Automoderated users, Autopatrolled users, Bureaucrats, Comment administrators, Confirmed users, Moderators, Rollbackers, Administrators
213,561
edits
Dai-Guard: Difference between revisions
Added "Category:TV Series" - the page already had "Category:Work Com" but did not have the broadercategory
m (trope=>work) |
(Added "Category:TV Series" - the page already had "Category:Work Com" but did not have the broadercategory) |
||
| (6 intermediate revisions by 5 users not shown) | |||
Line 2:
[[File:Dai-Guard_6216.jpg|frame|To Serve and Defend [[Obstructive Bureaucrat|(but not to spend)]].]]
{{quote|
This is the motto of ''Dai-Guard'', an extremely non-traditional [[Humongous Mecha]] [[Anime]]. Set in [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future|the year 2030]], the show focuses on three employees of the 21st Century Defense Security Corporation, a company that owns a giant robot named Dai-Guard. Dai-Guard was originally built by the military to protect the world against Heterodynes ([[I Thought It Meant|no, not]] [[Girl Genius|those]]), aliens from another dimension that show up to destroy everything they can get their hands on. However, the first and only attack occurred 12 years ago, and when the series starts, Dai-Guard has been retired and is seen as little more than an overblown corporate mascot.
When a new Heterodyne suddenly appears, the protagonists -- young and brash Shunsuke Akagi, rational and hard-working Ibuki Momoi, and aloof and cynical Keiichiro Aoyama -- activate the dormant robot and defend the populace. They become instant heroes, but there is the small matter of dealing with the [[Obstructive Bureaucrat|Board of Directors]], who are [[Bothering
''Dai-Guard'' plays a lot of standard trope arrangements from both ends. It takes a [[Real Robot Genre|Real Robot]] and drops it in alongside the standard [[Monster of the Week|crazy monsters from another dimension]]. It uses [[Power Trio|common character arrangements]], but avoids many anime stand-bys, employing relatively little [[Fan Service]] or [[UST]]. It alternates its focus between the day-to-day "realities" of a company utilizing a giant robot and said giant robot punching things in the face.
<small>As you may have guessed, this is the namesake of a certain [[User:Dai-Guard|bot on All The Tropes]].</small>
{{tropelist}}
== General tropes: ==
* [[A House Divided]]: Surprisingly, the Heterodyne are a serious threat for only the first nine episodes... out of ''twenty-six.'' At the end of episode nine, the behavior and weaknesses of the Heterodyne have been figured out, and one gets [[One-Hit Kill|one-shotted]] for the first time in a repeatable fashion... only for Shirota to stab the team in the back and assist in the military's attempt to hijack the operation. It takes four more episodes to iron out the mess, after which they pull off a perfect Heterodyne elimination with ''zero collateral damage...'' only for the [[Pointy-Haired Boss|company executives to screw things up in an even more spectacular manner.]] Four episodes after that, just as they get that ironed out, things go ''international;'' [[Eagle Land]] purposefully interferes with a Heterodyne attack in the hopes of capturing one for study, then spins the resulting near-attack on their spy plane into an attempt to shut down the entire operation. While a Heterodyne is wandering around that can ''freeze entire cities solid.'' This arc only lasts two episodes, as it barely dodges a [[Space Whale Aesop]] about Japanese militarization. Safe to say, the Dai-Guard team spends at least as much time arguing with egotistical authority figures as they do fighting monsters.
* [[And the Adventure Continues...]]: It seems that the Heterodyne will ''never'' stop appearing. Like earthquakes and hurricanes, monster attacks are now a fact of life in 21st century Japan. Now that they've developed the tools, skills, and attitude to handle them, the story is over.
* [[Armies Are Evil]]: A variant version where the army feels it's the only ones qualified to battle the Heterodynes, despite having no [[Humongous Mecha]] piloting experience, and only cares (strangely, for [[The Evil Army]]) about civilian casualties and not their quality of life, willing to destroy hundreds of homes so long as nobody dies.
* [[Ascended Fanboy]]: Akagi. He's wanted to pilot a [[Humongous Mecha]] his entire life, to the point of taking an otherwise useless college course to learn how to do it and spending years in a dead-end job just to be around the only one in existence.
** Interestingly, this is actually played for character development. He never stops being thrilled over being a robot pilot, but his character development is tempered by him realizing [[With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility]], regardless how awesome it might be. Bizarrely inverted with Shirota, who initially is a hardass who wants to insist on letting the military do everything and wants Akagi and his fellow pilots to defer to them. As episodes go by and Akagi's team proves their competence while the military continues to screw things up, Shirota {{spoiler|has his hardassedness filed off and even has Akagi's attitude rub off on him to a degree.}}
* [[Attack Its Weak Point]] [[For Massive Damage]]: Hitting a Heterodyne in its its central Fractal Knot instantly destroys it and causes its body to dissolve.
* [[Badass Normal]]: Dai-Guard's pilots may only be Public Relations office workers, but they eventually prove themselves to be better than the military's pilots.
* [[Blood Knight]]: While it reconstructs many tropes it deconstructs at first, this is not one of them. In fact, this attitude causes more problems than it solves for anyone who acts likes this. In fact Akagi refuses to act this way in an episode where a Heterodyne is discovered near a hot spring, to the astonishment of everyone else who expected otherwise, especially when he insists it's not hurting anyone, so he feels no need. {{spoiler|And he turns out to be right, since if it's left alone, it will sink back into the Earth and it's fractal knot will break up on it's own with no harm coming to anyone around it, as opposed to all the damage it's massive size could do if it were provoked into full combat}}.
* [[Combining Mecha]]: Justified within the series. At first, Dai-Guard has to be carted to the battle site in pieces and assembled. Eventually the pieces are outfitted as vehicles in their own right, presumably to avoid this hassle, but they have to transform back to their "parts" form in order to assemble, and are demonstrated to lack weapons or any other non-transportational functions.
* [[Cool Big Sis]]: Ooyama is specifically called out in this role during the [[Recap Episode]].
Line 30 ⟶ 32:
* [[Gadgeteer Genius]]: Rika Domeki.
* [[Glass Cannon]]: Dai-Guard in both the series and [[Super Robot Wars Z]] 2 can dish out a lot of pain, but it gets damaged extremely easy and isn't very fast.
** Notable especially early in both media when it's still wearing show armor than couldn't blunt a wet fart worth a crap, making it even more this trope, and even after it gets proper armor, it's not that drastic an improvement.
* [[Guns Are Worthless]]: Dai-Guard uses only physical melee weapons, stemming from the limitations that A) the 21st Century Defense Corporation isn't the military or the police (and this is Japan) and B) Heterodynes can only be destroyed with an accurate strike to their Fractal Knot, which melee weapons are better at.
* [[Handsome Lech]]: Aoyama. Subverted in that his flirting always seems to have a business purpose behind it. Then, when the office suspects he has a girlfriend because he's always talking on the phone and disappearing, {{spoiler|it turns out it's his mom, who's in the hospital}}.
Line 35 ⟶ 38:
** The same happens with {{spoiler|Saeki, Shirota's "apprentice"}} and {{spoiler|Kokubogar's main pilot, Akagi's former professor}}.
* [[Hero Insurance]]: [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] and averted in turns. The insurance requires ridiculous amounts of paperwork, and the damage cause by Dai-Guard still ends up costing the company a buttload of money. In fact, the aversion fuels a lot of the show's non-monster conflict.
* [[Hidden Depths]]: Turns out Shirota's really good at decorating cakes. Everyone's pretty surprised, not least of which being Shirota himself.
* [[Honor Before Reason]]: Akagi ''insists'' on using Dai-Guard at every opportunity and refuses to accept that sacrifices must be made. Shirota hates this, but it usually works out anyway.
** And by "works out," we mean nobody dies. Dai-Guard frequently ends up getting beat to hell and back.
Line 42 ⟶ 45:
* [[Hot Springs Episode]]: Subverted. Tanigawa and Ijuuen visit one just in time to be interrupted by a giant balloon Heterodyne, but little skin is shown and in Tanigawa's words, they had "separate rooms and boring conversations".
* [[Humongous Mecha]]: Strangely, it's the rare [[Real Robot Genre|Real Robot]] that ''looks'' like a [[Super Robot Genre|Super Robot]]; Dai-Guard was designed for the very specific purpose of getting in close enough to a Heterodyne to destroy its Fractal Knot.
* [[I Just Want to Be Normal]]: It takes Aoyama a long time to get used to piloting Dai-Guard; in episode 3 [[Ten
* [[Indy Ploy]]: This is all Akagi does, much to the horror and annoyance of his coworkers.
* [[Jurisdiction Friction]]: The [[Evil Army]] and the 21st Century Corporation are frequently at odds about who should really be using Dai-Guard.
* [[Kaiju]]: The Heterodynes.
* [[Monster of the Week]]: The Heterodynes again, although they are more of a [[Framing Device]] for the main conflict.
* [[Nobody Can Die]]: Everyone is ''always'' evacuated before the Heterodyne (or Dai-Guard) can start smashing the place up. No one's ever caught in the crossfire, and the few times someone ''does'' get trapped under falling rubble or somesuch, don't worry, rescue crews will be along shortly. Justified as Japan is known for having a ''really good'' disaster alert and response system to begin with, and within ''weeks'' of the pilot episode they've isolated the warning signs that precede the arrival of Heterodynes. Episode 8 is simply [[A Day in The Life|A Week In The Life]] of the Dai-Guard team during which they get nothing but repeated false alarms... and have to stay at their posts for hours on end waiting for the threat to emerge to no avail.
Line 52 ⟶ 55:
* [[Non-Lethal Warfare]]: Because it's operated by an insurance company in Japan, Dai-Guard doesn't use ordnance of any sort. This has the side effect of keeping collateral damage to a minimum (in theory!).
* [[Nuclear Weapons Taboo]]: The first Heterodyne was destroyed by an "O.E. Weapon", which stands for "Over Explosion". (It's never actually confirmed to be nuclear in nature - and appears to be some other type of explosive - but its use will leave an area uninhabitable for a period of time in addition to the massive collateral damage.)
* [[Obstructive Bureaucracy]]: Arguably just as bad a threat to the heroes as the Heterodynes, if not more so.
* [[Only Sane Man]]: In one of the early introduction episodes, Aoyama remarks on Akagi and Ibuki's unstable nature and heroic tendencies and declares, "I am the only sane person on this robot, and there's nothing I can do about it, except hang on and enjoy the ride."
** The pilots of Dai-Guard and most of the more ethically inclined members of the 21st Century corporation {{spoiler|as well as Shirota, after a little character development}} wind up being this compared to the trigger happy military types and the more corrupt executives, {{spoiler| with the latter eventually seeing the error of their ways after a colossal amount of screwups force them to realize how inept they were, and the latter eventually get fired after their own greed and stupidity catches up with them}}
* [[Our Monsters Are Weird]]: The Heterodynes. No two are quite alike in design, shape and abilities, but are all based on the same basic composition which is equal parts fungus and octagon-shaped crystal (the "Fractal Knot"). They then form a body out of surrounding matter, making no two quite alike. They can move freely (some even fly), are ''usually'' attracted to EM waves and often have odd powers to defend themselves. That's about ALL they have in common.
** They are considered straight-up monsters by the general population, but specialists consider them tantamount to natural disasters, as they don't have a particular purpose or capacity for thought.
** Oddly, somewhat subverted in the final episode, where the core of the Heterodyne assumes a pseudo-humanoid shape {{spoiler|resembling the Dai-Guard itself even}}, though given the Heterodynes do have a rudimentary form of instinct despite not showing organized thought, it's apparently its means of defense, since most of it's body isn't ambulatory.
* [[Post Episode Trailer]]: Complete with the page quote as [["On the Next Episode of..." Catchphrase]].
* [[Power Trio]]: Akagi, Ibuki, and Aoyama.
* [[Ragtag Bunch of Misfits]]: All of Public Relations Division 2.
* [[Real Robot]]: One of the most credible [[Real Robot]] series out there, [[Square-Cube Law]] aside, though it would qualify as a [[Super Robot given it's specifications.
** Alternatively, a [[Genre Deconstruction|deconstruction]] of the [[Super Robot Genre]].
* [[Running Gag]]: Early in the series, Dai-Guard loses an arm in basically every fight.
Line 65 ⟶ 70:
** Aoyama even comments on this once: "It wouldn't be a fight if we didn't lose an arm."
* [[Salaryman]]: The main characters -- even though they frequently protect the country from Heterodynes -- and their co-workers.
* [[Scary Shiny Glasses]]; Quite a few characters sport these.
* [[Ship Tease]]: Akagi had this with Ibuki but has much more teasing with Ooyama, the final shots of the cast in the final episode even has the two of them standing rather close together as Dai-Guard is repaired. Nakahara is also teased with Aoyama.
* [[Square-Cube Law]]: Ultimately abused but recognized in early episodes where simply walking around too much could threaten to shake Dai Guard to pieces and punching Heterodynes only broke his own arms.
Line 71 ⟶ 76:
* [[Tall, Dark and Snarky]]: Aoyama.
* [[Talking to Himself]] Aoyama with [[Mobile Suit Gundam 00|Lockon Stratos]] {{spoiler|both of them}} in [[Super Robot Wars Z]].
* [[Theme Naming]]: The pilots and some other characters are named after
* [[Tokyo Is the Center of
** Justified in that the dimensional warp is caused by unique tectonic action in Japan.
** It's mentioned in the comic that there are Dai-Guards stationed around the world, as the warps are related to earthquakes - Japan just happens to have a lot of them.
* [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future]]: The series is shown in the 1st episode to take place in 2030, with the first Heterodyne appearing in 2018.
== Tropes applying to individual episodes: ==
* [[Christmas Episode]]: One with a decidedly western feel to the holiday.
* [[Daddy's Girl]]: We see in one episode that Ibuki used to be one until [[Dead Little Sister|her father died in the first Heterodyne attack.]] When she realizes her biological father only studied the Heterodyne [[For Science!]], she has a [[Heroic BSOD]] in the [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izAdFAkz_MI very next battle]. When she realizes her stepfather's heroism is real, she's one all over again.
Line 94 ⟶ 97:
* [[Rocket Punch]]: Not an actual mechanical ability, but the next best thing: Dai-Guard takes off its hand and ''throws it at the monster''.
** Faithfully recreated in ''[[Super Robot Wars Z]] 2'' as part of the drill arm's animation against air units.
* [[Taking You
* [[Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right]]: In the series finally {{spoiler|Shirou Shirota disobeys orders to stop a [[Nuclear Weapons Taboo|Over Explosion Bomb]] from being dropped on Tokyo to stop the [[Monster of the Week]] from covering the world. His plan works, but the bomb might not have.}}
* [[Ten
* [[Theme Tune Cameo]]. Cellphone ringtones. Baa, ba ba Baa, ba ba Baa, ba ba Bara rara rara ra...
* [[This Is a Drill]]: And drills are [[Awesome but Impractical]]. [[You Fail Physics Forever|Ever heard of "torque"]], [[Gadgeteer Genius|Domeki?]]
Line 111 ⟶ 114:
[[Category:Toonami]]
[[Category:Dai-Guard]]
[[Category:TV Series]]
| |||