"We are creatures of fire and water. We wither under a surfeit of light as readily as we wither beneath drowned hopes. When photons march soldier-fashion at an admiral's bidding, people die."
— Between Two Dragons, by Yoon Ha Lee
Implements of destruction that deal damage by projecting elementary particles, nearly always observable by the naked eye, such as photons, electrons, exotic particles or unspecified Pure Energy. Science and logic may or may not apply — the Rule of Cool is in charge here.
Most commonly manifests as either of the following:
- Beam Spam
- Energy Bow
- Eye Beams
- Fire-Breathing Weapon
- Flaming Sword
- Hard Light
- Kill Sat
- Laser Blade
- Lightning Gun
- Magnetic Weapons
- Plasma Cannon
- Ray Gun
- Slow Laser
- Solar-Powered Magnifying Glass
- Wave-Motion Gun
A more in-depth index can be found at Ranged Energy Attack Tropes.
Contrast to Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better, which is when the fiction uses weapons just like or similar to Real Life Weapons despite the tech level of the story. Compare to We Will Use Lasers in the Future when the story setting has energy weapons as the best weapons or have great advantages. For various technobabbly reasons, when two energy weapons meet, Like Cannot Cut Like.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Bleach: Traditionally, Quincies are archers made famous by their mastery of the Energy Bow, which either functions as Hard Light or, with advanced training, can become such condensed energy they look completely solid. When they modernise their organisational structure and uniform, they also modernise their techniques and weapons. With the exception of the Ishida family, they fight with any weapon that suits their personality rather than using bows. However, they can still fire arrows from their weapons, even if it's a sword or an axe or something else.
- Code Geass
- Kallen Kozuki's Guren has an arm-mounted gauntlet outfitted with a Radiant Wave Surger, a microwave-esque weapon that causes affected Knightmares to swell and explode. While designed originally as a melee weapon, later upgrades allow Kallen to focus and extend the range of the weapon, turning it into a Wave-Motion Gun.
- Luciano Bradley's Knightmare wields an arm-mounted energy drill, essentially a weaponized version of the Deflector Shields seen at the start of the series.
- In Gundam, normal energy weapons are fine for the small fry, but energy-based melee weapons are just about the only thing that can settle a duel between Gundams. An especially egregious example is Deathscythe's energy scythe in Mobile Suit Gundam Wing, which knows both how to come to a point and to curve. In this case, though, you do get an answer: The plasma used in beam weapons can also be guided and shaped by specially-aligned magnetic fields, essentially forming a surface tension around the 'blade'. When it makes contact with a solid object, the field is disrupted around the point of contact, allowing the plasma to do its work. See Minovsky Physics
(wikipedia), even if it is extensive technobabble and handwaving.
- Then there's the ridiculousness of Mobile Fighter G Gundam's Argo Gulskii. He wears a pair of gigantic beam manacles — the bracelets are metal, as are the first links attached to them, but if he pulls them too far apart, a blue beam chain snaps between them. Yes, with individual beam links. This is even worse with his Gundam, the Bolt Gundam. Aside from the obligatory head-mounted vulcan guns, the only armament it has is the Graviton Hammer — a ball of metal with a handle that fires a super-long, super-huge version of the beam chain between his handcuffs. What's worse is that the beam chain doesn't burn anything — he can hold the chain and swing the ball in a smaller circle, and even gets tied to a gigantic spire of rock by his own weapon once!
- Mobile Suit Gundam SEED attempts to justify it with the anti-ship sword, a giant solid sword with a beam blade running the length like the wire portion of a cheese cutter. Hence, there are two terminals between which the beam runs, and the weight of the solid part gives extra power to the user's swings, which is what makes it anti-ship.
- Mobile Suit Gundam 00 subverts the beam saber stereotype, establishing such weapons as highly impractical in its setting, as energy is an extremely scarce resource. Thus far, melee energy weapons are only available to a small number of Super Prototype Humongous Mecha.
- It also subverts in a different way, with Gundam Exia's GN Blade, an enormous metal blade that was designed to penetrate GN Fields, something that normal beam sabers couldn't do.
- It actually makes sense since the GN fields are condensed particles held by a field. A similar weapon like a beam saber which functions under similar principles would be unable to penetrate since the field holding the saber together would be disrupted and the particles would just disperse. This would result in the need for a humongous amount of particles to rupture the field, much less damage the unit it's protecting (which the O-raiser did by freaking creating a giant beam saber on the Empress). GN blades, on the other hand, were solid weapons; as a result, after meeting the GN Field head on, it could simply push its way through the field to hit the unit. Although it was thrown in on episode 25 and read as a Deus Ex Machina, it wasn't justified due to the GN Arms having PIERCED the Alvatore's GN field before said revelation.
- In the same way, the Seraphim Gundam in season 2 had to fight the Garazzo which was using a GN field to protect himself. In response, the Seraphim's hands were forced through the field so that the barrels would be beyond the scope of the field before having clearance to fire.
- Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans is a rare exception where energy weapons don't appear at all; thanks to the nanolaminate armor possessed by basically every mobile suit and battleship, physical weapons (whether railguns or just big honking maces) are much more useful because they can deal solid impact damage. The second season finally introduces a beam weapon on the Mobile Armor Hashmal, but the trope is subverted because it's basically useless against nanolaminate...and then it's double-subverted when the beam just deflects off of the MS defending against it and curves around to hit the settlement he was trying to protect, killing everyone there despite his noble efforts.
- Lyrical Nanoha has energy scythes, energy whips, energy swords, energy daggers, and who knows what else. Of course, they're also magical.
- Aoyama Yuuga in My Hero Academia has one built into his navel. However, it's later revealed that he wasn't born with it but the Big Bad gave it to him in a Deal with the Devil his parents made. Because of this, his body isn't equipped with Required Secondary Powers and he gets physically ill using it
- Neon Genesis Evangelion:
- The Third Angel (Sachiel) came equipped with what was essentially an energy spear. The Fourth Angel (Shamshiel) had energy whips in place of "arms". In a typical Evangelion subversion, the Evas themselves had nothing but giant-sized versions of mundane weapons to work with — and even then, no swords, only knives (sonic knives, though), spears (The Lance of Longinus, to boot) and guns (really big guns, larger than your average ship based artillery cannon). The only time an Eva got to wield an Energy Weapon, it was a monstrous particle beam sniper rifle that sucked down the entire power output of Japan to fuel a single shot.
- Another is designed specifically to be used by an Eva mentioned as not being powerful enough to damage the 5th Angel. The only time it sees use is against the 15th Angel... right before it Mind Rapes Asuka making the few shots she does get off go wildly astray.
- Patlabor: The TV Series: Only one Labor type ever uses one, and it's quickly abandoned by the corporation building them because they're too expensive and not as effective against cannons and good old-fashioned pummeling as they thought. It was likely deemed Awesome, but Impractical, as we only see it fighting the AV-98s.
- YⱯIBA features several of these, especially during the Pyramid Arc. Unlike other examples, they're often totally made of energy.
- Zegapain not only has weapons made from light, but also armor made from light. Result: a cool-looking glow on the mechs.
Asian Animation
- Lamput: The blue superhero outfit Skinny Doc wears in "Super Docs" comes with a visor that can shoot laser beams.
Comic Books
- Pouvoirpoint: The starship Entreprise-2061 is equipped with lethal vibro-cannons. It is not clear how it works, but they must surely vibrate in a very cool way...
- Zombo: The Death Shadow is a man-made weapon that disintegrates living tissue on contact. Since Zombo is a zombie, he's the only one able to wield it.
Fan Works
- Equestria Divided: Sunray cannons are magical weapons used by the Guild of the Sun of House Moon and Star, which focus sunlight into a destructive beam.
- The Mission Stays the Same: Gallardi's lasgun fires directed energy beams, something that while standard fare in the Imperium is unheard of in the Mass Effect setting — weapons there are all strictly kinetic in nature. This is particularly significant in light of the resulting prevalence of personal kinetic barriers in combat, which block most physical projectiles but don't do a thing for lasers. Gallardi's standard-issue lasgun tears through the galaxy's best personal defense technology like it simply isn't there, and it's expected that once the technology is reverse-engineered and mass-produced it will revolutionize warfare. Since it can also be scaled more or less indefinitely, this will also lead to laser cannons fit for large ships, which is also very significant in light of the fact that the Reapers possess kinetic barriers that the best cannons in the galaxy can't scratch but which, again, would do nothing against lasers.
Films — Live-Action
- Bruiser: Henry kills Miles Styles by hoisting him into the air and shooting him in the head with an industrial laser.
- House Shark: At one point, the house shark pulls out a laser weapon to blast Frank, Zachary, and Abraham with.
- Star Wars isn't limited to lightsabers and blasters. For instance, "light whips" — which make a bit more sense than a lightsaber, as the "energy" tendrils actually have a solid metal core.
Literature
- The Aftermath: Volek energy weapons include Energy Rifles - long range, two-handed, semi-automatic weapons that can kill from up to half a mile away; Repeater Pistols - one-handed energy weapons with a high rate of fire that can fire blasts capable of stunning or killing anything they hit; and Concussion Guns - powerful weapons that fire concussive blasts but are somewhat inaccurate and prone to overheating.
- Area 51: The Airlia Talon craft and the Ark, among others, use powerful lasers as weapons.
- Digitesque: "Guns" are in fact small laser pistols, and hunters can do the same thing with more utility.
- Magic Hour: Sir Carter's sword can fire off energy blasts.
- Tides of Protomis: Paritcle beams are used in conjuction with railguns, and produced by "Sigma Particles". But require powerful reactors, so they are used for vehicles.
- Voidskipper: These are portrayed in the realistic sense of lasers and highly relativistic particle beams. The shots travel at or very near lightspeed, they're effectively invisible until they hit, and the weapons have smart targeting systems that mean they almost never miss when used against terrestrial targets.
Live-Action TV
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Pearl and Nash can summon two green energy swords.
- CSI: NY's "You Only Die Once" has a James Bond-type car equipped with laser beams strong enough to cauterize the wounds they cause.
- Doctor Who: Most alien weapons seem to be energy weapons, with the most famous example being that of the Dalek organ-scrambling beam, or the Time Lord Staser weapons.
- The first appearance of the Ferengi in Star Trek had them using energy whips — which were physical whips that, for no logical reason, shoot slow lasers when swung.
- They actually looked like they were supposed to be phaser-bolt atlatls.
- Starships primarily use phaser and disruptor weapons against each other.
- Most advanced infantry will use some kind of energy weapons against each other, rather than more conventional armaments.
- They actually looked like they were supposed to be phaser-bolt atlatls.
- Red Dwarf:
- It has "holowhips", apparently made out of whatever Applied Phlebotinum a "Hard Light" hologram is made out of.
- There were also bazookoids (essentially a mining laser adapted for use as some sort of BFG) and laser pistols in the show.
Roleplay
- A variety exists in the Nexus Gate setting. The specifics of the tech is explained here.
Tabletop Games
- 1001 Science Fiction Weapons for D20 system, as the title might suggest, has quite a lot, including:
- Lasers of multiple different tech levels.
- Particle beams.
- Ion guns.
- Lightning guns.
- Energy and force field blades.
- Disintegrators.
- Coagulators, which affect the targets' internal biochemical structure, rendering it all too inert to function as life.
- A whole chapter on pulpy sci-fi rayguns, from death rays, which make you simply drop dead of your own accord, to life-draining and life-transference rays.
- Sonic weapons.
- Microwave weapons.
- Lepton weapons.
- Blasters.
- Antimatter.
- The General Weapons System mark 490, similar to the Zorg personal weapon cluster in The Fifth Element (also available in the book as the Mark 183), but more advanced, where the old Mark 183 had mostly kinetic weapons and explosives, the 490 features mostly energy weapons, including a less lethal option, plasma, and antimatter.
- And the strange weapons made by the mysterious Witherslant Masters, which have many incredible functions and cannot be bought with simple currency, only by barter in the form of an agreement to kill whoever the Masters say for a year.
- BattleTech has a whole class of Energy weapons. They come either as lasers or particle projectile cannons (ppc). Energy weapons are very accurate, lightweight, powerful, and do not carry ammunition when compared to ballistic/missile weaponry; hence giving them a major edge in the logistics department and allowing mechs to last longer in extended combat. However, they generate massive amounts of heat in the mech, so a mech that carries around a lot of lasers is going to explode if it fires them all. If a mech is armed with only energy weapons, they require lots of heat sinks to keep themselves from overheating. There are some certain mechs that are equipped with energy weapons as their only means of primary armaments; examples being the Flashman and the Nova, though in the latter's case, it is a Clan OmniMech that can have its original weaponry swapped for a more specialized role.
- Dungeons & Dragons:
- Brilliant energy weapons ignore armor bonuses to AC because they pass through armor, but they cannot hurt undead, constructs, or objects.
- Certain editions feature energy firearms, either as "magic" weapons found in certain adventures or examples in chapters about varying the setting from the default-assumed norm of vaguely medieval-ish — for example, 3.5 has rules for laser pistols/rifles and antimatter rifles.
- The Breath Weapon of mercury dragons is a laser-like beam of burning, concentrated light.
- GURPS has lasers (UV, IR, blue-green, X-ray, gamma-ray, polychromatic), masers, force blades, force glaives, force whips... Their defining feature, in rules terms, is that the skill to use them is Beam Weapons, whereas projectile weapons use Guns.
- Pathfinder is mostly the same quasi-medieval tech level as D&D, but there are exceptions, especially in the nation of Numeria, site of a truly massive crashed starship. For the Iron Gods adventure path set in that nation, an entire sourcebook was written full of rules for advanced technology, including many flavors of energy weapon.
- Warhammer 40,000: There are a variety of such weapons in the setting, including both Ray Guns and Plasma Cannons. Power weapons are a variant of this: common models are not pure energy, but have a physical sword or gauntlet or set of claws and a surrounding field of energy. There are actually pure-energy models, but these are very rare. Nevertheless, like most expressions of this trope, they cut through other materials with ease. In the tabletop game's rules, no armour saves are permitted against an attack from one. Eisenhorn had a power sword that was one of the energy-blade variants. He also had
magicpsychic powers and worries about falling to the dark side. He lost his sword, and actually used a metal power sword for the rest of the series, including in his fight with a cybernetic, psychic, dark lord. It's also important to note that his nemesis was not his father, and Eisenhorn was the one who was crippled. Eisenhorn still won.
Video Games
- ANNO: Mutationem has the "Stormram" particle cannon. After a brief charge-up, it fires a large, powerful beam of concentrated energy that pierces through enemies and can travel from all the way from one end of the screen to the other.
- Borderlands:
- Eridian weapons fire energy projectiles (with infinite ammo). One can argue that electrical damage weapons are also energy weapons, but those consume "normal" bullets, so who knows.
- Borderlands 2 introduces E-Tech weapons, guns made via the Eridian tech above. Depending on what type of gun, they either fire off plasma blasts, lasers or blobs of energy.
- Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel! has Laser guns that either fire out a continuous stream or blasts of energy bolts.
- Borderlands 3: Maliwan weapons are now energy weapons that fire out balls of energy.
- Castlevania: The Vampire Killer's true form is shown in Castlevania: Bloodlines, where, when powered up to its full potential, it manifests as a light whip.
- City of Heroes has unlockable skins for most of the weapon powersets based on this trope. The Talsorian blades, available from Vanguard, are tintable blades of energy available for Broad Sword, Katana, Battle Axe, Dual Blades, and Archery (and Trick Arrow) powersets. Yes, there's a Talsorian bow. But not a mace or hammer, for stylistic reasons (which the developers have justified with self-aware Technobabble).
- Clustertruck:
- There is a complete world dedicated to them. Naturally, touching one of them is an instant death.
- One of the chat options when using the Twitch integration is "Lasertrucks", which gives each truck a laser beam at their rear.
- Descent has most of its primary weapons consist of energy weapons that draw from your ship's energy banks, which can be recharged at certain areas. However, the truly damaging Game-Breaker weapons tend to be kinetic, partially because they AREN'T Painfully Slow Projectiles and are hitscan, unlike the "lasers".
- Disgaea tends to include some of these, like the Beam Javelin, Laser Axe, and Energy Blade.
- EVERSPACE has many energy-based weapons. They are usually more useful against shields than armor.
- EXTRAPOWER: Star Resistance: Forcestar's primary attack is launching a beam out of his hand. A weaker attack than other characters', it penetrates enemies and widens at every power up.
- Fairune not only gives Hope Girl these in the form of sword beams and laser machineguns to combat the final bosses, but they're also used in the form of sustained lasers by some forms of the afforementioned final bosses.
- Fallout: This is a specific kind of skill in all games of the series. Laser and plasma weapons are generally more powerful than conventional guns, with the tradeoff of less available ammunition. Fallout: New Vegas presented a different tradeoff; in exchange for ammo that could be very easily found and converted using the game's crafting system, the tradeoff became the loss of stealth ability; energy weapons are the only weapons besides explosive that can't be silenced.
- FreeSpace: A rather unique example. The Shivans appear to have Laser Blades mounted on their forelegs and a Death Ray on their backs. The latter weapon appears to be a part of the Shivan anatomy, but we don't know enough about the Shivans themselves to know for sure.
- From the Depths features both directed energy weapons (lasers) and particle beam weapons. Lasers are hitscan weapons that charge up by running engine power through a system of laser "pumps" and can either be continuous or pulsed, while PBWs use massive particle accelerators to shoot out highly deadly elementary particles near the speed of light and if damaged can shoot particles through your own vehicle. Bonus points for a high-rate of fire, low accuracy PBW turning into a pseudo-Lightning Gun.
- Fury Unleashed is a game that's a nod to Nineties Antihero comics. While the staple trope for this type of character are oversized machine guns (especially emphasizing the bullet casings flying out ), the large Plasma Cannon etc. is common too. So Fury is no exception and with a massive assortment of them such as Tesla rifles, Dark Energy guns, Soul guns, Laser and Plasma guns etc. there may actually be more energy weapons than projectile guns in the game.
- Gift (2001): Lots of, and usually they are moving. Some are deadly and some are detector beams which activate or deactivate mechanisms.
- Home World most commonly has Ion beams as the main energy weapon, however fighter-sized bombers will drop plasma bombs which is just vented plasma according to the manual rather than an actual physical bomb that explodes into plasma.
- Intrusion 2: The blaster is a laser rifle and the machine gun and double rifle may be some sort of plasma gun. Maku wields a large laser cannon, and MACE shoots lasers out of its eyes.
- Kaiju Wars: Two of the experimental anti-kaiju weapons you can build are the Freezer and the Maser Cannon.
- Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime: The main guns fire sprays of small pink lasers, while the Yamato cannon fires a sustained burst of powerful energy projectiles. Upgrading them with beam gems causes the main guns to fire more powerful lasers in short bursts and the cannon to produce either a single steady laser beam (when upgrade with a single gem), a trio of moving lasers (two gems), or a wide spray of energy blasts (a beam gem and a power gem).
- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: The Guardians' primary weapon is a bright blue laser beam that can create explosions, start fires, and can inflict devastating, potentially fatal (especially early in the game) damage in a single shot. The smaller Guardian Scouts have smaller lasers that are not as damaging, but can be fired in rapid succession.
- Mario Party 6: The minigame Ray Of Fright has a character operating a two-sided laser cannon, while the other three characters are around them. The objective for the solo player is to shoot slow-moving beams from both sides of the cannon to hit the other characters; for extra help, the two beams can ricochet from the borders' walls. The solo player wins if they manage to hit all three rivals, but the trio will win instead if at least one of them survives during 30 seconds.
- Mega Man Zero: All of Zero's weapons are energy melee weapons, with the Z-Buster being the exception (it's a ranged energy weapon). The Rod series of weapons were the most bizarre, as they started off with an energy spear, then an energy whip (which also doubled as a grappling device), then an energy tonfa, finally ending up with an energy fist.
- No Man's Sky: Most weapons, both starship, and multi-tool weapons are energy weapons, with only a small handful, like Boltcasters, that use more conventional projectiles.
- Energy is an entire ammuntion class in Nuclear Throne. There's laser weapons which fire single piercing beams, plasma weapons that fire balls of energy which eventually explode, an orbital strike Ion Cannon, and lightning weapons that home in on objects. The Energy Screwdriver, Energy Sword, and Energy Hammer are all melee weapons which use Energy ammo. The Laser Brain mutation increases the strength and duration of all energy attacks.
- Many characters from Overwatch utilize energy base weapons, Tracer uses a pair of pulse pistols, Symmertra uses a photon projector, Zarya uses a particle cannon that can create a mini black hole.
- Phantasy Star Online used what was known as Photon weapons. What this meant is that every weapon in the game had a glowing Lightsaber-like part on it. Even the guns.
- Of course, the Phantasy Star series as a whole, with its sci-fi setting, had several breeds of "laser" weapons, notably swords, knives, slicers, claws, and axes. Though stuff made out of laconia managed to be superior.
- As a "Star Afflatus", Mr. APPLe of Reverse: 1999 fights by shooting magical beams of light at his enemies. His Ultimate Incantation has him summoning a cosmic prism, a device used to diffuse white light into other colors.
- Strider
- Plasma-based weaponry became some sort of vogue in [[Strider (Arcade) Strider 2, as a lot of enemies use them. Types range from huge plasma cannons to smaller portable guns and even melee weapons like a plasma lance.
- Xi Wang Mu from Strider (2014) uses a pair of knuckles which can generate pure energy constructs of any weapon she desires. In gameplay, however, this is limited to the three weapons used by her students.
- The Sunrider series has Laser and Pulse weapons, which respectively fire continuous slower-than-light beams and staccato energy bullets. The former have significantly greater range and damage, while the latter fire significantly more shots per attack. Both types of weapons are mitigated by the target's Deflector Shields. Then there is the Vanguard Cannon, a Wave-Motion Gun powerful enough to punch through multiple capital ships in a row.
- Super Smash Bros. Brawl has Zero Suit Samus's energy whip, because the Paralyzer from Metroid: Zero Mission wasn't cool enough before. Unlike most of the whip examples on this page, this one's actually made of energy, not just coated in it.
- Some of the additional graphics in the Neverwinter Nights Community Expansion Pack allow you to have bladed weapons with lightsaber-like blades, including laser spears, laser halberds, and laser battleaxes in addition to the ubiquitous laser sword.
- Many of the weapons in the Unreal series shoot plasma or nondescript energy rounds.
- Warframe: Energy weapons are quite rare, and most of the ones seen are repurposed Corpus mining lasers. Therefore, they tend to fall into Awesome, but Impractical a lot, either being extremely accurate but rather weak, extremely powerful but inaccurate, or just plain eating through ammo too fast to be sustainable. The Grineer have a very small number of energy weapons, but they don't have the technology to produce them on the massive scale that they need.
- X Com Ufo Defense had your forces capable of independently researching laser weapons and eventually using and manufacturing the aliens' own plasma weapons. With X-Com being such an influential game, many Spiritual Successor games will have the humans start with 20th/21st century firearms then upgrading to lasers (or some other native experimental technology) before incorporating alien energy weapons.
Web Animation
- DSBT InsaniT: Amber can fire a beam of gamma ray energy.
- Toaster of Object Overload fame fires a giant laser beam in the episode "Rostrum Rampage." The beam managed to hit Coney and make her fall off the cliff.
Web Comics
- Parodied in Isometric, where a villain facing defeat proclaims himself inventor of the electric whip when the hero corners him, only for the hero to point out that he had merely pulled electric cables out of the wall.
- Sleepless Domain: Laser Thrash's magical girl power is to control a pair of flower-shaped Attack Drones that can open to shoot beams of light on command. She can also control the size and intensity of the drones — for training with her fellow club members, she summons a pair of miniature, nonlethal drones called "Stinger Mode".
- Unordinary: Blyke can create energy from his hands that he fires as laser beams at his enemies. Later on, he gains the ability to fire off a burst of energy off his body that causes everyone around him to get knocked back.
Web Original
- Styropyro's Youtube channel is devoted to generally being a Mad Scientist, which naturally includes making a lot of super overpowered lasers. This includes creating a laser gun so powerful it can punch through metal.
- The Tough Guide to the Known Galaxy: Beams, which fire either concentrated energy or energized particle beams, are a mainstay of science fiction combat, and usually much nimbler and more efficient than real lasers.
Western Animation
- When the Bravest Warriors rub heat-sensitive stickers on their armor, they summon their animal-themed energy weapons: Danny's Dog Sword, Beth's Cat Lashes, Wallow's Falcon Ax, and Chris's...Bee With Excellent Leadership Skills. Beth's father's sticker summons a copy of the Aeon Worm.
- Hank's bow from Dungeons & Dragons (1983) could not only fire energy bolts, but even fire "energy arrows" that could wrap around foes.
- Transformers:
- In the original The Transformers, the second episode featured Optimus Prime using his laser axe against Megatron's... laser flail.
- The tradition continues in Transformers: Animated with Prime's energon axe (but rocket-powered this time!), Sentinel Prime's energon lance and shield, and Jazz's energon Nunchuks. Interestingly, these weapons all have physical components that spread out and so do not touch when the weapon is "turned on", and are only held together by Pure Energy.
- Transformers: Energon has the creation of weapons such as these as one more thing the titular Applied Phlebotinum can do. Plug in an Energon Star and you can get an energy ax, or even a gun made out of energy that shoots energy. (However, one of the many problems with the series is its failure to make things like this look as awesome as the other series do. Two uses, the star runs out of power and the weapon goes away. And it's not super-powerful or anything.)
- Wakfu: Beings sufficiently skilled at manipulating the titular Life Energy can fashion it into constructs for combat.
- The most notable are the Eliatropes, with The Hero Yugo able to form swords, shields, and even tonfas. His brother Qilby prefers using a wakfu Sinister Scythe as if he wasn't trying to show off how evil he had become even more.
- In addition, the Eliotropes, having been inadvertently created by Yugo and possessing similar powers to him, also possess this ability, as demonstrated by Season 3 Big Bad Oropo forming a longsword and dagger Laser Blade on separate occasions.
- Season 1 Big Bad Nox once fashioned dual wakfu war-hammers for his battle with the dragon Grougaloragran.
- Pretty much everywhere in Storm Hawks. Aerrow and the Dark Ace's swords, Starling's nunchuks, Junko's knuckle dusters, Ravess's arrows, Snipe's flail, etc.