Deconstructor Fleet / Anime & Manga

• Berserk portrays a High Fantasy world where kingdoms are constantly at war and things like demons, magic and gods are completely real. The results are horrifying.
• Bokurano: Just because a cosmic entity grants children gigantic mecha to pilot doesn't mean they'll necessarily use those mechs for the sake of good.
• Case Closed upon closer inspection deconstructs all sorts of genres through the backstories of the people involved in the cases. It ranges from whodunit murder mysteries to convuluted soap operas or even romantic comedies. One case about a ripped up baseball penant seems like something out of a sports underdog story.
• Code Geass shows what happens when characters from a high school anime with their angst, idealism and silly crushes get involved in a Mobile Suit Gundam setting.
• The Creation Alchemist Enjoys Freedom showcases what happens when Klingon Scientists Get No Respect is taken to its logical conclusion. While blacksmiths are tolerated, since they can at least swing a hammer, most of the other support classes, especially [Alchemist] are scorned. As such, the empire's infrastructure and technology has been in decline for at least a century, and the empire's most vaulted [Holy] weapons are falling apart, due to lack of maintenance. In fact, the main character was in the process of repairing the holy sword belonging to the crown princess before his own father has him kidnapped, berated as "useless" and "incompetent" and being shipped off to the demon king country, expected to die there. The reason the empire has this mindset? They're emulating summoned "Heroes" who valued combat utility over all else, out of sheer necessity.
• Dancougar served as this for the Super Robot Genre.
  • "Why does the evil alien empire fool around with the Monster of the Week trying to take down a lone mecha instead of launching a full-scale invasion right away?" - Show premise.
  • "How would a Hot-Blooded pilot actually fit and cooperate with a military?" Nice Job Breaking It, Hero moments occur on more than one occasion.
  • Also touches on how hard it would be for four people, each one Hot-Blooded to some degree and confident in their individual piloting skills, to control a Combining Mecha which requires all its pilots to operate in sync. The first transformation took place after a quarter of the show had passed (after the pilots got the hang of the transforming mechanics and their Beast forms), and it actually failed since they have yet to learn how suppress their ego and work effectively as a team.
• Darker than Black does its best to play with as many superpower tropes as it can, and often deconstructs them. For starters: Required Secondary Powers is either often exploited, or forgotten about, resulting in the deaths of many characters.
• Digimon Tamers is another Mons deconstruction. Remember the first two seasons? They're all fake, nothing more than a kids TV show and merchandise franchise. This Is Reality. The show explores how much damage real Mons could potentially cause to a cityscape, the consequences of endlessly trying to make your mon stronger (both for the mon and the Tamer), and the psychological problems that could result from being too attached to your mon.
• Dragon Ball has a few deconstructed tropes. Attempts by main characters to kamikaze the villains are rarely, if ever, met with success, despite all the weight that is often put into these decisions. Both Tien AND Chaiotzu failed to make their ones on Nappa stick, Vegeta's attempt to pull one on Majin Buu was rendered useless, and Gohan's last stand against the Androids in the "History of Trunks" special just ended up making things worse for humanity. Really, the few that actually worked tended to involve Goku, be it keeping Raditz at bay for Piccolo's Special Beam Cannon to work, or teleporting Cell off-planet to stop the world from blowing up (and even that didn't end up killing Cell).
• Excel♡Saga: Technically it is a satire mocking the Japanese recession, but every little thing, no matter how mundane or boring, is depicted as totally awesome. The anime meanwhile, parodies a different movie or television genre each episode.
• Fate/Zero, following the example of its predecessor, deconstructs heroism tropes, this time especially the concept of the I Did What I Had to Do The Needs of the Many-style Anti-Hero and the Well-Intentioned Extremist, as well as some interesting and bizarre musings on the notion of being the villain of a story.
• FLCL, but Played for Laughs and Mind Screws.
• Gantz: The author himself said that he laid out to subvert as many tropes as possible with the series. One might argue the prime example here is First-Person Shooter, as in being inside a First-Person Shooter would be horrible.
• Genkai Level 1 Kara No Nariagari deconstructs as many isekai harem tropes as it can sink its teeth into. The human kingdom that summons Tetsuya and five other people wasn't looking for genuine heroes to protect them from an existential threat, regardless of what Meme says on her introduction. They were looking for shock troops and enforcers that they could exploit to be war weapons of mass destruction, and threw Tetsuya over a cliff when he failed to match up to their aesthetics, not to mention how much Tetsuya's life sucked because he was the stereotypical Ordinary High-School Student Godlike Gamer and then became an adult and had to try and adapt to modern society...
• Hayate the Combat Butler subverts, averts, deconstructs, and stealth parodies Harem Genre tropes as much as possible.
• Heaven's Lost Property mostly pokes fun at many harem tropes and tropes such as Messianic Archetype. One standout case however is Chaos who is walking deconstruction of What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?, and unlike the rest it is not played for laughs. She shows what happens when you try to teach someone love who literally doesn't have any understanding of the concept and stuff such as Love Hurts are taken frighteningly literally.
• Irresponsible Captain Tylor — Space Opera, completely Played for Laughs.
• Is This A Zombie? is not your normal magical girl series.
• Kaguya-sama: Love Is War loves to make fun of romance manga tropes by either giving them realistic outcomes, or utilizing them in a tongue-in-cheek fashion. The very premise of the series is a deconstruction of Cannot Spit It Out, as Kaguya and Shirogane waste so much time dancing around their feelings for each other, that when they finally do get together, Shirogane only has a few months before he has to go overseas for college.
• Key the Metal Idol — One of the first truly brilliant Anime Mind Screws, it also sinks its teeth into numerous works and tropes of fiction, including Pinocchio/ Become a Real Boy, Mini-Mecha, Real Mecha, Super Mecha, Eccentric Mentor, Idol Singer, and Magical Girl, in addition to subverting and deconstructing the Emotionless Girl and Robot Girl archetypes before they were much of a thing in anime to begin with.
• Kokoro Connect disassembles every aspect of Slice of Life high-school romance it can think of, "Freaky Friday" Flip and similar Magical Realism tropes, and even the very concept of entertaining the audience.
• Haruka Kotoura of Kotoura-san could have been a classic Moe protagonist and is one deep down. The problem is that her Telepathy cannot be turned off so she's unable to distinguish between speech and thought. In her backstory, she grew up in a society where Tatemae is a commonplace concept. It did not end well for her at all. As a result, many of her major character tropes are either Deconstructed, Played for Drama, or they are simply cynical in nature.
  • This hypothetical situation also explores the implications of Tatemae's validity. Is it worth the risk of Becoming the Mask just so you can belong in society? Is it really okay to hurt and shun the Honest Advisor who may not know better if at all? Does this promote a truly happy society or a Crapsaccharine World?
• Magical Record Lyrical Nanoha Force take some Surprisingly Realistic Outcome. Since the antagonists are adults and choose their own path, this series deconstructs some concepts of entire Nanoha franchise, especially the mainstay Defeat Means Friendship. As usual, the heroes always use the usual friendly approach to the villains, but the villains use the advantage to get away with things, leading to more stubbornness and aggression for the villains or even running away. In an example of Tropes Are Tools, these changes were almost universally hated by the fandom, resulting in the series being put on indefinite hiatus and relegated to Fanon Discontinuity.
• Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi — The whole frickin' point is basically to deconstruct a genre per episode. And then, halfway through, it shifts gears and begins to deconstruct itself.
• Maoyu deconstructs popular cliches of the fantasy genre. It begins by explaining how killing the Evil Overlord does not necessarily end the world's problems. In fact, the true way of achieving world peace is not through brute force, but through a combination of military, economic, diplomatic, political and social reforms.
• Medaka Box has pretty much become this. Exaggerating shonen tropes (especially those found in Shonen Jump) while also showing issues that come with the characters having such off the wall powers, and even deconstructs the concepts of the Invincible Hero with many a Parody Sue.
• Yoshiyuki Tomino is practically a one-man Deconstructor Fleet.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam deconstructs the then-prevailing Mecha trend of overpowered Super Robots, thus creating the Real Robot genre.
    • The mecha that would have otherwise taken on the role of the titular super robot is a hell of a hassle despite being super, simply because it's so cutting edge to the point of being hard to maintain. By the end of the One Year War, it has difficultly responding to Amuro because it lacks the hardware to keep up with his Newtype reflexes.
    • The protagonist Amuro Ray, despite his intelligence, is a teenage boy who acts like one. He angsts over his role, clashes with the military chain of command, and leaves White Base at one point before growing into his role as pilot. He's not the team leader either and remains subordinate to Bright Noa throughout. Amuro also never gets together with either love interest. He accidentally kills Lalah and fails to notice the affections of Fraw.
    • The series goes on to show that The Principality of Zeon despite being a Nazi-esque military dictatorship has sympathetic and likeable characters like Ramba Ral, Garma Zabi, and Char Aznable, averting straight Black-and-White Morality.
    • The sequel series Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam has the Federation, the good guys in the original series, creating the Titans to hunt down Zeon remnants, only for them to become corrupt and commit the same atrocities Zeon engaged in. This brings the original heroes and Char together to stop them.
  • Mobile Suit Victory Gundam deconstructs the rest of the franchise's Universal Century side, given that it was produced during Tomino's emotional lowest point against Sunrise's endless Executive Meddling. It tells everything buried deep in Tomino's mind about the commercial reality in the anime industries. Tomino himself has admitted regret that the show ened up as dark as it did.
  • The Universal Century in general is itself a deconstruction of the sort of ideas, tropes and lofty aspirations that inspire the likes of Star Trek, which is further highlighted by works like Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn. If there are strange new worlds to see, expect them to have a lot of the same problems we deal with on Earth. And expect humanity to bring its conflicts, bloodshed and hubris to the stars.
• Mobile Suit Gundam 00 deconstructs the rest of the Gundam franchise. It even has the voice actor of the original hero play the Big Bad.
• Mobile Suit Gundam AGE deconstructs the mindset of the Kid Hero of the first generation — does he believe in achieving peace to both sides? Nope, he considers the Vagan as irredeemable monsters no matter what, and he holds this belief throughout his life; not even his son and grandson can change his mind on that. At least not until the last minute.
• Naruto — Deconstructs Idiot Hero (Naruto isn't an idiot, he just act like one because that's the only way he can get a brief moment of attention, and it's a defense mechanism against his depression), Messianic Archetype (Nagato via what happens when the universe goes out of its way to treat said archetype like crap), Cosmic Plaything (out of four examples, all but Naruto have snapped somehow as a result and even then Naruto barely avoided snapping), All Girls Want Bad Boys (Sakura), No Good Deed Goes Unpunished (Kakashi suffered some major trauma as a result of what happened to his father), and revenge tropes in general (especially Sasuke).
• Neon Genesis Evangelion was the first in a while to attempt to answer a lot of the nagging questions about Humongous Mecha series and anime in general and returns answers so simple, direct, and reasonable that they are some of the most frightening or most awakening depending on the viewers interpretation.
  • Why are all the central protagonists the same age? Due to a quirk of the setting, 14 is the current maximum pilot age, and the technology has been under development for their whole lives, so these children are all to some degree Tyke Bombs.
  • Why would a vehicle care about its pilot's mental state? Because the vehicle is a Soul Jar containing the soul of its pilot's mother.
  • Why are the mecha's abilities so closely matched to their enemies? The "mecha" are actually lobotomized clones of the enemy species fitted with machinery to control them like Meat Puppets by the pilots.
  • How did the main character suddenly become the best fighter with zero experience? While the Evas follow orders, they have wills of their own and are fully capable of independent action. The pilot is only truly necessary to animate the Eva.
• Ouran High School Host Club — Joyfully mocks the reverse-harem shoujo genre it often falls straight into.
• Patlabor is a relentlessly hilarious satire of every element of Humongous Mecha.
  • They're rarely over a dozen meters tall, so as not to crush their own feet. And one tripping will still take out a house. They don't even walk long distances; they're stored at construction sites like any other piece of heavy equipment, and the Patlabors are transported to combat scenes in their own specialized trucks.
  • Falling into the Cockpit is impossible as they're complicated as hell; Noa teaching her mech to tie a shoelace knot is considered proof of her being a genius pilot. Most people can't do much with even a Super Prototype robot even if they find themselves piloting one.
  • Weapons are scaled-up versions of conventional firearms; a laser shows up in a single two-part episode, but never seen again — it destroyed all its foes, but it was too delicate and expensive.
  • War for Fun and Profit is neither fun nor profitable; Schaft Enterprises makes an attempt to pit one of their military prototypes against the police's Ingram in pursuit of combat data. What followed was ridiculously stupid, as the only people they could find willing to do such a ridiculously stupid thing were some deadbeat stoner Bomb-Throwing Anarchists - who fled the scene once they realized how ridiculously stupid the whole thing was.^note Of course, the whole Griffon plotline, from Brocken fighting Ingram to collect its data to the Griffon itself, is a huge Shout-Out to Tetsujin No. 28. Simply replace Brocken and Griffon with Baccus and Black Ox and the whole thing should be clearer.
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica — While being selfish in most Magical Girl shows makes you the villain or the Alpha Bitch, using your wish to help others might lead to them to question everything, unknowingly take your help and forget you, or cause their suffering to build over multiple timelines. And you get to have all the fun of watching it happen and knowing you caused it.
  • The show calls attention to the fact that these untrained, unprepared youths are liable to actually die in their fights with the Witches, as well as the psychological damage it entails.
  • Rebellion, the series' sequel, also attacks its fair share of tropes. Most prominently, how disturbing would it actually be to love only one person, to the exclusion of all other relationships? Rebellion also features the portrayal of the characters in a more standard magical girl setting, with one of them realizing that it's not what their setting is actually like.
• In its first few episodes, Revolutionary Girl Utena is a bit of an Affectionate Parody of shoujo manga, particularly the stories that star a swashbuckling, crossdressing girl. Its presentation begs comparison to The Rose of Versailles, which, as a widely-known classic, Japanese audiences will pick up on right away.^note English speakers, who are rarely exposed to the early greats of shoujo manga unless they specifically look for them, tend to focus on Magical Girl influences. They are salient, but to a lesser degree. Shoujo manga creates an in-between space where girls can vicariously be who they want to be, love who they want to love, and live out their dreams...until they become women and societal reality comes into full effect. Magical girls lose their powers and become wives and mothers. In The Rose of Versailles, the heroine rejects life as a woman and meets a tragic end. Revolutionary Girl Utena has a very conscious awareness of all this context, and approaches it from the perspective that these societal burdens hurt not just girls, but everyone. It also makes a compelling case for shoujo manga as an optimal vehicle for stories of self-discovery.
  • And speaking of a Kunihiko Ikuhara anime that savages traditional gender roles at every turn and traffics in some very subversive ideas about how certain kinds of love are portrayed in Japanese media, let's talk about Yuri Kuma Arashi...
• Re:Zero takes great pains to critically examine many tropes present not just in the typical NEET Trapped in Another World plotline, but aspects of high fantasy and the concept of supporting cast. Rather than a straightforward fantasy of 'fight monsters' and 'defeat a great evil' the driving goal of the series is more political in nature, and both the characters and the setting have complex, interlocking backstories that Subaru (and the audience) learn about as time goes on. In fact, the Witch of Envy (who would normally fit the role of Big Bad in this type of story) was defeated centuries ago and is implied to be what summoned Subaru in the first place, with much of the challenges faced arising from the legacy left behind by both her and her fellow Witches, and being the cause of Fantastic Racism that plagues Emilia in the present.
• The Rising of the Shield Hero has its own page.
• Rosario + Vampire: In recent years Ikeda has taken it upon himself to ask what sort of background the girls in an Unwanted Harem might have come from, and to highlight the impact of being the Romantic Runner-Up in such a relationship. It also shows how dangerous it is to be The Team Normal and the possible adverse physical and psychological effects of an Emergency Transformation. Not to mention Kahlua shows just how messed up being a Punch-Clock Villain can make you.
• Rurouni Kenshin — Deconstructs many aspects of the Wandering Samurai ^note Not that Kenshin WAS one, mind you found in the Jidaigeki genre.
• Saikano: So your shy, timid girlfriend turned out to have actually been a secret government human superweapon all along? Expect suffering, my friend. Lots and lots and lots of it.
• School Days, like the game it was based on (more on that in the Visual Novel folder on the main page), takes the Harem Genre and mashes it with Surprisingly Realistic Outcome all the way to a terrifying ending. Bluntly speaking, it deconstructs the Harem Genre by showing what would happen if a person became the focus of a harem, and instead of being oblivious to their affection, decided to take advantage of their love for someone to get sex out of them, and shows the toll that this would have on someone in a situation like this.
• Shadow Star — Like Digimon Tamers, this one really digs into the darker implications of the Mon subgenre, but the vein in which it does so is closer to Bokurano's take on the subject, asking the viewer what sort of person would want that kind of power and why just as much as how that power's effects would play out in a world like this. The story's answers to that question are by no means reassuring. Not coincidentally, the manga comes from the creator of the latter, while the anime adaptation was scripted by the creator of the former.
• Shiki to vampire fiction. Starts out as a regular undead invade village, heroic vampire hunter fights them off. By the end, we're all left wondering who the real monsters are.
• Star Driver thrives on this. A great deal of the generic anime tropes used throughout the anime are exaggerated and played with massively to the point they feel totally new.
• Originally, Super Dimension Fortress Macross was meant to be a Deconstructive Parody of shows like Mobile Suit Gundam. While it veered off that course eventually and played a fair number of tropes completely straight (never mind inventing a few along the way), every major entry into the Macross franchise has featured at least one major, often scathing, deconstruction of the science fiction and adventure genres, not to mention the anime medium as a whole.
• Haruhi Suzumiya — What do you mean "we should stay in one genre?" If we did that, Kyon wouldn't get to snark at them!
• Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann eats this trope, among others, for breakfast. At the very least, it played the trope straight by deconstructing the Giant Robot genre. Some hypotheses suggest that the first arc is based on 70s giant robot anime (roaming around having episodic Monster of the Week adventures), the second is the 80s (moving toward a Big Bad and beating his subordinates along the way), the third arc transitions into the 90s (a much more cynical setting that looks very similar to something else by the same studio), and the final arc is intended to invert this trope by reconstruct everything into something new. Along the way, it examines how the Hot-Blooded type was treated in each of those. Among other things.
• Trapped in a Dating Sim: The World of Otome Games is Tough for Mobs deconstructs many Otome Isekai tropes with the most prominent being the whole concept. Marie trying to steal the role of the original game's protagonist has a huge major issue: she doesn't have any abilities of the original, which means the world is basically doomed.
• Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE- — Deconstructs itself, its second half deconstructing its first half.
• Uwakoi and Aki Sora, both by Masahiro Itosugi, collectively take the most infamous tropes associated with the ecchi and harem genres - Brother–Sister Incest, Extreme Doormat, Fetishized Abuser, Hormone-Addled Teenager, The Ditherer, Unwanted Harem, Yandere, etc. - and plays them all for realistic drama and/or psychological horror.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! GX — Especially the original series' heroes' use of Defeat Means Friendship (which the Big Bad's Cult uses in Season 2). And just look at what happens to its typical Idiot Hero-Invincible Hero protagonist in season 3.
  • It doesn't just deconstruct tropes, it also deconstructs aspects of the game itself; Judai's duel with Kagurazuka takes a stab at showing the flaws in the Possession Equals Mastery theory of netdecking, and a central theme in the anime is over which side of the "Stop Having Fun" Guys debate is right.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V takes the deconstruction even further, to the point that it has its own page. Here are a few examples:
  • In the first episode, Yuya's pendant spontaneously creates Pendulum Monsters and uses them to win. However, the audience calls him a cheater for having fake cards or at the very least cards nobody else has, and an early plot point is people either trying to steal Yuya's new cards or trying to develop their own Pendulum Monsters.
  • Yuya's missing dad causes him very major issues in contrast to past protagonists.
  • The fact that the heroes are essentially Child Soldiers is not sugar-coated in any way, and the series explores the mental damage that would result from being in their situation, namely through Sora, Kurosaki, Yuto and the Obelisk force. Especially Reira, who was already utterly broken by his upbringing in a war-torn country.
  • The Superpowered Evil Side demonstrated by Yuya and his alternate dimension counterparts is very much portrayed as horrific.
  • The Solid Vision is used by the villains, who are, aside from being from a parallel world, normal people, to turn Duel Monsters into weapons of war. Episode 34 demonstrates this by having Revolution Falcon do a bombing run and raze the entire field. Instead of having all humans be either 100% redeemable and/or heavily manipulated by an Eldritch Abomination, Humans Are the Real Monsters.
  • The Synchro Dimension arc is chock-full of Deconstuctions of 5Ds For one, the class divide still exists, and not only is it much more brutal, but the Zero Reverse isn't present to justify it. Instead, the people of the city have a culture and belief system that supports the insanity and even encourages the poor to mock people who fail to bring themselves up. Also, Security is very much a No-Nonsense Nemesis, utilizing decks full of monsters with Goyo Guardian's effect and not ceasing pursuit if they lose, making the duel a mostly a formality.
  • The Duels Decide Everything trope, core to the Yugioh franchise, also gets deconstructed. Namely, after the Lancers managed to get away when they attempted to duel them the first time, the next time they attempt to catch them, they don't make any attempts to duel them, instead detaining them through force and sheer numbers alone. Furthermore, when the Lancers are breaking out of prison, they don't bother with duels and instead have their monsters physically restrain their opponents. And later still, Sergey decides to forgo the duel altogether and instead uses his cybernetic enhancements in order to power through Tsukikage and Sora and kidnap Yuzu.
  • Yuya's All-Loving Hero attitude falls apart hard. Not only does he fall apart emotionally whenever his attempts at befriending others fail, but sometimes he alienates would-be-allies and/or his audience who see his behavior as naive, or because they view his beliefs as a personal attack on their culture.
  • The Jerk with a Heart of Gold trope is deconstructed through Jack. Though this version is genuinely well-meaning, a lot of people think he's a sellout because he never shows the public his true goals and motivations. His attempts to encourage a young duelist to become better by giving Sam a card that has deep personal significance make Sam think the gift is an insult, as he doesn't know about the emotional value and the card itself is pretty weak (unless your deck uses specific archetypes, some of which do not exist in Sam's dimension).
  • Defeat Means Friendship, a common staple of the Yugioh franchise, is either exploited by antagonists, or painfully averted or subverted in all but three of the protagonists' duels. These three duels all provide a solid reason why the trope is played straight, and said reason has more to do with the opponent's pre-existing personality and experiences than it does with Yuya himself; making Yuya less of a Warrior Therapist and more like the catalyst his opponents needed to set off their own Character Development.
  • Character Development in general takes a lot of time, and is sometimes characters grow in ways that aren't obvious or clear right away.
  • While generally the Magic Poker Equation is played straight, there are times when it has not. In one episode, Yuya ends up starting with a dead hand full of monsters he can't summon yet, and much latter, two people, both on the villains' and heroes' sides respectively, and in consecutive duels to boot, end up finding an Action Card that's completely useless to them.
  • For Happiness is deconstructed by Zarc. Like Yuya, he wanted to make people happy, but his audience was bloodthirsty and cheered him on when he was violent, twisting him into a monster.
  • The dueling, the entire basis of the franchise, eventually gets in on the deconstruction. The ancient Duel Spirits aren't happy at being made to fight against each other for humans' entertainment, so when Leo Akaba developed Real Solid Vision, they used it to manifest themselves into the real world and start attacking humans.
  • Like all the previous Big Bads before him, Zarc has a deck full of insanely overpowered cards, with his ace card being designed to be Nigh-Invulnerable. The rest of the cast eventually calls him out on this, pointing out that rather than display how powerful he is, it just shows that he's a coward afraid of losing.

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