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Walking the Earth: Difference between revisions
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This trope is bottomless, it seems. The audience ''wants'' to believe life without roots is romantic and [[In Harm's Way|full of adventure]]. [[The Drifter|The character]] has no home, no job, no money, no identification, no friends, and no visible means of support, yet is always healthy, well-fed, clean, and welcome wherever he goes.
Most of us would agree with Vincent Vega's response to Jules: "You're gonna become a ''bum!'' If you don't have a job, a home, and legal tender, that's all you'll be is a bum. Someone who picks in garbage cans and eats the stuff I throw away." Most people who go [[Walking the Earth]] by themselves are male (or [[Sweet Polly Oliver|disguised as male]]). Females generally belong to a nomadic group, mostly for defense purposes.
It's much easier when you have a valuable skill... but this is [[Knight Errant|a different trope]]. You can get away with just [[Walking the Earth]] in settings with sufficiently strong traditions of [[Sacred Hospitality]], though -- like Homeric Greece (obviously), the Muslim world (where hospitality is a religious obligation), the Balkans if you're not from next door, and [[Sweet Home Alabama|the American South]]. Some Walkers, however, have some skills like craftsmanship that they utilize to make a trade/earn a living while traveling, like Hobos.
There have been few [[Walking the Earth]] shows lately; the trope lay fallow until fall 2005, when a [[Walking the Earth]] show entitled ''[[Supernatural (TV series)|Supernatural]]'' premiered.
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== Anime and Manga ==
* ''[[Mushishi]]'' is a good example of this because its main character, Ginko, goes from place to place studying the mushi and helping others with mushi. While it's true he has friends and tends to revisit places, he has no real home.
* ''[[Blame]]'' jumps several steps ahead and has a protagonist '''''walk the Solar System!''''' Not that the journey is [[Crapsack World|particularly romantic,]] [[Serious Business|carefree,]] or easy.
** not to mention that it's nigh impossible to accomplish too. Getting from one level of the superstructure to another involves penetrating nigh indestructible wall/ceiling/floor, it also involves fighting endless hordes of mindless robots and nigh indestructible endlessly regenerating super cyborg agents with weapons of mass destruction. It's no wonder people stare in disbelief when he claims that he has traveled over 3000 levels or possibly more. They find it hardly believable that someone is from just the next level.
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* In ''[[Ranma ½]]'', the Saotomes had been doing this for about fifteen years at the opening of the series. It's left up in the air whether or not their time in the Tendo Dojo qualifies as the ''end'' of their [[Walking the Earth]], or merely a temporary respite. Also, antagonist Ryoga Hibiki always Wanders The Earth, due to the fact that his [[No Sense of Direction|sense of direction]] is so ''bad'' he gets lost trying to [[The Exit Is That Way|walk across a room]]. [[Unlucky Childhood Friend|Ukyo Kuonji]] also spent about ten years doing this after Genma stole her father's cart and abandoned her, while minor [[Villain of the Week|single-arc antagonists]] are often implied to be doing this, like Natsume & Kurumi (anime) and Ryu Kumon (manga), who are travelling all over Japan in search of their father and the counterpart to their school of martial arts respectively.
* Vash the Stampede and Nicholas D. Wolfwood from ''[[Trigun]]'' are examples, except that the planet isn't Earth.
* A lot of the immortals in ''[[Baccano]]'' do this. The most notable are the years between 1970-2002 in the novels where Maiza, Sylvie, and Czes spend a long time with the broad needle in a haystack reason of finding the other immortals who have scattered across the planet over a few hundred years.
* The setting of ''[[The Slayers]]''
* The ''[[Saiyuki]]'' gang could be considered to be part of this trope; although they do have a destination, they get side-tracked so often that they might as well not have one. Luckily, Sanzo has a credit card. The kind that's accepted everywhere. Even in small, rural villages in the middle of nowhere.
** [[Schizo-Tech|In what looks like ancient china]]
* This makes up most of the plot of ''[[Scrapped Princess]]''...but they do a lot more running, so to speak.
* {{spoiler|Simon and Boota}} did this at the end of ''[[Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann]]''. Not all fans were pleased with the circumstances.
* The characters from ''[[Blood Plus]]'', literally circling the world by the time the series is over. Particularly Hagi, who not only accompanies Saya on her journey during the series, but also wanders the earth during her dormant periods as well.
* Kenshiro is introduced doing this in ''[[Fist of the North Star]]'', and generally wanders when he isn't dealing with a specific foe.
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* ''[[Rurouni Kenshin]]'' [[Subverted Trope|subverts]] this trope, showing what happens when a swordsman who'd been wandering around Japan for 10 years actually settles down in one place for a while. Kenshin does leave Tokyo occasionally, but it's always for a specific place and a specific goal, and he always returns to the Kamiya dojo in the end.
** It's also played straight: {{spoiler|Soujirou, Shishio's [[The Dragon|Dragon]] ends up Walking The Earth after the Kyoto arc.}}
** Kenshin’s mentor, Hiko was a wandering master swordsman, before he took Kenshin in.
* {{spoiler|C.C.}} ends up doing this in ''[[Code Geass]]''.
** And some fans believe that {{spoiler|[[He's Just Hiding|Lelouch is doing it too.]]}}
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* Renton & Eureka literally end up like this by the end of ''[[Eureka Seven]]'' for over 1 year until they find their way home. The Gekkostate lifestyle is also full of this, considering they are mercenaries. The couple Ray & Charles as well.
* Parodied in ''[[Silver Spoon]]'' with {{spoiler|Yugo's older brother}}, who is an [[Lethal Chef|awful cook]]. He believes that the ramen chef he was apprenticed to sent him out on a quest to find the best ramen ingredients in the world, when in actuality he was fired.
== Comic Books ==
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* ''[[Douwe Dabbert]]'' does this. Throughout the series, he repeatedly refuses to settle down.
* [[J. Michael Straczynski]]'s {{spoiler|first ''[[Superman]]'' arc, "Grounded," has Supes walking across America in order to re-connect with humanity after his sojourn on New Krypton. [[We All Live in America|Because apparently humanity is American.]]}}
** Or because Americans are human, he's based in America, or part of the deal is that he's not flying on his journey and it's rather hard to walk to other continents.
* European comic ''Aria'' features a rare solo female example and an [[Anvilicious]] one at that who chose this lifestyle because she wanted to remain [[Childfree Is Not Allowed|childfree]] and, most of all, [[Does Not Like Men|man-free]].
* [[Red Sonja]]
* In ''[[Judge Dredd]]'', when a Judge retires from active duty in Mega-City-One, he/she must embark on The Long Walk. The Judge is, essentially, exhiled to the [[Gaia's Lament|Cursed Earth]] or the [[Beneath the Earth|Undercity]] where they must wander and travel for the rest of their lives and "bring law to the lawless".
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** In ''[[The Silmarillion]]'', Maglor took up a life of wandering beside the sea and singing a lament over his own violent stupidity at the end of the First Age. The same is true for Daeron, who vanished after Lúthien's disappearance. Fanon commonly has them as ''[[Ships That Pass in the Night]]''.
* ''[[On the Road]]'' by [[Jack Kerouac]]
* In the ''[[Casca]]'' series by Barry Sadler, Casca is the Roman soldier who stabbed Jesus in the side with a spear. Christ dooms Casca to walk the Earth until his second coming. Casca busies himself during this time be being involved in numerous wars and adventures throughout history.
* This ebook wears the trope on its cover, as the anthology is called ''[[Wandering Djinn]]'' and stars... well, look at the title.
* Played straight with Vianne and Anouk in the novel ''[[Chocolat]]''. Played with to [[Paranoia Fuel|chilling effect]] in the sequel ''The Lollipop Shoes'' in which {{spoiler|Zozie manages to live this way using a combination of fraud, identity theft, murder, magic and spiking people's food and drink.}}
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* Arguably [[Inverted Trope|inverted]] in ''[[The Riches]]'' in which the premise is that of a family of [[Irish Travellers|travellers]] that ''stops'' walking the earth.
* Mac references this in an episode of ''[[It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia]]'' saying that it would be cool to adopt the lifestyle of a hobo "travelling from town to town solving mysteries" but that it would be impractical.
* In the short-lived [[
{{quote|Someone needs help, so they called me. That’s what I do. I help people in trouble...They call me: The Searcher.}}
* The short-lived Judson Scott TV series ''[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083464/combined The Phoenix]'' also followed this model, except the man doing the walking was a space alien.
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* This is pretty much the MO for [[Sonic the Hedgehog]] - every time he trounces Eggman and saves the world, he's off looking for the next big adventure.
* This is essentially what you do in ''[[Pokémon]]''. You do generally have a goal in mind, beating the Gyms and the Elite Four, but beyond that you're just traveling around the region, occasionally helping out and saving the world.
* A staple of the ''[[Fallout]]'' series where the protagonists travel the Post-Apocalyptic Wastelands while saving the world.
** The Vault Dweller is sent out to do this in order to find a much needed replacement water chip to save Vault 13. Afterwards he is exiled from his Vault and returns to travelling the Wasteland. [[Fallout 2|The sequel]] reveals he's eventually settled, founding a village and starting a family, then several years after his wife dies and at a great age, he mysterious vanishes into the Wastelands once more.
** [[Fallout 3|The third game]] actually refers to the player character as The Lone Wanderer after his escape from Vault 101.
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** Zuko spends three years <s>walking</s> sailing the earth, and spends a couple of months wandering around in the Earth Kingdom. Said wandering did more for his character development than just about anything else.
** In ''[[The Legend of Korra]]'', the sequel, {{spoiler|Zuko explores the world again, this time as a peace ambassador, after he retires and his daughter takes over as Fire Lord.}}
* In ''[[Transformers Prime]]'' it's Wheeljack who does this with the galaxy.
** It's later revealed that a fellow Wrecker of his, Seaspray, did the same until Dreadwing killed him. Wheeljack then pursued him to Earth and has since given up the whole galaxy wandering- but now he wanders the Earth instead.
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