Serious Business/Playing With
Basic Trope: An activity is treated as though it had much more importance than most people in Real Life give it.
- Straight: In the year 202X, hopscotch has become a major league sport. Millions of people watch hopscotch games live or on Three-V, the best hopscotch players make excellent money, and kids want to grow up to be just like their favorite "scotchers." The main characters of the story all either play hopscotch, or are the close friends and relatives of those that do. Other games and activities are mentioned from time to time (Katie was a champion ropeskipper before crosstraining into hopscotch), and Ken can be seen in regular boring classes every so often between matches.
- Exaggerated: In the second season, hopscotch has become the only sport on Earth. Top scotchers are worshipped like rock superstars in our world, Ken and Katie attend a special school that teaches hopscotch (and apparently nothing but), every player has named special techniques, and there's an Ancient Conspiracy out to rule the world by taking over the hopscotch league. Characters who don't play hopscotch are reduced to Combat Commentator or Damsel in Distress roles.
- Justified: In order to be the best at a particular sport or activity, you have to treat it with seriousness, even if it seems silly to outsiders to do so.
- Due to a whim of an ancient god, hopscotch gives untold mystical powers to those who can master it.
- Hopscotch actually became a serious business in this world; serious things such as court cases are resolved by hopscotching. Hopscotch decides everything in this society and thus it is a serious matter, since everything depends on it.
- This would be a reasonably convenient way to control a large magical diagram on the floor.
- Inverted: Normally serious things, like war or disease, are treated as though they're no more important than children's card games.
- Subverted: In the middle of a tense hopscotch match, Ken stops and says, "Dude! We're taking this all way too seriously! It's just a game, we should relax and have fun."
- Double Subverted: But then Team Evil reveals that Katie's been poisoned, and the only way they'll give Ken the antidote is if he wins the match.
- Katie refuses, claiming "This stopped being a game the moment we started hopping."
- Parodied: While the hopscotch players are engaged in their fierce battles, we cut to ordinary people getting on with their ordinary days, completely uninterested in the proceedings. When one side loses, it has no effect on the larger world.
- Deconstructed: Ken and Katie suffer all the normal effects of concentrating on one activity to the neglect of all others. Their school grades suck, they have no normal relationships with outsiders, and they start taking performance-enhancing drugs with all the side effects those have.
- Reconstructed: "Quintuple Square Hop Inversion!" Damn, that's cool.
- Alternatively: What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?.
- Zig Zagged: Most of the episodes concentrate on the fierce hopscotch battles for the fate of humanity, but we also see the characters taking days off to do other things that are important too, or just playing hopscotch for fun.
- Averted: While all the characters enjoy their favorite activities or sports, no one gets carried away with it.
- Enforced: "Is there anything we haven't made a sports anime out of yet?" "Ummm...hopscotch?"
- Lampshaded: "You know, I bet that no one back in the 2010s would have believed that hopscotch would ever get so big." -- "You mean other than Konami?"
- Invoked': Ken decides to become the best hopscotch player ever, no matter what.
- Defied: "Oh for God's sake, it's just a children's hopping game. I'm not going to let it take over my life."
- Discussed: "You know Bob Bigbux lost all his money betting on pro hopscotch? Me too."
- Conversed: "Anime can make anything look awesome and important, even hopscotch."
This is a Matter of Life and Death! Hopscotch Back to Serious Business!