The Tokyo Fireball: Difference between revisions

{{quote|''"The movie begins with Tokyo exploding -- which, for anime, is the cliche equivalent of '[[It Was a Dark and Stormy Night]].'"''|'''Noah "The Spoony One" Antwiler''' ''[[The Spoony Experiment]]'' on ''[[Akira]]''}}

 

 

 

One more note for this trope: no matter ''how'' the destruction happens, it will rarely happen [[Nuclear Weapons Taboo|thanks to a nuclear bomb]].

 

{{examples}}

* ''[[All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku]]'': Nuku-Nuku and Eimi demolish most of Nerima Ward during their first spat.

* The film ''[[Akira]]'' blows up Tokyo ''twice''. The manga possibly does it a ''third'' time (though it hadn't even begun rebuilding from the second blast.)

** Tokyo is destroyed at least once before the series starts, multiple attacks by giant monsters that devastate the city and require frequent rebuilding, {{spoiler|a [[Nuclear Weapons Taboo|pseudo-nuclear]] assault that utterly eradicates the city before the U.N. invasion of NERV's headquarters can begin, and finally the virtual destruction of Earth (and thus, anything that is left of Tokyo). Not to mention Rei's self-sacrifice that destroys the 16th Angel -- and turns a large section of Tokyo-3 into a brand-new crater lake.}} And guess what happens in [[End of Evangelion]] when SEELE remembers that they have N2 mines left over from the Angels. There's ''nothing left'' after they finish: its just a massive, perfectly circular hole in the ground. Everything that even ''remotely'' resembled a city is completely vaporised.

*** Interestingly, they don't rebuild in the same location. "Old Tokyo" is abandoned as a nuclear wasteland; Tokyo-2 is in Nagano Prefecture, and Tokyo-3 is built on the site of present-day Hakone.

* ''[[Angel Sanctuary]]'': Tokyo is destroyed in the third episode of the anime, and rather early on in the manga.

* ''[[Demon City Shinjuku]]'' starts with a major precinct of Tokyo collapsing and being cut off from the rest of the city because of an earthquake caused by [[Demonic Invaders|demons]].

* ''[[The Big O]]'': While not Tokyo, [[Big Applesauce|Paradigm City]] regularly has large chunks of itself destroyed by fights amongst [[Humongous Mecha]]. And no one seems to care about the irreplaceable losses whenever another 5 square blocks get razed in what is apparently the last remaining city in the world. This culminates in episode 25, when most of the city is reduced to rubble {{spoiler|and only restored by an apparent [[End of the World Special]]}}.

* In the [[Grand Finale]] of ''[[Tokyo Mew Mew]],'' Tokyo is in ruins; it comes back, but with a lot more overgrowth, which had built up over the series by the use of environmentally-friendly [[Applied Phlebotinum]].

* ''[[Paranoia Agent]]'': As out of place as it may seem, the trope appears in {{spoiler|the last episode, when Tokyo is engulfed by Shonen Bat's rapidly growing form. It's rebuilt by the end of the episode, of course. And its implied the whole thing will happen over again, if that's not enough.}}

* ''[[Deadman Wonderland]]'' is built following a massive earthquake that levels Tokyo, and there's recently been another strong earthquake {{spoiler|or possibly a giant robot got loose again}}.

* ''[[RahXephon]]'' plays with this. At first, it seems to be [[Inverted Trope|inverted]] with the whole world ''besides'' Tokyo having been destroyed. However, it's quickly revealed that this isn't true, and that Tokyo has instead been sealed off from the outside world, with nobody being able to enter or leave, which is close enough to it having been destroyed from the perspective of the people living outside of it. The events of the series are kicked off when people from outside manage to break through, and take a person (and a [[Humongous Mecha]]) from inside back out with them.

* In the final arc of ''[[The Daughter of Twenty Faces]]'', a [[Mad Scientist]] attempts to vaporize most of Tokyo.

* ''[[Shangri-La]]'''s backstory consists of Tokyo having been mostly flooded and turned into a tropical jungle by global warming. A few landmarks are visible beneath all the plants and vines.

* While the Dragons of Heaven are supposed to be preventing this in ''[[X 1999]]'', they don't exactly do a good job of it.

* ''[[Darker than Black]]'' calls a scenario like this "the Tokyo Explosion," and groups attempting to cause or prevent it are behind most of the first season's plot. {{spoiler|In the end it does happen, but then it... [[Time Travel|un-happens]]. [[Mind Screw|It's complicated]].}} A lot of the city got destroyed or rendered [[Eldritch Location|unlivable]] with the appearance of Hell's Gate, as well.

* In spite of the cute characters and upbeat music during the credits, ''[[Tokyo Magnitude 8.0]]'' presents a horrific example of this.

* ''[[Violence Jack]]'' is set [[After the End]] of a massive earthquake that demolished Tokyo and most of Japan, which isolated it from the rest of the world.

 

* Generally averted in the original ''[[Gamera]]'' series. When Gamera first appears he mostly stomps around Hokkaido. Barugon wrecks Osaka (No, not ''[[Azumanga Daioh|that]]'' Osaka) and Kobe. Gaos attacks Nagoya. Only the final film, ''Gamera vs. Zigra'', features Tokyo getting flattened. Of course, by that point there aren't many Japanese cities left besides Tokyo to destroy, so, yeah...

* ''[[Godzilla]]''. The series makes fine work of leveling Tokyo.

* ''Jishin Retto'' (also known as Death Quake in the US) revolves around a massive earthquake which in turn triggers a city-wide firestorm.

 

* James Clavell's ''[[Asian Saga]]'' has a couple of examples:

** In ''Shōgun'' an earthquake causes a massive fire that destroys most of Osaka. Blackthorne's companions explain that this happens to their cities every few generations. When it does, they just rebuild.

* The first of [[Andre Norton]]'s ''Solar Queen'' stories has a brief mention that centuries before, "volcanic action, followed by tidal waves, had overwhelmed a whole nation in two days and a night--so that Japan had utterly ceased to be--washed from the maps of Terra."

 

* There's even a song used in [[Initial D]] with this trope. The song No One Sleeps in Tokyo by Edo Boys. ''No one sleeps in Tokyo, because Tokyo '''is on fire!'''''

* [[Blue Öyster Cult|Blue Oyster Cult]]'s "[http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Blue+Oyster+Cult+Godzilla Godzilla]".

''Boy, I really wish they'd cut it out'' }}

 

 

* [http://www.sluggy.com/comics/archives/daily/19990321 Parodied] in ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]'': When [[Santa Claus]] builds a Mecha Easter Bunny, it is programmed to destroy Tokyo. When asked why, he responds that it's a rule of Mechas that they must destroy Tokyo. He is then informed that Tokyo has just been leveled, making the point moot.

* Parodied in ''[[Megatokyo]]'', where the Tokyo Police Cataclysm Division schedules such events to ensure that day-to-day life isn't overly disrupted.

 

** The [[wikipedia:Great Kanto Earthquake|Great Kanto Earthquake]] of 1923 also burned down much of the city. It was the inspiration for the earthquake in ''[[Bubblegum Crisis]]'', above.

** There's also Little Boy itself, the Atomic Bomb that was detonated above Hiroshima August 6, 1945 which turned the city into rubble under a large mushroom cloud.

** Also, the native Shinto religion places enormous importance on purity. Shinto shrines are torn down and rebuilt to the exact same specifications on a regular basis. E.g., the Grand Shrine of Ise complex, purportedly home to one of the three Imperial Regalia of the Japanese Emperor, is torn down and rebuilt every 20 years.

* Want to know why Tokyo gets a lot of earthquakes? Tokyo is the meeting place for three different tectonic plates. It's been described as "The city waiting to die". Also, Japan contains ten percent of the world's active volcanoes. Fun!

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Japanese Media Tropes]]

[[Category:The Tokyo Fireball]]