We get back what shouldn't be gone! The recovery service with an (almost) 100% success rate!
A 1999 manga that was adapted into an anime in 2002, Get Backers focuses on Ban Mido and Ginji Amano, two superpowered pals who run a repossession service to help people get their lost stuff back. Ginji's body can generate a powerful electrical current, and Ban has both a two kilo-newton grip (look it up) and the "Evil Eye", which can induce powerful hallucinations through eye contact.They inevitably run into conflicts of interest (such as an equally superpowered "delivery service"), which they deal with by kicking ass. Though it starts out as a light-hearted shonen action series, it later took a sharp right turn into Cerebus Syndrome country with the Limitless Fortress arc.The anime was co-produced through Studio DEEN, who is famous for other series popular in America such as Fruits Basket, Ranma ½, and Rurouni Kenshin.Tokyopop has pulled a Dragonball Z and is releasing the second half of the series as Get Backers: Infinity Fortress, starting with volume 26 (we think, anyway). Volume 3 of Infinity Fortress has been canceled, as Tokyopop no longer has the license to continue the translation.Ban and friends appear in the Massive Multiplayer Crossover game, Sunday VS Magazine Shuuketsu Choujou Daikessen.This series has a character sheet. All character tropes should go there instead.
This manga/anime provides examples of:
Art Evolution (The manga has this going strong. Most dramatically Ginji and Himiko, but compare any pre-volume 9 character with a shot of them after volume 22 or so. The differences are amazing.)
Backstory (Practically all major characters and villains have more than one flashback throughout the series, constituting to very complicated backstories)
Badass Longcoat (Akabane. Ban (in the anime only) would fall under the "excessively long shirt" subset.)
Boat Lights: Characters possessing the Stigma have this effect, with the notable exception of the Voodoo King, who has Stigmas in all three of his eyes!
Boke and Tsukkomi Routine (Emishi & Amon/Shido, Ginji & Ban. A panel of Juubei tossing a needle into Saizou is captioned "Juubei's tsukkomi level up!")
Bishōnen (Most male characters in the anime. Specifically, Kazuki, who retains his bishounen status even in the manga.)
Bowdlerise: The manga-to-anime transition shows this to some extent — in the anime most of the ecchi scenes were completely removed, there's barely any bloodshed even during the most heated of battles, and Ban is definitely not a pervert.)
Canon Immigrant (Definitely Ujiie Kaoru and Sarai Kagenuma. Where exactly Masaki and Kanou fall on this scale is iffy: their first appearance in the Eternal Bond arc is very close to the anime's beginning.)
Cast Speciation (Somewhat averted. There are multiple blind characters, doctors, string-fighters and animal whisperers, but the last two are somewhat justified by being family skills.)
Catch Phrase (Ban's "Just one minute," and "Did you have a nice dream?" Also, Ginji's cheeful "I feel like I'm forgetting something..." (in regard to Akabane).)
Clothing Damage (Himiko, who gets all her clothes ripped off about five times per arc. Actually, ALL of the girls basically come under this as any time they fight, their clothes are off no matter what. To be fair, Ban occasionally suffers from this trope too)
Combat Sadomasochist (Takuma Fudou, who seems to love the pain he receives as much as the pain he deals out.)
Dangerous Forbidden Technique (EVERYONE has one of these around here. Ban may use his Jagan only 3 times a day, lest he suffer fatal consequences. Ginji becomes a megalomaniac if he strains himself. Akabane's weapons are made out of his own blood)
Fanservice (HEVN and Himiko and all the other random big breasted girls who show up wearing nothing but bras for no real reason. Partially suspended in final manga arc, where winter forces Hevn to get dressed properly—but introduces Maiya Kokuchouin, who is 13 and makes Hevn look positively shy.)
The Faceless - In the anime, whenever Raitei and the original Four Kings are shown in flashback, the 4th King, Kurusu Masaki is always hidden in shadow (Fridge Brilliance because he has the superhuman power to generate/manipulate light) and only his blackened silouhette is shown. This lasts until the first episode of the final story arc, where he is formally introduced.
Fermat's Last Theorem: Lucky, is given a problem like this to solve. The dog answers that it's unsolveable (x = "nothing"), which is what really clues Ban into the fact that the whole "genius dog" thing isn't a parlor trick... the dog's actually been infected with the same virus that caused apes to mutate into humans, the so-called "Missing Link Virus." It... doesn't make sense in context, but there is an explanation.
Foe Yay (Akabane and Ban/Ginji, no wonder Ginji gets so nervous when he's around. And taken Up to Eleven, there's the one-sided Takuma Fudou and Ban.)
Four is Death (Ginji's Four Kings and MakubeX's New Four Kings)
I Have the High Ground (Raitei and the Four Kings are often shown sitting or standing on large columns of rubble. A later filler episode has Emishi parody it, then Kazuki play it straight, then Emishi completely destroys Kazuki's coolness factor by bringing him into the parody as "the Beauty Warrior of love and good looks." Kazuki is not amused.)
Legacy Character (Ban and Ginji are the third generation of the Get Backers. The second gen was the trio who gave them their Subaru 360 and the "last piece" analogy. The first gen was Paul and Ban's father, der Kaiser.)
Master of Illusion (Makubex. Also Ban, to a lesser extent. And, to an even lesser extent, Kagami.)
McGuffin (Every single plot revolves around one of these. Subverted in second half of manga. Madoka pops up as a retrieval target. In the last arc, they are to retrieve Himiko, among other stuff.)
Murder the Hypotenuse (Takuma Fudou to Ginji, over Ban. Seriously. "When you're around, Midou doesn't even notice me. Midou's eyes are not on me... because you're in the way!")
Nakama (Just about everyone Ginji knows finds their way into a large, complicated nakama. Ban doesn't really like any of them, though, and professional obligations come first.)
Nuclear Weapons Taboo: Averted when an item to be delivered turns out to be a key nuclear bomb component.
Occult Blue Eyes: Midou Ban has almost preternaturally blue eyes, as well as being an actual case of association with witches, as noted above. He also has the ability to give the Evil Eye.
108 (Akabane. His scalpels number that many, to be accurate.)
One Steve Limit (Averted with Kaoru Haruki. Her surname is Emishi's given name, and her given name sounds identical to Kaoru Ujiie's, although they use different kanji. There's also Rena Sendou and Ren Radou.)
Orgasmic Combat (Takuma Fudou tends to have this, but only when he fights with Ban.)
Panty Shot (As often as possible, especially for Himiko.)
Parental Abandonment(Manga only. Lots, but somewhat mitigated by the fact that most of the characters are over 18 by the time the series starts. Let's see: After knowing that he's a freak, Ban's mom declared him a child of the devil (and this was after the father had placed a seal on it at birth.) He was then set loose at a tender age. For Kazuki, his family was killed by a rival clan, later revealed to have been helmed by his younger brother, who was given away at birth. Shido is the son of the leader of the Fuyuki tribe, but his parents were probably killed in the Kiryuudo war and he ran away to Mugenjou in his early teens because the Kiryuudo thought he was the one with the chimera. Natsumi's parents are dead. Makubex was abandoned as a baby and adopted (yet not named) by Gen. Himiko is an aborted fetus brought back to life, raised by her brother, and he's dead. Rena's father is dead, and her mother is emotionally distant, and her stepfather raped her. Madoka's parents are either dead or don't notice that their blind seventeen-year-old daughter has a twenty-one-year-old man & his animal posse shacking up with her, or that she was kidnapped by his enemies—but hey, it's a pretty Big Fancy House! As for Ginji, he's technically a created being. His mother, after her son's death, created Ginji in the alternate dimension which houses Mugenjou. Subverted by the Kakei siblings, who left home of their own will, against the advice of their father, and Toshiki Uryuu, who's illegitimate and ran away from home after either beating the crap out of or outright killing his younger-but-legitimate brother for the right of inheritance.)
Say My Name (Especially in the manga, where speech bubbles containing just names can fill up an entire page. BAAAAN-CHAAAAN!!! KAZU-CHAAAAN!!! Shido! Shido! Shido! Makubex! Makubex! Makubex! Juubei! Toshiki! Madoka! Hevn! Himiko! Ginji! '')
Stupid Sexy Flanders (Kazuki is this for both Ban and Ginji... as well as for other characters. There was even a part where both Ban and Ginji saw him bathing in the hot springs from the back, and tried to peek because they thought that they finally found a hot naked girl to spy on.)
Introdump (The first scene of the 'three transporters' is like this, as they have to call each other both by their actual names, and their professional monikers.)
Year Inside, Hour Outside: While the illusions of the Evil Eye last only moments, it seems that there's no limit on how long you can make someone think something is happening, allowing for very creative scenarios to be created.
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