Unobtainium / Anime & Manga

• Doraemon: The Record of Nobita : Spaceblazer have the adventure being set on Planet Koya Koya, a world flled with valuable Gartite Ore - a mineral which can create artificial forcefields simply through friction. Two tiny Gartite pebbles can levitate a person, as Doraemon and Nobita's new friend, Ropporu, demonstrates. Unfortunately Koya Koya being a rich deposit of Gartite leads to the story's main villain, a MegaCorp, repeatedly threatening her citizens and into destroying the entirety of Koya Koya in order to force her citizens to surrender the Gartite.
• In Neon Genesis Evangelion they have a special liquid called LCL which has several useful properties. One is its ability to conduct electrical signals, useful for electrically conducting nerve impulses between an Evangelion pilot and his/her Evangelion. But more amazing is its property that it can hold vast amounts of dissolved oxygen at concentrations high enough that once it has filled the lungs, a human can directly breath the oxygen present in it (handy thing when you have to fill a bio-mecha cockpit with this stuff and have the pilot be completely submerged in it). It's actually the blood of the Angel Lilith, which adds all sorts of retroactive squick when you realize they've been "breathing" it the whole time.
• Orichalcum (or a variant spelling) is a metal with magical properties that makes appearances in several anime, including Slayers.
• In some works by Osamu Tezuka there's the "Omotanium", a fictional substance that has several different properties depending on the plot, usually it's a highly radioactive metal that has beneficial powers but can also destroy the brain systems of a robotic character.
• Digimon as a whole has the Chrome Digizoid metal (also spelled ChronDigizoid). It's characterized as a highly sought after super-metal (with a silly name) of any colour which is very strong and cannot be damaged, except by other samples of it; in addition to being mined in some Digimon canons, a small number of Digimon species are either made of/plated in it (e.g. MetalEtemon) or wield weapons made of it (e.g. Zudomon, who weakened the aforementioned MetalEtemon in Digimon Adventure with his hammer, giving the mortally-wounded SaberLeomon the opportunity to kill MetalEtemon). One time it's been referenced in the anime itself was briefly in the aforementioned Digimon Adventure incident between Zudomon and MetalEtemon, and then only mentioned offhand to give Zudomon, a lower-level Digimon, a way to defeat MetalEtemon; as such, most mentions of the substance occur in the broader source material. According to said source material, there exist several varieties with different properties denoted by specific colours: Blue, which provides high speed (as seen on UlforceV-dramon); Red, which provides even higher defence (e.g. Sleipmon); Gold, which increases a Digimon's offensive power (e.g. Shoutmon DX); and the vaguely described Black (e.g. Craniummon) and Obsidian (e.g. KaiserLeomon).
• The entire Gundam franchise uses unobtanium to various degrees.
  • It is played straight and subverted in the very first series of all, Mobile Suit Gundam. Early on, the RX-78 Gundam's Lunar Titanium Alloy (later renamed in-universe to Gundarium Alloy in the Gundam's honor) armor is effectively indestructible to conventional fire, the oversized machineguns and bazookas used by mobile suits shaking it, but otherwise causing very little damage. This changed near the end of the series, when Zeon mobile suits gain beam weaponry technology, and we discover that beam weaponry trumps EVERYTHING in terms of armor. For the entire Universal Century timeline afterwords, combat becomes based around avoiding getting hit, since any significant hit at all is instantly fatal, regardless of armor. Even the large shields mobile suits carry generally only suffer one impact before getting blown away completely. Unless the shield in question has anti-beam coating, which itself is quite rare and still doesn't provide complete protection.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam Wing plays the trope straight, and has the alloy Gundanium, which is incredibly tough, nearly immutable, heat-resistant, electrically neutral, and a natural radar damper. The "rare, hard-to-find" part comes from the fact that it can only be manufactured in space and the fact that at the start of the show, only six people in the world know how to make it. You might be surprised to learn that this has some basis in real-world science, as the crystalline structures that form as liquid metal solidifies can be very different in microgravity. The odds of creating an alloy with all the aforementioned properties remain fairly small, however.
  • The Cosmic Era Expanded Universe has its own unobtainium in the form of the beam-resistant alloy the Gerbera Straight was forged out of. Only one person in the entire Earth Sphere knows its composition and how to forge it. There's also the material needed to run the N-Jammer Canceler. The thing about this is that, while it's rare on Earth, it's plentiful on Mars and those living on Mars do not want the EA or ZAFT to know.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury uses Permet, a naturally-occurring mineral element, as its main plot driver. Permet sees use in countless devices, but its main utility is that it enables incredibly fine prosthesis, allowing for a full mental interface with a machine. This can be further parleyed into using it to control mobile suits, though this has thusfar proven a Deadly Upgrade too dangerous to handle.
• Mazinger Z:
  • The show took the "ridiculously high strength/density ratio" thing to a whole new level when Japanium is alloyed into Super Alloy Z. The titular robot, built from the stuff, stands 18 meters tall, yet weighs a meager 20 tons. In one episode, Dr. Hell managed to steal a supply of the stuff and build his own robot with Super Alloy Z armor, but he wasn't able to completely cover it with the stuff. Eventually, the heroes found out which part of it wasn't made of it, and was able to Attack Its Weak Point to destroy it. Great Mazinger and Venus A are built from the same stuff. And Mazinkaiser.
  • UFO Robo Grendizer gives two examples: Gren, an alien metal Grendizer itself is built with. Since it can not be found on Earth, when Grendizer gets damaged, Alloy Z is used to repair it; and Vegatron, a highly radioactive material only can be mined from planet Vega. The Vegans used it to create powerful weapons, but its overexploitation led to the planet becoming highly unstable.
  • Super Alloy Z Alpha from the Mazinkaiser OVAs is several orders of magnitude more strong; it takes whithout a scratch the impact of two weapons of the original Mazinger and even is able to withstand swimming in hot lava.
• Levistone from Kyouran Kazoku Nikki, a material which makes things hover when electricity runs through it.
• Code Geass has Sakuradite, previously found and said to be the "Philosopher's Stone" in medieval times, and found in large amounts in Japan. It's now valued as a superconductor, being liquid in room temperature. It also explodes rather easily...
• Various evolution-inducing stones aside, in one episode of Pokémon: The Series, Team Rocket had a mecha composed of "polished unobtainium", which made it immune to Psychic attacks.
• Done with a twist in Castle in the Sky where the Levistone (a Grade A unobtainium) is a well-known mineral (and the name of the material is Etherium instead of Levistone), commonly found in rocks — however, it rapidly decays when exposed to air and thus serves no practical purpose. The movie's Precursors knew how to refine it and fashion it into durable crystals, with many amazing properties. This technology has been lost and the world's nations will now stop at nothing to lay their hands on the few remaining samples.
• The Vision of Escaflowne has 2 of these.
  • One of them is actually called Levistone here. It is heated to decrease its levitation (allowing one to control the height of an airship).
  • The other (and more often referred to) is Drag Energist. It gives life to dragons and sits in their chest cavity where their heart would normally be. It is mined from places where there's lots of dead dragons or from a dragon that is hunted and killed. This mineral is usually pink and it directly creates electrical energy (just makes electricity out of thin air, no input required) needed to power mechs and other machinery. It also undergoes "resonance" (what seems to more accurately be nuclear fission) if too many are placed together in the same area. In one of the last episodes, an atomic bomb is built using this same principle with this material.
• One Piece:
  • Seastone, apparently "a solidified form of the sea". Contact with it will weaken Devil Fruit users, and drain them of their abilities. It's also apparently harder than diamond.
  • Adam, a super-strong type of wood.
  • Don Krieg's armour was made of Wootz steel, a real-world type of unobtanium (see below).
• Vizorium is both the unobtainium that makes warp-drive possible, and the central plot driver of the Dirty Pair Movie Project Eden.
• GEMs in My-Otome give Otome their robes (and thus, most of their powers). The Coral and Pearl GEMs used by students are artificially created, but the knowledge of how to create Meister GEMs was lost, making them extremely valuable.
• Outlaw Star has dragonite, used for Faster-Than-Light Travel (and accidental Pokémon references).
• Lupin III has used several different examples of this trope.
  • Goemon Ishikawa XIII has a katana with a blade made either from a meteor (the manga series) or from a rare alloy that only his clan knows the secrets to making (Lupin III: Dragon of Doom, Lupin III: Episode 0: First Contact).
  • Lupin III: The Woman Called Fujiko Mine has Alexanderite. A gemstone that changes from red to blue, depending on the light.
  • The crossover special, Lupin III vs. Detective Conan, features a brand new mineral discovered in Vespania that allows a brief moment of stealth.
• In Claymore swords are made from a rare ore which makes them indestructible. The near-impossibility of getting said ore and the ease at which the Claymore's organization is able to get the ore to make new swords becomes a big supporting evidence of a major plot point quite far into the story.
• In Dragon Ball Z, Supreme Kai summons a block of "Kachin", the hardest metal in the universe, to show just how awesome the Z Sword is. It consequently breaks to release Supreme Kai's predecessor from 15 generations ago and the metal is never heard of again.
  • Dragon Ball Super introduces Kachikachin, an alloy of kachin which is even harder, which is used to make up the arena for the Tournament of Power. Despite the fact that it's implied to be the strongest material in the multiverse, it gets trashed over during the Tournament...or perhaps it's meant to be a sign of how strong the fighters are.
• A Certain Magical Index: the #2 Level 5 esper, Kakine Teitoku, is able to generate unobtainium as his esper power. It is colloquially called "Dark Matter", and he seems able to imbue it with various properties that are impossible in normal matter. The first time we see him, he's created wings out of it that have antigravity properties and light refracted through them becomes deadly radiation. Later on he's created a variant that mimicks the properties of living tissue, allowing him to create clone bodies of himself out of the stuff. And Academy City uses his "Dark Matter" in several of their technological wonders.
• Godzilla: Singular Point has the Archetype, a mysterious material with time-bending properties made by SHIVA Consortium which is created from the red mist the Kaiju leave around.

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