Roboteching: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

Said of missiles or beam weapons that fire along trajectories that are at an unlikely angle off of their target, streak along for a fair distance, and then make sudden synchronized turns in order to actually bring themselves to bear and hit it. The individual missiles of a [[Macross Missile Massacre]] almost always robotech on their way to a target. Often, it seems the best (or only) way to avoid this or a [[Macross Missile Massacre]] is to perform a [[High-Speed Missile Dodge]].

*** Not in the Budokai games (entirely different set of games, believe it or not). In those, you can only dodge the initial combo that triggers the cutscene-based attack. The only way Piccolo can screw it up then is if he fails the quicktime event, and even then, it only results in fewer grenades, not a dodge.

** Goku was once able to control where his [[Kamehame Hadoken|Kamehameha]] was going against Raditz.

* In ''[[Space Runaway Ideon]],'' the missiles Ideon fires act like this. When they are powered by the god-like Ide, they then fire off as beams of light, with 90-degree angles.

* In her ''Pactio'' powered-up form, Chachamaru from the ''[[Mahou Sensei Negima]]'' anime is seen using a roboteching [[Beam Spam]] attack that emerges from her back.

** The same system appears again in ''[[Gundam Unicorn]]'', as part of the Shamblo. Here, as well as using it to confuse the opponent, it was also used to reflect incoming beam attacks back at the attacker.

** This was touched on again in ''[[Mobile Suit Gundam 00|Gundam 00]]'', where {{spoiler|[[The Woobie|Louise Halevy]]}}'s [[Lightning Bruiser|Regnant]] is shown to be extremely dangerous due to the fact that that the shots from its main beam cannon were able to change their paths multiple times.

* In ''[[Katekyo Hitman Reborn]],'' Gokudera's Rocket Bomb attack does this with hand-thrown dynamite by having secondary and tertiary charges explode to allow him to control the trajectory. At least some mention is made of how difficult a technique this is.

* TenRyuJin's 'Hikari to Yami no Mai' in ''[[GaoGaiGar]] FINAL'' does this—she fires off chaff missiles, then bounces maser shots off the chaff (based on an attack the first Bigbad of the series used). And yes, she does comment on how hard the calculations are. When EI-01 used it originally, he was using every computer in Tokyo as a distributed computing network to handle them.

* Many of the ships in ''[[Gall Force]]'' do this too, as lasers will be shot out at right angles to their ship, and once clearing the hull profile, make a 90-degree turn forward to bombard their target.

* In ''[[Pokémon Special]]'', the Elite Four all have special powers from out of freaking nowhere, and Lance's is that his [[mon]]s' Hyper Beams can robotech.

** Even when they're not controlled by the computer, [[The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard|the Elite Four are cheating bastards]]!

* [[Playing with Fire|Hikaru's]] [[Kill It with Fire|Flame Arrows]] in ''[[Magic Knight Rayearth]]''. Much more egregious in the [[OAV]] continuity where, even though they're shot straight at an enemy, the fire bursts robotech ''around and past'' the target and then strike it in the back.

* In ''[[Uchuu Senkan Yamato]]'', Gamilus uses mirror satellites to direct their reflex cannon at the Yamato even when it is on the other side of a planet from their base. [[Fridge Logic]] asks, if they have something that [[Frickin' Laser Beams]] just bounce right off of, why not use it for shields? {{spoiler|Eventually the good guys do exactly this to defend against the Desler Cannon. It's a pretty awesome [[Deus Ex Machina]], but it doesn't explain why the Gamilusians didn't think of it first.}}

* The recent ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion]]'' remake features a bunch of missiles fired at Ramiel that behave this way—fired straight up into the sky and suddenly execute a 90-degree turn to aim at the target.

* Similarly, some robot-controlled planes in ''[[RahXephon]]'' are launched straight upwards and suddenly turn downwards to attack their target from above.

* Beams fired by Nobles' ships in ''[[Wolf's Rain]]'' will maneuver quite extensively to track their target, if they don't hit it straight. At one point, a single beam splits in two to hit different targets.

 

== [[Comic Books]] ==

* Also seen in the Ultimate Nullifer in the [[Marvel Universe]].

* In the earlier issues of [[Image Comics]]' ''[[Stormwatch]]'', Flashpoint (one of the members of Stormwatch Prime) also had the ability to control the direction and intensity of his eye blasts. It was ''very'' cool. Too bad the character was a prime [[Jerkass]] and [[The Mole]] (actually, all three members of Stormwatch Prime were moles, but he was the only one who enjoyed it and stayed evil. He [[Karmic Death|got his in the end]], too.)

 

== [[Film]] ==