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Mundane Made Awesome / Anime & Manga
aka: Anime

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"I'll take these potatoes... and CHIP THEM!"
Mundane Made Awesome in Anime & Manga.
  • The snowball fight in episode 19 of ×××HOLiC. Too awesome to spoil with extra words.
  • Acchi Kocchi: Several examples, starting with an air hockey match in ep. 1 that's looks like something out of a Fantasy Battle manga—complete with dramatic action stills and explosions of light.
  • Ah! My Goddess does it repeatedly:
    • The entire series starts because Keiichi manages to contact Belldandy, a goddess... Through a phone call. And while he didn't mean to do so (in fact it was Heaven that intercepted his call and sent Belldandy to him), goddesses regularly contact Heaven through Keiichi's phone, and at least once got called back.
      • Then Keiichi tops himself by calling Heaven on purpose, something mortals were supposed to not be able to do. But Belldandy had fallen ill and Keiichi needed help...
      • And then Urd tops everyone by summoning Hild, the CEO of the Infernal Realm, through a phone call, catching other goddesses by surprise. Though this has a very good explanation: Hild is Urd's mother... Meaning Urd can summon the CEO of the Infernal Realm by phoning to her mom.
    • Skuld once killed an Eldritch Abomination... By tricking it into possessing a floppy disk, that she then made unwritable to trap the abomination in it and then wiped with a magnet.
  • Akagi will freight the outcome of a simple round of Mahjong with an amount of drama and symbolic content roughly on par with the Book of Revelation.
    • The Spiritual Successor, Gambling Apocalypse Kaiji, is as advertised.
      • In fact, characters are displacing wind while placing down playing cards and create small tornadoes while pounding down with their fists!
      • Kaiji has a sound effect for silence.
  • There was a ping pong match in And Yet the Town Moves featuring Tatsuno Toshiko and Haribara Harue, with Badass Narration and music that belonged in the Awesome Music section. It was one of the most epic moments in the Slice of Life genre.
  • Assassination Classroom:
    • A normal day at school involves learning how to use knives, guns, seduce and attempting to kill the teacher; who is a yellow octopus resembling creature with an undetermined number of tentacles and can go at Mach 20. Granted, this is not a straight example, as everyone in the series is well aware of how ridiculous this is and are only following along to save the planet.
    • A straighter example is how exams are depicted in the anime. Armed with hammers, swords, and guns, the students face off giant behemoths in a gladiator match, while in reality they're just solving questions on a sheet of paper.
  • Attack on Titan: A more serious version. After everyone joins the Survey Corps, they get the signature green capes. Showing them each putting it on, before panning across the entire team, treated as the coming of age it is.
  • Azumanga Daioh: Who knew test scores could be so action-packed?
    Osaka: Forty-two points!
    Kagura: Thirty points!
    Tomo: Thirty-one points!
    All Three: By our three scores combined, we have a hundred and three!
    • In a color chapter of volume 4 of the manga, Tomo, in a daydream sequence about what she would do if she had her classmates' abilities, makes an epic entry into the classroom in which she backflips from the classroom door into her seat, answers a question asked by the teacher, and says she forgot her textbook. Then back in reality, Tomo blames Osaka for the end of her daydream sequence, saying "her powers got mixed in there, and everything got all weird". This scene was adapted into the anime thusly: Tomo announces the disbanding of the Bonkuras/Numbnuts/Knuckleheads, given that she's found a way to get out of being one herself: by stealing Sakaki's athleticism and Chiyo's intelligence. Osaka chimes in, saying that Tomo can have her lateness and forgetfulness. Tomo explains the consequences of absorbing these "abilities" as well, the same as described above for the manga. Osaka apologizes for these additions.
    • The very act of splitting chopsticks is made into Serious Business.
    • Osaka's first scene makes even the simple act of walking into a room worthy of several dramatic close-ups and a Bishie Sparkle.
    • Tomo was once so impressed with Osaka's yawning that she got all hot-blooded about it and decided Osaka should open a "yawning dojo". It turns out that yawning practice on the roof in the afternoon is a great way to fall asleep...
  • Baccano!:
    • What terrifying event upon the Flying Pussyfoot drives Isaac and Miria to horrified tears? It's not the hijackers, or the apparent appearance of the Rail Tracer. Nor is it the mutilated, unrecognizable corpses scattering the train cars. The truly terrifying thing is the sudden realization that they forgot to get Ennis a present! NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!
    • Poor Firo is extremely confused when he discovers that attempting to question, examine, or touch the huge, elaborate domino design Isaac, Miria, and the rest of his assorted friends have constructed will earn him a thorough scolding. He's quickly drawn into the fun of it though.
  • Bakemonogatari: The whole series works on Mundane made Sexy! ...or Fanservice made Awesome? Sheesh, middle ground: Mundane made Sexyawesome.
    • The first scene in the first episode is a Bullet Time panty shot.
    • Koyomi brushing Karen's teeth. Epic toothbrushing. With incestuous overtones.
    • Bathtime for Shinobu? Be sure to levitate in the air while surrounded by streams of rose petals! Too far to walk from the shower to the tub? Leaping across the room with acrobatic twirls might be for you!
    • Animation itself takes weird spikes in framerate from time to time. While some are played for the fanservice, others are seemingly random: because you NEED just that one twirl in absolutely fluid animation.
  • Battle Angel Alita: Last Order fetches at least one instance of supersonic needle point, but that hardly holds a candle to two battle androids engaging in a truly epic round of thumb wrestling supplemented with flip kicks and century old Martian kung-fu.
  • In the manga version of Battle Royale, when Shinji Mimura thinks he's found a way to hack into the network of the Program, you can't help but yell: "Yeah, work that keyboard!"
  • This is the biggest plot element in Being Able to Edit Skills in Another World, I Gained OP Waifus. The protagonist's special ability is all about getting the most boring and mundane skills he gets his hands on and reconstructing them into truly awesome abilities nobody else has... and then installing them into his slave harem for maximum tactical advantage... while trying to stay under the radar.
  • Ben-To: A show about epic gang fights for... discount lunchboxes. But it's awesome. Even the weapons are awesome from Ayame's Dual Wielding Chopsticks, to Monarch's One-handed cart swinging and finally Orthus's shopping baskets Speed Blitzzes.
  • Beyblade: Spinning tops is the most known sport in the world. Beyblades are just like normal tops, but they are made with special technology — what kind differs per sub-franchise. You can summon giant beasts to attack, control gravity, make fire storms, tidal waves and hurricanes, destroy huge stadiums, hold complete control over time, create universes and other stuff. No wonder there is always some random Big Bad trying to use these "toys" for their own purposes. Surprisingly, no one ever died, until Rago & Nemesis got involved and almost caused the apocalypse, but the police doesn't seem to care.
  • Black Butler:
    • Pretty much anything Sebastian does.
    • Alois Trancy, the new master, destroying some egg yolk while having a little speech about how pitiful sunny-side up eggs are. Add in that it's one of his psychological complexes and has an underlying prelude to the loss of Hannah's eye, it's creepy awesome.
    • Baldo cooking.
    • And who knew photography could be so... explosive?
    • Making curry is Serious Business.
  • Black Jack is to Medicine what Ace Attorney is to Law. Never will you find more epic surgery prep than in this anime.
  • Bleach:
    • Uryuu Ishida occasionally displays lightning-fast, incredibly accurate... sewing skills, complete with the same stern concentration he has when fighting or speaking of Quincy pride. It's also applied to him more generally as he'll make his own uniform for battle, solely for the sake of looking cool. He even has a back-up cape just in case the one he's wearing gets damaged.
    • There's nothing dramatic about the phrase "thank you"... until it's spoken while accompanied by a close-up shot of Yumichika's focused, fearless, dangerous eye where it becomes a Pre Ass Kicking One Liner to a Curb-Stomp Battle. The anime even cranks this up by giving Yumichika Glowing Eyes of Doom and dramatic music pause as he says it.
    • Aizen proves his truly epic taste in furniture with the Megacouch.
  • In the second episode of Blend-S, Mafuyu and Dino face off to see who gets to take home an anime figurine. There's a long, dramatic buildup with the two posing and hamming it up... and they square off in a game of rock, paper, scissors. Which ends in Mafuyu uppercutting Dino.
  • Bludgeoning Angel Dokuro-chan plays Sakura-kun's death and resurrection in this manner in the final episode of the first series. Normally, this would be a legitimately dramatic scene... but in this series, this happens at least Once an Episode and is played purely for comedy, so handling it as if it were actually dramatic only makes it funnier — which was probably their intention.
  • The grand poo-bah of this trope could very well be the senseless wonder that goes on in every episode of Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo, from using one's nose hairs as a fighting style, making people bald Serious Business, constant Mind Screw, letting loose a surreal world inside the main character's afro, holding contests out of blowing into fans, superpower-inducing jackets, using farts as weapons of doom, and on top of that, being so purely and utterly random ANYTHING can be transformed into an captivating battle - such as hanging upside down from bungee cords or just sleeping! Even facing an enemy with geometry-based powers can become epic - because when you're Bobobo, you can shut those 3-D-reliant moves down by turning reality into a literal 2D video game!
  • The manga/anime Bungo Stray Dogs turns writing into magic - literally. Books and poems are turned into badass magic powers. All effect beams are made from text and the series is littered with literal citations of books. Who thought literature could be so awesome?
  • [C] – Control: it's a show about financial transactions carried out by way of elaborate shounen-style battles on an Eldritch and Amazing Technicolor Battlefield. And then about halfway through the real Mind Screw sets in.
  • Everything about Captain Tsubasa is done in awesome fashion with slow-motion and special effects, despite supposedly being a soccer anime about completely normal KIDS (and eventually adults) doing soccer.
  • Cardfight!! Vanguard, being a card game anime, naturally runs with this. Any time a character rides a new Vanguard, it usually involves them dramatically slamming the card down onto the playing field. Then the sequences on Cray proceed to take it up to eleven.
  • Cells at Work!: The human body is represented as an enormous city, with individual cells anthropomorphized as people depending on their function and size. A pollen allergy is represented by the pollen getting in the eyes as a meteor strike, then the body being flooded by histamines in reaction to the antibodies produced to fight the cedar allergens, sneezes are represented by fragmentation missiles exploding everywhere, and the anti-allergy medication is a killbot that dispenses active ingredients at every affected cell.
  • Chūka Ichiban! (a.k.a. Cooking Master Boy) lives this trope, as everything from choosing ingredients, through preparation and cooking, to presentation is incredibly over-the-top. And the when unveiled, Mao's food has a blinding Power Glow that fades to reveal... Szechuan cuisine.
  • In CLANNAD, Akio is the main source of this, often grabbing things and drawing out a baseball bat in a dramatic way with Speed Stripes, whoosh sound and all.
  • Lelouch Lamperouge of Code Geass is a textbook example of this. With a fabulous, stylish Batman-esque costume, Lelouch, with his flair and love for drama, fired up his popularity amongst Japanese resistance cells against Britannia with his exaggerated gestures, speeches, and ability to pull off outrageous plans that most would consider suicide. Examples include:
    • The keyboard-controlled Knightmare Frames, which let him show off his awesome typing skills. Suck it, GUI. With keyboards that sound like church organs, no less.
    • His mechanical diabolical looking clothes hanger made in the same aesthetic style as his Zero suit.
    • He makes something as mundane as taking a (very special) contact lens on and off FABU-LOUCH!
    • Lelouch's habit of being overly dramatic when speaking, using his Geass, or doing anything is mocked by C.C., who asks him why he feels the need to do some overly-dramatic hand gymnastics at some times and going without it at others. His answer boils down to "Shut up," which, ironically, is pretty undramatic.
    • The destruction of the giant pizza. Dramatic chords everywhere, people chasing Euphemia, Suzaku tries calming everyone while the music continues and no! His attention wanders! The pizza is cast onto a tree by accident! Poor C.C.
    • Many racing series make the act of picking up a key, putting it in the ignition, and turning it seem dramatic. This show takes it farther because Suzaku pulls this off even though the mecha keys in this show look like (and probably are) flash drives and the ignition looks like a USB port.
    • Lelouch can make the act of fidgeting his hand while holding a chess piece seem dramatic.
    • Whether it's a corded phone that was installed in a bathroom or his cell phone, Lelouch knows how to make answering a phone look stylish.
    • When C.C. bleeds lightly from one finger, then puts a bandage on it, the show makes it seem dramatic. Her blood happens to fall on top of the crown of the black king chess piece, and she stares at that bandage on her ring finger like it's a wedding ring.
  • The entire plot of Comic Party centers around drawing and selling doujin, and about half the cast is constantly screaming about how awesome it is.
  • The Cowboy Bebop episode "Toys in the Attic" gives us the best way to get rid of a fridge ever, with sparkles and orchestral music to boot. Then Ed eats the monster that's been attacking them. Seriously.
  • Cyborg Grandpa G gives us dramatic farming. It doesn't help that Grandpa thinks that explosives and flechettes are appropriate farming tools... which actually does make it awesome.
  • Death Note loves doing this. You'd be surprised how epic eating chips or writing in a notebook can really be. You obviously aren't trying hard enough. Granted, said notebook is an Artifact of Doom that kills people when their names are written in it, but is dashing across the desk (complete with red/blue after-effects and flaming eyes) really necessary? The manga wasn't anywhere quite as ridiculous with some of these aspects, and it's arguable this is just a result of trying to transfer the striking and stylized visuals possible with individual panels.
    • Mikami Teru takes this even further by making slashing motions with his pen as if it were a sword while writing names in the Death Note while saying "sakujo" ("delete" in the English dub) to himself when he finishes writing a name. A particularly epic "sakujo" of the anime includes slow motion, a fall backwards, and a very, very joyful look on his face that resembles an orgasm more than a killing. Fanart ensued. The same Sakujo-gasm also has what appear to be large drops of shiny white sweat, with a spotlight on his crotch. seen at the end of this video, which includes every instance of his Catchphrase.
    • Also, when Mello eats a chocolate bar.
    • While the Japanese version of the potato chip eating was similar, the people dubbing decided to go full out and added freaking maniacal laughter.
    • Epic hugging, 'cause just a hug isn't epic enough.
    • The second ending is one of the best ways to show the trope: Light Yagami goes up an elevator, his Note is opened by the wind, he writes a name on it, watches his clock, flies at high speeds, walks calmly across traffic, flies in the opposite direction, and does a Crucified Villain Protagonist Shot over a city... all of that to the rhythm of heavy rock.
    • The fact that the tennis match between Light and L didn't turn out more epic than it did is a bit of an anomaly, but then again, The Prince of Tennis took care of that.
  • Played for horror in Death Parade, in which two people enter a bar and are coerced into playing ordinary bar games with weird side effects in a Secret Test of Character. This includes a darts game, where the marks on the boards are actually linked to the other players body parts. So if Player A hits the lung or heart mark on the dart board, Player B's respective organs will feel an equivalent pain. Or the bowling game, where Player A's bowling ball contains an exact, functioning replica of Player B's heart inside, and vice-versa. Obviously, the games are ridiculously high-stake and often end up being played with far more vigor than usual.
  • Destroy All Humankind. They Can't Be Regenerated., a series revolving around the card game Magic: The Gathering, portrays each duel as if the players are real life spellcasters partaking in an epic battle of the ages, summoning giant fantastical creatures to their side, interacting with field effects, and taking physical damage from opposing monsters and spells. In reality, they're just sitting down at a table playing a card game.
  • Digimon:
    • Digimon Tamers, where nearly every main character has a different, epic, method to slide a card through their Digivice, complete with fancy card spinning and flipping, and kung-fu moves. The payoff comes in the form of two sequences which come close to being actually epic, including a split-screen triple slash, and the final one where all four mains slash the same card.
    • In the Digimon Adventure movie, Izzy redirects hundreds of emails to Diaboromon to slow him down and allow their Digimon to finish him off. What makes it this trope is Izzy's over-the-top line while all he's doing is redirecting emails.note 
    Izzy: "You've GOT MAIL!"
  • Dragon Ball:
  • The Drops of God combines the truly epic act of decanting wine with Engrish. Decantering from such a height... Incredible...◊
  • Duel Masters is almost as bad about this; however, this is intentional, as it's an Affectionate Parody of Yu-Gi-Oh!... well, at least the dub is.
  • Durarara!!: Mikado Ryugamine uses the Internet so epically that his mouse catches on fire◊. If you've ever wondered why your mouse has yet to catch fire during your epic Internet browsing, that's because you have never weaponized Anonymous.
  • Ever silly, a Recap Episode of Excel♡Saga had quite possibly the most epic scene of setting up dominoes that has ever been made, complete with a dramatic premature trigger override. Which could only be carried out by Il Parazzo.
  • Eyeshield 21 does this a lot too. Although the way techniques in the manga are portrayed in a way such that you realize that the cool effects are purely symbolic, the anime features fast runners becoming surrounded by bright colorful battle auras. Because! Sena is...running! But! Not only is he running! He's running FAST!! The fact that he's sometimes animated running like Shaggy from Scooby-Doo makes this even worse.
  • Fairy Tail:
    • Pillow fights are taken a little bit too seriously by Natsu, Erza, and Gray.
    • Natsu and Lucy fixing their hair and Happy putting on his sack right before they fight Ultear and Kain.
  • The first episode of FLCL shows CPR in Bullet Time. We're then told by the characters that it was shot in real time.
  • Food Wars! is a series about cooking with no supernatural or science-fiction stuff. The characters' cooking is so good that people have orgasms eating it! Or so bad it makes girls feel like they've been groped.
    • Just cooking or even when they're preparing cooking makes the chefs looking so Badass. The epicness of either cooking or eating is on the same level as of Death Note, but with a strong flair of a battle manga. This is what happens if you combine this trope with Awesome Art.
    • It helps there are amazing cooking duels (called Shokugeki) like in real life, where two parties are cooking in an arena (the official Shokugeki at least).
  • Fullmetal Alchemist:
    • The Colonel's epic TINY MINISKIRTS! line.
    • EVERYTHING Alex Louis Armstrong does. EVERY SINGLE FREAKING THING. With sparkles of AWESOME included. This epicness HAS BEEN PASSED DOWN THROUGH THE ARMSTRONG FAMILY FOR GENERATIONS!!! In the anime, he and Sieg Curtis perform the MOST. AWESOME. BROFIST. EVER. Complete with pec flexes and Bishie Sparkle, WHILE BEATING UP SLOTH, while a deep-voiced male chorus sings in the background.
    • Ed doesn't understand why nobody else appreciates his unique aesthetics.
  • One episode of Full Metal Panic! season 1 features Humongous Mecha engaging in fierce battles of tug-o-war and ping-pong.
  • Employed several times in Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu:
    • In the Hot Springs Episode: Kurz Weber's Lovable Sex Maniac antics collide with Sousuke's always-excessive security measures, with epic results. Kurz delivers two "inspirational" speeches to Sousuke's classmates, the 2nd of which sends Kazama into SEED mode.
    • The epic, Rousing Speech-ifying, Full Metal Jacket-channeling, (literally) jaw-shattering Rugby match.
    • The 2nd episode features an epic dash, complete with athletic moves, zooming and epic posing, all just to buy a loaf of bread from a lunch stand.
  • GaoGaiGar combines this with the Invocation in Mission Control, whenever the heroes need to use the Forgotten Superweapon or start a Transformation Sequence:
    Taiga: Final Fusion... (points dramatically) APPROVED!
    Mikoto: Roger! Final Fusion! (Closes eyes, opens them with determined expression.) Program DriiiiiIIIIIIIIve!
    (Mikoto smashes through the "molly-guard" safety glass covering the Big Red Button. Every time. Cue Transformation Sequence for the eponymous Combining Mecha.)
    • Later in the series, she also swipes a keycard to release the Goldion Hammer for use. She does it so epically that one wonders what it looks like when she goes to the ATM!
    • Taiga Koutaro is equally dramatic about turning the key that activates the card reader, but he's the living embodiment of this trope. Later still, he has a key that, when used in tandem with its partner, activates a super weapon that's a Goldion Hammer big enough to extinguish a sun. You can imagine how understated he is when he uses it.
      • Given the situation and stakes, it's a shock that Entouji kept such a straight face during the transformation of the battleships. (Yeah, the hammer has a tiny handle made of battleships.)
      • Made more hilarious by the fact that the partner key is held by the Prime Minister, a doddering old man who takes forever to retrieve it (fumbling in his coat for a few seconds as he does so), blow on it and then use it as it was intended.
      • Taiga's Golf Driver is made of this, typically over the course of the show, a new weapon or item will appear as a still at the very end of the episode with the narrator telling the audience that "This is the Key to Victory", along with the next episode's Eye Catch giving the specs of said Key to Victory. Koutaro's driver, the aptly named Taiga Wood gets this treatment as well.
    • Also with the introduction of Liger Shishio, Leo's brother. When their Sibling Rivalry gets physical, the narrator actually describes the attacks they use on each other with all the seriousness of Gao Gai Gar's.
  • It looks like the Gintama anime learned a few things about this trope from Death Note (even throwing in a shinigami at the end), seeing how it kicked off the news of its third season with what else but tactical warfare over... who'd get to eat sukiyaki?
    • Whoever "won" would become the "nabe shogun/emperor".
    • How about the psychological warfare over toilet paper during Kyuubei Arc?
    • Or the rousing speech on the epic truth of Strawberry Milk. ICHIGO GYUNYU!!
    • Hijikata actually does the dramatic writing thing (and possibly to an even more dramatic extent than Light) when helping Shinpachi write a letter.
    • The time the Yorozuya trio broke into Hattori's house to dramatically cook fried rice. To an awesome soundtrack no less.
    • The game of kick the can gets turned into this on two different occasions, but especially the second instance.
  • GJ-bu has Kyoro's hair-brushing skills, which make the receivers look like they're... turned on.
  • Godhand Teru: performing surgery is the most badass thing ever.
  • Haruhi Suzumiya:
    • Minor example, but Haruhi manages to make a table tennis serve appropriately EPIC. In the same episode, Kyon adds a brief burst of light to placing down what he thinks is a winning Mahjong set.
    • To say nothing of the epic Space Opera that ensues in everyone's imagination when they battle the Computer Society in a doujinsoft Real-Time Strategy game. Complete with orchestral soundtrack and Deep-Immersion Gaming.
      President: GLORY TO THE COMPUTER CLUB!!!
    • Made even funnier when it constantly swaps between the epic orchestral music and the mundane beep-music of the cheap strategy game in the real world, and by the fact that we all know real gamers also act like this.
    • And the fact that she's already Dynamic Entry'd the Computer Club President.
      Haruhi: Kyon, a duel is a duel from the very moment the word is mentioned! Anything the loser says after that is just an excuse!
    • Haruhi is the epitome of this trope. Practically everything she does is presented as overly dramatic enthusiastic, even walking into a room.
    • Then we have Suzumiya Haruhi no Gensou, the CD of the concert where the J-pop songs of the series are rearranged and played by none other than the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra.
    • The scene when Kyon finally breaks the Endless Eight loop, complete with swelling background music. The most dramatic declaration of unfinished homework ever.
    • Haruhi-chan:
      • Naturally, the spinoff takes it further, with Death Note-style doodling-as-swordplay and Kyon and Haruhi building balloon-modeling into a fierce battle.
      • The hot blooded dodgeball match between the SOS Brigade and the Computer Society. It helps that Haruhi had unknowingly unlocked everyone's full potential, meaning that the match proceeds in typical shonen style.
    • Disappearance opens with an epic first person struggle to turn off an alarm clock.
  • This is the source of most of the comedy in Haven't You Heard? I'm Sakamoto. Sakamoto makes everything look cool and stylish no matter how mundane.
  • Chapter 282 of Hayate the Combat Butler, where Ayumu is trying to trick Hayate into asking her when her birthday is (it's that day), while Hayate is trying to avoid the subject like the plague (they have a surprise party planned for later), is played exactly like a fight scene, complete with side characters commenting on the tactical choices.
  • HeartCatch Pretty Cure!: In episode 5, when Tsubomi and Erika are giving the fairies a drink, the formers shakes the bottle relatively weakly. Erika, on the other hand, shows her how it's really done, and then some.
  • Hell Girl manages to make untying strings epic and dramatic. Mind you, the string in question is on the doll that Ai gives people who use the Hell Correspondence, and untying the string is how they seal the contract and send someone to hell.
  • America from Hetalia: Axis Powers lives and breathes this trope, treating everything from watching horror movies to eating Japanese blowfish as mighty trials from the legends of Hercules.
  • High School D×D:
    • The light novel gives us the debut of one of Issei's primary powers he'll use later on called "Dress Break." The anime turned this debut up to eleven when it had Ominous Latin Chanting music playing while he spreads his demon wings out.
    • In the anime, Issei has the best alarm clock ever!
  • Higurashi: When They Cry:
    • Water Gun fights and Zombie Tags are awesome to many viewers. However, they are rather over-exaggerated.
      • The water gun fight is even more dramatic in the manga.
      • The water gun fight is even MORE dramatic in the original Visual Novel, especially when Night when the Invisible Scares you plays in the background of the entire 10 minute fight.
    • Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni Rei:
      • Episode 1: Who would've thought that taking off Keiichi's trunks would be Serious Business. Takano's Kunai Syringes, Ciel's Black Keys Chie's T-squares, the Yamainu lurking in the pool, Oishi's riot police, Kasai's stun grenade among many others. Oh, and Keiichi's fur seal.
      • All of the club games are Serious Business.
    • All of it is even more over top in the Visual Novel. And it was there since the very beginning.
  • Hikaru no Go relies on this in order to keep the interest of viewers who aren't familiar with Go. There are dynamic camera angles, and alternating backgrounds and occasionally depicting the Go board as a solar system because of the star points.
  • An in-universe example in Hozuki's Coolheadedness: Every years, in December, Dayu leaves her home to deliver her annual report on the administration of the crushing hell to Hozuki. Since she has the reputation of being one of the most beautiful women in the world , and is very rarely seen in public, people started gathering to try to catch a glimpse of her. Not wanting to disappoint them, she started wearing increasingly beautiful kimonos and ornaments, resulting in more people gathering to see her. The great parade of Dayu is now a well known end-of-the-year event, with many people attending it not even realizing that it's just Dayu doing ordinary paperwork in a extremely flashy manner.
  • Hunter × Hunter: The Gungi matches between Chimera Ant King and Komugi are full of dramatic slow motion tile placements, speed lines, dramatic pauses and ripping off arms. Gungi is a simple board game, both players just take it very seriously.
  • Inuyasha versus bicycle. With the main battle theme playing. Incidentally, the bike wins.
  • Is the Order a Rabbit?:
    • Rize when she's showing Cocoa how to make latte art, due to the way she flips the milk and coffee, then stirring as she's making the art.
    • The girls when practicing sports in episode 5.
  • Is This A Zombie? has an series of epic games of Jenga, Mahjong, Twister and others, all for a cup of pudding.
  • Everything in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure is this. The only reason it doesn't get into Rule of Cool is because of how utterly crazy everything is, especially the increasingly insane and weird powers which are supposed to be Psychic Powers. Some examples:
    • Battle Tendency has a chariot race which involves vampire horses, a giant war-hammer, a pillar being used as a weapon, massive crossbows, one of the competitors blinding himself to avoid being tricked, and several Improbable Aiming Skills.
    • Stardust Crusaders has an epic poker match which involves fighting for souls, people being turned into poker chips and two people trying to out-cheat each other. And the hero breaks the villain's finger for what seems like nothing at first, but is quickly shown to be interrupting a cheating attempt. The last wager knocks the villain out.
    • Diamond is Unbreakable gives an epic match of Rock–Paper–Scissors, complete with air jousting, windows breaking, powers being stolen from people, and a kid throwing himself in front of a big rig truck because he lost. He gets saved by the arrogant manga-ka he was playing against so that the kid couldn't steal his power (which, by the way, is the ability to read people like a book and write commands into people that they have to follow).
    • Stone Ocean makes a game of catch awesome to watch.
    • In Steel Ball Run, the President Evil bases his entire villainous philosophy around the analogy that at a dinner party, the side one takes their napkin from is determined by the first person to pick one up, with everyone else following their lead. As a result, when things go his way, he's prone to posing dramatically and bombastically proclaiming "I will pick up the napkin!!"
  • Junji Ito's Cat Diary: Yon & Mu is built entirely around this, portraying Junji Ito getting into wacky hijinks with his cats as if it’s the most terrifying horror story ever put to print.
  • Kaguya-sama: Love Is War:
    • The fundamental premise of the story is two shy teenagers trying to get the other to confess to them because they don't have the guts to do it themselves. But! It's dressed up to look like crazy mind games between the two as they try to trick the other into confessing, asking them out or showing undeniable interest in them. For every zany competition between them, at the end there's always a battle record of who won or lost. ...But don't forget, they don't actually think they're really competing with each other: If they did, they would know the other is interested in them and therefore defeat the point of the (imaginary) competition.
    • Shirogane's attempts to convince Tsubasa to get a job in the anime are so full of fiery passion that they cause temperatures across Japan to skyrocket.
  • The Ramen King subplot in episode eight of Kemeko Deluxe! turns eating ramen into Serious Business.
  • Kuroko's Basketball, a sports anime, obviously has turned almost everything about the game into something pretty awesome. But one example that stands out in particular is how they turned the concept of the ZONE into something similar to going full-blown ninja. No one in real life, when they enter the ZONE, could possibly move like this.
  • Kurozuka':
    • The anime gives us the incredible, breath-taking, five-minute 'throwing a bag of excrement into the river' scene.
    • There is a scene later on where Karuta gets rather too into making hotpot before the big battle, complete with dramatic beats and zooms.
  • The Legend of Koizumi:
    • All world politics are decided by mahjong. At several points characters have set themselves on fire from sheer hotbloodedness of playing mahjong. The Vatican team refer to it as "man's attempt to recreate Genesis".
    • The pope does just this in his first match against the eponymous character. The resulting mahjong plays are so powerful that it causes koizumi to collapse and bleed from his eyes, nose, mouth and ears.
  • This is literally the premise of Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions!, in which a few characters with often see things through the filters of their teenage delusions of epic grandeur, or chuunibyou.
    • Episode 01: Rikka trying to open a train door by Dramatic Wind and then walked in as if nothing happened. Also in the episode: Rikka unseals her Magical Eye.
    • Episode 02: Rikka versus Touka — in an epic battle of umbrella versus ladle — through the former's vision.
    • Episode 03: Rikka and Sanae's broom fight through their delusions.
    • Episode 04: Sanae's hair versus Shinka's pom poms.
  • The trope is taken to its logical extreme with Lucky Star's Meito Anisawa (Anisawa Meito: Ani Me), who turns his pursuit to sell something to "Legendary Girl A" Konata into something almost Dragon Ball-like.
    • Hiyori turns something as simple as tripping into an epic battle for the survival of one's drawing hand.
    • Shopping for trading cards is Serious Business.
    • Konata already has maps, routes, teams, designated locations, and synchronized watches for... a trip to Comiket.
  • Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's:
    • The dodgeball match in the supplementary manga, which had Fate vowing to protect Nanoha, performing a Super Jump to keep said promise, and having a final showdown with Suzuka, who had now been completely absorbed in the competitive atmosphere ("As expected from Fate-chan!"), complete with internal Combat Commentary. It ended with Fate losing both the match and her consciousness after Suzuka successfully countered her nigh-impossible to dodge attack, which was depicted in slow-mo.
      Arf: ...what kind of strength does that kid have...?
      Amy: I wouldn't expect any less from one of Nanoha-chan's friends.
    • The Distant Finale/"Where Are They Now?" Epilogue has a slow motion scene of Hayate casually standing up after putting her shoes on before she runs to school (to emphasise that she's finally free from the curse of the Book of Darkness).
  • The last episode of Magician's Academy features an intensive manga drawing scene complete with evil overlord pencil techniques, maniacal laughs, and pencils leaving streak marks across the sky... all too similar to a certain other anime.
  • Maken-ki!: At Tenbi Academy, everything is decided by duelling for it, which includes asking any of its female students for a date. So if any guy's got a crush, they'll have to throw down the gauntlet and hope they can win - because the girls are a hell of a lot stronger than the guys are.
  • On an episode of Mars Daybreak, the Ship of Aurora is trapped on a drained dock and Earth troopers are trying to cut their way in. The Captain calls to deploy the "Elizabeth Cannon." The rest of the crew suddenly get Oh, Crap! looks on their faces and promptly cover their ears to prepare for the weapon's deployment... which consists of the captain (Elizabeth) yelling in the loudspeaker at the top of her lungs with the external loudspeakers turned all the way up. Don't laugh, it worked.
  • Mayoi Neko Overrun!'s Onsen Episode gives us badass ping-pong playing (though sandwiched in it is a minute of padding).
    • Episode 8 brings in the director of Saki to deliver a spot-on parody via the medium of Epic Jenga.
  • Mazinger series do this a lot:
    • Mazinger Z: Although Kouji mostly saves his hotbloodness to when he is fighting or riding his Humongous Mecha, he simply can not make some activities in a mundane way. He can not go downstairs like a normal person. He has slid down the railing. His idea of bike-riding contests includes hopping off the bike and making a somersault before landing back on his seat, or leaping across a cliff and using his rival's bike to gain momentum. And when he is going to docking in his Super Robot, he ALWAYS has to shout "Mazin go!" out of the top of his lungs in spite of it being unnecessary. Given that he is the Trope Codifier for The Hero in Humongous Mecha anime, that kind of attitude bled in other Mecha Show protagonists.
    • And then you get Boss inventing Brockenball. It is like soccer, except the ball is Count Brocken's head and everyone wins... but the ball.
    • Great Mazinger: Tetsuya's docking in Great Mazinger is even more exaggerated. He leaps dramatically in the Condor Brain jet, dashes through a submarine cavern, takes off through a shipwrecked ancient ship, and docks in Great Mazinger while it is being catapulted towards him, rotating his aircraft one-eighty-degrees.
    • UFO Robo Grendizer: And Duke Fleed, who is pretty calm and quiet when he is not piloting, boards Grendizer by dashing off a tall hatch as making a somersault as yelling his name.
    • Mazinkaiser: In one scene, Sayaka's bra gets cut, and everything -her bra falling, her breasts weirdly bouncing, everybody reacting to the fact- goes bullet time.
  • More than one moment in Medabots.
    • When Ikki inserts Metabee's medal in its body. Is camera rotating, excessive posing and shouting really necessary to show a kid inserting something in a robot?
    • Mr Referee has a way of dealing with rule-breakers? He calls upon a satellite to get justice! With a blow gun! And knock out darts!
  • Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid:
    • In Chapter 21, after the Curb-Stomp Battle, the dragons decide to have a match between themselves. Their vast superhuman abilities turn the relatively modest sport of dodgeball into what amounts to an epic battle with massive amounts of property destruction... which gets fixed in a jiffy (and bystanders have their memories erased) through magic afterwards.
    • In Episode 2, Tohru and Kanna use the seesaw to toss each other sky high after Kobayashi tries explaining its correct usage to them.
  • Mister Ajikko is made of this trope. It brings cooking battles to absurdly epic levels.
  • Mob Psycho 100: To keep up with his Phony Psychic image, Reigen Arataka uses a variety of Special Moves that are just average actions only he shouts out their names to give it some showmanship flare. These techniques range between healing and non-lethal moves like Sorcery Crush (giving a client a massage that loosens their joints and relives stress) to more straight-forward attacks like Anti-Possession Jumping Knee Strike (using a jumping knee strike on a possessed person).
  • The Mythical Detective Loki Ragnarok manga had a scene where the eponymous character taught the others how to drink milk... awesomely. Possibly referencing The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time example in the video games section.
  • Might Guy and Rock Lee of Naruto. No matter how they are viewed by their fellow shinobi or how unnerving their appearances have become over the years, NOTHING CAN EXTINGUISH THEIR FLAMES OF YOUTH!!!
    • After a long and anticipated wait, Naruto brings you the epic rivalry of Kakashi Hatake vs Might Guy... at rock-paper-scissors.
    • THOUSAND YEARS OF DEATH! is a glorified ass poke. Then Naruto actually manages to make this attack actually awesome by performing it with a kunai laden with explosives, seriously hurting Gaara in half bijuu mode.
    • In the Sunny-Side Battle! OVA, Itachi makes breakfast.
  • Negima! Magister Negi Magi gives us one of the most epic arm wrestling matches ever. It blasts a hole in the floor.
    • Just two chapters later, a kiss takes up four pages, has an inspirational speech in the middle of it, and causes an explosion.
    • Thanks to the magical items she procured during her travels in the Magical World, Nodoka manages to turn a question that most people ask many times in their life into the most awesome thing ever.
      Nodoka: What is your name?!!
    • And lately near the end of the Negi vs Fate final fight we get One Handshake Death Match.
  • Nichijou is full of this trope Played for Laughs.
  • No Game No Life: Even something like cheating at poker is made extremely intense in the anime adaptation.
    • The chess game in episode 3, which turns out to be a lot different than a regular chess game. Especially after Sora takes over for Shiro.
    • You would think that something as simple as a word-chain game like Shiritori cannot fall under this trope, but no: the Flügels turned Shiritori into a life-or-death game by making everything that is said appear or disappear, depending on whether it currently exists or not. Sora and Shiro use this to defeat their enemy Jibril, who formerly survived a hydrogen bomb (on the FIRST turn!), with a hypernova by removing Coulomb interaction from the universe, thus causing an artificial Big Bang.
    • The coin toss game between Sora and Miko in episode 12 isn't called "the world's most brutal" for no reason.
  • Onani Master Kurosawa is Death Note but with fapping. Yes, really.
  • One Piece:
    • Crocus's abuse of the dramatic moment, part of one of the more bizarre episodes. Also Lampshade Hanging.
    • Also, the crew merely walking to Arlong Park and Enies Lobby. It's made to be as badass as possible.
    • Bartolomeo taking a piss. It shows how casually he can act in a battle royale between notably tough fighters, because his barriers keep him completely safe.
  • Ouran High School Host Club: Tamaki explains the ways of the common people in this fashion. In the first episode, he gets a round of applause for announcing he's going to give instant coffee a try, to the bafflement of Haruhi.
  • Peace Hame runs on this trope to liven up what would otherwise be a standard Harem hentai by being an Affectionate Parody of the Shonen genre among others as the overall goal's for Tamao earning the right to have sex with his classmates and take their pictures afterwards for the school yearbook.
  • Poison Berry in My Brain: Decision making and the Josei theme is made awesome thanks to the Ghost in the Machine council members.
  • Pokémon: The Series}:
    • Releasing a Pokémon onto the battlefield is often done with great emphasis, and a flashy background. When contests were introduced, it got a little more flashy. Thanks to the introduction of Pokeball seals in the Diamond/Pearl/Platinum games though (which then got introduced in the anime too), releasing a Pokémon into a contest now is similar to setting off several large, bright, fireworks — all at the same time.
    • "Challenge of the Samurai" had a pair of Metapod dramatically trying to out-Harden each other for what seems like hours.
  • In The Prince of Tennis, a mere tennis serve is illustrated by a sequence including the extinction of the dinosaurs by a meteor shower of tennis balls. Happily, this means the series about tennis does, indeed, put more drama into tennis than the series about mass murder does. Still not convinced about the nature of the anime? Just gaze at this tennis match which is elevated to Dragon Ball Z proportions. One of the comments gave a pretty good description: "It feels like Final Fantasy and tennis had a lovechild, and named it Prince of Tennis and let it run free among the DBZ community until it matured into this. "
  • While it's not necessarily "mundane", Ballet has a bit of a reputation for being... boring. Princess Tutu would beg to differ. Case in point.
  • Ramen Fighter Miki is a Gag Series that is a Slice of Life anime… except for their protagonists, BurgerFools in a shopping district, who live in a World of Ham doing this trope practically all the time. The picture of this page is Kankuro doing mundane tasks with the same enthusiasm he trains to defeat his rival.
  • A frequently used comedic trope in Ranma ½. See: Fine Dining Martial Arts, Takeout Delivery Martial Arts, Rhythmic Gymnastics Martial Arts, Tea Ceremony Martial Arts, Calligraphy Martial Arts...and so on.
    • "I will NEVER forgive this offense of the CURRY BREAD!"
    • Taro might fit into this trope as well. His main goal in life is to replace the front half from his Embarrassing First Name, "Pantyhose Taro", but all of his chosen replacements are attempts to be cool, and thusly just as stupid: "Mr. Cool Taro", "Awesome Taro", et cetera.
    • Ranma himself lampshades the tendencies of other martial artists to do this by giving fancy flowery names to maneuvers such as "Ultimate Serenity Strike" or the like and later agreeing quite calmly that it was "just a backrub."
  • Rio -Rainbow Gate!-:
    • This anime turns casino games into something on par with Yu-Gi-Oh!. A game of poker is represented with Rio talking to the cards in some sort of flowery dreamspace while her opponent summons giant charred slabs of cards down from the heavens. Casinos are loud and over the top already, Rio just makes it more so.
    • In the 2nd episode, they get to compete using a gigantic roulette with the symbolism as volleyball.
    • In episode 5, the most extreme slide ever. Seriously.
    • A flying casino.
  • Rurouni Kenshin—Kenshin slices through a daikon radish using a kitchen knife with more gravitas than he'd been shown to fight some of his battles, and for good reason: he's looking for a legendary swordsmaker, and he was testing the blade. The actual awesome is when he immediately puts the radish halves together and the cut seals and the radish becomes one piece again, because the cut was just that perfect.
  • Rust Blaster manages to turn getting to the cafeteria first into a combination race/battle for survival, complete with the main character fighting off five guys at once to get the best meal possible.
  • Saki: Mahjong is played with dramatic camera angles, speed lines, flashing lights, and gusts of wind. Being able to get plus-minus zero score every time is pretty awesome and somewhat inhuman, but that is just the beginning. It's not just dramatic music and lighting, this turns it up to eleven in ways you would not imagine. Winged creatures, transformation and lightning are only the beginning. Good luck understanding any of the actual mahjong play except through context, but it is frikkin' epic.
  • Samurai Champloo:
  • Saturn Apartments shows more reverence for window-washing than your average priest shows for the sacraments.
  • Spoofed ruthlessly in the second season of Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei: Itoshiki, tired of casual conversation, tries saying an incredibly casual phrase in an earth-shattering dramatic way. It turns out to be very fun to do, and all of his students take turns saying casual things extremely dramatically. It gets even better when they start practicing extremely dramatic reactions to the above statements.
    • Chiri, however, subverts this right off the bat in the same scene by saying that she gave her sister a juice injection in an overly dramatic tone, acting like it's actually no big deal at all. According to her, it comparatively isn't. She could have injected compressed gas instead, you know.
    • If anyone wants to check, here.
    • Frankly, Itoshiki-sensei makes remarking that something bugs you into an art form. I'M IN DESPAIR!
  • School Rumble:
  • Sgt. Frog parodies the living daylights out of this trope. About once an episode, Keroro tries to turn his dialogue into a dramatic declamation... about vacuuming... or model building... or going to the toy store...
  • In the Festival Episode of Shinji Ikari Raising Project, Shinji and Asuka have the most inane rivalry in existence. It must be seen to be believed.
  • Skip Beat!: Kyoko Mogami is prone to exaggeration and flights of fancy. For a talent demonstration, she opts to peel a radish with what amounts to BURNING SPIRIT, complete with intense roaring and dilated eyes.
  • Soul Eater: there's an episode devoted entirely to the main characters taking a test. This includes Soul's AWESOME CHEATING SKILLS, Patty's AWESOME GIRAFFE MAKING/KILLING SKILLS and Liz's AWESOME HAIR PLUCKING SKILLS. Black☆Star's AWESOME AUTOGRAPH, written in blood, with a backing track of heavy metal. Death the Kidd suffers, sweats, and cries for not being able to WRITE A PERFECTLY SYMMETRIC LETTER "K". Then, horror of horrors, his pencil broke and his testpaper ripped! His shock and disgust were so great, he coughs up blood and dies! (Not really. As the son of the Grim Reaper himself, it's debatable whether he actually can die).
  • "Stitch Meets High School Musical": Stitch and the other aliens dance to "We're All in This Together" just to bring a stuck basketball down.
  • Straighten Up! Welcome to Shika High's Competitive Dance Club actually has this as its premise for Competitive Ballroom Dancing. Welcome to the Ballroom does so as well.
  • Street Fighter Alpha: The Animation uses extreme close-ups, cuts to amazed onlookers and inspirational music when Ryu ties his headband on.
  • Summer Wars:
    • Scribbling on notepaper and rapidly tapping keyboards have never been so epic.
    • The Hanafuda match for the fate of the world starts out pretty awesome already, but then John and Yoko grant Natsuki a rare angelic kimono for her avatar and it gets crazier from there, culminating in a meteor strike-esque (with an explosion of Cherry Blossoms upon impact) slamming down of the last card.
    • Epic use of a rotary dial phone and an address book!
  • Super Milk Chan. BELGIAN WAFFLLLLLSSSS!
  • Team Medical Dragon: If this manga is to be believed, performing surgery is the next most badass thing after being a ninja.
  • Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann:
    • The anime pulls out dramatic music and slo-mo at the end of episode 6 when Yoko loses her top.
    • Parallel Works 2 has epic pachinko.
  • Tentai Senshi Sunred: General Hengel takes on even the most boring of everyday tasks — like buying furniture — with an incredible seriousness and lightning effects in the background. His subordinate sees him as slightly loony, but is loyal nonetheless.
  • Umineko: When They Cry:
    • Wouldn't debate competitions be so much more interesting if they were as bright and shiny as the red and blue text? This is so far more true in the VN than in the anime. In the VN, they'll show bright sword slashes flying through the dark while intense music like "Dread of the Grave or "Dreamenddischarger" plays.
    • Umineko Chiru has Dlanor and Battler actually having a SWORD FIGHT with their respective truths...and it's pretty epic especially when Battler decides to whip out the Gold Sword of Truth and completely trump her.
  • Variable Geo: Two words: combat waitressing. Picture a MMA competition between gorgeous vixens duking it out with Full-Contact Magic and Supernatural Martial Arts to decide who's the strongest waitress of them all. That's VG in a nutshell.
  • The Vision of Escaflowne features an ultra-dramatic scene complete with Ominous Latin Chanting where a city-sized Fate Alteration Engine is used by the bad guys to...make the heroine fall in love with a different man.
  • The Wallflower: The fighting manga-esque ping pong battle.
  • Welcome to the NHK
    • The third episode turns googling porn into a magnificently epic adventure on the high seas.
    • Before that it made Satou looking through uncensored hentai game CG sets (and some other stuff) as astounding to the audience as it is to him by punctuating reaching the end with giant explosions. Lampshaded when a note on the screen says this is an imaginary screen.
  • The Way of the Househusband: Much of the comic's humor comes from "Immortal" Tatsu, a Yakuza enforcer turned house-husband, treating everyday things like shopping with his wife or cleaning the house like he's still a hardcore mobster.
  • The World God Only Knows has Keima's Capturing God Mode, which pushes his concentration and stamina to increase his speed times six, to a point where he loses three years of his life for every hour he uses it (his words). And what is this awesome technique used for? Playing Dating Sims.
  • The Fate franchise is known for its insane fight scenes, intense moments, and overall badass characters. So, naturally, spinoff series Today's Menu for Emiya Family does this with... cooking! While mostly simple Slice of Life comedy, you know that Once an Episode you’ll have Shirou break out the apron as the intense music kicks in (interlaced with detailed cooking instructions).
  • Any time someone tastes the hero's home-made bread in Yakitate!! Japan, it's an event which makes the parting of the Red Sea look minuscule in comparison, replete with dramatic music, flashing lights, and vivid hallucinations. (One might wonder if the hero is actually slipping psychotropic drugs into his creations...)
    • In fact, in one episode Kazuma makes a bread composed mostly of cannabis derivatives... and it was so delicious, the judge who tasted the bread was sent back in time and saved his own mother from Death by Childbirth.
    • Kuroyanagi (And Pierrot) make tasting bread awesome. Besides the aforementioned effects, they both go so far as to explain why the bread is so good in a Large Ham way, then goes beyond as to deliver a what can be called a "The Reason You Suck" Speech to the losing individual/team. Makes sense when you consider both their voice actors.
  • The whole point of Yotsuba&! is taking aspects of day-to-day life, like going to an electronics store or cycling to school, and treating it like an epic life-changing adventure, because to a five-year-old they really are epic life-changing adventures. Probably the best is chapter 45, where Yotsuba turns cake decoration into a monumental feat.
    Yotsuba: And finally, I'll put on this egg!
    Fuuka: An egg?!
    Shimauu: I've never seen decorations like this before!
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! does this with a children's collectible card game. Though in that case, the fate of the characters involved (or even that of the world) really does hang in the balance. Still, the amount of drama that goes into picking up a card and putting it back down is almost laughable.
    • Taken to the next level in the Battle City Arc: apart from the usual dramatic catch phrases and exaggerated arm gestures, the use of an Egyptian God Card also requires Ominous Latin Chanting, lightning flashes and ancient Egyptian laser beams.
    • Lampshaded in an episode during the Battle City arc. Jonouchi and Ryouta Kajiki were set to duel in what was apparently the local version of Sea World. Since they had an audience (which they shanghaied by somehow interrupting a killer whale show), Jonouchi attempted to play to the crowd by drawing his card in an even more dramatic fashion than usual, pirouetting and rotating like a champion ice skater. Kajiki interrupts this display of card-drawing prowess by demanding Jonouchi get on with it, after which both duelists continue their duel at the standard, slightly less ridiculous level.
    • Just like everything else about Yu-Gi-Oh, the Abridged Series lampoons this mercilessly. "Oh, my God! A giant rock!"
      Steve Arkana: "Now let's begin by shuffling our cards in a needlessly dramatic fashion."
      Yugi: (shuffling his cards with an utmost serious look) "Way ahead of ya."
    • Even the dubbed characters seem to take this trope into consideration when playing:
      Adrian: I reveal two of my face downs.
      Chazz: But how?
      Adrian: Easy, I just call out their names dramatically, and they pop up.
    • I'm going to drink some MILK! And then I'll do my laundry...
    • Yami Bakura made eating a steak so epic and terrifying that it was censored in the dub.
    • In Yu-Gi-Oh! The Dark Side of Dimensions, Kaiba slams his hand into the stone floor, then his fist plunges into the stone releasing bursts of light. He then says in the most straining voice he can manifest the word "Draw". But yells in in a similar fashion to Yami's infamous "DORO! MONSTA CARDO!". And pulls his arm around him by at least 225 degrees. And the the the ground begins to crack as he summons Obelisk the Tormentor.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds has Card games... on MOTORCYCLES!
    • Episode 86 brings us guns that turn into duel disks in a western-styled draw. Just flipping a coin to decide who gets the first move isn't nearly dramatic enough.
    • A trend that starts in 5Ds and continues into the following sequel series' is that when a character summons a monster from his/her extra deck, the summon itself is always done with a lot more drama and flair than usual, while the summoner does a chant (which is always specific to each monster), shouts out their summoning method, and then calls the name of the monster they summon as the monster gets some dramatic camera angles as it slowly materializes into the field. Along with epic music. The fusion users in Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V even make it a point to clasp their hands together as they perform their fusion summons. Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS topped this even further by having the act of STARTING a Link Summon involve summoning a portal with phrases specific to each character. Yes, they haven't even summoned the monster yet and they already shout signature phrases.
  • QQ Sweeper makes cleaning a room awesome, as it takes place on the mental plane and disperses negative emotions.
  • In Mission: Yozakura Family, the Yozakura's daily routine is this. Need to change the channel? You better be able to hit the remote with a pistol from 100 m away. The food? Poisoned to give you diarrhea. Hope you have the skills to crack a multi-layered lock to get to the bathroom. Waking up? Hurry up. The alarm clock is set to blow in 10... 9... 8...

Alternative Title(s): Anime

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