History BigFancyHouse / AnimeAndManga

If the front door is more than a few feet from the street, if there are more than four or five rooms, if the rooms are bigger than the typical American walk-in closet... you are looking at the residence of somebody with wads of cash. If it looks like a French chateau and is surrounded by an actual estate, then we are well out of filthy rich and into ImpossiblyCoolWealth.

** Pictured on the main page: Tomoyo Daidouji, being the daughter of a toy-company CEO, lives in a classic BigFancyHouse; Tomoyo's bedroom is bigger than the entire second floor of Sakura's house. And then are the ''mansions'' in England and Japan where Eriol lives, and, in the first movie, the big state of Shaoran's family in Hong Kong. And don't forget Great-Grandpa Masaaki's HUGE own European-style country mansion, either!

* In Manga/EdenNoHana, when Tokio Wakatsuki moves back to Japan to find sister Midori and rebuild his life in his home country )after almost one and a half decades in the USA), he invokes the trope via intending to purchase a really big house for the two of them. And yup, the one in which he and Midori live is pretty big and cozy per Japanese standards.

* Youta Moteuchi from ''VideoGirlAi'' lives in a house that is both this ''and'' a CoolHouse. Sort-of justified in that Youta's father is a very well-known architect, and Youta himself wants to follow in his footsteps and become an artist.

** To the Japanese audience, the isolated two-story log cabin (somewhere on the huge school grounds) Eva apparently lives in was already noteworthy. Although it was probably meant to carry subtext that the school ''really'' doesn't want her having to room with the students... or them with her.

** As a little boy, Inuyasha is shown living with his own mother (a human noblewoman named Izayoi) in a more normal traditional Japanese palace.

* Chiyo-chan's spacious, walled-and-gated, far-off-the-street house in ''AzumangaDaioh'' is a source of much wonderment for her friends, who had no idea she was so wealthy until they visited. ''And'' she has a summer home.

* The residences of Shinichi Kudo and Professor Agasa in ''CaseClosed'' are this.

* Sachiko's mansion in ''MariaSamaGaMiteru'' is remarkably big. Interestingly enough, her summer house is much smaller, Sachiko remarks that she prefers it as it gives her a feeling of comfort because it is cozy. Sachiko's fiance Suguru also lives in a very large mansion.

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* In ''DeathNote'', Yotsuba Group's Shingo Midou has one of these with a large front yard. His living room was redecorated in the anime but his TV remained tiny. The Yagami family house also qualifies, as does the HQ/apartment Light and Misa live in later on.

* Most of the houses in ''AiYoriAoshi''.

* Many characters in ''Manga/CardCaptorSakura'' have big houses, the less fancy one belonging to the Kinomoto family. Sakura's dad is a famous archaeologist, her MissingMom was a famous model... however, they weren't always ''that'' well-off, having lived for some years in a cosy but small apartment.

** Note that Ruki's mother does ''not'' own the BigFancyHouse; it more exactly belongs to ''her'' mom, Ruki's maternal grandmother.

* In ''InuYasha'', Sesshoumaru's mother possesses a huge, sprawling traditional Japanese palace. Location? Floating amongst the clouds. It takes even someone with Sesshoumaru's insanely good nose a good few days of active searching to actually find it and even then his mother has to come to meet him before he can locate it. His mother must be an absolute [[IncrediblyLamePun bitch]] to get in touch with at short notice.

* [[RichBitch Sayoko's]] parent's house in ''AhMyGoddess''.

* Many characters in ''CardCaptorSakura'' have big houses, the less fancy one belonging to the Kinomoto family. Sakura's dad is a famous archaeologist, her MissingMom was a famous model... however, they weren't always ''that'' well-off, having lived for some years in a cosy but small apartment.

* Mugi from ''[[{{ptitlei5gydjrz}} K-On!]]'' appears to live in a huge mansion. We never get to see it, but Sawako-sensei was impressed when she drove Mugi home one day. Since Mugi claims that her family's beach estates are ''small'', we can get the idea that her home must be huge indeed.

** Pictured above: Tomoyo Daidouji, being the daughter of a toy-company CEO, lives in a classic BigFancyHouse; Tomoyo's bedroom is bigger than the entire second floor of Sakura's house. And then are the ''mansions'' in England and Japan where Eriol lives, and, in the first movie, the big state of Shaoran's family in Hong Kong. And don't forget Great-Grandpa Masaaki's HUGE own European-style country mansion, either!

* The Mishima estate in ''AllPurposeCulturalCatGirlNukuNuku''.

This is not so much an AnimeTrope as a fact of Japanese economics, but it makes for a great visual shorthand when the animators want to let the viewer know someone is outrageously wealthy. The same premise usually applies to characters mentioning their family has a summer home somewhere.

* Kotonoha's [[http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/koto_house.jpg huge, fancy home]] in ''SchoolDays''. [[http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/koto_room.jpg Kotonoha's bedroom]] is at least twice the size of [[http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/sekai_room.jpg Sekai]] and/or [[http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/makoto_room.jpg Makoto's]] own rooms, and this is considering Makoto's bedroom is quite large for Japanese standards.

* The Tohno mansion in ''{{Tsukihime}}''.

** To the Japanese audience, the isolated multistory log cabin (somewhere on the huge school grounds) Eva apparently lives in was already noteworthy. Although it was probably meant to carry subtext that the school ''really'' doesn't want her having to room with the students... or them with her.

* Einzbern Castle in ''FateStayNight'' only has ''four'' inhabitants, nevermind that Berserker is one of them. Has its own forest too.

* Japan from AxisPowersHetalia lives in a rather large and traditional Japanese complex home.

On the other hand, the indication of wealth is not always solid if the home was vacated or offered cheaply [[HauntedHouse for obvious reasons]].

While the same effect can be and is done in American series, the impact is nowhere near what it is in Japan; a character would have to have an estate comparable to Monticello or San Simeon to be as impressive to suburban American audiences as a relatively modest house would be to Japanese viewers. This doesn't stop ''manga-ka'' from driving the point home by giving their characters homes opulent beyond Versailles, however.

While the same effect can be and is done in American series, the impact is nowhere near what it is in Japan; a character would have to have an estate comparable to Monticello or San Simeon to be as impressive to suburban American audiences as a relatively modest house would be to Japanese viewers. This doesn't stop ''manga-ka'' from driving the point home by giving their characters homes opulent beyond Versailles, however. Curiously, this is actually ''less'' effective in the yet smaller Great Britain, where a massive estate is often a sign of [[BlueBlood hereditary nobility]] (often land-rich and cash-poor) rather than sheer wealth, though this is less the case than it was in the past. It occasionally shows up in pre-20th century works; in ''{{Pride and Prejudice}}'', Elizabeth Bennet jokingly claims that she started to fancy Darcy when she first saw his BigFancyHouse.

In Japan, it takes a meaning well beyond what it does in the US or UK. Japan is a very-densely populated nation -- equivalent to packing half of the USA's population in a space roughly the size of Montana -- which results in some of the highest real estate prices in the world. This is doubly the case in Tokyo and other big cities where even the smallest homes can cost 100 million yen ($1 million US) and up. Consequently, a large home with a lot of space around it is ''fantastically'' expensive, and indicates its owner has more money than the rest of the cast combined.