10 Epic Anime Fights Where The Villain Takes Zero Damage

Anime is no stranger to that age old trope, whorfing. For those not in the know, to be whorfed means to have a character that the story has designated to be rather powerful, and having the new bad guy thoroughly whoop their ass to establish the threat of the new villain. But rather than having one character fill that role, some anime will give that privilege to literally everyone who isn't the main character because most manga writers are sad, self-indulgent nerds just like the rest of us.

But when anime does relegate a character or characters to the "time to get your butt kicked for stakes" corner, they more often than not at least make the resulting beatdown utterly sublime to watch. There's almost a sick thrill to be found in watching beloved characters throw themselves ceaselessly at a wall, knowing that they're not gonna be the ones to bring it down.

And this list looks at the best of the bunch. These fights were utterly one-sided, but that doesn't mean they can't be awesome all on their own.

While it isn't uncommon to have the main character get whorfed to raise the stakes in an anime, since they're the main character, most writers know that the audience knows that they won't actually kill them - so where's the drama? However, sometimes you get one that finds a good angle, and one such example is Luffy's harrowing first encounter with Crocodile.

Up until the Alabasta arc, while Luffy has definitely struggled, he's still been mostly shown to be invincible. His rubber body bounces off all but the sharpest blades and the hardest punches, and his stretchiness allows him to close large distances instantly. So how do you get around a guy who's literally bulletproof? Simple, make him utterly unable to do anything to hurt you.

While everyone knew that Luffy was not going to die in his first fight with Crocodile, what makes it work is that the fight plays a completely different game. How does Luffy beat a man made completely out of sand? As the fight showcases, Crocodile just has to slowly wear Luffy down while he can't even land a blow on him due to his body being made out of sand, and them fighting in a desert basically makes Crocodile a god.

Luffy would find a clever solution to this dilemma come their next encounter, but this fight showed just how insurmountable someone like Crocodile was to someone like Luffy.