Why Anime Martial artists really grind my gears

As you can tell by the topic title, I am about to start discussing martial arts in fiction. HOWEVER, I am not here to discuss how martial arts allow people to shoot fireballs from their hands. I am perfectly fine with that, as while that is not going to happen in reality, the series USUALLY does not pretend to be realistic when this happens. No, what really grinds my gears is when anime that pretends to take place in reality tries to portray martial arts.

Why is that you say? This is because martial arts are always presented as making you INVINCIBLE. I’ve taken Karate classes, and it didn’t make me toughest guy on the block. Yet, if a character in an anime has taken martial arts, they can take down an army of minions. Take for example, a scene during Key: The Metal Idol when a guy knocks a mob enforcer on his face, and mentions he was able to do it because he took some Karate in college. What, do bodyguards not have to learn to fight these days?

But do you know who REALLY grinds my gears? Ai Tokiwa from Great Teacher Onizuka. Really, a high school student who can beat the crap out of several people just because she’s taken Tai Kwon do? How long has she been taking it? Of course, she gets beaten up by the local computer nerd, who also is apparently a karate master (yeah, sure, probably took the same weekend class as Ai), but that doesn’t explain why she can take down several people… but apparently nobody in that universe believes it either.

Now then, I’ve taken some martial arts classes, and I was highly disappointed that the three months of training that I took did not allow me to take down five henchmen at once. In fact, when I discuss it with people, I’ve found that a surprising amount of people know martial arts themselves. So if I were to try to take down a bunch of people, I’d get my ass kicked. And yet, in fiction, about a month of martial arts training makes you as tough as a real person gets with 10 years training.