Originally posted by junior
Not so much the idea of MIRVs as the idea of the 'drunken missile swarm', which is very popular in anime. Seeing a single missile being fired in sci-fi anime is fairly rare, and when a cluster of missiles is fired, the missiles never fly in a perfectly straight line. Instead, they bob and weave toward their target, which while visually appealing, leads to them being termed 'drunken'.
I don't think Prophecy is all that animeish, however. If the swarmers were inspired by anything not in the real world, than it probably would have been the swarmers in Freespace.