Zegapain

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Kyo and friends.

Entangle!

Zegapain is a 26 episode 2006 series about a high school student named Kyo Sogoru. He is a model student, gets good grades, and is the sole member of the soon to be dissolved swim team. One day he sees a beautiful girl on the diving board and rushes there in excitement for a potential new member. However when the girl dives and hits the water she disappears and Kyo has no idea what's going on. He sees the girl again, whose name is Shizuno Misaki, and asks her to be in a promo video for the swim club and in exchange he agrees to pilot a mecha called the Zegapain Altair against an enemy known as the Gards-Orm. When he asks what this world is he's told it's a game.

What follows is a tale of a world gone by that questions what it means to be human and just what is reality.

It's very hard to talk about the plot without giving away major plot points as the amount of spoilers below will attest.

Tropes used in Zegapain include:

• Absurdly Powerful Student Council: Justified they are Celebrants from the organization Celeblum that protect the Maitama server in the real world and therefore have the ability to edit it as needed.
• Ace Pilot: Justified Kyo was a former pilot that was rewritten into the server and is good because he still has the skill of his former self. Ryoko is played straighter but still justified in that she is a Witch. Also it's implied that pilots are chosen because they have been screened to be good.
• After the End: The real world has been destroyed and the remnant of humanity exists solely as data in Quantum Servers that sit among the rubble of destroyed cities.
• Airborne Aircraft Carrier: The Oceanus
• Almost Kiss
• Amnesiac Lover: Shizuno bears with it.
• Anyone Can Die: But most don't stay dead.
• Applied Phlebotinum: LOTS AND LOTS OF IT. Quantum Servers, QL energy, Holonic Loaders, Holonic Armor, Zegapains, Deutera Areas, etc.
• Armor Is Useless: First Subverted then played straight when the Gards-Orm develop the Anti-Zega.
• Artificial Human: Abyss and Sin
• Battle Couple: Chris and Arque. Later on, Kyo and Ryoko. And Misaki and the previous Kyo.
• Beam Spam: The Zegapains and Gards-Orm gun attacks.
• Bishonen: Lu Shen.
• Break the Cutie
• Breakout Role: Kana Hanazawa had a previous minor role in Last Exile, but got popular voicing Ryoko.
• Bridge Bunnies: Projected bunnies, but still.
• Came Back Wrong
• Catch Phrase: Kyo's "It can't be".
• Chekhov's Gunman: Errr, cat.
• Chekhov's Skill: Kyo's penchant for punching enemies when out of Phlebotinum comes handy later.
• Clone Degeneration
• Come with Me If You Want to Live: How Shima and Minato met.
• Conspicuous CGI
• Contemplate Our Navels: Very important to the story and VERY well done.
• Cool Ship: The Oceanus.
• Cyberpunk, or Post Cyber Punk
• Death Is Cheap: Not to the main characters. Also when Kyo still thinks the real world is a game he thinks the destruction of the Shanghai server is no big deal and says it aloud to Jen May-Yu and Jen May-Yen earning a punch in the face from Mao Lu-Shen. But also subverted in that a person can be destroyed permanently.
• Defector From Decadence: Shima and Iel
• Destination Host Unreachable
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Played straight since Kyo often uses punches after his QL runs out to finish off remaining enemies. Also subverted when he fails to destroy the Deutera Core in time to prevent the destruction of the Shanghai Server.
  • Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: Happens when Kyo fails to destroy the Duetera Core above
• Determinator: Kyo.
• Distant Finale: With Babies Ever After.
• Earn Your Happy Ending
• Emotionless Girl: Ryoko after being "repaired".
• Evil Counterpart: Sin and Abyss.
• Evilutionary... Physicist?: For Science! Just Think of the Potential.
• Evolving Credits: The opening credits change slightly to fit the circumstances of the plot.
• First-Episode Resurrection: Kyo
• Forgot the Call: What happened to Kyo when he suffered his Loss of Identity.
• Girl Next Door: Ryoko.
• Gratuitous English: In the Zegapain Cockpits, although the voice actor chosen clearly speaks English fluently if not as their first language.
  • Gratuitous French: In Chris and Arque's cockpit due to them being French Celebrants with assumedly French-made Zegapains.
    • Gratuitous Spanish: In the original broadcast their cockpit uses Spanish.
  • Gratuitous Greek: Duetera is Greek for Monday
• Groundhog Day Loop: Caused by the Maihama Server resetting periodically, and restarting the memories of everyone but the Celebrants.
• Hard Light: The Zegapains' armor.
• Holographic Terminal
• Hollywood Science: Genetics don't work that way. And Memory Waves aren't a part of Quantum Physics.
• Hot-Blooded: Kyo is pretty much a Shonen hero. The previous Kyo, not so much.
• Ho Yay: Lu-Shen. Oh Lu-Shen. Possibly also Tomigai--since he was willing to give his Sacred First Kiss to Kyo while filming a love scene for a movie Ryoko was making.
• Humongous Mecha: The Zegapains.
• I Just Want to Be Human: Everyone, but most of all Misaki.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: Kyo at least for a little while.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Shizuno to Kyo. Ryoko to Kyo. Even Lu-Shen to Kyo. What is this, Toradora!?
• Japanese School Club: Kyo is obsessed with his Swimming club, and Ryoko's membership in the Audiovisual club plays a part on the story.
• Jumped At the Call: Kyo, and later Ryoko.
• Katanas Are Just Better: Kyo's specifically asks for a katana for his Zegapains close range weapon. Subverted in that he almost always uses his gun first and only uses the katana when he runs out of gun ammo or an enemy gets way to close.
• La Résistance
• Loss of Identity
• Male Gaze: For balance, Kyo is a Walking Shirtless Scene.
• Matrix Raining Code
• Meaningful Rename: Misaki Shizuno is a Line-of-Sight Name given to her by the previous Kyo. People who know her from before still call her Yehl.
• A Mech by Any Other Name: The Zegapains.
• More Than Mind Control: The Quantum Servers and Celeblum can make people control what people pay attention to so if someone disappears people just ignore them unless specifically brought up and even then they just brush it off.
• Multinational Team: The Oceanus Celebrants.
• New Transfer Student: Subverted Shizuno is just written into the program so she doesn't have to be a transfer student.
• Nietzsche Wannabe: Naaga
• Nuclear Weapons Taboo: Nope.
• Onee-Sama: Shizuno.
• Ontological Mystery
• Parental Abandonment: Justified. They don't exist to lighten the load on the Quantum Server. The Server just tricks its residents into believing they do.
• The Power of Friendship: Anti-tank stoning.
• The Power of Love: Can create a Witch.
• Psychic Powers: Celebrants and Awakened can manifest "force shields" and other tricks (see below) within a Server.
• Recycled in Space: It's The Matrix with Humongous Mechas!
• Redemption Equals Death: Shima
• Reincarnation: Possible to a degree.
• The Reveal: One every two episodes or so.
• Rocket Punch: The series keeps sliding into Shonen territory.
• Rule of Symbolism: Bad guys have a snake motif (Naaga, Orm - ancient Norse for dragon -, Coatlicue - feathered Aztec snake god -), good guys have eagle-related names. Snake-slaying eagles are a common good-vs-evil symbol; to stress the religious meaning, the good guys are called Celebrants. Tao/Zen is also invoked; a tenet of which is "going with the flow" and not messing with the natural order. The good guys' ships are named with Deluge mythology in mind, which emphasizes humanity surviving even against overwhelming odds against them.
• Shonen Upgrade: Layered QL.
• Shout-Out: The famous "butterfly dream" of Zhuangzi is mentioned early in the series.
  • Last Year At Marienbad is mentioned in Episode 18. This movie's theme is memories and their relation to reality... Interestingly enough, the movie was supposedly inspired by Adolfo Bioy Casares The Invention of Morel, a novel about a machine in a desert island that can record and reproduce reality and uses simulacra of real people to replay the same events time and time again. Its inventor killed everyone appearing in the re-enaction because after being recorded they were functionally immortal. The book is also strongly reminiscent of a certain TV series about weird events in a desert island.
  • Discussing irreality and betrayal over an elegant virtual supper.
• Save Both Worlds: The point of Celeblum.
• Schrödinger's Butterfly
• Small Secluded World: The Servers.
• Sphere of Destruction: Deutera Areas
• Surprisingly Good English: The Zegapain cockpits. Is it you, Raising Heart?
  • And the Hraelveg cockpit speaks pretty good Spanish.
• Sword and Sorcerer: Gunner and Wizard, Type 2.
• Synthetic Plague: The Orm virus.
• Take a Third Option: Resurrect or eternally loop? What about joining the enemy and becoming like them?
• Taoism: In case using Zhuangzi's butterfly dream didn't spell it clear:

Shima: Form is void, void is form.

• Tear Jerker: Arque's fate due to her unstoppable data corruption. Ryoko being all but erased, and having her data damaged irreparably.
• Theme Naming: Oceanus Class Ships have names having to do with flood mythology. Gards-Orm mecha usually have ophidian names, Zegapain mecha have the names of mythical birds.
• Those Two Guys: Kyo's old middle school swimming team.
• Tron Lines: The units are some of the shiniest Mecha on record.
• Two-Teacher School: Justified.
• Victorious Childhood Friend: Even with Babies Ever After.
• Viewers Are Geniuses: Orm is an old Norse term for dragon... and ORM is also Object-Relational Mapping, a programming technique for creating virtual object databases.
• Virtual Ghost: All the good guys are this.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: Kyo, with the excuse of being a swimmer.
• The War On Straw: To make a case for Immortality Immorality, memories gain the attributes of souls, the guy supporting immortality is a genocidal Mad Scientist and his evolved humans feral Blood Knights.
• Wave Motion Gun: GASPR cannons.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Explored with the Gards-Orm, contemplated with the artificial intelligence characters among the Celebrants.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: Well, some people do. That's what started the whole mess.
• Wistful Amnesia: Dead Celebrants are erased from memories or conveniently Put on a Bus from the point of view of people in the Servers.
• Xanatos Gambit: The attack on the Maihama Server couldn't really go wrong, at worst being a stalemate. Kyo tried his best to mess it though.
• Your Days Are Numbered: Arque and Shima.