Five Top Characters More Dangerous than They Look (Friday Five)

lady_ganesh wanted to know about "Top five characters more dangerous than they look." Because proving this about a character always involves a reveal, there are spoilers (which I have covered) in each answer.

Cho Hakkai from Saiyuki (right). On the surface, a mild-mannered, absent-minded young man. But cross him, and you'll find out that he's totally bad-ass - even before he takes off his power limiters and becomes a youkai covered with prehensile vines and whose strength and reflex speed greatly exceed those of virtually every other youkai we've seen in the series.

Sanada Saemon-no-Suke Yukimura from Samurai Deeper Kyo (in the post icon), a cheerful short guy whom we first see as a harmless drunk with a woman on each arm. A few minutes later, he's puking his guts out. Who would suspect that he's one of the only swordsmen in Japan who can give the notorious Demon-Eyes Kyo a good fight ... and can chop lesser opponents in half vertically with a single stroke?

Yoshino Dōa from Blade of the Immortal (right), a very petite, very young Ainu woman who turns out to be a ruthless, blood-thirsty swordswoman with ultra-fast reflexes who takes out male opponents much larger and stronger than herself with fearsome efficiency.

Sister Yolanda from Black Lagoon, an elderly, sweet-faced one-eyed nun who is the Mother Superior of a church outside of Roanapur, Thailand, who packs a a gold-plated Desert Eagle pistol and is efficiently running an arms-smuggling and intelligence-gathering operation. (Sadly, I have no Sister Yolanda icon ... )

Ayasegawa Yumichika from Bleach (left), a fey, vain, eccentric little goofball who's too pretty for his own good and seemingly too refined to even perspire, yet in actuality is the Fifth Seat of the notoriously combat-ready and violent 11th Division of Soul Reapers, meaning that he can whip the ass of just about any even semi-normal opponent without ... breaking a sweat.

If You Like FAKE (and/or Project Blue Rose, or Due South ...)

... I think you will enjoy this video by Grum:

"Through the Night"

(Too cute!)

Crown Duel (Sherwood Smith)

Meliara Astiar and her brother Branaric are the Countess and Count of Tlanth, a small, rural province of a not-very-large kingdom named Remalna, which is ruled by king who's a nasty piece of work. The siblings and their supporters start a guerilla revolution. They are hopelessly outnumbered but wilderness-crafty, and they cause the king considerable grief before Meliara ends up in one of her side's own booby traps, gets badly injured, and is captured by the Marquise of Shevraeth, known as a wealthy fop but a cool head in battle. She eventually escapes but is recaptured - and then discovers that her current captor has also decided to overthrow the king.

At the end of what was originally the first book (this was first published as two volumes), Mel and her brother are awarded a considerable part of the king's ill-gotten gains. As the second book opens, Mel has used these funds to reverse some of Tlanth's general dilapidation and is refusing all invitations to court in the capitol because she distrusts and despises courtiers. Branaric arrives from his own court sojourn with an irrefutable reason for Mel to accompany him back, and she is soon involved in a much more civilized form of warfare. Her actions in the war against the hated king have made her something of a folk heroine (which, as Diana Wynne Jones observes, is something very different from a hero), and various factions court her with the idea of using her as a tool. At the end, she find her place and her love.

I liked this - well enough that I plan to look for some more of the author's work - but I didn't love it. Head-shaky things happened for Important Plot Reasons, and I didn't get along with Mel - who is the first-person narrator - very well. She seemed to me to be a different person than various characters and she herself wanted me to believe she was. There are also stereotypes at work: Mel is in many ways a red-haired Spirited Princess straight out of Tough Guide to Fantasyland, for example, and bad people are much more likely to be overweight than good people are.

( Read more ... with spoilers and lots of nitpicking )