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Traditional Hermetic Magic often required creation of elaborate pentacles, pentagrams, magic circles, runes, etc. before a spell could be cast. These would typically be scratched into the ground, or made with special materials. This takes too long, but it does look really cool.
Anime has gotten around this by having special effects do the work. As soon as the mage calls out the attack, any required circles, designs and written magical incantations appear glowing in the air. This is common for Hermetic-flavored Magical Girls.
Either these designs are prepared by the mage beforehand, or whatever force the mage serves under contract does it for them.
In recent years, almost always done in CG to keep an intricate look.
Many video games using magic have it, including RPGs and Real Time Strategy games. Increasingly common in modern fantasy webcomics and in the artwork of 3rd edition d20 Dungeons And Dragons, probably inspired by computer games and animé. Glowing magic circles and mystic runes floating in the air around the spellcaster look so much cooler in a visual medium than a wizard waving a staff around.
For the Sci-Fi cousin, see Tron Lines. See also Sphere Of Power.
Examples:
Anime
- Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha
- Card Captor Sakura
- Mahou Sensei Negima. For the most part these don't even require prior construction, but a significant aversion to this occurs in the Magic World Tournament finale, when Negi activates a massive set of runes out of nowhere to absorb Rakan's power, and Rakan realizes with a shock that Negi had written them in the ground unnoticed while in his Fragile Speedster mode much earlier in the fight.
- Nitpick: the inscriptions in the outer circle pictured above are in Armenian.
- All the magic in Scrapped Princess
- Slayers
- Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle has both this and a variation. Fay's magic seems to work by him literally writing it out on the air with his staff, though he can use other forms.
- .hack//SIGN when a wavemaster uses their powers.
- Aversion: Full Metal Alchemist goes into more detail about these; they're called "Arrays" and most Alchemists have to prepare them beforehand on items they possess or their bodies; e.g. Roy Mustang's gloves, Scar's tattoos. However these things are all drawn ridiculously fast, with the most egregious example being drawing half of one on two tables, and shoving them together, each taking about half a second. That and Edward can circumvent them all together.
- Not to mention that when Al's body becomes the Philosopher's Stone, he resurrects Ed without drawing any transmutation circles, instead having six huge, incredibly detailed circles appear around him instantly. The whole ordeal is like much in the way of an Aversion that didn't stay consistently executed. Thus, it becomes more of a handwaved aversion.
- Ed, Izumi, and Al don't have to draw the circle, but the series explains that they are still forming an array: their clapped hands form a circle out of the body/arms with a simple triangle on one end. The rest of the details of the array are held in the alchemist's mind. You need immense knowledge of alchemy to pull this off; this is why the only people who can do it are ones who have opened the Gate. Consider it a perk of being crippled from attempting human transmutation.
- Naruto
- Kanji have been known to appear on fingers (Jiraya, when removing Orochimaru's seal that was on top of the demon fox seal on Naruto's belly) or hands (Yamato, when supressing Naruto's fox demon transformation) of a person performing certain types of jutsu.
- In the anime, a Taoist Bagua symbol appears when Neji Hyuga performs his Eight Trigrams, Sixty-Four Palms technique.
- Possible subversion-the symbol might not actually appear, and could just be a guide to show the boundaries of the Eight Trigrams, and to show how the jutsu works.
- The pattern that forms on the ground whenever Naruto et al perform a summoning jutsu does fit this trope. But it's a variation, since the pattern always forms on the surface of whatever Naruto puts his hand on (usually the ground).
- Partially subverted in Mahoujin Guru Guru, where the "Guru guru Magic" works mainly in summoning creatures through drawings in circles. While these drawings can be very simple, Kokori (the little, naive Guruguru witch) does them wrong... more often than you expect.
- And more often the summoning works still with wrong circles, displaying nonsensical monsters and gag devices.
- And finally Kokori figures it how to invent new spells. Well, not so simple.
- Averted in Mahoujin Guru Guru, where Kukuri must draw her magic circles then and there on the ground and mistakes can cause random effects and summons.
- Shakugan No Shana
- Disgaea features these in the OP, the ED, and the eyecatch, as well as within the show itself. A few attacks in the games utilize them, too.
- The Seal of Orichalcos in Yu-Gi-Oh.
- The flaming Geoglyphs in Yu-Gi-Oh 5Ds probably count as well, although this might be stretching it a bit.
- A primitive and weirdly nonmagical example: in King of Braves Gao Gai Gar, when the titular Humongous Mecha uses his "Protect Shade" power to defend himself, the averted lasers/energy bolts trace out a pentacle-shaped path in the air in front of him rather than being directly reflected.
- This is apparently inherent to the Protect Shade technology. The heroes reverse engineer it to develop their base's shield system, and the "PS generators" do the same thing.
- One of the first things you see in Fate/stay night is Tohsaka Rin summoning her Servant with a pretty red glowing rune/incantation circle rising from the floor, through her body and above her head (though this is subverted in the original game, where she does, in fact, prepare the circle beforehand).
- Played straight with Rider, in using her Noble Phantasm "Bride of Chivalry". The best example would be in the Fate route, where a spell circle is formed from her own blood.
- Also subverted in the verse with runic magecraft. One major drawback is that it must be somehow inscribed on the target. Two characters shown the use of runes in combat: one drew the symbol in mid-air with cigarette smoke and overlaid it on the target, while the other carried around a talon to physically carve them out.
- In the Hellsing TV series, Alucard does this once, causing a massive, glowing pentagram to hover over the Hellsing mansion. It's the only cool CGI effect in the whole thing.
- He does one better when he makes the pentagram so big that it not only covers all of London, but is visible from low Earth orbit.
- Dr. Muraki in Yami No Matsuei uses at one point an intricate magic circle that rises from the floor as pure light. However, it is still linked to a simpler circle he apparently prepared beforehand, and that can be destroyed by shooting the glowing gems at the points of the pentagram.
- Ah My Goddess — All of Urd's magic does this.
- Also happens when the remaining goddesses, and Keiichi, try to wipe Belldandy's mind in the movie. Belldandy/her mentor actually rewrite the hermetic diagrams to summon Yggdrassil so he might destroy it.
- Abe no Seimei's modus operandi in New Getter Robo, for barriers and pain spells and everything in between. Sometimes, he takes the trouble to trace his pentagrams with his finger, but mostly he just sticks out his hand and they appear. And as the war between him and Getter goes on, he sometimes doesn't have to expend that much effort.
- Soul Eater has one with the Kishin. When he's going to do his beam attacks, a rune circle appears in front of him.
- To Aru Majutsuno Index
- Bible Black
- Satella and Fiore have these appear around them when they use their Jewel Summoning powers.
- Fairy Tail (anime only).
Literature
- Though the circles used for demon summoning in David Eddings' Belgariad and Malloreon are traced by hand (usually with a big stick), particularly potent sorcerers can hold them stable whilst, for example, walking on a storm-tossed ocean...
- In Diane Duane's Young Wizards series, a lot of wizardry requires diagrams drawn out in the wizardly Speech. At first, these are mostly drawn out in the dirt, on paper, etc., but as the characters become more proficient, they can learn to conjure glowing diagrams (or sometimes 3D models) in the air, which can be stored in their manuals and later pulled out to be glowing diagrams in the air again. And one character uses a computer program to plot out and save spell diagrams.
- Justified in that magic is explicitly stated to be highly complex statements in an actual, speakable language - akin to programming code for reality itself.
- The Weis/Hickman series The Death Gate Cycle features 'instant' glowing runes in the air when Greater Magic is being worked. They do key off of movements, song, and (for the Patryn) pre-existing runes tattood onto the body, however.
- Averted in Patricia C Wrede's Mairelon the Magician, and more explicitly in Magician's Ward, as Mairelon explains that the use of most magic requires runes prepared in advance.
- Harry Dresden in The Dresden Files (sometimes averted).
- In addition, Bob likes to draw runes in the air, though these don't do anything.
- In Elantris, though they don't appear automatically, Elantrians can "draw" AonDor runes in midair to activate their magic,
Live Action TV
- Everyone in Mahou Sentai Magiranger, and Power Rangers Mystic Force, too, Wolzard/Koragg being perhaps the most obvious example.
- Notably averted in Supernatural, in which the frequently used runic circles are always drawn laboriously by hand. (You'd think Sam and Dean would carry around a sheet or something with a demon-trap painted on it, but no, they always have to draw the dang thing out...)
Video Games
- The Real Time Strategy game Warcraft III.
- Warlocks' demon-summoning spells in World Of Warcraft do this, as do the hearthstones characters can use to teleport back to their home locations.
- In the next expansion, warlocks will get a spell that generates one of these in the ground and the warlock can teleport back into it.
- Death Knight spells are Instant Runetastic.
- They're since changed it so that all area effect spells create large instant runes on the ground, presumably to help people know the exact edges of their effects.
- Also, look closely next time you're on the receiving end of a Mage's Arcane Explosion spell. There are Instant Runes in the impact mark.
- Final Fantasy games have started doing this with summoning magic; Final Fantasy X is a prime over-the-top example, while Final Fantasy XI does it in a relatively low-key fashion. Crisis Core also features this when Genesis does his Limit Break.
- Final Fantasy bosses do it too. The final Sequential Boss of Final Fantasy X calls up a massive, personal sigil of flame in the sky for the last segment of the fight. And Final Fantasy VII's Sephiroth summons a supernova with physics equations, of all things.
- In Advent Children, runes can be briefly seen when Kadaj summons Bahamut SIN.
- Balthier's quickening, 'Element of Treachery' in Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings uses these. To turn him into a meteor.
- Edge in the Final Fantasy IV remake for the DS shows these when he uses ninjutsu.
- In Final Fantasy IX, Freya's best Dragon skill uses this, despite not being "magic" (as it can be used on the Anti Magic continent). Is there a trope article for the truly bizarre magic/non-magic distinctions in JRP Gs?
- Western videogame example: Eternal Darkness for the Gamecube does that every time you cast a spell, complete with columns of light shooting from the Instant Runes and an ominous, supernatural voice pronouncing the runes, that varies with the algniment of spells that you can cast.
- A similar circle to the Fate/stay night example appears around the spaceship coming out of hyperspace (or whatever method it uses for space travel) in Phantasy Star Online. The circle also shows up whenever your Mag uses its Limit Break photon ability.
- In Galaxy Angel, Tequila casts spells this way, even in space from her ship, where they appear bigger than it is.
- The titular Door in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door starts instant-runing whenever you return a Plot Coupon.
- Same goes for its sequel, Super Paper Mario, when Pure Hearts are locked in place.
- The Cybuster's "Akashic Buster" attack in Super Robot Wars involves creating a circle and hexagram in midair, before invoking a flaming phoenix from it and merging with it to slam into the enemy.
- SRW also has a rare non-Hermetic example, the Ryu-Ko-Oh, which does this with Chinese-style trigrams.
- Shion's "Spell Ray" Limit Break in Xenosaga episode one involves creating a set of runes in midair, loading them into her weapon (a huge mechanical arm), and firing a BFG-level blast from one of these. Similarly chaos's Lunar Seal attack draws runes in the air, sets them on fire and then blasts them at the enemy.
- In the Star Ocean games, this is an actual science, referred to as Symbology (or Heraldry, or Runology, depending on the game). The distance from the rune to the caster affects the strength of the spell, so most casters tattoo the symbols on their bodies. The third game deals with three children who were experimented on to have the runes inscribed in their chromosomes, giving them access to various abilities which should allow them to transcend their dimension.
- The first two games have characters with genetic runes as a trait of their species. Although one character doesn't take advantage of it.
- Averted in the story-within-a-story of Wild ARMs: Alter Code F, where we are explicitly being told that the heroine is drawing the runes into the air with a finger.
- In Super Smash Bros Brawl, instant runes appear as part of the "warp magic" that makes up Marth's and Ike's stage entrances.
- In Tales Of Symphonia, any character that can cast magic causes a magic circle to appear beneath their feet as they cast. This is especially visible with Sheena, who creates four magic circles, and a giant triangle about 4 times as large as the other magic circles when she summons anything bigger then Corrine. Also, the spells "Photon" and its dark equivalent, "Dark Sphere", trap the enemy in circles of appropriately coloured Instant Runes.
- Tales Of The Abyss must have won some kind of award for most Instant Runes in a video game ever. They're in everything, for aesthetics when casting magic to being part of structures to being an integral gameplay element; every spell in the game leaves a 'Field of Fonons' near it's target, and these can be used to power up attacks.
- In Tales Of Phantasia, casters would spawn elaborate magic circles from their hands as the screen froze when their spell resolved. There were even different circles for Arche's Magic, Klarth's Summoning, and Mint's Healing. If you look closely, some versions also have a circle pattern appear on the ground when Cless uses Shugohoujin, which creates a wall-like pillar of damaging light.
- Just about every single scene in Tales Of Vesperia that involves Rita and blastia, or Rita and spellcasting results in instant runes.
- Certain boss characters in City Of Heroes have an ability to curse player characters, halving their endurance pool. They do this by firing a magic bullet at the target, which when it hits produces an instant rune at the victim's feet as they're cursed.
- Heroes themselves gain a Rune of Warding of their own, a temporary power gained from a storyarc that is especially effective against certain magical creatures. And looks awesome.
- City Of Villains Masterminds have two powers which enhance the abilities of their pets. For the Ninja Matermind the visual effect for the 'upgrades' is large, glowing kanji appearing under the feet of the pet being buffed.
- Warping in more recent Fire Emblem games cause Instant Runes to appear. Especially in Fire Emblem 9, is this very visible.
- Not sure if it happens in other places, but the critical for Shamans in Fire Emblem 7 involves a magic circle being drawn under the character's feet while charging the spell.
- Criticals and Flare for Arch Sages in Radiant Dawn make layered runes.
- In Touhou Project, Magic Circles are everywhere. Most of the time they appear when the characters activate theirSpellcards, but there's so many others. The PC-98 games had instant runes appear before every boss battle just to fire bullets.
- In Beyond Good And Evil, a really good hit with stick causes floating runes to show up.
- Kind of... that 'really good hit' requires Jade be followed by a buddy, and have the team mate us a stomp maneuver, which will then force the bad guys up off the ground for her to then whack with her stick, and she can half-way aim the ensuing enemy projectile...
- Fable has the spells "Divine Fury" and "Unholy Wrath," the latter of which was referred to in Zero Punctuation as "the Evil Pentagram of Soul-Sucking Horror."
- The ill-fated Hellgate: London had a delicious sigil in motion forming the title screen.
- Ryudo, main hero from Grandia 2, despite being swordsman, does that during his ultimate special by sticking his sword into ground.
- The magikoopas in Super Mario Bros fire a jumble of simple shapes at the player as a projectile.
- The Nameless One in Planescape Torment, if the player follows a certain path, can gain the use of the Awesome But Impractical spell "Rune of Torment", which carves itself into the ground before it goes off.
- Castlevania is fond of this trope in general, having lots of occultish magic. Two notable examples would be the collectible runic glyphs in Order Of Ecclesia and those in Dawn Of Sorrow which the player must draw themselves with the DS stylus to activate.
- One might consider Dawn Of Sorrow to have inverted(?) this trope by actually making the player draw the rune. However, this is only used in specific situations, and the game probably has Instant Runes elsewhere.
- In Final Fantasy XII Chaos' Limit Break includes creating a giant mandala, of things.
- In Battle For Wesnoth, the Scribe line of units from the user-created (and very well-done) faction Windsong use Instant Runes to attack. No projectiles or anything, the rune just appears over the scribe's head and the enemy mysteriously takes damage.
- In Persona 3, fusing Personas places them on a rune configuration before combining them into a single entity.
- The Final Battle of Vagrant Story takes place on a magic circle that floats high above the devastated Cathedral.
- In Melty Blood, Aoko Aozaki instantly creates runes around her arm
 ◊ for her "Severe Break" Arc Drive.
- In Skies Of Arcadia, each of the magical Moons has a crest assigned to them from the Old World. Naturally these crests appear whenever magic is cast.
- In the .hack games, these appear both above the caster and near the target whenever magic is cast (either by a PC or by an enemy).
- Dizzy of Guilty Gear summons these when she gets dangerous. Also, Chipp Zanuff averts this by drawing the lines of the pentagram of his One Hit Kill move after the victim gets caught in it.
- Most of Ryu's transformations into his dragon forms in Breath Of Fire IV involves a semi-circular sphere enveloping him and his party, which was then decorated with runes.
- In the Samurai Shodown games, at least Amakusa (from the 3rd game onwards) and Mizuki can make rune-like images to attack.
- Igniz from The King of Fighters 2002: Unlimited Match makes these appear below his opponent to start his Disintegrational Universe attack.
- Some characters in Blaz Blue: Calamity Trigger have attacks that manifest Instant Runes (such as Hakumen's counterattack ability); like Negi in the Naruto example, these seem to be visual conceits, usually no more visible to the actual characters than the lifebars at the top of the screen. Then there's the attack of Nox Nyctores Gigant in the Story Mode.
- Most probably the only use in a sci-fi game that doesn't even use magic: Ace Online. The spell "Purify" is available to M-Gears after obtaining the rare Special/Elite Skill Opening Card. The activation animation is quite distinct: you suddenly gain an instant magic circle with a symbol on top, sending sparkles downward. Non-players assume it's a godly buff; players know it does the opposite. No, it doesn't purify you or allies of negative status effects, it nullifies all buffs and skills you have, including the that lets you do the Macross Missile Massacre.
- The visual effect for "holy" elemental attacks in Lufia: The Legend Returns uses a simple form of this trope. (The same may also be true for other games in the series, but this troper hasn't played them.)
Comics
- Averted in Madame Xanadu by... madame Xanadu herself, while her magic circle is quite impresive and it shines, she has to draw it by hand... with a knife.
Webcomics
Web Original
- Red Vs Blue parodied the idea when Lopez activated his weather-control device. Immediately, glowing golden runes encircled him. Turns out that Doc added them as a special effect just because he thought they looked cool.
- This seems to be averted most of the time in the Whateley Universe. Hekate's 'fools' circle' trap for Fey took tons of prep time, and she's a really dangerous mage.
- Flint demonstrates some in Bunny Kill 4.
Western Animation
- Doctor Strange and company does this in his recent Marvel Comics animated movie.
- Raven of the Teen Titans gets these on her skin until she lets her father through in the 3-part "The End".
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