Freezing is a manga by the manhwa team of Dal-young Im (author) and KIM Kwang Hyun (artist) published by Comic Valkyrie in Japan and by Haksan Pub in Booking magazine in South Korea.Beings from a different dimension, called Novas, have started a war with mankind. To counter this threat, mankind has manufactured tissue called "Stigmata" and branding it into their bodies, a new breed of female warriors was born. An academy called "Genetics" that trains female warriors called "Pandoras," who can wield special weaponry and armor, was formed to train these warriors. Taking younger boys called "limiters" as partners, these warriors fight in two-person teams, which can be expanded into small squadrons. "Pandoras" are also the only power on earth that have the power to resist the Nova's freezing effect.Kazuya Aoi decided to enroll in this school because of a promise with Kazuha, his sister, an outstanding alumnus who died in battle. On the first day at school, he meets Satellizer El Briget, nicknamed "The Untouchable Queen" due to her solitary demeanor but also the top student of the academy whose battle simulation streak was undefeated, until he came... and slowly changed her.The official site (in Japanese) can be found HERE.An anime adaptation began airing in January 2011, and is simulcasted by FUNimation as well as licensed.A spin-off started being published called Freezing: First Chronicle starring Chiffon and her days as a first year. A second one was also released, titled Freezing: Zero.There is a character page HERE.Freezing has examples of:
Above the Influence: In one chapter of the manga, Satellizer goes on a Drinking Contest with Elizabeth. After Kazuya takes her back to her room, she drunkenly tells him to strip some of her clothing off, which he does with great difficulty. In the morning after she sobers up, she wonders if Kazuya took advantage of her, but then concludes that he didn't since she still had most of her clothing on, as well as her makeup.
A-Cup Angst: Atia in episode 8 is visibly shocked when she sees Satellizer and Rana's busts.
Adults Are Useless: Where the hell were the members of the faculty when the 3rd Years were waging their war on Satellizer?
And the government is just as bad!
All Girls Want Bad Boys: Subverted. Satellizer's first limiter was a womanizer and she put him in the hospital. Aoi is sweet, polite and keeps his hands to himself when he's asked to, and Satellizer is much happier for it. Not that she'll admit this.
America Saves the Day: So far, no. In the E-Pandora Arc, the facility is run in Alaska and when Elizabeth Malby gives her father information to give to the Secretary of State to shut down the program, they turn against Elizabeth Malby's family and ruin them.
Subverted, when Aoi uses his immobilizing powers to give one to Ingrid during her fight with Satellizer, telling her that she's tainting her dead friend Marine's memory by acting like a Lawful StupidBlood Knight;
Chiffon recieves one from Elizabeth in chapter 69 after trying to stop the latter from assisting the rebelling E-Pandoras.
Pandoras are ranked according to their strengths; the higher numbers (ie the stronger ones) obviously have more authority over the lowers. Of course, though Satellizer IS the strongest among the second years, everyone just avoids her since they're all scared shitless of her.
As portrayed in the anime, it's more of a bullying hierarchy, with the "upstart" second and first-years being "put into their places" by the third years. And not all of them, either; the latest episodes show it to be a clique among the third-years; and they've just been told by their leader to BACK OFF of Satellizer. Atia doesn't listen, though - she just tries non-combative ways the take Satellizer down.
Author Appeal: Like Lim's other works, the females characters are almost all Hourglass Hotties. Also the main male hero has a female romantic interest who's older than himself. Then there's the older sister/younger brother dynamic that seems to be a bit too close.
Axe Crazy: A majority of the Pandoras are this, especially when pissed off. The nova possessed Pandoras also count.
Bad Ass Nick Name: Most Pandora of note get some sort of cool moniker: Satellizer's title of "Untouchable Queen" and Chiffon's alias "The Matchless Smiling Monster" Of course Miyabi and Attia get names like "The Rookie Limiter Devourer" and "the Manipulative Schemer" which don't imply the sort of person you want fighting Nova along side you.
Barbie Doll Anatomy: Luckily for Ganessa in episode 2, or her super-sexy kneeling-defeated pose sans-clothing would have gotten this anime slapped with an R-18+ sticker.
Averted in the manga, though. Be prepared for a little more than what you paid for reading it.
The Manga is actually odd about it, in chapter 63 Chiffon and Elizabeth are in the shower and their nipples seem to appear and disappear at random.
Beware the Nice Ones: Satellizer if anyone threatens to hurt Kazuya (and vice versa), and especially if you ignore Chiffon's warnings to stop fighting. Rana can act this way as well towards Kazuya, as evidenced by in episodes 5-7.
Big Damn Heroes: Cassie Lockheart vs Julia Munberk, #3 in the world overall.
Big Eater: In chapter 24, Kazuya, Satellizer, Ganessa, and Arthur are the last competitors standing at a couples eating challenge made up of 5 bowls of ramen, 10 sets of 10 takoyaki, 5 large steamed meat buns, and 5 hamburgers. Satellizer pulls though at the end when her Trademark Favorite Food comes up and manages to stack, cram, and take down all 5 burgers at once.
Black and Grey Morality: On one side, we have the Nova on the other we have a corrupt government willing to sacrifice children in unethical experiments and torture anyone who speaks out against it.
Blood Knight: Most of the Pandora take a little too much pleasure in violence, but for Satellizer fighting and winning is a psychological compulsion. See Freudian Excuse.
Bowdlerise: Like many recent shows, the TV broadcast censors not only some of the nudity, but the blood and violence as well by literally blacking or whiting out parts of the screen. Using mainly Censor Shadow in both black and white.
Averted with the nudity, since the anime shows more Fanservice than the manga.
Depends on which version of the anime you watch; there's a "uncensored" version going around that's pretty explicit, in both blood AND nudity.
Breather Episode: Episode 8, which is really needed after the nearly non-stop fighting in every previous episode. Enjoy it while you can, because it really goes downhill from there as the plot really begins to kick in.
Brother-Sister Incest: Louis likely wanted to do this to Satellizer. It's never explicitly said that he did in their younger years though we are given broad hints he molested her to some degree, but in the manga after he meets her again, he mentions this trope, but doesn't follow through with it.
Bullying a Dragon: You wonder why people keep taunting Satellizer while knowing how powerful she is.
Her sadistic-loser-and-rapist brother Louis is also guilty of this: See Too Dumb to Live for more details.
Cake Eater: Invoked due to how the Pandora-Limiter relationship works, with the woman being the older of the two, and since the relationship has an extremely high chance of turning romantic, it becomes an even straighter example of this trope.
Calling Your Attacks: Pandora's do this when they form their Volt Weapons and do Accelerating turns and seemingly related techniques. Limiters have a tendency to shout "Freezing" when they are about to use it, though not always.
The Cake Is a Lie: The drug and crazed Gina reveals the MARK IV drug used on E-Pandoras is not what they say it is.
Can't Spit It Out: Satellizer. She knows that Kazuya is pretty much her only friend but the whole childhood abuse thing makes it difficult to tell him this.
Cat Fight / Panty Fighter: Averted? While it's only girls doing all the fighting and there are a lot of Panty Shots, there's not much Fanservice as the fights are downright brutal. And aside from the opening chapters, the fanservice shots in combat usually disappear. The Anime, on the otherhand...
Rana hilariously invokes this trope at the end of episode 12, thinking that Satellizer was stripping to lure Kazuya in her room. So she responds by stripping her clothes, which then causes Satelliza to strip even more off...
After hearing Kazuya simply call her Rana, Satellizer is pretty upset by it, especially when Rana mentions that in their relationship, they don't need honorifics. Satellizer then forces Kazuya to call her Satella.
Holly towards Louis in the manga. She hates how much Louis adores Satellizer.
Clothing Damage: This always happens in any fight. Fortunately, the school uniforms repair themselves. Pretty convenient.
In chapter 52 they even end up with Clothing Damage during a football match. Possibly related to the next trope combined with the hyper competitive attitudes of all the Pandoras.
Cold-Blooded Torture: In retaliation for leaking the information about the Mark-IV, the Alaska Institute tortured Elizabeth Malby until she could not even be touched by her partner without shaking in fear.
Combat Pragmatist: The battle simulations are explicitly intended to teach this attitude to the Pandora.
Combat Tentacles: A Nova's main weapon, Wave Motion Gun aside. Not only are they incredibly effective at slicing their victims into ribbons, they're also able to corrupt Pandora, turning them into Novas themselves.
Cool Big Sis: Violet, Satellizer's older half sister. YMMV: She forgives what Louise did as a child because he was a 'child' and asked for Satellizer to do the same.
Cooldown Hug: Kazuya gives one to Satellizer to keep her from killing Cassie after she reverts back.
The Chevalier frames Elizabeth's father as one to punish her for interfering in the E-Pandora project.
The Corruption: Stigmata is essentially Nova tissue. As a result, every Pandora has a chance of turning into a new Nova. This is what happened to Kazuya's dead sister Kazuha. Worse, the Nova can force the transformation by absorbing Pandoras. The process is reversible, but is incredibly difficult and requires extreme precision.
And now the head honchos are trying to see if it's possible to control Nova Form.
Crapsack World: Only infecting humans with the tissue of Eldritch Abominations gives mankind any hope of fighting the Nova, and the organization that's funding these front line soldiers trains them through free-for-all gladiatorial tournaments and as a result creates student 'rankings' from them that are then set in stone and enforced through rampant vigilantism on part of the students in the name of keeping unit cohesion. In a world that's already effectively reached the Godzilla Threshold, the people setting up things make the world a perfect place for many gratuitous Let's You and Him Fight moments amongst its best and last line of defense. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. And the people in charge of the Pandoras still care more about politics than about the monsters hellbent on wiping out humanity.
The Mock Battles of three of the best of the old-type Pandoras (rgw generation we are introduced to at the beginning of the story and previous ones) against the E-Pandoras or Evolution Pandoras, who would have been considered rejects to the old type. The E-Pandoras never stood a chance.
Rana during her introduction fight in episode 5 effortlessly defeats 3 sophomore girls.
In First Chronicle, we see why Chiffon's called a monster; she single-handedly massacres 50 other Pandora in her year effortlessly. In comparison, the highest ever kill streak in the history of the battle royales was (according to a bystander) a mere 5 kills.
Played for Laughs in the 6th OVA, Rana, Satellizer, Ingrid, Atia, Ganessa, Atia and Chiffon were expected to escape KAZUYA Freezing by any means neccessary (minus Pandora More). How, they did by exposing Satellizer.
Death Glare: Chiffon and Satellizer Death Glareeach other, although in actuality Chiffon was hiding behind an equally-terrified Tish.
Debut Queue: The early episodes of the anime essentially introduce one or two new girls. Who then usually get beaten into a bloody pulp by Satellizer.
Defcon Five: The anime gets it right, going to Defcon-1 when the Novas directly assault the academy.
Defeat Means Friendship: Ganessa, while not exactly on friendly terms with Satellizer after being beaten by her in episode 2, does help her out at least twice.
Demoted to Extra: The main heroes, with whom we started the adventure have become little more than background characters with their lack of political-influence, whereas the previous antagonists have taken center stage due to their Power Level and social connections.
Did Not Do the Research: The author seems to have no idea as to how a real military system works, as most of the crap pulled in the story would have the characters put in jail or discharged. In fact, here's a list of notable idiocies that stand out:
While the story justifies the sanctioned competition of the Pandoras to an extent, the unsanctioned fighting is insanely counterproductive, and is even pointed out in universe to be potentially crippling to their ability to field troops, but the regulations and measures take to prevent this or punish such activities are so laughable it's sad.
The rank structure is non existent. Everyone at the school regards themselves like students, not military officers, and though the school answers to the military in theory, in practice the military merely asks for assistance and the teachers are expected to keep the students in line without having trained either themselves or the students in ANYTHING resembling military discipline.
The Pandoras and Limiters have insanely deadly powers that could cause just as much damage as the Novas themselves if not more, and since the Pandoras can go nuts or be turned against each other by either their own innate hostility or if converted by the Nova, it would make very good sense to preclude having walking superweapons turned rogue by devising or working on countermeasures to keep them from hurting civilians, each other for unsanctioned reasons, or simply raising hell for whatever reason, but the conventional military seems to have nothing planned for this (something any self respecting army with half a brain would plan for), merely hoping the other Pandoras will take down the mad dogs amongst themselves, which means they're screwed if ALL the Pandoras and possibly the Limiters go rogue.
Actual military organizations drill soldiers in discipline, have formal ranks and a well established chain of command. The Pandoras are semi disciplined at best, and while the lack of standard uniforms is semi justified, any military officer worth their salt would be appalled at the severe lack of oversight both the Pandoras and Limiters have.
Dirty Business: Taken to heartbreaking heights with Professor Oohara, who puts on the facade of a heartless scientist and gives Amelia a lecturing about the necessity of her actions. Then she breaks down crying in her office.
The Determinator: Satellizer, who refuses to back down and/or lose to anyone.
Disproportionate Retribution: The 3rd Years are experts at dishing this out, mostly for the purpose of Serial Escalation levels of ego tripping. For what they consider "disrespect" and "insubordination" on Satellizer's part, they launched an all-out assault starting with just outright picking fights with her. Then when that didn't work they tricked someone else into a fight with her and had two reinforcements on standby to tag team her just in case she beat the dope they duped. She did. Round two. Fortunately the duped took on the second back-up.
So what did Satellizer do to bring this on? She defended herself from getting raped by a 3rd Year and her minions and then beat her assailants into bloody pulps. Made worse by the fact that not even the heroes point this out. No one talks about that kind of thing. At all.
The third years finally mellow out after the academy siege, considering that Satellizer did save Annette's life.
A most triumphant example of this is also the reason why Louis made Stella's life into basically a slave hell, he kissed her neck and she didn't like it. That's it, that is his whole motivation. Basically proving he's an absolute nutter.
Does This Remind You of Anything?: Honestly, baptism is pretty much a blatant metaphor for sex. The "First Time" is really just the male partner going to the pandora's room for the first time but with the way the characters make a big deal about it, the reader can't help thinking it could mean something else.
To be fair, the scanlators of the English version note that the whole thing with the "First Time" wasn't nearly as innuendo laden in the original language.
IN the manga, the "baptism" sounds like it's innuendo-laden but in reality it isn't. What the "baptism" consists of is the chosen Limiter and the Pandora exchanging a Stigmata, to facilitate their relationship and synchronization. It's more symbolic of an engagement than anything else.
Face Death with Dignity: The E-Pandoras stage a coup in order to escape the facilities, even if they'll most likely get killed in the process, rather than staying and be subjected to some questionable experiments that have an insanely high mortality rate.
Amelia:'' And if we can't avoid death, at least how we die will be our decision.
Failure Knight: Ingrid first and foremost, but she's not alone. Almost all of the Pandora have watched a friend die.
Fan Disservice: Chapter three. Sattelitzer was basically borderline raped by a girl with a grudge and her THREE male partners. First, they engaged her in a fight because she didn't adhere to the "School hierarchy" and greet a sophomore "properly" (Which Sattelizer would be a sophomore if she hadn't gone berserk and been held back). Then they triple freeze her so she can't even move and proceed to grope her, take pictures of her in her underwear and ass in a pose they PUT HER IN WHEN SHE COULDN'T RESIST, in that order. And they probably weren't going to stop if Kazuya hadn't used his powers due to his rage. Let's remember just WHY Satellizer has that terrible dislike of being touched by anyone, and the look on her face doesn't exactly scream "enjoying myself".
And this doesn't begin to touch the "fight" that followed afterwards.
President Chiffon Fairchild's Illusion Turn is the truest example thus far. There's a reason she's called West Genetic's Monster.
Fluffy Tamer: Kazuya, from the perspective of his school mates. Satellizer is treated like an unstable nutcase but he follows her around and insists, with a straight face, that she is more misunderstood than dangerous. He's right of course but he gets funny looks from the students who don't know the full story.
Freudian Excuse: You wanna know why Satellizer is so messed up? Her step-brother, Louis, treated her as a toy and sexually abused her on a seemingly regular basis from age 8 up. When she told her mother, she was told to bear it quietly and not make things more difficult for her. Only her half-sister Violet's intervention saved her. When her mother died later, she repented her words at her deathbed and told Satellizer to instead grow strong enough to never have to submit to anyone ever again.
Cassie's backstory has a similar pattern of self-denial for the sake of a selfish parent and becoming a Pandora without really wanting to be one. The both have an insane drive to win in battle, but for opposite reasons, making Cassie a Shadow Archetype of Satellizer.
Genki Girl: Rana is quite cheerful, particularly around Kazuya.
Get A Hold of Yourself Man: Cassie's Limiter Kyouichi gets this moment following her apparent death in the Yokohama battle, from his Limiter senpai Alex. The moment has added punch (very literally) because Alex knows what the junior Limiter is feeling - his Pandora is Mileena (Cassie's senpai), who was also apparently killed by a Nova in the same battle.
Genre Shift: Ever since Satellizer's personal-demons have been put to rest, Freezing has turned from an Action Girl Scifi series into a Machaeivallean political thriller in which the majority of action takes place in boardroom-meetings rather than on the battlefield... but making said-battles not one bit less vicious for it all.
Glass Cannon: Despite having super strength and speed, Pandora are sufficiently vulnerable to harm that a Nova Or corrupted Pandora can kill them in one blow.
Also, while they have some increased durability (to survive hitting each other at least), bullets still penetrate and do damage to them and blades pierce their flesh normally as well. Hitting them is another matter entirely! Still, good thing they can heal considerably faster than normal humans.
The Glasses Come Off: Satellizer doesn't wear her glasses during fights. We witness her taking them off in episode 2 when she squares off with Ganessa and again in episode 3, right before her fight with Miyabi. This is a Subverted Trope since Bridget doesn't wear Nerd Glasses. Possibly justified as in the manhwa we see another girl take off her glasses before fighting Nova and we are told that their eyesight is being boosted in some way and in the anime before the fight with Ganessa there is a close up of Satellizer's eye when a glowing pattern appears.
Gorn: Throughout the manga we have Pandora's that are slashed in half, beheaded, limbs ripped or cut off and so forth. One character has pretty much half their torso blown off.
So far the anime isn't pulling any punches for Yumi-sensei's arm literally fell off in anime.
Government Conspiracy: Chevalier openly displays E-Pandora in order to hide the Type Maria project.
Healing Factor: The Pandora girls have enhanced healing, although its mentioned that getting hurt too often shortens their lifespan. Note that this doesn't make them immortal, and they can still die if severely damaged enough, such as from a Nova attack. This may explain why the school has such fancy food, and why Satellizer loves burgers.
Earlier, Atia's limiter does the same thing for her and doesn't survive, leading Atia into a Roaring Rampage of Revenge. Doesn't work.
Also there Kazuha.
and Ingrid's friend that caused her to go all Lawful Stupid
In Chapter 91, Chiffon absorbs the force of Nova!Amelia's self-destruct attack to protect everyone else in the vicinity. It's currently unknown whether she lives or dies, but seeing as her body started disintegrating from that move...she's probably not going to make it.
Heroic Second Wind: Satellizer gets these a lot, and Rana gets one as well in episode 7.
Honor Before Reason: Many of the fights between the students could be avoided if they would just talk about what's bothering them first.
Lampshaded when Kazuya breaks up a fight between Rana and Satellizer by telling Rana that she was misinformed about his relation to Bridgette.
Hopeless Suitor: Rana towards Kazuya. But she seems to see this more as a challenge to overcome.
Hope Spot: After the appearance of new types of Novas beyond what is normally seen, Dr. Aoi sees Chiffon as this as she may be their only hope in victory.
Hour of Power: "Pandora Mode" only lasts for three minutes, after which the Pandoras can no longer fight for quite some time, meaning that this should be a last resort only.
Humanoid Abomination: The corrupted Pandoras are essentially humanoid Novas. Since Kazuya has a "Stigma Body" similar to his sister who transformed into a Nova on her own, Kim is concerned that Kazuya might become a Nova as well.
I Just Want to Be Normal: Cathy tells Kazuya this in episode 9 when she mentions wanting to be a writer. Turns out that she was there when Satellizer first attacked the guy who wanted to be her Limiter when she was at East Genetics. Her refusal to lose caused Cathy to question her own resolve in being a Pandora.
Succeeds with Satellizer when she very nearly killed Cassie. But Kazuya gives her a Cool Down Hug, and she ultimately misses her fatal attack on purpose.
I Owe You My Life: Why Cassie intervenes in favor of Satellizer and Lana in their fight against Julia.
It Got Worse: Okay, so the earth is getting invaded by monsters. We can deal with that. Unfortunately, it turns out that our only means of defense against them, the Pandoras, can be brainwashed by them. Not only do the brainwashed Pandoras keep all their powers and gain a few more (ie resist freezing), a whole squad of them just fell to some Nova and are then sent to attack Genetics. Oh Crap...
I Will Protect Her: Kazuya towards Satellizer. She inverts it on him as well, and will kick the crap out of anyone who hurts, or threatens to hurt him.
Karma Houdini: Louis. Louis. LOUIS. Satellizer saves his life, forgives him for what he did to her and he skips out without any real punishment despite his horrific actions and his raping a random woman.
Not even random. It was his partner who loved him and worked with him for several years, making it all the worse
Loners Are Freaks: Bridgette, is treated like this by most of the students.
Love Confession: Cassie's limiter confessed his love to her and told her that he would wait for her answer the following day. The following day is a massively bloody and epic battle. Its a few days after, when she can confess her own feelings.
Love Triangle: Type 4 Triang Relations. Rana (A) to Kazuya (B) and Satellizer (C). Not that it stops Rana from trying.
Satellizer is not happy when Rana explicitly tells her that Kazuya is her soulmate in episode 6, and seems quite bothered by it.
Luminescent Blush: Kazuya's the only one who gets to see it on Satellizer.
Machiavelli Was Wrong: (Anti-) Heroic inversion. Satellizer is feared by everyone and it causes her no end of trouble.
Mama Bear: Brutally averted. Satellizer's mother was aware of the abuse her daughter was suffering and ignored it. Her final advice to Satellizer (though her heart was in the right place and she regretted ignoring the abuse) only made things worse.
Mighty Whitey: Played with; Wherease every one of the current champions of East or West Genetics of Japan are westerners, it is worth noting that the late Kazuha Aoi wasthe single greatest Pandora who has ever lived, is an Asian. And though the search of potential Pandoras seems to run by Europeans, the only culture mentioned to have born Pandoras is in Tibet, where they have tied the presence of stigma to their very religion. But the current and most powerful Pandora in the Chevaliers is Suna Yi, a Korean.
Mind-Control Eyes: The Pandoras in Nova Form (even when not under Nova control)
Minor Injury Overreaction: Admittedly, it was a cut to the face on someone who prides their looks, but is attempted rape really the right response to that, Miyabi?
No Guy Wants An Amazon: Averted. The entire female student body is made up of bunch of superpowered Blood KnightsandStudent PresidentChiffon. If a male student at Genetics minds having a super powered girlfriend, then he won't be dating anytime soon.
Nose Bleed: Kazuya suffers one at the end of episode 12 after a nearly topless Satellizer falls on top of him.
No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Satellizer both gives and receives quite a few of these in the series. When she's delivering them, quite often their opponent brought it on themselves.
No Sense of Personal Space: Rana does this to Kazuya in episode 6. While in a lunchroom with a lot of other students. Satellizer is not happy to see that when she walks in a few moments later.
Not Good with People: Satellizer, but with how the other students see her as a borderline psychopath.
Oh Crap: Happens multiple times in each episode, usually when Satellizer gets a Heroic Second Wind and beats her opponents. Also played straight in episode 9 when 4 Nova show up simultaneously, and just about everyone, including senior students and teachers mention how bad that is.
There's also the "Does he have a death wish?" reactions early on when Kazuya touches Satellizer.
Plucky Girl: Satellizer willnotlose to bullies. So do Rana, she also gets back up even when badly beaten, and don't even lose that cheerfulness.
The Power and Position Will Make You Forget: In the chapter 65.5 short story, we see Elizabeth Malby disliking the unsaid rules on how the juniors Pandoras must follow the orders of upperclassman and she wants to become #1 so she can better understand the rules and remake them. Flash forward a few years when Satellizer fights to defend herself against an abusive seniors, not dissimilar to what Elizabeth protecting Arnette Mc Millan from, and Elizabeth cites these same unwritten rules to make war against Satellizer.
Pre Meeting: How Kazuya meets Satellizer and Rana.
Powers as Programs: The Stigmata are removable and transferrable, though the Pandora vary in how well they can synchronize to them.
Pandora Mode seems to be a literal case, while Satellizer is fighting Ingrid she theorizes that Satellizer isn't using Pandora mode because her "Pandora Chip" was confiscated after she tried to kill Miyabi.
Power Dyes Your Hair: In the anime Pandora Mode causes the Pandora's hair to turn white, in the Manhwa Pandora Mode takes the form of what appears to be Powered Armour
Rape As Backstory: Satellizer. Good god, Satellizer. As detailed otherwise on this page, Louis' constant psyche-crushing abuse and rape is pretty much what defined her as a character, from her dislike of being touched to her ungodly desire to get stronger to her relationship with Kazuya, since the rape led to all those things. Namely, psychological trauma manifested as a loathing of contact, gathering strength so she doesn't get dominated any more, and recovery from the damaging relationship through Kazuya's unconditional love.
Rape as Drama: Louis does this to Holly in the manga, partly to "put her in her place", and perhaps venting some frustration because he couldn't do it to Satellizer earlier.
Reasonable Authority Figure: President Chiffon Fairchild, she's one of few 3rd year students not at all interested in putting Satellizer in her place and she asserts her authority to get Elizabeth to stop, in a very kindly worded and nervous plea.
Red Shirt Army: When the Nova attack, they cut a bloody path through an entire squad of Pandora. Cassie's apparent death is particularly horrifying.
Replacement Goldfish: Why Kazuya attracted to Satellizer in the first place is because she was implanted with his sister's stigmata, making her has a similar aura as his sister.
Rival Science Teams: In creating the Pandoras, there is the work of Dr. Aoi Gengo who was the first to make Pandoras as they are today and the E-Pandora Project led by Dr. Oohara. The big difference between them is Dr. Aoi used only girls who could naturally handle stigmata. Dr. Oohara wants to make any human capable, not matter the risk.
Sempai Kouhai: Serious Business. It's both built into the typical Pandora / Limiter relationship, and it's the entire reasoning behind the outrageous, criminal abuse the 3rd years pile upon the heroine.
Shower Scene: Satellizer has had two so far. (Well, one of them was just a bath.)
Shrouded in Myth: Satellizer is called "The Untouchable Queen" and is given a wide berth by the rest of the student body, much to the detriment of her mental well-being.
Single Woman Seeks Good Man: Kazuya is very unlike the guys whom Satellizer dealt with, so she's very drawn to him.
Skinship Grope: In the spin off Ticy offers Chiffon a massage, when she touches Chiffon's breasts it turns out she's ticklish, she then decides that it's unfair for Ticy to be fully clothed so forcibly strips her and decides to aggressively "compare" their busts over Ticy's objections hurtling straight through this trope all the way to Black Comedy Rape.
Sleep Cute: When Kazuya was in the sick bay, Satellizer visited him and fell asleep next to him until morning. Also Arthur and Ganessa in a flashback (with his face on her breasts).
Story Breaker Power: Kazuya's Freezing abilities are an order of magnitude more powerful than any other limiter and they don't require synching with a Pandora. This is good since Satellizer is on everyone's hit list. The other Pandoras quickly figure this out and start gunning forhim first when they get the chance.
Sugar and Ice Personality: Satellizer starts in this territory, but is rapidly approaching flat-out Tsundere, especially after Lana makes her objectives known.
Spirit Advisor: Kazuha appeared briefly in Sattelizer's mind (dream or nightmare or whatever?) and somehow give her the strength to fight the Nova's mind control.
Super Soldiers: The Pandoras. Probably of the Bio-Augmentation variety, considering that their powers come from the Stigmatas.
The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized: In Chapter 68 the E-Pandoras, faced with extermination, gamble their lives in an all or nothing attempt to escape the laboratory and reveal the Chevalier's actions to the world, smashing up tons of stuff in the process.
There Are No Therapists: Satellizer needs competent psychological help. The way she's treated by her peers, it's a damned miracle she hasn't gone the kill-em-all route, and if it wasn't for Kazuya being one of the few sources of decency in her life, it's quite likely she would have totally snapped of her own volition.
Hell, Bridgette's not the only one who needs a therapy session. Ingrid comes to mind.
Though Genetics is a military base, it is still a school...given that the students are given high class dorms, food, and facilities, couldn't some money be spent on some goddamn psychiatrists?! Especially seeing how this is a military base...
This Is Unforgivable: Satellizer is PISSED upon discovering how the Chevalier knowingly sacrificed the E-Pandoras for propaganda and tried to dispose of them.
To Be Lawful or Good: Kazuya. When your partner is someone that half the school is afraid of and the other half actively wants to destroy, this kind of dilemma will pop up.
Elizabeth Mably, a stickler for rules, took the E-Pandoras side, specially after finding out the kind of experiments they were planning for them.
Cassie Lockheart, another stickler for rules, simply chose to side with Satellizer and Lana because they had saved her life in the past.
Too Dumb to Live: Abuse is Louis' answer to everything, even when the question is: "how do you treat a superwoman that habitually stabs the source of her ire?". Said woman even gives him the option to lie to her face and make her feel better. Cue his immediate impalement over a cliff.
Trademark Favorite Food: Satellizer loves burgers to the point that she can stack 5 jumbo burgers and eat 'em all in one go.
Tranquil Fury: Chiffon Fairchild. *shivers at the thought*
Translation Convention: Freezing stars a multinational cast, and though no specific universal tongue is specified as the one spoken in East Genetics, everyone (with the exception of Rana) speaks said-unspecified tongue so fluently that no loss of understanding occurs between the nationalities whatsoever. Heck, the tongue is so universal that the Pandora seem to even reflexively scream in pain with it, regardless of mother-tongue; Point in fact, when Ticy (a Finlander) lopped off the fingers off the right hand of Atia (a Romanian) with her halberd, she understood her screams of "MY FINGERS!!" perfectly enough to sarcastically rub in the point with "What's the matter? So only upper-class girls have fingers now?" despite not being able to speak one word of Romanian, and Atia likewise understood Ticy perfectly enough to be enraged by said-sarcasm in spite of not speaking one word of Finnish.
Understatement: "There's dirt on your face." Not quite so comically used, as it was said to Ganessa, after her heroic sacrifice which left her with a large part of her torso and one arm completely blown off and half her face badly burnt.
Undying Loyalty: Ticy for Chiffon and Arnett for Elizaberth.
Despite the emotional scarring that has distanced her from immediate society, Stella still finds it in her mental cracks, er, heart to leap to her abuse-happy brother's rescue and forgive him.
We All Live in America: Well not America but a few of the names under "Multinational Team" don't sound much like they from the country they are supposed to be. Holly's uniform is pretty far from being like a British school uniform.
That one was justified, given the implication that the stabbee was going to take Kazuya as her slave by force, while her OTHER slaves very nearly raped the stabber. Bitch got what she deserved. Try linking some of the things the third years do instead, those are the senseless ones.
There's also the fact that A) They are students and not actually defenders of humanity. B) Contrary the above description of injuries (the part they are called "crippling"), the injuries were in fact non-permanent. Meaning at worse you've got a student that has a month or so of training missed, out of 4 years at least.
There's crippling, and there's crippling. As the arc with Cassie Lockheart showed, those battles do take their psychological toll, and there's a reason we don't see Miyabi again in both the manhwa and the anime. Being stabbed through the heart, then having the blade TWISTED as well, would be making her (mentally, at least) confront death in a quite...personal fashion.
We Have Reserves: It isn't an actual battle, but the committee running the E-Pandora project sees their participants in this light. Their lives have less worth than seeing the project succeed by any means.
With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Satellizer already had issues before she gained Pandora powers. Getting those powers just made her problems worse.
Worthy Opponent: Elizabeth Mably to Amelia Evans, the leader of the E-Pandoras, and one of the reasons why Elizabeth took it upon herself to challenge Chevalier on their treatment of them all.
You Gotta Have Blue Hair: The wide array of colors is surprisingly somewhat justified for once seeing how we have an international cast here, with the few Japanese characters having black or dark hair. Of course, there's still some people out there with white or purple hair...
You Will Be Assimilated: Appears to happen to some of the Pandoras when the Nova pull them in.
Zombie Apocalypse: During the last big Nova Assault, the Nova turn a group of Pandoras into a group of zombielike Pandora/Nova hybrids. Oh, they're not rotting or anything. But they appear to be single-minded (as in killing anything in their path) and lumber around like zombies. Until they get into kickass mode, where they become badass Action Girls with blades jutting from their bodies and slaughtering anything that moves. These things would give zombies nightmares.
Zettai Ryouiki: This is pretty much a standard feature of the girls' school uniforms. Satellizer's uniform is rather modest when compared to the others.
Yeah, but her massive breasts more than makes up for it. Her top's been obviously altered 'cause apparently none of the standard sizes could fit that enormous bust.
.An anime adaptation began airing in January 2011, and is simulcasted by FUNimation
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