Nothing Is Scarier / Anime & Manga

Examples of Nothing Is Scarier in Anime & Manga

Wait for it...

Creators:

• Junji Ito is an absolute grand master of this. All his intricately detailed horrors are prime Nightmare Fuel on their own, but really it is the suspenseful Monster Delay of nothing he creates, before each scare that makes just turning the page so dreadfully nerve wracking.
  • For example what makes “The Neighbour's Window” spine chilling is the set up to the Jump Scare: a kid moves into a new house where his room faces the only window of the neighbour’s house. At night he hears a woman’s voice eerily calling to him from next door saying she wants to see his face and looking out the window in the darkness he can make out the woman staring at him from her own and by the next panel BLAM! Nightmare Face. Ito could of have just hit us with the hag’s hideous face by page 2 but the set up is what makes it so disturbing. Worst still we don’t properly see the woman’s awful face again but we do see her hands and hear her voice as she tries to get into the boy’s room with her house grotesquely stretching to reach his window.
  • Similarly “The Fashion Model” is all in the build up to the scare (which itself is absolutely horrifying). The set up is mundane yet more unnerving for it, the protagonist Iwasaki (who’s already got a bad premonition something will happen) sees a model with a horrible face in a magazine and has a nasty fright when she’s on the next page too, as if she’s following him. In the following weeks he just can’t get the sight of the woman’s terrifying face out of his head. Just as he’s appeared to get over it and going through casting pictures for the student film he’s making with his friends the last picture is of the woman he saw in the magazine. Terrified, he’s against her being cast but his friends believe she’ll raise the profile of their film. When they meet the model Ms Fuchi she doesn’t actually do anything scary at first but her creepily tall appearance, ghastly face and ever-staring eyes freaks Iwasaki out. Even then there’s no hint of anything supernatural… until the car ride to the filming location where while laughing Fuchi reveals her Scary Teeth and even that’s not enough to prepare the reader for what comes next.
  • The Enigma of Amigara Fault is probably Ito’s greatest display of this. The story is that a boy Owaki, and a girl, Yoshida, meet on Amigara Mountain, where an unsettling discovery has been made. An earthquake has created a huge fault in the mountain, and human-shaped holes are scattered across the face of the fault line. It soon becomes clear that the holes are "calling" to the people they are shaped like. Unlike so many of his other stories the horror here is mostly psychological, as the human holes are so clearly unnatural and no there’s no explanation of where they came from. The terror is just the dread of what happens if Owaki and Yoshida were to enter their own holes when they can no longer resist . Turns out quite a lot of Nightmare Fuel Claustrophobia tunnels and Body Horror by the time Owaki comes out the other side.
  • Uzumaki has tons of scares and deeply horrifying chapters, yet the beginning of the manga which (comparatively) contains the least amount of gut wrenching horror and a lot of nothing, still manages to be deeply unsettling and frightening. It simply starts with the heroine Kirie walking back home from her high school yet there’s something amiss in the air. After witnessing some Weird Weather she notices that a man is crouched down in an dark alley staring◊ at a wall or more specifically a spiral snail shell on it. She thinks the man might be her boyfriend Shuichi‘s father which is later confirmed by Shuichi himself who reveals his father is obsessed with spirals to an incredibly disturbing amount. Shuichi confesses that he hates being in the town which leaves him with a sinking feeling of dread he can’t quite explain with even the sound of the town’s foghorn burrowing painfully into his head. By the time Shuichi‘s father gives Kirie and the reader a deeply unpleasant taste of the spiral-themed horrors which are upcoming, you’re already fully primed to be scared.
  • What makes Tomie so unnerving is this. On the surface there’s nothing frightening about her she’s simply an extremely beautiful dark-haired girl… until something inevitably wounds or damages her and she reveals herself to be a Humanoid Abomination that spreads like a disease. A lot of her stories begin with her just looking normal and attractive and the terror is just waiting for the other shoe to drop. Hell even the chapters where Tomie isn’t immediately displaying her monstrous side like the “Photograph” are still deeply unnerving. Such as when Izumisawa angers Tomie by showing the Spooky Photographs of her, Tomie drops all her usual radiance and just wants Izumisawa dead with the former having to hide from Tomie and her devotees. The threat here is initially just dreadful implication and all the more frightening for it.

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Specific works

• Justified in the Anime adaption of Another. The person that was supposed to tell the main character everything was out sick for his first day. The result is the main character is just as scared as the viewer is for several episodes. This is lampshaded several times.
• Berserk being a Dark Fantasy with abundance of horror elements has multiple chilling moments of this.
  • Guts’s Incubus-induced Nightmare Sequence early in the Black Swordsman arc is him stuck naked at the bottom of a stone chasm with water going up to his ankles. He’s running from something behind him as his shadow on the wall grows frightening, Guts then impales his foot on spikes that now stand up from the water as he hears a ripple in the water behind him and turns to see a massive Fetus Terrible, his son rearing up — then he wakes up and kills the Incubus.
  • The build up to Zodd in both the manga and 90s anime is an excellent example of this. The usually unstoppable Band of the Hawks are raiding a castle but their troops have suffered heavy casualties to apparently just one soldier, at which Judeau says he heard a rumour “Noseferatu Zodd” was part of the enemy forces — news that makes Casca, Ricket and Corkus react in shock and for Ricket to explain The Dreaded warrior to Pippin though Corkus claims it’s only a fairy tale. Guts outside the castle is fuming and trying to get inside as his men hold him back, a Hawks soldier Dillos staggers out of the entryway missing an arm and with his last breath proclaims it’s “Zodd”, at which Guts finally ventures inside. Guts finds the castle dark, empty and absolutely littered with bodies, their faces frozen in terror and blood everywhere. Guts hears a scream further on and drawing his BFS runs into the waiting dark — then stops stricken at the horrible sight of a pile of mangled bodies with twisted faces and Zodd himself, a towering monster man who’s holding two impaled soldiers up by his sword. While there’s many other terrifying antagonists introduced in the series, seldom as effectively as done here.
  • While ultimately a case of Creepy Good, Skull Knight’s introduction strongly invokes this. Guts has just defeated Griffith in a duel leaving the Band and is now camping out in the wilderness alone. Despite his usual Nerves of Steel Guts can’t help but feel an unease bordering on fear and starts at the noise of a fox among the trees. He realises this is the first night he’s been completely on his own in three years since he joined the Band and opened up his shell to people and is feeling the vast dark isolation. Just as he’s pondering his decision the fog becomes heavy and Guts feels something looming over him and drawing his BFS spins around to find — nothing behind him. Guts only remembers sensing this kind of presence once before when he met the aforementioned Zodd and realises to his horror whatever he’s encountered has somehow blindsided him with Guts feeling it directly behind him, stunned with fear Guts feels if he moves it will kill him but ducking the supposed blow, he pivots and slashes out with his sword, to again nothing. Guts then sees a skeleton face in the fog laden darkness as the Skull Knight fully revealing himself calmly and cryptically talks to him. He reveals that he knows everything about Guts and his upcoming tragedies.
  • Ricket’s encounter with the Apostles on the eve before the Eclipse pulls this off chillingly (both in the manga and 1997 anime). At first it’s just a peaceful scene of him with some of the other waiting Hawks, all excited to see Griffith again. Ricket goes off on his own to draw water from the lake but across the water he spots a fairy-like being (Rosine) which soars over his head and through the trees. Amazed, Ricket then hears a cry back at the camp and panicking runs back to the camp, only to find darkness, snuffed-out bonfires and nobody in sight◊. Ricket wanders around in the darkness trying to figure out where everyone has gone until he starts at a faint voice and an eerie sight — one of the Hawks Kim, dangling upside down and telling him to run… as a Nightmare Face looms above him and the next panels reveal Kim is held in jaws of a monstrous slug creature (The Count) who eats him whole. Ricket too scared to even move, notices blood at his feet and turns to see three insect monsters perched over the mangled corpses of his friends and the fairy insect girl in the trees above him ordering them to kill again. Thankfully Big Good Skull Knight appears Just in Time to save Ricket’s bacon and scare them off.
  • Griffith’s rescue in the Tower of Rebirth is similarly effective despite there being no monsters. At this point the heroes Guts, Casca, Judeau and Pippin have infiltrated Wyndham at night and thanks to princess Charlotte gotten to the tower without any trouble where they learn Griffith is held at the lowest level. In the tower they descend a shadowy Absurdly Long Stairway deeper and deeper into the earth as Charlotte explains that the hole is actually older than Wyndham itself having the remains of the Lost World at its bottom, the eeriness only intensifies when Casca bumps her head on a stone and accidentally drops her torch into the abyss and we follow its fall past ancient statues and very Malevolent Architecture landing among many corpses branded with the mark of sacrifice. Guts then hears something behind them, but sees nothing, although as they walk away a silhouette can be seen on the stairs. They reach Griffith’s cell at the bottom and entering find it pitch dark◊ and seemingly empty◊… until their torchlight reveals Griffith on the floor almost unrecognisable◊ from torture. There’s a bloody fight and escape soon afterwards, which is frankly a blessed relief compared to the proceeding unknown.
  • The build up to the Eclipse itself is spine chilling and full of gut-wrenching dread (especially for the readers who know what’s coming next) despite there initially being nothing overtly supernaturally horrifying about the scene. In fact, it seems at first peaceful and calm. After escaping Midland and defeating Wyald, the Band now despairingly try and decide what they do next with their once great leader now a lame disfigured mute. Griffith in a cart overhears hears Guts and a tearful Casca saying he should leave to pursue his dream. Griffith stricken with emotions and hallucinating his former self, dream, childhood and crippled future drives the cart away and crashes into a river with the Hawks chasing after him. Laying in the water, Griffith has his Despair Event Horizon and Laughing Mad attempts to kill himself on a branch but only cuts his neck slightly. Then in the water Griffith discovers his Behelit, come back to him at last and raises it up. Guts, Casca, Judeau, Pippin, Corkus and the rest of the Hawks rush to the river just as a solar eclipse happens overhead. Griffith squirms away from the approaching Guts his thought bubbles wanting him to stay away just as Guts notices◊ hundreds of naked, shadowy people standing in the water behind Griffith. The Band questions who they are with Guts feeling a chill of dread understands immediately they are dangerous. Jumping off his own cart, Guts rushes to Griffith who is overcome internally pleading for Guts not to touch him. As Guts does so, Griffith’s blood activates the Behelit which screams and the whole world changes around them into a hellscape. What happens next is the greatest and most agonising Nightmare Fuel in the series.
  • The Lost Children Arc indulges in a bit of this early on, as besides some depraved bandits and a monster tree at the very start we don’t actually see the Monster of the Week Rosine until a couple of chapters in when the bandits flee the scene and come across Rosine and her “fairies” but it cuts away to Guts and Jill before we can see what happens to them (we do later and it’s horrific). It gets more unsettling later, as during a lull in the action it becomes clear the village is terrified of fairies as Jill describes how they eat livestock, attack people and carry off children. Guts then feels his Brand start to bleed as something drifts across the horizon. At first the “fairies” seems like just a bunch of lights… until they reduce a dog along with cows and pigs to Ludicrous Gibs and tearing at doors with them finally being revealed as they enter a family’s house and butcher a mother and father in front of their young son.
    • Guts’ first appearance in the arc is a case of this too, the bandits are just about to kill Jill when a burdock comes out of nowhere and stings the bandit’s hands. They peer into the darkness seeing nothing…◊ before a Lightning Reveal shows◊ Guts was resting there the whole time watching them, Jill even thinks he’s a ghost.
• All the episodes of Kagewani show scenes that something is hunting down civilians from out of nowhere. Near the end of each episode, it shows a reveal that a cryptid chooses to reveal itself.
• In the early part of Shiki, a lot of the horror comes from the fact that nobody in universe or out has any way of knowing who or when the vampires will attack next—instead characters just mysteriously develop anemia and before their friends and family can do anything sensible, they're dead.
• The last few episodes of Neon Genesis Evangelion. Due to the budget starting to really run low, many scenes are dragged out beyond what appears reasonable. This includes a short moment during End of Evangelion, when Shinji finds the destroyed Unit-02, and we get treated to multiple very gory shots. Or in EOE, when Asuka is lying in the water, repeatedly saying "I don't want to die". That shot alone lasts for just about a minute, while the camera is slowly zooming in on Unit-02... It's creepy as hell. Interestingly, the Gainax production team (including Anno himself) have remarked in interviews that their supposedly infamous money-saving sequences are intentionally done for genuinely artistic reasons like building tension, while the former reason is just a happy by-product.
• Dragon Ball:
  • Probably the most chilling and sad example of this in the entire franchise, is in episode 101 “The Fallen” the end of the 22nd Tenkaichi Budoukai arc and the opening to the Piccolo Daimao arc and the greatest case of Mood Whiplash. Tien has won the tournament by a hair’s breadth and become friends with the heroes alongside Chiaotzu. The gang go to a restaurant to celebrate but Goku realises he left his dragon ball and power poll. Krillin says he’ll go get them and as he hurries off Goku tells him to wait and Krillin turns back to hear what Goku has to say — followed by a prolonged and unsettling pause before Goku just says “See you soon” much to everyone’s amusement. As everyone goes inside Goku watches Krillin depart with unease and at the dinner while the gang gets sick of waiting and digs in, Goku has a terrible feeling and the room distorting around him he rushes out of the restaurant and back to the tournament… to find Krillin dead on the ground. It’s a startling Genre Shift in the manga as well but the sheer ominous and quiet dread of the anime version is far more frightening.
    • Roshi’s reaction to the piece of paper by Krillin’s corpse is also a case of this as the old man is filled with terror. It’s just a simple kanji of 魔 pronounced “ma” and meaning "demon" but we soon learn first hand what terror this spells for the world.
  • Also from the Piccolo Daimao arc in the anime there’s the quest for the Ultra Divine Water which provides a spectacularly chilling example of this with the Cave of Darkness. To find the power up to beat Piccolo, Korin informs Goku and Yajirobe the water is kept in a cavernous labyrinth beneath an icy wasteland, many adventurers have tried to navigate its long winding tunnels only to get lost and starve to death. Through a magic pot, Goku and Yajirobe are able to make it there and after escaping from some ice monsters just spend the rest of the episode going through a very dark, very scary cave with for the most part no foes to impede them which if anything just makes things more unnerving. Then there’s the moment where Goku is separated from Yajirobe and finds Kami House in the cave, with his all friends inside, who tell Goku to stay with them… in creepy high-pitched and echoey voices. Keep in mind the anime in general is lighthearted and goofy so this shift into suspenseful horror is startling to say the least, not to mention when Goku and Yajirobe do finally meet Darkness rather just popping out at them, they find themselves in a greater cavern with a inky pool, where this thing slowly emerges.
  • The build up and introduction to Cell is probably the most suspenseful case of this in the series especially in the anime. The Z-Fighters are currently spending all their attention on the threat of the Androids, doing their best to keep Goku safe as he recovers from the Heart Virus while Vegeta laments his defeat and Piccolo goes to Kami to fuse back together with him. However Kami reveals something is amiss as he can sense a worse threat than the Androids out there. Around the same time Trunks learns a Capsule Corp vehicle that resembles his Time Machine has been spotted. Trunks along with his mother Bulma and Gohan investigate finding a exact duplicate time machine covered in moss and cracked open as though something has blasted out of it and they find weird coconut-like egg shells on the seat, Trunks checking the ship’s logs is shocked to learn the Time Machine landed four years ago. Gohan alerts them to another find an exoskeleton of some disgusting looking bug creature which freaks Bulma out. Back at Kami House the Z-Fighters watching the news at Bulma’s prompting learn that the population of Gingertown has just vanished and watch footage of a reporter and film crew trying to make sense of the empty streets. Then there’s the sound of screaming far off and the reporter has a look of horror on his face as the camera goes to Snowy Screen of Death briefly before coming back to show an empty street littered with clothes. Leaving the Z-Fighters both confused and unsettled.
  • Piccolo arriving in Gingertown before meeting Cell face to face is the epitome of this in the anime. Landing Piccolo scans the city which is bright and sunny but there’s not a single soul in sight, empty cars litter the street along with clothes and firearms. As Piccolo walks along the quiet streets, the camera cuts to a dark alley and we see something moving but only the shadow that it casts on a wall is visible, Piccolo faces the alley as a parasol rolls out of the darkness like tumbleweed and we get a different shot of a wall with a leaking faucet that drips ominously before a horrifying insectoid shadow moves across the wall. Piccolo’s eyes continue to dart around searching while the wind rustles the trees before he hears a twig snap and turns around to see the bio-monster. Worth noting at this point Piccolo is now stronger than he’s ever been with Cell being then no real threat to him — yet Imperfect Cell is so spine chilling and his build up so effective, that you can’t help but feel scared for the Namekian faced with this terrifying new threat, which at that point feels unknowable and strange.
  • A similar moment happens later on when we cut to the prospective of a nameless Action Survivor in Nicky Town, a single guard with an assault rifle who is waiting in front of a door for Cell. The audience is well aware at this point that Guns Are Worthless in this setting and without any Z-Fighters there to save the day this poor guy is just going to die horribly to Cell’s absorbing tail. This makes it all the more harrowing that Cell doesn’t just kill the guy straight away rather we see from the man’s perspective as he stares at the door opening into a dark and empty hallway, panting and gripping his gun while the News Broadcaster on the TV unhelpfully prattles on… just before Cell bursts down from the ceiling to absorb him.
• Invoked in a very unique fashion towards the end of the first volume of My Lovely Ghost Kana. Five pages of pure black with only a short paragraph of text on two of them. In context, it is a scary, tear-inducing moment of anxiety before finding out which sort of ending is coming - happy, sad, or downright devastating.
• Naruto:
  • During the Forest of Death exam, Anko is called in to see three dead genin, who have had their faces stolen. We never see their empty faces, we're just told that they look smooth and flat, like they melted away.
  • Subverted in episode 65. Gaara is on his way to his fight with Sasuke, only to run into two men who tell him that their superior has placed a bet on Sasuke and he needs to lose. As this was before his Heel–Face Turn, Gaara proceeds to kill them. We hear nothing but his footsteps getting louder and louder as he then walks down the hall and approaches the stairs, where Shikamaru and Naruto are. They and the audience are fully expecting Gaara to kill them or at least attack them, but he doesn't do anything. He just walks past them as if they aren't even there. It is terrifying.
• Chainsaw Man: As one might expect from a series where the titular hero kills people with chainsaws growing out of his arms and face, 90% of the fights are spectacularly over-the-top and often darkly humorous brawls with stylish superpowers and hideously grotesque monsters, punctuated by spectacular geysers of blood. Which makes it all the more jarring to see all that violence brought to a screeching halt in the International Assassins arc when all the assembled main characters are teleported to Hell, which is depicted as an eerily bright and lush green field with not a single living thing larger than an ant in sight. The previously brawling sides declare a truce when they notice the Fiends and Devils are all groaning in pain or outright panicking because the Primal Fears are coming. Watching the previously haughty or unflappable Fiends stunned silent in terror or begging to be granted permission to commit suicide rather than confront the Primal Fears is incredibly unnerving and cranks up the suspense to unbearable levels even before a door opens in the sky, a single blob of darkness falls to the ground like rain, the entire environment turns pitch-black instantly, and, in one of the most iconic panels in the entire series, the hazy, indistinct form of the Darkness Devil appears at the end of a corridor of bisected astronaut corpses praying to their own severed lower halves. Unlike many examples of this trope, the payoff is equally terrifying as the buildup when the enemy is finally revealed, as it immediately proceeds to dismember everyone present and massacre half of those who survived in seconds.

Nothing at all

• Serial Experiments Lain is also fond of this, the whole show sweats with creepiness even in the most casual scenes.
  • Less systematic, but still present to some extent in its spiritual successor Ghost Hound. For instance, we know Taro and his sister Mizuka were kidnapped as children and that Mizuka died as a result, but during flashbacks we never see the kidnapper's face or actually learn what killed Mizuka.
• Boogiepop Phantom: the Deliberately Monochrome and False Camera Effects make the entire show look like some insane nightmare.
• Dragon Ball Z:
  • While we see what it's like from the point of view of Buu's victims, no one knows what happens to the androids and other innocent people after they are absorbed by Cell. In the anime though when Imperfect Cell powers up against Piccolo and 17 we do see screaming spectral faces and glimpses of his agonised victims in his Battle Aura — suggesting some truly horrific fate.
  • The Hyperbolic Time Chamber though incredibly useful is definitely an example of this. It’s a Blank White Void that stretches on for seemingly forever and Mr Popo outright warns the Z-Fighters not to wander too far from the entrance, lest they want to get lost and get trapped in a empty void. In the Buu Saga, Piccolo in a desperation move destroys the entrance to trap Super Buu in the chamber, it’s clear none of the four characters like the idea of being trapped in the place with Buu forced to unleash a Super-Scream that rips a hole in the chamber’s dimension allowing him to escape the void while Gotenks is able to replicate the feat. The anime of the Cell Saga managed to make the Hyperbolic Time Chamber even more disturbing with it being a Eldritch Location that can change temperature drastically and then go back to normal just as quickly, on top of psychically project someone’s mind as seen with Vegeta or give terrible nightmares as seen with Gohan.
• Possibly unintentional, but there is a certain uncanny air to Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou's harmonious, post-apocalyptic setting. It is caused by a combination of the unexplained mysteries regarding the androids, humanoid fungi and feral beings that populate the world, and the apparent lack of purpose they seem to have (despite presumably them originally having one). The suspense comes just from the endless waiting for them to reveal why they are here.
• In Brynhildr in the Darkness, there are three buttons on a device implanted in the back of the neck of every "magician" (read:test subject). This acts as a collar, so it is expected, but it is their functions that are extremely creepy. One button acts as a suppressant for their powers. Another kills them and does so in an extremely gory fashion. The third is unknown to everyone and is implied to be a Fate Worse than Death, so no one even dares to find out what it does. The third button has different results for different people. For Kana, it removed her powers semi-permanently but also removed her paralysis. For Neko Kuroha, it allowed her to use her powers to their full potential.
• Berserk:
  • The epitome of Nothing At All in the series is the tortured Griffith’s face. The Depraved Dwarf jailer and torturer cut Griffith’s tendons, flayed his skin and cut off his tongue all of which has of course badly affected Griffith’s beautiful body but the disfigurement to his bishie face in the manga remains unseen — due to his hawk helmet (stuck on him as a sick joke) covering his head. Guts and Judeau unscrew the helmet to look at Grittith’s face◊ and despite being both hardened mercenaries react in horror◊. Guts even tells Casca to stay back and not come any closer when she steps forward to look herself, suggesting a horrific amount of Facial Horror. Keep in mind the series absolutely does not shy away from grisly imagery, making Miura’s rare restraint in this instance all the more unnerving. Averted in the art book for Berserk: The Golden Age Arc which shows Griffith’s disfigured face in full detail, which while gruesome isn’t nearly as chilling of the manga version which leaves it up to the reader’s imagination to fill in the horrible blank.
  • This trope is very well utilised in Chapter 347 where the elf queen Danan takes Farnese, Schierke and the invalid Casca on a Dream Land Journey to the Center of the Mind. Farnese and Schierke’s dreamscapes are comical and lighthearted while Casca’s surface thoughts are like a child’s drawing, when Farnese and Schierke are guided to go deeper into Casca’s subconscious the next and final page is devoid of any characters◊, just a black cloud Alien Sky with an all too familiar solar eclipse. The fairy flowers petals of Danan only make the sparse sight more disturbing. The next chapter also invokes this as we see Casca’s mindscape is initially just a barren wasteland that Farnese and Schierke have to trek through.
• The final challenge Toriko must face before reaching the Bubble Fruit is a simple path lined with bubbles. Toriko starts trembling when he realizes that there is absolutely nothing else on the path. No dangerous beasts, no deadly traps...and no food or water anywhere.
• In Attack on Titan chapter 38, the soldiers trying to locate the breach at night express the fear that Titans could be anywhere nearby and they wouldn't know until it's too late due to the tiny pool of light provided by their torches.
• Soul Eater:
  • One of the scariest anime scenes is when Medusa's cronies enter the tomb of Asura, who had to be sealed away after he went mad and turned into a demon. The heroes have been fighting desperately to try and prevent Asura's rebirth, but just when the tension is highest, we are faced with a vast, shadowy room, completely silent but for the occasional clinking of chains, and Asura, waiting somewhere up ahead.
  • Asura himself qualifies for this. Despite being the Big Bad, and a near-constant threat due to his madness infecting the world, he barely ever makes an appearance. It's eventually revealed that he's been hiding on the Moon the whole time, watching...
  • Then when the heroes learn of this and track him down, descending deeper and deeper into the bowels of the Moon, until they can sense his presence right in front of them... there's no one there. Just darkness. Then, comes the sound of a heartbeat.
• An in universe example from Pluto. When the authorities examined the human-killer robot (and Expy of Hannibal Lecter) Brau 1589 for the malfunction that caused him to avert Three Laws Compliance, what did they find? Nothing. There was no error in his programming and thus nothing to suggest that any other robot couldn't do the same. As a result of the latter implication, the authorities are too afraid to even kill him until they can discover how this is possible.

There all along!

• In the manga adaptation of Yume Nikki, notice how the eye on Madotsuki's sweatshirt logo keeps shifting positions. What purpose this serves is seen in Chapter 4, which it carries Madotsuki's effects with her.
• A good examples from Tiger Mask: when telling of Mr. Chi's first appearance intruding in a battle royal to choose the challenger for a wrestling world championship and crushing everyone, Baba relates that Mr. Chi didn't run and jump in, he just walked on the ring and looked the match for a while before anyone noticed him. Between this and the Curb-Stomp Battle he inflicted on two dozens wrestlers three or four times his size, Baba is comprehensibly terrified of him.

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