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Wait, wait, wait! Tomoyo-chan lives THERE?!
In Japan, the Big Fancy House takes a meaning well beyond what it does in the US or UK. Japan is a very densely populated nation — equivalent to packing half of the USA's population in a space roughly the size of Montana, and with even more mountains — which results in some of the highest real estate prices in the world. This is doubly the case in Tokyo and other big cities where even the smallest homes can cost ¥100,000,000note  and up. Consequently, a large home with a lot of space around it is fantastically expensive, and indicates its owner has more money than the rest of the cast combined.

If the front door is more than a few feet from the street, if there are more than four or five rooms, if the rooms are bigger than the typical American walk-in closet... you are looking at the residence of somebody with wads of cash. If it looks like a French chateau and is surrounded by an actual estate, then we are well out of filthy rich and into Fiction 500.

This doesn't stop many mangaka from driving the point home by giving their characters homes opulent beyond Versailles, however.

A family that is extremely traditional will invariably have a shishi-odoshi somewhere in the yard of their Big Fancy House. It may also be found on Middle-of-Nowhere Street.

It's also worth pointing out that if the work is still set in Japan but not in the Tokyo and Osaka/Kyoto metroplexes, and especially on Hokkaido or Kyushu, then larger houses aren't quite as completely absurd — Japan is crowded, but not so crowded that it lacks rural areas or smaller cities with somewhat less sky-high land values. Higurashi: When They Cry is a good example of a work set in such a place, although even there, the huge size of the Sonozaki residence is meant to foreshadow a good deal about their nature. This is also why a number of pieces of media, like the image-header-provider Cardcaptor Sakura, are set in technically-made-up cities or townships — they get to look like the Tokyo metroplex in a lot of ways, but the creators can Hand Wave away questions about just why everyone has such big houses.

This is not so much a Japanese Media Trope as a fact of Japanese economics, but it makes for a great visual shorthand when the animators want to let the viewer know someone is outrageously wealthy. The same premise usually applies to characters mentioning their family has a summer home somewhere.


Examples:

  • The Hanazono residence in The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You.
  • Sayoko's parent's house in Ah! My Goddess.
  • Most of the houses in Ai Yori Aoshi.
  • The Mishima estate in All-Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku.
  • The Kazamaki Clan in Ayakashi Triangle have a large, traditional Japanese house surrounded by much larger, tree-covered plot of land in an otherwise more developed suburb. Despite this, it's far from luxurious because it's gone so long without any renovation—it doesn't even have air-conditioning. Matoi, the clan head's daughter, outright calls it a dump and stays at a hotel even when she's in town.
  • Chiyo-chan's spacious, walled-and-gated, far-off-the-street house in Azumanga Daioh is a source of much wonderment for her friends, who had no idea she was so wealthy until they visited. And she has a summer home. Tomo's response on reaching the gate: "M-Maybe we should have brought a gift?"
  • Kai from Bakuten Shoot Beyblade lives in a giant mansion. In the manga the Hiwatari Family even has a private training house the size of a normal Japanese house.
  • Ren Mihashi's and his mother's house in Big Windup!.
  • Kyou and Asu, in Binbou Shimai Monogatari used to live in one.
  • The Phantomhive mansion from Black Butler is enormous and would be completely impossible for its small handful of servants to maintain if one of them wasn't a demon who actually (re)built the entire thing by himself in seconds.
  • Bleach:
    • The Kuchiki Manor (aka Yachiru's playhouse) is so big and fun that Yachiru (in omakes) has modified it with hidden doors and tunnels and holds the Women's Shinigami Association meetings there much to Bya-kun's chagrin. It wasn't, however, big enough to hide the enormous swimming pool the women decided to build and "hide" smack in the middle of his yard. Hilarity Ensued.
    • Shukuro Tsukishima lives in an European mansion located in the woods surrounding either Karakura or Naruki. Not to mention Yukio seems to own the whole building that is used as the X-Cution HQ.
    • Flashback arcs reveal that the Ishida Manor is a huge sprawling house on its own private land somewhere in Karakura Town. It came complete with servants, too. One of them being the maid Kanae Katagiri, who'd eventually become Ryuuken's wife and Uryuu's mother. This was Souken Ishida's home and where Ryuuken lived as a child and a teenager. Uryuu's memories of Souken imply Souken had a much smaller home by the time Uryuu was born and Uryuu's classmates have commented that Uryuu is very poor. Since Uryuu refuses to live with his father, and Ryuuken's current home or wealth status has never been revealed, the current state of the Ishida family's wealth and residency is a complete mystery, but until not too long ago the family was clearly fantastically wealthy.
  • In Blend-S, the Sakuranomiyas live in a huge traditional Japanese house, so big that it can't be seen from the front gate.
  • Might Senpuuji of The Brave Express Might Gaine owns approximately 1/3rd of Tokyo Bay solely to himself and has a personal mansion that's built right on bay waters complete with island space big enough to be called "a district."
  • In Brigadoon: Marin and Melan, Moe's family has two such houses: one in Tokyo and one in Kobe.
  • Captain Tsubasa:
    • In the original series, Genzo Wakabayashi's house is a big ass European mansion in the outskirts of the port of Shizuoka.
    • In the Road to 2002 TV series, the episode that showcases the start of the Japan vs. France match begins with the view of a HUGE palace. It's El Sid Pierre's house.
  • Cardcaptor Sakura:
    • Many characters in Cardcaptor Sakura have big houses, the less fancy one belonging to the Kinomoto family. Sakura's dad is a famous archaeologist, her Missing Mom was a famous model... however, they weren't always that well-off, having lived for some years in a cosy but small apartment. They only moved into that house around three years ago, when they arrived to Tomoeda: by that time, Nadeshiko had already died and Fujitaka had only begun to make himself a name as an uni professor.
    • Pictured above (and once on the main page): Tomoyo Daidouji, being the daughter of a toy-company CEO, lives in a classic Big Fancy House; Tomoyo's bedroom is bigger than the entire second floor of Sakura's house. And then are the mansions in England and Japan where Eriol lives, and, in the first movie, the big estate of Syaoran's family in Hong Kong. And don't forget Great-Grandpa Masaaki's HUGE own European-style country mansion, either!
  • Case Closed:
    • Shinichi Kudo used to take care of his massive and luxurious home on his own since his parents work abroads, but after got shrunk into Conan and went to live with the Mouris (who live in a two-store duplex whose first floor is outfitted as the detective agency's office), Ran and Sonoko had to drop by once in a while to get it clean. Later, uni student Subaru Okiya (whose apartment was burned down in the case he appeared) was hired by Shinichi's parents to become its landlord though in reality he is the undercover cop Shuichi Akai under a disguise.
    • Dr. Hiroshi Agasa is not only an old friend of the Kudos, but their next-door neighbor. His house is just as big and it includes the laboratory where he produces all of the gadgets he makes for Shinichi/Conan. Later, Ai Haibara moves in as Agasa's sort-of adoptive daughter and hopes that she will be able to use the lab to synthesize an antidote to APTX 4869..
    • Many cases take place in either just as huge Western mansions or in Japanese traditional complexes, almost always located in the Japanese countryside for obvious reasons. At times, their massive floor plans have rooms that play vital roles in the cases themselves.
  • When the gang of Code:Breaker needs shelter for the night, the apparently homeless Yuuki suggests a bench, then a park, then the big fancy house that envelopes the park. Naturally, it's his house (big imagination + The Nicknamer + a country that loooooves collectible toys = (mega) profit!). When Toki suggests that Yuuki is just being used to make a profit, Yuuki shows that he's also really good at reading the stock market, not that any of that helps with what he really wants: friends.
  • Code Geass:
    • The Student Council in Code Geass has its own entire fancy house, and then there's the rest of the academy.
    • And we're not counting the imperial villages and castles as well.
  • Dear Brother:
    • Fukiko and Takeshi's family have several European mansions, complete with greenhouses, rose gardens, huge pools, picturesque forests, and the odd Room Full of Crazy in one of them to even everything out.
    • Also, for a middle-class girl Nanako lives with his parents in a pretty large house. Likely to contrast with her "Oniisama" Takehiko's rather simple bachelor apartment and Rei's flat with a Room Full of Crazy.
    • Mariko and her mom Hisako live in a really nice home too. After the Shinobus's divorce, they move out into a cozy but small flat.
  • Death Note:
    • Yotsuba Group's Shingo Midou has one of these with a large front yard. His living room was redecorated in the anime but his TV remained tiny.
    • The Yagami family house also qualifies, as does the HQ/apartment Light and Misa live in later on.
  • The Himemiya family home in Destiny of the Shrine Maiden, complete with maid staff.
  • A Dog of Flanders (1975): Alois, the daughter of the richest man in town, lives in a large mansion and has a personal butler who cares for it. Contrast to our protagonist Nello, who lives in a small house with his grandfather and is turned homeless by his cruel landlord.
  • Ruki's house in Digimon Tamers and Touma's in Digimon Data Squad. Note that Ruki's mother does not own the Big Fancy House; it more exactly belongs to her mom, Ruki's maternal grandmother Seiko.
  • In Eden no Hana, when Tokio Wakatsuki moves back to Japan to find his long-lost little sister Midori and rebuild his life in his home country (after almost one and a half decades in the USA), he invokes the trope via intending to purchase a really big house for the two of them. And yup, the one in which he and Midori live is pretty big and cozy per Japanese standards.
  • In Eden of the East, amnesiac Akira Takizawa is quite surprised to learn that he apparently has a fully stocked supermall to himself. To be fair, it's assumed that its property values were unusually low thanks to its proximity towards a missile disaster zone, but still — fully stocked supermall.
  • In Fairy Tail, Lucy's former home was a large mansion. Her guildmates take it in stride, until they discover that the land outside the walls all the way to the mountains on the horizon is also part of the grounds.
  • Fate/stay night:
    • Einzbern Castle only has four inhabitants, nevermind that Berserker is one of them. Has its own forest too. And this is only during the Grail Wars (of which there have been five in about 200 years, and which last at most two weeks); usually, it has no inhabitants. The Einsberns own the castle for the sole purpose of providing a base for whoever is representing them in the war, and Ilya only moved there from Europe a few weeks ago, at most. Yes, they're that rich.
    • The houses of the other three main (human) characters (Shirou, Rin and Sakura) are also rather large. In Rin's case, however, she's implied to have rather little actual spending power, because she spends any spare money that she has on jewels for her magic. To be precise, Sakura and Rin both live in Western style mansions; dimensions and size are never explicitly pointed out although both are LARGER then Shirou's home. Shirou, on the other hand, lives in a Japanese style mansion that has 4 separate buildings (Main, Out, a Dojo, and a Large Shed) that is stated to have enough rooms to serve as a ryoken hotel. In his case, there's a subversion — the house doesn't belong to him but to the local Yakuza, and they let him stay there as payment for some huge favors that his and Ilya's Disappeared Dad Kiritsugu did to them. That also explains why Taiga stays there: she is the Yakuza leader's granddaughter and Shirou's guardian.
  • In Fly Me to the Moon, Tsukasa and Chitose's childhood home is an extremely large multi-story mansion.
  • The Sohma family in Fruits Basket has an enormous gated compound with multiple roomy houses. The house that Yuki, Shigure, and Kyo share doesn't seem especially big, but it is in the middle of a huge plot of undeveloped land.
  • The Armstrong manor in Fullmetal Alchemist. Mustang comments to Olivier that it's so big, she could hide an army in there. And that's exactly what she does.
  • The Fushigi Yuugi has two of these:
    • In the prequel Fushigi Yuugi: Genbu Kaiden, Takiko Okuda's family moves into a large Japanese complex located in Morioka (Iwate Prefecture), implied to be owned by her maternal family.
    • The original Fushigi Yuugi has Suzuno Ohsugi and her grandson Toki's house, a just as big Japanese mansion. Fans speculate that this might be the same home featured in Genbu Kaiden, as the house itself is also in Morioka, and Takiko and her dad died without leaving direct heirs to the family home; since Suzuno's dad was the Number Two to Takiko's and inherited the Universe of the Four Gods, him eventually inheriting the house and then passing it to Suzuno wouldn't be too unbelievable.
  • Futari wa Pretty Cure:
    • Honoka Yukishiro's home is a traditional Japanese dwelling with a garden and walled yard, but is also located in the middle of a city; upon just seeing the gate Nagisa realizes that she's way out of her economic stratum. Same goes for Komachi's digs in the fourth series.
    • Karen, from the same series as Komachi, could probably buy Honoka and Komachi's combined assets with her pocket change. Not only is her home positively huge even by American standards, but it's not all. She has a smaller house just sitting around completely unused, which she just gives to Coco and Nuts to live in like it's nothing. At the start of the second series, that house is unavailable... so she gives them another one. And she has a summer home. On her island. Are you getting the picture here? Just in case you weren't getting the picture, the second season later also shows us her mountain villa.
  • The Randoll estate from Future GPX Cyber Formula is one, which is complete with a garden the size of a forest and it even has its own race track.
  • The home of Chairman Morinomiya in Gakuen Babysitters, which Ryuuichi and Kotarou now also live in after the plane crash that killed their relatives.
  • Mint's got one in Galaxy Angel. In the games, you get to see the inside.
  • The main house of the Gowa family in Gasaraki, a very traditional place indeed.
  • What little we see of Madoka's house in Get Backers implies it to be very large; she has room for all of Shido's animals on her lawn, and Akutsu Shunsuke, the man Shido was working for when he met her, definitely applies. Flashbacks show Kazuki's family's home to be even bigger and fancier.
  • In the episode ¥?$ of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, the team visits an eccentric billionaire's mansion to save him from a hitman. It's absolutely ginormous, with a large estate around it. Another sign of his wealth is the wall-to-wall stacks of gold bullion in his bedroom.
  • One of the arcs of Ghost Hunt is set in what looks like this, owned by the family of a former Prime Minister. However, this house subverts the trope in a handful of ways — unlike most examples, it's out of the way enough that a taxi or bus is needed to reach it from Tokyo if you don't have your own transport (which becomes a hint that an assistant to one of the summoned psychics is still in the building after they go missing), and that it was once a much smaller but still-fancy house that kept having extensions added. Inside, however, the house strongly resembles the Winchester Mansion (referenced by at least one of the characters) and built that way for a very similar reason: the original Winchester mansion was designed as such to bewilder ghosts of the victims of Winchester rifles from haunting the founder's widow, stopping them getting in. The Ghost Hunt mansion was built like so to stop a vicious old man turned into a monster from centuries of blood magic and sacrifice getting out.
  • Kazuharu Fukuyama from Girls Bravo owns a Big Fancy House so large that it has an elevator. Along with that, his family also owns a multi-billion dollar stadium, an entire gaming company, and an entire mountain range.
  • The residence of Shin Sawada's family in Gokusen. In the second live action series of Gokusen, Yankumi tries to track down a chronic absentee student only to find he lives in a ludicrously large house, and his neighbors apparently feel the need to speak about his family in exceedingly obsequious language.
  • Shiina of Gourmet Girl Graffiti has a large Japanese-style mansion within the boundaries of Japan, complete with a bamboo grove, a pond, and a vegetable patch.
  • The very first student Great Teacher Onizuka helps is a girl whose family lives in one of these, but she's unhappy because the once lovey-dovey family has become emotionally distant now that they've upgraded from a one-room apartment. Onizuka's solution? Literally bash down the wall between her parents' rooms.
  • The mansion in Hanaukyō Maid Team is so big, they're able to park a blimp in the driveway. With plenty of room to go around it.
  • Haou Airen replaces the big fancy homes with big fancy buildings and skyscrapers. This is Hong Kong, after all.
  • Tsuruya's villa in Haruhi Suzumiya. Apparently, there is nothing it doesn't have. Kyon's first line in the anime upon seeing it is wondering what evil he has to commit to be able to live somewhere like that.
  • Hayate the Combat Butler:
    • Sanzenin Nagi has a massive mansion, plus tall walls that surround the grounds, that is about the size of downtown, so ridiculously large that a lake, space center, and theme park can fit into it. This is especially to the shock of Hayate, who has been living a poor life prior to working for Nagi. And Nagi says that, as not many people live here, it's SMALL. Then, when they visit Nagi's grandfather, when Hayate sees HIS mansion, he's convinced he's no longer in Japan.
    • Athena Tellos also lives in a huge and very fancy mansion. In fact, Hayate utters the quote above as he goes searching for her after Nagi smashes her inheritance stone, which also was a Mineral MacGuffin related to Athena's Superpowered Evil Side.
      • Hayate ends up blowing Athena's mansion to kingdom come. She's not exactly happy about it, but has more important things on her mind, such as her release from said evil side and being reunited with Hayate.
    • In Hayate the Combat Butler case it's not an extreme show of wealth, since all but a few of the cast have homes that fit squarely within this trope. Just none as large as Nagi's is shown to be. They're all filthy rich.
    • Hayate has the same problem navigating Nagi's 'small' mansion at times equal to the trouble he has navigating Athena's.
  • Yoshitaka's house in He Is My Master is positively enormous, taking up what seems to be a hundred city blocks on a side, with its own small lake and stream, as well as a very large house filled with expensive treasures. What gets broken each episode would pay for a decently-sized house.
  • Hello! Sandybell:
    • Marc Wellington lives in one. Fitting since his mother is the Countess of Wellington. However, tragedy strikes causing them to become Impoverished Patricians.
    • Kitty Shearer, who's father owns the conglomerate company Shearer & Co., lives in one, and it's also the site of her Masquerade Ball.
  • Hetalia: Axis Powers:
    • Japan lives in a rather large and traditional Japanese complex home.
    • Spain and young!Romano (and maybe Belgium and Netherlands too) live in a castle. Justified Trope, since the Spain-centered strips/episodes take place during his Imperial years.
    • Subverted in the case of Chibitalia, Hungary, Austria and HRE. Austria's mansion is pretty big, but the end of the Chibitalia strips suggests (if not outright states) that their spending wealth is very limited, which is remarked when HRE leaves the mansion with other Germanic states. OTOH, the fancy manse where Austria and Hungary interact with Maria Theresa plays this straight, which is again a Justified Trope considering that Vienna is very famous for palaces like Belvedere or Schonbrunn.
    • In the manga, the Nordics gathered for lunch and Iceland's "announcement" in a house that looked pretty average-sized. In the anime, said house is much bigger.
    • Switzerland and Liechtenstein seem to live in a rather cozy mansion, too.
    • The "I, like, wanna be free" manga strip shows glimpses of China's living room. It looks like he, Macau and Hong Kong live in a traditional Chinese complex home.
  • Saya Takagi from Highschool of the Dead lives in a what could only be described as less of a palace and more of a castle. Her parents are fabulously rich ultranationalist Crazy Survivalists, so of course their house is built like a bunker and has it's own shielded power plant and a small army of guards (in addition to being amazingly luxurious on the inside, of course).
  • Hunter × Hunter: Killua Zaoldyeck lived on a massive estate with his family, a bunch of world-class Assassins before he ran away to become a Hunter. How big is it? The mere front is more than enough to count as the local tourist attraction. And when Gon manages to get in, it has an impressive front yard and luxurious gardens as well as the freaking massive building itself.
  • The iDOLM@STER: Iori lives on one.
  • Isabelle of Paris takes place in 1870s France and focuses on a family of Bourgieoisie landowners, so this trope is in full effect. Many buildings of Paris also qualify.
  • Inuyasha:
    • Sesshoumaru's mother is a very powerful, high-ranking lady who dwells in an appropriately huge, sprawling traditional palace. Location? Floating amongst the clouds. It takes even someone with Sesshoumaru's insanely good nose a good few days of active searching to actually find it and even then, his mother has to come to meet him before he can locate it. His mother must be an absolute bitch to get in touch with at short notice.
    • Inuyasha's mother is strongly implied to have been an aristocratic lady. As a result, the anime extrapolates that she lived in a human aristocrat's palace. However, Word of God imagined her having a sad background involving a fallen lineage living in poverty — which isn't what the anime chose to do, showing Inuyasha's childhood home as a pretty well-kept place.note 
    • Kagome Higurashi comes from a shrine family. Her house is a normal two-stories one... but is attached to her (maternal) grandfather's large shrine, placed on huge grounds atop of a hill in the middle of Tokyo. The novels explain that the family lives there specifically because both house and shrine were too big and lonely for Grandpa Higurashi to handle after his wife died, not helped by how Kagome's father had died in an accident around the same time.
    • This is explained even more later. The shrine has been where it is since Edo was a small fishing village, and the city has grown up around the shrine. The Higurashis are the ancestral caretakers of the shrine, and had the house built so they would not have to sleep in the shrine. The shrine makes a fair bit of money, since it's a tourist attraction and popular wedding spot, but the Higurashis have little disposable income since most of the money they make gets spent on upkeep and maintenance.
    • In both manga and anime, the deaths of Sango's family as well as the brainwashing/temporal death of Kohaku and Sango's almost death happen in the grounds of a local clan's huge traditional castle where Naraku has taken over the body of Hitomi, the prince of the clan — stealing his looks from then on.
  • In INVADERS of the ROKUJYOUMA!?, Sanae's family live in a house with a 500-year old shrine and grounds "as big as a baseball stadium".
  • The Joestar Mansion in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Phantom Blood. It is a gorgeous, sprawling estate where the protagonist Jonathan Joestar, his father, and later his adopted brother (and antagonist of the story) Dio Brando live; it is said to have been the home of the noble Joestar house for generations. Unfortunately, it is burned down by Jonathan himself early in the story in an attempt to kill Dio, who had just become a vampire.
  • The Battour estate in Kaze to Ki no Uta as well as the chateau 'Cherubin de la Mer', especially the latter (to the point that Serge, the heir to the former, was awestruck by it). Although note that the Japanese economic implications don't apply quite so strongly as the series is set in historical France.
  • Katri, Girl of the Meadows has the titular Katri work in two - the Räikkölä's house and the Kuusela's house. While the Räikköläs are mean (though good at heart), the Kuuselas are sweet and down to earth, and Lotte Kuusela views Katri as a surrogate daughter.
  • Kekkaishi has more than anyone dares to count.
  • In The King of Fighters: KYO manga, Kyo Kusanagi lives with his parents Saisyu and Shizuka in a huge traditional Japanese house located in the outskirts of Osaka and atop of a big hill. It looks like it's either an inherited home mantained through centuries and recently outfitted for modern use, or a reconstructed version of a traditional house destroyed in the Osakan bombings of World War II; the backstory that took place 600 years ago shows parts of a very similar complex owned by the Kusanagi ancestor and his clansmen.
  • The Kurata home in Kodocha. Also Misako's parents's house, doubling as an onsen.
  • Kuro's house in Kodomo no Jikan. Justified, as she's extremely rich (she has a Gold Card at 10 and a 4 poster bed with a room that puts American master bedrooms to shame).
  • Komi Can't Communicate: Katou lives in one, and had assumed that living in such a big house was normal for everyone until Sasaki told her otherwise.
  • Mugi from K-On! appears to live in a huge mansion. The audience never gets to see it, but Sawako-sensei was impressed when she drove Mugi home one day. Since Mugi claims that her family's beach estates are small, one can get the idea that her home must be huge indeed.
  • In Kotoura-san, Haruka Kotoura's grandfather Zenzan has this. When the ESP Club members went to his house in episode 4 to find Haruka, they have noticed they didn't even see the house from the entrance. In Episode 6 the ESP Club members went there—turns out it has a private beach, and Zenzou built a theme park just because Haruka brought friends back for the first time...
  • Marble Mansion, the Russell's huge manor in Lady!!. Which is sold-off later since they're also Impoverished Patricians... and that becomes a plot point in the sequel Hello!Lady Lynn as Lynn's rival Mary manipulates Lynn via promising to help her get it back — but only if she relinquishes her bid to the Lady's Crest that both of them want so badly.
  • Subverted in Legend of Heavenly Sphere Shurato. The house in which Shurato Hidaka lives with his parents, sister and grandfather is pretty big by Japanese standards (and is in the middle of Tokyo, meaning the grounds where it's located can be pretty expensive), but it seems to also be very old. It may be yet another old family-owned home that just hasn't really changed.
  • In the Liar Game, quite a few of the meeting places where the games took place were a Big Fancy House.
  • In Living Game, Raizo briefly has the opportunity to date someone living in a huge mansion. His regret on not marrying into money is tempered by finding out she uses most of the house to house her pet snakes, though.
  • Love Lucky: Fuuta and Kirari move from their condo into one in the last chapter.
  • Lucy-May of the Southern Rainbow:
    • Invoked with Mr. Pettywell, the Popple family's Sitcom Archnemesis. While they are on the fringes of poverty, he is living life without any problems and has a fancy house as a show of his wealth. In the first episode, when building his house goes horribly wrong and results in the walls collapsing over him, Lucy-May and Kate are absolutely besides themselves with laughter.
    • Jane Mack also owns one, which Billy, Lucy-May and Kate remark on. Jane later turns it into a bakery, where Clara works at.
  • The Burton Manor in Madlax.
  • Due to his father being a famous professional baseball player, Daigo's family in Major 2nd has a large house with a pool.
  • Magic Knight Rayearth:
    • Both Fuu Houiji and Umi Ryuuzaki live in European-inspired mansions; even whent he audience only sees the dining room of Umi's home, what is shown is pretty luxurious already, and the front yard/facade of the Houiji state is pretty glorious.
    • Hikaru Shidou and her older brothers's home is, at first sight, much more simple than the others. But it's actually a traditional Japanese house, including a really nice garden and a Kendo dojo, so it also counts as this trope.
  • Maria Watches Over Us:
    • Sachiko's mansion is remarkably big. Interestingly enough, her summer house is much smaller. Sachiko remarks that she prefers it as it gives her a feeling of comfort because it is cozy.
    • Sachiko's fiance and cousin Suguru also lives in a very large mansion.
  • The home shared by the Koshikawa and Matsuura families in Marmalade Boy is large enough for the six of them to live together comfortably, but the house Meiko Akizuki's family lives in dwarfs even that, and Miki herself says that when she spends the night there. Miwa and Suzu also live in rather fancy houses, understandable since their fathers are famous architects.
  • In Mars (1996), Rei's father lives in a more realistic version of this; Rei and Kira move into it after Kira runs away from her place. It's full of flashback fodder for Rei's childhood, such as the room in which his mother hanged herself and the room still crammed with his dead brother Sei's paintings. Consider then, that Rei's dad has been living in this huge house alone with all of these reminders about his family's tragedies.
  • The estate where Midori and her mother live in Midori Days is almost as large and impressive as Ayaka's.
  • My Hero Academia:
    • The Yayorozu residence. Momo Yayorozu's first reaction when she invites some students over to her house to study is that she'll have to ask her mother to open up the hall. When her classmates do arrive at her house, they're stunned as the front gate of her estate runs the entire street:
      Kaminari: I knew she was rich, but I didn't know she was that rich!
    • The Bakugo residence. While it isn't a mansion like the Yaoyorozu residence, it's still very large by Japanese standards, especially for a family of three.
  • The Hyuuga and Uchiha households in Naruto: Very big, to the point of almost being a town within a town in the Uchihas' case, very traditional, a shishi-odoshi sounding off in the background. Used to convey power and tradition more than loadsacash We eventually learn there was a reason the Uchiha were kept in one area.
  • Negima! Magister Negi Magi:
    • Ayaka's family home could have been built by Louis XIV. But Konoka's home in Kyoto trumps it — it's not just a Big Fancy House, it's an entire temple complex staffed by priests, mages, and a dozen or more maids/shrine maidens who treat her like a princess. And then there are Evangeline's numerous estates, which consists of at least a castle, a summer resort, a hot spring, as well as other areas used for Negi's training. Impressive considering that before it became as it is today it is implied she dug them from her real land.
    • To the Japanese audience, the isolated two-story log cabin (somewhere on the huge school grounds) Eva apparently lives in was already noteworthy. Although it was probably meant to carry subtext that the school really doesn't want her having to room with the students... or them with her.
  • Whenever the action is in a private home in Oishinbo you can be certain that it is in one of these.
  • Given the nature of the protagonists of Ouran High School Host Club, it's no surprise that all of them except Haruhi live in enormous European or Japanese-style mansions. Haruhi, by contrast, lives with her dad in a two room apartment that's actually smaller than their club room.
  • Isabella from Paradise Kiss also lives in a Big Fancy House.
  • Penguindrum:
    • Masako Natsume lives in a HUGE and VERY fancy black mansion in the outskirts of Tokyo. Which is also Kanba's original home, before he and his (and Masako and Mario's) father were kicked out of the Natsume clan and he ended up adopted by the Takakuras, who live in a tiny middle-to-low class household.
    • Yuri Tokikago also lives in an awesome loft located in a VERY high-class condo, which amazes Shouma when he and Ringo drop by. Her boyfriend Tabuki moves in there when they get engaged... and then the Attempted Rape of Tabuki by Ringo happens. And several episodes later, when Tabuki gets Put on a Bus, Yuri is living there alone again.
  • In Pokémon: The Series, Ash, Brock, and Misty are being taken to James's parents' house. First, they say that they must have left the front gates half an hour ago, then they see a simply enormous mansion. Upon their remarking that there must be a hundred people living in it, the butler indignantly replies that it is not the mansion... it is merely the doghouse for James's pet Growlithe. Then he points to another mansion that dwarfs the first one.
  • Pokémon Adventures: Misty comes from a rich family and has a mansion, complete with a full staff of maids.
  • The protagonists' house in Popotan. It's huge, has a Christmas shop and can travel through time.
  • Powerpuff Girls Z: Bubbles lives a big house that's been in her family for generations. The property includes a nice bit of land, a small pond, and a shishi-odoshi.
  • The Awayuki residence in Prétear.
  • Nozomi Uedo in Pretty Face — her family's got a trained team of riot police and a fucking Tyrannosaur skeleton.
  • Atobe's ridiculously HUGE state in The Prince of Tennis. Aside of this, both Echizen and Tezuka live in traditional-style Japanese complexes.
  • Puella Magi Madoka Magica:
    • Madoka's home, with a very big and empty-looking bathroom among other things. It's hinted that it was built by friends of Madoka's parents.
    • Also, for someone who lives alone after her parents's deaths, Mami Tomoe's apartment is huge. (If, in the original TV series, rather empty. The Blu-Ray release makes it much cozier.)
  • Ranma ½: Both examples below supposedly exist in the center of the resolutely middle-class Nerima district of Tokyo... Of course, popular Fanon has it that the Tendō and Kunō family homes are simply old family-owned homes that just haven't really changed with the times (it certainly seems likely for the Kunōs).
    • The Tendō home in is a positively huge traditional-style Japanese complex featuring a two-story house and a detached training hall surrounded by a large yard and bordered by a stone wall.
    • The Kunō estate is even bigger, being almost a medieval Japanese castle — at least in the anime. It's outwardly more reasonably sized in the manga, though still quite large and fancy. Both versions of it feature an underground labyrinth, secret passages, and traps for unwelcome guests.
  • Sailor Moon:
    • In the Sailor Moon manga, Ami Mizuno (Sailor Mercury) brings her friends home to a place they immediately call an example of a millionaire's home, with a marble foyer she tells them not to worry about when it accidentally gets cracked. While the first anime and the live-action series don't play this up as much, her mother remains a doctor in all versions, the ostensible source of the wealth.
    • Rei Hino (Mars) lives in a huge Shinto shrine, which seems to be built in the old traditional style.
  • Sakura Gari, a manga that takes place in the Tokyo of The Roaring '20s, has three of these:
    • The Saiki family lives in a huge, HUGE Western mansion. That one is pretty recent, however; it looks like it was erected in the space the original one used to have, and the only thing left from that one is an abandoned Japanese-style warehouse located behind the new mansion. This is very plot important: Sakurako was locked away for nine years in the warehouse, and MANY things happen in there.
    • Dr. Katsuragi lives in a traditional Japanese house, which is located within the city itself. Said house gets burned down, with him inside.
    • The Kawamori family has a mansion that is just as beautiful and ornate as the Saiki's. The dance at the start of the manga happens there.
  • In Satou Kashi no Dangan wa Uchinukenai, Nagisa's friend Mokuzu Umino is an eccentric rich girl who lives with her father Masachika in an insanely cool house in the city's upscale district. Masachika is an ex-Idol Singer and minor celebrity who seems to be a smart investor, so it's justified. Heartbreakingly, however, it's also the place where Masachika ends up murdering Mokuzu and dismembering her remains.; Nagisa finds a lot of proof of it in the house's otherwise lovely bathroom.
  • Kotonoha's huge, fancy home in School Days. Kotonoha's bedroom is at least twice the size of Sekai and/or Makoto's own rooms, and this is considering Makoto's bedroom is quite large for Japanese standards.
  • Momoka on Sgt. Frog lives in a huge mansion with an on-site shopping plaza and other absurdly luxurious accommodations. Dororo's family also had a Big Fancy House on his home planet. The Hinatas also have a reasonably large home (in inner Tokyo, no less), but for an obvious reason. The Momoka estate has apparently been granted sovereignty by the Japanese government. It even maintains a heavily armed private security force to defend against all manner of conventional and supernatural threats.
  • Midoh in Shrine of the Morning Mist lives in a comically exaggerated Big Fancy House that puts the Palace of Versailles into shame — it has individual rooms whose back walls disappear into the horizon.
  • In Slow Start, Kamuri's house is shown to be modeled on a European mansion, only slightly smaller, and Kamuri's room is straight out of a fairy tale.
  • The non-canon Street Fighter manga Sakura Ganbaru! depicts the Kanzuki Estate as so large, it doesn't just have its own rivers, mountains, and savannas, it has its own climate. Even though it's in the middle of Tokyo, visitors don't arrive by car, they arrive by chartered plane and land at the private airstrip.
  • In the also non-canon Street Fighter Alpha: Generations OVA, Gouken and Akuma's master Goutetsu lived in a huge-ass Japanese traditional complex located atop of a hill. The only persons living there are these three and Goutetsu's niece, Sayaka. And a good part of the action happens in a very similar complex owned by a local Old Master, who strikes an Inter Generational Friendship with Ryu and once was a friend of the dead Goutetsu.
  • Yurika from Sugar Sugar Rune.
  • Subverted in Summer Wars, where the Jinnouchi family's mansion is all that remains of their wealth.
  • Yasuko from Sweet Blue Flowers lives in a large estate, which her girlfriend Fumi found out when she gets invited to meet Yasuko's mother and sisters. Luckily all the residents appear to be normal and well-natured folk. It's just too bad that Yasuko chooses that day to dump Fumi.
  • Tenchi Muyo! GXP:
    • The unlucky hero Seina discovers that his family was able to afford a new Big Fancy House by the time he returns to Earth after being shanghaied into the Galaxy Police. Fortunately for his self-esteem, it's as much because of the money he'd been sending home as their not having to deal with him jinxing their store.
    • It's still smaller than the one that Amane lets him stay in, though. He notes that his entire old house could fit in one bedroom. And that's just her family's summer home.
    • The Masaki home is nothing to sneeze at, either, although being moved wholesale onto the grounds of Yosho's shrine and rebuilt several times since doesn't hurt...
    • The Jurain royals are an unusual example in that they are filthy rich and live in trees. Trees with huge hollowed-out rooms and baths inside.
  • In Ten Yori Mo, Hoshi Yori Mo, both the Shijou and the Narumiya families live in big European homes (Though the Shijou's household isn't as rich as it used to be). In the meantime, the Fujiwara family resides in a traditional Japanese complex. This contrasts with the Mizumoris, who lived in a standard two-bedroom apartment before the story started and said condo got blown up, forcing Mio to move with the Shijous.
  • Tokyo Ghoul: Re:
    • The Quinx Squad live together in an impressive multistory house aptly nicknamed "The Chateau". Not only does it seem to be a large and luxurious house by even Western standards, but it appears to be located in the Chiyoda Ward — with some of the highest real estate prices in Japan.
    • After vague mentions of it in the original series, the sequel finally shows the estate owned by the insanely wealthy Tsukiyama family. It's a massive western-styled mansion with beautiful rose gardens and a multistory library. Tsukiyama himself has made an off-hand mention to his childhood bedroom being about 73 square meters large. He's clueless as to why the others consider this strange.
  • Minto Aizawa in Tokyo Mew Mew has one.
  • As does Shinobu in Triangle Heart 3; so does Alisa in the spinoff, Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha.
  • The Tohno mansion in Tsukihime.
  • The Mendo estate in Urusei Yatsura actually is a medieval Japanese castle, somewhere in the middle of Tokyo... as heavily fortified as Fort Knox; land mines, watchtowers with spotlights, secret passages, vaults with timed locks, etc.
  • Youta Moteuchi from Video Girl Ai lives in a house that is both this and a Cool House. Sort-of justified in that Youta's father is a very well-known architect, and Youta himself wants to follow in his footsteps and become an artist.
  • Exaggerated in Witchcraft Works with Kagari's mother's impossibly gigantic 41-story mansion, and its synchronized army of maids. Her family supposedly has another such architectural monstrosity somewhere. Good thing, too, because it gets leveled within minutes of its first appearance.
  • In Yamada Taro Monogatari, one of the students found out about the fact that Yamada is actually poor and planned to prove that Yamada is truly in poverty. Thankfully Deus ex machina saves Yamada from certain disaster as his dad's best friend owned many holiday homes and planned to let them stay there free of charge. Yamada isn't too happy living there though, prefering the cramped home.
  • In Yu-Gi-Oh! Season 0, the True Companions get the shock of their lives when they see Kaiba's house, complete with a hedge maze modeled after the Palace at Versailles. Jounouchi/Joey says "His house is HUGE! There must be a law about living in a house that big!"
  • Yui Kamio Lets Loose: Kiito's house is a rich large mansion.
  • In Yuri is My Job!, when Hime Shiraki and Mitsuki Yano are in elementary school, Mitsuki invites Hime over to her house, which is a three-story fancy-looking house with at least two pianos and a maid. Hime's immediate reaction is shock, with Hime asking Mitsuki, "Just how rich are you guys?" Later, when Hime visits Mitsuki in high school, she notices Mitsuki is living in a small apartment, implying that the Yanos fell on hard times, but doesn't ask about this.


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