s-CRY-ed

s-CRY-ed

スクライド
2001 Sunrise TV Tokyo 26 episodes Completed
Action Sci-Fi Supernatural
Details & Synopsis
A geological disaster tears part of Kanagawa away from mainland Japan and creates the Lost Ground. One percent of the children born there develop Alter powers, the ability to reshape matter through will. The mainland responds the way institutions usually respond to people it cannot control: containment, classification, and a special police force called HOLY.

Kazuma is a Native Alter who takes mercenary jobs because rent still exists after the apocalypse. Ryuho is a HOLY officer who believes control is the only thing keeping the Lost Ground from collapsing. Their powers are different, their politics are different, and both of them solve emotional problems by hitting the other one harder.

s-CRY-ed aired in 2001, directed by Goro Taniguchi years before Code Geass. Adult Swim picked it up in 2005, where Steve Blum's Kazuma helped the show fit perfectly beside the network's louder action lineup. It never became the biggest title in that block, but the people who watched it remember exactly how committed it was. No ironic distance. No apology for shouting attack names. No attempt to make the rivalry healthier.

Twenty-six episodes built around two men who would rather punch through the world than admit the other one understands them.
Alt Title スクライド
Studio Sunrise
Network TV Tokyo
Aired 2001
Episodes 26
Genre Action, Sci-Fi, Supernatural
Status Completed
← All lore

Alter Encyclopedia

HOLY Alters

Radical Good Speed

Straight Cougar · Vehicle Enhancement / Self-Acceleration
Cougar can apply his Alter to machines or to his own body, turning speed into both transportation and a weapon. The ability fits him almost too perfectly: every problem becomes something that should already have been solved five seconds ago.
Why it matters
Cougar's speed is not only combat power. It is why he can move between factions, rescue people before plans close around them and keep acting independently inside an organization built on orders.
Straight Cougar

Eternity Eight

Asuka Tachibana · Eight Emerald Orbs · Construct / Control Type
Asuka controls eight small emerald Alter orbs that can rearrange into tools, weapons, shields and platforms. Their flexibility makes Eternity Eight one of the cleaner examples of an Alter being less about raw force than how creatively its user arranges the same basic pieces.
Why it matters
Asuka begins convinced that technique and HOLY training make him superior to Kazuma. Losing with a power this versatile is exactly why the defeat hits his worldview so hard.
Asuka Tachibana

Mad Sprict

Unkei · Written Scenario · Behavioral Control
Unkei writes scenarios that force the people caught inside them to behave according to the role he has assigned. The power works by turning somebody else's emotions and expectations into the material of the script.
How you can tell
Kazuma breaks it because submission to a role somebody else wrote for him is practically the one thing his personality is biologically incapable of doing.

Eternal Devote

SPOILER! Scheris Adjani · Restoration / Enhancement · Life-Force Cost
Scheris can use Eternal Devote to restore or strengthen another person, but the ability draws heavily on her own life. It is one of the clearest Alters in the series where the cost is not abstract fatigue. The more completely Scheris gives, the less of herself remains.
Why it matters
Her final use on Ryuho is not a surprise power invented for the ending. It is the most extreme possible version of what Eternal Devote has always meant.
Scheris Adjani

Alter Alias

SPOILER! Martin Zigmarl · Armor + Independent Partner · Refinement Cost
Zigmarl's Alter combines armor on his own body with the independent mecha-like Alias fighting beside him. The two forms can coordinate attacks and generate compressed-air shockwaves, giving Zigmarl both direct power and a separate attacking partner.
What changed
The refinement that helped make him powerful has also ravaged his body. By the time Ryuho sees the full Alter, the cost of HOLY's refinement program is standing directly in front of him.
Martin Zigmarl

Native & Refined Alters

Noble Tempest

SPOILER! Ayase Terada · Water Manipulation · Later Refined
Ayase manipulates water with Noble Tempest, an ability that becomes much more dangerous after Mujo's people refine her. The stronger version is exactly the kind of result Mujo wants: more output from the Alter regardless of what the process is doing to the person.
Why it matters
Ayase makes refinement personal. The system is not improving a weapon in a laboratory. It is exploiting somebody desperate enough to accept the bargain because her brother needs help.
Ayase Terada

Kanami's Psychic Alter

SPOILER! Emotional Perception · Dream Connection · Remote Contact
Kanami's ability does not manifest as armor or a giant weapon. She senses other people at an emotional level and experiences Kazuma through dreams long before she understands that those dreams are an Alter phenomenon. Later the connection becomes strong enough for her to reach him across the Lost Ground.
Why it matters
Kanami's Alter does not make her another fighter. It makes literal the role she already has in Kazuma's life: the person who can reach the part of him he keeps trying to hide behind violence and distance.
Kanami Yuta

Yes, the Watermelons Count

Urizane's Watermelon Alter

Bombs · Shields · Platforms · Teleportation · Watermelons
Urizane's Alter is never given a grand formal name. It does, however, let him use watermelons for an absurd range of functions including explosives, barriers, platforms and transportation.
Why it matters
s-CRY-ed never requires an Alter to look cool in the same way twice. Kazuma gets a rocket fist. Ryuho gets a lethal ribbon monster. Urizane gets watermelons. The setting accepts all three with a completely straight face.
Urizane

Absolute Perception

SPOILER! Elian · Electronic Observation / Information Control
Elian's Alter allows him to create and control electronic systems for observation and communication across enormous areas. In a show where most Alter users solve problems by hitting them, Absolute Perception turns information itself into the ability.
Why it matters
That makes Elian valuable to whoever controls the system around him. Under Mujo, surveillance becomes another layer of the fortress. Later, the same kind of reach can be used for something as harmlessly ridiculous as broadcasting Kazuma and Ryuho's final fight.
Elian

The Tokonatsu Sisters

SPOILER! So Kigetsuki · Three Alter Puppets · Burning Summer
So Kigetsuki's Alter creates the three Tokonatsu Sisters, artificial women with their own limited abilities who can combine into the much larger Burning Summer form. They are less like equipment than a tiny cast of characters generated by one user's power.
Why it matters
The Tokonatsu Sisters are s-CRY-ed at maximum early-2000s confidence: specific, ridiculous and dangerous enough that nobody in the story needs to stop and ask why one man's psychic superpower manifested as three women who can combine into a monster.
Sou Kigetsuki