Serial Escalation / Anime & Manga

"I'm sure we all remember the days when Naruto had tactical, down-to-earth fights back before Madara started dropping the odd meteors over an army of fucking ninjas. Or, hell, before the universe-threatening fights, the Dragon Ball manga started off with general martial arts tournaments. You end up looking at the stark contrast between earlier and later fights to think "Wow, how the hell did we get here?"

— Gigguk, "How to Fix Shonen Anime's Biggest Problem"

Serial Escalation in Anime & Manga.

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• Yuri!!! on Ice: Just how many of the fans' wishes can the creators make to come true? How much more intense can the gay relationship between Yuuri and Victor get? How much higher can the skaters score?
• Air Gear is no stranger to this. Starting out, it's crazy cool tricks like wall riding and shooting compressed air out of one's rollerblades that dominate the series. Later on though, making tornadoes with your bare hands, accessing the tricks of others via futuristic software, or combining roads to make insane hybrids of other roads, i.e wind and gem road equal the jade road, take the place of once plausible tricks in favor of asinine tricks that could never be achieved in a million years.
• Black Clover begins with Asta and Yuno dealing with local Eye of the Midnight Sun terrorist threats and competing to become the Wizard King. Then it degenerated into dealing with the group leader, Licht/Patry who seemingly kills the Wizard King and unleashes hordes of reincarnated elves that possess the Clover Kingdom's Magic Knights to wreck havoc, cumulating into dealing with a Manipulative Bastard of a devil. Then the Dark Triad invades and tries to unleash Hell on Earth through releasing the gates of hell, with each sibling of the Triad and their supreme devils being the most awful, monstrous people encountered as of date. After they and their supreme devils are all taken down, it all ends here, right? Wrong! At this time the Wizard King rears his ugly head to reveal himself as the eldest brother of the Dark Triad, a literal supervillain who manipulated pretty much everyone (including his siblings) to grant him the power equal to a God so he can unleash a Holy War that purges all of humanity and revives them as angelic beings.
• Bokurano is often remembered as one of the most brutal and depressing, yet life-affiming, manga ever made. The story begins innocently enough: During a summer camp, 15 middle-school children are given the opportunity to ride a robot and defend the Earth against alien monsters. However, they would soon find out that this is neither a game, nor their actions heroic. In order to control this robot, the pilot must give away their life in exchange. So each child only gets to perform a kamikaze once to protect the Earth. (Not that anyone is envy to be in their position.) And once you agree to pilot the robot, you cannot cancel the contract. In short, by the end of the story, all 15 kids will die. No magic will bring them back to life. Of course, almost all the pilots have a mental breakdown before their battle, and quickly learn to reassess the life they are living.
  • The story, of course, ramps up the brutality and depression with each passing chapter. Once a pilot's story ends, short as it may be, you would think the next one cannot match in terms of quality. Of course, given that the longer a character lives, the more development he/she gets, this almost always happens.
  • Bokurano almost reaches its peak of cruelty when the author forces a fourth-grader girl to quote-unquote "defend the Earth". Yet ironically, that is still not the most brutal thing he could have pulled for the story. Having said that, by putting these youngsters in such cruel situations, the story can go into very meaningful existential discussions. About what it means to live, and what we should do so that our lives are meaningful. The last battle is probably the cruelest of them all, yet compassionate all the same.
• Pretty much the entirety of 7 Seeds. It starts off After the End and the characters, after they spend several chapters running from danger that includes almost drowning, carnivorous insect swarms and crocodiles, learn that Everybody's Dead, Dave. It gets worse in that they keep finding new, dangerous places that try to kill them, diseases that are unknown to them and we even have flashback chapters that prove that things before the Apocalypse weren't all that great either, including an institution that is built solely for the fact of training teenagers for the worlds after the Apocalypse... by killing them, drugging them, make them paranoid about everything, punishments that involve being hung upside for hours or swim among bones and blood and in general be jerks to them. And the series keeps going, hammering in all the more that everyone aside from them is likely dead and encounter more ruins.
• Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann:
  • Every single fight scene is cooler and more awesome than the last. And if you thought that's enough, in the second movie, they go one step further! It gets to a point where you realize that having the Humongous Mecha pilot another Humongous Mecha, which happens to be the moon is just par for the course. For reference, here is a video that illustrates the size of the titular mecha. And, if you take the movies as canon, this is not even the biggest one in the franchise. That one is one hundred times larger.
  • It has been said that Super Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is 1.8% the size of the observable universe. To give you an idea of how inconceivably large that is, according to the numbers on the observable universe from The Other Wiki, STTGL has a volume of about 7.38 × 10³⁰ light years cubed.
    • As if it wasn't big enough, the drill it produces in the final fight is more than a hundred times the size of the STTGL itself. So the weapon alone is larger than the entire universe. And of course, the anti-spirals manage to match it by procuring a drill of their own of equal size.
    • To be fair, these events occur in a pocket universe separate from our own, though it is implied it is the same size.
  • Not only the sheer size, but also the abilities and massive firepower of the Mechs as the series goes on.
• Much like TTGL before it, Kill la Kill is pretty much a straight uphill slope, it just keeps getting crazier and crazier and cooler and cooler.
• Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Rebellion, a manga retelling of Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory has the Adzam Repair, a cross between an Adzam from Mobile Suit Gundam and the Apsalus from Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team.
• Mobile Fighter G Gundam can probably be considered its predecessor in many aspects, but doesn't get nearly as far. They finished with a robot the size of, or rather made out of, a space colony that is apparently the size of Japan. They more than make up for it by trying to out cheese themselves in a Writer Revolt.
• Case Closed Movie 10: The Private Eye's Requiem, for the unnecessary Cast Herd pileup. How many of the 30+ regulars can fit in one movie?
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure thrives on this. Each installment of the 9-part (and still ongoing) saga has over-the-top abilities, more sick-in-the-head ubervillains, more insane stunts, more Crazy Awesome.
  • Phantom Blood is about Jonathan Joestar, a British aristocrat who trains in Hamon, a martial arts technique that harnesses the sun's energy to confront his adoptive brother, who transformed into a vampire thanks to a stone mask. Jonathan's allies include a street thug, his Hamon teacher, a monk and the teacher's own mentor, and two of the monk's other students. Tame, yes, but this is only the beginning.
  • Battle Tendency involves Joseph, the grandson of Jonathan, as he teams up with the grandson of Jonathan's mentor, the grandson's teacher, and a Nazi cyborg, to take on four ancient vampiric beings—an Ax-Crazy one whose awakening alerts the heroes to the existence of the other three, an honorable warrior who can create wind from his body, a Hot-Blooded one who can heat his body to 500 degrees Celsius and attack with his blood vessels, and the one who created the stone mask that influenced Part 1, who can attack using blades from his body. Said creator eventually becomes the Ultimate Lifeform and the power to gain traits of any animal in the world, and Joseph defeats him by blasting him into outer space by the use of an amplified volcanic eruption. Already crazy enough, but what Part 3 introduces makes things crazier.
  • Stardust Crusaders has a delinquent named Jotaro Kujo and a few others travel to Egypt to break a curse placed on Jotaro's mother. They also have Stands, manifestations of their fighting spirit, instead of the energy technique from the previous two Parts. While Jotaro's Stand, which has Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs, isn't anything extraordinary, he's joined by his grandfather—returning protagonist Joseph Joestar—who now can gain information by creating photos, an Egyptian fortune teller who is a master of fire, a high school student whose Stand can transform into tentacles and shoot emerald projectiles, a French Casanova Wannabe who's great at swordsmanship, and a dog (yes, even animals can wield Stands) that can control sand.^note All of the additional Stands will be noted in order to show you how bizarre things can be here. Together they fight against other Users of this new power.^note An old man with an insanely fast stag beetle. An assassin posing as a sea captain who can control water currents. A perverted orangutan whose Stand takes the form of a freighter. A shaman whose Stand possesses objects and can grow stronger with each grudge he makes. A narcissist who controls a Blob Monster. A cowboy whose Stand is a gun that can curve its bullets. A sadistic Serial Killer whose Stand is a beam of light that only appears in reflections, including one's eye. A Manipulative Bitch whose Stand is a sentient, growing wart attached to one's body. A Boisterous Weakling whose Stand is a literal car. A hag whose Stand can possess bodies by entering their wounds. A Smug Snake whose Stand enters people's bodies and transfers any pain done to him onto someone else. A Living Prop whose Stand is a replica of the sun that can shoot lasers. A baby who can invade peoples' dreams and kill them there. A Stand that poses as a Jackass Genie and can create things using the earth. A woman who can transform metals into any inorganic object. A blind man who can control water. Two ineffectual brothers, the older of whom is a Master of Disguise, while the younger's Stand is a comic book that predicts the future. A sentient Stand inhabiting a katana. A Dude Magnet whose Stand is a power socket that turns anyone who touches it into a living magnet. A man who de-ages anyone who touches his shadow. A gambler who steals the souls of those who concede defeat against him. A hawk who can generate ice. The gambler's brother, who can not only steal peoples' souls, but also read their minds. A man who can create elaborate mazes. A vampire whose Stand can transform into a ball of nothingness. A Too Dumb to Live Butt-Monkey vampire who has a woman's face on the back of his head. Oh, and the Big Bad is the vampire from Part 1—who managed to attach his head onto Jonathan's body and now has the ability to stop time!
  • Diamond is Unbreakable focuses on Josuke Higashikata, a freshman whose Stand grants him Healing Hands, and is also very sensitive about his hair, as he seeks out a bow and arrow that gives people it shoots Stands. Joining him is Jotaro and Joseph—the latter who turns out to be his illegitimate father—as well as a Tiny Schoolboy who can weaponize Written Sound Effects, The Ditz who can erase anything touched by his Stand's right hand, and an eccentric manga artist who can turn anyone into living books. Together, they meet, befriend, and occasionally face off against more Stand Users as they seek the bow and arrow.^note A Serial Killer whose Stand can morph into any liquid. The ditz's older brother and the owner of the arrow, who leads a toy-sized army. A Con Man whose Stand is a lock that weights people down with their guilt. A bully whose Stand is a wooden mannequin that can copy the appearance of a person. A Yandere who can manipulate her own hair. An Italian chef whose food cures ailments of those who eat it. A guitarist who stole the arrow from the brother and can manipulate electricity. A baby that can turn invisible. A pair of rats whose Stands take the form of turrets whose bullets can melt flesh. A greedy kid that commands a colony of 500 diminutive Stands. A beautician who can change the body parts of her patients. Eventually, the party meets the ghost of a young girl, and soon find themselves on the trail of her killer, Yoshikage Kira—who has a weird fetish for women's hands. Said killer also has the power to turn anything he touches into a bomb. The story from then on focuses on the heroes and a child whose father Kira is impersonating trying to catch Kira and the ghost of his father Yoshihiro, who can appear in photographs and manipulate anything appearing in the photo, and the people who were shot with another bow and arrow Yoshihiro has.^note A Rock–Paper–Scissors prodigy who can steal the Stands of those who lose to him. A Chick Magnet biker whose Stand hunts down victims while moving at 60 mph and drain them of their nutrients once caught. A cat planimal who can control the air around it. A man with a Stand that takes the form of a transmission tower that reflects attacks and traps its User inside it. A fear-lover who can transform people into paper once he identifies their fear-based tic. A Stand that leeches on one's back and kills them if someone else looks at their back. Oh, and there's a shapeshifting alien, too... maybe. And when the time for the final battle comes, Kira gains the ability to create a "Groundhog Day" Loop.
  • Golden Wind focuses on Giorno Giovanna (the conceived son of DIO), whose Stand allows him to turn non-living objects into living objects, as he climbs the hierarchy of an Italian mafia in order to become its boss and change it from the inside. He starts by joining a gang consisting of a fisherman’s son who can put zippers on anything, an ex-cop whose Stand can act out past events, a tetraphobe who fights by having bullets shot by his gun be guided by his Stand (which, unlike most Stands, is sentient with a mind of its own), a Book Dumb hothead whose Stand is a miniature plane, and a genius with anger issues who can unleash a virus that kills anything it touches. After fighting through several other members of the mafia^note A unnaturally fat man whose Stand moves through shadows and acts automatically. A man who can deflate people like balloons. His partner, who can control kinetic energy., the gang is tasked by the boss to bring his daughter to him. Along the way they fight a defected gang of the mafia who want to capture the daughter.^note A man with an Inferiority Complex who can shrink things. A narcissist who can pull things into a mirror world. A Determinator who can cause Rapid Aging and his nervous partner whose Stand is a fishing rod that can phase through things. A lecherous man whose Stand is a parasite that infects women to birth homunculi. An anger prone man whose Stand is a suit that can lower the temperature of the vicinity. They manage to get the daughter to the boss, but it turns out he was planning on killing her, so the gang betrays him. They proceed to fight numerous members of the mafia that have targeted them.^note A pair of gayngsters whose Stands take the form of a shark that can appear in any liquid and a parasite that can attach itself to people's tongues to cause miscommunication. An extremely fast and powerful Stand that only activates after the User's death. The leader of the defected gang, who can control the iron in people's blood. A Sadist Doctor who creates a flesh devouring mold that activates based on altitude and his Human Pet who can turn solids into mud. Along the way, the daughter gains the ability to make things elastic. They eventually fight the boss and it turns out the boss is actually two personalities in one body. One of his personalities doesn’t know that he’s the boss, while the other has a Stand which has power to erase time and is the dominant of the two. Also that Frenchman from earlier shows up. And in the end, Giorno gains the power to undo any action.
  • Stone Ocean follows Jolyne Cujoh, the daughter of Jotaro Kujo, as she tries to break out of a maximum-security prison. She discovers that she can turn herself to string, but soon after her father’s Stand and memories (in the form of a disc coming out of his head) are stolen by a priest, named Enrico Pucci, who has the power to turn people’s memories and Stands into discs which can be removed or replaced with other memories. Since he was a friend of the vampire from Parts 1 and 3, he intends to carry out the will of his deceased friend. Jolyne decides to stop Pucci and save her father. She is joined by a fellow prisoner that can duplicate objects by putting a sticker on them, a genius 12-year old who resides in the ghost of a burnt-down room, a sentient colony of plankton wearing the body of a dead girl, an amnesiac with the power to control the weather, and a prisoner (who was originally introduced as a woman but is retconned into being a man) that falls madly in love with Jolyne and whose Stand can go inside objects and tamper with them. Together, they fight fellow jailbirds as they try to escape the prison itself.^note A psycho who can shrink people and forces them to wear the skins of dead animals. A blind sniper whose Stand can read air currents. A suicidal depressive who can cause people to share the damage of his suicide attempts. A thief who can forcefully claim payments of one's bet, whether that payment is money or not. A prisoner who can inflict zero-gravity on things by spitting on them. A gangster who can resurrect the dead as invisible zombies. A prisoner who can increase people's aggression levels. A prison guard who can control meteors, empowered by the previously mentioned prisoner. An aging martial artist who uses Fengshui to pinpoint the perfect angles of attack. An ex-cop turn prisoner whose Stand works automatically and has extremely corrosive saliva. A baby-like creature that shrinks anyone who approaches it. The prison's head of security, who makes people remember only three things at a time. Eventually, the prisoners escape, only to fight three more sons of that vampire who have allied with Pucci.^note A former druggie who can bring fictional characters to life. A man that can control rod-shaped cryptids that absorb body heat. The eldest of the three, who can literally unearth memories. Also, there are snails. Pucci soon gains the power to control gravity and speed up time, and is eventually defeated—but not before he resets the universe!
  • Steel Ball Run is about a paraplegic horse jockey named Johnny Joestar who gains the ability to walk again thanks to the steel balls of an Italian. He teams up with the Italian and the story then becomes a cross-country horseback race, where they face off against fellow racers, assassins hired by a mysterious third-party, and a number of other enemies.^note A Creepy Crossdresser who houses bugs in his body. A family of assassins that can turn anything into a magnet, including blood. A man who can attach Sticky Bombs to anything he touches. A Western Terrorist with a gun inside his hand. A kid that can shoot hooks from his mouth. A geologist who can turn things into dinosaurs. A gunslinger who can rewind time by six seconds. An Apologetic Attacker who can manipulate rainwater. An American Indian who can create Written Sound Effects that replicate the sound's effect on anyone who touches it. A tree that puts the two through some trials under the threat of being absorbed into it. A group of men who can phase through one another via the tattoos on the back of their heads. A man who can make living balloon animals out of metal. A man who's impervious to anything when he kneels. A soldier who can manifest a person's guilt to attack them (Jesus Christ himself appears during this fight, by the way). A man whose armband can form a grid that can reposition things. During the race, Johnny gains the ability to shoot his fingernails like bullets, and he slowly gains mastery over this new ability during the race. They also make allies in the form of a cowboy that can segment his body via a rope, a Sweet Polly Oliver that can spray flesh from a spray can, the race's creator, his 14-year old wife who gains a Stand (which is all but stated to have been the Stand of Jesus Christ himself) that allows her to weaponize Contrived Coincidences, another Italian who uses the same abilities as the other Italian, who starts as an enemy before pulling a Heel–Face Turn, and a British jockey who's also the Alternate Universe counterpart to the vampire from Parts 1 and 3, who also starts out as an enemy before pulling a Heel–Face Turn, and also stole the geologist's ability turn things into dinosaurs (though unlike the geologist, who could only turn other things into dinosaurs, he can only turn himself into one). As for their opponent? The 23rd President of the United States, who desires the corpse of what's implied to be Jesus, and can open portals to Alternate Universes. And at the end of it all, Johnny faces an alternate version of the British jockey... who has the same time-stopping ability as the vampire.
  • JoJolion begins with Josuke (not to be confused with Part 4's Josuke), an amnesiac sailor with four testicles and a Stand that can steal proprieties of objects using bubbles, found by a young woman who can manipulate electronics. Josuke is soon introduced to the very eccentric Higashikata family—all of whom have Stands of their own.^note The patriarch, who can track scents via puzzle pieces. The patriarch's ex-wife, who can store things inside a deck of cards. The eldest son, who can store heat in objects. The eldest daughter, whose high heels can turn into spikes. The youngest son, who can screw and unscrew anything. The youngest daughter, who can steal memories in the form of chess pieces. The eldest son's wife, who can manipulate vectors. The eldest son's own son, who can create living origami that can make people hallucinate. The family's maid, whose Stand can attack when someone opens something using extremely cold winds. Josuke is then adopted and becomes part of this family. Together, the family and the young woman fight against a group of mysterious beings made of rock and a number of other enemies.^note A man who can control people via their open wounds. A group of trees that transport people along the road they're planted at. The Higashikata family's architect, who can make people the center of gravity. A salesman whose Stand is a tornado that pursues people through their breathing. Twin street performers, the older of whom can transform his right hand into whatever his left is touching, while the younger can generate a Deadly Gas that he stores in a soccer ball. The eldest daughter's boyfriend, who can turn people into putty if they touch his fingerprints. Along the way, Josuke also makes an ally in the form of a con artist who can control the growth of people's hair. As Josuke tries to piece together his identity, he eventually gets caught up in a conflict involving a mysterious fruit. He eventually learns that the reason behind his amnesia and four testicles is because he's a fusion of two humans. With newfound resolve, Josuke decides to save his ill mother with the fruit. Teaming up with his adopted family, the young woman, and a plant appraiser that can peel his skin like string, Josuke faces more Rock Humans to succeed in his goal.^note A man with a transferable Stand that curses people to gain an endless amount of money. A heavily disfigured man who can control people if they touch him. A Mad Doctor who can melt the flesh of humans, along with his pet... thingy, who can burrow through the ground. A Dirty Old Man who looks like a baby who can control air pressure. A medical doctor who can turn into gravel. An insect whose attacks cause people to leak asbestos when they extend their joints. Another insect that can multiply via their victim's blood. Eventually, Josuke confronts the ringleader of the Rock Humans, an Improbably Aged doctor whose Stand brings misfortune to those with the intent of pursuing him... only to learn that the doctor is the Stand, and that his User and the true ringleader is actually the young woman's ex-boyfriend. And those bubbles Josuke uses? Actually invisible strings that spin so rapidly, that they're effectively nonexistent and defy the laws of physics. And the final opponent fought? A man-eating guard rail that takes people's clothes off while babbling nonsensically.
  • The (non-canon) light novel Jorge Joestar is even more insane than the canonical storyline, how you ask: ^note Kars coming back to Earth, and is a really nice guy. The Holy Corpse from SBR is Dio, the one from Part 3 is a fake and the real Dio is still alive. OVER HEAVEN was written by fake Dio. Dio's 14 words on how to get to Heaven are revealed. Morioh gets separated from Japan and grows legs and starts walking around. The island the Passione family is on starts moving and collides with the Morioh Island. Like in SBR, the characters in this world are slightly different, though many have the same names. All stands are different except for Heaven's Door, Gold Experience (Requiem), and Killer Queen. The rest are similar but different. Narancia's stand is "U Boat" and is a deep-sea diving Stand, but still has rapid-fire weapons and is remote controlled. Giorno has already taken over the Passione family. Doppio exists independently of Diavolo. His Stand turns objects into telephones. The one who shares a personality with Diavolo is Giorno. The reason the same people and Stands exist are because they survived a loop into the next repetition of the universe, like Emporio. Giorno used GER to "nullify his death" and move through space-time, when time sped up at the end of Part 6. Rohan just kept working on his manga and turned out okay. Kira seems to be connected to the Deadman's Questions story. He's more nonchalant now. Diavolo used King Crimson to not truly die, but only the version connected with Doppio died. Jorge is not killed by a zombie. Kars "remembers" about Stands. Ultimate Kars and Ultimate Dio team up. Jonathan comes back to life, because Erina was storing his head. He fuses with the holy corpse and becomes Ultimate Jonathan in the SBR world. So the corpse is Dio+Jonathan. Kira uses Bites the Dust to go back and time and do stuff. Because... Kars takes over Killer Queen and he induces explosions to run time backwards until it's back to only "one time the universe has repeated", which is the SBR world. That's how Jorge and Jonathan end up in the SBR world. The reason Kars does things is that he holds something close to "respect" for human bravery and ambition. Killer Queen stops obeying Kira and follows Kars. And it ends with George marrying Lisa Lisa while a Zombie Apocalypse occurs.....What?!
• Neon Genesis Evangelion: How can we break Shinji today? What next happens to the characters that no psychiatrist can help with?
  • To be concise, the series starts off making Shinji and company a Chew Toy to fate. The first few episodes aren't so bad, and it looks as though the mental agony is starting to taper off near episode 13. Then comes the second half of the series... which promptly reintroduces all characters to a hellstorm of mental destruction... which keeps getting worse. Sound awful? Take a glimpse at the last two episodes... Not satisfied? Gaze upon the Grand Finale... End of Evangelion.
• Rebuild of Evangelion makes the most spineless child of anime into a certifiable badass when he trumps his previous level again and again. Special mention goes to the Angels in general, which look far more freaky and bizarre than in the original and the fights against them become increasingly mundane. Possibly for cinematic effect, possibly for the hell of it, many aspects of the series are blown up to incredible levels:
  • Compared to her somewhat underwhelming introduction as a supposed Ace Pilot, Rebuild 2.22 has Asuka managing to take down a colossal Angel while falling from the sky, only to realize she destroyed the wrong part and then still manage to place 6 crossbow bolts right on each other's end, in the right core... And top it all off with what looks like an Inazuma Kick. In less than 70 seconds.
  • Almost as if to trump this introduction, Kaworu's Evangelion Mk.06 was made its first appearance with him stopping the Apocalypse with an unstoppable weapon while gently floating down from the Moon.
  • The famous battle against the 13th Angel is Bloodier and Gorier than the already insanely bloody and gory original, and even more horrifying. In the series the final attack is Unit-01 crushing Toji's entry plug in his hand, Rebuild has Unit-01 crushing Asuka's entry plug between its jaws.
  • The soundtrack is recorded with a richer, more powerful orchestra. "The Beast" epitomizes this, being renamed "Les Bêtes" - pluralised and French - sounding utterly crazed and featuring face-melting guitar leads and shrieking violins.
  • How radical can the next installment be?
  • Everytime Shinji tries to do what he believes is the right thing, everything just gets worse and worse. First, when he tries to rescue Rei, he accidentally initiates Near-Third Impact, which kills off 90% of the Earth's remaining population (Second Impact already killed 90% of the world's population alone). Then, in 3.0, when he tries to undo the Near-Third Impact (which at that point is just referred to as Third Impact), he accidentally ends up triggering the FOURTH Impact. Here's the kicker: Third Impact was supposed to liberate humankind of their mortal bodies (as seen in EOE). What the effects of Fourth Impact were, remain to be seen, but so far, we only know that Shinji, Asuka and Mari are still alive.
  • The Evangelion Units themselves become more and more awesome, as the movies progress.
    • First, we have EVA-01, which is basically just the EVA-01 we know from the series. Then comes EVA-00, which is no different from the series either. Then we see the Provisional EVA-05, which is the first purely mechanical EVA so far. Since it doesn't have an AT-Field, it gets destroyed quickly. Then there's EVA-02, which at first seems no different from the series. Then, EVA-03/Bardiel comes along, and this is where things start to get off the tracks.
    • EVA-03/Bardiel as the apparent ability to grow an extra pair of arms at will, making this the first four-armed EVA ever.
    • EVA-02 reveals its Beast Mode in battle against Zeruel, taking on a form that looks a bit like the MP-EV As, only more demonic.
    • EVA-01 gets its hand chopped off during the battle against Zeruel, and creates a new one out of its AT-Field, which it also uses for Rocket-Punching Zeruel. After that, EVA-01 "awakens" and starts Third Impact.
    • EVA-06 arrives after the battle to stop EVA-01, then gets impaled in Central Dogma sometime within the next 14 years.
    • EVA-02.Dash and EVA-08 are apparently perfectly capable to operating in space!
    • EVA-09 is a copy of 00, only with the added ability to regenerate. An ability that's pretty handy when you keep getting your head blown off.
    • EVA-13 looks like a copy of EVA-01 at first, only with a Double-Plug system and Attack Drones. Then it reveals that it has 4 arms right from the get go, solely for the purpose of weilding the Lance of Longinus and the Spear of Cassius simultaneously.
• FLCL: What will come out of Naota's head next? How many double entendres and half-veiled sexual references can be packed into a single episode? How impossibly bizarre can the plot ultimately become?
  • And lets throw in a baseball-themed episode. Because why not?
• Ranma ½: Who's going to fall in love with Ranma this time? What crazy move will Ranma master this time? Just how angry can Akane get with him this time?
  • Slightly related to the first question: How many times can a man betroth his toddler son in exchange for food?
• Genesis of Aquarion: How terrible a pun can Gen make? What Saturday-morning-cartoon-on-acid lesson can the heroes learn? How over the top can the symbolism become? How can crystal power save the universe this week?
• Kite (1998) manages to mix this with an Overly Long Gag. After a particularly lengthy and brutal fight scene, the mood is lightened somewhat after a bodyguard latches onto Sawa, throwing her and himself out the hole in the wall from said scene in a high-rise building. They then proceed to latch onto a neon sign, which breaks off at the hinges, sending them falling once more until they land on the roof of a car waiting on an overpass. The weight of their impact somehow sends the car through the bottom of the overpass, landing on a truck waiting below the overpass. This impact then sends the whole pile through the ground into a subway station. Then the neon sign falls onto everything, causing the truck to explode... sending Sawa hurtling through another window into an adjacent building. AND she survived completely unscathed! It's like They Live! crossed with Wanted.
• Samurai Flamenco: An odd, relatively mundane variant variant. First it was just Masayoshi berating jaywalkers. Then he was taking down muggers. Then he built up to drug dealers. And then it escalated damn fast with the introduction of King Torture and From Beyond. Considering the rate of escalation and the overall tone of the series, it can be said to be a spiritual successor to Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann!
• Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha: How much more powerful will Nanoha's magical cannon get? How much effort will she have to use to "befriend" her latest ally? How much subtext can be inserted between her and Fate? How high can the rankings get? The answer to all of these questions, of course, is "infinity." Subverted with the character ability/power levels also. In first season, Nanoha and Fate were pretty damn powerful. So in A's the even more powerful Wolkenritter had to be enemies. However, in StrikerS flying is no longer a default case (see poor Teana, who doesn't even have Not Quite Flight), unlike with the mains of previous two seasons, where even Non-Action Guy Yuuno could fly, and some characters clearly on lower level than the oldbies.
• Pretty much a staple of any Dragon Ball anime series, each subsequent one will usually always have a villain more powerful than the predecessor and the (at least part-)saiyan heroes will inevitably achieve even more powerful transformations:
  • Dragon Ball Z — How big can we make this energy blast? What will the villain blow up next? Just how blonde and glowy will Goku become next? How many of the cast will die and be brought back to life by the Dragon Balls? How many episodes will the battle last?
  • Son Goku's level reaches 32,000 just a few episodes after those famous words were spoken (Kaio-ken X4). Indeed, less than two months later, he had defeated Frieza, whose (canonically given in the Daizenshuu) power level in his final form was 120,000,000 (Though it had dropped due to fatigue). So, Goku had gone from 416 (him fighting Raditz) to 150,000,000 in barely over a year. And they just get stronger from there. Son Goku's power has to be considered to grow exponentially. Noncanon numbers are hard to consider afterwards, as there are multiple ideas about the power levels beyond Frieza. Not that it removes any entertainment value. (As a side note, This Very Wiki states Broly from the Non Serial Movies to have a power of 1.4 billion)
    • If you remove the Super Saiyan 50x strength factor, Son Goku goes from ~9000 to 3,000,000 with a Near-Death Experience, 6 days' super-intensive training, and another Near-Death Experience. The real question is, how much of a power boost can Saiyan cells give you?
  • Achieving the level of Super Saiyan was considered to be a myth and the equivalent of a Saiyan achieving godhood. Fittingly, Goku accomplishes this, with a Super Saiyan from the future arriving, and then Vegeta, and Goku's son Gohan. Then they got wind of a possibility of going beyond that, known as "ascending the threshold of Super Saiyan", Vegeta and Trunks did it in a sense, Goku and Gohan were the closest, but the latter truly accomplished this and became a Super Saiyan 2 or a "True Ascended Saiyan". Then, facing Majin Buu, Goku gave a tutorial on Saiyans and their transformations; going to Super Saiyan 3; saying as he transforms "And this... is to go even further!" Even the English dub voice actor went above and beyond with that massive Kiai he was scripted to do! Truly, becoming a Super Saiyan 3 is this, if anything.
    • By around the time SS3 showed up, to be relevant at all a character needed at least SS1. So while the older characters needed Training from Hell and extreme trauma to push them over the edge resulting in a Moment of Awesome to get to the first level, Trunks and Goten, aged 8 and 7 years old respectively, already had it without even fully remembering how or why.
  • It doesn't even stop there. In Dragon Ball GT, he goes Super Saiyan 4. Then Vegeta does it too. Then Goku and Vegeta do the Fusion Dance and become Super Saiyan 4 Gogeta.
  • That is nothing! Try Super Saiyan GOD! In Battle of Gods, Goku has to become a God in order to fight at least on par with God of Destruction Beerus, who gave Super Saiyan 3 Goku a humiliatingly easy defeat.
  • Still not done escalating yet! Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection 'F' reveals the Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan. As redundant as the name sounds, it is exactly what it sounds like. Yes folks, the Super Saiyan God form has its OWN Super Saiyan transformation. And that's before mentioning the resurrected Frieza: his final form? That's not even his final form, anymore!
  • Dragon Ball Super: You thought Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan (or Super Saiyan Blue as it's called) was the absolute limit of the Saiyan's potential? Well, try Super Saiyan Blue EMPOWERED BY KAIO-KEN TIMES TEN!!! Though afterwards King Kai states that Goku may finally be maxed out, since going Super Saiyan Blue Kaio-ken X10 messed up his ability to control his power and even do simple techniques properly for a while. Of course, it's probably only a matter of time before he escalates into something with the same or greater power boost without the drawbacks.
    • As the whole Super Saiyan legend has been turned into a child's plaything (quoted Vegeta), video games and spin-offs tend to make completely random heroes turning Super Saiyan on certain conditions. Dragon Ball Online allows any human character to turn Super Saiyan. Even female characters who haven't been seen doing it in the main canon before Super.
  • As of the Universe Survival Arc, we've gotten something even greater. Say hello to Ultra Instinct. This new form transcends the power of Super Saiyan Blue and allows Goku to fight on par with Jiren, who completely outclassed him beforehand. Unfortunately, the new power wears off and reverts Goku back to base form. Knowing the series, it's only a matter of time before Goku masters it and others follow suit. Which, as of Episode 129, he does. And while the Universal Survival Arc only allows Goku a limited amount of time with Ultra Instinct before breaking down, the Galactic Patrol Prisoner Arc allows him to access it anytime.
  • Thought that just getting Ultra Instinct would be the end of Goku's journey? Far from it; in fact, it's only just the starting point. Meaning, there are MULTIPLE stages of this power, akin to Super Saiyan!
  • Not to be outdone by his eternal rival, Vegeta learns another godly technique on par with Ultra Instinct: Ultra Ego. This not only puts him on par with Goku once again, but is now implied to surpass him in power!
  • And then Frieza arrives and that easily defeats Goku and Vegeta's strongest forms in a single blow. How? Even Golden Frieza isn't his final form anymore—say hello to Black Frieza.
• Macross:
  • Macross 7 — How much more ridiculously awesome can Nekki Basara get? First he's just the awesome front man to an awesome band, then he's flying his Cool Plane with an Electric Guitar for a joystick into the very center of a battle to wow his enemies with The Power of Rock.
    • In the Grand Finale, he speaks of how he wanted to sing to make a mountain move as a child, and today, he would move that mountain. Basara defeats the Big Bad and saves every single life form in the galaxy from death with The Power of Rock alone. Truly, the fact that Nekki Basara ever existed in any medium is a feat of awesome.
  • Super Dimension Fortress Macross — Max Jenius outflew The Hero on his first combat sortie, steals the title of The Ace from Roy Focker, fights the enemy ace in single combat and wins three times consecutively, then woos and marries her within hours of her third defeat, starting the first Interspecies Romance and spawning not one but seven children — who all apparently inherit some of his awesome.
    • You'd think he'd call it quits at that point, but no, that's just what happened before Macross 7. He's been promoted to command a New Macross-class Battleship and the entire Macross 7 defense fleet, where he proves why he is worthy of the trope. He orders his crew to fire the Macross Cannon at empty space. The second the gun fires, the enemy fleet defolds directly in the beam's path and is instantly vaporized. Yes. He killed the enemy fleet with tactics before it even arrived. He later goes on to effortlessly fly into the Big Bad's lair, with a nuke, after all the best pilots in the fleet tried for several minutes unsuccessfully (except Basara, whose awesome has already been explained).
• One Piece:
  • How much is the World Government willing to pay to bounty hunters? In the East Blue, having a bounty higher than 10 million was considered impressive. By the time they reach the New World, the strongest pirates all have figures above the billion range.
  • The villains which the Straw Hats face off against get more fantastical, monstrous, and fantastical which each major battle. At first they're largely just regular guys with some unique weapon or fighting style and a crew behind, then they have some strong Devil Fruit and a destructive fighting style, and their "crews" of a few dozen became armies thousands strong, and the subordinates started having strong Devil Fruits too.
  • The islands of One Piece just become far more fantastical and dangerous as the protagonists proceed forward. East Blue, for example, consisted mostly of normal port towns and sleepy villages, but then the Straw Hats enter the Grand Line and are suddenly greeted by a ship-devouring whale, an entire island of bounty hunters, a pair of giants dueling in a prehistoric island filled with dinosaurs and so on.
    • Even the weather is like this. In East Blue, it's pretty much normal. In Paradise (the first half of the Grand Line), the weather can change suddenly from one extreme to the other (for example, from snowing to sunny spring to a rainstorm) with no warning. In the New World (the second half), you get the really absurd stuff, like the sea catching on fire and candy raining from the sky.
  • Related to the above points, The Straw Hats' feats just increase in scope as they travel along the Grand Line. In East Blue, their actions were limited to helping isolated villages who couldn't handle a nearby pirate threat. In the Grand Line, the Straw Hats are consistently saving entire countries from ruin. In the New World, they topple entire empires that encompass multiple islands and are on their way to flip the world upside down.
• In One-Punch Man, the webcomic to manga remake not only increased the level of detail to much greater heights with Murata's artwork, but it also has been increasing the scale of several key fights in the series, adding new ever bigger displays of power during said bouts.
  • Boros in the webcomic didn't even do half of his moves against Saitama as portrayed in the manga. In the webcomic Boros' tremendous attack leveling a portion of his ship, scaling to the size of several city blocks, did not happen; the Meteoric Burst in the webcomic just resulted in Boros punching Saitama in way that finally moved him back a bit, not an insane volley of attacks that juggled Saitama all over the ship, and the insane high kick straight to the moon simply did not exist in the webcomic.
  • Tatsumaki vs. Psykos has been expanded to an even grander scale in the manga thanks to various original manga developments contributing to that end; the existence of Orochi as the new head figure of the Monster Association in the end amounted to it fusing with Psykos, the sole leader in the webcomic, creating a creature with an extreme imposing level of power that has done things in the same, or greater, scale than Boros did, like emitting a beam that can slice continent sized chunks of the entire planet; in the webcomic Tatsumaki vs. Psykos was just a fight between 2 espers in a much smaller scale.
  • After the debut of Psykorochi in the manga greatly upped the power scale of the Monster Association, truly looking like the most powerful foe around, the manga adjusted Garou accordingly to still remain the biggest threat of the entire arc like he originally was in the Webcomic, his steps into Awakening were revised with "God" being directly involved, amplifying Garou's powers to untold levels, to the point Awakened Garou vs. Saitama had to be moved away from Earth lest them destroy it as mere collateral damage from their fight.
• Zatch Bell!: How big can we make a demon's next spell? How massive can we turn the Baou? How badly can the main characters be injured without being killed? Just how tearwrenching can we make the next protagonist "death?"
• Bleach:
  • How insane will the fights get? How many more ridiculously strong power-ups will Ichigo stack on at once?
  • How ridiculously strong are the Bankai of the 7 11, (counting the Vizards) 14 (counting the Visored, Royal Guard and the Exiles) remaining Shinigami that have yet to release their Zanpakuto? A particularly interesting case is Kenpachi Zaraki, that beats most of his enemies by bashing them with his dull sword, and does not even know how to release the sword or use his powers properly.
    • To clarify on this point, Yamamoto's Zanka no Tachi can destroy the Soul Society if left released for too long, Zaraki obliterated a meteor with Nozarashi in one sword swing, and Rukia's Hakka No Togame can flash-freeze the target down to ABSOLUTE ZERO in a certain area. Any remaining Bankai or Shikai left to be revealed will have a very hard time measuring up to these three.
  • How much Gambit Roulette does Aizen have? The only thing left for Aizen is the fact that he planned out the manga. Too late.
    • Who is the one that really planned everything, and planned for all the other planners to plan what they planned?''
    • This guy.
  • How much higher can the reiatsu levels rise?
  • To give you an idea, they have now reached the point where simply being within a few kilometers of the fights can cause normal Hollows to explode.
  • Officially, as of chapter 418, Kurosaki Ichigo, has went on ahead, and has absolutely shattered the power scale of Bleach. Even AIZEN HIMSELF IN HIS SECOND HOGYOKU FORM called Ichigo's actions "Ridiculous". So far, Ichigo has destroyed a mountain with a single sweep of his blade, caught Aizen's Zanpakuto bare-handed, and proceeded to smash a level 90 Kido, cast with a chant by Aizen, with his bare hands. His power was so high that Aizen could not sense it, and Aizen's own reiatsu was imperceptible to normal Shinigami.
  • How many more evolutions can Aizen have?
  • How many people can Unohana scare the shit out of just by smiling?
  • How many villains will have the ability to Mind Rape?
  • How many people can a Vandenreich member kill in a single chapter? They seem to be outdoing each other with every chapter that gets released. (The record, by the way, is 116 in a single chapter which took only three minutes to achieve.)
    • The first invasion broke the record with one thousand dead in the first seven minutes of the invasion. By the mid-way point, that number increased to close to half the Gotei 13's total fighting force of 6000 Shinigami.
  • How crazy will the abilities of the Stern Ritter get? We got things like "The Fear" and "The Explode", but then you get "The Superstar" and "The Love". In terms of broken abilities, the Stern Ritter had "The Visionary", which can create life, Seireitei destroying meteors and the void of space.
  • How immensely powerful/hax will the remaining abilities (Bankai, Schrifts, etc) be? With abilities like "The Almighty" and Ichimonji recently revealed, it'll be difficult to imagine any abilities that could ever be impressive anymore after those showings.
• Naruto:
  • The series really starts to kick this into swing with Pain's invasion of Konoha, where Pain kills Jiraiya and Kakashi and flattens Konoha, Naruto beats him back mostly by himself, Hinata sincerely confesses her love to Naruto and tries to help him, only to get stabbed right in front of him, which enrages Naruto so badly that he instantly goes from nothing to 6-tails for the first time ever, transforms into an 8-tailed monstrosity, and then nearly releases the Kyuubi.
    • Episode 167 of Shippuden covers the fight between Kyuubi-Naruto and Pain. The action and animation are turned up a notch and the characters use moves and survive attacks that they'd never be able to pull off in the normal continuity, simply because it looks cool. Bonus points for how Hinata managed to not get harmed any further or even get killed during the fight.
  • Especially true since the Killer Bee Arc. For example: how badass can we make Kumo? How insane can we make Killer Bee and A in comparison to the other characters? What can we do to top Konoha's destruction? How big will Naruto's Rasengans get? The THIRD RAIKAGE!!!!!!!!!
  • Of particular note is Naruto vs. the Kyuubi, where the two go at it, Naruto with a little help, like cats and dogs. After getting a second wind, Naruto Curb Stomps the beast so hard it near instantaneously became a Jerkass Woobie in some of the Fandom's eyes.
  • How many more paper tags Konan can utilize? You have no idea how much.
  • How large can the Shinobi Armies get? How does 80,000 soldiers sound? How many can Tobi's Zetsu Clone Army get? 100,000. This is a huge leap from Part I where Orochimaru thought he could destroy Konoha with just 100 Suna Ninja, a handful of Sound Shinobi, Gaara, three summoned snakes, and himself.
  • How big can a Bijuudama explosion get? This big.
  • Just how powerful were the most powerful shinobi of each generation? The Sannin, Pain, Tobi, the Five Kage, Madara and Hashirama — it just keeps going.
  • Genjutsu: In the Land of Waves arc, Kakashi uses it as a technique to show illusions to deceive his enemy. Later during the Chunnin exam arc, Orochimaru uses it to paralyze Sasuke. In a later arc, Itachi Uchiha demonstrates its use as a torture technique. Post time-skip, Danzo uses an advanced genjutsu techniques which lets you cast illusions on yourself. Later, Itachi Uchiha (again!) shows another genjutsu technique which lets you rewrite history. To cap it off, Madara Uchiha and Obito Uchiha start a world war over their goal of casting an endless illusion on the whole world.
  • The Fourth World War as a whole gets a little out of hand◊.
  • How many Greater Scope Villains can this franchise have? First Orochimaru, then Itachi, then Danzo, then Tobi, then Madara, until finally Princess Kaguya.
• Negima! Magister Negi Magi:
  • How over-the-top and ridiculous can Jack Rakan's improvised techniques become? He starts off by summoning a skyscraper sized sword, moves on to accidentally blowing up a mountain while making up a finishing move for Negi, surfs on a sword, defeats enemies by stealing their panties, and destroys a pocket dimension by first disrupting the artifact maintaining (by flipping the owner's skirt, repeatedly) then generating a micro-black hole. This is lampshaded by other characters to no end.
  • His list of accomplishments includes fighting a Legendary Dragon to a standstill. Apparently the skyscraper sized sword does have a logical purpose. It's how he has his record of destroying 137 airships. Rakan modestly placed his power level as 12,000 to boot.
    • Evangeline, as a 'High Daylight Walker', is said to be on a similar power level to the Dragon, and thus Rakan. Nagi, who beat the pre-series Big Bad, a being that scared Rakan and is possibly the creator of Mundus Magicus is beyond even them.
  • For reference, the demon god of the Kyoto arc was ranked at 8000, this is Rakan's new estimate on the Big Bad too.
  • Rakan's response to a reality warper capable of turning a punch into a tea party, using the power that created Rakan's race and the world it lives on, and quite justifiably calling him a puppet?
    Illusion? Puppets? Heheh, What about 'em? Screw that crap!
  • Rakan then tops everything. Reality is warped so that he ceases to exist entirely, prompting a Heroic BSoD and Superpowered Evil Side relapse in the Kid Hero. Rakan immediately wills himself back into existing temporarily, for the sole purpose of smacking Negi upside the head.
    • THEN HE DOES IT A THIRD TIME!!!!
    • Of course this creates one of the best and saddest lampshades in the entire series with Chisame breaking down crying saying that Rakan was the character that should have infinite cheats.
  • Negi and Rakan's entire fight is turned into this. It starts with Negi revealing his artifact, that lets him use all his partners' artifacts and builds through multiple rounds of No One Could Survive That! by Jack and I Am Not Left-Handed by Negi. Insert Moment of Awesome for Jack, Negi, and Kotaru while we're at it until... Negi applies the Lightning Bruiser concept figuratively to go Super Saiyan 3 while using a power absorption spell to hit Jack with his own power. All to bring it down to a joyful slugfest that ends in a tie. As a side show it breaks the arena safety barrier rated for magical battleship fire. (Oh and for comic relief has Jack using Eternal Negi Fever... on Negi)
  • Chapter 263: Ultimate extreme KISSING. Where Negi either ensouls a robot or bends the laws of pactio. Take your pick.
    • Of course, there is a third option, with Negi convincing a robot who does not believe she has a soul, to believe so, by kissing her. Or it could be all three. That is how far the power of Negi's kiss could go.
  • How powerful can Akamatsu make Evangeline? She casually counters every spell Negi throws at her. Then, she Curb Stomps a demon god that required most of Ala Rubra to seal away, in a matter of seconds. Then, it's revealed that High Daylight Walkers such as Evangeline have the same level of power as the Legendary Dragon that fought Rakan to a standstill—without taking into account that Evangeline is also the most powerful evil mage in the world. Then, a phantasm with only a fragment of the real Evangeline's power kills Negi more than 70 times in his own mindscape. After Negi ties in his battle with Rakan, the fragment proceeds to spar with the Superpowered Evil Side of Negi—which is just as clever as he normal is—and completely owns it at its highest level of power. All of which she topped when she instantly defeats the revived force of every single member of Cosmo Entelecheia with a single spell, save for the Mage of the Beginning.
  • Thousand Thunderbolts, Ending World (and Freezing World, its less deadly version), Burning Sky, Tearing Earth, are called as Ultimate spells of lighting, ice, fire and earth element respectively. We are shown that there can be something stronger when Negi combines the Thousand Thunderbolts with a lighting spear spell to create Titan Slayer, but in latest chapter Evangeline show us her original spell: Endless White Nine Heavens, which combines Freezing World with lighting element. It takes all the bad guys out aside from the Big Bad. And she only spent few months working on this spell.
• Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE- and ×××HOLiC: How squicky and "Double-You-Tee-Eff?"-inducing can the characters' connections and relationships with each other get? How utterly convoluted could the Gambit Pileup get? How much angst can we pile up on Fay?
• The Prince of Tennis. Basically, it's Dragon Ball Z, only MORE. With junior high school tennis.
• Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo. How more truly messed up can we make the villains, the heroes' techniques and the ENTIRE show itself?
• Getter Robo: How batshit freakin' insane can the characters get? How big can the mecha get? How many completely improbable things can the mecha combine with? How intense can the crazy expressions get? How manly can the heroic sacrifices get? Will there ever be a page that doesn't feature dinosaurs and if so, will it show up before our brains explode from the awesome?
• Death Note: How much more audacious can L and Kira get in attempting to unmask each other? At least in the first half. The second half reduces this tension immensely.
  • Also, just how many more schemes can be added to the immense Gambit Pileup?
• Paranoia Agent: How screwed up and/or insane can the characters become?
• Reborn! (2004): How many more Bishōnen are going to be introduced? How much larger is Tsuna's harem of possessive, dedicated Bishōnen bodyguards going to get? How many more magical powers does the mafia have? Subtopic for the last question: How many worlds does Byakuran exist in and can draw knowledge from? Answer: All of them. He's just Crazy-Prepared.
• The whole of the Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise. Almost every main villain ups the ante from the last. Early on, it's just some teenagers trying to contend with some jerkasses giving them a hard time. By the time Seasons 3 and 4 roll around they're fighting Physical Gods from ancient Egypt and Atlantis. Season 5's villain plots to basically destroy the space-time continuum by re-writing history so The Bad Guy Wins in the past.
  • In GX it's a lot more easygoing at first, but the first real ongoing plot already involves saving the world, and by Season 3 we're into saving the multiverse. Season 4 scales back a bit, not by much through, with a villain being the embodiment of all darkness in the hearts of humans who was trying to instigate an Assimilation Plot.
  • In 5D's saving the world begins almost immediately after the first Tournament Arc, with the initial major villains starting to take civilians' souls en masse to summon their Eldritch Abomination aces. In the crossover film and the final seasons the villains are once again screwing with the timestream to re-write history. The final villain claims to be a god.
  • ZEXAL starts out fairly mundane but near the 100-episode mark, we get things like both protagonists conducting a Fusion Dance, villains with triple-digit Numbers (despite the fact that there were only 100 Numbers scattered across the world), and the cast being involved in an interdimensional war with Earth on the line and an increasing number of name characters being killed in the interim. Also, various important characters begin to demonstrate Shining or Chaos Draw, allowing them to pull off their plot device cards whenever necessary.
  • ARC-V is beginning to show this too, as its mundane initial setting very quickly gives way to the cast struggling against invaders from an alternate dimension trying to fuse all of them for currently unknown reasons, and the ensuing interdimensional war having several repercussions to protagonists and side characters alike.
  • The gameplay becomes extremely over-the-top as well. At the beginning, it's only a few cards which make realistic combinations. By the end of Season 4, Yami Yugi can pull off a victory against Dartz's infinite-attack power monster by drawing precisely the right cards to reach Infinity Plus One. His monster's attack is stated to be higher than infinity. Season 5's villain was defeated by fusing three of the aforementioned Physical Gods into the embodiment of all light.
  • The final villains of subsequent series go increasingly over-the-top — GX's final villain used cards that were the metaphysical embodiments of darkness, while in 5Ds they opted for Faux Symbolism with the final villain using cards representing the ten aspects of the Sephirot and named after Archangels.
  • 5D's escalates the design space by having some Synchro Monsters also be Tuners, resulting in powerful Synchro Monsters formed by tuning Synchro Tuners with other Synchro Monsters - the protagonist's ultimate version of his ace monster utilized a Synchro Summon using five Synchros.
  • The opening duel ZEXAL ends with the protagonist doubling his ace's strength to 5,000 to finish off his opponent. That is just the beginning. Subsequent climactic battles involve "how high can we jack up the ATK stat while it's still a real number?" with the record being broken with every instance of an ATK-doubling effect. 8,000? Certainly. 16,600? Accomplished at the battle with the first Big Bad. 79,200? Needed a Shining Draw for that. 83,200? Accomplished due to a complicated loop of effects. The ultimate Big Bad has an ultimate monster with 100,000 base ATK and it was trumped by boosting Utopia to 204,000 ATK.
    • ATK scores aren't the only thing escalating in ZEXAL. Midway into the first half of the show, the protagonist gains the ability to use his own Xyz Monster as an Xyz Material for a monster of the same Rank.^note Xyz Monsters don't have Levels and so cannot be used as Xyz Materials without assistance. Cue the second half of the show, and villains (and eventually protagonists) begin using Rank-Up cards to upgrade their Xyz Monsters into more powerful forms with a higher Rank. This culminates with Eliphas, who has a Deck designed around the Rank-Up mechanic and reaches a never-before-seen Rank 13 monster. It doesn't stop with that by the final Duel of the show, with a Double Rank-Up card that pulls out 2 monsters from 1, and Yuma using Xyz Monsters to Summon a Rank 0 Monster.
  • In Yu-Gi-Oh! The Dark Side of Dimensions, Aigami first tries to prevent the Puzzle from being found and completed by stealing its pieces. When that fails, he tries to kill Kaiba, who plans to put the Puzzle back together to duel Atem. When that fails, he tries to kill Yugi, as killing him would ensure the Pharaoh had no vessel to return to, as well as kill Bakura to get revenge for Shadi. When that fails, the Millennium Ring possesses him and goads him to try and kill them both.
  • Parodied in The Abridged Series in episode 52. This was about the time the show really turned things up in the Noah arc.
  Yugi: "Okay, since when did this show become AMAZING?"
• Sengoku Basara: How mundane can the fights get? How "manry" and Hot-Blooded can the characters be? Is there any way the Anachronism Stew and the historical inaccuracies can be even more hilariously awesome? How gratuitous and mangled can Masamune's Gratuitous Engrish become? Can we cram any more blatant homoeroticism into this before Masamune and Yukimura actually start making out onscreen? How much of a gigantic, creepy prick can we make Mitsuhide? Can Oda Nobunaga possibly be any more Obviously Evil?
• Shin Mazinger - What's more powerful than a Rocket Punch? Turning your entire mecha into a Rocket Punch. Mazinger transforms into a giant golden fist. And they find a way to top that in the final episode, by a ludicrous degree!
• The Legend of Koizumi: How high stakes can the mahjong get? How many politicians can we cram in there? How utterly ridiculous can we make it without losing the impression of trying to be serious?
• Saikano. How powerful can Chise get? Are there any other ways of destroying her life we haven't thought of yet?
• Gintama. How ridiculously blatant can a parody be? How many poop jokes and Dragon Quest references can be fit into one episode?
• Bakugan. How much more ultimate can Drago, the ultimate Bakugan, get?
• The last twenty chapters or so of Fullmetal Alchemist are basically an exercise in "How many awesome moments, tearjerkers, and things that make us want to hide under the bed can Hiromu Arakawa cram in?" It's an exponential curve, it turns out.
• Higurashi: When They Cry. How much more insane can the characters get? How much crazier can the facial distortions be? How confusing can the first season be? How is the second season going to explain things? (Answer: awesomely.) For how long can Rika and Hanyuu suffer in those worlds? How cruel can the Hope Spot be? How awesome can the real happy ending be?
• Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt is the new Gainax series that does to Refuge in Audacity and Vulgar Humor what Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann did to Rule of Cool. It became the new de facto Quirky Work after one episode and after nine more, shows no signs of staying in one place for more than eleven minutes. How much more vulgar, sexual and just plain weird can this series get, anyway?!
  • Enough to give us possibly the average Gainax Ending ever (at least until their next project).
• To Love Ru Darkness does this with fanservice. Just how much ecchi can we make this Shounen manga?
• REDLINE: Just how much more insane does the race get? How many Anime and western flick references can be crammed into a movie. How much more can it go through this particular trope to higher limits than even the Trope Namer itself?
• Monster - Just how bad can a character be before you, the viewer, stop sympathizing with them? How many more characters will get more focus...only to not to make it to the end?
• [C] – Control - EXTRAVAGANT DUEL IN ANOTHER DIMENSION WITH ECONOMIC TERMS AND IN THE GUISE OF ECONOMIC DEALS, anyone?
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica: How many Wham Episodes can this 12-Episode Anime have? How many more rifles can Mami summon up? (There's a reason why fans often call her skill Unlimited Rifle Works.) How much shit can Homura blow up? How much damage can Walpurgisnacht take? Lastly, how much more powerful can Madoka get?
  • The Spin-Off Puella Magi Kazumi Magica is also this by bringing in Wham Chapters after Wham Chapters. Double that for the total number of Shocking Moments delivered in each of them.
• Fist of the North Star - Just how cruel, sadistic and despicable can the next villain be?
• The Digimon franchise. Just how many digivolutionary levels can the digimon go through? How much more ridiculously powerful can they get? Then came DNA Digivolution, Armor Digivolution, Mode change and Biomerge Digivolution.
  • Then humans started getting in on the evolution. Digimon Frontier also concluded with the final villain having enough physical strength to piledrive the strongest of the heroes through a moon. Said heroes became the equivalent of the Japanese Storm God, Susanoomon, who splits an entire planet in half with his sword.
  • Then came along a main character named Marcus Damon. Just how many digimon can he punch out by himself to allow his agumon to digivolve? The series ends with Marcus punching out what is effectively the god of the Digital World.
  • Digimon Fusion in particular, with its several Shout Outs to the Super Robot Genre, its full of this to levels even the previous series before it couldn't possibly achieve. Just how many digimon can be xrossed together? How much more Hotblooded can Shoutmon get? How much more strategic can Taiki get? How much more ridiculous looking and yet extremely awesome can Shoutmon's Digixros forms get? The end result is Shoutmon X7 Superior Mode, a Fusion Dance of the entire population of the Digital World.
  • After Digimon Adventure tri., the franchise undergoes a Darker and Edgier Audience Shift where the question is no longer how overpowered the Digimon can be, but how depressing and bleak each story can be. It reaches the point where Digimon Ghost Game and Digimon Survive go beyond simple Deconstructions to become borderline shock horror.
  • In Digimon Ghost Game, the first few instances of Digimon incidents don't even affect more than a building or two, and the daily Digimon don't go far away from typical mischief or other non-lethal incidents. Come Episode 13, and Sealsdramon, a Serial Killer of Digimon, appears and personally murders 1,000 Digimon all by himself and was killed by the advent and intervention of the vicious GulusGammamon. Since then, the party finds themselves dealing with more dangerous Digimon who attempt kidnapping, Body Horror and sometimes murder on a larger scale. Vamdemon in Episode 25 takes this further; he kidnaps women influencers and uses them to spread a vampire zombie apocalypse to take over the entire world, forcing Hiro to unlock his Perfect form to deal with him. Since then the incidents really reach horror territory with hostile Digimon blatantly causing gruesome incidents in the open, Jump Scares and Body Horrors galore, and high stake incidents that can easily lead to a Total Party Wipe. It climaxes at Episode 56 where a Kuzuhamon essentially attempts mass murder of Hiro's city and had to be stopped in combat, only for Hiro to be almost defeated because she's an Ultimate/Mega and Hiro's Gammamon can only evolve to Perfect/Ultimate at most — other equally powerful Ultimates and Megas routinely come out to enslave or wipe out humanity (or at least, try killing hundreds), the protagonists find themselves fighting against multiple apocalyptic abominations, and something worse is threatening the end of both worlds.
• Rio -Rainbow Gate!-: How insane can Howard make his casinos? In episode 5, he opens up the "Sky Resort", a 25 story Glass pyramid with Multiple casino floors, a Ridiculously Human Robot girl, the world's largest waterslide (with KILOMETERS of tubes), and a Holodeck. When he cuts the ribbon to open the building, it suddenly RISES UP, as it's revealed the pyramid is on top of a skyscraper. AND THEN THE WHOLE THING LAUNCHES INTO SPACE.
• We Without Wings pushes how far can it can go with Does This Remind You of Anything?. Refuge in Audacity, indeed.
• Silver Diamond has many characters capable of this, but Chigusa is this trope personified: Improbable Aiming Skills, No Social Skills, The Determinator, Genius Ditz, THE Healing Factor, or Accidental Pervert. You name it, chances are he's gonna absolutely destroy the standard for it.
• Code Geass:
  • How much more over-the-top, crazy or brilliant will Lelouch's plans get? What new technological innovation will the two sides of the arms race apply to their mecha?
  • What new technological innovation will be applied to the Knightmares? It starts off with three Ace Custom mechs, and everyone else using a standard model including the main character, Lelouch. For most of season 1, all Knightmares use machine guns or melee weapons. Towards the end of the season, Lelouch acquires a cutting-edge Knightmare that can not only fly, but can shoot powerful lasers; with it he easily curb stomps anyone who fights him. But then in Season 2 that prototype's technology proliferates and soon every faction has flight and laser weaponry that can wipe out swathes of enemies in a single shot. And nearly every major character gets a unique Knightmare.
• PandoraHearts. How much Ship Tease can there be between...everyone? How many people will Vincent have extremely disturbing Foe Romance Subtext with? How many more Wham Episodes can appear?
• No Game No Life: As far as the anime is concerned, every episode is basically 『　　』 stepping up their game, and taking on (and defeating) ever-increasing levels of challenge and badassery.
• Uzumaki: Events start out relatively small scale, but over the course of the story, they become outright apocalyptic. Typhoons are drawn toward the town of Kurozu-cho, where the graphic novel's events take place, and a naval detachment is swallowed up by a whirlpool.
• Heybot!: What will our "heroes" do next to obtain Neji Screws? What kind of insanity will happen in the next Bokya Battle? How obscure will the references get? Can the show become any more meta? How far can the staff flip the middle finger towards the executives, moral guardians AND intended audience? Can they possibly sneak in any more innuendos without the censors noticing?
• On a fandom note, how much Shipping can the Pokemon anime have? This page lists literally tens of thousands of official names.
• Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun:
  • The idea is parodied in Chapter 31. Nozaki laments that a Declaration of Protection between Suzuki and Mamiko is boring when he just says it to her. His idea of spicing things up is to have Suzuki make his declaration on a cliffside, while hanging to a rope with one hand, and gripping on to Mamiko with the other.
  • In Mayu's case, his educational pictures for the judo club start from being simple drawings showcasing judo techniques to being flagged for indecency by the school board due to the Ecchi-style pictures.
• Due to the freedom of being a Sequel in Another Medium, Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School actually acts as the tail-end of escalation in Danganronpa's Hope's Peak Saga.
  • In the games, Monokuma got people to kill by holding loved ones hostage, threatening to air dirty laundry, and forging evidence (Trigger-Happy Havoc), and moved on to starving the contestants and setting off a disease that messed with their minds (Goodbye Despair). In Side:Future? He outright brainwashed players to kill themselves to get the others on the right path.
  • The first execution of an installment is the most brutal, with such highlights as getting stoned to death (Trigger-Happy Havoc) or getting dipped in lava (Goodbye Despair). In Side:Despair, the first chronological execution in the saga tops them all: A death trap-filled maze designed to gradually chip away at its player, topped off by a javelin to the chest at the goal. And to make matters worse, this is no minute-long Black Comedy sequence: it takes half the episode.