Butterfly of Death and Rebirth: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

Whenever you see a pretty (usually blue or black) butterfly show up, things are about to get [[What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic|Symbolic]].

** Spoiler ahoy: Take a good look at {{spoiler|Aizen's latest form}} in 415.

* Heavily seen in the first opening and ending of ''[[Higurashi]]''. That one of the butterflies is dead is a sign of how dark the series is.

* In the opening of ''[[Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro]]'', Sai crushes a blue butterfly in his hand. He's a murderer who is constantly regenerating at the loss of his memories.

** After a certain dramatic moment in [[Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle]], the concurrent xxxHolic chapter featured Watanuki dreaming of her death - then, when he wakes up, a butterfly appears over his clenched hand, and vanishes into thin air. Naturally, when he goes to look for Yuuko, she's gone, having moved on as payment to fight Fei Wong Reed's [[Gambit Roulette]].

* Keeping this in mind while you're watching any version of ''[[Revolutionary Girl Utena]]''. It may help your sanity.

* The butterflies seen in ''[[Cowboy Bebop]]'' the movie by people infected with nanomachines.

* At the end of ''[[Digimon Adventure 02]]'', Yukio Oikawa's dying wish is to transform his body into a mass of butterflies which spread across the Digital World to protect it and restore its weakened barrier after his [[Family-Unfriendly Death]]. ''[[Digimon Adventure]]'''s [[Anime Theme Song]] is titled "[[Crowning Music of Awesome|Butter-Fly]]", though its lyrics barely involve this trope; however, it does play over ''02'''s [[Distant Finale|distant]] [[Where Are They Now? Epilogue]], during which Oikawa's butterflies do show up.

* ''[[Busou Renkin]]'' has Papillon, the butterfly-themed villain whose entire deal was that he replaced his dying, mortal body with an immortal [but still sick, oddly] homunculus body.

** The [[Four Is Death|fourth]] woman dies.

* ''[[This Ugly Yet Beautiful World]]'' is packed with these... and [[Fan Service]].

* ''[[Turn a Gundam (Anime)|Turn a Gundam]]'''s Moonlight Butterfly means a literal change in the world, destroying all the technology on the Earth two thousand years before the beginning of the series, thus forcing a reconstruction of the civilization, and after the series' finale, imprisoning the [[Big Bad]] and protagonist's [[Humongous Mecha|Humongous Mechas]] in a cocoon, signing the end of the war.

* Episode 8 of ''Mr. Stain on Junk Alley'' has this all over the place. Basically, it starts with our titular hero finding an abandoned baby in a junk heap, and it just gets cheerier from there... Stain dashes out of the alley and steals milk to feed the baby with, grabbing the attention of the law. Unfortunately, his attempts to care for the baby are too late- the poor tot dies, a blue butterfly floating out of his mouth. Frantically, Stain tries to catch it in hopes of reviving the baby, but the butterfly is crushed by a Jerkass cop, who proceeds to beat the crap out of Stain and then shoot him. Dying, Stain manages to go back to the roof he left the baby on, reach down his OWN throat, extract his OWN butterfly, revive the baby, and fall to his death... ironically, on top of the same Jerkass cop, killing the cop. Stain's conveniently-nearby friend nabs the cop's escaping butterfly, uses it to revive Stain, and everyone lives happily ever after.

** The season one opening theme is called "Sakasama no Chou," or "Upside-down Butterfly," which adds another layer of meaning to the equation.

* When the solar eclipse in ''[[Umi Monogatari]]'' gets accompanied by the appearance of thousands of eerie blue butterflies, you just know [[Mood Whiplash|things will turn rather dark]] from then on.

* Then there's ''[[G Gundam]]'''s Sai Saici, whose Hyper Mode Ultimate Attack and the Shaolin Temple's final and secret technique is a suicide attack in which his Gundam gains chi-created butterfly wings (much the same as the Naruto example with Chouji above, but with a [[Giant Robot]]). He also [[Unexplained Recovery|gets better]]. Multiple times.

* One chapter of ''[[Pet Shop of Horrors]]'' elevates this into mindfuck: Leon (a cop) accidentally shoots a childhood friend (Harry) who turns out to have become a criminal over time. Count D allows him to experience Harry's life for himself, trapping him inside an illusion given by a magical butterfly. Just as Leon experiences being shot to death, D crushes the butterfly, giving Leon his normal life back.

* In ''[[Prétear]]'', the [[Big Bad]] Takako attacks with purple butterflies. They can be used as spies, too.

* In ''[[Iris Zero]]'' Hijiri has an [[Evil Eye|Iris]] that allows him to see black butterflies that gather around people that are supposed to die in the near future.

* Before his apparent death in ''[[Black Butler]]'', Lau tells the story of a Chinese boy (reflecting himself) who dreamt he was a butterfly

** Which doubles as a [[Genius Bonus]]; the story is word for word based on the philosophical musing of [[Laozi|Lao Tzu]].

** In one of the ending songs, there's a constant blue butterfly flying around screen.

* [[Loveless]] plays this for all the symbolism it can get, especially with Soubi, complete with Ritsu-sensei musing on how "humans are able to be reborn".

 

== [[Comics]] ==

* In the Infinity War, [[Omnicidal Maniac|Thanos]] turns his evil clone.. well, just as evil clone into a butterfly as he passes on. ...[[Shoot the Shaggy Dog|And then eats it.]]

 

 

== [[Film]] ==

** The moth used in the scene at Orthanc was real; to make that scene work, they had to get a bunch of chrysalises from a giant moth species and incubate them for weeks.

* When the four girls who form the central coven in ''[[The Craft]]'' perform a ritual together for the first time, they find themselves surrounded by dark blue butterflies as an indication that the deity they worship approves of their actions.

* The girlfriend of the titular ''[[Patch Adams]]'' has a fondness for butterflies and says that she hopes to be reincarnated as one. Later, after her death, Patch is elevated from his depression by the appearance of a butterfly on his shirt, as though her wish has come true.

* The German language romantic tragedy ''[[Love In Thoughts]]'' features a scene in which, while Gunther is dicking around with his pretty, pretty gun, as per usual, a butterfly lands on the barrel and distracts him with its pretty, pretty wings.

* Mothra, grand [[Kaiju]] of the Pacific and eternal frenemy of [[Godzilla]], is literally one of these. Almost every appearance of Mothra will have it die, only to have it's [[Generation Xerox]] offspring take over for it.

* ''[[The Matrix]]'': Neo's speech at the end was going to refer to the Matrix as a chrysalis but [[Executive Meddling|the execs]] weren't sure if [[Viewers are Morons|enough viewers would know what a chrysalis is]] ([http://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pupa&mobileaction=view_normal_site#Chrysalis it's this, by the way]).

== Literature ==

* The second book of the ''[[Malazan Book of the Fallen]]'' : A particularly bloody battle is fought on a river crossing that just happens to be the mating ground for a large group of migrating butterflies. They serve in a few different symbolic ways : ephemerality of life, instinctual drive to mate then die and premonition of the slaughter to come, as they coat the river in a yellow coat before the battle, before being replaced by the red of human blood. Finally, a thousand of them are used as psychopomps for the soul of a particularly powerful warlock.

* An alien butterfly is used as an analogy for what Vergere is doing to Jacen in the [[New Jedi Order]] book ''Traitor''.

* The cover art for the novel ''Luna'', having (presumably) Liam/Luna on the cover with butterfly wings. Representing Liam's transformation into Luna throughout the book.

* In Tim O'Brien's short story, The Man I Killed (In the book ''The Things They Carried''), a butterfly crawls up the dead boy's face and flies away.

* In ''[[The Death Gate Cycle]]'' the kenkari titled the Keeper of the Door, Keeper of the Book, and Keeper of the Soul all hav butterfly-esque clothes, they are a line of elves on arianus who care for the souls of those elves of noble birth

 

 

* Monarch butterflies play a huge role in ''[[Kings]]'', symbolizing the recognition of a king. Specifically, they herald the rise of David and the fall of his predecessor.

* An episode of ''[[Millennium]]'' focussed on a conspiracy among mothers murdering their daughters. The incident that began the episode was a plane crash, fatal to everyone onboard, caused by one of the mothers. At the crash site there was an overly abundant amount of butterflies, said to be attracted by the chemicals in tears.

* A group of children dressed like butterflies show up at the beginning of the ''[[Pushing Daisies]]'' episode "[[Pushing Daisies/Recap/S2 E2 Circus Circus|Circus Circus]]", an episode heavily focused on new beginnings.

* From ''[[Power Rangers RPM]]'': One character, Dr. K, has been raised in a secret government think tank named Alphabet Soup under the pretense that she suffered from a sunlight allergy. A butterfly one day appears on her keyboard while she works on the Ranger suits. She follows it as it flies away towards an opening in the wall in which the sunlight shines through. She looks at her hands and realizes that her handlers have lied to her the whole time about the sunlight allergy. She attempts escape along with her only friends Gem and Gemma by wirelessly uploading a sentient computer virus named Venjix in hopes that it would blind the security servers long enough for them to escape. However, before she can install the firewall which would contain the virus to the compound, guards take her and her friends away. In a span of three years, Venjix has destroyed every human city (except Corinth), killed almost every living thing, and destroyed almost every biome on Earth. [[Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds]], indeed.

 

 

== [[Video Games]] ==

* ''[[Fatal Frame]] 2''. The twin killed in the ritual "becomes a butterfly" through the butterfly-shaped reddened mark left on her throat from where the other twin has choked him or her to death. The butterflies themselves linger on as spirits and are seen throughout the game.

* Butterflies play a big part symbolically in ''[[Silent Hill 2]]'', as rebirth is one of the game's main themes.

** The blue butterflies serve as save points in Persona 4, which fits the death and rebirth symbolism considering how often you'll die and have to reload.

** {{spoiler|There's a blue butterfly fluttering around when Persona 3's main character dies.}}

* Yuyuko Saigyouji, the ghost princess of Hakugyokurou from ''[[Touhou]]'''s ''Perfect Cherry Blossom'' uses a lot of butterfly-themed attacks. Bonus points for also tending an evil youkai cherry tree to provide the cherry blossom death imagery as well.

* ''[[Final Fantasy Tactics Advance]]'' has some butterflies at one of the artworks. It ''might'' mean that the dream world of Ivalice was born, but then dies at the end of the game.

* They come up frequently in ''[[Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker]]'', down to the names of the various AI weapons corresponding to stages of butterfly growth.

* Evacaneer DOOM, [[True Final Boss]] of ''[[Ketsui]]'', has a set of energy wings that seem designed to evoke butterfly imagery. In this case, it's the '''death''' aspect being referenced more than rebirth, as DOOM is [[Harder Than Hard|going to kill you a lot no matter how good you are]].

** Also from CAVE, every single final boss from the [[ESP Ra De|ESP]] [[Esp Galuda|series]], as well as the player characters from the Galuda games.

 

 

== [[Web Comics]] ==

* In ''[[Concession]]'', a deep purple butterfly seems to be one of {{spoiler|Miranda's}} spiritual forms.

* In ''[[Sinfest]]'', [http://www.sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=3129 Fuschia is inspired by a butterfly as it means people can change]. (Which she will have to do to win her love.)