Hero Insurance / Anime & Manga

• Averted in Basquash!. In his attempt to bring back basketball with his mecha, his attempt at a slam dunk being blocked by Iceman ends up destroying a good chunk of the stadium, landing him in jail for a year. Cue Time Skip and Dunk Mask becoming Shrouded in Myth.
• In chapter/episode of Bastard, Dark Schneider kills a demonically enhanced undead cyclops with a magic earthquake-generating mace with a magic spell that banishes it to another dimension. He brags about how powerful and complicated the spell is, and how he's pretty much the only one capable of using it. Then Yoko clobbers him, points out the enormous crater he just created, and points out that the city would have suffered less damage if they'd just let the cyclops continue trashing the place.
• The Big O:
  • The titular robot, a Humongous Mecha whose pilot is sometimes guilty of causing just as much damage, if not more, while fighting the Monster of the Week than the monster could cause all by itself. Sometimes entire blocks are razed, but the massive destruction is never really brought up. It's lessened a little by the fact that Paradigm City is fairly underpopulated — a lot of the buildings are entirely deserted, or ruined anyway.
  • It's not just fighting monsters either. The act of just deploying Big O and returning it to its "hangar" causes huge thousand-feet-deep craters to be dug all over the place, and nobody seems to care.
  • The manga version of The Big O hangs a lampshade on it: Beck's flunkies, who lack Offscreen Villain Dark Matter, are seen working construction repairing some of the damage afterwards in order to make some quick money.
  • Hinted that the main reason Dastun wants to find out the identity of the black Megadeus is to put an end to the constant damage. This was likely the job of all those maintenance men during the Season 2 finale arc who fix the near completely ruined Big O before the final battle. It would certainly explain why damage never carries over, given how fast they are! It's implied that constantly having to dig out from under rubble is why a lot of people have jobs in that universe. That doesn't do anything for all the times Big O makes a huge hole in the road, though...
• One of the reasons Train and Sven from Black Cat are so poor is because most of their bounty money is used to pay for the damage they cause when catching criminals.
• Generally averted in Bleach where the Shinigami have the ability to stand on air, which they generally use to keep their battles high above the cities to lower the collateral damage. One time^note The battle against Aizen and his top three Espada, Soul Society even went as far as replacing the town with an exact replica of it so they don't have to worry about breaking anything. They have broken things before, like during Ikkaku's fight with the arrancar Edorad Leones. However, it was mentioned that Soul Society fixes everything afterwards, with the costs being taken out of the budget of the squad responsible (Though that does beg the question of who pays for damages caused by Ichigo's fights...).
• Blue Exorcist:
  • The series tends to gloss over this kind of thing, though it does happen. Arguably, since the True Cross Order has been established for about two thousand years, they probably have this kind of thing down pat.
  • Actively brought up in an early episode. Since Rin is the half-breed Son of Satan, even before his awakening he was very strong. Combing this with his Hair-Trigger Temper and his Nice Guy tendencies, and you get a few scenes of of Shiro yelling at him for costing him money. Not to mention he couldn't hold a job due to this...
  • A short omake at the end of episode 13 shows Mephisto confronting Amaimon on the destruction he caused in his fight with Rin. Scratch that, he was just upset over the now-headless statue of him. The wrecked rollercoaster and ball pen are totally over looked.
• Bokurano:
  • Averted in the most mean-spirited manner. After learning that their first giant robot battle has killed two thousand people and leveled a mountain, several of the children get notably upset by it and want to break the masquerade and tell people about it.
  • Plenty of people die and plenty of damage is done when Zearth fights. In fact one of the protagonists father gets crushed while they're fighting, right when he was thinking how a few thousand peoples lives don't matter when it saves the majority and how he and his dad are a few of the strong. Kodama dies soon afterwards himself.
  • In the end, a military official notes that while he knows Zearth was the instrument of mankind's salvation, to the vast majority of people, it will probably be remembered as a terrible monster that terrorized the planet.
• At the end of the LXE arc of Buso Renkin, Kazuki attempts to reach Victor's regeneration capsule before he awakens by using Sunlight Heart to rocket to the roof of his school, blasting through floors in the process, as he was inside when he came up with this idea. Because of this, Kazuki ultimately caused more property damage than the entire LXE.
• Both Played for Laughs and somewhat deconstructed in Chrono Crusade, depending on the chapter/episode. Sister Rosette is a Hot-Blooded Destructive Saviour, so she's quite often shown crashing her car into the sides of buildings, destroying buildings—heck, the very first storyline shows her crashing a ship into the Statue of Liberty. However, it's shown that her supervisor in the Order of Magdalene constantly chews her out for it (even saying they could write a book based on her damage reports), and it's explicitly mentioned that the Order has to help pay for the damages as well as bribing the local media not to mention their involvement with the damage. Also, when civilians are shown badly injured in the aftermath of one of her battles, she's shown being shocked and upset.
• In Cowboy Bebop the reason why the Bebop crew is always starving or using sub-par equipment is because a good chunk of the cash they make off of their bounties is used to pay for the collateral damage they tend to leave in their wake.
• Lampshaded in Dai-Guard, where the company that owns the title giant robot is responsible for all collateral damage the robot causes, and numerous insurance-related forms have to be signed before it can be deployed. It's FURTHER lampshaded in one episode where by the time all the paperwork is completed, Dai-Guard has already been deployed and beaten the Monster of the Week. And when one considers that the only other way to destroy the monsters besides the eponymous giant robot is with nukes, the insurance complaints seem rather inane. In-story they're still cleaning up after the first monster's rampage twelve years later.
• Subverted in The Demon Girl Next Door. Sakura paid off the Hinatsuki family 11 years ago for her destroying their family factory in the course of fighting Ugallu by buying the property outright. The Hinatsukis used that money to move westwards and re-establish their business there.
• Devil May Cry: The Animated Series:
  • Subverted in Episode 2. Dante wrecks a bridge to defeat a demon. By the end, he's even expecting to be paid for the mission with no issues, but Lady informs him that he has to pay for it out of the reward he got for killing the demon. Lady is implied to have paid the charges on his stead, as she has adjusted the amount of debt Dante owes her.
    Lady: Of course, you and I got paid for taking care of ol' "Red Eye", but there might've been a few other charges, like repairing that city bridge you tore up...
  • Played straight in most other cases, however. Dante wrecks a bar, Trish destroys the roof of a church, and so on, but the consequences of these demon-slaying acts to such properties are no longer brought up.
• D.Gray-Man usually plays it straight, but it's averted when Allen gapes at a massive hole Lavi puts in a building using his Size-Shifting Hammer and Lavi carelessly mentions not to worry about it and that Komui will 'foot the bill.' Apparently the Vatican have very deep pockets, considering the damage the Exorcists tend to create during their fights.
• In Digimon Adventure tri., the Chosen Children find their Digimon to be made out to be bad guys after a few fights wreck the town. Noticeably, Taichi ends up getting flashbacks to the destruction, holding him back.
• The protagonists in Dinosaur King cause enormous amounts of collateral damage when fighting rogue dinosaurs, or their enemies. Sometimes to priceless historical landmarks. They're occasionally berated for this by locals, but rarely actually have to pay up for it. The damage is all undone using the time machine in the end.
• Exaggerated in Dirty Pair. The Lovely Angels' recklessness in their cases mingles with Finagle's Law to frequently cause the destruction of cities, if not entire planets; nevertheless, the Central Computer of their employer infallibly clears them of blame every time. Which isn't enough to keep them from being hated and feared by most of humanity.
• Perhaps no anime series depicts this trope as often as Dominion Tank Police. Throughout the series, the main characters routinely cause enormous amounts of property damage in the city while attempting to apprehend criminals, sometimes failing to make an arrest in the end. This never results in any member of the tank police being arrested, fired, or disciplined, other then occasionally getting chewed out by a supervisor.
• Dragon Ball:
  • Usually averted, particularly in the movies. While battles usually take place in remote areas by default, Goku has often made a point of taking a fight outside of the city to prevent this kind of thing.
  • Played straight when Androids 19 and 20 aka Doctor Gero come calling. Goku tries to get them out of the city out of concern for the civilians. Android 20 destroys the city with his Eye Beams. Leading to this exchange:
    Goku: How could you do this?! Leave these people out of it!
    Android 19: There are no people left to leave out.
  • The titular Dragon Balls are a sort of ultimate insurance company as they can be wished for complete reparation of any damage caused during battles (including destroyed PLANETS), and are more than once used for just that.
    Announcer: Please don't destroy the arena again.
• Justified in Durarara!!: It turns out that someone actually does pay for all that property damage Shizuo causes: his manager (not Tom, but another guy above both of them), who docks it from Shizuo's salary in return. Shizuo's honestly surprised that he still gets paid at all (or that he even still has a job).
• Averted in Fairy Tail, as the massive property damage the members of the titular guild cause is the main reason they aren't more wealthy or influential despite the considerable power of their mages. In fact, the Magic Council which regulates them would have probably disbanded them several times if their leaders wasn't friends with (an increasingly small number of) council members. Hell, Lucy even states that no matter how high-ranking and well-paying the missions she completes are she's never getting most of it as long as her partners Natsu and Gray keep breaking crap. Eventually, the Magic Council starts actively looking for a reason to disband them. It ultimately fails as the threats escalate and Fairy Tail are more or less the only people capable enough of facing these monstrous individuals and organizations.
• Fullmetal Alchemist:
  • Averted on at least one occasion where Edward finishes a battle that causes impressive collateral damage, only to be made to clean up after himself by irate shopkeepers. Fortunately, he lives in a setting where powers are as good at fixing messes as they are at making them.
  • In another instance, he wrecks a woman's balcony during a big fight. He apologizes mid-battle, and promises to come back and fix it. Later he does fix it (to the woman's surprise) although given his sense of... style, it's debatable whether it's better than it was before.
  • Double-subverted when he and Roy have a Wizard Duel. Mustang and Edward end the episode cleaning up the damage with shovels, no alchemy in sight.
• Averted in GaoGaiGar; the villains realize early on the potential of handicapping the heroes by bringing fights to populated areas. The heroes respond by inventing a device to create a pocket dimension in which to fight the villains. That said, if the story of the episode needed to have more of a rousing conclusion, GGG does have a small army of Tool based robots ready to repair any damage done.
• New Getter Robo:
  • Subverted, where a big deal is made of the property damage when a battle moves into the city.
  • And again in the manga. When Shin Getter Robo accidentally blows up a city and puts one of its pilots into a coma from the trauma, people aren't happy.
  • And once more in Shin Getter Robo VS. Neo Getter Robo, where the massive amounts of property damage caused by Musashi's Heroic Sacrifice causes the government to abolish Getter Energy research. Though played straight afterwards, as even though Neo Getter run on plasma energy, they still cause property damage while fighting monsters and are never called on it.
• Played for Laughs in Girls und Panzer:
  • Senshou-dou matches often end up in urban areas, and collateral damage is bound to ensue. Early on, during a Sensha-dou match, a tank runs into a shop belonging to one of the members of the audience. His reaction is to Squee about how he can now renovate it with the insurance money while the others around him comment on his good fortune and pray that their shops get wrecked next.
  • The same shop gets blown up in Girls und Panzer der Film, and once again the same guy is cheerful while the others are envious that it always seems that his place is hit.
• Godaigo Daigo: Hero Insurance is a plot point in this story which is about a giant-sized man whose job is fighting kaiju sized lizard aliens. He's fallen on hard times because he's getting little action and thus less sponsorship for him and his support staff. He can't help out in other regions, which have their own heroes, because he has an insurance contract for collateral damage only in his district. His manager is able to get them the money they need by liquidating this contract, but at the risk of making him then incapable of taking any action without taking on all the cost. He does it anyway but manages to get the money he needs from a previously failed crowdfunding effort due to all the goodwill he earned.
• Aversion: As a result of the numerous destructive car chases in Gunsmith Cats, Rally "The Wrecker" has been blacklisted by every auto insurance company in Illinois.
• Despite not quite being the genre for this, He Is My Master subverts this by having the main character's lack of Hero Insurance driving the plot.
• High School D×D generally sidesteps the issue. Organized clashes happen in single-use pocket dimensions explicitly to avoid repair costs, and even a couple of early major antagonists are willing to play by those rules. Later on, both sides of the conflict make a point of fighting in deserted areas or in other ways to limit collateral damage - the heroes do so to avoid unnecessary damage and casualties, and the villains don't want to break the Masquerade any earlier than they have to, lest their opponents go from Great Offscreen War-depleted remnants to seven billion strong (even gods in this setting have to worry about a lot of diddly). When significant collateral damage is explicitly caused, it's usually discussed, such as Souna agreeing to fund and manage the school's repairs in volume 4 since it was her territory, or Rias deliberately refusing to reimburse the feuding vampire factions for damage Gaspar caused since they'd been acting like dicks since the word go.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders:
  • Happens at least once, when Jotaro's first Stand battle nearly collapses his entire school. He never faces any consequences for it; granted, nobody knows he was responsible as only Stand users can see each other's Stands.
  • In the 1993 Stardust Crusaders Original Video Animation, Jotaro's Stand, Star Platinum, tears off the top half of a minaret and throws it at DIO. Once again, nobody ever calls him out on having destroyed a possibly very old and significant religious building.
• Averted for laughs in the Kochikame action based episodes and TV specials. Kankichi Ryotsu defeats the villain and saves the day, but gets billed by the owners for property damage he caused or blamed for it. Notably, the Fuji TV station (the show's broadcaster) is destroyed multiple separate times. Thanks to Negative Continuity or possibly Ryotsu's gambling winnings, everything's back to normal and forgotten in the following episode.
• Zig-zagged in KonoSuba: Kazuma's party destroys a large portion of Axel's walls during the fight with Beldia. It's first a downplayed subversion, since the town won't demand he recompense the city for all of the repairs, but he still has to fork over all 300 million Eris of the reward, as well as go 40 mil into debt. It later turns into a Double Subversion, because the greedy landlord used a demon's powers to make everyone forget that adventurers don't have to pay for damages. The town eventually returns all of the money that was taken from him when the landlord's crimes are exposed.
• Averted in Linebarrels of Iron, the main character ends up not only destroying large parts of the city, but believes that he is a "hero of justice" and as such gets very miffed when the authorities cover up the battles as malfunctioning mecha. He eventually blows over about this, destroying more of the city with his humongous mecha whilst demanding why no one will praise him for saving their lives, oblivious to the fact that he his in fact being a bigger threat to people's safety than the bad guys. After his friend is killed by another humongous mecha, he goes into a rage and nearly obliterates the city in his rampage. Later he is called out on his behaviour, being told to his face that his selfish actions have done more harm than good, and that if anyone is to blame for his friend's death, it's him.
• Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha: Nanoha flees the scene of her first battle when she hears sirens, not wanting to get in trouble for the damage caused by the Monster of the Week. Averted after the final battle of A's: the TSAB works on repairing the damaged areas of the city.
• In Magilumiere Co. Ltd., insurance against Kaii is a commonplace for the magical girl industry and is meant to cover the damages caused to buildings by both the Kaii and the magical girls who fight them.
• The basic premise behind Mobile Fighter G Gundam is that war has been replaced with periodic dueling tournaments with Humongous Mecha. While this is less destructive than all-out global war, this doesn't make it destruction-free, as Gundam Fights can and do start in the middle of cities with no safety precautions in place to prevent damage or loss of life. Gundam Fighters are legally exempt from culpability for anything they do during a match apart from cheating in the match, so they literally have insurance, but all too often nobody actually does anything about the resultant mess, resulting in the Earth getting a little more wrecked every four years. Disgust over this is why Master Asia became a villain.
• Subverted in Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny. While seemingly played straight with Kira getting off scott-free with all the destruction he causes in the Battle at Orb, Shinn's family are revealed to have been killed in collateral damage, and this is the cause of all his malice towards Kira as the pilot of the Freedom throughout the series.
• Averted in Moldiver, where not only does the city have to pick up the tab for repairs after superbattles, it contracts them out to the lowest bidder — who happens to be the Big Bad in his civilian identity, and who is driven to distraction by the escalating levels of damage cutting into his profit margin.
• Discouraged in My Hero Academia, as pro hero agencies often have to pay off any collateral damage caused by their hands, and U.A usually docks points in tests and exams for collateral damage caused in their training facilities by students acting as heroes (or villains) under simulation scenarios.
• Negima! Magister Negi Magi does a Hand Wave saying that the people of the magic world in a city known for its dueling and gladiator fights are used to this sort of thing and have measures in place to deal with it. Apparently up to and including buildings being chopped to pieces. Naturally, this doesn't stop Negi from worrying about it anyway. The implication seems to be that the loser(s) of the fight is made to pay for the damages. One has to wonder what happens if the loser ends up dead, if that's the case.
• Neon Genesis Evangelion:
  • Deconstructed (like everything else). The series often lampshades how often that not only are the EVAs really costly to repair and maintain (it costing about enough money to bankrupt a small country to repair a severely damaged EVA after one battle), but how much time, effort, and money it takes to repair New Tokyo-3 as well as disposing of the dead Angels (Ramiel sits in the middle of the city for rotting for weeks on end).
  • End of Evangelion opens on the image of Tokyo-3 after all of the battles had come to an end. With funding drying up, Tokyo-3 hasn't seen any repairs recently and most of the civilian population has fled.
  • It's not even a question of funding. The destruction of Eva-00 was a bigger explosion than any of the previous battles. We know Shinji's friends fled, but it's also a case of Inferred Holocaust, even with the population in shelters.
  • There's almost nobody living in the city to begin with. Misato appears to be the only person actually living in her building, most wide shots of the city show little, if any, traffic, and almost every classroom in Shinji's school is empty... and this is before things start getting bad. Dialogue halfway through the series suggests that the population is down to actual NERV employees and a few diehards. It's only in the Rebuild movies that Tokyo-3 is ever depicted as having an appropriate population level for a city that size.
• One Piece:
  • Averted. The heroes are pirates to begin with, so if they destroy buildings the Navy will respond to it. Normally, the Straw Hat Crew is able to survive their encounters with the Navy. However, if they do commit a serious crime their bounties could increase.
  • Also averted when Luffy wrecks a restaurant staffed mostly by former pirates, who make him work off the damage.
• Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt: Panty and Stocking must have this in spades considering how destructive their fights with the Ghosts are. Then again, everyone in this universe appears to be Made of Iron.
• Pokémon:
  • Averted in Pokémon: The Original Series, in "Showdown at the Poké-Corral" when Ash's herd of Tauros ram Team Rocket away and save the day while destroying a fence. Afterward, Oak makes Ash and his friends rebuild it to end the episode. Played straight in "Pokémon Emergency" wherein a massive Thundershock generated by several Pikachu ends up destroying most of the Pokémon Center, but nobody seems to get in trouble.
  • In Pokémon Adventures, Black battles and captures the Galvantula that attacked a camera crew but destroys the filming equipment in the process. He gets thanked but still gets stuck with the bill, which White covers. He's now in her debt and is stuck working for her.
• The heroines from Pretty Cure don't have to worry about this trope as it's a tradition in the series for the battlefield to return to normal, negating all the damage from the fights, after the Monster of the Week is defeated and the villain of turn makes a quick exit. Strangely enough, Fresh Pretty Cure! is the only entry where this doesn't happen all the time, for reasons that were never explained. Made more jarring by the fact this is the first Pretty Cure series where the Monsters of the Week are summoned mainly to attack civilians and wreak havoc rather than only to deal with the eponymous Magical Girl Warriors, and as such the level of destruction is higher compared to previous works.
• Check the end of the second Project A-Ko film. The kind of use would be a spoiler. Check the beginning of any episode. A-Ko causes massive damage just by running to school.
• In Psychic Squad Kaoru, a special ESPer working for a government agency, is requested a help from a Friendly Enemy Well-Intentioned Extremist organization to help them in a particular task. When they damage a passenger plane to drive one of their evil enemies out of it, Kaoru freaks out for them being so reckless and for gambling with the passengers' lives. When they point out to her that she does the same thing regularly when going on missions, she replies that in that case she is backed up by the said government agency which controls and compensates the damage.
• Ranma ½:
  • Soun Tendo is on the city council, but one has to wonder if that really helps given the amount of destruction his "son-in-law" and friends dish out on a regular basis. Even though there are those "Do Not Smash Wall" and "Do Not Crush Pole" signs everywhere.
  • In Fan Fiction a common nickname for Ranma and friends is "Nerima's Wrecking Crew" or "Demolition Crew". Joke stories often have companies that want to renovate call Nabiki Tendo to have set up a fight between Ranma and some rival that takes place in their building. Allowing them to collect the insurance money, and renovate.
  • One Fan Fiction even featured the Nerima Building Crew trying in subtle ways to help save their best source of business.
• Lampshaded in Sailor Moon episode 13 when Sailor Mars wants to blast some airplanes being used by the villain and Luna replies that she could never afford to pay for the damage. The joke actually made it through to the DiC English dub.
• In Scryed, Alter powers can't not cause damage, as they rely on the surrounding matter for both energy and mass to make the Alter forms, and the Alter Users don't have much control over what matter gets used.
• Horribly messed up in Shakugan no Shana battles take place in barriers similar to X but the writers can't make up their mind about whether time passes normally outside the barrier or not, after the battles end, human lives are consumed to repair the collateral damage. Depends on who wins. Bad guys use human lives to repair the damage. Good guys use the bits inside "Torches" (the remnant echos of humans whose existence has been consumed by the bad guys).
• Slayers: The poor innocent villagers probably would make Lina pay for the damage... if they could catch her. Averted; in fact it's a running gag. She's basically what you get if you turn Vash the Stampede into a sorceress and take away the insurance girls. While the audience/readers and her close friend know she is a hero, her path of destruction has made her a feared villainess in her world, to the point a Sympathetic Inspector Antagonist got away with arresting her with the charge of being Lina Inverse. Even when she does something truly heroic and redeemable, she blows it by losing her cool and nuking the town she just saved. She rarely gets to claim her reward because it will likely be the down payment on rebuild the town from the ground up around the huge crater she just made.
• In Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, explosive destruction of the first Anti-Spiral ship causes significant damage to the surrounding city, blame falls on Simon for destroying it. Subsequent confrontations involve increasingly elegant ways to prevent said damage from occurring. It wasn't a problem before that either, as there were no cities and most fights were in giant deserts/wastelands like the old Transformers cartoon, and latter in space.
• Averted in Tiger & Bunny. Damages incurred by a superhero must be paid for either by his/her sponsor company or the hero him/herself. In the very first episode Kotetsu, the protagonist, is berated for damaging a monorail track in order to stop a hijacker. And in episode 5 he is brought before a judge who rules that his company be fined for the property that was destroyed during one of his rescue attempts in episode 4. To be precise, the city pays for any damage deemed necessary for the hero to capture a criminal and/or protect civilians. However, anything the city deems unnecessary is billed to the hero's sponsor company. So a hero who pulls a chunk out of the road in order to stop a bystander being shot would not be charged, but a hero who stomps a car's roof in when he could have just run around it would be charged. All of the heroes in the show are employees or owners of companies which use the hero's "brand" to generate money, so that they don't personally have to pay these charges (and also to generate a living wage for them, as they aren't directly paid to be heroes). One of the reasons co-protagonist Wild Tiger is nicknamed the "Crusher for Justice" is due to his habit of smashing things up with his super strength and earning himself a constant stream of large bills for his sponsor company to pay. The show actually begins with his original sponsor company going out of business due to the large bills he receives. The only reason he agrees to be in a partnership with Barnaby is because the next company to hire him tells him to do it or quit, and implies that no other sponsor company would agree to take on a hero who's fame (and ability to generate money) is waning but continues to rack up such large bills.
• Trigun:
  • Vash The Humanoid Typhoon. However, it's not without its Lampshade Hangings. Two of the characters are insurance society representatives who stick around to keep an eye on him and fail miserably at keeping him out of trouble, and in the fifth episode of the anime, a character mentions that "Class G Property Damage" contributed to Vash's enormous bounty.
  • In the end, the Bernardelli Insurance Company just washes its hands of Vash, and declares any and all damage caused by him "Acts of God." Justified, since he accidentally blew a chunk out of one of the moons; at that point, you can't really call him anything else.
  • This trope is arguably deconstructed, alongside the Technical Pacifist trope, with the July 5th incident, the primary source of the bounty on Vash's head. Vash somehow managed to avoid killing a single soul when he blew up an entire city... but it probably would have been kinder if he had vaporised the population, because almost every last man, woman and child either died of thirst/starvation or was murdered for their supplies by their desperate fellows.
• Averted in World Trigger. It's made very clear that this doesn't exist and is part of why the Forbidden Zone is necessary: aside from keeping civilians safe, it also allows types like Izumi and Amo to go wild.
• Averted in X/1999; the good guys create a barrier/parallel dimension to protect the battle zones which in this case can't be considered collateral damage, tearing down the buildings is the primary objective of the bad guys. If the good guys die, the area retains the damage from the battle. Note that the good guys have an unimpressive track record for "winning". Also, it's not just "death" that dissolves the barrier. Loss of Heroic Spirit, like that endured by Subaru still results in the damage being permanent. Also, in the manga, one holy site gets blown up without the heroes ever showing up.
• Lampshaded in Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie: Pyramid of Light. After Anubis' defeat, Kaiba leaves in a huff, and Grandpa says, "I'm glad he didn't bring up the damage you all did to his Duel Dome, because I really don't think his insurance is gonna pay for it!"
• Averted in Zambot 3 about as far as it can go. Many battles happen in cities that had been destroyed in previous battles and the people of the Japan don't take too kindly to the heroes.

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