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An anime by J.C. Staff about girls who fight battles to have their wish granted, using special cards that have wills of their own. Based on the card game WIXOSS by Takara Tomy.

The first season premiered in April 2014. A second season, named Selector Spread Wixoss, aired during Autumn of the same year.

Spin-Offs include the mangas Peeping Analyze, Re/verse, and Selector Stirred Wixoss, the idol card fighting AU Diva A Live, and the mobile game Selector Battle with Wixoss. There are also several light novels for WIXOSS as well that take place in a an Alternate Universe.

A sequel movie titled Selector Destructed Wixoss premiered on February 13, 2016. A new anime titled Lostorage Incited WIXOSS followed, premiering on October 7, 2016. A sequel of Lostorage, titled Lostorage Conflated WIXOSS premiered in April 7, 2018 and it brigs together characters from both series.


This show provides examples of:

  • Adults Are Useless: The parents (particularly mothers) of the main Selectors are either one to a degree, such as Ruuko's mom abandoning her, Hitoe's mom becoming worried about her daughter's well-being during the period when Hitoe's wish was tainted, and Akira being an ungrateful child to her own mom.
  • All Deaths Final: The consequences of becoming an Eternal Girl or losing three times straight cannot be reversed by any means, even by becoming an Eternal Girl to reverse the consequences. The Selector Akira murdered will stay dead because it was a result of losing three times straight.
  • All There in the Manual: An in-universe example. Chiyori already knows pretty much everything that happens regarding becoming an Eternal Girl because she read all about it in the game's companion novels. She is actively surprised that none of the others bothered reading them.
  • Aloof Dark-Haired Girl: Iona. In Spread Ulith becomes this when she takes over Iona's body.
  • Arc Symbol: The tower or pillar appears to be this.
  • Becoming the Genie: The result of a selector having her wish granted and becoming an Eternal Girl. The truth is that the LRIG takes her place and lives out her wish while the selector becomes an LRIG and must deceive a new Selector into making a wish and fight in Wixoss battles if she wishes to become human again.
  • Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Akira Aoi, a model. In public she acts all sweet, but when in a WIXOSS game with other selectors, she psychologically tortures them.
  • Bland-Name Product: We see Ruuko making a search using "Gargoyle" in episode 10 of the first season.
  • Blood Knight: Tama gets fairly excited when it's time for a battle to begin. Ruuko gets in on it too, with part of the plot midway focusing on her trying to stop playing the game because she's scared of how much she still enjoys battling even after learning the potential consequences for those she defeats.
    • Iona and her LRIG Ulith as well.
  • Break the Cutie: Hitoe. She gets better.
  • Brother–Sister Incest: Yuzuki wants to be with her younger brother Kazuki. She gets her wish granted... for her LRIG Hanayo. Epilogue does not give a clear answer about the final status of their relationship, but the plot very strongly implies that it is possible, given that Kazuki returned her feelings.
  • The Cameo: The characters from the Re/Verse spin-off manga appear briefly in the epilogue to Spread.
  • Catchphrase: As part of her overly-bubbly personality, when something goes Akira's way, she declares that she's "Aki-Lucky".
    • Later, in Spread, it changes to Aki-Lovely due to her feeling of being made "lovely" by Ulith
  • Chekhov's Gun: When Yuzuki meets Chiyori in Infected, Chiyori mentions reading WIXOSS light novels. These novels become a plot point in Spread.
  • Collectible Card Game: The show revolves around the game WIXOSS.
  • Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Deck types have different colors. The five colours correspond to those of Magic: The Gathering, making this also an example of a Shout-Out to that game. The writer for the show, Mari Okada, has stated that she herself is a fan of Magic: The Gathering.
    • Every color controls a different part of the playing field: White controls the Deck, Black controls the Discard Pile, Red controls the Battlefield, Green controls the Resources, and blue controls the Hand.
  • Combat Pragmatist: Yuzuki believes that she'd quickly win if she battled Ruuko before Ruuko learned how to play WIXOSS, and probably would have if her brother hadn't helped Ruuko.
    • Also Akira who takes advantage of weaker Selectors to get easy wins.
  • Crapsack World: Within the context of the game, as those who fail at the game are punished while those who revel in the battles and all that they entail get rewarded beyond those who merely seek the granting of their wish. Even the Seiyuu for the show mention that for a card game anime, these girls don't look too happy to be playing.
  • Cute and Psycho: Akira looks cute and acts cute, but she's vicious and underhanded.
  • Darker and Edgier: More so than regular card game anime. And yet this was made to attract females to play trading card games.
  • Deconstruction: Of card games, wish granting, and, to a lesser extent, magical girls.
  • Despair Event Horizon: Ulith makes it her mission in life to force all people past this.
  • Downer Ending: The first season ends with Tama disappearing and Ruuko gets Iona as her new LRIG.
  • Estrogen Brigade: invoked Lampshaded In-Universe by the media. WIXOSS are mainly played by females instead of their traditional male players although there are males who do play the game like Kazuki but they are not selectors.
  • Eternal Recurrence: How the Eternal Girl thing plays out. Once a Selector becomes an Eternal Girl, she becomes a LRIG and her LRIG takes over her body and her wish. The new LRIG will then be sent to another Selector to be hers and the process continues.
  • Everything's Sparkly with Jewelry: Tama, Ulith, and Mayu have at least one red earring.
  • Exact Words: The wish of a Selector is granted if they become an Eternal Girl. But the Selector isn't the one who gets it.
    • Tama asks Mayu in the second season if she can see Ruuko again. She ends up becoming the LRIG of Ulith.
  • Expy: Hitoe resembles Yomi in many ways, especially the part where they lost all of their friends mid-season.
  • Fanservice: Promotional artworks aside, this is very lightly played on the Selectors in the anime. For LRIGs, see Ms. Fanservice below.
  • Fate Worse than Death: As a Selector, losing three times in the card game means not only your wish won't be granted but it will be tainted to the point where it can never be granted. Even if you become an Eternal Girl, you are still screwed.
    • Also played on the LRIGs who are tasked to fulfill their Selectors' wish. Fulfilling their wishes means they have to live with those wishes for the rest of their lives and if they fail they will die.
  • Foil: Piruluk to Akira and Iona to Urisu.
    • Iona and Ruuko to Akira.
  • Friendless Background: Hitoe and Ruuko.
  • Grand Theft Me: Yuzuki/Hanayo and Iona/Urisu, as the rule of becoming an Eternal Girl is this. Yuzuki obviously didn't ask for this, while this is a part of Iona's wish.
  • Hate Sink: Ulith in the second season. The entire first half of episode seven is just her monologuing about how much she relishes causing despair, ripping people's hopes and dreams apart, and finally driving them to suicide for no other reason than she finds it hilarious.
  • Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Each episode title begins with the word "this" or "that".
  • Improbably Female Cast: Not surprising since this anime features a card game that is In-Universe intended for girls and that all Selectors and LRIGs are female.
  • Joke Weapon: Green. It supposedly has an advantage over blue, but the only time we see it facing blue ends with it being crushed. On top of that, green is never actually shown winning, with Hitoe losing all three of her battles when using her green deck.
  • Kids Are Cruel: A lot of kids (and not just Selectors) go to this point while making adults look weak.
  • Laser-Guided Amnesia:
    • Hitoe, after she loses her rights as a selector, loses all her memories of her time playing WIXOSS. She gets better.
    • Same happens to Chiyori in spread after losing to Hitoe and thus her right to be a selector.
  • Loophole Abuse: After Yuzuki is imprisoned into an LRIG after her wish is granted to her former LRIG, she learns that she cannot tell Hitoe, her new Selector, the truth about LRIGS or else she will be forever trapped in her card. She finds a way around this by having Hitoe challenge Ruko, and for her to reveal the information to Ruko instead.
  • Manipulative Bastard: Ulith in the second season. She overtly manipulates Akira's emotional distress and lack of self-confidence to get her to become obsessed with her, among compelling those around her to be driven past the Despair Event Horizon.
  • Merchandise-Driven: Downplayed. The first episode, which would normally contain a thorough explanation of the basic rules of play, instead tells us very little, focusing more on Ruuko's and Yuzuki's interactions with their LRIGs and each other. The LRIG is face-up in the table, the players take turns, and cards are played to power up the LRIG cards in some vague manner - that's all that can be gleaned from the first episode. It's told nothing of the various zones, or actions, or card types in the game. Ruuko is confused at first, but then suddenly knows how to play the game, without being taught - a la Falling into the Cockpit. The series continues this by not spending time on any of the cards instead focusing on the unfolding character drama. Compare this to the archetypal Collectible Card Game show, Cardfight!! Vanguard, which spends nearly half of its first episode teaching its main character, and by extension the audience, how to play the game.
  • Mind Rape:
    • Akira psychologically tortures Hitoe through some brutal words, reducing her to a sobbing wreck; fittingly, Akira forces her to discard all her cards before she can play them (a tactic represented in Magic: The Gathering as mental attacks).
    • Mayu gives one to Iona to maintain her Blood Knight self.
  • Miss Exposition: In the first episode, Hayano clears up the rules about how to become the Eternal Girl.
  • Ms. Fanservice: The majority of the LRIGs are this, combined with Male Gaze.
  • Mystical White Hair:
    • Tama, being Ruuko's LRIG, and Urisu, who is Iona's.
    • Mayu, who may have more connection to the above two than previously thought.
  • Nightmare Sequence: Ruuko Kominato had one after meeting her LRIG.
  • Our Genies Are Different: According to Fumio, she senses something different about Ruuko's LRIG, Iona, who is the "Girl of Black".
  • Parental Abandonment: Ruuko was abandoned by her mother after her father left them.
  • Poor Communication Kills: Hitoe's wish could've been avoided being corrupted if her LRIG told her what happens if she loses three times before right when she was about to lose her third battle.
  • Red Herring: At the start of the series there's discussion of how a new skyscraper under construction resembles a pillar, and Ruuko worries that it will make the town disappear like lines in Tetris. The final battle of the first season takes place on top of said skyscraper. At the end of Spread, a pillar similar to the skyscraper disappears...but this turns out to be a good thing as the pillar was imprisoning Tama. At the very end of the series, the skyscraper is completed and there's a comment that the town didn't disappear after all.
  • Red Oni, Blue Oni: The relationships of the first five selectors and their respective LRIGs are essentially this. Akira/Piruluk and Iona/Urisu play this trope the closest and ironically, one pair's contrasting personalities are inverted on the other. This is averted by Chiyori and her LRIG Eldora, as they get along quite well.
  • The Reveal: Things get whammy as the girls explore the true nature of the card game.
  • Sdrawkcab Name: LRIG is backwards for GIRL, referring back to the whole Eternal Girl bit.
  • Shoo Out the Clowns: Hitoe hands Chiyori her third defeat near the end of the series, before things get truly heavy;. The backlash of Chiyori's wish wipes her memory and causes her to become distant from Wixoss.
  • Shrinking Violet: Hitoe stutters her way through attempts to challenge other selectors.
  • Sibling Yin-Yang: Yuzuki is clearly more impulsive than her brother and is willing to battle Ruuko before Ruuko even learns the rules for WIXOSS, while Kazuki is the calmer one who apologizes for her behavior and believes in an honorable fight. Yuzuki is a newcomer to WIXOSS while Kazuki is a skilled player.
  • Spoiler Opening: ZigZagged. The three girls (Ruuko, Yuzuki and Hitoe) hang out together in the opening of Selector Infected WIXROSS, promising another friendship-building brought-together-by-a-hobby perseverance story. Sure enough, they meet, they're good, they're kinda friends. Then Hitoe gets hit by supernatural amnesia and painful feedbacks at each prospect of finding friends ever again. The get-together by the end of "Infected" doesn't cut it either, since Yuzuki is a LRIG-entity confined to a WIXOSS game card, and Ruuko is heartbroken over what led to her separation with Tama.
  • The Stinger: After Ruuko and Tama's reunion at the end of destructed, right after, we see a scene of Ulith/Rumi being absorbed into the void, only to be reunited with Sachi.
  • The Stoic:
    • Piruluk, Akira's LRIG, doesn't even show emotion when Akira threatens to rip her in half. The only time she smiles is when she smirks at Ruuko during Akira's match with Hitoe.
    • Iona, as well. Akira even lampshades how similar her LRIG is to her.
  • Stripperific: Hanayo and Midoriko in the anime.
  • Take That!:
    • A very subtle one. WIXOSS seems to take some inspiration from Puella Magi Madoka Magica. Late in Infected it's revealed that there are certain wishes that can't be granted. The example given? Time Travel.
    • A less subtle one aimed at Madoka basically calls out Madoka's final solution as extremely selfish.
    • Also takes aim at shows like Vanguard regarding its constant and nearly shameless product shilling by having the relentless in-universe advertising campaign for Wixoss being helmed by some pop idols who want more girls to play the game so that they can have as many easy targets as possible.
  • There Are No Therapists: Even if there are therapists, it's only going to make things more complicated.
  • Vapor Wear: Tama doesn't seem to be wearing anything under her dress, let alone any underwear.
  • Wham Episode:
    • In Episode 5, Ruuko and Yuzuki learn the consequences of losing three Selector battles: not only do they lose any memories of being a Selector, but their wish is reversed.
    • Episode 8 shows what would happen if a Selector becomes an Eternal Girl, with Episode 9 going into more detail.
    • Episode 12 has the "final battle." Iona and Ruuko are both ready to become Eternal Girls, Tama refuses to grant her Selector's wish. Urisu does not. Urisu takes over Iona's body and Iona becomes Ruuko's new LRIG, implying that was her wish all along.
    • Spread keeps them coming with Episode 8 showing Ruko lose her first battle. And Akira stabs what appears to be the season's Big Bad Ulith.
  • Yandere: Iona to Ruuko. In the second season, Akira to Ulith, to the point where she says she's willing to kill Ruuko for her. Also, Mayu for Tama.

 
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Urith threatening Hitoe and explaining her motives.

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