It started with the butterflies.Claire, Rose, Rachel and Kate — four girls from the same school but from very different backgrounds and social circles — are drawn together one night by a flock of mysterious butterflies that only they can see. Waiting for them are two mysterious figures — a woman named Lula and her partner, JC — who inform the four girls that they are dead.In order to continue in their borrowed lives, the heroines are forced to fight for them. Each night, they must wait until midnight before they can rest. If the butterflies come to them before midnight, the girls must follow them and fight a twisted, bestial man with no help and no skills but their own will to live.Thereafter, the lives of the girls (and the plot of the anime) revolve around coming to terms with these facts and the "suicide" of their friend Lise. Their deaths and the rabid men they are forced to fight all tie back to a strange and influential family.Combining elements of horror, music — the girls occasionally break into song — and teen drama, Red Garden takes a very different approach to the girls-fighting-monsters genre.
Animation Bump: The last episode is noticeably better looking than the others.
Anti-Villain: Herve just wants to save his family from its curse.
Back from the Dead: Kate, Rose, Rachel, and Claire, obviously enough. An unexpected example comes up later when Lise is revived.
Bait-and-Switch Credits: The opening credits are pretty floral silhouettes accompanied by a pleasant girlish song. The show, on the other hand, is dark.
Big Fancy House: Rachel and Kate both have nice homes, but it's the mansion where they died that takes the cake.
Burger Fool: Claire works for an unnamed burger joint.
Butterfly of Death and Rebirth: The butterflies only appear to the girls after they've died, and are generally linked to situations where death happens in some form.
Calling the Old Man Out: Claire does this towards her father for not noticing her mother's emotional spiral into suicide.
Captain Ersatz: The NYPD investigators, an old jaded white guy and his younger black partner, would seem to be Detectives Briscoe and Green with the badge numbers filed off.
Character Development: The actual focus of the series. The nightly fighting and background of the two clans take a backseat to the way the girls are coping with their borrowed lives for most of the show.
Dating Catwoman: Kate ends up dating Herve. She's oblivious about who he is for a several episodes, but he knows from the start - it's why he pursued her in the first place.
Disappeared Dad: Rose's dad. She goes to find him later in the series.
Driven to Suicide: Lise's death is covered up as this. Later, Randy attempts suicide after the collapse of his company. It's implied that this is what happened to his and Claire's mother.
Evolving Credits: The first set of ending credits change gradually over time. Also, the opening has some mostly still bits swapped for something more animated about halfway through the series.
Expy: Almost everyone in the OVA (barring the title Dead Girls, who are the same people) is an expy of someone from the TV series.
Fangs Are Evil: The men the girls fight tend to have fangs, heightening the animalistic image they project.
¨Genre Shift: The OVA features sci-fi stuff such as Humongous Mechas and flying cars. Justified because it takes hundreds of years after the events of the original series.
Les Yay: The first episode has Kate pining for Lise on a very — personal level. And at times, Paula seems very close to Kate — very close. This goes into Anvilicious territory from episode 18 onwards.
Limited Social Circle: Much of the show deals with the heroines' escalating ostracism from their old social groups and their varying efforts to stay in contact with their old lives.
Limited Wardrobe: Averted; most of the girls wear different clothes everyday. Even Kate, who wears her Grace uniform more than anything, wears unique outfits outside of school.
Phenotype Stereotype: Most of the upper class people have blonde hair and blue eyes, among them Kate and her family, Claire's family (but not Claire herself),several of the members of Grace, and both of the feuding clans.
Precision F-Strike: Delivered by Luke when his suspicions about Rachel and one of her teachers boil out.
Random Passerby Advice: At one point Claire is on the sidewalk outside her apartment practicing swinging a bat when a random guy runs across the street and critiques her stance, advising her to "rotate your hips", then walks away.
Talking the Monster to Death: In the OVA, Louise challenges the girls to a battle and when they lose, they'll have to become her friends. The girls point out that she already has valuable friends even if they're not immortal, and the battle never actually takes place.
There Are No Therapists: Subverted. While the girls never actually go to therapists their friends and family do notice that something is wrong, and they do ask the girls questions. The girls, however refuse to tell them.
Timeskip: The Dead Girls OVA takes place several hundred years in the future, with all of New York except Roosevelt Island mile high buildings and floating cars.
Throw the Dog a Bone: The only outsider to the family wars who gets entrusted with a vague hint of what the girls are doing is Butt Monkey Sam, who doesn't understand it, but it's the thought that counts.
Happens again in the OVA where a dressed-up Rachel starts flirting with Sam's Expy at the school prom.
Title Drop: Not in the main series, but in the OVA. The Red Garden is Roosevelt Island, which is now covered in pink flowers.
Tomboy: Claire leans towards this, especially when contrasted with the rest of the group.
Trademark Favorite Food: Well, not the favorite part. A few episodes in the girls find that lemons help with the side effects of their condition and from then on are seen eating them often and to the bemusement of the people they know, but they don't necessarily like them.
Wake Up, Go to School, Save the World: Deconstructed. Fighting is clearly difficult for the girls (whether physically or mentally), and they don't know why they have to do it. This ends up creating a lot of social (and mental) problems for them, which are given quite a bit of focus.
Well-Intentioned Extremist: As mentioned before, the only reason Herve does what he does is to save his family.
Who Wants to Live Forever?: The leaders of Animus whose only goal is to die. Of course being unable to move as a result of a curse probably contributed a lot to their disillusionment with eternal life.
Averted in the Dead Girls OVA where the four main characters are mostly satisfied with their immortality, and instead of angsting all the time do things like composing ridiculously silly battle songs.
Fridge Horror: At the end of the OVA, Kate and Claire admit that they're getting bored.
Yank the Dog's Chain: In the OVA, Edgar and Louise finally look like they are ready to love each other [[spoiler: and the girls are willing to let Edgar off the hook for his crimes, only for both of them to get pulled under the earth by vines.
You Gotta Have Blue Hair: The hair colors are mostly within the realm of realism, but Mireille and one of Rachel's friends have pinkish hair. Claire's hair appears grey and Luke's purple, but they're probably variations on black.
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