Nano Core (Chinese: 纳米核心) is a Sci-fi Chinese CGI cartoon made by Coastline Animation Studio that began airing in 2014.
In the planet of Birthigin, humans will never stop searching for a brighter future despite the many hardships. In revolutions and evolution, human keeps challenging the creator, and which induced contractions intensifying. The humans choose to wake up and struggle for their own ideals. They end up braking the peace and anger sweeps the whole planet, resulting in an outbreak known as the Purple Fog.
Our story centers around Ray, a young Aesir sent to unknown land after his mother figure, Heyar Adas, believes that he deserves to live as a human. He gets discovered by a pair of siblings, Nova and Miya Fentis, but is shortly separated after their home gets attacked by soldiers sent by the Aesirs searching for him. He later teams up with Tangxin, a young agent of the Bing family and Lozo, a sniper from the Shark Squadron, to avoid his pursuers.
Contains examples of:
- Action Girl: Tangxin, and also Hella.
- Aerith and Bob: You have English sounding names like Joseph and Ray, then you have uncommon names like Miya (which can also be spelled as Mia), Hella, Heyar, and then there's Tangxin, whose name is Chinese.
- A God Am I: Jazz Atlantis is implied to be this by Heyar after Quartz City Incident that took Parkus's life. Averted, the real Jazz Atlantis is the real victim of the incident, Parkus recreate an AI with Parkus personalities to prioritize survival of Birthigin civilization.
- Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: At the end of the series, Ray has fused/become The Ark.
- Artifact of Doom: The Ark, which actually is the container of most of the Purple Fog, which is implied in Season 2 as the advanced reconnaissance party of invading aliens.
- Or actually Birthigin Planet Defense System to invading aliens, which is the current Birthgin civilization.
- Attack Drone: GA-18 utilized drone swords as one of her primary attack. Jazz main defensive method is also this, unless brainwashing is taken into account.
- Badass Adorable: Ray and Tangxin.
- All main cast who is not an adult in Season 1 and 2 qualify. Lozo is a brilliant field tactician,Hella can slaughter a whole platform of Viper Army.Miya telekinesis can potentially disabled even Hella.Nova can create fire to increase offensive power.
- Big Brother Instinct: Nova is extremely protective of Miya and won't tolerate any kind of harm towards her.
- Big "NO!": Tangxin after Ray falls from a great height. Then Ray becomes Baldur.
- Boring, but Practical: This special video.
While other Viper operatives fight with acrobatics, Baihu (白虎） just shrugs, walk slowly upfront to intercept Baldur, give it a punch to gain distance, and then blast it with grenade launchers (Albeit with other two's help). - Brought Down to Normal: Ray becomes this at Season 2 Episode 2. It didn't last long.
- Cain and Abel: Lozo and his older brother Loxa are implied to be this.
- Child Soldiers: Ray (GA-17) was originally meant to be this if it weren't for Heyar ejecting him off of a spaceship. Hella (GA-18) was one too.
- Combat Pragmatist: Lozo. He will use anything, everything, to achieve objectives. This is how he survive season 1.
- Cooldown Hug: Nova gives one to Miya after she goes berserk and unleashes her powers.
- This turns around in season 2, which Nova is the one that needed cooling down.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Whenever Nano Scouts versus ordinary humans and sometimes mutants. Berserk mutants can do this to Implanted type Nano Scouts.
- Died in Your Arms Tonight: Heyar to Ray, as he is forced to kill her to stop Jazz. Also, Hella to Torris, which is even sadder because you could see her despair facial expression.
- Deadly Upgrade: Lo Xa. He got an installment of Nanocore and become a Implanted type Nano Scout. As it is not meant for humans, he now has a short time to live, as noted by Bai Sen in Season 4.
- Destructive Saviour: Birthigin is dying, conflicts almost draining last resources, and advanced alien invasion imminent? Drill deep for all resources using collection towers, sample and store genes of planet biomass, and get out of the planet to leave it even more barren then before before they arrived. In short, "The Ark" Plan.
- Doppelgänger: At the end of Season 4, Ray has to fight a Purple Fog manifestation of Baldur, which improves rapidly over the battle. However, it also develops flaws that Insults on it destabilize it. Nanna and Tangxin use it to great effect.
- Elegant Gothic Lolita: Hella, with a parasol to boot.
- Enfant Terrible: Hella, although she's Really 700 Years Old, she has an appearance of a young pre-teen.
- Enemy Mine: Since the series is composed of multiple parties that have their own agendas, this frequently happened. The most prominent example is Lanque(蓝雀) ,despite their positions are usually as enemies, arguably provide more help to Ray than any other characters throughout the series.
- Face–Heel Turn: Hella. Though most likely because her obsession in Torris and then his final orders before the mercy kill. She did show gratitude and less racism towards mutants after they rescue her in Season 4 though.
- Fantastic Racism: The mutants are discriminated by humans for worshipping the Purple fog and are viewed as disease carrying demons.
- Fragile Speedster: Thorm Chaser Squad and Lozo are this, as they usually travel light for reconnaissance and rapid response or extracting highly valuable targets like Ray and could not win in a direct confrontation. Subverted since their main opponents are Viper Army, which aside from badass also has strength in numbers, or Manders, a Nano Scout.
- Forgiveness: One of the main theme in the series, especially Season 4.
- Ray to Miya, as she actually betrayed him for the sake of her newly rebuilt village. Though it also took a bad vision of future and cooldown from Heyar at the back of his mind to do that.
- Hella and Lozu to Loxa. In Lozu case, Loxa tried to assassinate him out of jealousy. In Hella's case, Loxa is the one who incapacitate Torris and indirectly cause his death, by her hands no less.
- Nanna to Baisen, as he is the one causing her parental substitute to die as a coverup.
- Genki Girl: Tangxin
- Guns Akimbo: Tangxin's energy SMG pistols, which can combine into a bow.
- Heel–Face Turn: Subverted for Hella, as she does it to Jazz due to his ignorance of Torris Lage.
- Heroic BSoD: Tangxin goes through one after her brother dies.
- Ray also have one briefly in season two, after his nanosuit, Baldur's core was destroyed. he got another during the 5 years of season 2 and 3.
- Ray again, in season 4. after his deep psyche link reveals that Miya tries to contained him inside the mind to locate the ARK instead of helping him as a friend..
- Heroic Sacrifice: Tangxin's brother tries to kill Manders by shoving him into explosive crystals, it doesn't work. Subverted, the Nanosuit of Manders is coated with explosive crystal dust, enabling Lozo to exploit it later on.
- Hot-Blooded: Nova. Season 2 provides Loxa*.
- Heroic RRoD: Nova in season 2. Downplayed in Ray during season 3, he mentioned that due to lack of maintenance, Baldur is failing and would disappear anytime soon, and in the case of episode 4, he even have problems summoning it.
- Jaded Washout: Ray after the Battle of Asgard, doing petty jobs in backalley like repairing devices although he is hailed as hero. Justified that Viper Army is after him, and Aesirs are currently hunted down by current society.
- Kill It with Fire: Nova's natural powers controls fire.
- Kid Hero All Grown-Up: Every teenager. Although not all of them is revealed yet, you can see them in the second opening in season 3. All of them are now in Season 4.
- Lethal Joke Character: Loxa and Nova. Both of them can be qualified as this due to their Butt Monkey status. However, in combat, the former is actually capable of holding against Lozo, the latter can transform.
- Lensman Arms Race:
Word of God implies that in the early stages of war, they uses automatons with superior technology to crush opponents. Then the humans start to fight back by adapting and tactics. Aesirs then start the project on Nano Scouts, which led to the creation of GA series. By season 3, Viper Army had developed pseudo Nano Scouts on their own, which while take a beating by Ray, is able to stand toe to toe with real nano scouts and win through numbers. - Macross Missile Massacre: Baldur's shoulder mounted micro missile launchers always do this, and they always didn't work against what he fights.
- Mid-Season Upgrade: By almost the end of Season 2, Ray has one after receiving the core retrieved from Torris. At the end of the series, Ray absorbs almost every nanocore he gets just to battle the ever-improving purple fog doppleganger.
- Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Birthigin, the planet the story took place in, has mutants with supernatural power, Aesir with high end technology, normal humans, and even purple-like mist entity worshiped by some of the mutants, which is implied to be vanguard extraterrestrial entity intend to invade Yuan Xin.
- Nigh-Invulnerability: Manders able to summon a sphere wall of nanomachines to deflect anything outside, but not inside, when one of the crippled Wind Chaser Squad which happens to be inside detonate a grenade against Manders, it did almost nothing visually, but it definitely have an effect on him as he was forced to disable it. All Nano Scout are this when using nanosuits, which endures a lot of punishment even from another nanosuit's arsenal. To defeat Manders in Season 1, Lozo had to detonate the explosive crystal via electricity, let Ray/Baldur grind down Mander's reduced integrity nanosuit, detonate a directed explosive directly on his chest, then let Tang Xin shoot a Energy Piercing Arrow to bring it down. For good measure, he then throw a pile of explosive on top of his body and detonate it.
- No Social Skills: Ray, who believes that hugging someone out of nowhere is a proper way of communication.
- Parental Substitute: Heyar was this to Ray, Nova for Miya, and Torris to Hella. Made all the more hilarious when the CV actors admitted that Ray and Hella have their complex to them during the premiere countdown bloopers.
- Patricide: Ray is doing this to Heyar at the end of season 2 out of necessity and it didn't do good to him in the slightest. Bringing her back can be considered one of the major things that drive the plot of season 3.
- A darker example would be Loxa, who killed his father at the end of season 3. Idiotic is one thing, but you treat people like crap and they will definitely hate you, Lo Lie.
- Another tragic case would be Hella to Torris. She acknowledged that he only saw her as a weapon, but they do care for each other. Also because this is under his order, so that she could recover from the poison extracted from him to get revenge on Loxa.
- Private Military Contractors: Viper Army, which is hired by Aesirs to perform missions against L.O.F in exchange for ruling capital city and testing various new weapons from Aesirs.
- Really 700 Years Old: All of the Aesirs are at least a over hundred years old, with Ray and Hella being the only exception.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: Nova, the red oni to Miya's blue.
- Refusal of the Call: Season 3, Ray. Justified since he considered the world is once again peaceful and 5 years after the Battle of Asgard left him cynical of all factions are no difference and use him as tools. And he want to find a way to revive Heyar before Baldur is completely deactivated due to state of disrepair.
- Split Personality: Nova has shown to be this in Season 4. The time his original personality comes up though is when he activated his combat avatar.
- The Chessmaster: Lo Lie (Lozo's father. (Actually, adopted.)), the boss of the Viper Army, frequently out-gambits Aesirs when the latter tried to prove them for trying to steal Nano Scout technology. The impregnable box that requires his personal unlocking turns out to be just an EMP bomb. (Illegal but not fatal). Then he slips a scoutbot inside the toolbox that dismantles the EMP bomb. When Aesirs cut the crap and just moving to subjugate him instead, turns out he already put a double in place.
- Averted, Jazz and Aesirs higher authority already know everything, they plainly don't care.
- Tsundere: Tangxin, type A.In season 3, She holds a huge beatdown on Ray with a chair, before finally hugs him and ask his past experience of 5 years after the Battle of Asgard.
- The Stoic: Lozo, his father, Shack; and Jazz Atlantis.
- Unstoppable Rage: Miya when she unleashes her mutant natural powers, leaves her immobilized as she unleashes powerful shockwaves capable of pushing an airship, it only takes Nova's Cooldown Hug to calm her down.
- As above stated, Nova also gains this in season 2 and pummeled Torris with a few materialized swords impaling his body.
- Wave-Motion Gun:Downplayed version, as it is considered big on a human scale. In season 4, Loxa's Nano Scout Model can perform this, albeit same type as Manders (maybe they made improvements on the model in the 5 years gap). Baldur can perform this too after absorbing the aforementioned Nano Core.
- Would Hurt a Child: Torris has no problem with torturing Miya, and proceeding to beat up Nova. Also Manders invokes that even if Ray is still young, he won't hold back on beating him up.
- Wham Episode: It is really easier to list down which episode isn't one. It probably won't help when starting season 3, each episode is shortened to 15 minutes, including both OP and ED.
