Nanomachines / Anime & Manga

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• The Fleet of Fog's ships (and their mental models) in Arpeggio of Blue Steel are assembled and repaired using nanomachines. The stuff's capable of mimicking organic matter down to the cellular level or creating nigh-indestructible battleships. Reverts to harmless silver sand when damaged/deactivated. Where it all comes from is one of the enduring mysteries of the series.
• Battle Angel Alita:
  • Dr. Desty Nova is a specialist in nanotechnology and uses nanomachines to do almost everything — from healing almost any wound to making pudding out of trash. The manga even features an extra section about the subject.
  • During the ZOT, we learn that Mercury is a Grey Goo ball.
• Taken to quite an extreme in Black Cat. One of the main characters, Eve, is a bioweapon of sorts who has several nanomachines inside her body that allows her to morph at will. This includes, but is not limited to, sprouting wings, turning her own skin into steel, transforming her hair into massive fists and, most notably, turning into a mermaid.
• In Blassreiter, Amalgams/Demoniacs are created by nanomachines.
• In A Certain Magical Index, Aleister Crowley uses nanomachines called UNDER_LINE to analyze everything in Academy City, explaining his Surveillance as the Plot Demands. Kakine Teitoku uses a Tricked Out Glove called the Pincet Glove to capture an UNDERLINE bot and reverse engineer it.
• In The Dark Queen and I Strike Back, Diedhauser has nanomachines which give him a potent Healing Factor and the ability to self-destruct.
• In Deadman Wonderland, the Branch of Sin powers come from femtomachines called the Nameless Worm.
• In GaoGaiGar FINAL, Palparepa uses nanomachines during his fight with Guy. After taking some damage from them, Guy uses his Evoluder abilities to rewrite the nanomachines and send them back at Palparepa. However, instead of weakening him, the nanomachines have the unforeseen effect of making Palparepa cross the Bishōnen Line.
• Getter Robo hand waves its Transforming Mecha in the Armageddon OVA by attributing the transformations to nanomachines.
• In Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, nanomachines are widely used. In the first season, one of the potential treatments for cyberbrain sclerosis is based on nanomachines (although it isn't very effective). One episode also mentions that nanomachines are used to counteract air pollution. 2nd GIG introduces the "Japanese Miracle", a nanomachine-based technology for neutralizing radioactive fallout from nuclear explosions. However, due to being written before "nano" became a popular buzzword, they're called micro-machines.
• Gundam loves its nanomachines.
  • Nanomachines were first introduced in "Cyber Newtype Story: MAD WANG 1160", set in an alternate timeline of the Universal Century. By UC 1160, humans have begun colonization of the Maliky Way and nanomachines are used in almost everything from space stations, ships, Armed Material (the future replacement of Mobile Suits) and even weapons such as Molecular Weapons, which use nanomachines within the ammo to create a magnetic field to counter electromagnetic shielding of enemy units.
  • Mobile Fighter G Gundam's Devil Gundam has nanomachines known as DG Cells known for their three primary properties: repair, revival, and regeneration. DG Cells can infect living beings and turn them into willing servants; it can even resurrect the dead, as its Mecha Mooks are piloted by reanimated skeletons. Its creator intended for it to heal the damaged Earth, but after crash-landing its programming went nuts and decided to Kill All Humans.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam Wing mentions nanomachines in its world-building material, saying that creating the nigh-indestructible Gundanium alloy requires that level of fine precision. The sequel novel Frozen Teardrop uses them much more extensively, to the point where critics mockingly compared it to Metal Gear Solid.
  • The ∀ Gundam and Turn X's powerful Moonlight Butterfly attacks work by releasing technology-destroying nanomachines; since there's an implied link between the Turn X and the Devil Gundam (mentioned above), these nanomachines might be a development of the DG Cells.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam 00 uses nanomachines to explain why the crew of Ptolemaios can stay in space for extended periods of time and not suffer bone density loss and so on. They are also the explanation, together with genetic modification, on why Innovades like Tieria do not age.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans: Nanomachines are said to be part of the Alaya-Vijnana interface, which provides a double meaning to the "Iron-Blooded" in the title. They also use medical nanomachines.
• Foo Fighters from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean is a unique character: while she does all the things that a nanomachine-creature can do, such as healing herself and others and morphing her body to suit her needs (she has a literal handgun), she's actually a Stand-enhanced colony of plankton.
• Kiddy Grade bases a lot of technology on "Nano-mist" — a fog made up of trillions of nano-scale machines, which can achieve amazing effects — from keeping a 64-thousand-kilometer-long starship from collapsing under its own mass, to creating a barrier, to repairing damage, to terraforming a planet. Also known as utility fog. However, it was suggested in-story (and confirmed in the sequel) that the ES members' abilities are not nanomachine-powered, but in fact seem to be actual (possibly Clarkian) magic.
• In Martian Successor Nadesico, exposure to terraforming nanomachines has an interesting effect on humans born on Mars. "Image Feedback System" nanomachines are also used to interface with various machinery. On Mars, IFS nanomachines are required for pretty much any heavy equipment, but on Earth, they serve only as the Unusual User Interface for Humongous Mecha and other military vehicles. This leads to Martian civilian Akito getting a lot of flak from Earth-natives who assume that he's a military deserter, and eventually getting press-ganged into piloting.
• The Otome from My-Otome receive their powers via nanomachine injections; they self-destruct when the female body's injected with semen.
• After suffering life-threatening brain damage that left her semi-paralyzed for months, Ai from Planetes finally get better after a long treatment involving nanomachines reconstructing neural pathways and such.
• In Rebuild World, nanomachines are omnipresent, used in potent Lost Technology scavengers like the protagonist Akira search for in ruins of cities After the End. He frequently uses medicine consisting of nanomachines, that he can either pour on a wound or take pre-emptively before he inevitably gets injured, such as when his Virtual Sidekick Alpha uses his Powered Armor to move him like a People Puppet, covering him in injuries. For Akira as well as most everyone else living in the slums as part of his MegaCorp run society's Extreme Speculative Stratification, they eat free food created by dodgy lost technology relics often leaving them filled with nanomachines. Both this food and the medicine leave dead nanomachines behind in the blood stream, making medicines less effective over time and leading to death unless a procedure is regularly undertaken at a hospital to remove them.
• Viluy from Sailor Moon attacks with nanomachines. After one of Sailor Moon's attacks causes them to malfunction, they turn on their creator.
• The Science Ninja Team Gatchaman episode "The Particle Iron Beast Micro-Saturn" has tiny bugs coated in lead. They cover buildings, making it appear there's no radiation; later, they pull together to become a giant bug. Once it has hold of the Godphoenix, the bugs drop loose and start chowing down on the hull. They have to go to Hinotori to melt the things.
• Sky Girls has nanomachines as the focus of the entire story. Monster of the Week? Nanomachines originally built to cure medical problems gone rogue. Pilots wearing Latex Space Suit? They are protected by nanomachine armor that only lasts ten^note or twenty-nine, depending on which version you're watching minutes. The weapons that the Sonic Divers carry? They are all nanomachine bullets.
• Strike Witches features the alien Grey Goo version of this as all of the Monsters of the Week.
• Yami from To Love Ru apparently gets her powers from nanomachines, as expected of an Eve-expy. Her 'younger sister', Mea Kurosaki, has the same powers.
• In Trinity Blood, the Crusniks are super-powered über-vampires who feed on vampire blood. They transform from human form into Crusnik by activating the nanomachines in their blood.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! OCG Stories: Zard injected Azalea and Camellia with nanobots that allow him to monitor and painfully shock them to keep them under control. Azalea electrifies herself to short out her nanobots, allowing her to defeat Zard. However, she then grabs the remote and uses the shocks to enslave Camellia.

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