"Shiny!"
— Firefly slang for "Cool" or "Great".
Basically, this is when the word "Shine" and its variants are used to mean "Good", "Holy", "Righteous", or other similar things.
The reason is that to shine is to reflect a lot of light, so in a setting where Light Is Good (or at least seems to be), to shine is an indication of goodness. It's part of the reason the word is in the phrase Knight in Shining Armor. (The other reason being that "shining" in armor also means "not rusty," important in a fight.)
Again, this is just the word, nothing else.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- The hero of Mobile Fighter G Gundam pilots the Shining Gundam, with the attack "Shining Finger!"
- The second opening of Mobile Suit Victory Gundam has "Don't stop shining on!" in part of the lyrics. Although that was part of the Bait-and-Switch Credits.
- Digimon Savers features ShineGreymon.
- Pretty Cure has the Third Ranger Shiny Luminous, the items Shiny Perfume and Shiny Tambourine, the attacks Lemonade Shining, Shining Fortissimo and Happy Shower Shining, and the power-up Shining Dream. Not to forgetting Cure Sunshine.
- Special Duty Combat Unit Shinesman
Fan Works
- In With Strings Attached, what we would call the east coast of the continent of Baravada is known as the Shining Coast, because it still contains the possibility (albeit remote) of adventure. The west coast is the Rust Coast, which as far as anyone knows is unoccupied except for some Ketafan refugee towns, and totally devoid of adventure.
Literature
- The Knights Radiant of The Stormlight Archive.
- In Thud!, the in-hiding king of trolls is known as "Mr. Shine,"note and Crysophase the troll refers to Captain Carrot (the suspected king of Ankh-Morpork and an all-around Nice Guy) as being "shiny."
Live Action TV
- Kamen Rider Agito's Shining Form.
- Ressha Sentai Toqger is playing with it, some kind of way. Dark Is Evil, with the villains wreaking havoc to harvest the dark energy given off by the people's suffering. However, Zet, the Emperor of Darkness, finds the "shine" of the heroes, particularly Red, naturally, intriguing and focuses on them to see if their "shine" will stand up to what he throws at them. He hopes to have some of it for himself and is actually disappointed every time his dark power increases (though he sure doesn't mind using that power to kick ass.) However, we're not exactly sure what the 'shining' he sees in the heroes and hopes to get for himself really is, and despite seeking the light rather than the darkness, he sure does just as much evil as any other Big Bad.
Video Games
- Sega has the Shining Series of games named like this trope.
- The Shining Series also has two animes too.
- Several White Magic style hi-ougis in the Tales Series of RPGs by Namco. Of note is Raine's Sacred Shine and Tear's Innocent Shine. These good and holy attacks easily do damage in the thousands.
- Appears to be the basis of Shing Meteoryte's arte list in Tales of Hearts, or at least the Japanese equivalent (mixed in with "star" and "heaven" for good measure).
- Crono's ultimate Tech in Chrono Trigger is called "Shining" (changed to "Luminaire" in the translation).
- In Dungeons of Dredmor, several skill lines allow the character to gain a shining aura from being (supposedly) good, improving their Righteous damage and sight radius, among other skills. For example, the Aura of Self-Righteousness skill has a percent chance to blind the enemy.
Western Animation
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic has Shining Armor, main character Twilight Sparkle's older brother and minor supporting ally. Take a guess which trope he's named for.
