The Atomic Axe! It slices! It dices! It cuts through energy! (Even the tough, cloudy variety!)
Cutting through energy is when a character uses Implausible Fencing Powers to slice through Pure Energy. Whether that means stabbing through Deflector Shields, parrying a Kamehame Hadoken, or being able to harm Energy Beings, this trope applies whenever someone is able to cut through something that should be insubstantial like it was a physical object.
Successfully cutting energy usually requires Implausible Fencing Powers, but may be at least partially Justified by using an Applied Phlebotinum weapon like a Soul-Cutting Blade or a Laser Blade — a blade of Pure Energy can presumably cut through other things made of Pure Energy because it Takes One to Kill One. Still, expect this trope to be restricted to the Master Swordsman — and with truly absurd amounts of skill, they'll be able to pull it off even with completely blunt equipment. Combat Clairvoyance is often used in place of (or in addition to) pure skill with a blade, as well — it's easier to put your sword exactly where it needs to be (to hit a resonance point in the energy matrix, or something) if you can see where it needs to be a few seconds in advance.
See also Parrying Bullets for deflecting projectiles (energy or material) with melee weapons, and Beam-O-War for defeating an energy attack with another energy attack.
Examples
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Anime and Manga
- Gundam:
- In Gundam Build Fighters, Nils Nilsen's Sengoku Astray can slice through incoming beam attacks with its katanas — notable that he's doing it with physical blades despite beam sabers being ubiquitous in the setting.
- And the sequel, Gundam Build Fighters Try, has Yuuma's rival Sakai using the unabashedly Super Robot Tryon 3 to pull this off by cutting through an enormous Wave-Motion Gun-sized beam blast when Yuuma fired it at him.
- In Touhou Bougetsushou, Watatsuki no Yorihime cuts through Marisa's Master Spark with her sword. Noted as doubly impressive because of how fast the beam was travelling towards her.
- One Piece: In a series filled with Implausible Fencing Powers, "Foxfire" Kin'emon has them all beat for sheer impossibility. The man can cut explosions.
- Subverted during Rayleigh's fight with Kizaru, the living light-man; the former managed to harm the latter with his feet and later a normal sword. The subversion comes in the secret behind it - Rayleigh uses Haki (the Armament version) in his attacks, that lets him (or anyone, really) safely hit anyone with Devil Fruit powers including Kizaru.
- Lupin III: Goemon, the gang's resident Samurai, has been known to cut things like lightning bolts and tornadoes in half with his trademark Absurdly Sharp Blade.
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Silver Chariot is capable of skewering flames on its blade, to show off Polnareff's fencing skills. This, of course, never comes back into use.
- Negima! Magister Negi Magi: Kurt Godel manages to cut Negi when the latter was transformed into lightning.
- Samurai 7: the samurai can do basically whatever the hell they want with their katana, up to and including deflecting Wave Motion Guns — though only the most skilled of them can pull that one off.
- In Sword Art Online, after some experience with Parrying Bullets in another game, Kirito figures out how to cut through the spells in Alfheim Online by striking a tiny hitbox at their center.
- The Runesave from of the Ten Powers sword in Rave Master has this as its unique function. It can cut anything that normally can't be cut, like magic, smoke, water and the like.
- Naruto: Kakashi's Raikiri (Lightning Cutter) technique, which electrifies his bare hand to let it function as a spear, apparently got its name from how he once cut a bolt of lightning with it.
Comic Books
- Camelot 3000 ends with the reincarnated King Arthur using the very point of Excalibur to split an atom. This initiates a nuclear explosion.
- In SnarfQuest, Telerie Windyarm gains her name from her "sword that can split the wind," which is capable of deflecting magical blasts or chopping them straight out of the air.
- Legion of Super-Heroes: The Persuader's Atomic Axe is so sharp it can cut through anything: including gravity (making targets float) or the rays of the yellow sun (cutting off Superboy's power).
- This is what happened to poor Rockslide in the story X of Swords, Summoner cutting through his body and destroying his energy form.
- In Annihilators, Quasar tries to restrain Doctor Dredd with a cage made of quantum energy. Dredd, who is surrounded by a magical cutting edge that lets him slice through anything, simply cuts the cage apart and walks out.
Fan Works
- Star Wars vs Warhammer 40K: Chapter Master Davik Thune of the Crimson Razors wields a pair of modified Lightning Claws that are shown to easily penetrate ray shields and cause them to pop them like bubbles.
Films — Live-Action
- The Jedi Knights and Sith of Star Wars are all about this. They routinely use their light-sabres to deflect and parry incoming "blaster" fire. Now while Mythbusters was able to completely bust the myth that the heroes could possibly dodge incoming blaster fire, ala Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy, a throwaway segment shows an actual Star-Wars stunt choreographer who coordinates the light-sabre duels was able to use a simulated light-sabre (a wooden practice sword to be precise) to deflect simulated blaster projectiles about 20% of the time, in fact, actually deflecting the very first projectile without practice or preparation. So it certainly seems plausible for Jedi and Sith to be able to do it, not only due to superior sabre training, but the canon explanation of having superhuman reflexes and Combat Clairvoyance thanks to the Force.
Literature
- In the Discworld series, Death's scythe and sword are both said to be capable of cutting daylight. In Reaper Man, he uses sunlight to sharpen his scythe in preparation for a battle with his replacement, and demonstrates its quality by slicing the words of another character while they are being spoken.
- In Forging Divinity, Taelien demonstrates the ability to cut through magical fire with an ordinary sword.
Live-Action TV
Tabletop Games
- Pathfinder:
- A powerful enough combatant can cut through the Pure Energy barrier of a "Wall of Force" spell — with great difficulty, since it has much greater Damage Reduction even than Adamantine and has a boatload of Hit Points to boot. This is a break from its spiritual predecessor, Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 Edition, where the Wall of Force is outright immune to physical harm.
- The Spell Sunder rage power allows those with sufficient antipathy toward magic to attack ongoing spells, suppressing their effects or destroying them entirely. Ironically, this is a magical ability in itself.
Video Games
- No More Heroes: Travis Touchdown can do anything and everything with his beam katana, even blocking a Wave-Motion Gun. But if the battery dies, he's screwed.
- Dirge of Cerberus: Weiss can do this. At one point, Vincent uses the Death Penalty to fire a freakin' death laser thing at him. Weiss responds by promptly spinning his blades, which somehow disperses the blast.
- In The Legend of Heroes: Trails into Reverie, during the assault towards the final dungeon, the Tower of Babel fires its Wave-Motion Gun at the Arseille II. The huge laser beam gets deflected by Aurelia, Victor, Matteus, Wallace, and Vandyck on foot with nothing but their weapons enchanted by Roselia and Vita. It's as ridiculous as it sounds even for the Trails Series.
Western Animation
- Ben 10: Omniverse: The Contumelia, the 5-D species that created the universe, have a Containment Field surrounding the Annihilargh (which the villain Maltruant has replaced with his own) while preparing to drop it into the void and create the Big Bang. They claim that the extradimensional field is impossible to breach. Ben proves them wrong by having Skurd morph Ben's arm into a sword made out of Alien X's DNA, a multidimensional being from beyond the universe. The Contumelia find this feat "interesting".
