Anime / Texhnolyze

"If there's anything you want, anything at all... come to me. I'll be your guardian angel."

— Opening Theme^note the line itself is taken from the film The Swimmer, starring Burt Lancaster

In the not-too-distant future, deep underground, descendants of a banished generation vie for control of the crumbling city of Lux. Ichise, an orphan turned prize fighter, loses an arm and a leg to satisfy an enraged promoter. On the brink of death, he is taken in by a young female doctor and used as a guinea pig for the next evolution of texhnolyze.

Having adjusted to his new limbs, Ichise is eventually taken under the wing of Onishi, the powerful but distrusted leader of Organo, a criminal organization with some hold over the people of Lux. Meanwhile, four different factions begin to draw battlelines for territorial control of the city: the aforementioned Organo; the Union, a fiercely anti-texhnolyze faction; the Racan, a group of rebellious texhnolyzed youths; and the Class, a mysterious group of privileged beings who lurk behind the city. As Ichise is unwillingly drawn deeper into an uncontrollable war, he learns of his possible future from the prophet girl Ran, who guides him from the shadows in his darkest times. When society comes crashing down, Ichise must uncover the truth about Lux and fight for his survival.

Directed by Hiroshi Hamasaki, written by Chiaki Konaka with character design by Yoshitoshi Abe^note The latter two known for working onSerial Experiments Lain, and animated by Madhouse, Texhnolyze is often considered to be one of the strangest and darkest anime ever made.

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Texhnolyze provides examples of:

• Affably Evil:
  • Yoshii proves himself to be as murderous as he is mild-mannered.
  • Kohakura, is pretty laid-back throughout the whole show, and unlike the rest of the Organo, openly sympathizes and respects Onishi's efforts to keep the city together. Then he kills one of the other bosses, frames another, getting Ichise to finish him off, and finally takes over the Organo and defects to the Class, showing his true colours.
• After the End: An unusual example in that the people of the surface world seemed to have simply faded away out of apathy, rather than being destroyed by some cataclysm.
• A Glass of Chianti: Doc can frequently be seen drinking red wine, from a lab beaker no less.
• Alas, Poor Villain: Despite everything he has done and has proven to be, Yoshii's death is treated in an incredibly somber manner, to the point that any possible Catharsis is drained out of the scene. The fact that the penultimate episode depicts how he used to be helps significantly.
• All There in the Manual: Given the minimalist tone of the series, several characters barely speak and have unspoken names which only appear in the credits.
• The Aloner: Ichise. Lampshaded by various people in-series.
• Ambiguously Gay: Toyama.
• And I Must Scream: This is how the Shapes end up.
• Animal Testing: Doc does this on rats, as is typical of an experimenting scientist.
• Anti-Hero: The protagonists, being Doc, Ichise, Ran and Onishii fall between this and anti villains.
  • Doc and Ichise are Nominal Heroes, the former being interested in the pursuit and propagation of Texhnolyze technology, regardless of how it aids others, while the latter, while not actively out to hurt anyone, has little to no qualms about hurting people for even stopping him in the street, shows little hesitance or guilt in caving in a man's skull with his bare hand, and is attached to the people around him purely out of personal interest or even because they asked him to, rather than any idealism or heroism.
  • Onishii and Ran are arguably either Pragmatic or Unscrupulous Heroes, being implicitly or explicitly shown to perform, allow, tolerate or even manipulate some fairly nasty events and people in their effort to try to safeguard Lux from self-destruction.
• Apocalypse Anarchy: Once the Obelisk powering all texhnolyzed limbs is destroyed and the lights above the city go out, everyone left in Lux essentially goes insane and the city descends into an orgy of random violence.
• Apocalypse How: It is vaguely presented, but the implications are that the surface-dwellers of the world at least partially predicted the decline of the human species, and isolated those with greatest genetic chances of prospering, which just happen also to be those that create violent tendencies. Also isolated were predecessors of the members of the Class, who were given special privileges in Lux in return for their cooperation. It is arguable as to whether this was a better decision than their first choice to solve the problem: kill everyone.
• Applied Phlebotinum: Raffia, which allows the Artificial Limbs to be attached to a human body.
• Artificial Limbs: The texhnolyze technology applied to humans, mainly in Ichise and Onishi's case but also Kano. Later events take this trope to a very disturbing extreme with the Shapes, humans who discard their biological bodies to be almost fully automatized as mechanical beings.
• Asshole Victim: Given the nature of Lux many secondary characters qualify. Subverted in the case of Yoshii. Played With in the case of Kano, as despite being the loathsome piece of shit responsible for the effective end of Lux, his death being at the tail end of the Emotional Torque of the finale makes his death barely satisfying.
• Back-to-Back Badasses: In episode 17, Onishi and Kimata, leaders of opposing organizations who would like nothing more than to tear out each others' throats, commit to this as the Organo aids the Union in fending off the Shapes.
• The Bad Guy Wins: Both Yoshii and Kano ultimately get what they want, in spite of the fact that they both die in the process.
• Badass in a Nice Suit: Onishi. He's pissed when his nice suit gets damaged.
  I just had it serviced.
• Bait the Dog: Kohakura comes across as one of the saner, gentler and more likeable members of the Organo, and amongst the few of the top brass willing to defend Onishi during the first arc of the show. Then the second arc with Kano happens and... well... take a look at what he's really like under Affably Evil above.
• Beautiful Void: The surface world, in a Nothing Is Scarier sort of way.
• Beneath the Mask: Yoshii, Toyama, Kohakura, and Kano initially come across as either heroic, or at least sane, only for it to become clear that under their smiles lies some serious, and ultimately deadly, psychological issues.
• Big Bad: Yoshii in the first half of the series, Kano in the second.
• Black-and-Grey Morality: Even the most sympathetic characters in Lux skirt close to being Villain Protagonists at times, while the actual villains want to destroy everything and make everyone suffer forever For the Evulz.
• Blade Below the Shoulder:
  • Part of Yoshii's prosthetic arm, unfortunately for Onishi. Also retractable.
  • The Shapes also use these to devastating effect.
• Blood Sport:
  • The almost ritualized 'spectacles' that take place in Lux at first glance seem to be nothing more than ways for the citizens of Lux to release their savagery but there are prominent clues that the spectacles happen to procure bodies for Raffia, which just adds to the brutality of the setting...
  • The boxing matches that Ichise participated in before becoming texhnolyzed didn't involve gloves or protection of any kind.
• Body Horror: All over the place. Texhnolyzation itself is seen as such by several characters. Then there are the Shapes, and what happens to Ran.
• Bond Villain Stupidity The villains frequently keep blathering while they have one of the protagonists at their mercy.
  • Justified in Kano's case. When confronted by Ichise, he is physically helpless, and only has his words to defend himself. And of course both he and Yoshii really want to be believed and understood by others, and genuinely try to appeal to people with their rants.
• Boomerang Bigot: Kimata, the leader of the Union, hates texhnolyze despite being texhnolyzed himself. Towards the end of the series his dragon calls him out on it only to reveal himself as a far worse hypocrite by defecting to the Class and becoming a Shape.
• Broken Record: The surface world has many radios which do nothing but repeat the same phrases over and over again.
• The Caligula: Kano.
• Central Theme: The series examines a number of topics related to the extinction of the human race and nihilism. While the series seems to imply that humans are nothing but senseless animals at the beginning, it slowly begins to flip this premise on it's head by the end. As the show draws to a close, it ends on the absolute worst outcome for the cast, with literally everyone dead, including Ichise and Ran. Most will attest that the shows' ending is very emotionally affecting, even considering the extremely dire scenario painted for the viewer which likely drained all hope of a happy ending long before the final episode. This is because, unlike most nihilistic works that simply say that humanity is hopeless and we have no future (and thus, why even bothering doing anything), Texhnolyze actually discusses the second half of nihilism. That being, if life has no inherent purpose, then you need to make your own. Even if everyone failed in their goals, their desire to live allows them some form of peace, unlike the Shades who are stuck as essentially immortal statues until the end of time. And even if their struggle was in vain, their struggle was real, and ultimately that's what matters. This is likely why most viewers find the ending so sad- with a situation as hopeless as this, you can only hope for an ending where everyone moves on in peace. Ironically enough, for an ending so depressing, it can actually make a person believe their life does have meaning.
• The Chessmaster: Kano, again. He isn't even revealed until after most of the damage has been done.
• Chick Magnet: Ichise. Every woman he comes across seems to want a piece of him. It's more disturbing than anything, especially considering his reactions to them.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: When they aren't trying to off the Union, most of the Organo's top brass are busy trying to off each other. Onishii is amongst the few not actively engaging in this.
• Cicadian Rhythm: On the surface, which makes the feeling of desolation even more pronounced.
• City Noir: With Dutch Angles to boot.
• Cool Bike: Racan members tend to use these as their main methods of transport, as opposed to the large trucks employed by the Union and the more stylish Mafia cars used by the Organo.
• Cool Old Guy: The Chief of Gabe, though it's also subverted in that his adherence to the village's You Can't Fight Fate philosophy causes him to actively hinder the efforts of the protagonists. Played straight with Great Father Goto, founder of the Organo, who is one of the few people in the organization to treat Ichise with any sort of respect.
• Crapsack World: Lux is presented as the dumping site of the planet. However, the surface world is revealed to be almost completely depopulated, save for "ghosts" of people, because humanity has lost the collective will to live.
• Creepy Monotone: Kano's voice always stays flat and emotionless, which just adds to his creepy nature. Yoshii is much the same, maintaining a pleasant falsetto tone to his voice.
• Creepy Twins: Kano's mothers are creepy triplets. Especially when they smile in unison.
• Crowd Chant: The Union's "SOUL! BODY! TRUTH! SALVATION! VENGEANCE!" counts.
• Crystal Spires and Togas: The Class have this sort of aesthetic, but it's subverted in that they're all completely corrupt, complacent, and decadent.
• Curb-Stomp Cushion: The Shapes pretty much bulldoze through Lux when they arrive, but they're shown taking casualties and losing individual skirmishes.
• Cyber Cyclops: The Shapes' helmets.
• Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: The Salvation Union are especially zealous about this.
• Cyberpunk: Like Serial Experiments Lain, Texhnolyze is a particularly dark example.
• Cyber Punk With A Chance Of Rain: Kicks in especially later in the series, disregarding actual rain obviously.
• Darker and Edgier: Of the informally known "Abe Trilogy" (Serial Experiments Lain, and Haibane Renmei) this show is considered the darkest of the three, and it even proves grimmer than most anime on the market. Not even Berserk eclipses it in terms of shear bleakness.
• Deadly Euphemism: "Spectacles" for wars between the city's factions.
• Death Ray: The Shapes carry these, capable of shooting a perfectly circular hole through anything.
• Decapitation Presentation: Kano does this in a slightly less traditional way with Ran, and she's still alive.
• Defector from Decadence: Inverted and played straight during the second half. Inverted in that Hal and a collection of Racan, along with Kimata's Dragon and his entourage of Union troops defect to the Class, Kano, and the Shapes side. Played straight for Onishi and his men, who ends up deciding Screw This, I'm Outta Here when Kohakura pulls a coup and convinces the rest to of the Organo to join up with Kano.
• Deliberately Monochrome: The first ten minutes of the final episode are done in the style of a silent film reel.
• Despair Event Horizon:
  • The series starts here and gets worse. The city of Lux is full of people despairing with their lives to the point where some just sit on the street too depressed to move, and Ichise comes from a childhood of despair. Yoshii was driven to insanity through his despair and dissatisfaction with the surface world, Tetsuya lives on the horizon, Shinji passes it when he goes on his rampage up on the Hill, and Doc passes it when she discovers what the surface world consists of. Fitting, given that the rest of the surface-dwellers of the Earth passed it a long time ago.
  • Utterly defied by Onishii in his Dying Momentof Awesome, as in spite of losing his wife, his secretary, his city, and knowing in the next few minutes, his life at the hands of the people he tried to protect, opts to remain true to himself and his goal, and die with a smile.
• Determinator: Ichise proves immovably determined to stay alive time and time again. Even Doc and Onishi remark on this, the first with amusement, the second with irritation because Ichise refuses to die in the first couple of episodes when he really should have.
• Dissonant Serenity: Yoshii comes across as a mildly camp call centre employee when hee threatens Onishii and tortures a Mook for information. Kano's eloquence and dignified manner, by contrast, serves to conceal how utterly batshit he really is.
• The Dividual: Kano's three mothers act basically like a single organism.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: All over the place, thanks to a heavy reliance on symbolism and metaphor to convey the story.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: Shinji.
• Downer Ending: The series generally maintains an extremely dark and depressing atmosphere throughout the show, but the ending still manages to be impressively sad. Essentially, everyone dies, Ran's prophecy is fulfilled despite everything, the Shapes are left immortal and immobile, meaning everything that happened was for naught. See examples below for more specifics. It's telling how depressing this ending is that most viewers will actually be kind of glad Ichise is dead, because the absolute hell that was his short life is finally over.
• Driven to Madness: In perhaps the most ambitious example of this trope, Kano drives the entire city of Lux to madness, reflecting the inner state of his mind. Lampshaded by Ran, Onishi, and Kano.
• Driven to Suicide: It is implied that Doc committed suicide in the bathtub of their hotel suite after Ichise went back to Lux. Also Ran, who killed her own mind to spite Kano and escape from an And I Must Scream situation.
• Dude, Not Funny!: When a group of Organo men are assaulted by a Union gunman, one survives but is shot in the genitals. The Organo higher-ups crack a bunch of jokes about their minion's misfortune but Onishi snaps that it's no laughing matter that their soldiers are being killed and maimed when a truce should be in place.
• Dying Alone: Ichise inadvertently fulfils Ran's prophecy of him. However, as the power of his texhnolyzed limbs almost dissipates completely, his arm projects an image of a flower onto the ground.
• Dysfunction Junction: Literally everyone.
• Dystopia
• Enemy Mine:
  • Onishi tries to negotiate this with the Racan and the Salvation Union in the beginning of the series when he suspects that somebody's attempting to break the incredibly fragile peace in Lux.
  • Onishi and the Organo assist Kimata and the Union when they attempt to rally against the Shapes. It doesn't end very well for the Union and Onishi's forced to retreat.
• Extreme Doormat: Ichise seems to have this attitude a lot of the time, though he does lash out every so often.
• Eye Scream:
  • Ichise gets his pupil plugged by the fingernail of his promoter's girlfriend during sex, which earns her a punch in the face.
  • Hal suffers one of these when he betrays Shinji and then returns to kill him as a Shape. You don't see the actual injury, but the crunching sound is enough.
• Fallen Princess: Doc was initially a member of the Class, but is banished for vague reasons.
• False Utopia: The surface world.
• Fan Disservice: Ichise's shirtless scenes and Doc's fetish of sleeping with her patients would provide relief from the impending grimness of the show if it wasn't for the disturbing manner in which they are presented. Ichise's body is covered in scars and poorly healed wounds from his pit fighting days, and Doc is, nominally, a rapist.
• Fate Worse than Death: The Shapes, left immobile and immortal, and Tatsuya, who is left to wait until he dies in silent misery on the surface.
• Faux Affably Evil: Kano. Unlike Yoshii, Kano's politeness and formal manner of speaking contrasts with his abominable actions only emphasizes how insane he really is.
• Finger Poke of Doom: Shinji to Hal when the latter becomes a Shape and attacks him.
• Food Porn: Inverted. The only appetizing food shown is that eaten by privileged inhabitants of Lux like Doc and Onishi. Everybody else's is unappetizing goo.
• Foil: Yoshii and Kano can be interpreted as one to the other. Both are fairly monstrous people with ideals seperate from, and incomprehensible to the people of Lux, and both bring the people of Lux to their breaking point during their respective arcs. But where Yoshii causes chaos to bring out the passions and the wills of the people of Lux, or so he claims, Kano uses the chaos to wipe out the remnants of Lux and replace them with his "perfect" Shapes, essentially bringing about a World of Silence.
• For the Evulz: This is what makes Yoshii's reign of terror all the more horrifying: his utter lack of a motive for it. It's made even worse by his placid and rational demeanour throughout the whole event and gets down right chilling when we see through Sakimura that he was once just an innocent, optimistic office drone. Yoshii's other motive is probably that the upper world could not handle their problems and ultimately just gave up. All the humans in the upper world have been reduced to ghosts who do the same things over and over out of habit, finding any change (even death, which they are all very close to) to be too much effort. Yoshii was once very optimistic and believed deeply in people but then the upper world became a literal ghost town, so he tried to prevent Lux from becoming that by making people as passionate and violent as possible, the complete opposite of the upper world. Still, a part of him probably did it for amusement.
• From Bad to Worse: In general, the longer the show goes on, the more hopeless its characters' situations start to look. And then you find out what's above-ground.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Yoshii arrives in Lux halfway through his transition and its only through flashbacks that we learn just how much of a nobody he was before he damn near destroyed the city.
• Genre Savvy: Shinji.
• Girlish Pigtails: Ran.
• Good Is Not Nice: Onishi. He's part of a Yakuza-esque group, and his first encounter with Ichise has him dismissing him as a 'stray dog', (for context, this is while Ichise is bleeding out after being de-limbed). It takes approximately half the series for him to start warming up to Ichise, and, excepting his secretary and his wife, comes across as fairly cold, frigid, and towards Shinji, downright patronising. But as the the story progresses, his Hidden Depths and more heroic traits start showing, and he begins to act in a more brotherly/fatherly fashion towards Ichise, and by the end, it becomes clear that, second to Ran, Onishi is the closest the series has to a Big Good and an Ideal Hero, even if he's rather deficient in qualities in the latter category.
• Hates Being Touched: Ichise. Even the few times he's shown having sex, he just lies there with the woman sitting on top of him.
• Heads-Up Display: For texhnolyzed people through their corneas, complete with bubbling gurgly noises.
• Heroes Fight Barehanded: Ichise, mainly because he's a prize fighter. He does get a sword later on.
• Heroic Mime: Ichise can talk, he just stubbornly prefers not to. The Gag Reel Lampshades this by taking advantage of Filming for Easy Dub and having him talk non-stop.
• Hidden Villain: It takes a while before Yoshii is revealed as the Big Bad of the first story arc. Especially since Onishi, Shinji and Kimata all seem candidates as well. Kano, likewise, keeps to the shadows throughout much of the second arc, largely working through his proxies in Lux.
• High-Pressure Blood:
  • Whenever there is a massacre, and there are quite a few.
  • Toyama's death, complete with Clean Cut.
• Hilarious Outtakes: The DVD releases feature "Alternate Dialogue Outtakes", which redub select clips from the included episodes with snarky, filthy, or outright bizarre dialogue (such as changing a vicious gun battle into a rather enthusiastic paintball match, and by-and-large lampshading the entire bowdlerization process).
• Hollywood Tactics: In Lux's final battle against the Shapes, they initially have a wall of metal shields to protect themselves—the first substance shown to actually stop the Shapes' death rays. But the Luxites leave the shields behind when they go on the offensive. This naturally leads to them being massacred.
• Humanity Is Insane: Kano seems to believe this. Within the context of the show, he is arguably right.
• Humanity's Wake
• Human Resources: Raffia. Even more terrible when it's revealed that it actually no longer serves a purpose and is simply being produced as a matter of procedure.
• Humans Are Bastards: Seems to be the closest thing the show has to an overarching message.
• I Lied: Doc reveals that she never used the (dead) cells of Ichise's mother to power his arm—it was just so she could get him to accept the texhnolyzation. Ichise is far from amused.
• Incest Subtext: Ichise, who never really knew his father, adopts Doc as his "second mother" by Word of God. However, he lets her have sex with him whenever she repairs his texhnolyzed limbs.
• Industrial: It is Cyberpunk after all. Some prominent examples include the Juno Reactor Theme Song "Guardian Angel (Xavier's Edit)" and "A Dog's Heart Leaping from Irritation".
• Innocent Flower Girl: Ran plays with the trope in various ways, though she really isn't all that innocent.
• I Reject Your Reality: Kano is a delusional solipsist with severe homicidal tendencies who won't entertain the idea that human beings are anything other than playthings produced by his mind.
• Ironic Name: "Lux" is Latin for "light," yet the city itself is steeped in the darkest aspects of the human experience. By the end of the series, every last light in the city has been extinguished, leaving it in total darkness once the final credits begin to roll.
• It's All About Me: Kano, in one of the most horrifying examples of this trope. He believes that Lux itself is a reflection of his mind, and that humans are puppets or homunculi eroding it. He would qualify for a god complex, except that he doesn't believe that he's God, he believes that he is reality itself.
• Jigsaw Puzzle Plot: The workings of the Raffia, the Organo, the Class and surface are all explained through minimalist storytelling. Pay attention.
• Karma Houdini: Arguably, Yoshii, to the extent someone can be in this show. While he does get killed, his death is a lot less gruesome and painful than those which befall pretty much every other character.
• Katanas Are Just Better: Subverted at times but also played straight many a time. Some of the curved blades used by the Organo thugs seem to be cavalry sabers rather than katanas, but the main characters in Organo all use katanas, so this trope is played straight more often than not.
• "Everybody Dies" Ending: By the end of the series, absolutely everybody is dead, with the exception of the Shapes, who are forced to live forever, and Tetsuya, who is still waiting to die on the surface.
• Knight of Cerebus: Kano.
• Kukris Are Kool: Hal uses one.
• Lack of Empathy: Yoshii and Kano. Kano is a particularly extreme example since he doesn't believe that anyone aside from him even exists to begin with.
• Last Stand: The final episode tells us exactly what happened in Lux while Ichise and Doc were investigating and warning the surface, in a vignette-like film-grainy fashion. Onishi, Shinji and what's left of Lux (including the Seer's followers) band together to try to prevent Ran from being taken by Kano and the Shapes, since she's the only person left to protect. Not surprisingly it fails, and all the people of Lux lose the will to do anything once Ran is taken.
• Likes Older Women: Yoshii is only interested in prostitutes with "experience."
• Little Dead Riding Hood: Ran.
• Lonely Piano Piece: "Time for Blooming Flower".
• Lost Technology: Interestingly enough, the surface world seems to be stylistically stuck in the fifties, with old fashioned radios and other outdated technology just laying around, but mixed with various examples of extremely sophisticated tech.
• Ludicrous Gibs: Onishi is shot by a crowd of deranged Luxites until he is literally a stain on the wall. All that's left of him are his texhnolyzed legs, still standing upright.
• Mad Oracle: Although Ran claims to be this at the end, she in fact narrowly subverts this trope.

• Manipulative Bastard: Several; most prevalent are Yoshii and Kano. A couple of the Organo take a stab at it, but fail when they are thwarted by other, smarter manipulative bastards such as Kohakura and Onishi. And while not really being one himself, Shinji seems rather adept at seeing through other people's machinations when inclined.
• Meaningful Name: Lux, or "Ru9su" as it was originally called. Kohakura makes a remark about this.
  Kohakura: He said this is the Ninth Annex of the Reviving Hell.
• Mecha-Mooks: Subverted by the Shapes.
• Medium Blending: after ending song, we can see Mind Screw shots like this.
• Mercy Kill:
  • Ichise does this for Ran at the end.
  • Onishi does this for Michiko when she begs for it.
• Messianic Archetype: Ran.
• Mind Screw: This series can be difficult to understand given the method of storytelling.
• Minimalism: The series' defining stylistic trope. There's almost no dialog for the entire first half of the first episode.
• Mob War: This is the focus of the first half of the series, instigated by Yoshii.
• Mugging the Monster: Two Racan thugs try to mug Yoshii.
• Mukokuseki: Averted, by and large. It's possible to infer the entire cast's ethnic backgrounds just by looking at them, the only aberration of course being Kano, who was specifically designed to look as alien and as much like a stereotypical contemporary anime character as possible in order to sell just how much of an Outside-Context Problem he really was to Lux.
• My New Gift Is Lame: Kano has a more petulant version of this in his backstory, just to show off what an irredeemable monster he is: Onishi sold his legs to the Class in exchange for what amounted to starter money to work his way in to the Organo (hence why he has texhnolyze legs). Kano received the legs as a gift and either got bored of them or found some other reason to be rid of them, effectively squandering Onishi's sacrifice. And of course, he gloats to Onishi about it when they meet face to face.
• Mysterious Waif: Ran, especially before she becomes a viewpoint character.
• Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant: Kano.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Ichise does this to... a lot of people.
• Nothing Is Scarier: When the characters reach the surface world. Everything seems lush and serene, but it's nearly empty of life and populated by ghosts.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Ishii sees something of his old self in Ichise.
  "This guy makes me sick, I'll cut off the rest of his limbs and then Onishi can have him. What the hell kind of look is that? You're disgusting. I hate your type because you act like you're better than everyone, thinking you can live on your own. But you're nothing but scum! Because I used to be just like him.
• Not Worth Killing: Hal after his Face–Heel Turn says this to Shinji. He apparently changes his mind shortly afterward.
• One-Hit Kill: Ichise basically does this to Yoshii, who had just recently taken down Onishi and effortlessly killed many Organo members. He does it again to Toyama near the ends of the series and then makes it a hat-trick by punching Kano's head off its shoulders.
• Only Sane Man: Onishi, though Kano believes it of himself.
• Oracular Urchin: Ran, yet again.
• Outside-Context Problem: Kano. Lux might have been able to bounce back from Yoshii's reign of terror, but it was doomed the moment the Shapes arrived from the Hill. Kano steamrolls over everyone and despite Onishi's efforts to mount a counterattack Kano damn near wins before his self-destructive nihilism (and Ichise's fist) catches up with him.
• Parental Incest: Poor Toyama. Apparently also how Kano came into this world.
• Penal Colony: It's utterly irrelevant to the story in the long run, but it's revealed near the end of the series that Lux was originally a massive underground concentration camp where the violent and undesirable elements of humanity were exiled to as the surface world constructed it's peaceful utopia. Flash forward an unstated amount of time later and it turns out that the surface dwellers actually pacified themselves into extinction, while Lux survived and thrived below ground. ...Until Kano showed up.
• Perilous Play: In the last episode, Ichise finds Ran on a theatre stage with Kano as a director and Shapes as unwilling audience. Her body is removed and her head is placed on a two-headed dummy. Ichise kills Kano and gives a Mercy Kill to Ran.
• Pinball Protagonist: Ichise.
• Platonic Prostitution: Yoshii rents a room with a prostitute who turns out to be severely mutilated, but only to get information about the city. Later he does sleep with her and finally kills her and her pimp.
• Primal Stance: Ichise takes this when walking out of an Organo cell block daring anybody to try and stop him.
• Psycho for Hire: Yoshi, made scariest by his overall sane-looking attitude and soft voice.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Kano is a Type C.
• Pygmalion Plot: One of the sideplots between Doc and Ichise.
• Rape as Backstory: Toyama. He really hates his father.
• Rape as Drama: Onishi's secretary Michiko, by the end of the series, has been raped and abused so much by a trio of remaining Luxites that she's barely responsive and only asks to be killed.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge:
  • Ichise to the man who sold his father out and had him killed. It gets him in trouble.
  • What Ichise does to the crazed people of Lux after they kill Onishi at the Obelisk.
  • Also counts when Ichise punches off Kano's head for what he's done to Ran.
• Royally Screwed Up: Kano, a high ranking member of the Darwinistic nihilistic Class.
• Sad Battle Music: Shinji's rampage through the Class is accompanied by a Lonely Piano Piece.
• Scenery Gorn: Lux is a desolate city beset with urban decay. Taken even further as the series goes on until by the finale it's almost completely dark, bombed out, and littered with corpses and the frozen remnants of the Shapes.
• Scenery Porn: The surface world is lush but almost completely empty of life.
• Schizo Tech: The setting combines advanced Artificial Limbs and other futuristic technology with early 20th century phones, cars, trains and weapons. The Class, on the other hand, is so technologically advanced it's lead to a form of transhumanist inbreeding. See Kano and his retinue of Body Horror technofreaks. The surface world is shown to be both highly advanced (see Yoshii and Sakimura's office) and has apparently regressed back into the 1920s.
• Screw Destiny: Ichise's approach to Ran's prophecy. It doesn't work.
• Self-Destructive Charge and Foe-Tossing Charge: Kimata does this near the end of the series against the Shapes with the Union behind him. It fails horrifically in the end, resulting in his and the rest of his organization's deaths.
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Ichise ends up inadvertently fulfilling Ran's prophecy by trying to Screw Destiny.
• Sentenced to Down Under: Quite literally, as in "down under" the surface of the Earth. The current population of Lux at the outset of the series (the Class included) are descendants of those deemed "undesirable" by the government of the surface world. They were corralled into a massive underground complex and sealed there to protect the new "utopia" of the surface from their corrupting influence. The plan Goes Horribly Right, as without the ostensibly verboten passions of the Luxites, the surface population slowly loses its will to live and procreate, effectively coasting to extinction by the start of the series.
• Sexless Marriage: One scene shows that Onishi and his wife sleep in separate beds. Which would explain why Onishi sleeps with his secretary instead.
• Sexy Secretary: Michiko, Onishi's secretary. On her day off she gets flirted with by Shinji too.
• Sheath Strike: Onishi uses his sheathed sword to beat the crap out of Union and Racan thugs alike when he's caught alone amidst their street scuffle.
• Shirtless Scene: The anime begins with a naked Ichise staring at himself in the mirror. Keeping up with the spirit of the series, it is not used as Fanservice.
• Shoot the Shaggy Dog: Everybody dies. Ichise reaches the surface only to discover that the human race has faded out of existence out of sheer despair. Doc is implied to commit suicide and becomes one of the ghosts that now inhabit the surface. Onishii's attempt to fight back against Kano's forces fails and the civilian population of Lux is slaughtered. Everybody dies. Ran is captured by Kano and subjected to a Fate Worse than Death so horrible that she destroys her own mind by commanding Onishii to destroy the obelisk. Everybody dies. Onishii is gunned down by hundreds of machine guns en masse. Ichise snaps when he discovers what Kano has done to Ran and punches his head clean off his body. Everybody dies. Without the obelisk to power their Texhnolyze parts, the Shapes are frozen in place forever unable to move. Ichise finally slumps against a wall and gives up while staring at a projection of a flower. Then he dies. Everybody dies.
• Shout-Out:
  • The way Yoshii manipulates the gangs into killing each other has shades of Yojimbo, especially in the scene with the gang members fleeing their burning headquarters.
  • To Macbeth in episode 18.
  • Also, scenes from the surface world mimic the paintings of Edward Hopper.
• Show, Don't Tell: As noted under Silence Is Golden, there are few digressions on the parts of characters as to what their motivations are, how they feel, or why they are doing what they do. Careful attention is the only real way to look beneath the surface and see their depths.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: Ichise sharply disagrees with Kano's nihilism. This is expressed by punching Kano's head clean off.
• Silence Is Golden: The first line of dialogue isn't spoken until 11 minutes into episode 1. Ichise, the protagonist of the series, doesn't say anything until episode 3, and after that is practically mute unless spoken to by someone he respects like Doc, Onishi, Toyama, or Ran.
• Sissy Villain: Kano doesn't do any fighting, unlike Yoshii. Both are quite camp in their own ways, however.
• Sliding Scale Of Free Will Versus Fate: Skates between type 0 and type 1. Ran predicts the future, but it is just one of many possible futures... unfortunately, if it is a long-term prediction it is almost always correct. It's not that there is a higher power, it's just that the inevitable succession of human actions leads to the result she predicts.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: They don't get much more cynical than this show.
• Sliding Scale of Silliness vs. Seriousness: Or this serious, for that matter.
• Smug Snake: Mizuno, to the point where both the Union and the Rakan hang a lampshade on him in very short succession. Kohakura seems like a more competent example but then arguably ends up even worse.
• The Sociopath:
  • Given the shit heap that is Lux, it's inevitable that many of these characters would show up. Even the protagonists show a degree of ruthlessness and apathy quintessential of this trope.
  • Yoshii not only kickstarts a civil war in Lux, but murders a prostitute he had seemingly bonded and sympathized with the night before for no conceivable reason.
  • Kano reveals in the final episode that not only does he have no problem forcefully turning a little girl into a cyborg, but that he doesn't even believe that anyone in Lux actually exists, let alone count as actual people.
  • Ichise ultimately subverts this trope, as his seeming apathy to the chaos around him, and initial indifference to the people he ends up attacking and/or killing, obscures the existence of not only his consistent love for his mother but his growing relationship with Doc, Onishii, and Ran.
• Soiled City on a Hill: Quite a blatantly symbolic example with the city inhabited by the Class.
• The Stars Are Going Out: Near the end of the series the artificial sky above Lux finally craps out, turning cement gray and plunging the city into an unending night.
• The Stoic:
  • Ichise, who only speaks when he has to. His first lines aren't until the third episode.
  • Many others as well, such as Onishi and Kano.
• Storming the Castle: Shinji, in the second-to-last episode. He succeeds in basically wiping out what's left of the Class, but dies in the process.
• Story Arc: Two of them; the first half mainly revolves around the actions of Yoshii, the second half is about the war for the city and Kano.
• Supernatural Gold Eyes: Ran the prophet. Kano, however, averts it by being crazy but human.
• Swiss-Army Appendage: Yoshii's prosthetic arm doubles as a retractable arm-blade.
• Tall, Dark, and Handsome: Ichise is a sort of diamond-in-the-rough version, until he puts a suit on that is.
• Technology Porn
• That Man Is Dead: Ichise says this when talking about his missing limbs.
• There Are No Good Executives: A rare subversion in Onishi, who is distrusted as the head of the ominous mafia-like business, Organo, that maintains enough control over Lux to prevent it from falling apart; despite this, he is one of the show's few sympathetically heroic characters.
• Throwing Your Sword Always Works: Well, it does when you have a computer in your arm plotting out the trajectory for you. Hal does this with his own weapon to help out Shinji during the bloody scuffle between Racan and the Salvation Union.
• Transhuman: The entire show is one long pessimistic study of transhumanism. It's conclusion? People are messed up, and transhuman people are even more messed up than regular people.
• Übermensch:
  • Kano, who leans very much towards Social Darwinist tendencies.
  • Yoshii's discussion with Tatsuya of the "humans' primitive energy" seems pretty evocative of Nietzsche's Will to Power, and his Motive Rant to Shinji implies that he is possibly trying to create an Übermensch to save Lux.
• Undying Loyalty: Michiko to Onishi.
• The Unfettered: Both Yoshii and Kano, and Ichise before he meets Ran.
• Unwilling Roboticisation: Many anime characters have been texchnolyzed, either voluntarily or not. Among them, Ichise, the protagonist, whose getting artificial arm and leg saved his life — but the creator of the limbs, Doctor Kaneda, never asked Ichise if he wanted it, lied to him about the creation process, and also literally raped him when he was helpless. Then Kano creates the Shapes — people whose entire body, except for the head, is replaced with a robotic one. Despite the horrors of dehumanization and the fate of becaming Kano's minions, many Lux residents believed Kano's promises of a better life, and also became so desperate, living in a poor, violent and dying world, that they willingly agreed to texhnolyzation. Not all of them, though — so, some of the Shapes are still full-fledged examples of this trope. After all, Kano texchnolyzes his (probably) sister Ran by placing her living head on a motionless two-headed doll. This causes Ran to destroy her own mind, and later causes Ichise to give her Mercy Kill.
• Visionary Villain: Kano, though it's a vision of basically nothingness.
• The Weird Sisters: Kano's three mother. There are no explanations about their nature in the anime, but their look and behavior are heavily inspired by the Moirai. The surreal character of the anime, and multiple links to Classical Mythology, don't help.
• What Measure Is a Non-Cute?: There are big brown rats everywhere, they are particularly noticeable when Ichise gets thrown into the sewers, and they are Doc's test subjects, but they are not depicted as hostile; in most cases, they are presented as pitiful creatures.
• Wild Card: Ichise and Yoshii.
• World Half Empty: Few anime have ever been so faithful to this trope. Not only does Lux itself qualify, but we later learn that the world on the surface is nearly empty, being only populated by ghostly half-humans that have given up on living but are too tired to seek death.
• World of Silence: The surface world, and Lux after the Shapes stop moving.
• Wretched Hive: Lux, obviously. This was inevitable due to the nature of its creation.
• Xtreme Kool Letterz: That X in the title may lead the uninitiated to pronouncing the title "Teks-nolyze". The anime itself makes it quite clear this is not the case.
• You Can't Fight Fate: Ran prophesies that Ichise will kill countless people before dying alone and unloved. He swears to fight this fate. He doesn't succeed.
• Zerg Rush: Seems to be the method of the Racan due to their disorganization, and is later employed against the Shapes by nearly all of the factions to varying efficacy.

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