There's so much more menace there. In the anime, I get that Chris is by far stronger than anyone they faced before (which has a lessened impact since the anime only shows a bunch of farmers coming after them at that point, no Big Noise or Convict or even properly armed thugs), but I never really got the sense that Shannon is afraid of him.

Haha, I actually had "plucked" for the first four drafts. Problem is, I kept obsessively checking the definition. It just denotes a bit too much force, while the point here is how effortlessly Chris stops the attack. Plus this way, I use the same word in both places, as in the original.