Literature / Oto × Maho

"Starting from today, you are going to become a magical girl, Kana-chan."

—Konata

Oto × Maho (おと×まほ) is a Magical Girl (kind of) comedy Light Novel series written by Shirase Shuu and illustrated by Yasu (also the illustrator of Toradora! and Joshiraku), which was published from 2007 to 2015 by Softbank Creative for 16 volumes. It also has a manga adaptation that was serialized from 2008 to 2011 in FlexComix Next.

Shirahime Kanata is an ordinary middle-schooler whose mother one night makes two big announcements: she's going to be heading out of town on vacation, and starting immediately, Kanata will begin working in her place to carry out her secret, but important job: being a Magical Girl! Kanata is not pleased by this for a variety of reasons, with the most pertinent being that — despite having a cute face and waist-length hair — he's a guy.

Unfortunately for him, the town can't wait, with a legion of monsters known as the "Noise" always ready to disturb the peace. In light of his mother's absence, Kanata ends up forced to sign a contract to take on the position of a magical girl, with the superpowers and cute skirt that it entails, as well as a clause that should he abandon his new responsibilities, he'll be permanently transformed into an actual girl. With the aid of his pet-turned-mentor, Moeru, and several other unexpected allies, thus begins Kanata's new adventures of fighting the forces of evil in possibly the most embarrassing way possible.

The story follows Kanata learning to come to terms with his powers, making new friends, and finding his place in the world within his unusual predicament.

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This series provides examples of:

• Ambiguous Gender: Downplayed with Moeru. We know for certain that he's presently male, but the light novel confirms that he used to be a magical girl before accidentally turning into a cat. What's specifically left unconfirmed is whether he used to be a female human who became a male cat, or if he was in a similar situation as Kanata of always being biologically male, but just placed in the position and customs of magical girls.
• Ambiguously Human: It's unclear what Effect actually is. They're first introduced as merely Noise monster (an especially strong and human-behaving one, but still a Noise), but following their reformation under President's leash, they more or less resemble an ordinary person with Noise-like powers, and at no point do they revert back. Adding to the wackiness is the epilogue reveal that they became a high school teacher passing as a normal human, as well as later light novel volumes showing them fighting alongside the tuners in Magical Girl fashion, complete with new outfit, with the final volume showing them still only just learning the basics of human biology, including childbirth. With all that laid down, it's unknown if Effect actually became human following their heel-turn, or if they still are a Noise, just a benign one that the tuners have no problem joining in their ranks.
• And the Adventure Continues: Twice over:
  • The manga ends with Kanata and his friends vanquishing Fearness, with Kanata's newly-repaired contract ensuring he still has to stay active in fighting off the remaining Noise. He doesn't mind.
  • The light novel epilogue ends with Kanata successfully proving his strength after a year of progress to his mother, though while proud, she still insists he still has much to learn. Konata bestows him with a pink scarf to his uniform, and the series ends with him looking forward to the path ahead, proclaiming "Today, tomorrow and every day, my sky is blue."
• Big Bad Friend: After several early hints, chapter 14 reveals that President is allied with the Noise, revealing her involvement in initiating "The Night" and destroying the Tuners. However, they quickly piece together that she's not the actual Big Bad nor is that mission her goal — that would belong to President's mother, Fearness.
• Big Damn Heroes: As Ruma, Yori, and Effect discover the severity of the "Creation Territory", they realize that they don't have a way to stop it with ordinary tuner magic. Cue the arrival of Konata — having just returned to town from her vacation — casually strutting through the spell's barrier, helping rescue her son from the newly-arrived Fearness, and giving him, Ruma, and Yori the power to fly to her location and stop her once and for all.
• Big Eater: Zig-zagged with Ruma — whenever she's shown eating, she eats a lot and very messily, but that's because she rarely gets a chance to do so. She's generally so preoccupied and focused on doing her Magical Girl job that she Forgets to Eat, at one point realizing she's been only subsisting on water for the last three days.
• Big Good: Konata ends up taking this role, bestowing powers to her son with a bizarre yet completely sincere and ultimately benevolent belief that he'll make a powerful Magical Girl, and despite having a very callous, trickster-type attitude towards danger, later chapters strongly imply her to be the most powerful magic user in the setting.
• Bishounen Line: Discord Effect first appears as an intimidating humanoid silhouette with twisted shadow imagery. Following their defeat and forging a partnership with President, they reform in the shape of a much more normal-looking, dark-skinned androgyne and retains that form for the rest of the series... including in the epilogue, where Kanata realizes they got hired as an English teacher at his school.
• By the Power of Grayskull!: "Spread widely, to the end of the sky!" are Konata's "meaningful words" to activate his transformation. He doesn't actually need to be told what the words are — he's simply instructed while getting thrown into his first Noise battle to invoke his way to power, and intuits exactly what he needs to say.
• Chain Pain: Yori's signature weapon are chains, which she either uses to whip around and lash her enemies or form around her fists for punching.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Konata, Kanata's mother, is quite airy and strange, having a long history of repeatedly pranking her son over bizarre matters and treating the whole "getting Kanata to become a Magical Girl to keep the peace while going on a globetrotting vacation" deal with a blasé, devil-may-care level of ease.
• Combat Pragmatist: Kanata has trouble honing his magic potential properly at the start of the series, but he makes up for it with his scrappy intuition, from chucking dust into his opponent's eyes to just clobbering his foes with his staff when he can't get the magic to work. During his battle against his Evil Doppelgänger, Kanata chucks his staff at it like a javelin, followed up by Moeru.
• Cool Big Sis: Yori functions as this to Kanata and Ruma, being the most experienced (and, to her chagrin, oldest) active Magical Girl. She has a particular experience trying to be a reliable guardian to Ruma (by the time both of them got their powers, Yori was already 19 while Ruma only 8), but Ruma continually brushes off her help in order to prove her own strength.
• Cute Clumsy Girl: Ruma, despite introducing herself as a haughty, experienced quasi-Dark Magical Girl, also has a repeated habit of tripping on the high heels of her magical girl costume at inopportune times, with Moeru snarking that she's a dojikko.
• Dark Magical Girl: Ruma is a downplayed example: she gets along decently with Kanata, but she takes her Magical Girl job much more seriously and initially looks down at Kanata for his inexperience and naïveté. Yori confirms that she's also had a habit of rejecting help and insisting she can take care of things alone, an attitude that the two spend their time helping her shed as the series progresses. Chapter 13 also directly alludes to Ruma also having a Dark and Troubled Past, having been abandoned by her parents at a young age, no doubt inspiring her aloof, solitary attitude.
• Determinator: As annoyed and embarrassed as Kanata is of the whole Magical Girl job, he's certainly not a quitter, being fully willing to throw down against whatever monster threatens him, his friends, and the town at large. His mother cheerfully comments that his most powerful trait happens to be his selfishness, as he refuses to go down without a fight in order to save those he loves.
• Disappeared Dad: The story never touches where Kanata's father is, only his mother.
• Disney Death: Kanata defeats Fearness and ends the Creation Territory event, but in doing so, President — choosing to stay with her mother as she fades away — leaves Kanata with the words "I'm sorry... and thank you..." before vanishing. In the week afterwards, only a few people at school are aware that she's missing due to her "recognition inhibition", leaving Kanata to wonder if she's gone forever. Guess who he ends up coming across after returning to school that day?
• The Dragon: Starting from chapter 11, a humanoid, talkative, and especially powerful Noise identified as "Discord Effect" attacks Yori and then later Kanata, later manifesting as the Number Two to the Big Bad. Subverted in that they end up specifically serving President, not Fearness, and when given the orders to save the girls, they do so without hesitation.
• Dragged into Drag:
  • Poor Kanata ends up in a full magical girl costume — complete with short skirt and spats — whenever he activates his powers, magically replacing whatever he was wearing at the time (though at least they return when he deactivates his powers). This also occurs non-magically as well: in chapter 11, President volunteers him into a cosplay contest, and he gets strong-armed to appear on stage in an outfit not dissimilar to his magical girl costume (and no, no one realizes he's male the entire time):
    Ruma: To think Kana-tan's gonna appear onstage... it seems like he kinda disliked the idea, but while chatting with that girl, he suddenly hung his head...
    Moeru: (realizes what's happening) Haha... Kana-tan's been "dragged in" again.
  • Another non-magical instance occurs in chapter 15, where during a School Festival, Kanata gets peer-pressured by Ruma, Yori, and Jou into multiple Instant Cosplay Surprises, resulting in him dressed as a maid, a waitress, a miko, and whatever Fanservice Costumes Yori just happened to have on standby.
• Dude Looks Like a Lady: Kanata, much to his annoyance, not only looks very slender and androgynous, but isn't permitted to trim his hair aside from his bangs, and as such is long enough to reach down to his waist. He barely looks distinguishable from his own mother! Unsurprisingly, he's been mistaken for a girl by many people meeting him for the first time, from his childhood friend Jou to Ruma. When he temporarily does become biologically female in the Final Battle, he looks almost entirely identical to before.
• 11th-Hour Superpower: In the Final Battle, Kanata decides to intentionally tear his contract, fully aware that the "punishment" of becoming a girl for real will give him full control of his magic ability, making him powerful enough to defeat Fearness for good. This surge ends up directly upgrading his Magic Staff to the "Cross OverThere".
• Emotion Bomb: When Fearness makes her first appearance in the flesh in chapter 18, her sheer presence invokes a horrifying level of fear and despair in Kanata and President, with Kanata almost fully succumbing to the darkness before he's freed and rescued by Konata, Ruma, and Yori.
• Emotion Eater: The Noise are specified to be based on the "discord" of the world around them, and in chapters 5-6, one particularly insidious Noise finds its way around by introducing chaos in Kanata's mind, amplifying his insecurity and self-doubt before taking on his form. In chapter 13, another Noise does the same thing to Ruma, putting her in a depressive trance until she gets rescued by Yori. In both cases, it becomes later revealed that they were planted by Fearness herself.
• Embarrassing but Empowering Outfit: Kanata's initial reaction to his Magical Girl costume, which is why he's so reluctant to take up the position's responsibility for a while. It takes him a while of realizing the responsibility of fighting off the Noise and protecting his friends and loved ones that he decides to brave through it.
• Embarrassing Nickname: Moeru habitually calls Kanata the rather infantilizing "Kana-tan", which annoys Kanata to no end. Sadly for him, it catches on with Ruma and Yori.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: As abusive and manipulative as she is, Fearness still flinches in shock when President finally stands up to her, particularly when she retaliates and hears her daughter scream out in pain.
• Even the Guys Want Him: Kanata seems to turn everyone's heads at school, but appears to have an especially large number of male admirers considering his specific looks. Even Jou seems to have trouble reminding himself that his best friend is male.
  Jou: Honestly, you're rather antisocial lately... don't tell me you have another boyfriend besides me!
  Kanata: What do you mean "besides you?!"
• Evil Doppelgänger: The main threat of "My Wish" is a Noise that gained power through Kanata's anxiety and insecurity, taking on his appearance (sans very conspicuous Black Eyes of Evil) and magical ability.
• Evil Matriarch: Fearness happens to be President's mother. Her fall and descent into villainy happened a few years after President was born, and President was raised to not only hone her own magical power, but to eventually participate in her long-term plan to cast the "Creation Territory" spell and consume the world. President didn't want to do this — she just wanted to live a normal life and not have to hurt anyone — but was simultaneously too afraid to defy her while also being too afraid to abandon her, leaving her alone.
• Fallen Hero: The Big Bad of the story, Fearness, used to be a powerful tuner and brilliant researcher of the Noise, but as she obsessed with using her magic to manipulate the human soul, she was stripped of her Origin Key and magic powers, leaving her furious for revenge and causing her to become completely corrupted by the Noise, ironically making her even more powerful.
• Fanservice: Typical to many Magical Girl works, Transformation Sequences result in nudity obscured by glitter and other effects as their new clothes form onto them, and there's the occasional upskirt shot, often where Kanata is concerned.
• Final Boss, New Dimension: The final battle against Fearness takes place in a dark Pocket Dimension in the sky — the center of the Creation Territory, unsurprisingly swarming with Noise. Only the main Tuner trio are able to reach it to rescue President and stop Fearness' plans once and for all.
• Forced into Evil: President became obligated to serve Fearness — her mother — and the Noise, and despite trying to bury her friendship with Kanata and oust herself as an irredeemable enemy once they make their move, it becomes clear through her carefully calculated moments of weakness and suspicious generosity that she feels terrible about it, and is doing everything she can do give Kanata and the rest of the girls a fighting chance while saving face.
• Forced Sleep: When the Birth of Night event hits, every non-magical person in its massive, city-wide radius, is forced into a deep slumber, which also includes Ruma when she gets knocked out of her magical girl form. When she comes to, she relays that she was stuck experiencing a terrible, unending dream where she was constantly reliving her negative emotions, leading the girls to realize why this aspect of the "Creation Territory" is so important — it will generate ridiculous amounts of Noise with nothing to oppose them.
• Full-Contact Magic: Casting magical blasts is an option for Kanata, but he much prefers to simply use his Magic Staff as a melee weapon, swinging it like a baseball bat to bash the Noise apart with blunt force. Notably, his evil clone in "My Wish" doesn't use this method and instead relies back on the magic blasts.
• Glamour:
  • As Moeru explains in chapter 5, magical girls naturally come with a "recognition inhibition" charm that conceals their identity to normal outsiders — not so much that they can't literally see them, but they become unable to directly attach identities, meaning that even though they can see the cute white-haired magical girl and "her" face, they're unable to recognize that it's Kanata.
  • Chapter 16 reveals that President is running under a much more powerful "recognition inhibition", allowing her to be close to Kanata without him realizing anything about her — not her interests, her hobbies, her name, and especially not her secrets.
• Good Powers, Bad People: This is what led to the creation of Fearness. She was originally a powerful and well-respected tuner, but in her quest to research and understand the Noise, she crossed a line by trying to use her magic to manipulate the hearts and minds of people around her to stop the discord, a breach that resulted in her Origin Key and magical girl status being revoked. Her fury and desire for revenge is what led to her trying to foster the power of the Noise for herself.
• Head-Turning Beauty: Everyone at school wants Kanata, even other male students. Kanata really doesn't like this kind of attention as not only does it make him unsure on whether or not they actually like him for who he is, it tends to just be awkward. His first encounter with Jou was a Love Confession after Jou mistook Kanata for a girl, and even after they ended up becoming genuine friends, Jou repeatedly tries to capitalize off Kanata's popularity, such as in chapter 8 where he presents Kanata figurines to an enraptured audience (up until Kanata realizes what he's doing and smashes them with a briefcase).
• Heroic RRoD: Ruma spends so much time on the clock fighting Noise that by the time she gets to fighting an especially big one in chapter 8, she can barely stand, only able to defeat it with Kanata's help before passing out.
• Hidden Eyes: Kanata's eyes vanish when you hit one of his Berserk Buttons. It generally leads to a laughably one-sided beatdown.
• Homeless Hero: Chapter 12 reveals that unlike Kanata and Yori, Ruma doesn't live in a fixed abode, but rather a tent in the park.
• Humanoid Abomination: Several Noise manifest as this to some degree, but we're introduced to an especially big one called the "Discord Effect" in chapter 11 that resembles a blackened human silhouette, has a much more chaotic and violent form of magic that nearly trounces Yori, and uniquely can talk. They're later revealed to be some kind of older, dark-skinned magical entity allied with President — simply identifying as "Effect" — and they willfully stand down when given the order to save the Tuners during the Birth of Night event.
• I Am Not Left-Handed: During Kanata and Ruma's fight upon their first introduction, Kanata notices that Ruma launches her magic coins from her right hand, giving him the idea to target it as she fires another coin barrage. It works, briefly disarming Ruma and throwing her off her game... until Kanata gets too close and Ruma pings a coin into him using her left hand.
• I Just Want to Be Normal:
  • In addition to finding the whole Magical Girl thing embarrassing, Kanata is generally insecure about himself, finding his unusually good looks attracting unwanted admiration and expectations, resulting in him wanting to reject the attention of others (worrying that his friends only like him for superficial reasons) while also anxious to look inward and define what he truly wants for himself. The "My Wish" arc hinges around Kanata being forced to confront this mentality and grow out of it, accepting that he is who he is, and he's going to take on his responsibilities because he wants to.
  • Reflected in a dark way with President, who was raised by her mother since childhood to help bring about the end of days. President didn't want to, instead just wanting the two to grow up as a normal parent and child, but was forced to go along with it due to just Fearness already having made up her mind towards apocalyptic levels of revenge, making facing her impossibly dangerous.
• "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: The penultimate battle between Kanata and President seems like President committing to betray her best friend to enable the Birth of Night and potential destruction of the world, but Kanata ends up realizing by her particular actions that it's a put-on — President doesn't appear to actually want to do anything evil, and is merely trying to convince herself to align with the outside pressure of her mother. As such, Kanata's course of action in stopping her is reaffirming to her that despite her current protests, President was, and always will be, his best friend. Eventually, it works.
• Identity Breakdown: Kanata experiences this in the "My Wish" two-parter, with a Noise amplifying his insecurity and leaving him in a state of questioning his place in the world, being reluctant to accept the love and kindness of his friends while also not knowing what he actually expects or wants from himself, which briefly costs him his powers and results in said Noise taking on his appearance. It takes some necessary introspection and Character Development for him to regain his confidence and blow his opponent to smithereens.
• It Only Works Once: Kanata's "Blue Trail" spell is his only major magic attack, and due to his lack of control over his magic ability, he tends to release everything all at once and immediately runs dry, leading him to rely on his physical prowess to fight instead. In chapter 14, he realizes while fighting Discord Effect that he's getting outmatched in that regard, and thus has only one chance to fire his spell. Fortunately, he makes it count, and it's really freakin' big.
• Lecherous Licking: President demonstrates her... intimate affection for Kanata by sneaking up behind him in the school hallway and licking his ear really intensely, even commenting that he tastes like milk. According to later comments, this isn't even a new thing.
• Loveable Sex Maniac: Moeru has a recurring perverted side, with a Running Gag of him trying to leer on Kanata's fanservice-y transformations, with Kanata doing everything he can to get him out of the way or in some way keep him busy. During volume 16 of the light novel, Kanata ends up stepping into various Dream Lands of his friends, and Moeru's takes place in a realm where everyone is obsessed with spats, with Kanata being forced to partake in a ceremony for the Spats Kingdom.
• Magic Is Feminine: Discussed in chapter 12 — while training Kanata, Ruma discusses with him the idea that women have more magical strength than men who have physical strength, which would explain why Kanata has less control over his magic than her or Yori. However, Ruma seems to doubt this hypothesis as Kanata is really magically powerful, just untrained and inexperienced, leading her to wonder just how much more or less powerful he'd be if he was female. As demonstrated during the final battle, it turns out the answer is "way more."
• Magical Girl: In the fiction of the series, magical girls are "tuners" who work to preserve the harmony of the universe, and are the sole defenses against the monsters that seek to disturb that harmony, dubbed "noise". Kanata ends up appointed in the position of one by his mom, with Ruma and Yori ending up becoming partners throughout the story. Yori implies in chapter 12 that there's some kind of unseen organization choosing tuners and backing them up, with some unknown sponsor providing them amenities like hospital care, and someone is apparently paying Ruma based on the Noise she takes down.
• Magically-Binding Contract: Kanata ends up roped into the Magical Girl business through a contract, and to his chagrin, he accidentally "signed" it by placing his thumbprint on it. If a magical girl unilaterally breaks contract, she'll end up receiving "divine punishment" — for Kanata, his would be getting turned into an actual girl. He ends up tearing it during the Final Battle as part of a gambit to boost his power to defeat the Fearness, though afterwards, Moeru manages to patch it back together with a warning to never try a risky stunt like that again.
• The Masquerade: The existence of magical girls and Noise is largely suggested to be beyond the knowledge of the public, and while there are periodically rumors of their existence, with a handful of fights happening at school that also include Kanata, the broader existence of a supernatural war is beyond their comprehension. Following Fearness' "Creation Territory" event, Moeru and several tuners tamper with news broadcasts to downplay the mass blackout and preserve the secret... until a post-manga volume of the light novel has several cunning Noise force the tuners out into the limelight, turning them into minor celebrities (and still with their Glamour, so they maintain their secret identities).
• Mentor Mascot: Moeru is a seemingly unassuming housecat who spent seven years in Kanata/Konata's house as their pet, but he turns out to be fully intelligent, able to talk, stand on two legs, and has been positioned to act as Kanata's "supervisor" while on the magical girl job. While he's a little too engrossed in the fanservice-y side of Kanata's transformations, he's still able to act as a sincere mentor who gives helpful advice and insight, and he's occasionally shown putting up a surprisingly decent fight when Kanata is out of commission (despite, again, being a housecat).
• Mirror Character: Kanata ends up developing this dynamic — bordering on having an Evil Counterpart — with President, who only avoids being a strict Evil Counterpart due to not being willfully so. Both of them were raised to be Magical Girls by their respective mothers, but while Konata did so lovingly with a belief that her son would do great things for the world and is the closest thing the series has to a Big Good, Fearness is a cruel, wrathful, revenge-filled Fallen Hero who raised her daughter for the explicit purpose of helping end the world, being very much the Big Bad. Both of them also ended up dealing with the baggage of fundamentally craving normalcy and facing similar identity crises of who they "are" and what they want deep down — Konata eventually learns to accept his responsibility, and he additionally ends up helping President rightfully rejecting hers.
• Mirror Match: During the "My Wish" two-parter, Kanata faces off against an Evil Doppelgänger born from his sense of self-doubt and unwillingness to accept his magical girl duties. In a neat bit of asymmetry, the doppelgänger uses ranged magical attacks, but Kanata wields his usual fighting style of physical attacks with his magic staff.
• Modesty Shorts: Kanata's magical girl costume fits him with spats, though he doesn't find that it makes the experience of wearing a miniskirt while fighting any less humiliating. For some reason, they get replaced with panties when he becomes a girl, which naturally triggers an even worse reaction.
• Money Mauling: Ruma's signature weapons are coins, and lots of them. Tagging a target with one coin gives her free reign to pelt seemingly infinite amounts of them from out of the aether.
  Ruma: Once your body comes in contact with [my coin], you shall become a millionaire, naremasu no~
• Monster Misogyny: Downplayed in chapter 5 as nobody gets seriously hurt, but Kanata notes the blade-adorned Monster of the Week seems to only shred the clothes of female students, with male pupils just so happening to get out unscathed. Then again, it ends up shredding Kanata's clothes as well...
• Mystical White Hair: Both Kanata and his mother both have naturally white hair, which carries especially supernatural connotations given they're part of the profession of Magical Girl. Kanata is revealed to actually be pretty sensitive about looking and being treated as "unique" even without his new supernatural responsibilities.
• Named Weapon: Kanata's magic staff is christened the "OverThere", which would be a pun off of Kanata's name (the katakana used, かなた, translates to "over there/far away"). When Kanata ends up actually turned into a girl in the final chapter, the upgraded staff becomes the "Cross OverThere".
• The Night That Never Ends: In chapter 16, President instigates "The Night", shrouding the city in pitch-black darkness (not even with any stars) and putting every non-magical person within into a deep sleep that will create even more Noise. It's revealed that the spell is of a powerful world-creating magic called "Creation Territory", reshaping reality to the desires of a newfound lord — that lord being Fearness, President's mother.
• Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant: President has a gentle, affectionate demeanor, but some of that affection manifests in occasionally really creepy or suggestive ways that quietly terrifies Kanata. She also seems to generally have morbid tastes, with her very first instinct upon getting invited to an amusement park being to hit the Haunted House. This ends up taking a much darker turn when it's later revealed she's in cahoots with the Noise.
  President: This is a truly colorful amusement park...
  Kanata: It is a little too dazzling...
  President: (with an evil smile) I wish everything were pitch black, so badly.
  Kanata: (shocked) Why are you saying something so horrible?!
• No Sense of Personal Space: President shows on multiple occasions to have a very touchy-feely way of showing her affection to Kanata, much to his discomfort. Even when they end up in a magical duel where she intends to kill Kanata, she can't resist the urge to get handsy when he's vulnerable.
• The Not-Love Interest: The President is the closest thing Kanata has to a love interest, with the two being close Childhood Friends that deeply care for one another, and they even go on what is effectively a date to an amusement park together. However, nothing about their relationship is directly stated to be romantic in nature, and aside from the playful tease here and there on President's end, it appears the two are content just being "best friends".
• Not Quite Dead: Discord Effect gets seemingly vaporized by Kanata's "Blue Spiral" spell, but barely ekes their way out in the form of a small cloud of black mist. They're still in mortal danger, and it's only when President finds them and convinces them to form an alliance that they're able to return during The Night.
• Older Than They Look: She doesn't immediately look the part, but Yori is 24 years old (having been working as a Magical Girl since she was 19), a fact that she's pretty sensitive about.
• One-Winged Angel: Fearness' initial appearance is imposing, ominous, yet otherwise human-looking, but during the final battle against her in her realm, she begins assimilating several Noise into her body, morphing her into an increasingly powerful and increasingly monstrous form. Even before that point, once she's encountered in the realm, she's become so consumed by the Noise's power that she doesn't even speak, only roaring and screaming in pure rage.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Even though the two are close friends, Kanata's class president is simply referred to as "President" rather than her given name.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: In the final volume of the light novel, one new Magical Girl appears before Kanata and co, wearing a white Domino Mask and identifying herself as "Cherry Blossom". Kanata almost immediately sees through it to realize it's his mother, doing something weird as part of her new shenanigans.
• Parasol of Pain: President's Magical Girl weapon is a parasol with an incredibly sharp tip, which she uses to both look pretty and cause maximum pain.
• The Pollyanna: Konata has an astonishingly upbeat and optimistic disposition no matter what supernatural and/or insane challenge lies before her, something that repeatedly weirds out her son. Upon saving Kanata from Fearness, she doesn't break her smile or airy attitude at any point while confronting the Big Bad, and no one's quite sure what to make out of her complete unbridled, yet dubiously-warranted confidence.
• Power Incontinence: Kanata's magic potential is remarkably high, but early on, he has a habit of expending all of his power at once before running dry, manifesting as a massive single magic blast followed by an inability to fire anything else for a while.
• Psychosomatic Superpower Outage: In the "My Wish" two-parter, Kanata finds himself unable to activate his powers in the face of a Noise attack due to his heightened self-doubt. Moeru points out that the powers only answer to those who truly believe in themselves, and despite Kanata becoming more eager to fight as a Magical Girl, it becomes clear that it's only because of obligation imposed on him externally, and that he really doesn't know what he actually wants for himself. It takes a pep talk from his friends and acceptance of himself and his duty that he gets his groove back.
• Race Against the Clock: Kanata imposes a race against the clock on himself in chapter 2, transforming to start fighting, then telling President on the other side of the door to the roof to count to 10, then open the door. If he doesn't kill the enemy in 10 seconds, then transform back to his normal form, his job as a Magical Girl will be exposed.
• Reluctant Fanservice Girl: Invoked with Kanata on account of not actually being a girl, but the poor guy is more prone to girly outfits and embarrassing shenanigans than other characters in the series, including other Magical Girls.
• Retired Monster: Played for Laughs, in the epilogue, Effect — having completed their original purpose as a number-two Noise — chose to disappear in peace... before reappearing in their human form as Kanata's new English teacher at school, much to Kanata's shock (and many students' admiration).
• Revealing Hug: A long-distance example in chapter 10: after spending the day together, President gives Kanata a warm hug while on the Ferris wheel. Ruma and Moeru — who have been secretly spying on the two from another gondola — realize that President was looking directly back at them.
• Secretly Selfish: Subverted with Ruma — Moeru discusses Ruma's habit of overworking herself in her Magical Girl responsibilities, pointing out that part of her particular contract involves a payroll for the amount of Noise that she takes down. Combined with pointing out that a Magical Girl's weapon takes a form reflective of the user's deep desires, and her is a lone coin, Ruma "confesses" to Moeru that she is, in fact, Only in It for the Money. However, Moeru doesn't buy it on the basis that if that were the case, not only would she not be overworking herself to the point of physically breaking down, but she wouldn't be rejecting any help in doing so, and instead interprets her lonely coin as representing her much larger desire to work alone.
• Series Fauxnale: The central driving plot of the series effectively ends with the manga, but the light novel continues well after Kanata defeating the Big Bad, largely as lighthearted epilogues to wrap up some loose ends and give characters some last-minute adventures and closure.
• Smoke Out: President's Origin Key gives her the power to shroud her surroundings in a thick mist, making it impossible for her opponents to detect her (even through magical senses) as she stabs them repeatedly.
• Strong Family Resemblance: Kanata has an astonishingly close resemblance to his mother, no doubt accentuated by his long hair and Konata's flat chest. When put side-by-side, Konata only appears at best to be a couple inches taller than her son.
• Super Gender-Bender:
  • Subverted; Kanata stays male even while in "Magical Girl mode", though considering his girlish looks, one could hardly tell a difference. The only predicament where he'd end up getting genderbent is if he stops being a Magical Girl.
  • Double-subverted during the Final Battle, when he willfully tears his contract just enough to induce his "punishment" and become a "full" magical girl, giving him the full control of his magic to defeat Fearness once and for all. Even then, because Kanata didn't destroy the whole contract (a piece of the parchment was still left dangling after tearing it), he still retains an... "oasis", according to Moeru. Following the battle, this ends up getting undone as Moeru manages to repair the contract and negotiate with the powers that be.
• Talking Animal: Moeru, a cat-shaped Mentor Mascot who's able to communicate perfectly with Kanata while also masquerading as a normal housecat. When Kanata suddenly shoves him in front of the President right after a Noise fight, Moeru lets out a meow that President comments sounds odd, like a person imitating a cat. The light novel reveals that he used to be a magical girl himself, but became a cat by accident during a failed experiment that fused him with his Origin Key.
• Trickster Mentor: Konata has shades of this — a lot of her lax and constantly carefree attitude is implied to be justified by her having tremendous power and tremendous confidence that Kanata and his friends are fully capable of solving their problems, only periodically giving them a small nudge here and there based on her bizarre wisdom. The final light novel has her explicitly put Kanata to the test by casting a benevolent "Creation Territory" and setting up a zany dream-hopping "game" for Kanata to demonstrate how powerful he's become after a year of the business, implicitly to provoke him into challenging her to a fight.
• This Is Something He's Got to Do Himself: Downplayed: Konata, Ruma, and Yori are the only forces that can reach the Fearness' Pocket Dimension realm for the final battle, with Konata only having enough power to send the three there, with she and Effect only able to stand by and wait for them to win. Effect suggests that Konata was probably more powerful and could defeat Fearness herself, but while she agrees, she then admits that only Kanata has the potential to defeat her and rescue his best friend.
• Uncertain Doom: In the manga, Fearness' fate following her defeat is unknown, with her simply shown fading away along with President and her Creation Territory. The light novel resolves this with President revealing that her mother has been hospitalized, but is otherwise still alive, presumably with the Noise knocked out of her.
• Verbal Tic: Ruma ends almost every other sentence with "desu no" or variants thereof, like "desu no ne" and "naremasu no".^note None of these honorifics have direct English equivalents — they're often said at the end of Japanese sentences to indicate politeness.
• Wacky Parent, Serious Child: One has to wonder how Kanata turned out to be a fairly serious and responsible kid considering his mother, Konata, seems to be a total space cadet who thinks it's a perfectly normal and reasonable idea to appoint her son to be a Magical Girl as she goes on vacation for herself.
• Weapon-Based Characterization: As discussed by Moeru, each of the girls' "Origin Key" weapons take form based on the user's feelings and self-perception.
  • Kanata's general Magical Girl motif is the sky, which includes his Magic Staff drawing power from the wild blue yonder itself, in turn representing his vast, near-infinite potential and adventurousness. In conquering Fearness, he ends up very literally breaking The Night That Never Ends to reveal the beautiful blue sky.
  • For Ruma, Moeru shares a heart-to-heart about the fact her weapon took the form of a coin — she eventually breaks and "admits" that it represents her greed, but Moeru disagrees, instead suggesting that it reflects her deeper desire to work and fight alone.
  • Yori's "Linker" chains are very much like her: tough and resilient, but also a tool to link things together, much like how Yori herself is the mature intermediary seeking to bring her fellow tuners together.
• Wholesome Crossdresser: Despite his reluctance and embarrassment for it, Kanata ends up crossdressing with astonishing regularity even without the magical girl setup, and everyone (including other boys) is drawn to him for just how cute he looks pulling it off.

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