A character uses an allegory to describe his romantic relationship with his significant other. Said allegory is usually rather up there, yet provides precious insight into said relationship from an unusual angle and is often positive.
Although this trope is titled "Allegory", metaphors are also included.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- Cooking Master Boy qualifies. Pretty much everything cooked has metaphorical elements. For example, in one episode Mao meets an attractive (but shallow) woman who wants to use him to make the dish her ancestor made, but much like her, the dish has the sauce on the outside while Mao shows it being cooked with the sauce inside (inner beauty). This particular theme is a recurring one.
- Another of these is demonstrated when Mao makes a hot pot in competition with a guy swearing vengeance on his master. The entire sequence is an analogy, as not only does his dried seafood (which like his revenge, has been preparing for years) backfire by overpowering the lobster (being in turn a sign that a person who is consumed by revenge has let it destroy their feelings), but Mao's dish uses paper to filter out the bitterness of the vegetable stock (like a person willing to forgive can remove the bitterness of misunderstanding).
- In Natsuneko's Spicy Sweets, Yuu compares her relationship with Aki (a baker-in-training) to a cake of which she only takes a single bite, for fear that it disappears on her. Post-Relationship Upgrade, she dreams of the same cake again—and no matter how much she eats, it never grows smaller.
- In Chatting at the Amber Teahouse, Seriho (owner of a teahouse) compares herself to a teapot who wants to make tea for everyone, and Sarasa, to a cosy that keeps the tea inside warm. Sarasa is slightly embarrassed by this story.
- In Destiny of the Shrine Maiden, Chikane tells the story of a seashell, to which only one other seashell in the entire world will be a perfect fit. Especially poignant, since it is told to her destined Starcrossed Lover Himeko, though she is unaware of Chikane's feelings at that point.
- Cowboy Bebop features an example with a decidedly more tragic bent in its double-episode finale. In the second to last episode, Jet delivers a paraphrased version of the Hemingway short story "The Snows of Kilamanjaro" to Spike to try and persuade him to leave his fight with Vicious in the past. Spike counters this in the next episode by comparing his relationship with Julia, the woman who drove the wedge between Spike and Vicious to begin with, to the popular Japanese children story "The Cat Who Lived a Million Times." The story is about a tiger-striped cat cursed with a million lives, who suffers an oppressive and meaningless existence until he meets a white cat. The white cat and the tiger-striped cat live happily together, until the white cat grows old and dies. The tiger-striped cat cries a million times, and then dies again, only this time he doesn't come back to life.
- This actually ends up being a complete subversion. After telling the story Spike gets up to go to his probable death at the hands of Vicious or his Syndicate lackeys, and Jet asks him if it really is all because of the girl. Spike responds that "there's nothing he can do for a dead woman," with the implication that there is something he can do for his friends that are still alive, namely leaving the Bebop to settle things with Vicious once and for all, removing them from the crossfire.
Film
- From Annie Hall: "A relationship is like a shark. It has to constantly move forward or it dies."
- The Way He Looks In a platonic version Leonardo explains to Giovanni that she's the moon, and Gabriel is the earth during a lunar eclipse. The moon disappears for a while behind the earth but it'll always come back.
Manhwa
- In Totally Captivated, a deliriously sick Ewon tells Mookyul the reason he doesn't want to be in a relationship is because Mookyul is like the chocolate on top of a cake that he once stole because it looked so good but melted before he could ever eat it. Mookyul tries to convince him this is stupid and in this case Ewon can have his chocolate and eat it too.
Music
- In Paul and Storm's song "Your Love Is (Love Song With Metaphor)", the singer's love is variously (and nauseatingly) compared to a butterfly, a sailing ship, and a tiny puppy, while his partner's is respectively likened to an entomologist, smallpox, and Christopher Walken in The Deer Hunter.
Webcomics
Video Games
- HK-47 of Knights of the Old Republic has a very unusual definition of love:
"Definition: 'Love' is making a shot to the knees of a target 120 kilometers away using an Aratech sniper rifle with a tri-light scope... Love is knowing your target, putting them in your targeting reticule, and together, achieving a singular purpose against statistically long odds."
