Pendulum War: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
During [[The War Sequence]], well, there's a ''war'' going on. This means that a lot of people are eagerly going at it at
Because of this, many battle sequences in works of fiction seem to go in one of two
The actions of the heroes, furthermore, are often disproportionate to their actual effect in the battle. No random extra achieves anything in the battle; only named characters can be militarily useful. Of course, given the power of many heroic or villainous characters, this is somewhat more
In any case, this effect will swing this pendulum back and forth; usually, until [[The Cavalry]] arrives, scenes of carnage and tragedy will dominate, until they crest the hill and suddenly the [[Evil Minions]] who just moments ago were rampaging unchecked are now fleeing in disorder.
This trope has some basis in
One-sided encounters are perfectly reasonable when those involved have radically disparate technology levels, resources, and/or training.
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== Anime and Manga ==
* Largely averted in ''[[Robotech]]''. Even the winning side in the battles takes heavy losses, and Earth manages to do ''some'' damage even when using a few early space weapons against the massive and technologically superior Zentraedi fleet.
* Averted in ''[[Legend of the Galactic Heroes]]'', where many of the larger pitched battles are brutal stalemates with millions of casualties on each side, no matter who wins in the end. The camera frequently switches to the gory deaths of [[Mooks]] from both sides to highlight the horrific human suffering caused by war. These scenes tend to be filler for the narrator's [[Author Tract
* The [[Non-Lethal Warfare|Battle of Mahora]] in ''[[Mahou Sensei Negima]]'' was fairly even between the students and robots...until the [[Humongous Mecha|giant demon mechs]] and robots with [[Gatling Good|gatling guns]] that fire [[One-Hit Kill|time displacement bullets]] showed up. Things quickly went downhill from there.
* In Turn 11 of ''[[Code Geass]]'' R2, Zero turned the tide against the Chinese Federation by combining the introduction of a new mecha, Shinkirou, with a [[Xanatos Gambit]] that caused the country's population to rise up. Partially subverted in Turn 18 with Kallen and her new [[Super Prototype]]. She started to pick off enemy units and could probably have wiped out the entire Britannian army, given enough time, but the battle actually ended in a more inconclusive fashion for both sides thanks to the unexpected use of [[Nuclear Weapons Taboo|a certain weapon]]. On the other hand, a straightforward example happened in Turn 22, after Suzaku had received a similarly powerful upgrade and was able to destroy a small army of Knightmares in the span of a few minutes.
* When the titular guild of ''[[Fairy Tail]]'' breaks into the Phantom guild they completely decimate all of the [[Mooks|opponents forces]], and it's seems that despite being a ''magic'' guild none of the members of Phantom but the highest are actually using any magic. Then, Master Makarov [[Deus Exit Machina|gets his magic drained]] (which is stated to mean "[[We Are Team Cannon Fodder|their battle strength is reduced by half]]"), and the Phantom guild-
* In ''[[One Piece]]'', during the battle of the Whitebeard Pirates and their allies against the Marines at Marineford, the pirates just charged forward only being slowed down and anything important was being done by the high-ranked pirates and officers, but the deaths of a small number of many of their forces {{spoiler|Oars Jr. (who might not be dead, just disabled), Ace (who wasn't in most of the battle), and Whitebeard, still forced them to retreat.}}
** {{spoiler|Well the only reason they retreated was because they were trying to save Ace, not destroy the Marines. One Ace died, the pirates had no more reason to be there.}}
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== Literature ==
* [[Older Than Feudalism]]: In [[Homer]]'s ''[[The Iliad]]'' the Trojans beat the snot out of the Greeks (when [[Achilles in His Tent|Achilles isn't around]]), the Greeks annihilating the Trojans (when Achilles ''is'' around).
* In the ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'' books (and movies), Gondor is getting badly clobbered until Rohan's cavalry arrives. In the movies, the conflict is presented by scenes of desperate struggle within the city walls and civilians fleeing screaming in
** Gondor is not badly clobbered in the books. Gondor is beaten back by huge hordes of orcs (and managed to rack up awesome kill ratios - 10 dead orcs for every dad man), but is hardly clobbered.
*** A siege that breaks through the outer walls of their capital city seems pretty clobbered. One character even remarks that they're like a child trying to threaten a knight. If Sauron had known that they didn't really have the One Ring, they would have been as good as dead.
**** The siege barely broke through the walls in the book; there were never orcs and trolls rampaging through the streets the way they did in the movie. The only enemy to enter the city is the Witch-King of Angmar, and he's only there for maybe a minute. Further, the line about being a "child trying to threaten a knight" is when they are attempting their diversionary action to distract Sauron from Frodo, after the siege has been broken.
***** Of course, assuming that Gondor actually WASN'T being clobbered, that would mean that the Reinforcements weren't as needed as they were made out to be. Which going by the theme of the book, rather unlikely. Of course, Gondor still had at least 1 Rigged Hero left, and all Mordor had was a bunch of Elite Mooks, Hordes of Even More Useless Mooks and [[The Dragon]] that never does anything useful. So maybe Gondor could of withstood it afterall.
**** It's also worth noting that the design of Minas Tirith meant it could actually survive surrendering not only the city's outer wall, but five of the inner walls (and the rings of city contained between them) as well.<ref>
* The ''[[Redwall]]'' book series is notorious for this. No matter how much the vermin army is built up, the actual fighting is almost always in favor of the good guys. Even if they're pacifist churchmice. Outnumbered 1,000 to 1.
** They ''usually'' have the advantage of terrain, as well. For the Redwall sieges, anyway.
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== Video Games ==
* The ''[[Dynasty Warriors]]'' games take this trope to its logical
** Except on "Chaos Mode" in some games, where it's inverted. All it takes to kill the player is (for example, in Warriors Orochi) 3~5 arrows... And let's not get started about how "enraged" (an in-game boss status, where the boss is juiced up with red [[Battle Aura]]. You ''don't'' wanna take a hit from it, trust me.) can do horrible things to you.
** The Empires revision of 6 now allows allies to finish battles.
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