One feature common to a lot of anime that seems to draw people in the embrace of over the topness, both in its tendency towards super high concept premises, and its willingness to amp every single about them up as far as possible. It’s in the combination of the fantastical, anything goes settings that make up the content of the story, and the extreme heightening of the moments within it, that the feeling of what most people think of as “anime” is formed.*

This mode of storytelling comes with a vocabulary of techniques all its own–think: people’s heads getting huge when they’re angry, elaborate transformation sequences, pose-striking, and more–that can seem totally baffling to someone not familiar with it (or incredibly fresh and enticing, depending probably a lot on your age).

But the most powerful of these, the signature move of this kind of anime, if you will (please will) is the signature move itself (thank you for willing). The moment during a climactic battle when a character, usually main, expresses their core philosophy, and the animation goes all crazy and starts panning around, as they scream the name of the ultra powerful attack that finally defeats their foe, warping reality around them with the sheer strength of their convictions.

These are the kinds of moments that keep people coming back to anime–it’s something you don’t really get from other places. But they’re not just cool and loud; they’re the defining moments of the story themselves, in which every piece and level of filmmaking resonate together in a unified expression of a character’s ultimate thematic triumph. Theme and character arcs manifest physically in the story for a moment of literal victory. Let’s call it: the Weaponized Conceit.

If the ending is the conceit, the ultimate culmination of what your story’s about, is when we feel it the deepest, then the climax before that, the overcoming of the final obstacle, is when we feel it the loudest, ’cause it requires the character(s) put the most energy into acting on it possible.**

But thanks to that over the topness, anime just has more opportunities to crank that shit to 12. Studio Trigger, and Gainax, from which they recently splintered off, are probably making most “anime-y” anime out there. They embody the best (and worst) of maximum anime, using their bonkers, high energy style to heighten the shit out of every moment of conflict, while its equally bonkers plots structure them together as a thematic focusing mechanism, climatically blasting forth like a giant laser beam.***

But rather than one of the batshit insane series, we’re gonna look at Trigger’s much more chill 25-minute one shot, Little Witch Academia, directed with aplomb (an entire plomb!) by Yoh Yoshinari. Which, since it compresses the whole development into one episode, is a perfect case study on how the Weaponized Conceit works. Which is actually really simple:

1. Establish Protago’s Desire

As a kid, Akko, LWA’s protagonist, watches a show by Shiny Chariot, a witch, who is dope. She is so enraptured that she decides to enroll in magic academy so she can become a witch like Shiny Chariot.*

*this whole process also frequently happens with characters who aren’t the main character, like when basically every single character in Naruto seemed to get their own entire thing over the course of one five years-worth-of-manga-long battle

2. Obstacles Throw It Into Relief

As Akko tries to become a witch, she undergoes various struggles which develop the themes and her character a bit more. Again, this is pretty basic story stuff, but it’s done so well thanks to the great animation, voice work, and characterization in general that it’s really effective to watch Akko’s battle against things like:

Studying magic turning out to be boring:

Other witches not respecting Shiny Chariot, and by extension her:

Her parents not being witches (unlike everyone else) meaning she doesn’t know how to ride a broom:

And, of course, a giant energy-absorbing dragon attacking the school:

3. SHOUTING OUT THE NAME OF THE ULTIMATE SPECIAL MOVE!!!!!

Akko has found the Shiny Rod, which Shiny Chariot used back in the opening to defeat a similar-ish monster, but while she tries to use it to stop the dragon, she can’t control it effectively enough. For the first time in the whole thing, she is ready to give up.

But as things are most hopeless (and with a boost from her teacher, secretly Shiny Chariot herself), she remembers what brought her here in the first place, and got her this far once it did.

And recommitment is all it takes. The Shiny Rod, which hasn’t worked for anyone but Akko, is powered by her belief in herself.

And as she draws again on that determination, that belief in herself that she can become a witch like Shiny Chariot, that determination lets her transform the Shiny Rod to perform Shiny Chariot’s ultimate, expertly animated attack, Shiny Arc (uhhh let my huge gif load sorry)–

–defeating the dragon, and saving the school. (Yay!)

The conceit becomes screamingly clear: Little Witch Academia is, like a lot of anime, about the power of determination and believing in yourself. The Shiny Arc moment is where the intersection of premise and style make the Weaponized Conceit happen. Premise-wise, the particular mechanics of magic here are what gives us the Shiny Rod, which, it turns out, is a kind of in-story plot device that channels the theme right into the text of the story–literally powered by Akko’s belief–and does it as visibly as possible. And style-wise, while not as bonkers as some other anime, every level of the scene is focused to transmit the triumphant feeling of that thematic power-up: the cameras range of movement expands from the mostly 2D movements to sweeping pans that emphasize depth at the same time, zooming in and out of her; the motion lines around convey movement, but they also turn the background into a different kind of space, warping the fabric of the surrounding world into giant cinematic amplifier; the arrow’s luminescent green glow sets it apart from all the other magic we’ve seen; sounds whoosh with the energy and camera, with some sweet mechanical noises as the bow transforms. Etc.

By–not to overuse the word “literally” but–literally weaponizing the conceit, the story dramatizes the core conflict in the most direct way possible: a fight. As the weapon fires, hitting the final obstacle with all the weight of whatever the character’s trying to realize, it’s depicted in a way that hits the viewer with all that weight at once too.

From Gurren Lagan‘s endlessly escalating Drill Breaker to FLCL‘s “He swung” (it makes a little more sense in context), Trigger/Gainax probably have the most intense, “pure” version of this, but it can also be as simple as DBZ’s you-can’t-do-it-alone symbolizing Spirit Bomb, or the special attack sequences that get reused in every episode of Sailor Moon, which, while not always as deeply rooted in a theme, are weaponizing the series’ central conceit that, with the combined powers of sisterhood and Usagi being really really mad all the time, the Sailor Guardians can bring justice to the world.



When done badly, the Weaponized Conceit can come off hollow and lazy, a band-aid of “coolness” meant to hide a story’s lack of resonance by shouting over it it really loud. And yeah, I can see why the general lack of subtlety around what are often pretty basic themes just doesn’t appeal to some people, and that’s fine. But when done well, it’s a resonator for the hairs on the back of your neck, getting louder and louder with each episode–and at a frequency you rarely hear anywhere else.

*Of course plenty of anime is not like this at all, but if you’re someone who was gonna point this out then you already know what I mean.

**I don’t want to get too abstract here, but there’s a certain level of literalizing the conceit that happens throughout any story that sticks to a theme, because you’re basically playing out a series of conflicts rooted in that theme. Really any climactic moment of a story works similarly to the Weaponized Conceit in anime because, in most cases, the protagonist is doing something to overcome some kind of obstacle by demonstrating something about whatever the theme is, and if the filmmaking is good enough, it’ll reflect it cinematically too.

***The most extreme example of this is Gurren Lagann, a sort of ur-text reconstruction this kind of anime that literalizes the storytelling device I’m talking about into an actual, physical device, which makes for the most inspiring shit ever.