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alt title(s): Energy Being 
Da'an transitioning between his physical and energy forms
Creatures that dispense with the need to have a body altogether.
Energy Beings are frequently Sufficiently Advanced or Precursors; in fact, non-physicality is a common prerequisite, though they may take on A Form You Are Comfortable With. Often times this means that when they "Touch" a corporeal being it has interesting side effects.
Even cheaper and simpler to pull off than Rubber Forehead Aliens, which explains why Energy Beings and Human Aliens so often dominate the demographics of The Final Frontier.
Never mind that being "made of energy" makes as much sense as being "made of heavy." Their continued appearance shows the unpopularity of philosophical materialism among science fiction writers (see Transhumanism). You could also argue that Energy Beings are basically used as a materialist/secularist version of religious transfiguration or afterlife.
It is also considered a Wall Banger as the energy beings usually act more like floating clouds of luminescent gas than energy, pure or not. Or, they might just plain be made of stars.
See also: Evolutionary Levels and Hollywood Evolution.
Examples
Anime and Manga
- The main character of Mahou Sensei Negima turns into one of these when he adsorbs the Thousand Bolts spell by using Magia Erebea. He calls it Raiten Taisou. Though he can only transform into pure lightning for an instant. Until he absorbs two Thousand Bolts spells to activate Raiten Taisou 2 — Perpetual Lightning Form.
- Atomsk from FLCL is a Phoenix like energy being that Haruko tries to absorb. Naota absorbs Atomsk power becoming an energy being himself but he lets the power (and Atomsk) blast off into space becoming human again.
- The Rynax in Kurau Phantom Memory are even being used as an energy source, leading to a lot of misery for them.
- The Getter Rays from Getter Robo are an energy being, though they rely on possessing Humongous Mecha for various reasons.
- The Angels from Evangelion, despite their typically rather imposing physical presence are said to have both "waveform" & particle properties, not unlike light. This despite the fact that, genetically, they're supposedly closer to humans than chimps are.
- Some versions of Ghost In The Shell involve something akin to the typical "ascension" story, but instead of some nebulously defined "Pure Energy", they're made of computer data, which is marginally less silly.
- In a fairly unusual example is what the Tailed Beast in Naruto apparently are. They're apparently just huge sentient masses of chakra that take a solid form, and in contrast to most Energy Beings, are feral and usually unintelligent. Their origin is apparently that they are the pieces of the Life Energy of an Eldritch Abomination.
Comic Books
- Subverted (sometimes) by the Celestials in the Marvel Universe. They're composed of a very intense and powerful form of energy — which is intangible and can't do much of anything on its own. It makes a very handy source of energy for the Humongous Mecha that they essentially "wear".
- Quite a few appear in Marvel Comics. Two notables are Living Laser, a photonic being made of light, and Klaw, who is composed of solidified sound. Both were human supervillains who got an upgrade into energy beings.
- X Men's Phoenix, originally just Jean Grey with a God Mode power upgrade, was famously retconned into an alien Energy Being after the executives wanted to bring back Jean but have her not be guilty of mass murder.
- And Wonder Man, too (technically he's made of ionized matter, which contains a lot of energy).
- Superman briefly became an energy being for a reason vaguely explained as overdosing on sunlight. Being Superman, his new energy powers were just as off the charts as his Flying Brick powers. He once magnetized the Moon to keep it from crashing into Earth. He could turn into a solid being though, which was handy for Clark Kent.
- All Star Superman features a brief appearance by things that look like energy beings, but it turns out they actually have some physical presence. Their energy patterns are contained inside some kind of biogenic crystaline structure filled with a conductive gas. In layman's terms, they're living neon signs.
- A subset of this trope, especially in comic books, is the idea of the "man in the can" — the energy being that needs to be kept in a containment suit, lest he lose all coherency and possibly wipe out Detroit. Examples include:
- Wildfire from The Legion Of Superheroes.
- Captain Atom from The DCAU.
- Not quite, he's actually made of "quantum foam".
- Fuji from Stormwatch, whose suit provides some... interesting side effects. Due to his form being extremely sensitive to vibrations, he has an orgasm every five minutes.
- Negative Man from the Doom Patrol has the ability to release an energy form capable of amazing feats, but only for one minute at a time.
- Johann Krauss of Hellboy spinoff BPRD (and the films of the main series) is composed of "ectoplasm" (a "spiritual energy" similar to Mana) in a containment suit.
- Actually, at least according to the (not always internally consistent) cosmology of the Mignolaverse, Ectoplasm is a bit more than spirit energy. The spirit energy still needs a... medium, if you will, to interact with the physical world. This is acchieved by combining with fluids from the channeler's own body. Herr Kraus is composed of what was once his own blood, bile, spit &... semen. Yes, that's right, he's basically a walking condom.
- This Troper wonders why there would be blood, bile, and spit inside your condoms...
- Green Lantern villain Parallax is made of... fear, anyway it acts just like an energy being as does Ion (made of Willopwer) and The Predator (made of love).
- Green Lantern Dkrtzy Rrr is described as a "bio-sentient mathematical equation". Why, yes, it's an Alan Moore creation. Why'd you ask?
- Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen sometimes behaves as though he were an energy being, even though he has a perfectly physical body. On the other hand, he doesn't seem to need it too much, since he quickly makes himself a new one after being disintegrated again at the end of the story.
- E Man is about an energy being alien who comes to Earth and can turn himself into whatever he wants. Hilarity Ensues.
Literature
- In The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy series (the books, radio show, towel...), Douglas Adams makes one or two throwaway references to "super-intelligent shades of the colour blue". Color being a form of light, it makes this an "energy being" concept if anything even more bizarre than that suggested for most regular instances of the trope (which may well have been the whole point). Starfish Aliens indeed.
- Peter F. Hamilton's Night's Dawn Trilogy features the energy-based hive mind Ly-Cilph, whose evolutionary history the author spends a few pages summarizing. The antagonists of the series, body-snatching souls invading from The Nothing After Death, also seem to be made of energy.
- In The Space Trilogy by C.S. Lewis, the eldils are essentially Judeo-Christian angels, or their cousins. They are imperceptible energy beings whose forms exist on a radically different wavelength than ours — for them, gaseous matter doesn't exist, and liquids and solids are gaseous, so the planets of the Solar system are just clouds. To them, light itself is the water through which they swim, and the Sun is their wellspring. "Visiting" a planet means moving into one of those moving clouds and then keeping pace with its orbit to maintain the appearance of standing still, while using some sort of projection to interact with wispy, ephemeral creatures they cannot fully see (ie: us).
- His Dark Materials presents its angels as something akin to Energy Beings, being made of a sentient particle known as Dust, which is analogous to RL's dark matter/energy, instead of organic materials. Needless to say that, lacking a truly solid form, they are usually very prone to die.
- In Andrew M. Greeley's Angel trilogy, the titular angels are immense creatures of (mostly) energy who stand somewhere between humans and God on the evolutionary scale, and willingly act as agents for God.
- The Precursors from Arthur C Clarke's 2001: Space Odyssey fit into the description, having somehow woven themselves into the very fabric of space-time. The protagonist of the first novel/film also becomes one of these due to the aliens' interference.
- The titular homicidal Catepillar (no, not that kind) in Killdozer was possessed by an energy being.
- Piers Anthony used a race of these in OX, mostly as an excuse to toss in references to Conway's Game of Life. No rationale for why a cluster of disembodied energy nodes would work like Conway's cellular automata is provided, but give Piers his credit: at least he tried to base his Energy Beings on something coherent, which is more than other users of this trope seem inclined to do.
- The creature in H.P. Lovecraft's "The Colour Out of Space" is one one of the first uses of this trope: the title entity is a bodiless something that's released from the inexplicably colored bubbles in a meteorite and possesses and gradually drains all the life from a farm and its inhabitants. Eventually, the creature gains enough strength to fire itself out of a well and back into space, appearing as a geyser of shimmering alien light as it does so. But then the hero sees a second, weaker entity trying to escape as well, only to tumble back down again. And then the abandoned farm's turned into a city reservoir...
- Skewered in The Biology of Star Trek, which points out at least three ways in which these could not exist: their time perception would have problems due to existing at the speed of light, there wouldn't be anything that could hold any kind of genetic code, and any form of sentience would have significant difficulties because all the brains we've encountered have been material.
Live Action TV
- Doctor Who featured this with the Megara, "justice machines" that were just bits of light, and in "The Mutants" where it represented the final stage of development of a rapidly evolving race of creatures.
- So far, though, the trope has been seemingly averted in the new series. The Gelth may look like your typical Energy Beings, but at least they're made of gas.
- In the Audio production "...ish", the Doctor encounters two sentient bits of language — the Ish, which serves as a singularity of linguistic meaning so strong it warps and destroys all meaning around it, and the Omniverbum, the hypothetical longest word in the cosmos which does the same for reality itself. At one point the Omniverbum chases the Doctor down a hallway despite being fully abstract.
- In the expanded universe, the Mondas Cybermen eventually evolve into these.
- Star Trek has had a bunch of these, including a few which simulated physical bodies — like the Q, the Organians and Trelane — and at least one group who wanted to get back into physical bodies.
- The Vorlons from Babylon 5 appear to be mostly energy beings, although they apparently still have some degree of physicality left, too. In "Mindquake", super-psychic Jason Ironheart, having undergone a Deadly Upgrade, gives up corporeal existence to become pure psychic energy. According to the episode "The Deconstruction of Falling Stars," at least part of humanity appears to be destined to go this way, too, in million years or so. Note that the far-future human seen in this episode looks like an ordinary man at first, then turns into a cloud of glowing particles which fly into a human-shaped containment suit. Similarily, precursor being Lorien is a quite physical humanoid most of the time, but can turn into a glowing cloud for travelling through space. This suggests that all these beings are basically physical creatures that have gained the ability to turn into a more or less gaseous/plasma/energy form at will.
- On Stargate SG-1 the Sufficiently Advanced species "The Ancients" have "Ascended" to a higher plane of existence, resulting in their existing on this plane only as Energy Beings. Daniel Jackson also 'dies', but actually 'ascends' secretly. Twice.
- In "Legacy" Daniel suspects that some dead Goa'uld are not in fact dead but have become energy beings. They haven't, he's becoming delusional because of some alien technology that got into him.
- A recurring element of Andromeda is that various celestial bodies have sentient avatars, energy beings who can manifest in humanoid form or as data.
- Mystery Science Theater 3000 parodied this with the Observers, who repeatedly claimed to be brains without bodies... despite the fact that they used their bodies to carry around their brains.
- In "Counterweight," an episode of the 1960s Outer Limits series, an energy being from the planet Antheon spies on a group of humans who plan to colonize the planet.
- Another Outer Limits energy being is the "vacuum cleaner monster" from "It Crawled Out of the Woodwork".
- Zordon was this in his last two years of life as a consequence of the method he used to free himself from his can. He was still in the can, as it was all that was holding his energy body together, but at least he could have people move the can around for him, rather than being stuck broadcasting to a fixed point.
- In Earth: Final Conflict there are the Taelons and the Kimera. The first seem to be primarily energy based but not entirely in the glowing squid squad as yet. The Kimera however look to be entirely energy - except when they feel like it and pretend to be some matter based life form. And the entire being based on energy thing is a key part of the Taelons' story line.
Real Life
- Many in the UFO community believe that UFOs and aliens are physical manifestations of interdimensional energy beings.
- A recent issue of New Scientist
 presents evidence suggesting that physical reality itself is an electromagnetic matrix of energy.
- All of us are Energy Beings. It's just that said energy is locked up in the form of matter. (Thank you, Einstein).
- A being composed out of only information, say for example a Sentient AI on the internet, could be said to have no mass.
- That factors out the amount of equipment that AI would have to be stored on. Otherwise the same argument works for the human mind.
Tabletop Games
Video Games
- The Naaru from World of Warcraft, although they do appear somewhat crystallized. They're also the closest thing in the Warcraft universe to angels.
- The Ethereals, who are essentially goblins from space, embody this trope a bit more; their material shapes are created by wearing mummy-style wrappings and other elements of clothing.
- Commander Keen 5 features a race of extragalactic energy beings called the Shikadi as the main antagonists. They want to use a quantium explosion dynamo to blow up the whole galaxy.
- Every alien character in Mega Man Star Force is a sentient pack of radio waves. By combining with a human, the fusion also becomes a radio being. This describes the titular Mega Man as well as every single boss, as apparently mere waves are no match for radio humans.
- Ditto the cyber-elves from Mega Man Zero.
- The character Pyron from Darkstalkers seems to be made from pure energy.
- The Thirnovans/Trinovans from Meteos somewhat count. Fine, they're only half-energy, which is also why they apparently only have one form.
- Kheldians in City of Heroes. However, they cannot survive for more than a decade as pure energy though so they inhabit organic hosts. Peacebringers and Warshades (reformed Nictus) do this with the consent of the host, the Nictus just take over whichever body they please.
- Kheldians (and as a result Nictus) can't take over a body unwillingly though, because the host can eventually just kick them out. However, Nictus get around this by kidnapping them and breaking their will in various ways so that they will become compliant hosts.
- Zorthan the Irritable from Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction.
- The Pkunk claim that the Ilwrath used to be perfect beings of shining light, which would seem to fit this bill, before they became too perfect and wrapped around to pure evil spider beings. It's never actually established whether this is actually true, like most of their other bizarre claims or just random Phony Psychic posturing, though.
- I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the Archons and Dark Archons from Starcraft, who certainly seem to be Energy Beings.
- According to the Metroid manuals, the titular creatures are energy beings, presumably made of the same Life Energy they feed on. The Chozo can also be assumed to be this after they Ascended To A Higher Plane Of Existence
- Subverted in Jak And Daxter: the first time we see a Precursor, it appears to be made out of glowing blue-white fire. It later turns out that they're instead fuzzy orange mustelids. Daxter was overjoyed.
Web Original
Western Animation
- As an Alien trope, you know there is a Ben 10 example: the Anodites.
- In Futurama Amy Wong once tried to set up Leela with M-5438, an entity of pure energy from another dimension that, according to Bender, is "big on musical theater, if you know what I mean".
- Another Futurama episode had Melllvar (yes, that's spelled correctly), an energy being who was the living embodiment of the Star Trek Fanboy stereotype.
- The evil Drej from Titan A.E. appear to be solid beings, but are actually composed of plasma-like energy. This ends up proving handy when they are lured into a trap that siphons away their energy to power the Titan, a ship built to recreate Earth after the Drej had destroyed it years before.
- The members (read: entire species) of the evil Brotherhood of Makuta from Bionicle have evolved past the need of physical bodies. They still need a shell or armor of some kind however, or said energy will disperse, killing them. Still, being made of energy gives them plenty of abilities, like being able to move into other bodies; and mind-control people with their energies. They have also padded their armor with more steel, since there's no body that needs space anymore. This made a painful experience for the Makuta Icarax, as he was devolved into his biomechanical form again by the Mask of Life, making his armor way too small to fit his reformed organs.
- One of the latest books mentions the Avokah, basically sentient lightning living in the universe's core. The Toa Mata drive these things out shortly after being created.
- Both Primus and his children, the Transformers, are Energy Beings that get around their lack of a physical body by using Humongous Mecha, which they treat as their "real" body, despite being able to leave any time and even switch mecha.
- In one episode of My Life As A Teenage Robot, an "energy vampire" called Gigawatt threatens to absorb all of the electricity on Earth. He claims to be a lifeform of pure energy, but after Jenny shorts him out with water from a fire hydrant, he shrinks down until all that's left is his lightbulb-shaped head.
- The Meekrob from Invader Zim may be energy beings...when they're not manifesting themselves as giant shoes.
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