This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
(Moved out of the main entry by Looney Toons)
Often in anime, though not nearly as often as this, there is some kind of world-destroying cataclysm set in the distant or recent past. "Nausicaa and the Valley of Wind" comes to mind. Robotech was set just after World War III. "Akira" was set in a post-nuclear world.
Western cinema and television use this idea too. "The Road Warrior" comes immediately to mind. But it's far more common in anime and manga.
// That's really a separate trope; Tokyo Fireball is really about an immediate destruction of just the city of Tokyo, usually on-screen. — Looney Toons // I agree with LT. Post-apocalyptic world is a fairly common subgenre of science fiction, limited neither to anime nor even to television. — Devil's Advocate
Ununnilium: I haven't seen enough of the original to know - would Super Sentai go here?
Yongary: Demon City Shinjuku is hentai? Are you sure you're not confusing it w/ something else?
Your Obedient Serpent: A throwaway bit of background from the Champions superhero RPG I ran in the '80s was that most buildings in Tokyo were made of unobtainium, since the city had been destroyed so many times and rebuilt with all the alien spacecraft that had crashed in the ruins.
- While not Tokyo, Paradigm City in The Big O regularly has large chunks of itself destroyed by fights amongst Humongous Mecha. And no one seems to care about the irreplaceable losses whenever another 5 square blocks get razed in what is apparently the last remaining city in the world.
