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| 7 | [[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/reign_of_the_seven_spellblades_vol1.jpg]] |
| 8 | [[caption-width-right:350:'''Oliver Horn:''' Don't cry.\ |
| 9 | '''Nanao Hibiya:''' Thank you.]] |
| 10 | As spring dawns in [[AlternativeCalendar year 1532 of the Great Calendar]], fifteen-year-old mages from all walks of life arrive at [[WizardingSchool Kimberly Magic Academy]] to begin their seven-year-long formal education in the arts of magic. An altercation with a [[AllTrollsAreDifferent troll]] at the entrance ceremony [[FireForgedFriends forges bonds]] between [[TheTeam six of them]] that will serve them well, for [[AcademyOfAdventure life at Kimberly is anything but safe]]. |
| 11 | |
| 12 | And for series protagonist Oliver Horn, talented mainly at [[VariantPowerCopying adapting and modifying others' techniques]], those bonds--especially with Nanao Hibiya, a {{samurai}} of the far east for whom magic is [[AutopilotArtistry more instinct than thought]]--are as much complication as boon, for he came to Kimberly carrying secrets darker than the labyrinth that lies below it. |
| 13 | |
| 14 | ''Reign of the Seven Spellblades'' (''七つの魔剣が支配する Nanatsu no Maken ga Shihai Suru'') is a DarkFantasy light novel series with TeenDrama elements written by Creator/BokutoUno (author of ''Literature/AlderaminOnTheSky'') with illustrations by Creator/MiyukiRuria, published under Kadokawa's Creator/DengekiBunko imprint beginning in September 2018. There is also a SpinOff volume, ''Side of Fire: Chronicle of Purgatory'', released 7 July 2023, which fills out the backstory of StudentCouncilPresident Alvin Godfrey and the Kimberly Campus Watch. The series won the bunkobon category in both the 2019 Light Novel Suki Shotenin Awards and the 2020 ''Kono Light Novel ga Sugoi!'' competition. |
| 15 | |
| 16 | A manga adaptation by Creator/SakaeEsuno (creator of ''Manga/FutureDiary'') was serialized in ''Monthly Shōnen Ace'' from 7 September 2018 to 11 November 2023, adapting the first three volumes of the original novels. |
| 17 | |
| 18 | The novels and manga were licensed by Creator/YenPress for English publication beginning in 2021. In April 2024, they [[https://twitter.com/yenpress/status/1783925269859828010 announced]] that a translation of ''Side of Fire'' was in production, to be released 15 October 2024. |
| 19 | |
| 20 | An anime adaptation from Creator/JCStaff and Creator/WarnerBros Japan, directed by Creator/MasatoMatsune, was [[https://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-news/2021/12/11/reign-of-the-seven-spellblades-tv-anime-adaptation-announced announced]] during the 2021 Dengeku Bunko Winter Festival. It premiered [[https://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-news/2023/06/01-1/reign-of-the-seven-spellblades-tv-anime-sets-july-7-premiere-with-new-visual-trailer 7 July 2023]][[note]]in an after-midnight time slot, Tokyo time[[/note]] on Tokyo MX and [=BS11=], and was simulcast on Website/{{Crunchyroll}} with English, Hindi, and German dubs. It ran for fifteen episodes and concluded on 13 October, adapting the first three volumes of the original novels. The UsefulNotes/BluRay set includes a bonus ShortStory from Bokuto Uno titled "Encore", filling in some of the events in the aftermath of volume 3. |
| 21 | ---- |
| 22 | !! This series provides examples of: |
| 23 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 24 | |
| 25 | [[folder:A -- B]] |
| 26 | * AbsurdlyPowerfulStudentCouncil: The faculty as a rule rarely intervene in student life, so the student council has to fill the gap. They're empowered to mete out discipline for attacking or endangering other students outside of the dueling rules, and are able to initiate curfews in the event of labyrinth incidents--and under Alvin Godfrey's presidency, they very much do: "Encore" shows them punishing Miligan for breaking the curfew in volume 3 by hanging her over a cauldron into which they toss ingredients to torment her with the fumes. They also exercise a lot of soft power over the general student culture: Kimberly used to be even crazier before the Campus Watch rose to power. |
| 27 | * AbusiveParents: ''Many'' secondary characters had very poor family lives, [[JustifiedTrope courtesy of]] mages tending to view ''everything'' in terms of [[ForScience pushing the envelope of magical research]], including their own children. |
| 28 | ** Vera Miligan was the only one of six children to ''survive'' childhood on account of [[spoiler:her parents implanting basilisk eyes in her left socket and left hand]]. [[LoveMartyr She has convinced herself it was an act of love.]] |
| 29 | ** Joseph Albright had a non-magical childhood friend, a serving girl ([[NamedByTheAdaptation named Emma in the anime]]) who liked to play chess with him. After she managed to defeat him, his parents tortured him for most of a day for losing, and murdered Emma and her entire family. |
| 30 | ** Ophelia Salvadori was made a de facto BreedingSlave for her mother's eugenics experiments the moment she hit puberty and carried multiple pregnancies, and was once ForcedToWatch her mother rape a man. That plus the SlutShaming she endured from other Kimberly students led to her descent into villainy. |
| 31 | * AcademyOfAdventure: A dark example. The academy is built on top of a labyrinth that is full of monsters, dangerous environments and unhinged upperclassmen who have no qualms about harming fellow students. The school provides very little protection from any of these things and it's up to the students themselves to look out for each other. |
| 32 | * AccidentalDiscovery: The underlying principle of the Second Spellblade, "Creumbra, the self-racing shadow", was discovered by accident when a mage tried to create a {{Doppelganger}} of himself and caused a RealityBreakingParadox that blew up both him and everything for several miles around. Other mages copied his research and managed to reproduce the effect at a controllable level, resulting in an UnblockableAttack that [[DisintegratorRay disintegrates the opponent]]. |
| 33 | * AdaptationDeviation: |
| 34 | ** In the novel (and anime), Luther Garland explained the concept of a "spellblade" (an UnblockableAttack) on the second day of class. The manga moves this to the first class session. |
| 35 | ** Both the manga and anime cut the scene where the Sword Roses try to get the pride plants to tell them who cast the spell on Katie at the entrance ceremony by making them laugh, in favor of having Richard Andrews make Mackley fess up [[spoiler:to repay Oliver and Nanao for saving his life when the garuda attacked]]. |
| 36 | ** In volume 2, the first broom-riding class and the discovery that Pete is a Reversi both happened after the start of the dueling tournament. The anime moves both events earlier in the chronology to episode 7, and the tournament starts in episode 8. |
| 37 | ** In volume 2, Pete's request for extra sword arts training from the other Sword Roses is motivated by a loss in class to a one-off first-year named Hughes. Episode 8 of the anime replaces Hughes in the scene with Tullio Rossi. The episode also alters the order of events: in the book, Rossi announced the dueling tournament in chapter 1, while Pete's sparring match and training request happened in chapter 2. |
| 38 | ** The potions that Vera Miligan supplies Oliver to resist Ophelia Salvadori's Perfume in episodes 12 and 14 are original to the anime. In volume 3 of the novels he was stuck having to just grin and bear it. |
| 39 | * AdaptationDistillation: The manga adaptation of the first volume's story skips a few scenes in the Sword Roses' investigation of the incident at the entrance ceremony to speed things along, among them the group interrogating the student who made Katie run towards the parade of magical creatures, and trying to trade for information with the [[PlantPerson talking plants]] by the entrance by making them laugh. It also cuts most of the first alchemy class with Darius Grenville. |
| 40 | * AdaptationExpansion: Volume 3 of the novels just ended on [[spoiler:the deaths of Ophelia and Carlos]] and moved straight to Creator/BokutoUno's afterword. Episode 15 of the anime adds an epilogue segment narrated by Oliver, showing the students returning to the surface in the aftermath of [[spoiler:Ophelia and Carlos's death]] and life in the student body getting back to business as usual, with Guy, Katie, and Marco getting {{Mandatory Line}}s after they had been mostly absent since episode 12. |
| 41 | * AdaptationalEarlyAppearance: |
| 42 | ** In the novel (and manga), Luther Garland and Richard Andrews didn't appear until the first day of class after orientation. The anime adaptation gives them both {{Early Bird Cameo}}s in the pilot episode (Garland briefly introduces Headmistress Esmeralda during orientation, while Andrews appears in a couple of scenes but has no lines), which rolls credits early in the morning before class (the first scene of the novel's second chapter). |
| 43 | ** In the novel, Teresa Carste wasn't introduced until the epilogue of the first volume (chapter 15 of the manga). The anime adds several scenes in the first five episodes where she covertly meets with Oliver on the dormitory quad, as well as having her send an anonymous tip to the Campus Watch to get Godfrey and Whitrow to respond to [[spoiler:Oliver and Nanao's raid on Miligan's laboratory]]. |
| 44 | ** The novels and manga introduce Tullio Rossi, Stacy Cornwallis, and Fay Willock all in the same scene where Rossi proposes a dueling tournament between the first-years. The anime introduces all three of them an episode early: Stacy and Fay appear in an early scene where they walk by the Sword Roses on their way to morning class, while Rossi appears in TheStinger and monologues about how much the Sword Roses annoy him. |
| 45 | * AdultsAreUseless: [[JustifiedTrope By design.]] As a general rule, the instructors at Kimberly seldom intervene in problems internal to the student body: they're not even allowed to go into the labyrinth after a missing student until the eighth day--at which point it's usually assumed they'll be trying to recover bodies rather than rescue survivors. The students are expected to solve their problems themselves as part of a curriculum meant to foster self-reliance, teamwork, problem-solving, and fighting skill, which is all TrainingFromHell for Gnostic Hunters. |
| 46 | * AgonyBeam: The pain curse, ''Dolor''. It has a NecessaryDrawback in that it can only inflict pain the caster has experienced, and it's hardly ever used in combat, but it's still a favorite of mages who wish to KickTheDog: SadistTeacher Darius Grenville is notorious for using it on students who stand up to him despite the school having banned teachers from using it on students. [[spoiler:Unfortunately for Darius, Oliver has the GhostMemory of his mother's RasputinianDeath at the conspirators' hands to fall back on when casting it: he only stops when Darius begs for death.]] |
| 47 | * AkashicRecords: Volume 10 explains the existence of the "Grand Records", the magical equivalent of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_information quantum information]] that underpins reality itself, left behind by its long-dead god (the Library of the Depths, the labyrinth's fourth layer, is the barest glimpse of these Records). This information is usually inaccessible unless one can sufficiently [[EmptyShell suppress one's sense of self]], which [[AwesomeButImpractical normally prevents one from actually making use of that information]]. [[spoiler:Demitrio Aristides figured out how to do it while maintaining his sense of self due to having accidentally [[SoulFragment fractured his soul]] as a young man. This then lets one achieve a greater portion of the god's former power than is normally possible with magic, something he calls "primal magic". Furthermore, Yuri Leik was the "ignorant" fragment of his soul, spun off into an ArtificialHuman, and his [[MySignificanceSenseIsTingling Significance Sense]] is an expression of him unconsciously tapping into the Grand Records.]] |
| 48 | * AllDeathsFinal: {{Discussed}} in volume 8. Resurrecting the dead is explicitly impossible, a natural law set down by the world's long-deceased god. The most magic can do is stave death off for a while: should a mage manage to reach the age of 200, TheGrimReaper will come for them without fail. [[spoiler:Cyrus Rivermoore's family kept the ghosts of several past master necromancers in sealed coffins, hoping to craft a [[PocketDimension Grand Aria]] that would hold the Reapers at bay long enough for them to pass on their lost knowledge. By the time of this book, several attempts have failed and only one remains; resurrecting her in an artificial body [[AntiVillain drives his actions]] in volumes 7 and 8.]] |
| 49 | * AllTrollsAreDifferent: Trolls in this series are a species of demihumans that stand several times the height of a man. Wild trolls can be agricultural pests (as Guy attests), but domesticated trolls, like Marco, a purebred Gasney, can be [[GentleGiant quite gentle and protective creatures]]. They also normally can't speak human languages, but Katie recalls being serenaded to sleep by her family's troll as a child. |
| 50 | * AlternateCalendar: The series begins in the year 1532 of the "Great Calendar", while the Battle of Diama is said to have taken place in the year 300 of the "Old Calendar". |
| 51 | * AnimeThemeSong: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OTGA43-_7I "Kenka"]] ("Sword Rose") by Music/KujiraYumemi, with vocals by Music/MimizukuAndFukuro. It's a neoclassical pop tune that serves as an ImageSong for Oliver: [[https://reign-of-the-seven-spellblades.fandom.com/wiki/Kenka the lyrics]] describe him as the "master of overlapping shadows", torn between his relationship to the other Sword Roses, "friendship that bloomed in a moment", [[spoiler:and "the shadow of my mother who never returned", i.e. his SeriesGoal to avenge Chloe Halford's murder]]. |
| 52 | * AppealToForce: In volume 2 ([[Recap/ReignOfTheSevenSpellbladesS1E11Duty episode 11 of the anime]]), Joseph Albright [[SoreLoser refuses to accept his defeat by Oliver]] in a fair WizardDuel,[[note]]He has a FreudianExcuse: the last time he lost to someone, at chess, [[DisproportionateRetribution his father tortured him for most of a day and murdered his opponent's entire family]].[[/note]] and conjures up [[ScaryStingingSwarm a swarm]] of [[BeeAfraid giant bees]] to force everyone present to let him wipe the defeat from their memories so he can tell people he won. The protagonists are having none of that, and come up with a plan to destroy the bees so that Nanao can take Albright down in single combat. |
| 53 | * ArcNumber: Seven ([[RuleOfSeven which is a trope in its own right]]), but also one-fifth or variations thereof: if someone cites a statistic or a probability, it's almost invariably a one-in-five chance. |
| 54 | ** According to Esmeralda's opening remarks to the Sword Roses' freshman class in volume 1 ([[Recap/ReignOfTheSevenSpellbladesS1E01Ceremony the anime's pilot episode]]), one of every five students who matriculate to Kimberly will not survive to graduate. There being six main characters, [[DoomedProtagonist the odds are against them all making it out of the series alive]] ([[spoiler:Oliver is already known to be SecretlyDying because his UniqueProtagonistAsset is CastFromLifespan]]). |
| 55 | ** Nanao cites a similar statistic in volume 3 ([[Recap/ReignOfTheSevenSpellbladesS1E12Possibility episode 12]]) to dissuade Guy from a half-baked plan to go into the labyrinth in search of Pete after Ophelia kidnaps him: in her days as a {{samurai}}, when comrades of hers went missing on the battlefield, only one in five ever turned up alive. This is also the odds that Miligan gives for Pete surviving if no one goes to get him, but a rescue attempt with the help of an upperclassman like herself might raise that to a 21% chance. |
| 56 | ** On a somewhat lighter note, Chela also says in volume 4 that statistically four out of five Kimberly students will have [[TheirFirstTime their first sexual experience]] at the school--meaning one in five won't. |
| 57 | * ArcWords: "Enjoy not the sword of vengeance, but the sword of mutual love." A key philosophical tenet of Nanao's family sword style, it instructs its adherents to seek fulfillment and joy in a DuelToTheDeath with an opponent one accepts and admires, rather than wielding the sword in anger. It's quite important enough to Nanao's CharacterDevelopment, but it takes on an additional meaning [[spoiler:given that Oliver, [[LaceratingLoveLanguage the very person she finds most fits this statement for her]], came to Kimberly to avenge the murder of his mother against seven faculty members--which is likely to end in his own death either at his enemies' hands or because his UniqueProtagonistAsset is CastFromLifespan. His last remarks in volume 1 are to recall Nanao speaking this line, and comment that "I will test the limits of this philosophy."]] |
| 58 | * ArtisticLicenseBotany: The second layer of the labyrinth is a forested region lit by a WeirdSun that never sets, which is said by Miligan to be the reason it's a paradise for plants. Actually, most plants ''do'' require a period of darkness for [[https://calgary.rasc.ca/lp/plants.html various]] [[https://gardenandme.com/do-plants-need-darkness/?expand_article=1 reasons]]. However, since the labyrinth is an artificially created magical environment to begin with, one can probably safely say AWizardDidIt. |
| 59 | * AsskickingLeadsToLeadership: Mage society as a rule has a tendency to default to this, since its overriding ethos is to push the limits of magic whatever the cost. At Kimberly Magic Academy in particular, the winning faction in the upperclassmens' combat league is likely to also win the poll for StudentCouncilPresident (who then gets to appoint the rest of the student council), which takes place shortly after. This tendency causes an extra wrinkle in volume 7 when outgoing president Alvin Godfrey, who leads the Campus Watch, [[spoiler:is severely wounded by Cyrus Rivermoore, who steals his sternum and a chunk of his etheric body right after the qualifying round. In volume 8 the Watch organizes a posse to go after Cyrus, while his SocialDarwinist opponent Leoncio Echevalria conspires to delay the posse so that Watch candidate Vera Miligan loses to his PuppetKing Percival Whalley.]] |
| 60 | * BadassTeacher: One of Kimberly's major purposes is to train the order of {{Military Mage}}s known as the Gnostic Hunters, who battle {{Alien Invasion}}s sent by [[EldritchAbomination the gods of other worlds]] and root out their cults. Consequently, every member of the faculty is a badass even by mage standards: several instructors are current or former Gnostic Hunters themselves, and they include among their number the wielders of at least two of the seven spellblades. At the top is Headmistress Esmeralda, [[RedBaron the Witch of Kimberly]], who is credibly believed to be one of the most powerful mages in recorded history. |
| 61 | * BattleCouple: |
| 62 | ** Oliver and Nanao are basically attached at the hip by the end of the first volume and admit that they're attracted to one another in volume 4, [[spoiler:and finally have a RelationshipUpgrade to OfficialCouple in volume 10]]. Between her brawn and his brains, they make a terrifyingly effective combo. |
| 63 | ** Stacy Cornwallis and Fay Willock are introduced as "master and knight" (which lends its name to episode 10 of the anime), but by volume 9 they've made a mutual LoveConfession and are presently in a sort of CourtlyLove limbo.[[note]]She's a BlueBlood, he's an orphan and only half-human, so they won't be allowed to be together long-term by her family unless their magical research together bears fruit--which by the combat league semifinals, it does.[[/note]] She has a habit of riding on his shoulders when he's in werewolf form and firing spells at their opponents while he attacks with his sword and claws. |
| 64 | ** In the {{backstory}}, Chloe Halford and Edgar Groves met while attending Kimberly and served together on a Gnostic Hunter squad battling {{Alien Invasion}}s [[spoiler:before she became pregnant with Oliver]]. |
| 65 | * BeeAfraid: Joseph Albright tricks the Sword Roses, Fay Willock, and Stacy Cornwallis into having a three-on-three duel [[spoiler:inside a hive of giant "stinger bees" in the labyrinth, and [[SoreLoser summons the bees to attack the others after losing fairly to Oliver]]]]. |
| 66 | * BewareTheNiceOnes: Oliver is normally a pretty cool-headed NiceGuy. He's also a MasterSwordsman (by first-year standards) and a fairly accomplished mage. While it's hard to arouse him to real anger, if you pick on his friends to their faces, [[BerserkButton watch out]]. And he goes full PayEvilUntoEvil when it comes to [[spoiler:the seven mages who murdered his mother]]. |
| 67 | * {{BFS}}: Nanao's katana, at least by Union standards: at first glance Oliver considers it way too large to make a good athame, which are typically one-handed swords between one and two feet in length (Oliver's resembles a messer). Nanao quickly proves him wrong: while she's inexperienced with magic, she's a former {{samurai}} ChildSoldier who was plucked from a Yamatsukuni battlefield where she had been fighting a LastStand as the rearguard of a defeated army, even killing the son-in-law of the enemy general in a suicide charge. |
| 68 | * BigEater: |
| 69 | ** PlayedForLaughs with Nanao: there's a minor RunningGag about her absentminded disregard for portion size. When the Sword Roses first eat together at the entrance ceremonies, she tries to take an entire slab of roast beef for herself, and Oliver has to stop her and make her a proper plate himself--then gets roped into doing it for Katie, too, [[PassThePopcorn much to the amusement of Guy]]. It happens again when they're celebrating the end of the combat leagues with the other second- and third-years in volume 9. |
| 70 | ** Volume 10 explains this is a JustifiedTrope when it comes to mages, who naturally require more nutrition than {{Muggles}}, especially during adolescence when their magical abilities are growing even faster than their bodies. Kimberly's cafeteria workers have permanent job security as a consequence. |
| 71 | * BisexualLoveTriangle: |
| 72 | ** Oliver has a slow-burn romance going with Nanao beginning in book 1 (complicated by the fact that [[LaceratingLoveLanguage she simultaneously wants]] a DuelToTheDeath with him), but Katie and Teresa Carste also have unrequited crushes on him. Additionally, AMAB SexShifter Pete starts to act like a {{Tsundere}} towards him starting in about volume 2. |
| 73 | ** Alvin Godfrey was pursued in the past by both Tim Linton ([[RescueRomance who fell for him after Godfrey saved his life]]) and Ophelia Salvadori (who became attracted to him after he went the extra mile to make her feel welcome in the Watch), plus Leoncio Echevalria having a VillainousCrush on him. This one ends on NoRomanticResolution: Ophelia had a major falling-out with the Watch after her turn to villainy, but there's no indication that Godfrey has any romantic interest in Tim either, and while he respects Leoncio's abilities, he personally despises him. Additionally, their nonbinary friend Carlos Whitrow was also in love with Ophelia, and chose to express it by [[IWantMyBelovedToBeHappy trying to ensure she was happy and surrounded by friends, even if that meant she ended up with Godfrey]]. |
| 74 | ** Chloe Halford had multiple pursuers while she attended Kimberly. Theodore [=McFarlane=] recalls having fought a duel with Edgar Groves over their relationships with her. Current Kimberly Headmistress Esmeralda, Chloe's underclassman, was also in love with her, and Chloe didn't tell her when she and Edgar became a couple, not wanting Emmy to think she didn't have a chance just because they were both women. [[spoiler:Oliver Horn is her son with Edgar.]] |
| 75 | * BlueAndOrangeMorality: Kimberly's new students have to come to terms with the fact that magicians don't operate on conventional morality. They will do whatever it takes to advance their own goals and research. |
| 76 | * BreatherEpisode: |
| 77 | ** Volume 4 has no significantly high stakes; the most that happens in it is exploration of the relationships between the Sword Roses and Nanao's broomsports matches. It's positioned between the very heavy volumes 3 and 5, involving respectively [[spoiler:the Sword Roses going into the labyrinth to rescue Pete from Ophelia Salvadori after she's consumed by the spell]] and [[spoiler:Oliver and his co-conspirators plotting to murder Professor Forghieri and suffering grievous losses in the attack]]. |
| 78 | ** Volume 6 is also somewhat lighter fare than either volume 5 or 7. While it sets up the brewing clash over the elections for StudentCouncilPresident and ends with [[spoiler:[[TogetherInDeath the deaths of Diana Ashbury and Clifton Morgan]]]], compared to the aforementioned end of volume 5 it's almost relaxing, focusing again on the relationships between the Sword Roses and particularly Nanao and Oliver having fun at her broomsports tournament. Volume 7 is much more action-heavy with the school combat leagues, ending in [[spoiler:a climactic battle between the seniors and Vanessa Aldiss. Then Cyrus Rivermoore steals Godfrey's breastbone out of him, roll credits.]] |
| 79 | ** Volume 11 is largely a VacationEpisode that has the Sword Roses going on an international road trip over winter break. It comes after a four-volume TournamentArc and intervening mayhem caused by [[spoiler:Cyrus Rivermoore]], the election for StudentCouncilPresident, [[spoiler:[[RelationshipUpgrade Oliver and Nanao finally becoming a couple]] and [[TheirFirstTime trying to have sex for the first time]]]], and [[spoiler:the assassination of Demitrio Aristides, which features our first look at a fight between two Spellblade wielders]]. |
| 80 | ** Episode 7 of the anime, "[[Recap/ReignOfTheSevenSpellbladesS1E07Reversi Reversi]]", comes on the heels of the WhamEpisode that is "[[Recap/ReignOfTheSevenSpellbladesS1E06Arise Arise]]", which concluded the adaptation of volume 1. We go from seeing [[spoiler:Nanao invent the Seventh Spellblade and TheReveal of Oliver's SeriesGoal with the brutal murder of Darius Grenville]], to Nanao riding a FlyingBroomstick and [[GenderBender Pete turning into a girl]]. |
| 81 | * BrickJoke: In volume 1, after Headmistress Esmeralda gives her welcoming DareToBeBadass speech to the new students, [[StupidQuestionBait she asks if there are any questions]], and [[RhetoricalQuestionBlunder Nanao pipes up with a suggestion of a headache remedy]]. It seems like a throwaway joke to illustrate Nanao's fearlessness and FishOutOfWater status. [[spoiler:Then in volume 5, Nanao encounters Esmeralda again at FlyingBroomstick practice and promptly asks her if the remedy helped any.]] |
| 82 | * BritsLoveTea: The series is set in Yelgland, a FantasyCounterpartCulture to England, so consequently tea is the beverage of choice for almost the entirety of the cast. |
| 83 | [[/folder]] |
| 84 | |
| 85 | [[folder:C -- D]] |
| 86 | * {{Calvinball}}: In volume 6, Nanao proposes a game of "demons", what we would call [[https://www.wikihow.com/Play-Zombie-Tag zombie tag]], to treat Oliver feeling uncomfortable in his own skin [[spoiler:due to the growth spurt he suddenly had as a result of having CastFromLifespan during the AssassinationAttempt against Enrico Forghieri]]. So the Sword Roses spend literally hours chasing each other around their laboratory and making up new rules as they go along by collective agreement. They decide to keep the "rule" about "free hugs on request" permanently even after the game is over. |
| 87 | * CastingGag: In the anime: |
| 88 | ** Oliver's voice actor Creator/AtsushiTamaru previously voiced another MasterSwordsman protagonist of a WizardingSchool LightNovel series who walks in on a partially clothed LoveInterest in the first episode, namely Ayato Amagiri from ''Literature/TheAsteriskWar''. And just like in his previous series, he and his LoveInterest duel shortly after meeting only to have it stopped by a third party (albeit for very different reasons this time). As an extra layer to this, Creator/AiKakuma, who voiced Ayato's LoveInterest Julis von Riessfeld, instead plays Vera Miligan, who is not only [[spoiler:the StarterVillain]] but also makes a pass at him in the novel (though the TamerAndChaster anime left this line out). |
| 89 | ** Creator/SatoshiHino provides the voice of Alvin "Purgatory" Godfrey, who is famed for his abilities with fire powers. "Purgatory" is a translation of "Rengoku" in Japanese. Only a couple years earlier, Hino voiced Kyōjurō Rengoku in the anime of ''Manga/DemonSlayerKimetsuNoYaiba'', who likewise has [[KillItWithFire fire-related elemental powers]]. |
| 90 | ** Enrico Forghieri's voice actor Creator/HochuOtsuka looks almost exactly like Enrico, except for having a bit more hair. |
| 91 | * CatchphraseInterruptus: [[spoiler:When the conspiracy goes to assassinate Demitrio Aristides, Oliver starts his customary PreMortemOneLiner, "The night of April 8th, 1525, of the Great Calendar. Where were you, and what were you doing?" only for Demitrio to cut him off before he gets any further than mentioning the year, because he's already deduced from the two previous murdered teachers that this is about Chloe Halford's murder.]] |
| 92 | * CentralTheme: "What are we as a society doing to ourselves and our children?" The core conceit of being "consumed by the spell", more than just being an interesting way to die, is a metaphorical critique of self-destructive obsession. The mage world as a whole is obsessed with getting ahead and pushing the envelope of what magic is capable of, regardless of the harm done to humanity and the world, and lionize those among them who work themselves into an early grave. And rather than leaving a better world for their children, mages abuse their desire to please their parents to turn them into living tools for their own ambitions, while the world as a whole gets harder and harder to live in. It comes off very much as an [[{{Allegory}} allegorical critique]] of the modern world and especially Japan's particular flavor of capitalism, where ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karoshi karoshi]]'', literally "death from overwork", has become a serious public health problem. |
| 93 | * CheatersNeverProsper: The election for StudentCouncilPresident that begins in volume 6 leads to Leoncio Echevalria's faction, which lost to the Campus Watch the year before the series begins, making several attempts to cheat in order to make the opposing Campus Watch candidate Vera Miligan look weaker, since mages tend to believe in MightMakesRight. These backfire. |
| 94 | ** By volume 6, the [[TrueCompanions Sword Roses]] have become [[FamedInStory minor celebrities in the student body]] and are known to be supporting Miligan. During Nanao's broomsports match against Diana Ashbury's team, a supporter of the old council shines a light in her eyes to throw off her aim during her attack run against Diana, but is caught, embarrassing Echevalria. |
| 95 | ** In volume 8, the old council tries to interfere with the Campus Watch's mission to recover [[spoiler:President Godfrey's sternum after it was stolen by Cyrus Rivermoore in the middle of a TournamentArc, {{depower}}ing him when he has matches scheduled]]. Richard Andrews and his teammates initially work with the old council, bringing them into conflict with the Sword Roses, but after old council member Khiirgi Albschuch is defeated by Campus Watch NumberTwo Lesedi Ingwe, Andrews calls the old council out for trying to cheat and quits the field, saying that if they want the students' support, they need to earn it fairly. |
| 96 | * ChildByRape: |
| 97 | ** {{Exaggerated}} with Ophelia Salvadori, who was essentially turned into a BreedingSlave for her mother's eugenics experiments the moment she hit puberty and was forced to bear multiple children before the age of fifteen, when she was able to escape to Kimberly Magic Academy. |
| 98 | ** [[spoiler:Shannon's]] pregnancy, first alluded to in Oliver's memory in volume 2, which mentions him being desperate to help her: "Every night, he’d faced her back and suppressed the tears that threatened to overflow." [[spoiler:It's ultimately revealed they were both drugged by the Sherwood clan elders and he was made to impregnate her, in the interest of a pure-blooded heir. The pregnancy ended in a stillbirth.]] |
| 99 | * ChildrenAreInnocent: A recurring theme of the series is that children are born wanting to be happy, make friends, and play, but adults abuse their desire to please authority figures to make them tools for their own advancement. Many of the Sword Roses' dealings with other students, including each other at times, revolve at least in part around BreakingTheCycleOfBadParenting: getting the "bad kids" to recognize that their family legacies and generational trauma don't have to define who they are and they can live for themselves instead. |
| 100 | * ColorCodedForYourConvenience: The neckties and inside lining of Kimberly student uniforms are color-coded to identify the student's grade year: first-year students wear red, second-years wear green, third-years wear orange, fourth-years wear magenta, fifth-years wear purple, sixth-years wear black, and seventh-years wear teal. [[spoiler:Oliver and his co-conspirators also wear all black when making their moves.]] |
| 101 | * ColorWash: All the color pages in the manga are drawn in predominantly red and purple hues. |
| 102 | * CompressedAdaptation: |
| 103 | ** The manga leaves out several scenes during the Sword Roses' investigation of the entrance ceremony incident and reduces the scene in alchemy class where Oliver impresses Darius Grenville to a couple of panels [[spoiler:and cuts Chloe Halford's death scene to a two-page spread]]. The adaption of volume 2 cuts Nanao's duel with the female student and most of Pete's training subplot. |
| 104 | ** The anime cuts several scenes short and moves others around compared to the book: Garland's explanation of spellblades is moved to episode 3, and the scene where he practice-duels Nanao and the conversation between her and Oliver over the nature of her feelings for him are dropped. This gives it somewhat choppy pacing for the first few episodes. This is partly because [[EnforcedTrope the novels are not paced in a way that easily lends them to the usual length of an anime season]]: the Year One books are essentially a TwoPartTrilogy, with volume 1 being a standalone story and volume 2 ending on a cliffhanger that leads directly into volume 3. Even with the season running for an unusual fifteen episodes, a fair amount of material is left out. |
| 105 | * ConstructedWorld: The world is fairly transparently a HistoricalFantasy version of the Eurasian supercontinent, taking place in an equivalent to the UsefulNotes/EuropeanUnion. Azia is Asia and Yamatsukini is Japan circa the UsefulNotes/SengokuPeriod, Yelgland seems to be Britain, and Farnland is probably Finland given Katie's surname Aalto. Other locations mentioned include Ytallia (Italy) and Indus (India). |
| 106 | * ContentWarnings: Creator/YenPress's manga translation is justifiably marked "L N V", meaning content warnings for language, nudity, and violence. |
| 107 | * CorruptedCharacterCopy: The series was heavily inspired by ''Franchise/HarryPotter'', and many characters especially in the first volume are recognizable as altered versions of Potterverse characters, but Creator/BokutoUno always puts his own twists on things: |
| 108 | ** Headmistress Esmeralda, for [[CompositeCharacter Albus Dumbledore and to a lesser extent Severus Snape]], being both the respected head of a prestigious magic academy and [[spoiler:in love with the mother of the main protagonist]] (though [[DecompositeCharacter Darius Grenville takes most of Severus' nastier personality traits]]). However, while Dumbledore (ostensibly) is quite a caring headmaster and deeply concerned with student welfare at Hogwarts, Esmeralda is [[DareToBeBadass completely unapologetic]] about the fact that about twenty percent of the students who matriculate to Kimberly Magic Academy will be [[MagicMisfire "consumed by the spell"]] before they graduate. Furthermore, while Albus and Severus did everything in their power to protect Lily and her family, [[spoiler:Esmeralda is the one [[YouKilledMyMother who killed Chloe]] and left Oliver without a mom growing up]]. Additionally, Severus' love for Lily is portrayed as true and selfless, and he's penant over accidentally causing her death, while Esmeralda intentionally kills the woman she loves and [[SoulEating eats her soul]], proving herself just as rotten as her co-conspirators. |
| 109 | ** Darius Grenville draws clear inspiration from Severus Snape: tall, slim, shoulder-length black hair, SadistTeacher of alchemy at a WizardingSchool who covets another professor's position (swordmaster rather than Defense Against the Dark Arts), and has a backstory connection to the main character's mother. Except rather than trying to save her from the BigBad and failing, [[spoiler:[[YouKilledMyFather he helped murder her]]]]. He also has a habit of helping promising students along in their academic research so he can [[PlagiarismInFiction plagiarize it]], [[spoiler:and is [[RasputinianDeath torturously killed]] at the end of the first volume, having succeeded only in solidifying Oliver Horn's resolve to kill his mother's other six murderers]]. |
| 110 | ** Frances Gilchrist is similar to Minerva [=McGonagall=], as a [[SternTeacher stern no-nonsense elder teacher]] who teaches advanced magic and is personally loyal to the headmaster. However, while [=McGonagall=]'s stern attitude belies a warmer side that cares for her students and she's definitely a fighter for good, [[spoiler:Gilchrist is part of the conspiracy that murdered Oliver's mother]]. |
| 111 | * CountryMatters: The translator renders an insult leveled at Miligan by her defeated opponent Deschamps in volume 10 as "What a cunt." (The original Japanese wording was あばずれおんな ''abazure onna'', literally "tiger-woman"--roughly meaning "minx" or "tease" in context.) |
| 112 | * CrapsackWorld: The Union has a rigid [[FantasticCasteSystem class system]] with [[{{Magocracy}} mages firmly at the top]]. {{Muggles}} are second-class citizens, and intelligent nonhumans are third-class ''if they're lucky''. Furthermore, the typical mage morality prioritizes [[ForScience pushing the limits of magical research]] above all other concerns. While there is a decently strong InternalReformist movement, people who try to reject this system outright tend to turn to cults of the gods of other worlds, {{Eldritch Abomination}}s that see "our" world as easy pickings due to an ancient alliance of mages and demihumans having killed its god fifty thousand years ago, and are pursued by an order of {{Military Mage}}s called the Gnostic Hunters that seek to stamp out the cults and their masters at all costs. |
| 113 | * CurbStompBattle: |
| 114 | ** In volume 2 ([[Recap/ReignOfTheSevenSpellbladesS1E08Rivals episode 8]]), Nanao is challenged to a WizardDuel by a classmate as part of Tullio Rossi's [[TournamentArc dueling tournament]], and defeats her in seconds courtesy of her ability to [[ParryingBullets parry spells with her sword]]. |
| 115 | ** Volume 7: Watch uppity first-year flout the school dueling rules. Watch him antagonize third-year Pete. Watch Pete summarily kick his ass as a pointed lesson that the dueling rules are ''not'' optional. |
| 116 | ** {{Justified|Trope}} in volume 11. Oliver challenges the graduating Godfrey to a parting duel. Predictably, he doesn't last very long, and his cousins are shocked that he even considered it while Shannon heals his broken arm. Oliver admits he knew full-well he'd almost certainly lose badly and just wanted to see how far he had to go. |
| 117 | * CurtainsMatchTheWindows: It's pretty common in Creator/MiyukiRuria's illustrations for characters' hair and eye color to match, to the point where it's easier to list the exceptions: Oliver Horn (brown hair and golden eyes), Chela [=McFarlane=] and Stacy Cornwallis (blonde hair and blue eyes), Richard Andrews (SignificantGreenEyedRedhead), and Vera Miligan and Fay Willock (gray hair and SupernaturalGoldEyes). |
| 118 | * CustomUniform: Kimberly seems to offer students a lot of latitude in their student uniforms. These range from minor changes like Guy skipping the necktie or Katie tying it in a bow instead of wearing it with a Windsor knot, up to large changes such as Ophelia Salvadori wearing a slinky purple ball gown slit to the hip and refashioning her uniform jacket into a bolero. |
| 119 | * DangerousPhlebotinumInteraction: In volume 1 (episode 5 of the anime adaptation), the class has their first practical class in alchemy, and Oliver notes that the recipe of the day has a lot of hidden pitfalls. He spends a good chunk of time rushing around the classroom doing damage control on his classmates' mistakes: adding an ingredient to slow a reaction after one guy puts in too much bubblegrass, then telling a girl to wash her eyes out with olive oil after she fails to cover her cauldron in time after adding an ingredient. Then Pete's potion starts sparking and smoking, and he has to [[JumpingOnAGrenade flip the cauldron upside-down and dive on top of it]]. His quick thinking impresses Professor Darius Grenville, [[spoiler:which gives Oliver an opportunity to get him alone and kill him to avenge his mother]]. |
| 120 | * DeadlySparring: This trope is [[DefiedTrope defied]] when Oliver Horn and Nanao Hibiya square off for a demonstration duel in their first period sword arts class. Both fighters prove themselves both MasterSwordsmen, with Oliver's sword arts training matching well against Nanao's battlefield experience as a {{samurai}}. When the duel starts getting ''very'' serious, the instructor calls a halt to the match because their intensity has broken the dulling spell he'd placed on their swords beforehand. |
| 121 | * DeathSeeker: Nanao, early on. She fearlessly charges an enraged troll, there's the DeadlySparring incident with Oliver where it nearly became a DuelToTheDeath, and then she attempts a rearguard action in the labyrinth against two upperclassmen before the StudentCouncilPresident intervened. Oliver et al. finally corner her about it and force her to reveal that she's been unsure up till then whether she actually died on the battlefield back in Yamatsukuni and has been having a DyingDream that will end if she falls. Oliver persuades her that yes, this is real, and that she should from now on only draw her sword with the intent of surviving. |
| 122 | * DecompositeCharacter: Much of the world is clearly inspired by the ''Franchise/HarryPotter'' franchise, but with distinctive twists put on it. The major characters are particular examples: |
| 123 | ** The Sword Roses each split one of the primary PowerTrio of ''Harry Potter'' protagonists between them. |
| 124 | *** Oliver Horn and Nanao Hibiya split Harry himself. Oliver looks a lot like Harry (he takes after his father physically but has his mother's eye color, yellow instead of green), and is a JackOfAllTrades with no significant weaknesses as a mage, and has a MissingMom who is a major part of his {{backstory}} and motivation. Nanao got Harry being a FishOutOfWater who found a home at WizardingSchool (though she's a MageBornOfMuggles, whereas Harry was born magical but raised by his Muggle relatives), as well as Harry's natural proficiency at riding {{Flying Broomstick}}s (she's known to have trained as a cavalrywoman when she was a {{samurai}}). |
| 125 | *** Katie Aalto and Pete Reston split up Hermione Granger. Katie is a curly-haired brunette and staunch activist on behalf of intelligent nonhumans, while Pete got Hermione's bookworm tendencies and MageBornOfMuggles background (though he takes much longer to catch up on magical studies than she does). |
| 126 | *** Michela [=McFarlane=] and Guy Greenwood split up Ron Weasley. Guy got Ron's FieryRedhead looks and personality and rural background, while Chela got Ron's role as the insider to mage culture who guides the rest of the group through its intricacies. |
| 127 | ** Severus Snape is roughly split between Headmistress Esmeralada--[[CompositeCharacter with some of Albus Dumbledore added for flavor]]--and Professor Darius Grenville. Grenville looks a lot like Snape, has a similar personality and well-earned reputation as a SadistTeacher, and covets another position at the school (Sword Arts rather than Defense Against the Dark Arts, this world not really having a concept of the latter). Also, [[spoiler:he and Esmeralda are connected in the series' backstory to Oliver's mother Chloe Halford--[[CorruptedCharacterCopy except they were among the people who conspired to murder her, rather than trying to save her]]. Like Snape, Esmeralda was in love with Chloe at the time of her death, [[CorruptedCharacterCopy but delivered the killing blow by her own hand]].]] |
| 128 | * DePower: Injure a mage, you hurt them. Injure their etheric body, however, and you seriously weaken their powers. [[spoiler:This happens to Alvin Godfrey at the end of volume 7, courtesy of Cyrus Rivermoore stealing his sternum and a chunk of his etheric body attached to it, leading to the main plot of volume 8 where the Campus Watch sends a posse after Rivermoore to recover the bone so Godfrey's etheric body can heal in time for his matches in the combat leagues.]] |
| 129 | * DidYouJustHaveSex: Katie, [[JealousRomanticWitness much to her chagrin]], figures out almost immediately in volume 10 that [[spoiler:Oliver and Nanao have finally slept together (unbeknownst to her, more literally than figuratively: they only actually got to third base this time)]]. Guy has to persuade her that ItsOkayToCry while giving her a CooldownHug. |
| 130 | * DisposableDecoyDoppelganger: Rosé Mistral and Teresa Carste both have the ability to create "splinters" of themselves, illusory copies without substance used to divert attention from the real attacker. Mistral can additionally place them over top of his allies to make them look like himself, letting him mix additional real attackers into the copies. Teresa, meanwhile, suppresses her mana signature to cover up any imperfections in her splinters. |
| 131 | * DisqualificationInducedVictory: PlayedForDrama in volume 9. At the climax of their match against Team Andrews, Chela [[spoiler:turns into elf form]] and defeats Rossi in nothing flat, [[spoiler:only for her father to interrupt the match and order her to transform back, since he had previously ordered her not to use her SuperMode as a condition of letting her join Stacy's team. Chela tries to attack ''him'' in a rage and he knocks her out cold with an OffhandBackhand. Stacy and Fay having already been defeated, this means Team Andrews wins by default--to the pleasure of nobody present, including the audience.]] |
| 132 | * DoubleKnockout: The final round of the third-year combat leagues in volume 9 has a ''Quadruple'' Knockout. [[spoiler:Rossi runs Yuri through but takes his sword in the leg, immobilizing him for a fireball from Nanao, which is her last-ditch effort after [[TakingYouWithMe she walked into a trap while taking down Albright]]. This leaves only Oliver and Richard to finish the match in single combat.]] |
| 133 | * DramaticIrony: |
| 134 | ** In volume 2, the possibility that a student might have killed [[spoiler:Darius Grenville]] is suggested, and then [[VaryingCompetencyAlibi immediately dismissed as impossible]], even though that's exactly what happened. [[spoiler:In their defense, it ''shouldn't'' have been possible: Oliver only won because no sane mage would expect a first-year magic student to have a spellblade.]] |
| 135 | ** In a {{flashback}} in volume 10, Chloe Halford hopes that her friend "Emmy", i.e. current Kimberly Headmistress Esmeralda, will become a CoolBigSis figure to her child even though Chloe turned her down romantically. Esmeralda was shown in the series' prologue striking the blow that killed Chloe. |
| 136 | * DungeonBypass: When it's the upperclassmens' turn at the combat league prelims in volume 7, Alvin Godfrey starts the race to the third level of the labyrinth by simply burning a hole clean through three floors of the first level, skipping it altogether. He only does this because [[MySignificanceSenseIsTingling his significance sense]] was giving him a bad feeling about the setup, and doesn't mind that it gives his competitor Leoncio Echevalria a leg up since it means [[EnemyMine two of the top seventh-year fighters will be available for whatever is ahead]]. |
| 137 | * DyingReconciliation: {{Downplayed}} at the end of volume 10. [[spoiler:Oliver Horn]] can't bring himself to torture his dying enemy [[spoiler:Demitrio Aristides]] the way he normally does, [[spoiler:because the only reason he won is that the personality of his friend Yuri Leik, a SoulFragment of Demitrio, was FightingFromTheInside. In return, Demitrio tells Oliver what he knows about the motives behind the conspiracy to murder his mother and [[{{Foreshadowing}} warns him about how dangerous Headmistress Esmeralda will be to fight]], then allows Yuri to take control so that he and Oliver can say goodbye to each other.]] |
| 138 | [[/folder]] |
| 139 | |
| 140 | [[folder:E -- F]] |
| 141 | * EmptyChairMemorial: The anime's opening credits sequence shows the four current members of the Campus Watch grimly looking out into the camera, with Carlos standing sadly behind an empty chair. [[spoiler:The last three episodes show a similar image, sepia-toned, with younger versions of the Watch looking happier and their estranged ex-member Ophelia Salvadori sitting in the chair.]] |
| 142 | * EnemyMine: |
| 143 | ** Demitrio Aristides characterizes the ancient alliance of humans and demihumans that slew the god of this world as little more than a team-up against a common enemy, though he allows that the now-extinct progenitor demihumans likely played an outsize role in getting the different factions to work together. |
| 144 | ** [[spoiler:Vanessa Aldiss is stationed at the entrance to the third layer as the final obstacle for the upperclassmen. This prompts the entire cadre of sixth- and seventh-year entrants to team up just to ''survive'', including political archrivals Alvin Godfrey and Leoncio Echevalria--who end up scoring actual, if minor, wounds against her and winning.]] |
| 145 | * ExpressDelivery: It's suggested in the early volumes and then confirmed in volume 10 that mage gestation is much shorter than that of {{Muggles}}. This is highlighted by the fact that Oliver's cousins Gwyn and Shannon Sherwood are in the same year at Kimberly but aren't twins ([[https://vxtwitter.com/unobokuto/status/1775385388435280290?s=46 a tweet by the author]] states Gwyn is only four months older than his sister). |
| 146 | * ExtraLongEpisode: [[https://vxtwitter.com/BuddyWaters/status/1735484965050253747?s=20 As noted by the translator on Twitter]], Volume 10 is at least half-again as long most other books in the series, due to the amount of material that it had to wrap up to conclude Year 3 (which itself is four volumes in length instead of the usual three): the seniors' TournamentArc concludes in a rematch between Godfrey and Echevalria, the election for StudentCouncilPresident takes place, the surviving seventh-year cast members graduate from Kimberly, [[spoiler:Oliver and Nanao reconcile after the end of volume 9 and [[RelationshipUpgrade finally become a couple]]]], and [[spoiler:Oliver assassinates Demitrio Aristides in our first-ever look at a DuelToTheDeath between two Spellblade wielders (the chapter that contains this is half the book's length all by itself)]]. |
| 147 | * FantasticFightingStyle: |
| 148 | ** There are three main schools of sword arts practiced in the Union, though in practice they're usually mixed and matched by most practitioners. |
| 149 | *** The Lanoff Style, favored by Oliver, is the most widely used and considered the easiest to learn. It emphasizes staying on defense while quickly analyzing your opponent's fighting style for weaknesses that can be counterattacked, as well as spatial magic targeting the footing of either the wielder or opponent, and techniques such as gravity manipulation. |
| 150 | *** The Rizett Style, favored by Chela, is a more offensively oriented fencing style, focused on thrusting attacks and using spatial magic in ways that disrupt the defender's ability to track the attacker's sword point. One known technique is the Hero's Charge, a sudden headlong rush ending in a thrust at full extension. |
| 151 | *** The Koutz Style emphasizes mobility, flexibility, and footwork. Pure Koutz practitioners such as Ursule Valois are exceedingly rare: most, such as Tullio Rossi, combine it with elements of other styles. |
| 152 | ** For her part, Nanao learned Hibiya Style from the moment she was big enough to pick up a sword. It's a pretty typical Japanese-style sword school, which Nanao modifies to her liking once she begins learning magic. |
| 153 | ** "Magicombat", unarmed techniques combined with spatial magic, is regarded as a sort of counterargument to Sword Arts. Several members of the Campus Watch practice it: Lesedi "Hard Knocker" Ingwe can kickbox in midair, while Alvin Godfrey wins his opening bout in the combat leagues with wrestling moves mixed with Lanoff Style spatial magic. |
| 154 | * FantasyConflictCounterpart: The test to enter the the third level of the labyrinth from the second consists of "the Battle of Hell's Armies", two [[DemBones skeletal armies]] reenacting a historical battle between "Rumoa" and "Kurtago" involving "swordrhinos", the "Battle of Diama". It's the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Zama Battle of Zama]] ([[CallARabbitASmeerp the "swordrhinos" are war elephants]]), and the point of the test is to help the side representing Carthage to win instead of Rome. [[spoiler:The Sword Roses use "toolplants" created by Guy to conjure fences of trees that foil the "Rumoan" cavalry charge against the infantry's flanks, allowing Nanao to make a literal DecapitationStrike against the enemy general.]] |
| 155 | * FantasyCounterpartCulture: |
| 156 | ** The Union seems to be a European Union equivalent, and Azia is obviously UsefulNotes/{{Asia}}. |
| 157 | ** The series is primarily set in the country of Yelgland, corresponding to England: GratuitousEnglish, and [[BritsLoveTea tea is serious business]], and it's even written 大英魔法国 ''daiei mahou-koku'', "British Wizarding Land" in the Japanese version. |
| 158 | ** Katie is from Farnland, which corresponds to Finland. It's written 湖水国 ''kosui kuni'', "lake country", in Japanese, and is located in the far north of the Union. Saunas and dips in freezing cold water are a big deal. |
| 159 | ** Nanao's homeland Yamatsu is transparently based on UsefulNotes/SengokuPeriod Japan, and is written 日の国 ''ni-tsu no kuni'', "sun country", one character off from Japan's real-life kanji 日本国. Nanao was taken from a battlefield where she was fighting a [[LastStand doomed rearguard action]] as a {{samurai}} of Tourikueisen Domain. |
| 160 | ** Additionally, the countries of Ytalli (Italy), Lantshire, and Daitsch (either Germany or the Netherlands) are mentioned as being part of the Union, while Azia also contains Chena (China, known for its foreign philosophies and the practice of [[EvolutionaryPressureCooker making poisons with urns of poisonous insects]]), Indus (India, the homeland of a monster called a garuda), and some characters have identifiably Spanish and Bantu names. |
| 161 | * FictionalSport: "Broomsports" in the series consist variously of obstacle course races on {{Flying Broomstick}}s, one-on-one jousting, and team battles--the latter of which Nanao quickly excels at after a notoriously MoodyMount takes a liking to her. Oliver, who is merely okay at riding brooms, is drafted to be her "catcher"--i.e. running around with a wand below the match to magically catch anybody she knocks off their brooms before they hit the ground, or potentially Nanao herself should she be unhorsed. |
| 162 | * FireKeepsItDead: Gnostic Hunters traditionally burn the bodies of fallen comrades and civilians alike to keep any extraterrestrial contagions they might have been infected with from spreading. |
| 163 | * FireStolenFromTheGods: According to Demetrio Aristedes in volume 5, fifty thousand years ago, an alliance of humans and demihumans [[KillTheGod slew this world's god]] and took its authority for their own, which is what we now call "magic". |
| 164 | * FirstEpisodeTwist: At the end of the first volume, [[spoiler:we learn that Oliver enrolled in Kimberly to kill the teachers who killed his mother, which was shown in the prologue.]] |
| 165 | * FlyingBroomstick: Rather than being {{Animate Inanimate Object}}s, broomsticks in this series are stated to be a species of magical creature in their own right that feeds symbiotically on its rider's mana. Getting to ride one is akin to breaking in a horse; actual cleaning brooms are dead individuals. |
| 166 | * FoeRomanceSubtext: The Campus Watch's tournament match in volume 10 features enough homoeroticism to make ''Film/TopGun'' blush, between Leoncio Echevalria's previously known VillainousCrush on Alvin Godfrey, Khiirgi's {{Combat Sadomasochis|t}}m against Lesedi Ingwe who hates her for seducing her girlfriends and making them cry, and Gino Beltrami's duel with Tim Linton literally ending with Beltrami kissing Tim with DruggedLipstick to cause a DoubleKnockout. |
| 167 | * ForeignQueasine: {{Inverted}} in volume 4 when Katie, who is Farnish by birth, makes the mistake of ordering jellied eels at the restaurant in Galatea. Even resident BigEater Nanao has trouble getting them down. According to Chela, her father is the only person she knows who actually enjoys this dish. |
| 168 | * {{Foreshadowing}}: |
| 169 | ** Having cut Chloe Halford's death scene from the first episode's opening, the anime adds in several scenes of Oliver meeting with a mysterious figure named Teresa Carste to clue in viewers that there's more to the story than is immediately apparent. |
| 170 | ** In volume 2, Ophelia Salvadori cryptically advises Oliver to stay out of the labyrinth for the next several months, [[spoiler:foreshadowing her experiment that causes her to be consumed by the spell at the end of the book]]. A Redditor jokingly compared the anime version of the scene in episode 8 to [[spoiler:[[https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/some-of-you-guys-are-alright-dont-go-to-school-tomorrow the "some of you guys are alright, don't go to school tomorrow" meme]] spawned by the 2015 Umpqua Community College school shooting]]. |
| 171 | ** There's been a couple of hints that Katie's family was disgraced in some manner. You could initially discount Darius Grenville's disparaging remarks as him being his usual {{jerkass}} self, but then in volume 9 Demitrio Aristides alludes to some incident involving the Aalto mages and a tír that caused their "downfall". |
| 172 | * ForcefulKiss: |
| 173 | ** Volume 9. [[spoiler:Nanao is knocked out of the final round of the combat leagues in a DoubleKnockout, and Oliver defeats Richard Andrews in single combat and they share a DefeatMeansFriendship moment. This makes Nanao irrationally jealous, and on their way back to the dorms the next night, she shoves Oliver against a tree and fiercely and possessively kisses him.]] |
| 174 | --->[[spoiler:"This was less a kiss than the feasting of a carnivore. Her ardor seeped through his membranes like molten lava, banishing all thought from his mind. A shudder of fear, mingled with an all-too-intense wave of lust. Oliver's every fiber tensed, incapable of motion. Second after second passed, lost to the moment— and at last, she broke it off."]] |
| 175 | ** Volume 10: [[spoiler:Nanao tries to apologize for the kiss in volume 9, but Oliver tells her, "I'm not letting you off that easily." He then kisses her back with equal force, then tells her, [[AnguishedDeclarationOfLove "You're not the only one restraining yourself!"]] and sweeps her off her feet with another kiss.]] |
| 176 | * ForeignLanguageTitle: The episode titles of the anime are all in English by way of katakana. |
| 177 | * FourLinesAllWaiting: The overall story structure of the novels can be characterized as a fantasy TeenDrama composed of a tapestry of various characters' story arcs, all woven together by the Sword Roses' progression through Kimberly's seven-year curriculum [[spoiler:with Oliver's revenge plot serving as the MythArc]]. Characters sometimes disappear for multiple books at a time but are rarely gone for good (unless explicitly killed off), the current record-holder being Annie Mackley, who disappears from the story after the midpoint of volume 1 only to be brought back over three InUniverse years later in volume 12. |
| 178 | * FriendlyRivalry: |
| 179 | ** {{Downplayed}} between Cyrus Rivermoore and Ophelia Salvadori. They've fought many bloody battles in the labyrinth and he's prone to SlutShaming her, but it's implied that he just does it to provoke her to fight him. If you look more closely, the series actually implies they're more competitors than enemies: they're shown critiquing each other's newest creations during the fight that that the Sword Roses witness in volume 1, and [[spoiler:Cyrus mentions he plans to give condolences to her family after she's consumed by the spell in volume 3]]. Doesn't make their fights any less dangerous to be around. |
| 180 | ** Oliver to Richard Andrews and Tullio Rossi. |
| 181 | *** Andrews kind of becomes a StockShonenRival for Oliver. They get off on the wrong foot due to a poorly worded remark from Oliver during Sword Arts, then their dispute gets tangled up in the conservative faction's beef with Katie over the troll. After they [[spoiler:fight the garuda together]] they're able to bury the hatchet, and though Andrews never really becomes a friend, he seems to view Oliver as a motivation to improve himself from then on rather than as an enemy, and seeks a rematch in the third-year combat leagues beginning volume 7. |
| 182 | *** Rossi takes a dislike to Oliver for hogging all the gossip after the events of volume 1, and starts the TournamentArc in volume 2 basically as an excuse to duel him. Oliver soundly thrashes him and then starts tutoring him in the sword, and Rossi teams up with Andrews in volume 7, likewise hoping for a rematch. |
| 183 | ** Upperclasswoman Diana Ashbury, the star of one of the senior league broomsports teams, takes an instant dislike to Nanao once she qualifies to join the senior league teams in volume 4, calling her an eyesore. Nanao earns her respect by forcing her to work extra hard to win in their first face-off, and Diana is shown helping train her afterwards. |
| 184 | * FriendsAreChosenFamilyArent: Pete and Chela both have much better relationships with the other [[TrueCompanions Sword Roses]] than they do with their birth families. This starts to get {{deconstructed}} towards the midpoint of the series, as the two of them begin to contemplate increasingly unscrupulous tactics to keep the group together. |
| 185 | ** Chela's father Theodore [=McFarlane=] is an UpperClassTwit and EmbarrassingRelativeTeacher whose silly behavior constantly embarrasses her, and she resents him forcing her not to acknowledge her paternal half-sister Stacy Cornwallis as a sibling: they're officially cousins, courtesy of Stacy's status as the HiddenBackupPrincess. She's also started to become suspicious of Theodore's motives for rescuing Nanao from a LastStand in Yamatsu and bringing her to Yelgland to become a mage. |
| 186 | ** Pete says in volume 10 that he has a terrible relationship with his birth family. He doesn't go into details, but he's a MageBornOfMuggles and there's [[FantasticRacism a lot of societal tension between the two]] so you can hazard a guess. Chela also mentions in volume 2 that nonmagical society trends heteronormative, and Pete is anything but straight (being both a SexShifter and pansexual). |
| 187 | [[/folder]] |
| 188 | |
| 189 | [[folder:G -- H]] |
| 190 | * TheGadfly: |
| 191 | ** Pete and Guy never seem to get enough of razzing Oliver over [[ChickMagnet his ability to attract the ladies without even trying]] and his obvious discomfiture about it. They even frequently egg Nanao, Katie, and Chela on. |
| 192 | ** Theodore [=McFarlane=] gets a kick out of poking his nose into things, while floating up in the air upside-down so that nobody notices him until it's funniest. He even trolls Esmeralda with that in volume 2. |
| 193 | * GambitPileup: The combat leagues in the year 3 books. On the face of it you have three tiers of students (grades 2-3, 4-5, and 6-7) competing for glory, prize money, and to settle old scores with class rivals, but there's also a political angle: since mages tend to believe AsskickingLeadsToLeadership and the election cycle for StudentCouncilPresident runs concurrently, the student body tends to vote for whichever side won a majority of the tiers. This leads to various attempts at CripplingTheCompetition. This is compounded by the murders of two professors in preceding years: Headmistress Esmeralda jacks up the prize money to attract more students, hoping to see if any of them might be strong enough to have killed Darius Grenville and Enrico Forghieri, while Demitrio Aristides inserts a ManchurianAgent into the student body, thinking to ferret out the killer. [[spoiler:And then Cyrus Rivermoore tosses a hand grenade into the mix by joining the 7th-year prelims just to get close enough to Alvin Godfrey to steal his sternum for an experiment, {{depower}}ing him, which provokes the Watch to send a posse after him to recover it before the finals so he can regain his lost powers, which in turn leads the old council to try to interfere with their hunt.]] |
| 194 | * GenderIsNoObject: On average, female mages are just as good at both magic and swordplay as male mages, though it depends heavily on the individual: Oliver, Nanao, and Chela are three of the strongest in their year, but not by enough to be decisive (Andrews, Rossi, and Albright are very evenly matched with them), while Guy, Pete, and Katie are generally considered also-rans whose talents lie in areas other than combat. In particular, volume 2 explains that while women have a large natural reservoir of mana in their uteri, men have enough smaller reservoirs elsewhere that it tends to even out. |
| 195 | * GenderRestrictedAbility: {{Downplayed}}. Female mages are able to use their wombs as an emergency battery of mana, which can give them an edge in {{Wizard Duel}}s. It's not a decisive edge, though, since magical strength is very much dependent on the individual and grows with age and training: on average, [[GenderIsNoObject male and female mages' capabilities are about equal]]. |
| 196 | * GenreBusting: At its core, the series is very much a TeenDrama about the growth and relationships of students attending a prestigious boarding school and growing into adults, except it's a WizardingSchool in a DarkFantasy setting that has a LovecraftLite underlayer. Furthermore, the MythArc of the series is [[spoiler:the main viewpoint character's {{revenge}} story]]. |
| 197 | * TheGlomp: Nanao is already prone to being physically clingy to Oliver, "stuck to him like a burr" as she once puts it. At lunch in volume 4, she gives him a bear hug after imbibing a beverage that turned out to have a lot more alcohol than anybody realized. Oliver has to run for the bathroom to cool off because the proximity to Nanao set off Ophelia's lingering Perfume and gave him a RagingStiffie. |
| 198 | * GodIsDead: Explained during the first astronomy class in volume 5. Ancient mages in alliance with demihumans killed the planet's god fifty thousand years ago to free intelligent life from its interference. However, this had the unintended consequence of making the world look like easy pickings for every ''other'' planet's god, forcing the creation of the Gnostic Hunters to battle the resulting {{Alien Invasion}}s. |
| 199 | * TheGrimReaper: Floating beings garbed in the classic black cloak and SinisterScythe are introduced in volume 8 as the enforcers of the dead god's laws [[AllDeathsFinal against resurrection]] and living longer than 200 years. If you reach your 200th birthday, a reaper comes to kill you every night, and if by some miracle you actually defeat it,[[note]]Oliver, Nanao, Yuri, Tim Linton, and the Sherwood siblings used every trick in the book and were barely able to HoldTheLine[[/note]] an additional reaper comes for every extra fifty years you've lived. It turns out though, [[spoiler:they don't feel any need to deliver the killing blow themselves: when Cyrus fatally stabs the resurrected Fau, the reaper that came for her immediately vanishes into thin air without even waiting for her to finish dying]]. |
| 200 | * GruesomeGrandparent: |
| 201 | ** Ursule Valois was told she was underdeveloped in the family's arts and sent to live with her grandmother, who denied her food for days on end unless she could cross a frictionless floor to get it, and intentionally inducing [[LoveMartyr Stockholm syndrome]] about the treatment. She also gave her a kitten to raise only to then force her to kill it with her bare hands, to get her to accept the idea of using ''any'' creature as a {{familiar}} including humans. |
| 202 | ** [[spoiler:Oliver Horn was put through the wringer by his and the Sherwood siblings' great-grandfather, who pushed his father into repeatedly [[TrainingFromHell training him to the point of death]] so that he could perform a MergerOfSouls with the remnants of his mother Chloe, then [[RapeByProxy drugged a newly pubescent Oliver into raping Shannon]] in the interest of [[RoyalInbreeding producing a pure-blooded heir]]. And it was AllForNothing: the baby was stillborn, leading Oliver to subconsciously conclude he was destined to suffer forever (which proved the TraumaticSuperpowerAwakening he needed to crack the Fourth Spellblade). In hindsight, it makes perfect sense that Chloe went no-contact and attended Kimberly under the pseudonym "Halford".]] |
| 203 | * HalfHumanHybrid: Mages sometimes interbreed with certain species of demihumans [[SuperBreedingProgram hoping to breed more powerful mages]]. |
| 204 | ** Particular attention is called to half-elves. Normally they take strongly after one parent or the other (called "actualized" if they resemble an elf and "dormant" if human), but a minority, [[spoiler:including Chela]], are "morphlings", who normally appear human but are able to shift to an elven form as a sort of SuperMode, dramatically improving their spellcasting power for a limited amount of time. |
| 205 | ** Half-werewolves like Fay Willock are able to partake of both their human and lupine abilities, though Fay is the first to ever to master spellcasting while wolfed out. The NecessaryDrawback is that he's in constant, severe pain while transformed. |
| 206 | * HalfSiblingAngst: Stacy Cornwallis was conceived by Theodore [=McFarlane=] with a woman from a [=McFarlane=] branch family to be the backup in case his legal daughter Michela didn't work out or died. She grew up ostracized by her stepfather and half-siblings because she was a more naturally talented mage than his children by blood, and got it into her head to overtake Chela and force her biological father to recognize her. For her part, Chela resented not being allowed to acknowledge Stacy as her sister and hated that they were estranged because of it, and meanwhile Stacy's maternal half-sister Lynette briefly expresses frustration that she's so obsessed with Chela. |
| 207 | * {{Hammerspace}}: Because Bokuto Uno didn't think to mention in volume 3 that the Sword Roses and Miligan had brought their {{Flying Broomstick}}s along until they actually became relevant, the anime doesn't think to depict them from episode 12 until episode 15 when they suddenly appear out of nowhere. |
| 208 | * HormoneAddledTeenager: {{Reconstructed}}: the series is pretty straightforward about the fact that most of the cast members, school faculty excepted, are teenagers and young adults, so ''obviously'' they're going to be interested in sex to some extent, but mostly treats it as a normal part of growing up without being prurient or titillating about it. Oliver and Chela even give TheTalk to the other Sword Roses in volume 4, wherein Chela says that about four Kimberly students out of five will have had their first sexual experience by the time they graduate, and warns them to keep contraception handy at all times. |
| 209 | * HotSpringsEpisode: In volume 11, the Sword Roses visit a hot spring while staying with Katie's family in Farnland (which is [[FantasyCounterpartCulture based on Finland]], [[ShownThereWork which really does have several areas of hot springs]]). This understandably is much to the pleasure of Nanao, since she's from Yamatsu. |
| 210 | [[/folder]] |
| 211 | |
| 212 | [[folder:I -- J]] |
| 213 | * IllFatedFlowerbed: The prologue of volume 3 ([[Recap/ReignOfTheSevenSpellbladesS1E13NoisyForest episode 13 of the anime]]) shows a young Ophelia Salvadori deliberately stomping the flowers in her yard. The narration explains that she hates flowers: "Their eye-catching beauty and heavenly scents that attracted all manner of insects reminded her too much of herself," referring to the fact that she SmellsSexy to males because of her {{succubus}} ancestry. |
| 214 | * InterplayOfSexAndViolence: Nanao is essentially unable to separate her desire for a romance with Oliver from her wish for a DuelToTheDeath with him. |
| 215 | * IntimateHealing: In volume 4, Oliver is still fighting the aftereffects of Ophelia Salvadori's [[SmellsSexy Perfume]], causing him to become uncomfortably aroused when a drunken Nanao glomps him. When Chela realizes it, she corners him in the restaurant men's room and advises him that, AsYouKnow, if he's still feeling the effects after this long, the only surefire way to clear the Perfume out of his system will be to satisfy the urge, and not by himself. Though she questions whether he'd rather sleep with Nanao (both of them having admitted to their attraction at this point, [[IUhYouToo though neither is willing to call it "love" yet]]), she solves the issue with a magic-assisted handjob through their clothes. {{Justified|Trope}} because SexMagic was involved in causing the problem to begin with, so it makes sense that a similar effect would be useful in resolving it. |
| 216 | * InstantDeathRadius: for wielders of the titular spellblades. The radius is even named - "one step, one spell" distance. |
| 217 | * IntraScholasticRivalry: There are two major overlapping intramural rivalries at Kimberly Magic Academy, though people aren't likely to fit cleanly into one faction or the other and often move freely between them. |
| 218 | ** Clashes between [[ZombieAdvocate pro-]] and anti-demihuman rights students form a significant part of the A-plot of volume 1. It's only been a few years since TheMagocracy gave citizenship to four demihuman races, and Katie Aalto among others advocates to expand this to other demonstrably intelligent demihumans, trolls in particular, and are opposed by a faction of students hoping to reverse this trend. Guy notably disagrees with Katie about the relative merits of trolls, but still backs Katie up along with Oliver and Nanao when she's targeted by bullies, landing the three of them in detention for brawling with the bullies in a classroom. [[spoiler:Additionally, the StarterVillain turns out to be from the ''pro''-rights faction.]] |
| 219 | ** The incumbents on the student council are a group called the Campus Watch, led by [[BigGood Alvin Godfrey]], a RagtagBunchOfMisfits who gained popularity by actively policing the student body and protecting freshmen from the depredations of rogue upperclassmen such as Cyrus Rivermoore and Ophelia Salvadori. They are opposed by supporters of the former student council, led by Leoncio Echevalria, an aristocrat with traditional-for-mages SocialDarwinist views. A significant plot in volumes 6-10 deals with the fact that several senior Watch members including Godfrey are about to GraduateFromTheStory, turning the election for StudentCouncilPresident (who gets to freely appoint the rest of the council) into a ProxyWar between Godfrey and Echevalria. [[TrueCompanions The Sword Roses]] take Godfrey's side and some of their class rivals join Echevalria, albeit reluctantly: Joseph Albright only backs the old council because his family would raise hell with him if he didn't, Richard Andrews withdraws his support over their attempts to cheat during the TournamentArc, and Tullio Rossi openly hates Echevalria and only works with the old council because his teammates Andrews and Albright are. Meanwhile, Echevalria's younger sister Felicia is a friend of Teresa Carste and Dean Travers, who are admirers of the Sword Roses. |
| 220 | * JealousRomanticWitness: The main pairing of Oliver Horn and Nanao Hibiya attracts this from several characters. |
| 221 | ** Their friend Katie Aalto has a crush on Oliver and tends to get a little irritable when Nanao acts too clingy (despite their otherwise close friendship). It's nonetheless clear pretty early that she's firmly the ThirdWheel, which becomes a significant source of angst as Oliver and Nanao's relationship gets more serious over the years. She's also a little jealous of Oliver's (affectionate but completely platonic) relationship with his cousin Shannon, getting worked up when Shannon greets him with a kiss on the cheek when they run into each other at lunch in volume 1. |
| 222 | ** In volume 9, Nanao gets jealous of Oliver's rapproachment with his StockShonenRival Richard Andrews, and physically attacks him with a ForcefulKiss. This in turn triggers an incident with Oliver's follower Teresa Carste, who crushes hard on him: in volume 10 she tries to get him to kiss her, then when he doesn't realize she wants it on the mouth, she loses her temper and goes out and attacks Nanao--and then has to run away with her tail between her legs because [[UnderestimatingBadassery Nanao is so much stronger than she ever thought possible]]. |
| 223 | * JumpingOnAGrenade: Pete makes a mistake in the first practical alchemy class and his potion starts a chain reaction. Oliver flips the cauldron upside-down and dives on top of it right before it explodes to keep anyone in the class from getting injured, coming away with some minor burns. |
| 224 | [[/folder]] |
| 225 | |
| 226 | [[folder:K -- L]] |
| 227 | * KickThemWhileTheyAreDown: {{Defied}} by Pete at the start of volume 7. He intervenes in a fight between four newly admitted first-year students, initially to instruct them on Kimberly Magic Academy rules on dueling--mainly, have an upperclassman present to referee and heal everyone up after. When the winner tells him "I don't remember giving you permission to ''heal'' anyone" and that he plans to use the losers to practice his [[AgonyBeam pain spells]], Pete administers a CurbStompBattle to teach him that the dueling rules are ''not'' optional. |
| 228 | -->'''Pete:''' Count yourself lucky it was ''me'' you fought. Some students here would have done far worse than a mere pain spell. |
| 229 | * KnightAndSamurai: Western mages--most of the cast, including main character Oliver Horn--carry short one-handed swords as their athames (usually single-edged weapons akin to messers), and practice sword arts inspired by historical European styles from the Renaissance. In contrast, Nanao Hibiya is a samurai brought from the far east who uses a katana with a traditional kenjutsu style, which allows for some techniques that are impossible in the traditional Union sword styles: in volume 4 she uses the increased leverage from her katana's much longer hilt to sever an attacker's sword hand while rotating only her wrists. |
| 230 | * KungFuWizard: "Magicombat", introduced in volume 8, is regarded as a sort of counterargument to sword arts that mixes ''unarmed'' combat with spatial magic instead. Alvin Godfrey demonstrates this in the senior-level [[TournamentArc combat leagues]] with [[TheGrappler magic-enhanced wrestling]], defeating his opponent Efler by choking him out. His friend Lesedi Ingwe as a rule prefers magic-enhanced kickboxing to swordplay. |
| 231 | * LastMomentTogether: |
| 232 | ** Volume 3 ([[Recap/ReignOfTheSevenSpellbladesS1E15LastSong episode 15 of the anime]]) closes with [[spoiler:Ophelia Salvadori and Carlos Whitrow mutually consumed by the spell. They [[DisappearsIntoLight fade away into light]], TogetherInDeath, while Carlos's best friend and Ophelia's estranged LoveInterest Alvin Godfrey looks on and bids them goodbye.]] |
| 233 | ** Volume 10: |
| 234 | *** The {{flashback}} sequence in chapter 4 depicts the last time [[spoiler:Oliver]] and his father saw his mother alive. Chloe had discovered that her comrades planned to kill her and went out to fight them to buy her family time to escape to her birth family's estate. [[spoiler:The next time they saw her, she had been reduced to the ghostly, disembodied remnants of her soul, which reside within Oliver to this day.]] |
| 235 | *** Second, between Oliver and [[spoiler:Yuri Leik, Oliver's teammate during the TournamentArc and a SoulFragment of Professor Demitrio Aristides whom Oliver has just mortally wounded with Yuri's assistance. As a gesture of [[DyingReconciliation recompense for his role in the murder of Oliver's mother]], Demitrio permits Yuri to take control of their body so that he and Oliver can say their farewells.]] |
| 236 | * LeonineContract: {{Subverted}} in volume 3 (episode 12 of the anime). Katie offers herself to Vera Miligan as an experimental subject, [[spoiler:who previously attempted to vivisect her to figure out how she was able to get Marco the troll to talk]], in hopes of getting her help [[spoiler:rescuing Pete after he's kidnapped by Ophelia Salvadori]]. Oliver and Chela naturally object, but Miligan makes the much more acceptable counterproposal of having Katie become her research assistant (de facto apprentice, though she frames it as an equal partnership). |
| 237 | * LetsWaitAWhile: [[spoiler:Oliver and Nanao's attempt at a first time in volume 10 gets scuttled by Oliver's PTSD from his RapeAsBackstory, so while they spend the night naked together in bed, they don't get as far as intercourse. They agree to try to take it slow and work their way up to "getting the pole in the hole", as Nanao bawdily puts it.]] |
| 238 | * LikeBrotherAndSister: Oliver and Chela are the de facto co-leaders of [[TrueCompanions the Sword Roses]] (he TheHero, she the TeamMom), and the two are social peers as mage {{Blue Blood}}s and get along very well. However, Oliver is in love with Nanao, and though Chela performs some IntimateHealing on him in volume 4 to address the aftereffects of a villain's SexMagic, it's motivated solely by concern for his health, and she feels very guilty about [[QuestionableConsent low-key manipulating him into it]] afterwards. |
| 239 | * LikeParentLikeSpouse: Nanao starts to draw comparisons from various characters who knew the deceased Chloe Halford: they're similarly talented at sword arts and {{Flying Broomstick}}s, even bonding to the same MoodyMount due to their similar mana signatures. [[spoiler:Oliver and his close relatives are the only ones present who know that Chloe was his mother. Oliver himself accidentally lets slip to Nanao in volume 11 that she reminds her of his mother, though he doesn't name her.]] |
| 240 | * LingeringSocialTensions: |
| 241 | ** A significant running conflict in the series deals with attempts to reform TheMagocracy to treat [[{{Muggles}} nonmagicals]] and demihumans better. It's only been a few years since a few species of the latter were even granted citizenship, and the A-plot of volume 1 has the [[TrueCompanions Sword Roses]] get caught between [[ZombieAdvocate activists trying to expand on their previous successes]] and conservatives trying to turn back the clock--a consequence of Katie Aalto and her family being strongly pro-rights. Volume 5 also states that PosthumousCharacter Chloe Halford was also an activist, and suggests this may have partly motivated her murder in volume 1's prologue. |
| 242 | ** Present StudentCouncilPresident Alvin Godfrey got his start as a campus organizer trying to protect weaker and underprivileged students from bullies and rogue upperclassmen, where the former student council were a clique of {{Social Darwinist}}s who mostly let them do as they pleased. As dangerous as Kimberly can be, Tim Linton says it was ''way'' worse before Godfrey formed the Campus Watch, and a significant plot in volumes 6-10 revolves around the fact he's about to GraduateFromTheStory and the old council is hoping to make a comeback. [[spoiler:Ultimately, Tim himself is elected as Godfrey's successor and appoints pro-rights candidate Vera Miligan as one of his council members, making it clear the reformists' forward progress is likely to continue for the near future.]] |
| 243 | * LoopholeAbuse: |
| 244 | ** In volume 5, Vanessa Aldiss expects the class to break griffins like a horse, and is ready to [[SadistTeacher flunk Katie and mock her mercilessly as per usual]] when she tries to befriend the griffin instead. Katie unexpectedly succeeds after Gwyn Sherwood covertly uses his MagicMusic to give her efforts a slight boost, and Gwyn points to one of the unwritten rules of Kimberly: if you succeed at an assignment despite disobeying the professor and they can't figure out what you did, it's a passing grade. |
| 245 | ** Volume 9: |
| 246 | *** [[RingOut Leaving the ring during a combat league match is an automatic loss.]] However, it's worded as "touching the ground outside the ring", meaning that technically there's no rule against running on the wall at the edge of the ring, which Ursule Valois uses to escape a trap set by Team Horn. |
| 247 | *** The teachers organize a bonus round for the TournamentArc where the runners-up compete to clean up invasive species in the second layer of the labyrinth after they moved a bunch of stuff from the deeper levels, as a way of making up for [[spoiler:Theodore [=McFarlane=] giving Team Andrews a DisqualificationInducedVictory over Team Cornwallis]]. Miligan, competing with her StudentCouncilPresident election opponent Percival Whalley as team supervisors, decides to sweeten the pot by offering extra prize money from her personal funds. Whalley calls foul, but Theodore [=McFarlane=] lets it slide because he ''did'' say the two candidates were to "demonstrate leadership skills" and Miligan isn't specifically trying to buy votes. |
| 248 | ---->“Hmm… I do see where Mr. Whalley is coming from, but… I was the one who said ‘however you like.’ It’s our fault for slapping together an event with such half-baked rules, but exploiting those loopholes is frankly a very Kimberly move. Is that not your own stance? In light of that, and given that Ms. Miligan is not specifically soliciting votes here, I’ll allow it.” |
| 249 | ** Combat league rules tightly restrict what equipment you're allowed to bring into the ring, including banning the use of {{familiar}}s. So in volume 10, Miligan (again) cuts her own hand off before the match and reattaches her familiar Milihand--which is literally her own original left hand that got cut off in volume 1 and she reanimated--then deliberately gets it cut off ''again'' during the match to free it for use, arguing that it's a part of her own body rather than a familiar. Garland and Theodore somewhat reluctantly allow it over her opponent's objections. [[spoiler:Which, as usual for her, is [[KansasCityShuffle misdirection]]: she also moved her other basilisk eye to [[BadassBack her back]] and replaced it in its socket with a completely nonmagical glass replica--another loophole in the gearing rules.]] |
| 250 | * LoveAtFirstPunch: Nanao speaks of the {{samurai}} ideal "shiawase", of a DuelToTheDeath with someone they love and respect--which she felt towards Oliver when their swords crossed in a classroom sparring session, and was torn up when he turned her down for a rematch. All of which is much to Oliver's chagrin when she explains it: |
| 251 | -->'''Katie:''' Um... to sum up... you got all depressed because Oliver rejected you?\ |
| 252 | '''Oliver:''' [[DudeNotFunny Sorry, Katie, but could you shut up?]]\ |
| 253 | '''Nanao:''' No, she is largely correct. Was I infatuated with your blade or the man behind it? Perhaps there is little difference between the two. |
| 254 | * LoveConfession: [[spoiler:Nanao and Oliver]] trade confessions in volumes 9 and 10. |
| 255 | ** First, [[spoiler:Nanao gets jealous of Oliver's rapprochement with Richard Andrews in the combat league finals, and essentially sexually assaults him the night after: she throws him against a tree for a ForcefulKiss, and after regaining control of her faculties and pulling away, tells him, "My heart lies with you, Oliver. For every moment, sleeping or awake, from now until evermore."]] |
| 256 | ** Second, [[spoiler:Oliver corners her in their base, she thinks he's about to excoriate her for her behavior earlier, but he instead returns her ForcefulKiss and tells her, "You're not the only one who's been restraining yourself!" They spend the night in bed together, and he finally admits the next morning that he's in love with her.]] |
| 257 | * LoveConfessor: |
| 258 | ** {{Downplayed}} in volume 2 ([[Recap/ReignOfTheSevenSpellbladesS1E08Rivals episode 8 of the anime]]). Oliver confides in his cousins Shannon and Gwyn that he's attracted to Nanao, often finding himself looking at her when they're together, but he doesn't say the "L" word. Gwyn counsels him that the feeling of attraction means something to mages, and to just hold the feelings he can't name in his heart and allow events to happen. |
| 259 | ** Shortly after Oliver and Chela give the other Sword Roses TheTalk in volume 4, Katie asks Nanao if she's in love with Oliver. Nanao admits she's deeply attracted to him, but isn't sure if she can call it "love" when [[LoveHurts she simultaneously wishes for]] a DuelToTheDeath with him. |
| 260 | ** Chela to Pete in volume 10: she wonders aloud why he doesn't seem to mind the idea of [[RelationshipUpgrade Oliver and Nanao getting together]], taking it for granted that he's in love with Oliver. He replies that, just like her, he wants to keep the group together, and [[IWantMyBelovedToBeHappy if seeing the man he loves with someone else is what it takes, then so be it]]. He hasn't given up, though: he tells her he's come to envision the Sword Roses as [[{{Polyamory}} a potential polycule]]. |
| 261 | * LoveDodecahedron: By the later books, you're gonna need a flowchart, and it's not all good. |
| 262 | ** Oliver has a complicated slow-burn romance with Nanao, and additionally has Katie and Pete crushing on him, plus his romantically ambiguous friendship with Chela (they're ostensibly LikeBrotherAndSister, but after the IntimateHealing scene in volume 4 it's implied there might be more to it on her end). His cousin Shannon is also overtly affectionate with him ([[spoiler:and their families once [[ChildByRape forced him to father a child with her]], though the baby was stillborn]]). Finally, his follower Teresa Carste also has a one-sided crush on him; he sees her as more of a baby sister, which causes a confrontation between her and Nanao in volume 10. |
| 263 | ** For Nanao's part, Tullio Rossi makes more than one pass at her. More disturbingly, Chela's father Theodore, who brought her to Yelgland, is somewhat prone to referring to her in overly affectionate terms despite a roughly twenty-year difference in age, and viewed finding her as a fulfillment of an oath he made to the late Chloe Halford, [[YouRemindMeOfX whom Nanao reminds many characters of]] and whom he dated when they were classmates. [[spoiler:And then we incorporate the fact that Oliver is secretly Chloe's son.]] |
| 264 | ** Chloe Halford herself had at least three suitors in her youth: Edgar Groves (whom she eventually settled down with), Theodore (who seems to still see her as TheOneThatGotAway), and Esmeralda (who eventually spearheaded her murder). |
| 265 | ** In year 4, Katie gets into a love zig-zag between her original crush on Oliver, and her newer feelings for Guy, who himself is also pursued romantically by their underclasswoman Rita Appleton, who fell for him shortly after enrolling. |
| 266 | * LoveHurts: In volume 4, after the Sword Roses get TheTalk from Oliver and Chela, Katie asks Nanao in their dorm room if she's in love with Oliver. Nanao admits she has feelings for him, but much to her chagrin she also hasn't been able to kick her desire for a DuelToTheDeath with him. The scene is made extra painful by the fact Nanao knows Katie has an unrequited crush on him as well. |
| 267 | * LovecraftLite: The backdrop of the series has "our" world suffering repeated {{Alien Invasion}}s from other worlds of TheMultiverse, called "tírs", that follow their own natural laws and have their own gods. Not only do they make attacks that can transform whole regions to follow their own AlienGeometries, they also send agents to infiltrate humanity and convert disaffected individuals into their worshipers, called Gnostics by mages. That said, Gnostic cults are as much a function of [[CrapsackWorld the oppressiveness of the mage world]] as anything else: {{Muggles}} and demihumans in particular often become Gnostics as a reaction to the tyranny of TheMagocracy, because [[SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome the Gnostics are the only ones offering them hope for an alternative to being second-class citizens or slaves ground under mages' boot heels]]. |
| 268 | [[/folder]] |
| 269 | |
| 270 | [[folder:M -- N]] |
| 271 | * MageBornOfMuggles: Pete and Nanao were both born into non-magic families, which in TheMagocracy means a significant bump in socioeconomic status (at least for Pete; for Nanao, it just beats being plain ''dead''). It's unclear if there is any specific mechanism that causes this, but it ''is'' known that you have to be ''born'' a mage: according to the protagonists, no spell exists that can turn {{Muggles}} into one. |
| 272 | * MagicAIsMagicA: While the magic system of the series is not explained in great detail, there are some things we know and that are consistent throughout: |
| 273 | ** Most spells require incantations consisting of [[LatinIsMagic Latin words]], and the longer the incantation, the more powerful the spell but the harder it is to cast (and therefore the more vulnerable a mage is to attack while casting). It's normally impossible for a first-year student to "double-cast" (cast a spell with a two-word incantation), [[spoiler:though Chela can pull it off in elf form]]. These escalate up to reality-warping "Grand Arias", which require incantations minutes long. Conversely, certain very weak spells, called "spatial magic", can be cast nonverbally, but you have to be creative to use them effectively. |
| 274 | ** Mages' powers are also reliant on elemental affinities and on their "etheric body", which appears to be an extension of their souls. An injury to the etheric body can dramatically weaken a mage even if there's no sign of physical injury. |
| 275 | ** Mages require some external focus to cast, which can be either a wooden wand or an athame (sword). Athames also double as a sidearm for most mages because, within a radius known as the "one-step, one-spell distance", no mage can cast faster than an opponent can strike them with a weapon. |
| 276 | ** Spells can be {{counterspell}}ed if you synchronize to their elemental cores or intercept them with an oppositional element. Nanao can do this instinctively with just her sword, which becomes known as the "Two-Handed Flow Cut" after a similar technique from the Koutz Style. |
| 277 | * MagicKnight: {{Justified|Trope}}: as is explained during the first session of the "sword arts" class, within a certain range called the "one step, one spell" distance, a physical weapon can strike a mage faster than any mage can cast a spell. Mages adopted sword training (referring to swords as "athame") four hundred years ago after a prominent archmage was killed in a duel by a {{Muggle}} swordsman this way, using their swords as both sidearms and magic foci. |
| 278 | * MagicMisfire: "Being consumed by the spell" is a catchall term for death due to magic gone awry, whether due to an ImperfectRitual, PhlebotinumOverdose, [[GoMadFromTheRevelation Going Mad from the Revelation]], a summoned creature managing to EatTheSummoner, etc. Several instances are detailed in the series: |
| 279 | ** [[spoiler:Ophelia Salvadori]] has a Grand Aria go wrong near the end of volume 2, [[spoiler:causing her chimeras and Perfume to go out of control and driving her AxCrazy]]. |
| 280 | ** In volume 4, Nanao admits to Katie that she fears her simultaneous love for Oliver and suppressed desire for a DuelToTheDeath with him might drive her mad, and [[MercyKillArrangement asks Katie to kill her if that ever happens]]. Katie has a mental image of Nanao surrounded by blood and corpses and realize she's imagining her consumed by the spell. |
| 281 | ** Volume 6: |
| 282 | *** Diana Ashbury recalls how the incumbent holder of the FlyingBroomstick time trial record simply disintegrated in midair after crossing the finish line. |
| 283 | *** [[spoiler:Clifton Morgan is revealed to have summoned fire from the tír Luftmarz and become infected by it, causing him to slowly burn alive ever since. He explodes into flames after watching his lover Diana break the broomstick time trial record, and she chooses to [[TogetherInDeath die with him]].]] |
| 284 | * TheMagocracy: The government of the Union is not discussed in detail but is strongly {{implied}} to be this. Mages sit firmly at the top of the [[FantasticCasteSystem class system]], to the point where non-magic expectant mothers sometimes approach random mages hoping they can cast a spell that would [[MageBornOfMuggles make the unborn child a mage]] (the existence of such a spell is explicitly stated to be an urban legend by the protagonists). Meanwhile, demihumans are firmly second-class citizens ''at best'': only a select few species even have civil rights, though there's a strong mage movement to change this. |
| 285 | * MaleGaze: In episode 8 of the anime, while Oliver is making small talk with Ophelia Salvadori, the camera lingers on her ample bosom in a several shots. |
| 286 | * MalevolentArchitecture: |
| 287 | ** Kimberly is built atop of an ancient labyrinth that has a tendency to encroach upon the school buildings after nightfall: Oliver, Pete, and Michela return to a classroom to retrieve a forgotten textbook only to discover when they try to leave that the door now opens into the upper levels of the labyrinth. |
| 288 | ** The last chapter of volume 9 depicts a "migration" from the tír Uranischegar, "the Regimented Heaven", which consists of a trio of stone columns that emerge from a portal and begin leveling the ground around them to be featurelessly smooth and white (before they're destroyed by two teachers). |
| 289 | * MasturbationMeansSexualFrustration: {{Discussed}} in volume 4. Main character Oliver Horn had several run-ins with the [[SmellsSexy Perfume]] of part-succubus Ophelia Salvadori in the preceding volumes, and getting {{glomp}}ed by his drunken LoveInterest Nanao Hibiya in a bar forces him to run to the bathroom with a RagingStiffie. Their friend Chela [=McFarlane=] follows him, having realized the problem, and [[AsYouKnow reminds him]] that if he's still feeling the effects of Salvadori's Perfume after this long, he's going to have to release the pressure with somebody other than himself. [[IntimateHealing She accomplishes this with what amounts to a magic-assisted handjob through their clothes, and Oliver does feel better after.]] |
| 290 | * MegaDungeon: Kimberly Magic Academy is built overtop of an ancient labyrinth containing at least five maze-like "layers", each of which is its own vast environment with its own flora and fauna and natural resources. Students at the school often build laboratories in it for degree research, a girl named Pamela Gorton has built a business supplying them with food from the surface, and some people even live down there full-time (Teresa Carste was born there). |
| 291 | * MilitaryMage: Kimberly Magic Academy is accurately, if occasionally derisively, referred to as "vocational school for Gnostic Hunters", these being an order of wizards who essentially act as counterinsurgency operators. Their job is rooting out and destroying cults of the gods of the solar system's other planets, which have the potential to cause TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt. |
| 292 | * {{Muggles}}: Called "nonmagicals" or "ordinaries" by mages, they represent the majority of humanity and form a permanent underclass in the FantasticCasteSystem: they rate better than demihumans but are still firmly second-class citizens. Turning a nonmagical into a mage is believed to be impossible, although [[MageBornOfMuggles mages born of nonmagical families]] do exist and can bring their families a significant bump in socioeconomic status. |
| 293 | * TheMultiverse: In volume 5, Professor Demitrio Aristedes explains the {{Constructed World}}'s cosmology by introducing the concept of a "tír": a world distinct from our own that [[AlienGeometries obeys different physical laws]], with different environments and ecosystems, many of them controlled by a GodEmperor of sorts. The earth the protagonists live on is an "atheosphere" because GodIsDead, and what mages call magic was originally the authority invested in a god until an alliance of humans and demihumans killed it. Every star in the sky is said to be "a glimpse of a tír", and the brighter the star, the easier it is to reach. Eight tír in particular come into conflict with our world on a cyclical basis, allowing alien creatures to migrate to it and "apostles" of the tír gods to come and try to establish cults among humans and demihumans, called Gnostics. TheMagocracy, in turn, created the [[MilitaryMage Gnostic Hunters]] to defend against such incursions. |
| 294 | * MythArc: The long-term throughline of the series is [[spoiler:Oliver's quest for revenge against his mother's murderers]]. However, the meat of most books is focused much more on the relationships between the characters and intramural conflicts between various students. |
| 295 | * NameOrderConfusion: {{Discussed}}. Nanao initially introduces herself in the Eastern style as "Hibiya Nanao", but then notes that by Union custom she would be called Nanao Hibiya. Her name is left in Western order from then on. The anime skips over this, with Nanao first introducing herself in Eastern name order but then being referred to in Western order from then on. |
| 296 | * NamedInTheAdaptation: |
| 297 | ** Episode 8 of the anime gives the name Evelynn "Speed-Talker" Odets to the originally nameless female first-year who challenges Nanao to a duel at the start of volume 2's TournamentArc and is swiftly defeated. |
| 298 | --->'''Female student:''' Her aim's bad and her visualization is lazy, but she fires fast. |
| 299 | ** Joseph Albright's family servant in his backstory [[spoiler:whom [[DisproportionateRetribution his parents murdered for beating him at chess]]]] is not named in the novels. Episode 11 of the anime gives her the name "Emma" in his TroubledBackstoryFlashback. |
| 300 | * NeverBringAGunToAKnifeFight: The origin of sword arts was a swordsman killing a noted mage in a fair duel, after which the mages realized that from a mutual cold start, a man with a sword can close with and strike a mage twelve feet away in the time it takes for that mage to cast a single spell. As a consequence, most mages began carrying short swords, "athames", for close-in defense, which double as [[SwordBeam spellcasting foci]]. |
| 301 | * NeverBringAKnifeToAFistFight: |
| 302 | ** {{Deconstructed}} in volume 2. Main character Oliver Horn fights a no-spells duel against Tullio Rossi, a self-taught CombatPragmatist who incorporates punches with his off-hand, kicks, foot-stamping, and shoulder-charges into his repertoire. After getting a HeroicSecondWind out of sheer irritation at Rossi's TrashTalk, Oliver demonstrates precisely ''why'' [[SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome trying to turn a swordfight into a fistfight against a trained opponent is a bad idea]]: the next time Rossi tries to punch him, Oliver catches that arm and throws him into an armbar lock. |
| 303 | --->'''Oliver:''' This is the reason the three basic styles have very few fist techniques, Mr. Rossi. At punching distance, throws and locks also become viable. Basically, the king of your beloved close-up brawls is actually grappling, not punching. If you don’t finish the fight in one blow, it’s not even good as a distraction against an opponent who’s willing to take the hit in order to win. You’re basically asking to be grappled by extending your arm. You’re defenseless. You managed to scrape together some semblance of style on your own. I’ll admit, you have talent. You slugged me good, after all. But the history behind orthodox styles won’t be demolished with a single punch. |
| 304 | ** Played straight with Lesedi Ingwe, a mage specializing in magic-enhanced kickboxing who regularly fights on equal terms with armed opponents because she's just that good. |
| 305 | * NeverTheSelvesShallMeet: {{Exploited}}. A mage once tried to create a duplicate of himself, which caused a RealityBreakingParadox that disintegrated him along with everything for several miles around. Experiments on this effect led to the invention of the Second Spellblade, "Creumbra, the self-racing shadow". |
| 306 | * NeverTrustATitle: The Seven Spellblades are actually a rather minor feature of the setting rather than a major driving force; also, there's initially only six. Newcomers to the series also sometimes have to have it explained to them that the title does not refer to the six main characters: their proper collective name is "the Sword Roses". |
| 307 | * NippleAndDimed: Oliver catches Nanao bathing outside, stripped to the waist ([[InnocentFanserviceGirl in full view of the boys' dorm, no less]]). The novel art uses a BoobsAndButtPose camera angle to hide everything but some sideboob; Oliver is more focused on her [[CoveredInScars collection of battle scars]] than her assets. In the manga, we get a frontal view but her nipples are whited out in one panel and given BarbieDollAnatomy in the second. In the anime, [[HandOrObjectUnderwear our view is first conveniently blocked by Oliver's hand]] while he [[PleasePutSomeClothesOn tries to explain how what she's doing is inappropriate]], then when we get a closer look [[HandOrObjectUnderwear she puts her forearm across her chest]]. |
| 308 | * NoEndorHolocaust: In volume 1, despite multiple students getting disemboweled by the garuda, the cast members specifically note that nobody actually died because [[SuperToughness mages are just made of tougher stuff than normal humans]]. The corresponding anime episode "[[Recap/ReignOfTheSevenSpellbladesS1E05Glare Glare]]" included the assurance that nobody died but [[AdaptationExplanationExtrication omitted the reason]], causing some commentators to [[InferredHolocaust infer dozens of student deaths]][[invoked]]--which in all fairness [[AcademyOfAdventure wouldn't exactly be out of character for Kimberly]] (the canonical death toll for that school year was 17 across all seven grade years, which is actually less than usual). |
| 309 | * NonHeteronormativeSociety: Played with. Chela mentions in volume 2 that {{Muggle}} society is fairly heteronormative, but among mages, the only thing that really matters is your own abilities: at least eleven named characters including main cast member Pete Reston are known to be some flavor of queer, and this is considered unremarkable or even a point in their favor. That said, there ''is'' some stigma around {{Sex|Magic}} ''[[SexMagic Magic]]'', enough that there's campus club for students with gender- and sex-related magical traits which serves as the InUniverse equivalent of an LGBT student union (founder Carlos Whitrow is nonbinary and asexual, with a BeautifulSingingVoice that counters other sex-related magics). |
| 310 | * NoodleIncident: |
| 311 | ** Kevin "The Survivor" Walker managed to get lost in the labyrinth, survive for six months (long enough he was [[ReportsOfMyDeathWereGreatlyExaggerated declared dead and his funeral held]]), and finally climb back out little worse for wear. Exactly how he managed to do this has never been explained. Ditto the time he reportedly tried to cook a meal while on the fourth layer and was nearly killed by the reapers that guard the GreatBigLibraryOfEverything. |
| 312 | ** Teresa Carste was apparently ''born'' in the labyrinth and spent a significant chunk of her childhood living in it: at one point she recalls to Oliver the AmusingInjuries she suffered from eating various creatures and plants. How she came to be down there to begin with, or who her parents were, has yet to be addressed. |
| 313 | ** {{Implied}} with Alvin Godfrey: there's an {{flashback}} sequence in volume 3 where he used BehavioralConditioning to immunize himself to Ophelia Salvadori's perfume, via the expedient of casting [[AgonyBeam pain curses]] on his own genitals to [[GroinAttack simulate the pain of a good swift kick]]. Now factor in that Oliver explained in volume 1 that the pain curse can only inflict pain the caster has experienced... |
| 314 | ** That time resident MasterPoisoner Tim Linton gassed the dining hall. It's cited in volume 6 as the reason he'd lose if he ran for StudentCouncilPresident. [[spoiler:[[ResolvedNoodleIncident We do eventually get an explanation in volume 10]] and [[CerebusCallBack it's a lot less funny than it sounded]]: it was an attempted mass MurderSuicide due to him being in a ''really'' bad mental state, and Godfrey saved his life despite himself.]] |
| 315 | [[/folder]] |
| 316 | |
| 317 | [[folder:O -- P]] |
| 318 | * TheOmniscientCouncilOfVagueness: {{Downplayed}} with Headmistress Esmeralda's insider group among the faculty. They have a series of secret meetings around in the series, but are all clearly identified and are as much in the dark about [[spoiler:Oliver Horn's conspiracy to kill them]] as the student body. While their overall goals [[spoiler:and their reason for murdering Oliver's mother Chloe Halford]] remain vague, they take significantly more concrete action to smoke out the competing conspiracy starting in volume 6 after [[spoiler:the conspirators fail to conceal the assassination of Enrico Forghieri]]. |
| 319 | * OnceMoreWithClarity: The final chapter of volume 10 revisits several previous {{backstory}} scenes, mainly from the prologue and Oliver's childhood memories, through the FramingDevice of [[spoiler:Demitrio Aristides reading his mind during their battle]]. [[spoiler:We see the entirety of Chloe's torture at the hands of her killers (including the revelation that Esmeralda is [[{{Dhampyr}} part-vampire]]), and we learn that the Sherwood clan leadership was just as rotten as most of the other mage families we've seen: the woman Oliver had healed through pregnancy was Shannon Sherwood and [[ChildByRape he was involuntarily the father]], and we learn that the clan head didn't care whether Oliver lived or died, only if he could make a breakthrough with the family's research into MergerOfSouls.]] |
| 320 | * OneSteveLimit: Surprisingly not: Pete Reston is a main cast member, but there's also a recurring underclassman named Peter Cornish who debuts in volume 4, who is part another circle of friends with Teresa Carste, Dean Travers, and Rita Appleton. |
| 321 | * OnlySmartPeopleMayPass: The test to enter the third layer of the labyrinth consists of the Battle of Hell's Armies, where two skeletal legions eternally reenact the ancient Battle of Diama (a FantasyConflictCounterpart of the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Zama Battle of Zama]]). The objective is to subvert the historical events so that the losing side instead wins, which requires the mages taking the test to both recognize the battle (Oliver only knows it because Pete had mentioned it offscreen while nerding out) and have enough knowledge of battlefield tactics to figure out how to change history. Though Vanessa Aldiss proves it's also possible to [[CuttingTheKnot simply brute-force the test]]: when the seniors reach the battlefield in volume 7, she's singlehandedly wiped out both armies. |
| 322 | * OpenMouthInsertFoot: Oliver has a bit of a problem with this, especially early in the series. |
| 323 | ** During the first sword arts lesson, Richard Andrews volunteers to cross swords with Nanao, but Oliver jumps in instead, saying that he met her first and they even fought the troll together. Richard gets ''very'' angry at this, and Oliver realizes Richard was [[ScrewThisImOutOfHere one of the students who ran for it while he and the other Sword Roses were holding the troll off]], and that he's made an enemy of Richard by accidentally calling attention to it. |
| 324 | ** Oliver tries to reassure Katie after she's bitten by the magical silkworm, and makes an allusion to an angel coming down to Earth. Katie turns bright red, and Oliver realizes he laid it on ''way'' too thick. |
| 325 | * OurElvesAreDifferent: Elves are about the only species of demihumans [[FantasticRacism treated as equals by mages]], and sometimes interbreed with them: Chela is [[HalfHumanHybrid half-and-half]] and [[SuperMode can take on a fully elven form to increase her spellcasting ability for short periods]]. Khiirgi "Avarice" Albschuch, a sixth-year aligned to the conservative faction, is the first full-blooded elf character introduced so far, and is an iconoclastic {{Jerkass}} who was [[MySpeciesDothProtestTooMuch expelled from elven society over her past behavior]]. Culturally, the elves are isolationists who generally despise humans and [[MalignedMixedMarriage forbid outbreeding]]: Theodore [=McFarlane=] marrying Mishakua reportedly nearly started a war. |
| 326 | * OurDwarvesAreAllTheSame: Played with, as the first dwarf character met in the series, Luluim in volume 11, is bulky, bearded, axe-swinging, and ''[[GirlsWithMoustaches female]]''. More generally, the dwarves are one of the few demihuman races to have citizenship. |
| 327 | * OverlyLongHug: Oliver and Nanao have their first real public display of affection in volume 4, after Nanao's first senior-level broomsports match. Intending it as a reward for getting through the match without injury, Oliver gives her a big hug--and then neither one of them can bring themselves to end the hug for a full ten minutes. |
| 328 | * PainToTheAss: While on their way to their MadScientistLaboratory for the first time, the Sword Roses are forced to flee a DeadlyGas trap through a passage they already know is full of bowshells--barnacle-like creatures that fire a spike at anything that comes near them. Guy ends up with a bunch of broken-off spikes in his rear. |
| 329 | * PainfulConfession: In volume 10, Oliver is forced to call a halt to his and Nanao's [[TheirFirstTime first attempt to consummate their relationship]] because it hit a TraumaButton for him: he confesses to the amorous Nanao that [[RapeAsBackstory he's been the victim of sexual violence in the past]] and can't keep going. With them ''just'' having made up after [[spoiler:a jealousy-induced ForcefulKiss from her]] in the previous volume, she's understanding enough not to try to force the issue, and they agree to try to gradually work past his PTSD. |
| 330 | * PainfulTransformation: |
| 331 | ** Pete Reston begins suffering painful mana disruptions upon becoming a SexShifter. According to main character Oliver, this is a fairly common side effect of changes in the body among mages: in addition to normal puberty and illness sometimes causing it, he recalls helping a woman through mana disruptions caused by a pregnancy. [[spoiler:It was his cousin Shannon.]] |
| 332 | ** Fay Willock is a half-werewolf, and taking his wolf form puts him in constant severe pain. He's eventually able to fight through it and master VoluntaryShapeshifting out of sheer determination to stay with his now-lover Stacy Cornwallis. |
| 333 | * ParentalNeglect: Stacy Cornwallis was conceived as a [[SpareToTheThrone "spare"]] to Chela with a woman from a [=McFarlane=] cadet branch, just in case Chela didn't work out or died. They were both forbidden to acknowledge their relationship, and Stacy was neglected by her stepfather, who saw her burgeoning talents as a constant reminder that she wasn't his. |
| 334 | * PetTheDog: |
| 335 | ** Ophelia Salvadori in volume 2 (episode 8 of the anime). For all that she's a {{succubus}}-blooded SerialRapist, she's still ultimately human and gets lonely living a solitary life in the labyrinth. In volume 2 (anime episode 8), Oliver runs into her when she's in a good mood and they're able to have a civil conversation: it comes out that among other things she has a sweet tooth and sometimes still comes up to the cafeteria for the pumpkin pie. She's acquainted with Shannon Sherwood for much the same reason, [[spoiler:probably helped by their CommonalityConnection of both having been forced to bear a child for familial obligations]]. She also subtly tries to warn Oliver away from the labyrinth for the next while, [[spoiler:{{foreshadowing}} her planned Grand Aria that causes her to be consumed by the spell]]. |
| 336 | ** Theodore [=McFarlane=] refuses to treat Stacy Cornwallis as anything more than another student [[spoiler:despite being her biological father, which caused her to [[ParentalAbandonment also be shunned by her stepfather]]]]. In volume 9, though, after she and Fay perform well as a BattleCouple in the TournamentArc, he promises to make her family allow their romance rather than force them onto the CourtlyLove path. |
| 337 | * PlantPerson: The Kimberly grounds are lined with talking flowers that like to harangue and tease new students as they head in for orientation. According to Guy, [[EmpathicEnvironment the personalities of such magiflora are affected by the quality of magical particles they absorb from the ground]], so their questionable behavior serves as an early clue to [[CrapsackWorld what life at Kimberly is like]]. They'll also act as {{Knowledge Broker}}s of things they've seen, but only if you can make them laugh first. |
| 338 | * PocketDimension: The natural laws of the world were set by its now-deceased god. The purpose of a "Grand Aria", an extremely difficult ritual magic developed in various forms by experienced mages, is to craft a pocket universe where those laws are altered. |
| 339 | * PowerDyesYourHair: Nanao has a trait called "innocent color" which causes her normally black hair to turn white when she draws magical power. Oliver's narration explains that it only happens in mages with exceptional magical circulation and a crystalline hair structure that allows uninterrupted flow of magical particles. |
| 340 | * PowerTrio: {{Discussed}} in volume 9 by the TournamentArc match commentators, who note how similar the finalist teams are in structure: they each have [[TheLeader a leader/planner figure]] (respectively Oliver Horn and Richard Andrews), a strong physical fighter (Nanao Hibiya, Joseph Albright), and an unorthodox disruptor (Yuri Leik, Tullio Rossi). |
| 341 | * {{Precursors}}: |
| 342 | ** The progenitor demihumans from the age of the world's [[GodIsDead long-dead god]] are the forerunners of all modern demihuman races. Now extinct, they're said to have been very similar to the god, with a limited sense of self that allowed them to access a portion of its power through the AkashicRecords, [[spoiler:an art that Demitrio Aristides rediscovered]]. It's also believed that they were the ones who unified the races of the world to rise up and KillTheGod. |
| 343 | ** Volume 8 explains that the labyrinth underneath Kimberly was built by an ancient civilization called the Parsu, which was destroyed by a ZombieApocalypse when its army of UndeadLaborers went out of control. Cyrus Rivermoore has Parsu ancestry and is trying to rediscover their necromantic arts, [[spoiler:accompanied by the ghost of a Parsu mage, Fau]]. |
| 344 | * {{Prequel}}: ''Side of Fire: Chronicle of Purgatory'' is set three years before the start of the main series and expands on the backstory of Alvin Godfrey, Leoncio Echevalria, and the {{rival}}ry between their respective student body factions. |
| 345 | * ProfanityPolice: PlayedForLaughs after Oliver and Nanao's [[spoiler:aborted first attempt to [[TheirFirstTime consummate their relationship]]]]: Oliver is appalled by her unladylike description of the event. |
| 346 | -->'''Nanao:''' Practice makes perfect! Try every means that avail us, offer sufficient supplications to the divine, and soon—or in due time—we shall manage to [[spoiler:get the pole in the hole]].\ |
| 347 | '''Oliver:''' Uncouth! Nanao, that was uncouth! ''(she cackles)'' |
| 348 | [[/folder]] |
| 349 | |
| 350 | [[folder:Q -- R]] |
| 351 | * QuestionableConsent: Upper-class mages seem to have a rather hazy grasp of the concept. |
| 352 | ** In volume 4, Oliver is suffering aftereffects of the previous volume antagonist's SexMagic. His friend Chela corners him in a restaurant bathroom after he has an episode, and informs him that, AsYouKnow, if he's still feeling the effects of [[SmellsSexy succubus Perfume]] this long after the incident, then the only way to clear it out of his system will be to satisfy the urge, and not by himself. After suggesting he try approaching his LoveInterest Nanao for sex without getting a response,[[note]]The two have admitted to their attraction at this point but aren't quite ready for a RelationshipUpgrade.[[/note]] she manipulates him into some IntimateHealing that amounts to a magic-assisted handjob through their clothes, to which he never clearly consents. To Chela's credit, she feels extremely guilty about it afterwards: [[LikeBrotherAndSister they're not attracted to each other that way]] and she worries she might have irreparably damaged their friendship by trying to help him. (He does briefly criticize her for it in volume 5, but doesn't seem to be holding any hard feelings.) |
| 353 | ** [[spoiler:Oliver and Shannon's great-grandfather, when he forced the two teenagers to have a child together. He ''claims'' that Shannon consented, but, quite apart from the fact that Oliver is under fifteen and ThePatriarch has to drug him into compliance, [[RapeAsDrama Shannon clearly has no idea what's about to happen]] and it's entirely possible that even if she ''did'' give consent, it was under duress by the head of the family.]] |
| 354 | * RagingStiffie: In volume 3, Oliver can't help "pitching a tent" despite his normally incredible endurance after being immersed in Ophelia's [[SmellsSexy Perfume]] for several hours during the rescue attempt for Pete. He has to awkwardly tell Nanao to back off a bit and not {{glomp}} him like she usually does, much to her disappointment--not helped by the fact that [[BluntMetaphorsTrauma Nanao, having learned Yelglish as a second language, doesn't actually understand what the idiom "pitching a tent" means]]. |
| 355 | * RapeAsDrama: [[spoiler:A flashback in volume 10 depicts ThePatriarch of the Sherwood clan ordering a pubescent Oliver drugged into a hyper-aggressive state and locking him in his cousin Shannon's bedroom with the intent of producing an heir to the dynasty with Chloe's SuperpowerfulGenetics. The result is '''''horrifying''''' to read, and Oliver still feels deeply guilty over it in the present day (even though Shannon forgave him since it blatantly wasn't voluntary) and has [[TraumaButton lingering PTSD that hampers his attempts to be intimate with Nanao when they finally become a couple]].]] |
| 356 | * ReestablishingCharacterMoment: Volume 7 does this with several returning characters who didn't appear in the year 2 books: |
| 357 | ** Necromancer Cyrus Rivermoore is reintroduced in the prologue, and is up to his old tricks of preying on other students in the labyrinth. [[spoiler:This foreshadows him backstabbing Alvin Godfrey at the climax of the book and stealing his sternum out of his body, setting up his promotion to ArcVillain for volume 8.]] |
| 358 | ** Richard Andrews and Joseph Albright, rivals to [[TrueCompanions the Sword Roses]] from the year 1 books, return for a rematch in the TournamentArc (teaming up with Tullio Rossi, who unlike them had stuck around for year 2) after [[TookALevelInBadass taking several levels in badass]]. To show off their growth, they easily defeat the team of Katie, Guy, and Pete and a team of second-years led by the secretly hypercompetent Teresa Carste without taking a single casualty of their own. |
| 359 | * RelationshipLabelingProblems: Oliver and Nanao have basically been attached at the hip since they fought a DeadlySparring match in volume 1. In volume 4, after he and Chela hold a [[TheTalk seminar for their friends on mage sexual and romantic relations]], Nanao asks him out of the blue if he wants to have children with her, then backtracks slightly and chalks it up to CultureClash. Oliver admits he feels attracted to her but refuses to elaborate; his InternalMonologue mentions not wanting their relationship "reduced to reproduction and inheritance" the way it so often is among mages. For her part, Katie asks Nanao later if she's in love with Oliver, and Nanao replies that she feels very strong affection for him, but isn't sure she can actually call it love since she simultaneously hasn't been able to kick the desire for a DuelToTheDeath with him. |
| 360 | -->'''Nanao:''' If you truly love someone, can that emotion coexist with an urge to see them dead? |
| 361 | * RelationshipUpgrade: |
| 362 | ** In volume 9, Stacy Cornwallis and Fay Willock, formerly "master and knight", have actively fallen into a sort of CourtlyLove, motivating them to join the combat leagues in hopes of forcing her family to allow them to be a couple. [[spoiler:Despite losing in the finals, Theodore is impressed enough he promises to make her family accept the relationship.]] |
| 363 | ** In volume 10, after a lot of soul-searching following events in the previous volume, [[spoiler:Oliver returns the favor with Nanao and takes her to bed, admitting to himself the next morning that he's in love with her]]. |
| 364 | * RelativeError: Katie, who has a crush on Oliver, is somewhat put-out when he's affectionately kissed on the cheek by a female upperclassman. Oliver identifies her as his cousin Shannon, and reminds her that he'd previously told TheTeam how she and her brother took him in after his mother died. |
| 365 | * RememberTheNewGuy: Stacy Cornwallis and Fay Willock were apparently present for the garuda incident in volume 1 but weren't seen. We are humorously informed at their introduction in volume 2 that they spent the whole time hiding while Oliver, Nanao, and Richard were fighting it. |
| 366 | -->'''Fay:''' Seriously? You want in [on the TournamentArc]? You were quaking in your boots like the rest of us when that garuda attacked.\ |
| 367 | '''Stacy:''' F-Fay! You're mistaken! [[BlatantLies I was just watching really intently!]] |
| 368 | * ReportsOfMyDeathWereGreatlyExaggerated: |
| 369 | ** Per normal school policy, the faculty doesn't get involved in missing persons cases in the labyrinth until eight days have passed, at which point it's assumed they'll be trying to recover a body. Kevin "The Survivor" Walker got lost down there for six months and was declared dead and his funeral held, only for him to eventually turn up later that year no worse for wear. |
| 370 | ** {{Exploited}} by TheConspiracy targeting several of Kimberly's teachers: they're sometimes able to recruit students for their hits whom the school had already given up for dead, which helps to mask their casualties. |
| 371 | * ResolvedNoodleIncident: Volume 10 does this multiple times: |
| 372 | ** Oliver's FlashbackEcho in volume 2 of helping heal a woman for pregnancy-induced mana disruptions? [[spoiler:It was his cousin Shannon, and [[ChildByRape he was the father]], after [[RapeByProxy being drugged by their great-grandfather into raping her]].]] |
| 373 | ** That gag in volume 6 about Tim Linton once gassing the Fellowship? [[spoiler:[[CerebusCallBack Not so funny when we're told the context]]: it was basically an attempted school shooting brought on by Tim being in a ''really'' bad headspace due to his DarkAndTroubledPast, and Alvin Godfrey saved his life from the attempted MurderSuicide.]] |
| 374 | * RousseauWasRight: Surprisingly for a DarkFantasy series, the theme that people aren't naturally evil but are made that way by their circumstances comes up a lot. Most of the antagonists turn out to have significant redeeming qualities and/or {{Freudian Excuse}}s, and Katie's efforts to kill 'em with kindness make a surprising amount of headway. While the mage world and especially Kimberly are amoral and often horrific, a lot of it is driven by [[ToxicFamilyInfluence generational cycles of abuse]], social inertia, and the cynicism of a minority of mage aristocrats, and a growing number of people are now questioning it, which has a lot of allegorical applicability to the time of writing. |
| 375 | * RuleOfSeven: |
| 376 | ** It's not called ''Reign of the '''Seven''' Spellblades'' for nothing: the fact Luther Garland initially says there are six is {{foreshadowing}}. [[spoiler:Nanao spontaneously invents the seventh at the climax of volume 1.]] |
| 377 | ** Similarly, seven mages conspired to kill Chloe Halford in the prologue, which took place seven years before the series begins. [[spoiler:Oliver's SeriesGoal is to avenge her by killing them.]] |
| 378 | * RunningGag: |
| 379 | ** [[BigEater Nanao's disregard for portion sizes.]] |
| 380 | ** The various female cast members [[ChickMagnet fussing over Oliver]], [[TheGadfly to the amusement of Pete and Guy.]] |
| 381 | [[/folder]] |
| 382 | |
| 383 | [[folder:S -- T]] |
| 384 | * SadistTeacher: The majority of the teachers are this. The headmistress of Kimberley openly states during orientation that about twenty percent of entrants will not survive to graduate. It's meant to be TrainingFromHell for battlemages called Gnostic Hunters. |
| 385 | * SchoolRivalry: Kimberly Magic Academy has a rivalry with the nearby Featherston Sorcery School. The dispute is primarily political: Kimberly is essentially the ThugDojo with its TrainingFromHell curriculum and disregard for the rights of demihumans (though pro-rights students are making progress in recent years), and Featherston students often try to stop Kimberly from culling demihuman settlements and using them in experiments--and usually get beaten up for their trouble, since their school focuses much less heavily on combat training. Case in point: in volume 4, a group of Featherston second- and third-years [[BarBrawl pick a fight with the Sword Roses in a restaurant]] in the town of Galatea located between them, which the Sword Roses easily win, to the approval of upperclassmen looking on. |
| 386 | -->'''Kimberly upperclassman:''' Listen up, second-years! Lemme give you a word of advice. I’m only gonna say this once, so don’t you dare forget it: This is Kimberly’s town! And if someone starts a fight—''you end it.'' |
| 387 | * ScrewTheRulesTheyreNotReal: Despite being an openly and proudly dangerous AcademyOfAdventure where it's expected that about twenty percent of matriculating students will not survive to graduate in seven years, Kimberly Magic Academy does have ''some'' school rules, but enforcement is haphazard and usually left up to the whims of upperclassmen (fortunately the current student council is of a mind to run a Campus Watch). Volume 2 makes particular note of the school rules on {{Wizard Duel}}s, which are a routine way to settle disputes: on the school grounds proper, only upperclassmen are allowed to set their swords' dulling spells at half-strength, but protagonist Oliver Horn is challenged by Tullio Rossi in the labyrinth beneath the school, where there's nobody to enforce the rule, and Oliver is willing to go along. |
| 388 | * ScrewYouElves: ZigZagged in volume 8. Elves as a people are on the receiving end of this ''in absentia''... by Khiirgi Albschuch, an elf who was [[MySpeciesDothProtestTooMuch kicked out of elven society for her disrespect for propriety]], such as conjuring [[NonHumanUndead undead plants]]. For her part, she thinks her birth people are stuck in a rut and refuse to innovate or break the rules of the world's long-dead god (who favored them over the other races), which allowed [[ScrewTheRulesTheyreNotReal more iconoclastic]] humans to long ago pass them by. Her MotiveRant to this effect is largely blown off by her rival Lesedi Ingwe, who says that Khirrgi may be more innovative than other elves and an objectively stronger mage than Lesedi herself, but her aforementioned disrespect for propriety is a FatalFlaw in one very important way: [[PrecisionFStrike "Nobody fucking likes you."]] |
| 389 | * SeductionAsOneUpmanship: |
| 390 | ** Tullio Rossi, who [[UnknownRival sees himself as a class rival]] to main character Oliver Horn, makes several passes at Oliver's LoveInterest Nanao Hibiki. He has absolutely no success at this because [[SingleTargetSexuality Nanao only has eyes for Oliver]]. |
| 391 | ** In volume 6, during a confrontation between the two parties in the election for StudentCouncilPresident, Khiirgi Albschuch from Echevalria's group brags about repeatedly cucking Godfrey's supporter Lesedi Ingwe to piss her off. |
| 392 | * SeekingSanctuary: Volume 10 shows how, when Chloe Halford's Gnostic Hunter comrades turned on her, she went out to delay them while her husband Edgar Groves [[spoiler:and their son Oliver]] fled through the night to take refuge with her politically powerful birth family. [[spoiler:It also shows how the Sherwood clan patriarch turned this into a case of "out of the frying, into the fire": he dominated Edgar, forcing him to stand by and watch as he subjected Oliver to a horrible TraumaCongaLine, the crowning moment of which was when he [[RapeAsDrama drugged him into raping his cousin Shannon]] in hopes of breeding Chloe's SuperpowerfulGenetics back into the main family.]] |
| 393 | * SeriousBusiness: |
| 394 | ** PlayedForLaughs. There's actually a significant degree of InUniverse FandomRivalry over the three main schools of Sword Arts, and Oliver and Chela get into a spirited argument in volume 2 over whether Pete should switch to the Rizett Style (Chela) or stick with Lanoff (Oliver). [[TakeAThirdOption Nanao offers to teach him instead but is shouted down]], and Guy suggests they instead try collaborating on teaching him fundamental elements of tactics that are common to all styles. |
| 395 | ** [[SelfParody Self-parodied]] in one of the anime {{omake}}s, where Katie walks in on Oliver and Chela arguing again and thinks they've restarted the sword arts argument from earlier. Nope, this time they're debating the relative merits of various breakfast breads. |
| 396 | * SetSwordsToStun: |
| 397 | ** Students are able to cast anti-lethality enchantments on their weapons which make them unable to deal lethal damage. Naturally, these enchantments are required for training duels between students. Unfortunately, it's possible to ''break'' these enchantments, as happened in Oliver's duel with Nanao. The instructor immediately called a halt to the match. Oliver was understandably deeply horrified to learn the enchantments had been broken and he and Nanao nearly killed each other. |
| 398 | ** It's also possible to deliberately set the dulling spell at half-strength, which allows a weapon to draw blood while still not permitting any lethal injuries. Normally only upperclassmen are allowed to do this, but the Sword Roses fight two duels in volume 2 in the labyrinth, without any teachers or upperclassmen around to enforce this rule. |
| 399 | ** Inverted by the opposite spell '''Acutus''', which puts a lethal edge ''back'' onto a weapon. |
| 400 | * ShadowArchetype: Oliver and Nanao are very much alike, but also different in very important ways. Both are {{Master Swordsm|an}}en, but [[TechnicianVersusPerformer Oliver's skills are rooted in endless hours of rigorous practice and book learning, whereas Nanao is a natural talent who does her best work when she isn't even thinking about what she's doing]]. Their other differences are highlighted by the conclusion of volume 1: [[spoiler:Nanao invents the Seventh Spellblade and [[LiteralDisarming severs Miligan's hand with it]] out of a need to rescue Katie, but spares Miligan's life, as her sword style repudiates the idea of vengeance in favor of finding joy in a fair fight against a WorthyOpponent. Oliver, meanwhile, uses the Fourth Spellblade which he reconstructed from the GhostMemory of his mother Chloe Halford, severs Darius Grenville's hand with it, and then slowly tortures him to death with pain spells to avenge Grenville's part in Chloe's murder.]] Oliver himself is reminded of Nanao's words, "Enjoy not the sword of vengeance, but the sword of mutual love," [[spoiler:and ruefully muses that "I will test the limits of this philosophy."]] |
| 401 | * ShapeshifterStruggles: In volume 2, Pete Reston has a strange dream and wakes up to discover his body has become female below the neck. He spends most of the following day irritably snapping at his friends because he has no idea how to deal with this (and because the transformation is causing [[PainfulTransformation painful side effects]] because his body isn't used to it), before Oliver and upperclassman Carlos Whitrow figure out what happened. Oliver explains to Pete that he's a "reversi", i.e. a SexShifter, and Carlos invites Pete to join a (heavily queer-coded) campus club for students with {{gender|RestrictedAbility}}- and {{sex|Magic}}-linked magical traits, with Oliver tagging along to keep Pete company. |
| 402 | * ShapeshiftersDoItForAChange: {{Discussed}} in volume 2 when Pete comes out to the rest of the Sword Roses as a [[SexShifter reversi]]. Chela idly comments that Pete could "make the most of it", noting that Rod Farquois, a historical archmage who was a reversi, had a variety of lovers of both sexes. (For his part, Pete is suggested in later volumes to be gay.) This line is {{Bowdlerized}} out of the manga and anime adaptations. |
| 403 | * SheIsNotMyGirlfriend: {{Exaggerated}} in volume 4. Nanao is unhorsed during her first senior-level broomsports match and is caught before she hits the ground by Oliver, who starts frantically checking to make sure she wasn't hurt. Much to his chagrin, their amused teammates start jokingly calling her his ''wife''. |
| 404 | * ShellGame: Team Miligan's strategy in their combat league finals match boils down to Miligan repeatedly swapping her familiar Milihand between herself and Lynette and sometimes hiding it underground, so that the opposing team can never be sure where it is and thereby guard against [[DeadlyGaze its paralytic gaze]]. [[spoiler:Which, much like her HidingBehindYourBangs hairstyle, is all a distraction from the fact she's had her main basilisk eye removed from her left eye socket and reimplanted in her back!]] |
| 405 | * SignificantBirthDate: Author Creator/BokutoUno listed off a number of the major characters' birthdays in [[https://vxtwitter.com/unobokuto/status/1775385388435280290?s=46 a 2024 tweet]], and several have noteworthy birthdays. |
| 406 | ** [[TheLancer Nanao Hibiya]]'s birthday is the first day of the seventh month. This is another example of [[RuleOfSeven the significance of 7 to Nanao (and the series)]]: [[MeaningfulName her name is a version of the number seven]], [[spoiler:and she created the Seventh Spellblade]]. |
| 407 | ** Tim Linton's birthday is 2/14, i.e. Valentine's Day, which is deeply funny given he's a CampGay WholesomeCrossdresser with an unrequited crush on his senior Alvin Godfrey. |
| 408 | ** Professor Demitrio Aristides's his birthday is 9/9. The number 9 is associated with suffering in (predominantly Christian) folklore, fitting into the suffering he first endured in his StartOfDarkness, then inflicted on Chloe Halford in her PlotTriggeringDeath [[spoiler:which indirectly caused her son Oliver to go through a horrific TraumaCongaLine]]. |
| 409 | * SimpleSolutionWontWork: In volume 2 ([[Recap/ReignOfTheSevenSpellbladesS1E09Explore anime episode 9]]), the Sword Roses take a lengthy trek through the labyrinth to reach the laboratory their ''senpai'' Vera Miligan offered them. The next morning ([[Recap/ReignOfTheSevenSpellbladesS1E10MasterAndKnight episode 10]]), she shows them a shortcut, a PortalPool that crosses over to a second-floor classroom in the school building. Asked why she didn't tell them they could use the PortalPool to get to the laboratory and save the trip, Miligan reminds them that [[MalevolentArchitecture the labyrinth has a mind of its own]]: that entrance isn't always accessible, and if they can't safely reach the laboratory by other paths, then it's probably too dangerous for them to be down here in the first place. |
| 410 | * SimplifiedSpellcasting: "Spatial magic" is a class of quickly castable spells like Oliver's favored "Grave Soil" spell that don't require an incantation and therefore are much easier to use within the "one step, one spell" distance. The NecessaryDrawback is that they're much less powerful than conventional spells (the [[MagicAIsMagicA general rule in the series]] being, [[LatinIsMagic the more Latin words in the incantation]], the more powerful the spell), but they have significant utility in sword arts and hand-to-hand combat, often being enough to create an opening for an attack. |
| 411 | * SingleStrokeBattle: [[spoiler:Oliver's duel with Darius Grenville. In all but one possible future, it ends with Oliver dead, but Oliver uses the Fourth Spellblade to reach the other future, where he avoids Darius's blade by the skin of his teeth and severs the man's sword hand.]] |
| 412 | * SinkOrSwimMentor: The general ethos of Kimberly teachers. Students are given instruction but are largely expected to resolve the consequences of their mistakes themselves or by helping each other, and as long as nobody actually ''dies'' in an incident in the labyrinth, the teachers will turn a blind eye to it. Even when students go missing in the labyrinth, the teachers are forbidden to get involved until eight days have gone by. That said, even by that standard, some teachers take it to extremes: Vanessa Aldiss finds it amusing when students are injured in her classes, and Enrico Forghieri is AxCrazy and doesn't care. The two notable exceptions to the rule are the younger teachers, Luther Garland and his old friend Ted Williams, who pointedly try to provide better instruction and intervene in classroom incidents ''before'' they get out of hand. |
| 413 | * SortingAlgorithmOfThreateningGeography: The known layers of the labyrinth escalate from "livable if you're careful" to "dangerous even for experienced mages". |
| 414 | ## The upper layer is [[RuinsForRuinsSake a maze of ruined, crumbling stone]] full of traps and fauna both benign and dangerous. |
| 415 | ## Below that is the Bustling Forest, a vast expanse of habitable but dangerous woodlands with a gigantic WorldTree in the center, and giant bees often nesting in the ceiling. At the end is the Battle of Hell's Armies, [[NightOfTheLivingMooks two armies of undead warriors]] that eternally reenact the ancient Battle of Diama and only allow mages to pass who can defeat the historical winner. |
| 416 | ## The third layer is the Miasma Swamp, which is [[SwampsAreEvil exactly what it sounds like]]. |
| 417 | ## The fourth layer, Library Plaza, suddenly takes you back to a sort of civilization: it's a GreatBigLibraryOfEverything watched over by [[AbsurdlyDedicatedWorker the untiring seraphs of the dead god]], including the [[TheGrimReaper reapers]] that are also tasked with slaying humans who live to the age of 200. You have to earn access to the stacks on each visit by surviving simulations of historical events recorded in the library. |
| 418 | ## Below the library is Firedrake Canyon, a desolate landscape of scorched rock inhabited mostly by dragons. |
| 419 | * SmoochOfVictory: Played for laughs in volume 1 when Chela decides Oliver hasn't been congratulated enough for his part in saving the day earlier, and tries to kiss him on the cheek. He's actually put off by this because they're LikeBrotherAndSister; meanwhile, Katie, who has a crush on Oliver, [[JealousRomanticWitness nearly blows a fuse]]. Then Nanao comes over and, taking it as a local custom, gives him a kiss and then demands one for herself. He's saved by the arrival of his cousin Shannon, who gives him ''another'' kiss by way of greeting; meanwhile Katie is fit to burst, and Nanao is left plaintively whining about her kiss getting forgotten. [[spoiler:Given a CallBack when Nanao again asks Oliver for a kiss after they beat Miligan. Oliver nearly does a FaceFault. Then Katie finally kisses both of them after she regains consciousness.]] |
| 420 | * StraightManAndWiseGuy: Vera Miligan's tournament match in volume 10 pits a very conventional dueling team led by Gwenaël Deschamps against 1) our friendly neighborhood MadScientist Miligan who deliberately [[LiteralDisarming gets her own hand cut off again]] to smuggle Milihand into the arena, 2) Lynette Cornwallis, who prefers spells to swordplay and conjures what amounts to a magical AttackDrone to split the other team's attention, and 3) Zoe Colonna, a girl on the verge of being consumed by the spell who fights by submerging herself in the ground like a LandShark. Between Miligan and Lynette playing a ShellGame with Milihand and its basilisk eye so the other team can't keep track of it [[spoiler:and [[KansasCityShuffle doesn't realize that Miligan had Katie move her OTHER basilisk eye to her back]]]], DeathFromAbove from Lynette's drone, and Zoe literally breaking chunks off the arena floor, the whole match ends up resembling a screwball physical comedy routine with Deschamps's team as the StraightMan. |
| 421 | * StrongFamilyResemblance: |
| 422 | ** Curly blond hair is a HereditaryHairstyle of the [=McFarlane=] family: Theodore [=McFarlane=] and his daughters Michela [=McFarlane=] and [[spoiler:Stacy Cornwallis]] all have it. Chela jokes at the entrance ceremony dinner that it's considered polite to faint at the beauty of it. |
| 423 | ** Oliver, much like Franchise/HarryPotter whom he's partly based on, largely takes after his father with a shock of messy brown hair, but has golden eyes like his mother. [[spoiler:The eye color isn't natural: his eyes were brown when he was a child but [[EyeColorChange seem to have changed]] after he took part of his mother's soul into himself. He {{exploit|edTrope}}s the fact he doesn't look like Chloe Halford to help conceal his parentage from her killers.]] |
| 424 | * StudentCouncilPresident: The council president serves a single three-year term beginning at the start of the school year following their election, and gets to appoint the rest of the council at will (as well as their replacement should they graduate during their term). The actual powers of the student council aren't clearly defined, but it's clear they have a lot of influence on the student body culture, and the election is complicated by the fact that it runs concurrently with the [[TournamentArc triennal combat leagues]]: as mages as a whole tend to believe in AsskickingLeadsToLeadership, teams that perform well in the tournament tend to boost the electoral performance of candidates they support. |
| 425 | ** At the start of the series, the incumbent is Alvin Godfrey, a fifth-year who was elected at the end of the year before the Sword Roses enroll, and has led a big, though [[LingeringSocialTensions still ongoing]], shift in Kimberly's student culture: he got his start as a campus organizer trying to protect weaker and underprivileged students from bullies and predatory upperclassmen, whereas the old council let them run riot. |
| 426 | ** Much of the plot of volumes 6-10 revolves around the fact he's getting ready to GraduateFromTheStory at the end of 1534 and the old council, led by his rival and ex-election opponent Leoncio Echevalria, wants to retake control and turn the clock back. The Sword Roses' ''senpai'' Vera Miligan runs as the pro-Watch candidate. [[spoiler:In the end, Tim Linton wins a DarkHorseVictory when Godfrey nominates him at the last minute.]] |
| 427 | * StudentsSecretSociety: The MythArc of the series revolves around a conspiracy by a secret society of students at Kimberly Magic Academy to assassinate seven professors to avenge the torturous murder of their former student Chloe Halford in the prologue to volume 1. [[spoiler:They are led by main character Oliver Horn himself, who is Halford's secret son, and many of his coconspirators are members of his extended family.]] |
| 428 | * StumbledIntoThePlot: The attack on Katie at the entrance ceremony. [[spoiler:Annie Mackley, another first-year, cast a spell on Katie to make her run towards the parade of magical creatures. At that same moment, the troll made a break for the exit to try and escape from Miligan experimenting on him. He didn't mean to harm anyone, he just became disoriented when everybody nearby panicked, while Mackley was just trying to embarrass Katie, not get her killed.]] |
| 429 | * SuddenContestFormatChange: School-organized tournaments usually use a round-robin format with the participants being scored on points. In volume 9, however, of the four finalist teams in the underclassmens' tier of the combat leagues, two are forced to withdraw after their matches.[[note]][[VillainousBSOD Ursule Valois had a mental health crisis after losing to Team Horn]], and Team Cornwallis were too injured to continue as scheduled and Chela had a very public confrontation with her father Theodore, one of the judges, besides.[[/note]] As a consequence, the school switches the final match between Team Horn and Team Andrews to winner-take-all and organizes a bonus round in the labyrinth (consisting of cleaning up invasive species left over from the upperclassmens' prelim) for the runners-up to make up for the reduction in the number of matches. |
| 430 | * SuperBreedingProgram: |
| 431 | ** A lot of magic traits can be inherited, and the mage world customarily places pushing the limits of sorcery above all other concerns. This means that mage aristocrats frequently try to breed more powerful mage children and add new traits to their bloodlines: supporting character Diana Ashbury is explicitly a product of several generations of selective breeding to produce faster and faster broom-riders. Even Kimberly participates to an extent: the school tacitly encourages TeenPregnancy by explicitly permitting third-years and up to conceive children and providing support to students who become parents. This also leads to Nanao and Pete being approached repeatedly for dates by other students starting in volume 4, since both are [[MageBornOfMuggles Mages Born of Muggles]] (and thus don't pose any risks of inbreeding) with rare abilities (Nanao's [[PowerDyesYourHair Innocent Color]] and proficiency with sword arts, Pete's [[SexShifter reversiism]]). Oliver himself comments in his internal monologue when he's [[LoveConfession forced to admit his feelings for Nanao]] that he doesn't "want their relationship reduced to reproduction and inheritance", and so declines to specifically answer whether he wants to have children with her. |
| 432 | ** In volume 3, Miligan describes how the {{succubi|AndIncubi}}, Ophelia Salvadori's maternal ancestors, had the ability to mix donor essences in their wombs, and used it with the goal of creating a "perfect being". Pure succubi are extinct nowadays, but Ophelia's chimera research is an extension of this project, and the male students she's kidnapped are the fuel for it. |
| 433 | * SuccubiAndIncubi: Rather than a kind of demon, succubi are said to be an extinct species of demihuman known mainly for two things: [[SmellsSexy they gave off a Perfume that made them sexually irresistible to humanoid males]], and had [[MotherOfAThousandYoung the ability to birth chimeras]] by [[HeinzHybrid mixing donor mana (harvested through sex) in their wombs]]. They used this in a SuperBreedingProgram to create a "perfect being", which has been carried forward by the Salvadori clan, [[UnevenHybrid a mage lineage with partial succubus ancestry]]. |
| 434 | * SuperToughness: Mages as a rule are hard to kill: they can usually at least survive anything that doesn't kill them right away, though a full recovery requires medical intervention. [[GoodThingYouCanHeal This is used by the author as an excuse to repeatedly inflict grievous wounds on them without issue]]: to name but one example, Oliver is disemboweled by the garuda in volume 1, but instead of bleeding out in seconds, is able to retreat and sort himself out with a healing spell while Nanao holds it off. |
| 435 | * SupermanStaysOutOfGotham: {{Downplayed}} in volume 3 ([[Recap/ReignOfTheSevenSpellbladesS1E12Possibility episode 12 of the anime]]). Oliver goes to his cousins for help when his friend Pete Reston is kidnapped by Ophelia Salvadori. The Sherwoods tell him they're joining the student council's posse hunting Ophelia, but flatly refuse to mobilize their comrades for him [[JustifiedTrope since it would risk their exposure]]: the group is reserved for Oliver's secret SeriesGoal alone. [[spoiler:However, Teresa Carste ignores the Sherwoods' orders and goes to help Oliver on her own.]] |
| 436 | * SupernaturalSensitivity: In addition to normal sensitivity to magic use, volume 2 implies, then volume 10 confirms, that users of the eponymous [[UnblockableAttack spellblades]] can subconsciously recognize one another when in close enough proximity to use them, a sensation formally known as "Grand Arts Synchronicity". [[spoiler:This sensation saves Oliver's life when he mounts an AssassinationAttempt against Demitrio Aristides: Demitrio defeats Oliver's Fourth Spellblade with the Fifth, but Oliver instinctively realizes a split-second before contact that he was facing another spellblade and pulls back just in time to avoid a deathblow. With the benefit of hindsight, Oliver realizes he's felt the same thing from Nanao, wielder of the Seventh, since they first met.]] |
| 437 | * SupernaturallyValidatedTransPerson: In volume 2, Pete Reston turns out to have a magical trait called Reversi that causes him to [[GenderBender switch his biological sex]] overnight. He still identifies as male for the moment, but alludes to having experienced possible dysphoric episodes. The Kimberly WizardingSchool turns out to have a [[JapaneseSchoolClub student club]] for mages with gender- and sex-linked magic, which non-binary upperclassman Carlos Whitrow invites Pete to join. |
| 438 | * SuperpowerfulGenetics: While we don't know exactly what mechanism leads to the ability to use magic, it is known that magic can either be inherited or [[MageBornOfMuggles appear spontaneously in non-magic families]], but either way it's something you have to be born with. Mages are even known to [[SuperBreedingProgram use selective breeding to try to produce more powerful mage children]]. |
| 439 | * SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome: Oliver's no-spells duel with Tullio Rossi in volume 2 ([[Recap/ReignOfTheSevenSpellbladesS1E08Rivals episode 8 of the anime]]) demonstrates that it really ''is'' important to learn the fundamentals of a topic (swordplay in this case), before you try to innovate, and why [[NeverBringAKnifeToAFistfight trying to turn an armed duel into a fistfight]] against an opponent you know is well-trained is foolhardy. Because Rossi never learned the basics, he doesn't realize that punching with his offhand gives a prepared opponent the opportunity to grab that arm and immobilize him, as Oliver indeed does with a standing armbar: as Oliver explains to Rossi, grappling is more useful at extreme close range than strikes. Even discounting sport fencing where unarmed moves aren't allowed anyway, this is why real-life swordsmen usually either keep both hands on the weapon (if they don't have a shield), or the undefended arm held back out of the way. |
| 440 | * SwampsAreEvil: The third layer of the labyrinth is called the Miasma Swamp. It's a bayou full of monsters and natural hazards like man-eating mud pits, and if you fly too high, the air itself becomes toxic. Add to this the non-native dangers, like the fact Ophelia Salvadori makes her lair there and thus it's sometimes full of her chimeras. |
| 441 | * SwordBeam: Mages can use their athames as magic foci, not just as swords, which saves them the trouble of having to switch between athame and wand in a fight. |
| 442 | * SymbolicDistance: Episode 9 of the anime adaptation contains an overhead shot while the protagonists are discussing the relative merits of Miligan's offer to give them one of her old laboratories, where Oliver is separated from the rest of the group by a couple of paces while he mulls over the offer. It's symbolism for how his secrets and wildly divergent SeriesGoal subtly separate him from them. |
| 443 | * TalentVsTraining: Oliver is contrasted with several characters in this way, particularly Nanao and to a lesser extent Tullio Rossi. Oliver is extremely good at learning and adapting magic and sword techniques from others: in volume 2 he shocks Rossi in a sword duel by defeating the Ytallian's self-taught fighting style with pure, orthodox Lanoff Style swordsmanship, [[spoiler:and is even capable of [[UnblockableAttack the Fourth Spellblade]] by making use of his mother's GhostMemory]]. However, he has no techniques or skills that are truly his own nor any unique magical traits or affinities like several of his friends have: Nanao in particular is a mage of phenomenal natural talent whose foreign life experiences and worldview as a {{samurai}} of far-off Yamatsukini allow her to use magic in ways nobody has ever even heard of before. |
| 444 | * TheTalk: {{Reconstructed}} in volume 4. After Nanao and Pete are approached a little aggressively in the dining hall by other students, Oliver and Chela host an informal sex ed seminar for the group, focusing particularly on consent and the peculiarities of mage sexual relations. One of the things that comes up is that the Union's mage aristocracy has what amounts to an informal SuperBreedingProgram, and Nanao and Pete's unique traits are highly sought-after additions to mage bloodlines as a consequence. |
| 445 | * TamerAndChaster: The original novels include a lot of fairly frank discussion of sexuality that is dropped from or diminished in the adaptations. |
| 446 | ** Neither adaptation includes Chela's suggestion from volume 2 that [[ShapeshiftersDoItForAChange Pete take advantage of his reversiism to experiment sexually]], and episode 13 of the anime cuts Miligan making a pass at Oliver after the Battle of Hell's Armies. |
| 447 | ** {{Downplayed}} with Ophelia Salvadori, whose SexMagic and [[RapeAsBackstory backstory of sex abuse]] are so key to volume 3's story it's impossible to avoid completely. However, she's [[https://www.zerochan.net/2630611 depicted]] [[ChildByRape visibly pregnant by rape]] in the {{flashback}} to her first meeting with Carlos Whitrow; the corresponding scene in episode 13 downplays the then-current pregnancy (her baby bump is much less obvious), but keeps her line asking Carlos if they're the next "man" she's expected to breed with. Episode 14 also bowdlerizes the discussion of Oliver's RagingStiffie to just the Perfume making him horny, and episode 15 cuts the brief flashback to Ophelia's mother [[ForcedToWatch making her watch her rape a man]]. |
| 448 | * TeamBasedTournament: The "combat leagues" take up the bulk of the year three books, consisting of teams of three students each (in tiers of second- and third-years, fourth- and fifth-years, and sixth- and seventh-years) competing to qualify for the team battle rounds, wherein the team that wins the most victories in the round-robin format final round is crowned champion. In volume 9, however, Team Valois and Team Cornwallis are forced to withdraw, which leads to the faculty switching to a winner-take-all format for the match between the protagonist Team Horn and Team Andrews. {{Justified|Trope}} because one of the major purposes of Kimberly Magic Academy is to train an order of {{Military Mage}}s called the Gnostic Hunters, whose job is to protect the world from {{Alien Invasion}}s and {{cult}}s. |
| 449 | * TechnicianPerformerTeamUp: Oliver Horn has no particular talents as a mage (though no significant deficiencies either), and keeps up with others in his age group by [[AwesomenessByAnalysis being smart]] and [[TrainingFromHell working his butt off]] with textbook practice, to the point where early in the series his fighting style is sometimes derided as boring. By the end of volume 1 he's practically attached at the hip to his primary LoveInterest, Nanao Hibiya, a mage of phenomenal natural talent who [[AutopilotArtistry does her best work when she isn't even thinking about what she's doing]] and invents new magic tricks [[spoiler:like the Seventh Spellblade]] simply out of necessity. The two of them make a terrifyingly effective BattleCouple to the point of becoming minor celebrities in the student body by the time of volume 6. |
| 450 | * TheirFirstTime: |
| 451 | ** {{Discussed}} when Oliver and Chela give the Sword Roses TheTalk: Chela mentions that statistically, about eighty percent of Kimberly students will have had their first sexual experience by the time they graduate. |
| 452 | ** [[spoiler:{{Downplayed}} in volume 10 when Oliver ''finally'' takes Nanao to bed for the first time, after the two had done a lot of soul-searching since she nearly forced herself on him at the end of volume 9. They don't actually have intercourse because Oliver has a PTSD flare-up related to his ''actual'' first sexual experience, but they get to third base and Nanao promises him the next morning that, one day hopefully soon, they'll "get the pole in the hole."]] |
| 453 | * ThemeMusicPowerUp: In the anime, the track [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3eed6Uk-c0 "オリバー 正義 (Oliver Justice)"]] has an orchestral crescendo that often plays as a {{leitmotif}} when Oliver takes the gloves off with an opponent, such as his comeback in his duel with Tullio Rossi. |
| 454 | * TimeSkip: The series frequently jumps several months between volumes since it's meant to follow the Sword Roses through the entire seven-year curriculum of Kimberly. About four months pass between volumes 1 and 2, and volume 4 skips from the fall of 1532 to the beginning of the next school year in April 1533. The next two years of the books all take place over the springs and summers of the corresponding years, with skips of several months between volumes 6 and 7, and again between the prologue of volume 11 (summer 1534) to chapter 1 (early spring 1535). |
| 455 | * TomboyAndGirlyGirl: Nanao and Katie. The one is a former samurai and broomsports jock, always up for a fight, whereas the other is a sweet-tempered, gentle girl who loves animals and hates to see any living creature in pain. Despite [[LoveTriangle both having feelings for Oliver]], they're roommates and close friends. |
| 456 | * TournamentArc: |
| 457 | ** The main plot of Volume 2 revolves around a sword arts tournament among the first-years, organized by Tullio Rossi, an Ytallian student with a ([[UnknownRival mostly imagined]]) rivalry with Oliver. Each participant is given a medallion and duels others to take theirs, with the students with the most medallions at the end of the week advancing to the playoff round. [[spoiler:The tournament is {{aborted|Arc}} before the playoffs when [[SpannerInTheWorks Ophelia Salvadori is consumed by the spell in an unrelated incident and kidnaps several of the participants]].]] |
| 458 | ** A second one runs for volumes 7-10, with three tiers of students (grades 2-3, grades 4-5, and grades 6-7) competing for prizes from the faculty. The "combat leagues" happen every couple of years, but this time around it's complicated by the deaths of two teachers in preceding years: Headmistress Esmeralda jacks up the prize money to attract more students, [[spoiler:and then installs BloodKnight SadistTeacher Vanessa Aldiss as the final obstacle for the upper tier--thinking that a student who does well against her might be a good suspect for the murders of Darius Grenville and Enrico Forghieri]]. |
| 459 | * ToxicFamilyInfluence: The series leans ''hard'' on ChildrenAreInnocent: as mage culture prioritizes the advancement of the study of magic above all other concerns, antagonistic students at Kimberly Magic Academy were almost invariably made that way by toxic relatives who took advantage of a child's desire to please their authority figures, and their redemption -- usually [[DefeatMeansFriendship accomplished through a fight with]] the [[TrueCompanions Sword Roses]] -- takes the form of a realization that they don't ''have'' to be defined by their family legacy. |
| 460 | * TragicStillbirth: As revealed in volume 10, [[spoiler:[[RapeByProxy Oliver was drugged into raping his cousin Shannon by their great-grandfather]] to keep the Sherwoods' progenitor ancestry in the family. Oliver prayed he'd be a good father in hopes that pain would be worth something, but their daughter was stillborn. This led to Oliver becoming subconsciously convinced he was destined to suffer forever, [[TraumaticSuperpowerAwakening enabling him to master the Fourth Spellblade]].]] |
| 461 | * TranslationConvention: Notwithstanding the rare flashback to Nanao's time in Yamatsu, all the dialogue in the series is in Yelglish ([[InventedLinguisticDistinction Fantasy English]]) but is rendered in the localization language. This leads to oddities such as characters in the original Japanese referring to each other with the English-language honorifics "Mister" and "Miss" transliterated into katakana, rather than using UsefulNotes/JapaneseHonorifics (with the exception of Oliver calling his cousins/foster siblings "onee-san" and "nee-san"). |
| 462 | * TwistingTheProphecy: 300 years ago, a mage theorized that [[MultipleChoiceFuture one cannot observe the future with precision because the act of prophecy itself changes the future]]: "'prophecy' is merely the act of guiding events towards one potential outcome." This became the underlying principle of the Fourth [[UnblockableAttack Spellblade]], "Angustavia -- the thread that crosses the abyss", which selects a desired possible near-term future and forces it to come to pass. [[spoiler:Main character Oliver Horn uses this to defeat Darius Grenville in a SingleStrokeBattle at the end of volume 1, bringing the one-in-ten-thousand possible future where he isn't cut to pieces in seconds to him.]] |
| 463 | [[/folder]] |
| 464 | |
| 465 | [[folder:U -- V]] |
| 466 | * UnableToRetreat: On their second night at Kimberly Magic Academy in volume 1 ([[Recap/ReignOfTheSevenSpellbladesS1E02SwordArts anime episode 2]]), Oliver, Pete, and Chela accidentally end up in [[MalevolentArchitecture the labyrinth under the school]] and are accosted by predatory upperclasswoman Ophelia Salvadori. They flee, only to be intercepted by another upperclassman, Cyrus Rivermoore, who conjures a fence of bones in their path, blocking their escape so that they may be victimized by whomever wins the ensuing WizardDuel between himself and Salvadori. |
| 467 | * UnblockableAttack: The eponymous "Spellblades" are a set of (initially) six offensive techniques [[MagicKnight merging magic and sword arts]], described in an {{epigraph}} to volume 1 as "A strike that can be neither dodged nor blocked, thereby guaranteeing death. Fulfill these conditions within the one-step, one-spell distance, and you have what is called a 'spellblade.'" The identities of their wielders are traditionally kept as [[SecretArt closely guarded secrets]], but four have been identified so far in the series. |
| 468 | ** The Second Spellblade, "Creumbra, the self-racing shadow", which exploits the explosive consequences of a mage's failed experiment in magically duplicating himself to disintegrate the opponent. [[spoiler:Used by Theodore [=McFarlane=] in volume 4 to slay an unidentified man attacking mages with a knife.]] |
| 469 | ** The Fourth Spellblade, "Angustavia, the thread that crosses the abyss", which explores [[MultipleChoiceFuture possible futures]] to find one where the wielder succeeds in striking down their opponent. [[spoiler:Previously learned by Chloe Halford, her son Oliver is [[DangerousForbiddenTechnique able to use it in extremis]] by drawing on his mother's GhostMemory from her soul contained within him. He uses it in a one-cut duel with Darius Grenville, and as a FinishingMove against Enrico Forghieri.]] Though in volume 10, we learn that [[spoiler:Oliver]] in fact uses a slight variation on this Spellblade: [[spoiler:unlike his mother's original version, he doesn't pick the most desirable outcome, but rather the one that causes him to ''live to suffer the most''--a consequence of his past TraumaCongaLine causing a subconscious conviction that he's destined to never be happy again]]. |
| 470 | ** The Fifth Spellblade, " "Papiliosomnia, the dream of a butterfly that never wakes up again", is a MindControl technique that attacks the target's sense of self, causing them to become unable to tell the difference between themselves and the wielder, and either not resist a follow-up strike or even [[PsychicAssistedSuicide kill themselves]]. [[spoiler:Demitrio Aristides wields this one, and uses it to CounterSpell Oliver's Fourth: Oliver is unable to pick a desirable future and only narrowly escapes the follow-through. The second time, his friend Yuri Leik, a SoulFragment of Demitrio, [[FightingFromTheInside reasserts himself over his creator]] to tell Oliver which future to pick, [[HeroicSacrifice knowing it will mean he dies along with Demitrio]].]] |
| 471 | ** The currently unnamed Seventh Spellblade, with which the wielder uses sheer force of will to simply cut everything between themselves and their target, [[AbsurdlySharpBlade even the space and time between them]]. [[spoiler:Invented by Nanao in her and Oliver's fight with Vera Miligan, in order to defeat the basilisk eye on Miligan's left hand when she's out of range of a conventional strike. [[AchievementsInIgnorance Nanao herself doesn't know how she did it]] and is unable to duplicate it.]] |
| 472 | * UndeadLaborers: Zombie labor used to be very common in mage civilization, but necromancers had to spend a lot of time consoling the spirits of the dead (mainly through MagicMusic). Above a certain quantity, this tended to become logistically impractical, leading to ZombieApocalypse scenarios called "maelstroms" that are compared to entire towns being [[MagicMisfire consumed by the spell]]. This is what happened to the Parsu {{precursor}} civilization who originally built the labyrinth under Kimberly Magic Academy; recurring character Cyrus Rivermoore is one of their descendants and is working to recover their lost necromantic arts. |
| 473 | * UnderestimatingBadassery: |
| 474 | ** Nanao is on the receiving end repeatedly in the early books: |
| 475 | *** Early on it's because she's a MageBornOfMuggles, and her inexperience with magic leads to multiple characters mistakenly thinking she's easy prey: Richard tries to duel her in class, only for Oliver to step in thinking she needs protecting from their aristocratic classmate. They're both wrong, as Nanao's combat experience and natural mana flow make her a terrifyingly strong swordswoman for her age. Evelynn Odets repeats their mistake at the start of the TournamentArc in volume 2. |
| 476 | *** By volume 10, most of the school has learned this lesson, especially after watching her in the combat leagues, which [[BloodKnight she actually finds frustrating since nobody ever tries to fight her anymore]]. Fortunately for her, Teresa Carste is too {{jealous|RomanticWitness}} of her relationship to Oliver to think straight, and ambushes her in the labyrinth thinking her lord needs protecting--only to discover that Nanao is ''far'' stronger than she anticipated: never mind winning, it's all Teresa can do just to escape. |
| 477 | ** The conspirators assume that Demitrio Aristides will be a relatively easy target since he carries no athame at all, so all they have to do is get [[spoiler:Oliver]] into the one-step, one-spell distance to use a spellblade. [[spoiler:Not so much: not only is he a RealityWarper via tapping into the AkashicRecords, but he's able to wield the Fifth Spellblade with only a wand. He defeats Oliver's Fourth Spellblade and immobilizes the entire hit team. Oliver is only able to turn the tables because Yuri Leik's personality reasserts itself within Demitrio's psyche at a critical moment and starts FightingFromTheInside.]] |
| 478 | * VacationEpisode: |
| 479 | ** Volume 4, chapter 3 has the Sword Roses take a day trip to Galatea, a town near Kimberly, and spend the day wandering around taking in the sights and shopping. Chela comes up with the idea because Oliver is acting stressed-out. |
| 480 | ** The entirety of volume 11 consists of the Sword Roses going on a road trip over winter break, first visiting Katie's family in Farnland, then the [=McFarlane=] household in southern Yelgland. |
| 481 | * VariantChess: "Magic Chess", which is apparently the bastard offspring of normal chess and tabletop wargaming: according to Oliver it's up to 28 editions and there are [[ObviousRulePatch rules updates]] every month that completely upend the {{metagame}}. The current edition, Dynamic, features among other things trap effects and one of Nanao's pieces defending itself against Oliver's move by turning into a werewolf. Oliver's father was terrible at it, while his mother routinely kicked both their butts. |
| 482 | * VaryingCompetencyAlibi: |
| 483 | ** When the faculty of Kimberly Magic Academy discuss the disappearance of Professor Darius Grenville in volume 2, the possibility that a student may have killed him is suggested, and then immediately discarded as impossible: as Headmistress Esmeralda puts it, "If, by some chance, a student did kill him, that would mean Darius was never fit to be a Kimberly instructor." This means that the prime suspects are the other instructors. [[spoiler:This was exactly what the killer, first-year student Oliver Horn, [[RefugeInAudacity wants them to think]]--and in their defense it indeed wouldn't have been possible if he didn't have access to his mother's GhostMemory.]] However, after a second professor is confirmed to have been murdered in volume 6, the idea that one or more students might have been responsible starts to gain more traction: in volume 7, the senior-year combat leagues are intentionally arranged so that Esmeralda can determine if any of their students might have been strong enough to do it after all. |
| 484 | ** {{Inverted}} with Alvin Godfrey, who in volume 6 is considered a possible suspect in the faculty murders based on his own fighting strength and the soft power he wields as head of the Campus Watch (i.e. FromACertainPointOfView he basically has his own private army). However, Esmeralda admits he's a poor suspect at best because he has no discernible motive; she's pretty much grasping at straws and tells him to consider his name coming up a compliment. |
| 485 | ** Played straight later in volume 6 when Esmeralda interrogates Oliver and Pete. She says up front that there's no possible way that two second-years were even physically capable of killing Enrico Forghieri; she instead thinks that, having visited Forghieri's laboratory,[[note]]Technically, Pete was kidnapped by Forghieri, and Oliver and Nanao pursued them to his laboratory.[[/note]] they might have unintentionally leaked information to the assassins and could help her identify them. [[spoiler:[[DramaticIrony Ironically, Oliver really IS the killer]], and spends the entire scene sweating bullets before Nanao rescues them both.]] |
| 486 | * VillainTeamUp: [[DownplayedTrope Technically more of an Antagonist Team-Up.]] In volume 7, three of Oliver's previously defeated class rivals--Richard Andrews, Joseph Albright, and Tullio Rossi--team up for [[TournamentArc the combat leagues]], hoping for a rematch. Their wish is ultimately granted in volume 9 when they wind up the co-finalists opposite Oliver, Nanao, and Yuri Leik. |
| 487 | * VirtuousCharacterCopy: |
| 488 | ** Where Oliver reminds of Franchise/HarryPotter, Richard Andrews fills much the role of Draco Malfoy: a haughty aristocratic racist who becomes TheRival to the protagonist. Unlike with Draco and Harry, however, their dispute is mostly based on a misunderstanding and is settled after [[spoiler:they fight the garuda together]]; Richard subsequently views Oliver as a competitor but not an enemy, and stops acting like a {{jerkass}} to the Sword Roses. |
| 489 | ** Marco resembles the troll from ''Literature/HarryPotterAndThePhilosophersStone'', both physically and in narrative role: both trolls attack (one of) the girl(s) due indirectly to the meddling of an antagonist, and defeating either troll solidifies the main cast's years-long friendship. However, Marco later bonds with Katie and helps save her from a rogue upperclassman, while the troll who attacked Hermoine disappears from the narrative after he's defeated. |
| 490 | ** Chela's father Theodore [=McFarlane=] has a lot of similarities to Gilderoy Lockhart, as a [[UpperClassTwit foppish and rather silly]] world-traveler and book author who fills in after another teacher is indisposed. However, unlike Lockhart, he actually ''did'' have all the adventures he claims to have done and is [[CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass quite competent when he puts his mind to being so]]: [[spoiler:he's even a Spellblade wielder]]. |
| 491 | ** Katie's similarities to Hermione Granger are significant, but there are some differences. Hermione was (controversially) roundly mocked for her activism on behalf of the House-Elves, whereas ''Spellblades'' portrays Katie's views as completely correct and the people bullying her over her views as wrong; she's [[WideEyedIdealist just a little naive and inexperienced at first]]. Katie is also a NiceGirl through and through, lacking the vicious streak that Hermione displays in the later books. |
| 492 | * VoluntaryShapeshifting: |
| 493 | ** Vanessa Aldiss's specialty is weaponized transformation of her body: most commonly of [[FemmeFatalons her arms]], but her whole body can be modified on the fly to be weapon, defense, or both at the same time. She can even grow mouths on her hands and eat with them, [[ImAHumanitarian which she does to a Gnostic cultist in the opening scene of volume 2]]. |
| 494 | ** In volume 2, half-mage, half-werewolf Fay Willock doesn't have direct control over his werewolf transformations, but his partner Stacy Cornwallis can make his body do it with a spell that simulates the light of the full moon. She only does this with his permission (though he never says no) since he's in constant severe pain while transformed. By volume 9, however, he's figured out how to trick himself into transforming by visualizing the image of the moon, and can flexibly transform only portions of his body. |
| 495 | [[/folder]] |
| 496 | |
| 497 | [[folder:W -- X]] |
| 498 | * WalkingOssuary: In volume 1, Oliver, Pete, Chela, and Nanao get caught in a battle between two upperclassmen, the chimera breeder Ophelia Salvadori and the skeletal golem-maker Cyrus Rivermoore. As their creations duke it out, Ophelia remarks to Cyrus that the spinal column on his bone creature is new and mentions him pillaging monster corpses deeper in the labyrinth, implying that it's a composite skeleton. Later on, Cyrus' new project involves stealing one bone at a time from other students' living bodies, apparently planning to create a composite human skeleton. [[spoiler:He's creating an artificial body for an undead woman his family has kept as a familiar for centuries.]] |
| 499 | * WeirdSun: The "sun" in the second layer of the labyrinth is a magical artifact created by the {{precursor}} civilization that created the labyrinth. It never sets, producing a constant level of light and warmth. |
| 500 | * WhamEpisode: |
| 501 | ** Episode 6 of the anime. It starts out pretty normal, segueing from the last episode with Nanao and Oliver [[spoiler: fighting Miligan.]] It's already exciting enough when [[spoiler: Nanao shows she can wield the titular seventh Spellblade to defeat her.]] Then (corresponding to the epilogue of volume 1) Oliver gets invited to come alone with Darius Grenville who wants his assistance after his good performance in class, and [[spoiler: it becomes ''very dark'' '''''very fast.''''' Oliver's real reason for enrolling in the school, the explanation for Oliver's secret collaborators, and ultimately the underlying plot of the entire show and the full truth of his RoaringRampageOfRevenge, [[TheReveal are all finally revealed]]. Following the CruelAndUnusualDeath of his mother, Oliver's true goal has actually been [[GottaKillEmAll to slaughter all her murderers]]... with Grenville as the first on his hit list. The teacher ends up getting violently and bloodily mutilated, tortured and finally killed by Oliver, and the episode reaches its end with our [[AntiHero somewhat morally ambiguous]] protagonist reiterating his vow to enact bloody revenge on an EnemiesList that includes basically half the faculty staff.]] |
| 502 | ** Volume 5, Chapter 4. [[spoiler:Oliver's easy victory over Darius Grenville with the Fourth Spellblade]] belied just how dangerous the teachers actually are compared even to Kimberly upperclassmen: [[spoiler:Oliver and thirty-two of his comrades prepare an ambush for Enrico Forghieri in the labyrinth, only for him to assault through it and kill eleven of his attackers and get in a nasty BreakingSpeech against Oliver before he's finally brought down. Furthermore, we begin to see the true costs of Oliver's revenge to himself: his UniqueProtagonistAsset is CastFromHitpoints and [[CastFromLifespan Lifespan]], and just acquiring it permanently changed his soul and [[CannotTellAJoke cost him his ability to be funny]], dooming his childhood dream of being a comedian.]] |
| 503 | ** Volume 10, Chapter 4. What starts as [[spoiler:the comrades' AssassinationAttempt against Demitrio Aristides]] turns into an '''incredibly''' dark look into Oliver's backstory to an extent we've never previously known, depicting how his happy life with his parents was derailed by mage politics. [[spoiler:This ends in his mother's murder ([[OnceMoreWithClarity depicted in much greater and gorier detail than before]]) and Oliver and his father SeekingSanctuary with her birth family, only to be dragged kicking and screaming into the rot at the heart of the mage world: Oliver is forced to relive his mother's murder through her GhostMemory, subjected to TrainingFromHell to accept a MergerOfSouls to seek revenge, and then is [[RapeAsDrama drugged by his great-grandfather into raping]] and [[ChildByRape impregnating his cousin Shannon]], which [[YankTheDogsChain despite her forgiving him and them hoping something good will come from it]], results in a stillbirth that [[BreakTheCutie convinces Oliver he's destined to suffer forever]]. All this is capped off by Oliver [[PayEvilUntoEvil casually killing his great-grandparents]] and [[ThanatosGambit his father committing suicide to help cover it up]]. [[ApologeticAttacker Even Demitrio himself feels sorry for him]] after seeing the DisasterDominoes that emanated from the murder he helped commit.]] |
| 504 | * WhamLine: Oliver to Darius Grenville in the epilogue of volume 1 (manga chapter 14, anime episode 6): [[spoiler: "On the eighth night of the fourth month of the year 1525, ''[[YouKilledMyFather where were you, and what were you doing?]]''"]] Finally we're introduced to Oliver's true purpose in attending Kimberly, and it's a doozy. |
| 505 | * WhatHappenedToTheMouse: The club Carlos Whitrow founded for students with sex- and gender-linked magic disappeared from the story after [[spoiler:Carlos's death in volume 3]]. The bonus story included with the Blu-ray box, "Encore" confirms that it did continue on. |
| 506 | * WhatMeasureIsANonHuman: The driving ethos behind Katie's civil rights activism for non-humans. Since the story takes place in a setting where non-humans like centaurs, elves, etc. exist with humans, there are issues surrounding just which species get to be considered "human" and given civil rights while others are treated as mere beasts. Katie comes from a family noted for its activism on behalf of intelligent nonhumans, which puts her in conflict with students tied to the conservative factions early on. |
| 507 | * WizardingSchool: Kimberly Magic Academy is an elite boarding school for mages that practices SocialDarwinism towards its students, with the student body [[AdultsAreUseless expected to solve problems without the intervention of the faculty]]. There actually is a reason for this: Kimberly is effectively a vocational school for Gnostic Hunters--elite battlemages who travel to other planets of the solar system to battle {{Alien Invasion}}s commanded by those planets' gods. |
| 508 | * WizardDuel: Kimberly Magic Academy is a ''de facto'' training ground for an order of {{Military Mage}}s called the Gnostic Hunters,[[note]]That is, it isn't actually part of the organization, but it's a major recruiting ground and many of the teachers used to be Gnostic Hunters.[[/note]] and its curriculum therefore puts significant emphasis on use of magic in combat. An entire class is devoted to teaching "sword arts", i.e. the use of blades and spells together in close combat. |
| 509 | ** Nonlethal duels with both magic and sword are a common way of settling student conflicts, and Tullio Rossi organizes a dueling tournament in volume 2 to decide on the strongest first-year. In volume 6, Teresa Carste also gets into an argument with a classmate, Dean Travers, which devolves into a playground brawl when he hits her RelativeButton. |
| 510 | ** The climax of volume 1 pits Oliver and Nanao in a duel against [[spoiler:fourth-year Vera Miligan, in order to rescue Katie after Miligan kidnapped her to do some exploratory surgery when she was able to get Marco the troll to talk]]. |
| 511 | ** In the epilogue of volume 1, [[spoiler:Oliver faces Professor Darius Grenville, one of his mother's murderers, in a DuelToTheDeath, which Oliver wins in a SingleStrokeBattle by using the Fourth Spellblade to cut Darius's hand off]]. |
| 512 | * WombHorror: [[spoiler:Ophelia's Grand Aria at the climax of volume 3: a PocketDimension created out of her own womb that allows her to endlessly birth chimeras by trial and error in pursuit of the "perfect being" once sought by her {{succubus}} foremothers, with Ophelia herself becoming part of the level geometry.]] |
| 513 | * WorfHadTheFlu: So far the only time Oliver's class rival Tullio Rossi has beaten him at the sword is during a sparring match in volume 6 when Oliver is feeling uncoordinated [[spoiler:due to the aftereffects of the battle with Enrico Forghieri.]] |
| 514 | [[/folder]] |
| 515 | |
| 516 | [[folder:Y -- Z]] |
| 517 | * YouRemindMeOfX: Nanao reminds Oliver, Theodore, and Esmeralda of [[spoiler:Chloe Halford]]. This might even extend to her broom, which once belonged to [[spoiler:Chloe]]. |
| 518 | * ZombieApocalypse: {{Discussed}} and {{justified|Trope}} in volume 8. Past mage civilizations made heavy use of necromancy for manual labor. The problem is, TheUndead need to be "consoled" periodically, or else bad things happen: the resulting "maelstroms" are compared to entire towns becoming consumed by the spell all at once. A series of such disasters in the past led to the practice mostly falling out of favor and getting replaced with demihuman slavery. |
| 519 | [[/folder]] |
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FollowingContext Literature / ReignOfTheSevenSpellblades
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