wolf-spirit. (As well as drawing 'attention' from a number of other, more-or-less superpowered spirits.) Of course, their warring for his attention DOES occasionally put him in a bad place...
  • In Mnemosyne, the longer an immortal lives and the more painful memories she has, the tastier her time spore is to Eipos.
  • The female lead of Vampire Knight.
  • ×××HOLiC Watanuki's subconscious angst made him especially tasty to spirits, causing more angst, in some sort of demonically delicious loop.
  • Flea-demon Myoga from Inuyasha once mentioned that Inuyasha's father's blood was 'especially delicious', and that Inuyasha had inherited that from him. Different from the other examples in that Myoga is a demon, but not a villain; in fact, he is quite loyal to Inuyasha. The fact that Myoga is only slightly larger than a mundane flea may have something to do with it, of course—as it is, he drains harmlessly small amounts of blood from his "victims", who are annoyed more than anything else.
  • Evangeline in Mahou Sensei Negima indicates at first that Negi's blood, being the son of the Mage who imprisoned her, would grant her the power to escape her bonds. She started off apparently as the homicidal version of this trope, but after her Defeat Means Friendship, started training him with Black Magic. Her price for the training is some regular Kiss of the Vampire, and she's getting away with it.
  • Hell Teacher Nube ended up with a Red Right Hand because his latent spiritual powers caused him to be a target for demons (who wanted to eat him) and ghosts (who wanted help from someone who could interact with them).
  • Hayate the Combat Butler: Hayate has delicious supernatural blood. It's part of the His Life Sucks package. In fact, his blood when he's half-dying is one of the most mystically infused substances in the world; and can completely power up Isumi or her great-grandmother. The latter has no problem with snacking on him, while the former tends to abstain, but once when Nagi was in danger, she tasted just a little and that gave her enough power to both break a Power Limiter curse that was on her and use her magic powers to teleport Hayate onto a spaceship in freaking Outer Space.
  • in Wild ARMs Twilight Venom, Mirabelle (a Crimson Noble) gets a small taste of Sheyenne's blood and flips out, wanting some more.
  • Considering how often she was attacked by the Monster of the Week in Sailor Moon, the fans decided that Naru has this problem.
  • The man-eating youkai of Natsume Yuujinchou often comment on how delicious Natsume smells because of the strength of his power.
  • Himegami from A Certain Magical Index at least smells delicious to vampires... however, they are destroyed by actually trying to drink her blood.
  • Helpless heroine Misao from Black Bird: “If a demon drinks her blood, he is granted a long life. If he eats her flesh, he gains eternal youth. And if he makes her his bride, his clan will prosper…” So she's constantly at risk from demons who want a bite. Or a marriage contact. Or both...
  • Tsukune from Rosario + Vampire. Moka frequently says his blood is "very sweet".
  • The main character in Ookamikakushi has this problem.
  • Ciel of Black Butler.
  • From Tsukuyomi Moon Phase we have Kouhei: He is the so-called "Vampire's Lover". What this means is his blood, besides being literally delicious for vampires, has the power to undo the psychic oaths of obedience they have towards their masters. That's how Hazuki was able to leave the castle prison she was in at the beginning, and how Elfriede is able to deceive and betray Count Kinkel, her master.
  • Berserk : The Mark of Sacrifice makes its bearer closer to the supernatural than normal, and is placed on people before feeding them to demons. In the unlikely event that a branded person escapes this fate, spirits will be drawn to them every night and try to eat them. As a side effect the bearer can sense the presence of spirits and ignores anti-Muggle wards.
  • The Karasumori site of Kekkaishi has a Cherry tree that blooms out of season, said to excite the feelings of all around. This makes it a powerful Ayakashi magnet.

Comic Books

  • Darklings from The Darkness give this reason for following Jackie.

Fan Works

Literature

  • Xuanzang of Journey to the West is this because his virgin flesh is supposed to grant immortality to demons as it is the flesh of a holy man.
  • Bella of Twilight evidently smells particularly appealing to vampires, and the love interest in particular.
  • Anita Blake.
  • In The Sookie Stackhouse Mysteries, faeries are practically Scooby Snacks to vampires, to the point they act like dogs in a butcher shop when in the presence of one. (Sookie herself is less than pleased when she finds out her own fairy heritage is the reason she's so attractive to supernaturals.) It doesn't seem to work the same way for her relatives, though.
  • In Amelia Atwater-Rhodes' vampire novels, witches' blood is especially delicious.
  • The fallen star, Yvaine, in Neil Gaiman's Stardust is endangered thanks to her heart being the key to longevity and magical powers, and attracting the attention of the Lilim. Whether heart-of-star is particularly tasty is clarified in neither film nor book.
  • While no supernatural reason is given for it, Captain Hook of Peter Pan fame is apparently pretty tasty. After Peter chops his hand off, it's tossed into the mouth of a nearby crocodile who finds it so delicious it now follows hook wherever he goes, licking his lips for the rest of him.

Live-Action TV

  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Slayer blood is often implied to be better tasting to vampires than normal humans. It was Slayer blood that allowed The Master to break his seal at the end of the first season. Slayer blood later healed Angel in season 3. Also, the Hellmouth is just pleasant to be around for those of the evil sort.
  • As seen in the page quote, in the series finale of Angel Marcus Hamilton makes the mistake of telling a vampire that great power is contained in his blood. Also, otters' blood is delicious.
  • In Ghost Whisperer, Melinda is usually chased by ghosts in need of help (whether they want it or not), but there is the occasional guy who collects souls to gain power, and they tend to target her. Her occultist teacher friend told her that "If a dark spirit collects the soul of a light spirit, it's like a hundred points!".
  • Supernatural's Season 7 had the year's Big Bad's followers creating food additives that would make any human eating them become tastier, bulkier, more complacent and lethal to any anthropophagous beasties other than his own kind

Tabletop Games

Video Games

  • Hermits in Touhou act as free level-ups for youkai that eat them, at least according to Perfect Memento in Strict Sense.
  • In the H-game Monster Girl Quest, the monsters (who are all female) have an appetite for human male...ahem...reproductive fluids. Add in that the human church forbids mating with monsters (again, they're all girls, so without human males they'll all die, making this nothing but a slow form of genocide), and many monsters rape any men they come across.

Web Comics

  • Eerie Cuties vampires agree that the succubi have "the sweetest blood". Which generally is just good fun for both participants, but for the weak-willed vampires there's risk of addiction. Which is a plot point, too.

Western Animation

  • In Gargoyles, the Archmage is told by his future self that he must bring the Grimoirum Arcanamorum to Avalon in order to further his conquest of the sacred island. When the younger Archmage asks, "What am I supposed to do, eat it?" the older Archmage answers, "You're catching on." He literally ate the Grimoirum, and its powers became a part of him. This also allows him to slip through a loophole in ancient rules that normally prevent the Grimoirum from entering Avalon in the first place. Backfires big time when Goliath removes the Eye of Odin from his head. Without the Eye, the Archmage could no longer control the Grimorum's magic, so the Archmage and the Grimorum were destroyed forever.

Real Life

  • The highly endangered giant Galapagos tortoise is said to be the most tasty and delicious animal on earth. After being discovered it took over 300 years to get one to Europe for classification, because every time some where collected, they all ended up being eaten before the ship made the journey back. Charles Darwin was a member of a club that had the sole purpose of eating rare and unusual animals. When he described the tortoise as the most delicious thing he had ever eaten, other sailors also had to try it out any time a ship colected one, and they subsequently ate all of them.
    • That's a bit of an exaggeration, the real reason they were so popular as food on ships was because they were such durable animals that they could be stored upside down, still alive, in the ship's hold with no food or water for a month. This meant that they could serve as a source of fresh meat longer than any other method available at the time.