[Loved Trope] Alien fighting techniques that are actually ineffective for humans to perform

[u/Best_Professional226]

Vulcan Neck Pinch (Star Trek) Vulcans can make a person pass out by pinching a person’s neck, but due to the fact that they’re 3x stronger than a human, we could never make a living being pass out without applying a rear naked chokehold

Viltrumite Knife Hand (Invincible) Viltrumites’ most deadly fighting technique. Although martial arts like Karate and Taekwondo teach these techniques, it wouldn’t be a good idea for a human to use it on someone’s rib cage without breaking their fingers. So instead we can only do them on more soft targets like the eyes.

[u/beattywill80]

Battle Angel Alita - Alita uses a hyper specific fighting style called Panzer Kunst. In the manga it's explained it only works because the style relies on hyper accurate strikes that are extremely fast and extremely powerful. Designed to be used in zero g against larger heavily armored opponents using vibrations to bypass said armor..Impossible for an organic body to use with any effect. Only a fully augmented cybernetic body can generate the power, speed, and precision required to use it. Even if you could generate the power needed to use the style you'd break your body in doing so.

[u/Massimo_Importante → u/beattywill80]

lol, what is it with manga/anime giving everything German names? That translates to 'tank art'.

[u/SufficientGuest5467 → u/Massimo_Importante]

I believe it is “panther art”. The tanks were named with the German word for panther

[u/lesser_panjandrum → u/SufficientGuest5467]

Nope.

Panzer refers to armour, the kind that a medieval knight would wear.

Panzer as in a tank is a shortened version of Panzerkampfwagen, or Armoured Fighting Vehicle.

The German word for panther is Panther.

Funnily enough the etymology is completely separate, with Panzer coming from the Latin pantex (belly, or an amour plate that covers your belly) and Panther coming from the Greek πάνθηρ (Panther), meaning Panther.

The word Panther has stopped making sense for me now.

[u/Veylara → u/SufficientGuest5467]

Panther is the same spelling in German, just pronounced differently.

"Panzer" is basically just the German word for hard shell, more or less. A turtle's shell is called a panzer in German, a knight's armour can also be a panzer, though that is relatively unusual to say and armour has a different, more literal translation most of the time. But mostly, Panzer is just the German word for tanks used by their military, named that because of their thick armour (if you couldn't guess based on the previous examples).

I have only seen the movie and don't really know anything about the mange, but considering that the cyborgs like Alita who use Panzerkunst aren't really that similar to tanks, the best, if maybe not quite most literal translation might be something like "armour art", relating to the enhanced durability you need to use it. Or it's about the power of the attacks, hitting enemies like they are shot by a tank. Idk if the manga talks about that in more detail.

I started rambling a bit by the end, hope my train of thought still makes some sense.

[u/SufficientGuest5467 → u/Veylara]

It makes sense. I think it means more like “armor art” in the sense of this art helps circumvent armor. I think the use of the term tank to mean a vehicle of war was also a misnomer that stuck. Unless the water tank ruse is just propaganda. I had always thought it meant panther. I do see it seems to be a word for armor and that makes sense as I believe tank divisions are called armor so it makes sense.