Line #21 DarkerThanBlack/SeasonOneSpoilers


1	Spoilerrific trope listing for the first season of ''Anime/DarkerThanBlack''. Please ensure that new additions are added to the correct sub-page.
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3	!! The following trope examples contain unmarked spoilers. Troper discretion is advised! The marked spoilers are from Season Two.
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5	!!Examples:
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7	* AnyoneCanDie: A ''lot'' of the core cast is dead at the end of the first season. [[spoiler:Though Mao turns out to have been NotQuiteDead.]]
8	** In fact, it's often something of a surprise (and a relief) when most of the characters focused on in a two-episode arc manage to survive intact. November 11 and his team especially make an impact for being the first [[AntiVillain "villains"]] to survive their featured story, especially after Hei had at least one clear shot at taking him out.
9	* BittersweetEnding: The genocide against Contractors has been defeated and some leaders of TheSyndicate are dead or imprisoned. On the other hand, a lot of characters have died, and while it's theoretically good that Contractors are now revealed to the public, there is the obvious danger of what an evil Contractor could do. Finally, it seems plausible that there are still Syndicate leaders alive who could threaten the protagonists in the future.
10	* BloodSplatteredWeddingDress: Alice's white party dress, after Wei turns on her.
11	* BoardToDeath: Wei, to the Chen Long Tang executives.
12	* ConspiracyRedemption: Turns out Evening Primrose was trying to prevent a genocide of all contractors that the group Hei had been working for was planning. Hei has a bit of a temper tantrum at the suggestion that Amber, who he hates for whatever happened between them in South America, may actually have the moral high ground.
13	* ContractOnTheHitman: Hei towards the end, once the Syndicate decides he's unreliable, with attempts continuing into the {{interquel}} period.
14	* CooldownHug: Hei, to Amber, when she asks if he's ''sure'' he doesn't want to go through with her "destroy Japan for the sake of the contractors" plan.
15	** And Mai and her father in episode 4, though [[InterruptedCooldownHug it gets interrupted]].
16	* DarkAndTroubledPast: Good ''lord'', Hei. Little sister ended up as a Contractor, had to become a ChildSoldier assassin for TheSyndicate to stay near her, thrown into the middle of a ''very'' ugly PhlebotinumWar, apparently betrayed by his then-girlfriend, and the entire team he was working with either killed or vanished when most of South America blew up, including the aforementioned little sister. ''Every single thing'' we know about his past fits right into this category.
17	** We then find out that said ex-girlfriend used the aforementioned sister as a catalyst to destroy the continent for the greater good.
18	** Huang and Yin too, for that matter.
19	*** Huang saw his best friend murdered in a very horrific way by his then-girlfriend, who turned out to be a Contractor that had only gotten involved with him in the first place to get information. He was then forced to either join the Syndicate or have his memories erased.
20	*** Yin, already blind, had her father die in a plane crash. Shortly afterward, she discovered and ''assumed'' that her mother was having an affair and ran out of the house... straight into the path of an oncoming truck. Her mother pulled a DivingSave and died in the process, leaving a 10-year-old Kirsi orphaned and blaming herself when the Gates appeared and MindRaped her into her current EmotionlessGirl state.
21	* DeadStarWalking: Chiaki seems like she will become a major character and/or love interest for Hei (and was featured prominently in some promotional material), but not only is she dead by the second episode, she isn't even the real Chiaki. And the real Chiaki turns up dead too!
22	* DefeatMeansFriendship: The group that greets Hei in his JourneyToTheCenterOfTheMind includes several characters who opposed him in life, but who seem happy to support him from beyond. These include November 11, Wei, Amagiri (but see {{Retcon}} below), Maki, Brita, and Nick Hillman -- though Nick was very much a FriendlyEnemy to begin with.
23	* DiesWideOpen: Havoc dies with her eyes open, and the final sign that Hei's attitude toward her has changed is that he closes them before going after those responsible.
24	* DyingMomentOfAwesome: Havoc, ready to die but not to use her power again; Wei, fighting Hei while knowing the outcome and helping him as the last action; Amber, RetGone-ing herself so that Hei can stop the Syndicate's plan without removing Japan from the map; and several TakingYouWithMe cases: Huang, November 11.
25	* EleventhHourSuperpower: Hei and Amber in the final episode. The unusual part is that it was already done once.
26	* EngineeredPublicConfession: Kirihara manages to catch Director Horai's MotiveRant on tape, and the timely arrival of first Hei and then Saito and Kono ensures that he doesn't manage a KarmaHoudini.
27	* EvilCounterpart: Nick fits in having the same electric power as Hei and a similarly sensitive personality, but also possessing a Contractor's willingness to kill. Wei might also qualify, in that like Hei, he is Chinese, and seems to be the Contractor who most enjoys murder, in contrast to Hei, who is one of the more pacifistic.
28	* EvolutionaryLevels: Harvest, from the manga, [[ArtisticLicenseBiology fails biology forever]].
29	* FakingTheDead: Hei in ep.10. He got his own blood all over his mask and threw himself off a building to fool Wei, only for Wei to have a bit of a nasty surprise when the Black Angel of Death [[DynamicEntry crashes through a window]] a few minutes later, kicks him in the face and electrocutes him [[HoistByHisOwnPetard through the blood all over the floor.]]
30	** It's also pretty clear that Mina Swami thought he died in the explosion that ensued when he got the Meteor Shard from Nick.
31	*** Not to mention in episode 2 when he was shot.
32	* FollowThatCar: Played with. April vs. Amber; Maki marked the sidewalk where they were standing and blew it up as soon as April got in a cab to follow them.
33	* FreezeFrameBonus: The contractor mentioned in Chiaki's flashback, about halfway through episode 2, is Pai--and standing behind her is Hei.
34	* FusionDance: Bai somehow lives on inside of Hei, granting him her electrical powers without having to pay a remuneration or lose his human emotions.
35	* GainaxEnding: Episode 25 bears more than a passing resemblance to the final episode of ''Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion'' especially the "congratulations" segment.
36	* GambitRoulette: Amber plans for Wei to be killed by Hei. If Wei didn't dramatically die up against the Gate's wall, or if he was electrocuted, our heroes would never have gotten inside. It's justified because she can see the future
37	* GenocideDilemma: Let PANDORA destroy Hell's Gate, killing every Contractor and Doll on the planet, or trigger the Tokyo Explosion and prevent them from ever trying it again, wiping out Japan in the process? Hei, naturally, [[TakeAThirdOption finds another option]].
38	* HeelFaceTurn: Considering who he had been working for up till that point, one might suspect that November 11 was still carrying out his job as a double agent when he switched over to Evening Primrose. This was initially true, but when he finds out the actual truth about [=MI6=]'s plans, really DOES turn.
39	* ItNeverGetsAnyEasier: This is surprisingly revealed about Hei in episode 25, stating that each and every kill he does still haunts him, no matter how much he tries to hide it, and that he only started to be with his sister Bai.
40	* JourneyToTheCenterOfTheMind: [[MindScrew Something like this]] happens in the last episode, when Amber activates Hei's RealityWarper abilities and he's confronted with his buried insecurities, fears, and regrets.
41	* KarmaHoudini: Surprisingly subverted at the very end. Eric Nishijima is backstabbed by his boss, his boss is then exposed by Kirihara. However, season two shows that not everything is resolved with their Organization.
42	* TheKidWithTheLeash: Subverted. It looks like Alice has Wei's leash, but he kills her with absolutely no provocation, remorse, or warning.
43	* KillerFinale: Most of the principal and recurring characters die during the final four episodes, leaving Yin, Hei and Kirihara as some of the only survivors. Kirihara's associates all survive as well, but barely feature in season 2. Mao's body is still alive, but his human mind (which was stored on a database somewhere else) had the plug pulled, effectively killing him.
44	** [[spoiler:Mao's mind was recovered in season two.]]
45	* MadScientist: Dr. Schrader. He's actually a [[AffablyEvil nice and chatty guy]], but thinks it's really great idea to indiscriminately eradicate some portion of humanity (thus cornering said people into trying ThrowAwayCountry trick just to stop him) ''and'' bet the whole Earth (it's already ''all'' under AlienSky undeniably connected to Gates and Contractors, remember?) on the validity of his theories. [[ForScience In a single experiment]]. Which is supposed to be [[NoPlansNoPrototypeNoBackup non-repeatable]] even if successful. Why not, indeed?
46	** It helps that his reaction to Hei interfering in an attempt to destroy the Gate, leaving TheSyndicate's plan shot to hell, is absolute ''glee'' that he got something so cool to study the results of.
47	* MagicalDefibrillator: Literally, but as such not quite an example of the trope. Bertha stopped Hei's heart briefly, only to quickly learn that this isn't the most effective way of taking down someone who can generate enough electricity to immediately start it again.
48	* TheManBehindTheMan: Kirihara's boss (of the Contractor-hunting police) is also the boss of TheSyndicate, which has been planning a genocide of the Contractors from the very beginning.
49	* NoPlansNoPrototypeNoBackup: Subverted. The MadScientist thinks that his plan has been stopped because Amber and company blew up his particle accelerator, but it turns out his bosses had made a backup copy. He compliments them for doing this and not letting him know.
50	* OneLastSmoke: Subverted twice. November decides that since he's dying, for once he ''doesn't'' have to smoke, and later, Hei stops Huang from having a cigarette when he says goodbye before the latter's DyingMomentOfAwesome.
51	* PowerMisidentification: Unbeknownst even to him, Hei's ShockAndAwe contractor powers actually involve quantum manipulation of matter, which makes him the keystone of the two factions' plans to destroy or alter Hell's Gate. It's also revealed that he's not actually a contractor himself: he absorbed his [[TheLostLenore sister]]'s powers, giving him the abilities of a contractor with none of the drawbacks.
52	* RealityWarper: In a way Amber's power, as she can alter time, as well as Hei's/Bai's which involves altering matter on a quantum level.
53	* ResetButton: Played for laughs in the OVA. After circumstances conspire to reveal Hei's identity and Saitou confesses his BodyguardCrush, Mao promptly charges in with a tube of something that turned out to be an experimental allergy medicine created by the chemical department of the Gate research group that had the bizarre side-effect of erasing the memories of non-contractors. This neatly prevents any of this from effecting much of anything.
54	* {{Retcon}}: During the climactic sequence, when a smattering of characters from all throughout the series meet with Hei in a vaguely afterlife-like realm, two faces stick out like sore thumbs on account of not being, well, dead. Granted, Mao's presence is somewhat excusable: he only resurfaces in season 2 thanks to a backup copy of his consciousness. So, one "version" of him ''did'' die, making his presence among the dead permissible if you squint. The other character, however, is a clear case of retconning: Amagiri, who seemed to have been burned to death by [[PlayingWithFire Mai]], but reappears in the Gaiden, scarred and injured but [[DisneyDeath quite alive]]. We can only assume he ''was'' originally meant to have died, therefore allowing him to appear among the others in the season 1 finale; the Gaiden offers no explanation to HandWave this.
55	* {{Retirony}}: Huang talks about how he wants to move to the countryside and fish all day and Hei tells him to stop smoking or else he will shorten his life; Huang dies soon afterward in a DyingMomentOfAwesome. However, if you pay attention, he had already ''been shot'' during that conversation, although whether Hei realized this is debatable.
56	* SacrificialLamb: Chiaki Shinoda. ''Twice''.
57	* SecretStabWound: Huang has a probably-fatal bullet wound throughout his entire appearance in the GrandFinale, which is only hinted at until after he's already dropped off the rest of the gang at the Gate.
58	* SuperEmpowering: The MadScientist mentions ''offhand'' in the last episode that Hei could grant normal humans Contractor powers. His reaction when he learns this is likely to be interesting, to say the least.
59	* TakeAThirdOption: Hei at the end, deciding not to go through with Amber's plan and turn all of Japan into his own personal Instrumentality-esque god-mode playground or to let the UN, PANDORA, and the Syndicate destroy the Gate and kill all the Contractors on the planet. Instead, he destroys the anti-Gate beam by altering the quantum structure of the particles inside it, making it unusable for its intended purpose but very good for blowing a large hole in both the wall and TheMasquerade.
60	* ThatManIsDead: "''The man you knew as Li no longer exists''." This doesn't stop her from calling him that every time she sees him afterward.
61	* TimeStandsStill: Amber's power.
62	* TomatoInTheMirror: Chiaki, episode 2.
63	* TonightSomeoneDies: Very subtle, but the title of the penultimate episode, "Meteor Shower", makes a rather grim promise to the viewer, when you consider that the "meteors" of this setting are actually illusory stars falling as their corresponding Contractors die. True to the title, quite a lot of Contractors as well as ordinary humans die in this episode (or at least appear to, in the cases of [[spoiler:Mao and Amagiri]]).
64	* TragicMonster: When Mai goes Moratorium, she causes a lot of unintentional damage, including burning her best friend and her dad to death.
65	* TwoSiblingsInOne: Hei and his sister.
66	* TheUnmasquedWorld: Hei (very intentionally) blew TheMasquerade at the end of the first season. His former bosses were not pleased, and he's been dodging assassins and bounty hunters on and off since.
67	* VillainousBreakdown: TheSyndicate leaders do ''not'' react well to Hei blowing both their genocide plan and TheMasquerade to tiny little pieces.
68	* VillainsDyingGrace: [[InvokedTrope Invoked]] by Wei. After Hei beats his ass in the final build-up to the climax, Wei's last act is to use his blood splattered all over the wall--killing himself in the process, though he was already dying--to open a path for Hei. His dialogue also shows that, while he ''really really'' wanted to fight Hei, he knew he almost definitely wouldn't win, and probably expected to end up helping Hei all along.

Context DarkerThanBlack / SeasonOneSpoilers