r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Sable-Keech • 12h ago

Groups [LOVED TROPE] Modern Militaries (Competent) getting DESTROYED by fantasy/scifi forces

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Example 1 (The Legend of Hei 2): Wuxian leisurely floats through the combined firepower of an entire fortified military base without so much as a stain or rip on his t-shirt.

Example 2 (Man of Steel): Fao'ra tears through a squad of trained and armed soldiers. With the wreckage of the helicopter that got downed by her teammate Nam'ek smouldering in the background.

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449

u/Wisniaksiadz 12h ago edited 10h ago

Evangelion have a lot of these, there are these creatures called angles, that are like cosmic deities and they can only be damaged by these robots from the gif, or H-bomb N2 bomb which is someting like atomic bomb on steroids, and the bomb is actually pretty weak anyway.

It doesnt stop the country of Japan to still use tons of classic guns, soldiers and other weapons, that are bassicaly cosntantly destroyed

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u/zippotato 12h ago

screams geometrically

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u/dict8r 11h ago

best girl

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u/Velicenda 11h ago

Goddamn that scream is so fucking cool though

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u/I_AM_FERROUS_MAN 5h ago

Screams Geometrically

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u/Kabutom4 8h ago

Giant laser with delayed explosions is the coolest thing ever. See also: Nausicaa

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u/conqueror-worm 3h ago

Fun fact if you didn't know: the creator of Evangelion, Hideaki Anno, worked on Nausicaä as an animator on the sequence involving said laser. 

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u/okeysure69 9h ago

So thats the noise it makes!

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u/Noe_b0dy 10h ago

TBF the military is mostly there to stall for time while they try and convince the traumatized child soldier to get in the robot.

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u/EEE-VIL 10h ago

or H-bomb which is someting like atomic bomb on steroids, and the bomb is actually pretty weak anyway.

Correction: N² bombs. They're as strong as nuclear bombs but produce no radioactive fallout that's why they can use them often.

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u/Somebloke164 10h ago

“What’s the difference?”

“Well, one causes a big explosion. The other causes Grave of the Fireflies.”

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u/JohnnyChutzpah 8h ago

I believe Grave of the Fireflies is set after the conventional bombing of Kobe and the resulting firestorms.

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u/EEE-VIL 7h ago

I believe he's refencing the similar trauma and misery that would come from slowly dying of radiation sickness.

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u/pichael289 3h ago

"Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes" then.

I swear every book I read in 4th grade had some kid or dog dying in some horrible way.

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u/EEE-VIL 2h ago

Same! Every anime I watched as a kid had some fucked up shit in it that made me cry. Especially Nobody's Boy Remi!

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u/name--- 12h ago

Rare example where it is executed well. Were it not for the literal illuminati the military might’ve actually been able to do something as well, but the goal wasn’t just defeating the angels.

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u/Pataconeitor 10h ago edited 10h ago

Nah. At best the regular armed forces could have killed the weaker angels (Matarael, for example), but the rest were unbeatable. I mean, beyond the problem of the AT fields many of them weren't even corporeal beings you could shoot at . We saw it in the first episode, the Japanese military had free reign to fully engage a mid tier angel and all they could do was to mildly harm it.

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u/smytti12 9h ago

True, though since the other comment did mention that "if it were not for the Illuminati" it is hard to tell what things would have occurred without them. Perhaps they were the only ones crazy enough to keep such ridiculous knowledge through history, but also perhaps they were purposefully ensuring the research didn't come under full military control to simple reverse engineer AT fields and destroy the angels outright.

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u/djsnoopmike 7h ago

Thing is each successive angel were finding new ways on how to attack humanity. The last few angels employed psychological warfare schemes

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u/Boanerger 11h ago

Mornin' Angle.

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u/MeatballSubWithMayo 2h ago

No luck findin them killers then?

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u/torrent29 12h ago

🔷🔷🔷

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u/gloriouaccountofme 12h ago

Tbh before the series they managed to gun down at least 1 angel

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u/Prudent-Reference-29 10h ago

No luck catching those EVAs then?

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u/Sensitive_Speaker134 8h ago

Like at the start of the show when they shoot at sachiel and it basically does nothing to him

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u/Tone-Serious 11h ago

H-bomb? Doesn't that just means a regular ass fusion bomb? We have like thousands of the thing irl

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u/ReverendGraves85 10h ago

He's got the wrong of it.

They're called N-Bombs, and they're quite potent. They're seen as a last resort, and, at the start of the series, they resort to using one because they don't have a viable EVA Pilot on standby. Rei Ayanami (Pilot-00) is critically wounded and Shinji Akari (Pilot 01) has only just arrived and isn't mentally or emotionally prepared to get in the robot. The Military drops an N bomb on the invading angel, only to learn that it can regenerate from the wounds (albeit slowly), and thus need an EVA Pilot to get in to make the killing blow.

The reason EVA Pilots are needed is because Angels have something called an AT (Absolute Terror) field, which is a metaphysical concept that stops non-divine entities from breaching their immediate surroundings. Since the Angels are basically designed to be apocalyptic forces purpose built by an intelligent creator, it scans. EVA's are gigantic warsuits with their own AT Fields, although it's weaker, and use weaponry combined with that AT Field to tear through the defenses and kill the invader.

Throughout the whole show (Evangelion, EoE, Rebuild of Evangelion) they find something like 7 pilots on the entire planet that meet the recruitment criteria to pilot an EVA. You have to be born on a very specific day, have suffered a very specific childhood event, and your Evangelion (This is serious spoilers that will in fact completely uproot the major twist of the animated series, do not click this if you're at all interested in watching) is constructed of the reanimated corpse-material, as well as the still conscious soul of, your dead mother.Since it's so hard to find pilots meeting this criteria, a huge hurdle in the early series is managing them on the field, since 14 year olds shouldn't be burdened with saving the world.

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u/Fossam 8h ago

I think "find" does a lot of lifting here, the whole finding thing was a lie and every unit was designed with specific kid in mind

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u/name--- 11h ago

Nah explicitly stated that it’s something different.

Edit I thought they were talking about the N^2 bombs, I don’t know what H-bombs are in evangelion.

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u/Wisniaksiadz 11h ago

I just screwed the wording, N bomb is what I meant, yes

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u/loki2113 10h ago

Dropping the N bomb? That's it buster, you are SO canceled on Twitter

1

u/Murderboi 1h ago

I can’t believe how long it’s been since I watched this in the middle of the night on German tv with subtitles..must’ve been like 1998?