Anime / Tousouchuu: The Great Mission

Money or Glory? Run for it!^note From left to right: Haru Tomura, Sawyer Tomura, Morris Shoemaker and Luna Nishinotoin. Also, lots of Hunters.

^{Click here for the second visual of the anime}

Tousouchuu: The Great Mission^note Literally Run for Money: The Great Mission is the anime adaptation of the popular Japanese game show Run For Money: Tousouchuu. It was produced by Toei Animation and aired its first episode on April 2, 2023 in the Sunday 9AM time slot on Fuji TV.

In the far future, humanity has migrate to the moon due to the Earth suffering from climate change and the depletion of its natural resources, living in a Fantastic Caste System where the wealthy lavish in a luxurious lifestyle on the upper layers while the poor struggle to survive in the bottom slums of the colony. Keeping the colony's happiness intact is Chronos Incorporated's long-running reality game show known as "Run For Money" (or "RFM", for short), where "Runners" must literally outrun the competition by navigating through the vast Wide-Open Sandbox, completing various tasks and make it to the end as the cash prize increases by the second, all while avoiding the Hunters - nigh-unstoppable robotic chasers marked by their Cool Shades and classy outfits - whose mere touch can eliminate a Runner from the game and rob them of the chance for the coveted prize pool.

Tomura Sawyer, a courier with great parkour skills, practically forces his way into the risky game show after it becomes apparent that the only way his younger brother Haru's health can improve is if they move to less polluted areas - something that they can only afford if Sawyer wins the notoriously difficult challenges of the eponymous game show.

Of course, between the various stages, tons of deadly chases, and an ever-changing line-up of participants, which including the absurdly lucky Luna Nishinotoin and the undefeated champion Morris Shoemaker, Sawyer will have to push his Le Parkour skills and his unusual instincts to its absolute limits if he ever wanted to claim the prize...

Has a character page in construction.

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MISSION: Provide valuable tropes for this page within the allocated time available! Avoid the Hunters at all cost and survive! Good luck, Runners!

• Aerith and Bob: Sawyer, Luna, Haru, Morris, Penta, Oliver, Chama, Sid... Justified by the fact that the show takes places on Moon after a mass migration from all corners of the Earth.
• Actor Allusion: Sigma/Appolo is not only an allusion to his voice actor's role as Zoro being a charismatic hunk with great physical abilities and swordsmanship skills, but also goes the extra mile of even mimicking Zoro's original inspiration Zorro by being a Lovable Rogue hiding his identity behind a masked alter ego. His title of 'Masked Duke' also references the original Zorro's status of a nobleman.
• Ambiguous Situation: Despite of the simple premise of the plot, there are several odd details that suggest the setting is not quite what it seems...
  • The brothers themselves are sharing a dream to one day see the beach, despite of the story taking place on the Moon. This raises several questions over the extent of the terraforming the Moon has underwent. Furthermore, the opening theme suggests that Sawyer and Haru might be Not Blood Related.
  • Several comments made by both Satoshi Tsukimura and his subordinates leave it dubious how much control Chronos Inc. actually has over the data worlds.
  • How Penta got stuck in debt in the first place is not explained, although it is alluded to be caused by his bad luck.
• Animated Adaptation: Not of a manga, but a game show.
• Antagonist Abilities: To say that the Arc Villain of each game is a nightmare to deal with would be an understatement. This includes anything ranging from Villain Teleportation, One-Winged Angel to The Paralyzer (the latter is practically a One-Hit Kill if a Hunter is nearby).
  • The fake Mika Lelouch, a Serial Killer who infiltrated the third game, can use her Warcry with much greater ease than the majority of the other Runners. The result of this is a frighteningly powerful One-Woman Army. To rub salt on the wound, she is even capable of effectively immobilizing the Hunters, unlike how any other player is at risk of being caught by the Hunters when they activate their Warcry.
• Anyone Can Die: Or rather, get eliminated from the game.
• Anti-Frustration Features: In-Universe, The game will pause any timers and not let any Hunters go after players if they're forced to use places that would have both long downtime and too small of an area to escape from Hunters fairly, such as the train rides to and from Dracula Castle during the London arc. These also act as breathers for the players between two intense battles.
• "Arabian Nights" Days: The setting of the the fourth game is based on this.
• Arc Villain: Each game has its own standalone antagonist.
• Big Bad Ensemble: The Hunters are a secondary threat in each game.
• Bridal Carry: Sawyer holds Haru like this in one of the last shots of the opening sequence.
  • While the Hunters prefer to just poke or touch the contestants, at times they will resort to this.
• Bread and Circuses: The Tousouchuu is almost exclusively devoid of participants from the lowest economic echelons of society, except for Sawyer and one prior exception who went on to become Shrouded in Myth. It nonetheless keeps the population very engaged and distracted.
• Cast Full of Pretty Boys: Aside of the odd Gonk here and there, most of the male characters are either pretty boys or hunks, while the older men are mostly silver foxes.
• Cast of Snowflakes: All the characters have distinct designs that make them easy to distinguish from one another.
• Casting Gag: Daisuke Kishio previously voiced many Monster of the Week characters in the Digimon anime, including the likes of MetalTyrannomon. Here, he is voicing Penta Baccana, a Butt-Monkey who almost gets Eaten Alive by a giant dinosaur-like monster that has the ability to continuously evolve into more powerful forms.
• Character in the Logo: Unusually for this trope, it is not the protagonist, but one of the Hunters.
• Combat Parkour: Sawyer and Sigma specialize in these, showing more prowess in acrobatics than any of the other competitors. They even end up forming a rivalry over who is better at it.
• Conspicuous Trenchcoat: Jotaro Sengoku wears one, which telegraphs The Reveal that he is an undercover police inspector the moment any even remotely Genre Savvy viewer sees him.
• Continuity Cavalcade: The fourth ending theme not only showcases all four of the Arc Villains, but it also references several events and objects from the prior games: the weapons used in the first game, Magical Homie's betrayal, the contraptions used during the Owari no Kuni arc, Haru's fox mask he used as John Doe, Penta successfully reaching the surrender booth and his Slime Warcry, as well as the fake Mika Lelouch's real nature in the London arc.
• Contrasting Arc Villain: Due to Run For Money altering its setting for every game, the antagonists of each game have different goals, plans, resources and abilities.
  • The villain of the first game in the anime is an Animalistic Abomination Kaiju capable of continuously evolving into more powerful forms.
  • The second arc features a literal Demon Lord Nobunaga, whose will is enforced by his Quirky Miniboss Squad for most of the game until the heroes finally reach him.
  • The third arc is a Boss Bonanza where various supernatural creatures show up one after another. Their only commonality is that they target the women of London. They are ultimately revealed to have been a series of genetic experiments by the Not So Well Intentioned Mad Scientist Zebit for the purpose of creating what amounts to Magitek biological weapons.
  • The fourth arc features Reewes II, a Nefarious Pharaoh who once ruled over the single kingdom that has since been divided into two. Now that he has returned to the present with the aid of his descendant Zamza the Pharaoh seeks to consume the souls of not only the two royal families, but also those of gods.
• Darker and Edgier: The London arc introduces the Warcry mechanic, making every subsequent RFM more than a High Stakes Game as using it also tires out the Runners on top of attracting Hunters much easily, and it wasn't until Episode 46 and 47 where the stakes has been escalated to that of saving the entire colony from a terrorist group having taken Chronos Incorporated hostage over a forbidden RFM game.
• Creator Thumbprint:
  • Sawyer's character design is not unlike what you'd expect from a Digimon anime protagonist, most notably the goggles. Fittingly both anime's were made by the same studio.
  • The villain of the first game is practically a Digimon villain, being an Animalistic Abomination in a digital world that undergoes several radical transformations into increasingly more powerful forms mid-battle.
• Declaration of Protection: Sawyer vows to protect his younger brother Haru at all costs, as well as to provide him with a better place to live in so Haru's health can finally improve. This also serves as Sawyer's Berserk Button that unleashes his Warcry's tru potential.
• Demon King Nobunaga: The villain of the Edo Stage, the setting of the second storyline, is a hilariously over-the-top Affectionate Parody of this trope, to the point of even being Hades Shaded. The end of the Owari Arc subverts this by revealing him to have been a victim of Demonic Possesion.
• Difficulty Spike: In-Universe. The London arc is the longest yet, and is acknowledged by a veteran player to have been the hardest installment of the game show in a long while.
• Enigmatic Minion: Harvest is seemingly Satoshi's Number Two who is mostly occupied by scouting for new participants in Run For Money, but her goals and actual position within Chronos Inc. are dubious.
• Establishing Character Moment: Sawyer's first scene in the anime is him performing a dangerous parkour stunt just to reach the balcony of the costumer so he can deliver a package to them, all while speaking politely while handing it over. This establishes his personality as bold and risk-prone, but also kind and polite.
• Everybody Hates Hades: Anubis is The Heavy in the fourth game.
• Fighting Spirit: The London Arc introduces a new gameplay power for the players in the form of Warcries: USB drives called Cry Triggers that plug into their Chrono Wristbands that allow them to spirit powers depending on the card they have. This only works if they have the determination, leaves them exhausted afterwards, and alerts Hunters to their location. That, and having a slight probability of making its user going completely berserk if left unchecked...
• Foreshadowing: Some hints to future developments occur several episodes before they become relevant:
  • Mika Lelouch being a phony is foreshadowed by her lack of direct confrontations for the most of the London Arc before getting finally exposed near the end of the game, as well as the suspiciously convenient timing of her meeting Sigma and Sawyer at the train station around the same time as Sengoku is attacked. The second ending theme also alludes to Penta being the one who orchestrates her defeat, only to end up becoming the object of her fixation.
  • Phantom Thief Apollon's lack of interest in the treasure he plunders from rich individuals foreshadows that his real intentions are that It's Personal with Chronos Inc.
  • The Warcry mechanic is been foreshadowed by the opening theme since the first episode, long before the third game. To say nothing of Sawyer's berserk state under said power.
  • The second ending theme foreshadows Haru entering the competition without Sawyer's permission.
• Genetic Engineering Is the New Nuke: The Hidden Villain of the third arc is trying to make a profit by artificially creating monsters from ancient mythology and Victorian era novels, testing them by unleashing them on London, and then selling them to foreign costumers.
• Genre Roulette: In-Universe. Each Run For Money installment is based on a different time period and operates under different circumstances and has its own unique mechanisms, with each world having a Contrasting Sequel Antagonist.
• Healthcare Motivation:
  • Haru's asthma-like ailment puts health and life at risk. This can only be properly remedied by him moving out of the Gray Area into to higher areas where air is cleaner. Just about the only way for Sawyer to legally get the needed money to do so fast is by winning the Run For Money.
  • Magical Homie is suffering from some illness that interferes with her usual profession as a Stage Magician. Unlike Sawyer, she is willing to do anything to win, even betraying the people who previously helped her.
• The Heavy: The Hunters are the most frequent and most active threat in Run For Money.
• Hunting the Most Dangerous Game: Why else would they be called Hunters?
• Just Like Robin Hood: Sigma/Phantom Thief Appolon steals from the wealthy in the White Area and anonymously donates to the needy in the Gray Area.
• Le Parkour: All participants are forced to use this to some extent, but only Sawyer and Sigma fully incorporate it, while others prefer to just run away, only resorting to acrobatics if there's no other option.
• Lovable Jock: Travis Lowe fits the Eagleland stereotype being a tall, blond and muscular rugby player, but is also earnest, respectful and highly cooperative towards the other players.
• The Man in Front of the Man: The blue demon that serves Nobunaga in the Owari arc is actually the one in control of Nobunaga's actions.
• Mecha-Mooks: Played With the Hunters. They're uncanny humanoid machines equipped with relative Super-Speed and Super-Strength and unlike the traditional take on the trope are NOT Cannon Fodder.
• MegaCorp: Chronos Inc, as always.
• Mr. Fanservice: Sprinkled thought the show.
  • Morris Shoemaker is considered as one In-Universe due to his tall and muscular body, handsome face, benevolent personality and astounding feats in the Run For Money. He even has a short Workout Fanservice scene. The outfit he wears in the game further accentuates his muscular build. Lampshaded by his title 'Mr. Perfect'.
  • The opening theme has a mysterious masked white-haired man with an open shirt revealing his muscular physique appearing in front of Sawyer. The man is revealed to be Sigma Redwing, a skilled acrobat and weapons user who is better known in the public as the Phantom Thief Apollon.
  • Travis Lowe is a honorable, dependable and handsome rugby player who easily becomes friends with the protagonist.
• Morality Kitchen Sink: The participants all have differing motivations for joining the game, and several among them have very different standards when it comes to dealing with a situation in which they're given a Sadistic Choice.
• Muscles Are Meaningful / Muscles Are Meaningless: Reconstructed. Some of the more athletic participants (such as Morris and Travis) have particularly muscular physiques, granting them enough stamina to keep moving without getting tired quickly and they usually reliably outrun the Hunters with relative ease, but even they can at most only briefly repel the Hunters in a direct confrontation; this still means getting close enough to get captured and kicked out of the game by them. That being said, what they can accomplish against the Hunters in a direct confrontation is to save another player, especially in situations where only a Fragile Speedster can complete a mission anyways.
• Mythology Gag: The series borrows its basic setting elements from the original live action series, most notably the Chronos Inc., as well as having a character named Satoshi Tsukimura as the Game Master.
• No-Nonsense Nemesis: The Hunters. The moment they see a player, they lock on them and relentlessly pursue them.
• Non-Action Big Bad: The closest thing the show has to a main villain is the Chronos Inc. Among their leadership, Satoshi Tsukimura is Game Master of the Run For Money and is the reason for why the game is designed to be so dangerous in the first place. Tsukimura is also at least complicit for the Moon being and staying a society of severe classism. That being said, he never directly confronts the protagonists.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome:
  • In the London arc, all the players that were about to be slain by The Mole are saved at the last second off-screen by the Hunters.
  • During the Time Skip, there was apparently a lot of astonished reactions during the events of the unseen Antarctica round.
• Off-Model: Being a Long Runner, the show often suffers from this.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Haru joins Run For Money wearing a fox mask under the name John Doe...While still wearing his normal clothes.
• Princely Young Man: Sid Phoenix and Sigma Redwing are two different takes on this trope. The former is a vain but reliable Long-Haired Pretty Boy, while the latter looks like he stepped out of a work intended for yumejoshi audiences, being a well-built Bishounen Guile Hero.
  • The fourth game introduces Prince Kaito, a literal prince example. With all the baggage of being The Wise Prince.
• Promotion to Parent: No mention is made of the Tomura siblings parents. This puts the responsibility of taking care of Haru on Sawyer's shoulders.
• Red Baron: Each contestant gets a title.
  • Sawyer's stunts quickly earn him the title "Gravity Master".
  • Due to his contributions during Sawyer's first RFM game via Hollywood Hacking, not to mention his analytical skills, Haru earns himself the moniker of "Wise Seeker".
  • Morris Shoemaker, having won the hellish game show multiple times, while also being handsome, athletic and polite individual overall, gets the title 'Mr. Perfect'.
  • Luna Nishinotoin earned the moniker 'Lucky Muse' due to her fixation on luck and pretty appearance.
  • Penta Baccana gets the unfortunate title of 'King of Debt'.
  • Sid Phoenix gets his title of 'Speed Prince' from his outfit's Prince Charming motif and his surprising agility.
  • Feathery Giver is dubbed 'Mindfulness Lady' for her yoga motif.
  • Major Oliver Fox, being a military figure participating in the game, is given the epithet 'Lone Soldier'.
  • Sarah Peabody, being a boulderer, is granted 'Bouldering Angel'.
  • Sigma Redwing is simply the 'Masked Duke'.
  • Travis Lowe is fittingly the 'Touchdown King'.
  • Jairo Demon gets the hilariously unsugarcoated title of 'Money Piranha'.
  • Pieta Barone is the 'Thrilling Busker'.
  • The astonishingly prolific pro swimmer Kai Bloom is appropriately named 'Dolphinman'.
• Retraux: The anime has a distinct late 90s / early 2000s feel, reusing several tropes and character design styles that were common in that period. The opening theme also sounds like a Homage to the opening themes from that period.
• Running Gag: A few:
  • Penta never being able to get out of debt.
  • Whenever someone is about to get out of the game safely via the Surrender Booth, they are usually intercepted and get caught by the Hunters instead.
  • Luna's luck often benefits her in very roundabout and indirect ways.
  • Sid's willingness to flirt with the majority of women he comes across, regardless of species. Yes, species. In the Egypt arc he menages to woo a dung beetle.
• Screw the Rules, I Make Them!: Chronos Inc. shows no ill will towards the Tomura siblings after Sawyer forces his way into the competition, and tacitly let him reenter as many times as he wants. Of course, since Sawyer a Pinball Protagonist yet also beloved by audiences, he is actually pretty useful for maintaining the Bread And Circus status quo.
• Scripted Battle: The main format of the Great Missions. Failure to accomplish them usually leads to things going From Bad to Worse.
• Sean Connery Is About to Shoot You: A Hunter is about to grab the main characters.
• Series Mascot: The Hunters, just like in the live-action version. A silhouette of one of them is even on the anime's logo.
• Silent Antagonist: The Hunters never speak. Then again, Nothing Is Scarier...
• Terminator Impersonator: Zig-Zagged. This is basically what the Hunters are in the anime, with some caveats: they do not seek to outright murder anyone, they only use brute force and no weapons. Also, they never speak.
• The Most Dangerous Video Game: Run For Money in the anime is basically this. In each game, the Runners are inserted into a Cyberspace that is themed after some period in Earth's past and need to avoid the Hunters, while also surviving the battle against the Arc Villain of each era before the time limit reaches zero. And then there's Enigma, which is said to be Chronos Incorporated's highly forbidden and completely unwinnable RFM game.
• Time Skip: A several months long gap takes place between the London Arc and the Egypt Arc.
• Timed Mission: The whole game is technically one. On top of avoiding the Hunters, the Runners are often abruptly given the titular "Great Mission", additional mid-game timed missions that are absurdly difficult. Thus, it was necessary for various Runners to work together to accomplish each game's Great Mission as efficiently and quickly as possible, lest a Hunter came in and eliminate them right and there...
• Touch of Death: Downplayed. The Hunters can eject any Runner out of the game just by touching them, after which they are caught in a sphere and launched out of the playing field, but the players are still physically alive. In fact, some Runners are saved from actual death mid-mission via being ejected by a Hunter at the last second.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: None of the NPC ever acknowledge the presence of the Hunters in the first game. In later games, they are relatively aware of them, but do not prioritize dealing with them over their world's Arc Villain.
• Urban Segregation: The protagonist and his younger brother live in the polluted Gray Area. The rich live in the pristine White Area. There is also the Blue Area which is the only that doesn't dip into either extreme.
• Villainous Rescue: While all players dread getting caught by the Hunters, sometimes getting caught by them is a good thing: at least one participant's life is spared by getting caught by one of the Hunters. This gets taken to its Logical Extreme in the 19th century London Arc, where the Serial Killer who infiltrated to game fails to kills any of the other Runners because the Hunters reached the cornered Runners first in an Offscreen Moment of Awesome.
• Wham Episode:
  • Episode 18 not only introduces a large number of new players for the upcoming third game, but it also features Haru finally entering the game albeit with a fake name. Furthermore, the Fighting Spirit element of the show that was hinted in the opening sequence is finally hinted at within the show itself. On top of that Sigma's beef with Chronos Inc. is made much more explicit.
  • The Egypt Arc is this, even in-universe. For the first time, the concept of having two simultaneous rounds of Run For Money is introduced, with Sawyer and co. even briefly clashing with an opposing team of players from the previous games, who are lead by Morris. And then there is Sawyer's transformation into a giant wolf..
  • Episode 46, 47 and 48 provides quite of a bombshell one after another.
    • It was revealed that Gustin was actually one of the creators of the Cry Triggers and the Warcry system, and that Sawyer's earlier rampage is due to his greater potential awakening it. Furthermore, Sigma seems to have confirmation regarding something called "Enigma", the forbidden game variant of Run For Money.
    • An armed group hjacked Chronos Incorporated, halting the current game of RFM in the process. Makoto Rozuki, the gamemaster of Colony A-3's own brand of RFM and leader of the Kairos Company, demands Satoshi and Harvest to surrender Enigma to them, ultimately endangering everyone on Colony A-7 when they denied his request and forced them to disable the entire colony's air petrification system. With everyone in the colony in great danger and Satoshi abducted by Kairos for their own nefarious plans, Sawyer, Haru, Luna (as well as her butler), Morris, Sigma and Gustin resolves to save the entire colony and Satoshi from Kairos' control by competing in a special variation of RFM against Colony A-3's own Runners. Then, Raccoon Dog Man reveals itself to everyone as Rabbi, a runaway Runner from Colony A-3 who offers the group of a way to her colony...
    • Episode 48 reveals the full scope of Rabbi and her relation with Kairos and Colony A-3: she is the Game Master of her colony's RFM until Makoto and his followers stage a coup d'etat that leads to her being stripped of her role as its Game Master, barely able to escape and went into incognito in Colony A-7 as Racoon Dog Man.
• Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: Taken to ridiculous extremes in the London Arc; every time the heroes think they've defeated the Arc Villain, they are immediately informed that another, independent threat is on the loose.

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"Who amongst the tropers will survive to the end? The game has begun!"