Manga / Cannon God Exaxxion

An Ordinary Highschool Student is given a Humongous Mecha by his Mad Scientist grandfather to battle an Alien Invasion.

Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

Kenichi Sonoda (of Gunsmith Cats infamy, also principal character designer for Bubblegum Crisis) rejuvenates the Super Robot formula by injecting it with a psychedelic combination of a starkly realistic world along his own special brand of over-the-top humor, characters and of course, Fanservice. The manga ran in the seinen magazine Afternoon from 1997 to 2004.

Set in an indeterminate near-future time, ten years after Humanity was first visited by an alien race known as the Riofaldians, said aliens now live and work among humans all around the globe and their technology has advanced Earth society by leaps and bounds. But when the Riofaldian government decides to take a more... direct role in Human affairs, the Earth's defenses are quickly overwhelmed.

Enter Hoichi Kano, a tough, wisecracking highschool kid who resents the fact that the other kids are so enamoured with the new toys the aliens have brought, as his grandfather had written an infamous conspiracy pamphlet predicting the Riofaldians would eventually make a play for world conquest. On the day the invasion begins in earnest a new transfer student, the beautiful (and VERY well-endowed) Isaka Minigata, arrives at Hoichi's school with a message from his grandfather, Hosuke Kano.

It's not long before Hoichi is thrust into action, donning a special powersuit with incredibly powerful guns, battling diabolical alien robots and saving the day. But as the alien attacks escalate in response to Hoichi's antics, he'll need the enigmatic giant cannon robot known as Exaxxion to liberate the Earth from the Riofaldians' tyranny...

...If he can keep from levelling the place himself, that is.

Much like Space Runaway Ideon, a major theme of the series is just how difficult the unbridled destructive power of the title mech is to control. Nearly every fight results in horrendous levels of property damage and civilian casualties, not to mention resultant angst from our hero. A fact the invaders are all too happy to point out in their propaganda.

Propaganda is also a major focus of the story, with elaborate smear and counter-smear campaigns waged back and forth by the Riofaldians and Professor Kano for the hearts of the populace. The importance of information control and the need for the public's support in the new media age is heavily stressed.

Equal parts Humongous Mecha, Alien Invasion and Techno Thriller (with a heavy dose of that ol' Sonoda Ecchi-ness), Cannon God Exaxxion is (aside from the typical Mecha Show flights of fancy) one of the most realistic portrayals of alien occupation to date.

Compare Space Runaway Ideon and Neon Genesis Evangelion for similar Deconstructions of Super Robots which tackle somewhat different angles (although Ideon plays some tropes straight that are subverted here). Contrast, perhaps, the Nagahama Robot Romance Trilogy or Voltron as the best straight examples of what Exaxxion is deconstructing.

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Contains examples of...

• Action Mom: Reiko, oh so much. She's more badass than Hoichi, and HE is the protagonist!
• Absurdly Sharp Blade: Faldian Terminal Drones are equipped with these as deployable arms and they are designed to effortlessly slice through steel, concrete, and, of course, hostile humans. Their legs also count in a way as their tips are sharp enough to pierce through targets like oversized needles. The wings of their flight packs are also built to double as flying swords.
• All-Loving Hero: Used by Team Exaxxion as one of the tactics to increase their public support. Hosuke Kano has Isaka impersonate Hoichi and visit various shelters and gathering points for civilians to heal the wounded with her medmachines. To boost Hoichi's popularity even further, Isaka's instructed to treat both humans and Earth-dwelling Faldians, as demonstrated when she revives a fatally wounded Riofaldian peacekeeper who got injured trying to kill her just moments before with a gun she previously disabled.
• Alien Invasion: A Type 3, which draws some (narratively intentional) parallels to 19th-century colonialism. The manga milks these for all it's worth.
• Aliens Are Bastards: Played straight, averted and subverted six ways from sundown. By and large, the Riofaldian characters we see run the whole gamut of personality types and are shockingly... well, human. The whole point is that, really, they're the same and that both sides should treat each other with dignity. The Riofaldian leaders, however, really do reach inhuman levels of bastardity. And they even use it on each other.
• Animated Adaptation: It's worth noting that, despite Sonoda's pedigree, it hasn't been made into an animated work yet, with no studio having even stated interest (not even from Sonoda's old fellows at AIC), even in spite of a seven-year serialization run and very successful results for the graphic novel collections. Speculation as to the cause varies, but pretty much everyone who reads the manga agrees it deserves a chance in the sun.
• Anyone Can Die: In a meta sense, this is true; while the main cast has plenty of Plot Armor, if you aren't a named character and aren't part of the primary recurring cast? God help you. Your life expectancy anywhere near the proximity of Exaxxion is roughly five seconds.
• Artificial Gravity: Most of the Applied Phlebotinum in the series is based around gravity and inertial control. Giant robots, Deflector Shields, flying saucers, all of it, really.
• Author Appeal: This is a Kenichi Sonoda manga, after all. Expect lots of guns, boobs and copious amounts of lovingly detailed blood and guts.
• Barbie Doll Anatomy: Obviously averted... for chest-shots, at least. In rare instances that a character needs to be seen whole-torso (such as Akane's near-miss at being assimilated) then the trope kicks in to keep things PG-13. Ish. Mostly.
• BFG: Hoo boy, is it ever! As the name implies, the title robot is basically a giant cannon with limbs and a head, with a barrel diameter of 4.096 metres (Which, to put in perspective, is about the height of a professional basketball player... when he's standing on the shoulders of another professional basketball player). And that isn't the biggest gun in the series. Dagunov One, Exaxxion's Evil Counterpart, has a main gun 50% larger. Then there's Full Barrel Mode, where the thing extends to about as long as the mech itself is tall. And it's very tall, even as Super Robots go. Plenty of others show up, too, both Human and Giant Robot scale. One memorable scene features Hoichi getting hit with a single gauge slug from a shotgun so powerful it turns the little girl he was holding at the time into a fine mist (she was already dead). To clarify, a conventional single gauge shotgun round is a one-pound lead slug. And in this case it was made of depleted uranium.
• Black-and-Grey Morality: As the story goes on, it becomes increasingly clear that Hosuke is quite the nasty piece of work himself, but all indications are he's still heaps better than a bunch of aliens who put dissenters into food processing plants. Although that isn't saying much ...
  • Hoichi agonizes over the fact that even piloting his giant mech will kill people, and his attempts to save people will inevitably kill thousands. He eventually resolves to build a future where no one else has to die, even if that makes him the biggest monster of all in the long run.
  • Depending on the exact scene, this can be either played straight or completed averted. Played straight when Hoichi fires his giant mech cannon in the middle of a city (resulting in tons of collateral damage from the shock wave of the cannon.) Averted when the Riofaldian military orders the HUMAN military to form a human wall around the giant mech knowing that the giant mech cannot move or defend itself without accidentally killing said human wall. Doubly evil when Hoichi refuses to fall for the obvious trap and the Riofaldians start firing on the human wall THEMSELVES and proceed to blame Hoichi anyway.
• Bottomless Magazines: Unlike his prior work, Gunsmith Cats, no one reloads here, including the main gun of the Humongous Mecha which in all rights doesn't appear to have the physical room for more than one round.
• Bridge Bunnies: Hosuke Kano has a harem of beautiful women who act as a support crew for his info-war and Exaxxion's operation. Disturbingly, it's implied that at least some of them were brainwashed into serving him.
• Bring My Brown Pants: In Chapter 14, a female Riofaldian guard is so deeply frightened by Reiko's powers that she makes an embarrassingly huge yellow puddle on the floor. It's the page image.
• Deconstruction: CGE shows just how much damage a giant mecha would cause just by walking (never mind the weaponry and fighting the "bad guys"), to pointing out that any sentient alien race almost certainly won't be unified in their desire to conquer humanity, to commenting on the fact that the Mad Scientist who reverse-engineered alien technology to save earth is not a guy you want to root for, and that having a harem of hot Bridge Bunnies is indeed problematic. A lot of the above slowly takes a toll on Hoichi's sanity]] and he comes to realize the terrible burden that his grandfather has placed upon him. He takes it doubly hard because all the death and pain clashes with his vision of an ideal hero.
• Death of a Child: Hoichi tries to save a young girl in chapter 11, only to find out it was only the upper half of the girl. Then he quickly discovers that the caravan nearby was full of dead children and women.
• Destructive Saviour: No matter how much Hoichi tries to avoid or reduce it. Just knowing him, or being in the same part of the city when there's a battle, is dangerous.
• Diagonal Cut: Specialty of the Terminal Drone robots.
• Distressed Damsel: Akane falls into this territory in the first few acts with a regularity that borders on the depressing. Hoichi finally manages to get her to safety at about the halfway point, though.
• Do-Anything Robot: Isaka and Hosuke's other gynoids, due to being made of Nano Machines. It's pointed out that the Riofaldians rarely use robots of this type because they're too expensive to massproduce.
• Dueling Hackers: Happens when both sides run a propaganda war against each other. Not so much the "Faldie" civilians. The majority of "Faldie" civilians are eventually relocated to Riofaldians military secured areas after Hoichi's resistance efforts prove to be more than expected. However, even prior to the resistance, "Faldie" civilians are protected by security robots which will attack and kill any human that attacks the "Faldie" civilian. In one scene, a human teacher is killed in front of Hoichi's "Faldie" teacher after an angry outburst in the middle of school... naturally with Hoichi and a good chunk of the human school watching.
• Emperor Scientist: Hosuke pretty blatantly desired to become one, believing that the strength of his intellect - and his robot - meant he deserved the position. Hoichi ends up dicking him over on this on multiple spectacular levels in the final act.
• Energy Weapon: The Riofaldians' favourite weapon to use against anybody without access to gravitational lensing. One wonders why they would bother with something so energy-inefficient when they already have access to extremely powerful conventional guns, but lasers do look quite impressive and the 'Faldies are explicitly fond of terror weapons.
• Everything Is an iPod in the Future: Most of the robots and other gadgets are based on modern technological aesthetics. It's particularly interesting in that aside from the unusual shapes of some of their robots and the obvious flying saucers, most of the Riofaldians' technology doesn't look particularly "alien" at all.
• Family Relationship Switcheroo: In Chapter 18, it's revealed that all the times Hosuke is called Hoichi's grandfather should technically omit the "grand" - Ryoko and Hoji were an Arranged Marriage, and a rather bad one at that. Hosuke, on the other hand, deeply admired Ryoko's scientific background and flattered her shamelessly - leading to the ongoing affair that produced Hoichi. Hoji seemed okay with this at first, but ultimately went green with envy at having lost a woman - even one he wasn't really attached to - to his father, and attempted to kill Hosuke while testing a prototype Gunner Suit. Unfortunately for him, he forgot that the prototype plugged into the wall and was crushed under a forklift he was about to smoosh Hosuke with when it ran out of power.
  Hosuke: I don't think he minded losing his wife per se - what really pissed him off was losing her to me.
• Fantastic Racism: Starts happening immediately when the Riofaldians are revealed to be conquerors, especially against Hoichi's teacher who is one of the sweetest characters in the entire story. First, Riofald spent ten years shaping Earth's civilization into something that couldn't repel an invasion - bright shiny laser technology was one of the carrots that turned out to be sticks. Hell, conventional bullets have a fair chance of penetrating personal shields. Second, Riofald is a civilization that thinks nothing of building twelve-story-tall Humongous Mecha at the drop of a hat. Their level of technology means lasers have Bottomless Magazines, and are perfectly fine for exterminating "monkeys". It's not like any non-Riofaldians have gravtech...
• Gag Penis: Both Hoichi and Hosuke are MASSIVELY well endowed, but while Hoichi's size is seen as a positive by Hoichi's mom, while Hosuke's is described to be dark and rough "like a demon".
• Gambit Pileup: Between Hosuke, Shes'ka, the rest of the occupational government and the Homeworld government you've got the proverbial conga-line of fuckers all trying to screw each other.
• Gatling Good: Well, doy. Of course the Ex features this in the form of 88mm gatling guns in its right arm - the "small" weapons.
• The Hero: Hoichi desperately wants to be a big-H Hero, which among other things means he shouldn't kill any civilians. Hosuke had rather different ideas when he built the Exaxxion, though. Hoichi's final solution is equal parts disturbing, tragic and touching.
• Heroic Resolve: The fact that Hoichi keeps opposing the Riofaldans (who, let's face it, very much needed opposing) despite the toll it takes on him and the fact he has to actually deal with the consequences may make him more heroic.
• Hollywood Density: Averted. Isaka is an ambulatory colony of high-durability high-utility Nanomachines, and as any engineer would expect of a human-sized clump of ultratensile materials, she weighs three hundred and forty-five point four pounds.
• Hot-Blooded: Hoichi bleeds fire, not blood. He's very much cut from the mold of an 80's Super Robot protagonist. (This turns out to be something of a problem for him.) (It ultimately saves him in the end, though; whatever else it deconstructs, the story doesn't say that being courageous is bad, you just have to know how to apply it and what being brave means.)
• How Do I Shot Web?: Hoichi takes some time to learn how to use his power suit and his robot properly. The former is comedic. The latter is terrifying, even for him.
• Humongous Mecha: Boy is it ever. It was up there as a possibly for "biggest in the medium for a while until Gurren Lagann managed to snag that perch...
• Imported Alien Phlebotinum: Hoichi thinks the human race should develop its own technology, so he's a bit disappointed when he finds out all Hosuke did was reverse engineer the Riofaldians' tech.
• Insignificant Little Blue Planet: The Riofald homeworld would destroy all of planet Earth to stop Exaxxion if it had to, because of its 'limited potential' as a colony world.
• Intrepid Reporter: Aoi, Akane's sister. Akane also tries to be one, although being a damsel in distress half the time makes it kinda difficult.
• Justified Trope: All over the place. Almost all of the seemingly nonsensical aspects of the technology or tactics used are explained quite well within the context of the circumstances or psychology of the people involved. Enough to maintain Willing Suspension of Disbelief, anyway...
• Karma Houdini: At the end of the manga, General Shes'ka is still alive and well, serving as the leader of Earth's Riofaldian population, albeit in peaceful coexistence with Humanity.
• Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better: Only kinetic weapons with huge amounts of force behind them can penetrate the Deflector Shields used by the aliens and Exaxxion.
• Lost Technology: The Exaxxion is really an ancient Riofaldian weapon that holds the last of their antimatter supply, aside from the stuff they need to keep their Portal Network alive.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: Hosuke is really Hoichi's father, having stolen and impregnated his first son's wife.
• Marshmallow Hell: Hilariously, Isaka does this to Akane by accident in the first chapter. Given what happens in the scene on the whole, it's hard to tell if her Luminescent Blush is from embarrassment or anger.
• Meaningful Name: The "Ho" in Hoichi uses the Kanji for gun or cannon, and Akane sometimes refers to him by the pet name "Ho" (or "Gun" in the Dark Horse English version).
• Mecha-Enabling Phlebotinum : Gravitational control, which relies on dark matter for power.
• Mecha-Mooks: The Riofaldians use plenty of robot goons, though there are plenty of ordinary flesh and blood ones, too.
• Messianic Archetype: The 'Hero Project' is a PR plan designed to gain support for Hoichi by having one of Isaka's copies take his form and heal people, including Riofaldian troops. The fact that his healing seems almost magical (it's actually super-advanced nanomachines) only increases the effect.
• Mukokuseki: A particular Sonoda mark. Akane gets this in particular - orange-red hair, big round green eyes and she's still supposedly Japanese.
• Murder Is the Best Solution: Once they decide to drop the pretense of cooperation, the Riofaldian authorities get really brutal. Their Terminal Drones summarily execute anyone who even slaps a Riofaldian. Most notably, they isolate and electrocute dozens of kids from Hoichi's school just because they're roughly the same height and body type as the "Black Rider". This pushes Hoichi to stop giving a shit about collateral damage and return to Exaxxion to bust things up.
• My Species Doth Protest Too Much: Miss Kin'ba is a staunch supporter of Human rights. Well, as much as one can be when you've got a fascist police state breathing down your neck...
• Name-Tron: The Exaxxion's name is a lampshade on this trope. Hosuke just took the three Xes on the antimatter generator and expanded them into a cool name with -on because "all the best giant robots have a name ending in -on".^note He then proceeds to name what're clearly the manga's biggest inspirations.
  "Ideon, Evangelion, Galvion, Voltron..."
• Needle in a Stack of Needles: Played for Horror. The Riofaldians theorize that the pilot of the Exaxxion mecha that is defying them is a Japanese teenager, but they don't know which… so they execute all Japanese male teenagers with a similar height, and build to the pilot. Scarier yet, they actually succeed — if not for Nano Machines in his body that brought him back to life, Hoichi Kano would have become a Decoy Protagonist.
• No Biochemical Barriers: Completely averted between humans and Riofaldians; while one can carry the other's child, it's impossible for them impregnate each other through natural means and such pregancies requires lab-assisted artificial insemination.
• Nothing Up My Sleeve: a variation; Hoichi's Gunner Suit can deploy a pair of powerful pistols into his hands. While the storage for these guns is actually in the suit's backpack, the guns travel from the shoulder blades to the hands on flexible rail-like strips that run across the entire length of its user's arms
• "Not So Different" Remark: The Riofaldians (Shes'ka in particular) never seem to get tired of pointing out how not only are they just doing the same thing Humans have been doing to each other for countless centuries with their colonization, they're a whole lot better at it.
• Nuclear Weapons Taboo: Justified by the fact that the Riofaldians want to colonize Earth, so they can't afford to use any weapons that are likely to damage the environment too badly. Weapons of Mass Destruction still get thrown around like they were Nerf balls at some points, but nothing that would prevent people from rebuilding after it's all over.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Given how big the guns in this story are, this rather happens quite a bit. Hoichi pulls a particularly delicious one on Shes'ka at the end of their showdown at the base of the orbital elevator, wherein the Long Barrel Cannon is point-blanked into Shes'ka's robot.
  • The best one, though, has to be Hoichi's face at the end of chapter 5-4. Even if you found the rest of that sequence more annoying than touching, his reaction to Akane's "announcement" and his obvious, sudden realization of how totally fucked he is on a decidedly non-sexy level makes the whole sequence worth it.
• Pink Mist: Features guns so ungodly powerful it's not just the brains that turn into pink mist, but the whole target!
• Plot Armor: The nameless masses may die like animals to the slaughter, but our main cast won't truly be in danger until at least the last act. This gets a hair annoying with Aoi Hino, Akane's sister, who frankly should've been reduced to a fine powder when the Ex's main cannon blasted the elevator base. It almost seems like Sonoda planned on killing her then decided against it last-minute to make sure Akane didn't hate Hoichi's guts forever. Even though Hosuke was the one who ordered that.
• Powered Armor: Hoichi and many other members of the Kano resistance group have them. The one used by Hoichi's mother is a Shout-Out to the ones Sonoda did for Bubblegum Crisis. The Riofaldians usually don't use them because they're expensive to mass produce, but one does show up eventually.
  • The manga also points that the gunner suit is nothing but a fancy costume without power, which Hoichi's father demonstrated when he was lifting a forklift when his suit powered down. SPLAT.
• Punctuation Shaker: Sprinkled liberally over the Riofaldan language.
• Puny Earthlings: Partially averted. Physically, Humans are considerably stronger than Riofaldians.
• Ragnarök Proofing: Exaxxion slept on Earth in a giant packing crate for two millennia and is still perfectly capable of singlehandedly trashing an alien invasion force. That was some box!
  • Or Hosuke was some Mad Scientist. He spent a lot of time adapting Exaxxion for a human pilot, and makes a last-minute total retrofit with no trouble at all.
• Ridiculously Human Robots: Mainly averted. Despite her human likeness, Isaka admits she's not really capable of human emotions like love and only acts like she has a personality because that's how she was programmed. Of course, protecting Akane from a nanotech hack involved some really intimate mental interaction, and what else can you say besides, "Humanity Ensues?"
• Robot Girl: Isaka, of course. Some of Kano's Bridge Bunnies also have robot duplicates.
• Rubber-Forehead Aliens: The Riofaldians don't look much different from us aside from their albinistic skin and hair, black vitreous humor and elf-like ears. To be fair, a lot of the political angle of the story is predicated on the aliens having a similar psychology to ours and the government being worried they could face a backlash against their colonization policies if their people come to sympathize with the Humans, which would be difficult, if not impossible in a story with Starfish Aliens.
• Sacred First Kiss: Isaka almost steals this from Akane in a way that has to be seen to be believed.
• Scary Dogmatic Aliens: The Riofaldians embody some of the worst excesses of both European Colonialism and the Axis Powers.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Near the end of the manga, Hoichi secretly rebels against his grandfather's plan and makes an alternate one with Isaka to do the right thing, not what his Jerkass grandfather wants.
• Shout-Out: A couple.
  • There's the Name-Tron example above, and when Hoichi infiltrates his school incognito, he uses the surname Kabuto.
  • Hoichi's mom, Reiko, uses a power suit that is VERY similar to a certain rock singer-slash-armored vigilante's. In fact, all the suits are not only a reference to Bubblegum Crisis, but they also have a similar appearance to Robot Hunter Casshan.
• Shown Their Work:
  • A natural for Sonoda, who is a bit of an engineering nut in general (beyond his total love for guns and cars). While the Exaxxion is still pretty ridonk, he does do a lot of things to make it seem plausible, at least; one example is that the Ex has massive, flat, elephant-like feet, which are the kinds of feet any kind of large robot would actually need to consider walking. And the Ex leave giant craters every time it takes a step, due to how heavy it is.
  • It's also shown that the Exaxxion uses its inertial dampening technology to actually increase its footprint even further.
    • The guns and cars, naturally, are all modeled lovingly from real-world examples despite the 20 Minutes into the Future setting.
    • And it has an ultra-rare justification for Humongous Mecha; how else are you going to field giant gravity and inertia manipulating systems with multi-petajoule power requirements? Having them walk around rather than fly saves energy and permits precision usage of otherwise-nuclear kinetic force. Exaxxion is able to punch through an enemy robot's chest and rip out its fusion reactor; instead of slowing down upon punching through the robot's armor, the inertial manipulators accelerated the punch at impact as if Exaxxion's fist was a multi-stage rocket. It's stated that the impact was the equivalent of a multi-megaton bomb, focused into an area the width of a car.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: the pilot tries a We Can Rule Together-type speech. This happens.
• Spanner in the Works:
  • Hoichi, who somehow manages to fuck up everybody's plans at every turn through a combination of superior firepower, Hot-Blooded-ness, and at least trying to be an actual hero.
  • Isaka's temporarily fusing with Akane to purge the Riofaldan nano-virus from her accidentally causes her primary loyalty to change from Hosuke to Hoichi.
• Spell My Name With An S: The aliens. Are they supposed to be Riofaldians, or Leopoldians? The former is what the Dark Horse version went for, but the latter is preferred by some fans due to the possible reference to King Leopold of Belgium, the infamous conqueror, colonizer and exploiter of the Congo, which seems rather apropos to our villains.
• Squick: Early in the manga, a Terminal Drone saves Kin'ba from an assault from another teacher... by cleaving that teacher in two through the waist. Right in front of her. Needless to say, she does not take it particularly well. Poor Hoichi finding the entire situation squicky as hell is also part of the point. invoked
• The Starscream: Shes'ka eventually wants to capture Exaxxion so he can go home and stage a coup. His cronies in the occupational government feel the same, but as it turns out, they don't particularily care whether Shes'ka's the one leading it or not.
• Super Prototype: Pretty much everything used by the Kano family. They stress a quality over quantity approach, whereas the Riofaldians, who have to budget for an entire planetary occupation, do the exact opposite.
• Theme Naming:
  • The men of the Kano family all have the kanji for "gun" in their name (Hoichi, his dad Hojo, and his grandfather Hosuke). It's worth noting that "Hoichi" means "First Gun" or "Best Gun", while Hosuke is something like "Selfish Gun".
  • The Hino girls are named for colors - Akane (for a red pigment) and Aoi ("blue"). Interestingly, this doesn't lead to the obvious joke, partially because Aoi doesn't really take part in the plot to a great degree.
• Transformation Trinket: The Gunner Glove. Hoichi's mom also has one of the stranger ones out there, in the form of a wig.
• Transforming Mecha: Terminal Drones; when they have to travel long distances or just surveil their designated area, they will assume a shape similar to a ball lollipop and connect to flight packs that allows them get airborne or even hover.
• Unexpected Virgin: Played With. After Hoichi and Isaka save Miss Kin'Ba and Murata from a gang of students that raped her, they take them to the Exa-base and have them hospitalized with medical nannites. To Miss Kin'ba's embarassed-yet-happy surprise, it is implied that the nannites also restored her pre-rape virginity.
• Unwitting Pawn: Anybody lacking the smarts to keep up with all the maniacal plotting going on has a good chance of turning into one.
• Vestigial Empire: The Riofaldians would never have bothered with an Insignificant Little Blue Planet like ours if not for the fact that an Antimatter accident wiped out most of their civilization a few centuries before the series takes place. Their interstellar empire was made possible by the discovery of an entire asteroid comprised of Antimatter - most of which was lost in that accident. They not only had to rebuild most of their civilization, they had to do it without the energy source that permitted it to be built in the first place. Imagine trying to rebuild modern civilization if an accident destroyed all the oil on Earth.
• Vichy Earth: Ranks up there with some of Leiji Matsumoto's best work.
• Victorious Childhood Friend: Akane. Her and Hoichi's first night together somehow manages to be funny, squicky and heartwarming all at once.
• Villain Protagonist: Hoichi ends up thinking of himself as this for a while, and a large part of the story is dedicated to whether or not people see him as this or The Hero, straight up.
• We Have Reserves: The Riofaldian government do not give the slightest damn about their own people, even ones who were just fighting against Hoichi. If they can kill millions of their own people to stop Exaxxion, they'll do it without a second thought.
• We Will Not Use Photoshop in the Future: Definitely averted. Hosuke and the Riofaldians are constantly cooking up new phoney videos to make each other look bad. Not that there's a shortage of real ones that do it, too. If the story were told from the perspective of a civilian on the sidelines it would get Mind Screw-ingly difficult to tell what was real or not very quickly.
• Xtreme Kool Letterz: The name Exaxxion is a Super Robot-y name Hosuke made up from the XXX markings on its chassis. This is apparently the Riofaldian symbol for antimatter. The last letter of their alphabet just happens to look like an X and has similar connotations to the greek letter Omega.
• You Can't Go Home Again: The wormhole gate is eventually destroyed, meaning all the Riofaldians on Earth will never see their home planet again.

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