Line #4 Anime/ConcreteRevolutioChoujinGensou


1	[[quoteright:321:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/konkurito.jpg]]
2	''Concrete Revolutio: Choujin Gensou'' (the subtitle meaning "Superhuman Fantasy") is a 2015 anime by Creator/StudioBones, directed by Seiji Mizushima and written by Creator/ShoAikawa. The second season premiered in 2016 and was titled ''Concrete Revolutio: The Last Song''. A manga adaptation ran in Young Ace from September 2015 to July 2016, and its official website is [[http://concreterevolutio.com/en here]].
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4	In a [[HistoricalFantasy fantastic version]] of Main/TheSixties, Jirou Hitoyoshi is a member of the Superhuman Bureau, who strives to protect superhumans for the sake of the government. [[FlashForward Five years later]] he is a wanted criminal who opposes the Bureau's actions with every fiber of his being. In a period of great cultural upheaval, can true {{Superhero}}es exist or are they just a fool's dream?
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6	''Concrete Revolutio'' is [[ViewersAreGeniuses a very information-dense series]], with each episode making heavy reference to both [[HistoricalFiction historical events]] and [[CaptainErsatz iconic fictional characters]] of the time, as well as how each is warped by the other's presence. This is a world where student protests are backed by {{Kaiju}}, and where Franchise/GIJoe has [[TheVietnamVet PTSD from fighting in Vietnam]]. It's often summed up as "a more confusing, Japanese take on ''Comicbook/{{Watchmen}}''".
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8	!!Examples of tropes in ''Concrete Revolutio'':
9	* AndThenWhat: Magotake asks this to Touzaki in episode 21 regarding a plan Imperial Ads started -- [[spoiler:have a definition for superhumans and to combat non-compliant superhumans with super robots]].
10	* AlternateHistory: The Shinka Era, where the series takes place, is very, very heavily insinuated to be an alternate version of the Shouwa era (1926-1989). For example, [[spoiler:the biggest historical nail is that instead of destorying Hiroshima, the atomic bomb became a baby Jiro. This resulted in Mankind to abandon Nuclear research and cause an even bigger oil crisis in the 70's. They still had a Vietnam analogue, albeit one fought against {{Youkai}}]].
11	* AmbiguouslyHuman: A great many characters have their exact nature put in heavy debate as to what it exactly is.
12	* AnachronicOrder: The series has a habit of doing this a lot, switching from the first day some of the members join to when they meet with Jirou [[FlashForward in the future]] when he's not part of the Superhuman Bureau anymore.
13	* AnimationBump: The third episode has an incredibly animated (if short) fight scene at the end. Likewise, the final moments of the fifth episode are conspicuously well animated, despite not having much action.
14	* AstroClone: Among the many {{Retraux}} {{Exp\|y}}ies filling out the cast, Earth-chan is a CompositeCharacter of Astro and ''the Sputnik satellite'' - a super-powerful RobotGirl who lives in orbit, and can appear instantly in response to the cries of people in suffering. While she starts off as possibly [[IdealHero the most admired hero in the setting]], her nature as both a child and a robot causes her to [[BlackAndWhiteInsanity see everything in black-and-white]]; she can't understand why humans tell lies, nor predict long-term consequences of her actions, which [[WrongGenreSavvy clashes horribly with]] the [[GreyAndGreyMorality complex politics]] of post-war Japan. When on one occasion she gains the ability to dream, she sees herself as a human with a loving family.
15	* BadassNormal: [[spoiler:Rainbow Knight is revealed to be this in the second season. He was made out to be a superhuman so that the Bureau could be founded and protect superhumans.]]
16	* BlandNameProduct: Horiz Ketchup - one of the Mountain Horse guys gets it on his head after phasing though his fridge.
17	* {{Cliffhanger}}: Episode 13 ends, unsurprisingly, with a great many plot points unresolved. By the end, [[spoiler: Jin has been defeated, but Jirou has left the Bureau and, with Akita's "death", the Bureau is in shambles. None of the flashfowards to later events are touched upon and the episode closes on giving the first major clue on Jirou's true nature.]]
18	* ColorCodedCharacters: In the second season's credits the main characters are occasionally shaded in a specific color.
19	** Jiro is associated with red and pink.
20	** Kikko is associated with blue.
21	** Emi is associated with purple.
22	** Fuurouta is associated with yellow.
23	** Hyouma is associaed with brown.
24	** Raito is assocaited with green.
25	* CoolCar: Jiro's car, Equus. It has the ability to transform into a [[HumongousMecha giant robot]].
26	* CompleteImmortality: The family of seven (the Hatakeyamas) in episode 9 have this. They've been alive since the beginning of the earth and nothing can kill them. Not even destroying them on a molecular level.
27	* ContinuityCavalcade: Nearly every character introduced up to that point show up in Episode 13 [[spoiler: during the riot in Shinjuku.]]
28	* ADayInTheLimelight: Many episodes, especially early on, focus specifically on a certain character. Over the first cour alone, we have Episode 1 (Kikko), Episode 2 (Fuurouta), Episode 3 (Shiba), Episode 4 (Emi), Episode 5 and to a degree Episode 8 (Jirou) and Episode 10 (Hyouma).
29	* DeathOfAChild: It's stated that all but one of the children Rainbow Knight took hostage were killed in the incident. [[spoiler:It's actually even worse than that; the children survived, but were instead experimented on and died in captivity.]]
30	* DrivingQuestion: [[AmbiguouslyHuman Jirou's]] true nature, per WordOfGod.
31	* FantasyKitchenSink: Pretty much any Shouwa era trope is happily used to the show's content.
32	* FunnyBackgroundEvent:
33	** While Jirou and Raito are bickering about the student protests in Shinka 43 at Kanda (episode 8), Emi, Kikko and Uru try out sour [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kombu konbu]] strips while talking to a policeman, and they make disgusted faces. There are two foreground events that make this more obvious: the subs getting more crowded than usual and the box of konbu filling up the screen momentarily.
34	** In episode 6, Freeze shocks a customer at a restaurant Mountain Horse is eating at while two other members of Mountain Horse are talking.
35	* {{Foreshadowing}}: Lots of it.
36	** At the end of the first ED, the appearances of the cast after the major TimeSkip is briefly shown. A good eye will spot that [[spoiler: Akita disappears from the frame, giving away his "death" in Episode 2.]]
37	** In the opening, four characters who appear later in the anime all dash past the screen. [[spoiler: At least 3 of 4 have been shown assisting Jirou after he becomes a fugitive, though it's unclear if this is also the case for Reiichi.]]
38	* GenreDeconstruction: The anime shows just what happens when you have all sorts of super powered beings in a socially turbulent era full of FantasticRacism, paranoia and very GreyAndGreyMorality that very much clashes with the very BlackAndWhiteMorality present in the time period.
39	* GenreThrowback: The entire anime is basically one long love letter to Shouwa Era media and culture.
40	* GreyAndGreyMorality: Even going as far back as the ''second episode'', the heroes are questioning whose side they're supposed to be on and why things aren't as simple as they initially made things out to be. In particular, since the Superhuman Bureau's job is to protect superheroes, [[spoiler:part of what they do is fund the creation of monsters and villains, to bolster public support for superhumans. Though Jirou and Fuurouta are in the dark, a good half of the group only care about civilian casualties if they result in negative publicity.]]
41	* InSpiteOfANail: [[spoiler:They still had a Vietnam analogue, albeit one fought against {{Youkai}}.]]
42	* MadEye: Jirou gets these in episode 4, when he's about to get squished by big [=GaGon=].
43	* MonsterOfTheWeek: Or rather Superhuman of the Week. Most episodes in the first half tend to be about a new Superhuman the Bureau investigates.
44	* MundaneUtility: Kikko uses her witch powers all the time at her house to do utterly simple things like making breakfast or organizing her closet.
45	* NotWearingTights: This show's a melting pot of superhumans, so some characters have got to have this trope.
46	* OurGhostsAreDifferent: The "ghosts" in this series are more inclined to [[FriendToAllChildren play with kids]], can have the ability to shapeshift, and don't age at all. However, they're not really mentioned to have actually ''died'' at any point.
47	* PlayingWithFire: Jirou, using his fist.
48	* PowerDyesYourHair: Kikko's hair changes to a lighter shade of purple when transforming.
49	* {{Shapeshifter}}: Fuurouta, as part of his "[[OurGhostsAreDifferent ghost]]" powers. It can range from turning into [[{{Animorphism}} cartoony looking animals]] to turning into abstract beings like balloon creatures.
50	* ShooOutTheClowns: Fuurouta and Kikko have a habit of disappearing from the story when things get serious. However, this is averted when [[spoiler: Kikko is revealed to be the demon queen to be, who becomes BrainwashedAndCrazy due to Claude]].
51	* ShoutOut:
52	** As a whole the series is basically a love letter to [[UsefulNotes/ImperialJapan Shouwa Era Japan]], and thus many characters of the week are based off pre-existing characters. This even extends to real-life events, with pretty much every major event in the show having some kind of historical basis. [[spoiler: Makes sense, since this is an AlternateHistory set twenty years after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.]]
53	** Episode 4 has Jirou use the term "[[Film/PacificRim kaiju groupie]]" (subtitled as 'beast groupie').
54	** Episode 9 ends with the U.S. vehicles combining into a single robot that bears a striking resemblance to [[Franchise/{{Transformers}} Optimus Prime]]. This is made all the better when Kikko magically assembles another robot from scrap to fight it, and this one looks exactly like Megatron.
55	* SizeShifter: Grosse Augen, a kind of giant alien. It can merge with a person and allow them to size shift.
56	* SpeculativeFiction: The genre of this work.
57	* TheStinger:
58	** Episode 7's post-credits scene involves [[spoiler:Jirou and Judas breaking into a safe to restore Earth-chan.]]
59	** The season one finale shows [[spoiler:Doctor Hitoyoshi finding a baby Jirou in a crater, only for the camera to zoom out to show a massive kaiju shadow coming from the child. The date line then appears: [[WhamLine Shinka Year 20,]] ''[[WhamLine Hiroshima]]''. ]]
60	* TemporalParadox: Subverted. [[spoiler: Hyouma believes this will occur when he kills his past self, but he survives, implicitly because his existence is tied to a StableTimeLoop.]]
61	* TimeSkip: ''Lots of them''. The events of separate episodes tend to occur months apart. The entire first half of the anime takes place over a little over two years, and about three years subsequently pass after that.
62	* UnusuallyUninterestingSight: Justified, superhumans are common in the series' universe to the point that many incidents are treated as normal by civilians.
63	* UrbanFantasy: The show takes place in a world where any and all types of superheroes and super villains exist among the more mundane folk. Transforming mecha, ghosts, aliens, and [[MagicalGirl Magical Girls]] are all over.
64	* WhoWatchesTheWatchmen: At least this series gives us an answer. The Superhuman Bureau, which Jirou is a part of and later defects from [[spoiler: out of disgust of their actions and a promise to cut himself from Kikko's life]], tries its best to protect regular humans and the superhumans that protect them, but also take up the task of getting rid of the more unstable superhumans if need be. They're more of an underground group, and few have heard of them let alone rumors.
65	* TheWorldIsAlwaysDoomed: Because there are so many superheroes and villains running around the place, Japan is always in some form of peril. [[spoiler: America, Russia and Vietnam also are part of the equation, as shown by the nationality of some of the side characters.]]

Context Anime / ConcreteRevolutioChoujinGensou