Shining Goodness
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"Shiny!"
—Firefly slang for "Cool" or "Great".
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Basically, this is when the word "Shine" and its variants are used to mean "Good", "Holy", "Righteous", or other similar things.
The reason is that to shine is to reflect a lot of light, so in a setting where Light Is Good (or at least seems to be), to shine is an indication of goodness. It's the reason the word is in the phrase Knight in Shining Armor.
Again, this is just the word, nothing else.
Examples of Shining Goodness include:
Anime and Manga
- The hero of G Gundam pilots the Shining Gundam, with the attack "Shining Finger!"
- Digimon Savers features Shine Greymon.
- Special Duty Combat Unit Shinesman
- The second opening of Mobile Suit Victory Gundam has "Don't stop shining on!" in part of the lyrics. Although that was part of the Bait and Switch Credits.
Literature
- In Thud!, the in-hiding king of trolls is known as "Mr. Shine," and Crysophase the troll refers to Captain Carrot (the suspected king of Ankh-Morpork and an all-around Nice Guy) as being "shiny."
Live-Action TV
- Kamen Rider Agito's Shining Form.
Video Games
- Sega has the Shining Series of games named like this trope.
- Several White Magic style hi-ougis in the Tales (series) of RPGs by Namco. Of note is Raine's Sacred Shine and Tear's Innocent Shine. These good and holy attacks easily do damage in the thousands.
- Appears to be the basis of Shing Meteoryte's arte list in Tales of Hearts, or at least the Japanese equivalent (mixed in with "star" and "heaven" for good measure).
- Crono's ultimate Tech in Chrono Trigger is called "Shining" (changed to "Luminaire" in the translation).
Western Animation
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic has Shining Armor, main character Twilight Sparkle's older brother. Take a guess which trope he's named for. He's one of the good guys.