Manga / Yuusha Gojo Kumiai Kouryuugata Keijiban

aka: Hero Union BBS

The forum regulars of the Hero Union BBS

Yuusha Gojo Kumiai Kouryuugata Keijiban, which roughly translates to Hero Cooperation Union Exchange Bulletin Board (or Hero Union BBS for short), is a rather unique web novel by Okemura, later adapted into a light novel and manga published by Alphapolis. It is best described as "Reddit/4chan meets every action/adventure fantasy manga in existence."

All of the stories take place within a multiverse with innumerable parallel worlds, each inhabited by a band of super-powered heroes. In order to provide much-needed assistance to the heroes of each realm, an inter-dimensional non profit organisation known as the Hero Union is established, dedicated to making sure that the exploits of heroes go smoothly and that summoned heroes can easily transition into their new lives and back to normal once their adventures are over.

Each chapter follows a different thread on the eponymous Message Board, usually involving retired heroes discussing their exploits or active heroes asking for advice on how to deal with strange occurrences in their world. The stories are not just limited to kids Trapped in Another World asking about what they should do, but how to deal with an extra hero accidentally getting summoned to a world that already had a destined hero born into it, or a twenty-something university student coping with being a Magical Girl in a universe where the concept happens to be just as silly as it would be in real life.

All stories are connected by the presence of the Troll-like Student, a rather Genre Savvy but also somewhat annoying retired hero.

The web novel version can be found here. The light novel is illustrated by KASEN and is complete at 3 volumes. The manga adaptation is by Akiyama Nenehisa, and is complete at 28 chapters.

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This work contains examples of:

• Action Girl: There are multiple female heroes.
• A-Cup Angst: Pilot and one of the Heroes are both flat chested. Neither like having it pointed out to them, especially since the Hero's partner claims it's the reason he sleeps around.
• Alternate Universe: "Global State", "Axis Phase Earth", and the Parallel Universes are all different variations of modern day Earth. Shopkeeper and other non-Earthen heroes comment that there's too many of them, and that more keep popping up.
• Animal Mecha: Star Alloy Robot 1, the creator of Chapter 11's thread, is a sentient, robotic dog. His mechanical comrades include a snake, a chicken, a giraffe, and a penguin.
• All Women Hate Each Other: The all-female party of Chapter 4 are haughty and rank each other based on class, and give enough shit to their equally female leader that the Union Force Returns her out of concern. The male-female duo that saves the world in their place gets along far nicer.
• Anti-Climax: Invoked. The Union can invoke a "forced return" for summoned heroes who might not be able to handle their journey, or if the people who summoned them might not be able to bring them back. Subverted when in a later chapter we return to this setting and find out how the authorities in that world responded to losing their hero.
• Berserk Button: A lot of the male heroes despise heroes with harems, for various reasons. They even have a "Kill all harem heroes" song that they sing near the end.
• Bullying a Dragon: In Chapter 20, a Demon Lord is accidentally summoned as a hero and unceremoniously dumped into a prison when the King who orchestrated the summoning realises what he is. This was a bad idea, since the Demon Lord is more than powerful enough to escape after he stops experimenting with the BBS.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Many characters fit this trope. Sage is an overly curious Absent-Minded Professor who is also one of the strongest known characters^SpoilersTo the point that he was able to rewrite the laws of magic in another dimension and the strongest in his dimension. Magic Maid is an extremely high leveled maid and magician who can destroy an army of foes with a single spell (almost always hitting her allies at the same time) and is only interested in serving others as a maid. Bewitching Maid enslaves people with her charm magic and destroys anyone who is able to resist her. As one of those is her dimension's demon lord, she completes her quest in the process. Legal Loli is definitely strong but she's devoted to persuading preteen girls to become immortal whenever opportunity comes up. That's only the most outstanding ones.
• Call-Back:
  • Prince asked Peddler to make a thread in the forum in chapter 21. Turn out it's a bait for the hero who appeared in chapter 17, inviting him to finish his story.
  • There are two heroes in Sage's homeworld, the summoned hero and hero from his world. Student advised Sage to make them cooperate with each other, so he made a pair of awesome swords and another sword for the demon king. He made a mistake when he made the sword for the demon king too strong. Student gave advice to make a dungeon and a pair of stronger swords to compensate. After they have slain the demon king, the pair of heroes paid a visit to Sage's cottage.
  • In Chapter 24, Sage receives a warning from the Association for creating an item that allowed two heroes to summon whatever they wanted from their home world, including cosmetics and clothes. He made it for the Gyaru and Samurai from chapter 8. He's also called in for a full-on lecture for accidentally transporting the Star Alloy Robots while investigating Earth-series humans' odd compatibility for being summoned.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: Hunter, a, well, hunter, wanted to use his bow to fight, but the game he was stuck in wouldn't progress until he took up the sword. By taking out his frustrations on every enemy they passed, he reached level 99 and SS+ rank in swordsmanship, allowing him to one-shot the final boss.
• The Chosen One: The forum is basically a support group for current and former Chosen Ones.
• Cliché Storm: invoked Played With.
  • Lampshaded with chapter four's story. The hero leading the discussion this time is an Ordinary High-School Student from Japan who ends up traveling with a party composed entirely of beautiful women. Student quickly points out how generic that is. Turns out, the hero this time is a high school girl, and the party members are medieval-minded classists who look down on her because she's neither a noble nor part of the clergy.
  • The Star Alloy Robot's story, which is a fairly generic Combining Mecha versus Evil Empire story pitched for kids with robots that "run on smiles" and fight for the sake of people's smiles. Another character, a serious detective on earth who is visually a Benedict Cumberbatch Sherlock-expy, is increasingly horrified by the fact that he actually exists in the same universe that they originate from.
• Cliffhanger: In Chapter 17, the thread's topic creator starts to drown in a deep pit full of rising water. As the heroes in the thread panic while trying to figure out a way to help him, the chapter abruptly ends. The next chapter is about a completely different story, leaving the previous plotline unresolved until Chapter 21.
• Combat Sadomasochist: Adventurer's demon lord at first seemed like a run of the mill Blood Knight, but soon turned out to be this when he displays pleasure in getting beat up over and over again.
• Combining Mecha: The Star Alloy Robots' signature move: the five of them can come together to form one gigantic, humanoid mecha.
• Contempt Crossfire: One person explains that they're in an adventuring party of attractive young women (gaining them the contempt of the more involuntarily celibate posters) and that the party is split into two groups who hate each other for political and religious reasons (but the only thing they agree on is how much they hate the person asking for help). The posters are still split, but when the OP reveals that they're a girl (so not an Ungrateful Bastard living out a tsundere harem fetish as they first thought), the entire forum immediately helps her to get out of there.
• Critical Existence Failure: When Prince's (female) Demon Lord saw him, she decided he was too attractive to let him age and die, so she spent all of her power forcibly making him immortal and turned to dust afterwards.
• Curiosity Is a Crapshoot: Sage, who was intrigued by the lives of Earthlings because so many of them become Bunny-Ears Lawyer hero(es), decided to peek with his magic. Then he accidentally summoned Star Alloy Robot 1 and in panic summoned the rest of Star Alloy Robots. He was scolded by a moderator afterward.
• Cuteness Proximity: Wandering Sword has it and it can be triggered by both Little Bit Beastly folks and Beast Men. She faints from a nosebleed when a Beast Man hero touches her shoulder in chapter 26.
• Department of Redundancy Department: The Evil Empire of Evul!
• Dimensional Traveler: Wayfarer is a retired hero who travels the multiverse by using powerful magic to pass through the space-time barrier between worlds.
• Dude, Where's My Reward?: Freeter is hit with this hard. He completed many adventures (25 by the last count). Yet whenever he completes the task, a portal to Earth appears and he goes back, nullifying the rewards which he gains from his achievements. Then Student points out he doesn't have to go back to his mundane world and suggests he pull an I Choose to Stay when he finds a world he likes.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Some heroes, such as Sage and Freeter in his 25th Call, are hit with this trope because of the difference in power between heroes and people around them, making everyone else see the hero with fear and suspicion. Others were disdained because of rigid social structures.
• Embarrassing but Empowering Outfit: Transformation-type heroes sometimes wind up with outfits or gimmicks that they'd rather not be seen with.
  • A magical girl named Patissier Macaroon considers her frilly outfit, transformation phrase, transformation sequence, poses, and finishing move to be embarrassing. It doesn't help that she's a 20-year-old college student who got dragged into a ridiculous food-themed battle.
  • Veggievorn's superhero costume grants him superpowers, but it's made entirely out of vegetables. He's so embarrassed by how it looks that he only comes out to fight monsters at night.
• Ending Fatigue: In-Universe example. The Oracle Hero and his companions defeat the 2 Demon Lords in the human world but they were informed that there is another Demon Lord in the demon world who must be defeated to save the world. Later, they were informed there was stronger demon lord who must be defeated. At last count they have slain 103 demon lords and the last one was a god. His drunken rants over this crashed the forum.
• Everything Trying to Kill You: In Honshiju Continent, the demon lord's castle is rigged with ridiculous traps which instantly kill the heroes. They repeatedly die by touching the front door, touching a statue, standing still for three minutes, and tripping on a piece of wood, among other things. The heroes manage to stay alive because they stocked up on divine charms before entering the castle.
• Expressive Mask: A variant with Student. He hasn't uploaded an image of himself to the forums, so he's represented as a box with a plain body, a mouth, and the words "Image Not Available" as its eyes. Even when he's cosplaying as an MGS cardboard box. He also uses a sock puppet with the same characteristics to communicate in a real-world meeting.
• The Faceless:
  • Anyone who lacks an avatar is drawn as an anonymous dummy-like figurine with "no image" written where their face should be.
  • Student, the only hero who permanently lacks an avatar, is shown in person at the end of Chapter 9 and in the face-to-face hero meetup in Chapter 27 but in both appearances, his face is never shown.
• Fantasy Kitchen Sink: Starts out with characters from a medieval fantasy genre and a couple of modern-day earthlings communicating with each other via a high tech, inter-dimensional message board. The story soon makes it clear that any sort of hero is welcome on the board, and it isn't long until we see samurai, detectives, mecha, battle maids, pilots, and magical girls enter the forum to join in on the conversation.
• Farm Boy: Deconstructed. When the kingdom in the Sky Garden universe was threatened by the demon lord, the destined hero from the countryside appeared to save the day. Unfortunately, he had been born so far out in the sticks that the kingdom wasn't aware of him and summoned a second hero from another world.
• Flat Character: Everyone in Hunter's adventure, including his party members, has only a limited amount of lines to give and only after some events.
• Foreign Queasine: For most of the Union, natto is this. Student was forbidden from bringing in food during a meetup at the end of the manga because he brought in natto the last time.
• The Friend Nobody Likes:
  • Legal Loli is a permanently youthful, immortal hero known around the forum for her obnoxious attitude. The other retired heroes become visibly annoyed when she loudly barges into a thread.
  • Magic Maid is a ditzy battle maid who has been a member of the forum for a while. Her actions and cutesy mannerisms frustrate both her party members and several users on the forum, and she's the only character whose personality Student absolutely cannot tolerate.
  • Student to some extent. He is a Troll who appears in every thread yet rarely someone protests his presence and others only complain about him when he trolled someone too much. The others do enjoy the schadenfreude of him being trolled by the Magical Maid, however.
• Gender Bender: A summoned hero from Earth who describes himself as a short, fat, male Otaku becomes horrified when his soul enters the body of a beautiful female upon entering the world he was summoned to.
• Genre-Busting: Not only is the manga itself very unique, but it also brings up unique types of heroes in-universe. One hero is a king who managed to fight off corruption in his kingdom.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Every person on the thread for chapter four, aside from Empress, become extremely jealous and angry upon finding out that the hero leading the discussion wound up in a party full of beautiful women. Their attitudes all change when they find out that the hero this time is a girl, and they apologize.
• Helicopter Parents: Shopkeeper comes from a lineage of heroes. When his daughter winds up succeeding him and embarking on a quest to save the kingdom just like he did, he tries to secretly follow and protect her and makes a thread to document his progress. The male heroes in the thread sympathize with him, but Pilot, the only female in the thread, points out how annoying his actions are and that it's unfair that he doesn't trust his daughter to succeed like he did. She then showed up at the thread and point out she is not happy her father is this trope.
• Hello, [Insert Name Here]: Heroes show up as "Hero" until they change their names in the settings. Changing to another world can apparently reset this.
• Henshin Hero: Veggievorn, an otherwise normal human being, turns into a costumed superhero after reciting a chant and undergoing a transformation sequence.
• The Hermit: Sage, the first hero we meet, is this. He saved his world from the Demon King 200 years prior to the events of the manga and retired in a cabin in the woods to study magic (he really didn't want to marry the princess and become a political pawn). 200 years later, he is surprised to find that his exploits as a Hero have been forgotten and he is now known as "The Sage of the Forest".
• Hot-Blooded: Star Alloy Robot 1 comes off as one. He's so enthusiastic about being a hero and protecting others that all of his sentences end in an exclamation mark. Playboy, Priest, Pilot Wandering Sword and a few others all appear to fit the bill in what little we see of them.
• Humans Through Alien Eyes: Several heroes are fascinated by aspects of Earth's strange culture, such as video game consoles, high school, transforming heroes, Google, and the "orz" emoticon.
• I Choose to Stay: Freeter decides to do this the next time he's summoned after deciding that staying in his home universe wasn't worth it. Student wonders why he didn't do this the other 23 times he was summoned to a different universe. In subsequent chapters, the trope is averted:
  • In the 24th world, Freeter took out his anger over not realizing he could have stayed on the Demon Lord, brutally destroying him. This leaves everyone in his party so afraid of him, that he leaves out of loneliness when another portal appears.
  • Freeter repressed his memories of the 25th world, but from his brief frightened whispers, it sounds like he had a harem in that world. A rather insistent, totally MALE muscle-fest harem.
• Identical Stranger: To secretly replace the hero who "force returned" in a previous chapter, the kingdom of Estrard recruits Waitress, a new hero who looks reasonably similar to the previous one. The thread figures out Estrard's scheme when it's pointed out that their black hair is a rare hair color in that kingdom.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Each chapter is named after the title of the thread made by the topic creator. Chapter 9 is an exception because it's a continuation of the thread from Chapter 6.
• It Runs on Nonsensoleum: Star Alloy Robots are fueled by everyone's smiles, not by electricity nor solar cells.
• Immortality Begins at Twenty:
  • Averted by and for Legal Loli. She became immortal while still an early teen, and encourages a nine-year-old hero girl to become immortal too. Based on the discussion, she wants all female heroes to become immortal before they turn fourteen.
  • Subverted with Saint in the same chapter because she is granted immortality when she is already very old even by the standards of her race.
  • Invoked for Prince as, when Prince's Demon Lord saw him, she decided he was too attractive to let him age and die, so she spent all of her power forcibly making him immortal and turned to dust afterwards.
• Improbable Age:
  • Kid Hero completed her adventure while she was nine years old.
  • Freeter completed twenty-five adventures before he was twenty-six.
  • Oracle Hero became a hero at eighteen, but unbeknownst to him, his quest required him to kill 102 Demon Lords and a god, so he didn't finish until he was forty-six.
  • The hero in chapter 25 lived in such a remote village, he didn't actually get the memo on him being the hero until he was 72.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: Several users are prone to resort to alcohol when the situation in a thread becomes too ridiculous to handle. Priestess Shrine Maiden in particular seems to do that often enough for the other regulars to mock her for it.
  • In reaction to the story about the Kogal (in this case, an airheaded one) and a samurai paired together, and being given guns in poor condition in order to fight the dark lord, one hero, a serious assassin, finally breaks down and says, "Screw it, I'm drinking! I can't handle this!"
  • Oracle Hero is so fed up with the way one adventure is turning out that he makes a rant thread titled "I can't keep this up without drinking", gets completely drunk, then spams his thread so much that it crashes the entire board.
  • Veggievorn's story is so ridiculous that more than half of the heroes participating in his thread express their need for an alcoholic drink afterwards, including Veggievorn himself.
• Infinity +1 Sword: The solution to That One Boss, as suggested by Prince. Sage must make a dungeon and stronger new pair of swords, then inform the heroes of the dungeon and swords so they can defeat the Demon Lord (who he'd previously given a similar sword, in order to justify needing two heroes to take the Lord down, as it's only level 5).
• Intrepid Merchant: Peddler was a traditional, adventuring hero who ended up stopping the demon lord not by slaying him, but by establishing trade with him. Nowadays, he regularly travels to the demon lord's realm to vend invaluable ingredients that can be used to make status ailment potions that the demons badly need.
• Jerkass Has a Point: One hero (Freeter) has been through 23 different worlds, and is understandably worried about going through another one at his job. As Student explains, either he goes through it and is written off as unreliable in the real world, or he ignores it and is haunted by the thought of ignoring a cry for help. Freeter says that accurate as it may be, it's worded to sound like a Morton's Fork... and Student pretty much states that yes, it is.
• Just a Kid: That nine-year-old girl? She defeated the dark lord of her world... ALL ON HER OWN!!! Some of the thread's participants are impressed that a hero so young was able to accomplish such a feat.
• Kid Hero: The nine-year-old who, all on her own, defeated the dark lord of her world. An exceptional example in a multiverse full of young heroes.
• Lampshade Hanging: Attention is brought to the fact that heroes summoned from various versions of Earth are an unusually common occurrence.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: The Union provides this service for heroes who wish to forget their experience for whatever reasons. High School Girl was recommended this when being rescued given the general trauma the situation caused her. She refused, and later came to assist her replacement.
• Lovable Coward: The priest who prevents Waitress from being brainwashed by Estrard inadvertently ends up joining her on her quest to defeat the demon lord and rid Estrard of its corruption. He's terrified of fighting demons because he has zero combat experience, but tries his best to do so and refuses to abandon her. Waitress is so touched by his actions that they eventually become engaged.
• Macho Masochism:
  • Played with in chapter four. When the hero leading the discussion of that chapter explains that he is constantly talked down to by his party members (who are all beautiful women) because of the rigid classism of the world he'd been summoned to, the Priest exclaims that some people happen to enjoy that.
  • Later on in the manga people discuss stranger demon lords, one of whom was a demon lord who, well, thoroughly enjoyed any powerful attack the heroes could hit him with.
• Magical Girl: Chapter three is about one. She's...less than thrilled to be entrusted with such a troublesome situation.
• The Man Behind the Man: Every single time Oracle Hero defeats a demon lord, there's always another "true" demon lord allegedly pulling the strings. In the end, he ends up slaying a grand total of 103 demon lords. The true perpetrator of the entire fiasco is a god who was trying to dispose of a excess amount of demonic energy by mass producing a bunch of demon lords.
• Maou the Demon King: The vast majority of worlds the players are stuck in have a demon lord as final boss, with variations on this archetype including having to defeat a hundred of them before finally revealing the real one, falling in love with the hero, the demon lord's son joining the party, and so on. In chapter 20, we learn of one world that tried to summon a hero to defeat their demon lord, but the hero they summoned turned out to be another demon lord from a different world, who decided to form an alliance with that world's demon lord.
• Marathon Boss: Oracle Hero and his companions manage to defeat the final boss, a god, by hacking away at him nonstop for a whopping 3 years. At least the final boss was nice enough not to use his regenerative powers.
• Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: Waitress and her priest companion. She is a tomboy waitress who came out of the slum by hard work and willpower, and he is a shy Lovable Coward White Mage who also happens to be the Token Good Teammate of a Corrupt Church. Waitress ended up as the one who gave the marriage proposal and Declaration of Protection in their journey.
• Masquerade: Detective's version of Earth has this. Detective himself is the hero of what would be an ordinary crime drama without any supernatural elements, but a Transforming Mecha and a Kamen Rider-esque superhero are both from the same dimension. The latter is even from his planet.
• Mind-Control Device: The bracelet that the authorities of Estrard gave to Waitress was supposed to strip her of her free will, but the priest who was supposed to put it on her didn't agree with the kingdom's agenda and dispelled its effects at the last minute.
• Ms. Fanservice:
  • Empress, a recurring female hero, wears a very revealing top.
  • Bewitching Maid, who only appears in two chapters, has equally revealing top and seductive mannerisms.
• The Multiverse: The setting of the story spans multiple universes. Characters from different universes can be summoned to another via magic or communicate with each other via the forum. Powerful heroes who have mastered space-time magic can travel through universes at will.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Overlapping with Chekhov's Gunman, Sage gets into a bit of hot water when the Demon Lord he gifted with a magical sword in the first chapter merely for the sake of trying to balance out the unexpected appearance of two heroes in his own world—both of whom were also gifted with their respective dual blades for the sake of fighting said Demon Lord—proves to be too powerful for them to defeat. Turns out Sage had too much fun crafting the bad guy's weapon and unwittingly turned it into an Infinity +1 Sword.
• No Name Given: Several heroes remain unnamed because they don't bother giving themselves a handle when they post in the forums. They're known only by the generic title given to all first-time users, "Hero". Except for Magical Maid, that is. She states her name but other heroes, especially Student, prefer to use the handle name.
• Non-Player Character: One story involves a hero who was summoned to a world of these by a glitch. He admits that the forums are what kept him from going insane.
• Older Than They Look: Several users are far older than they appear because they either age slowly due to their long natural lifespans, such as Demon Lord, or look youthful due to their immortality, such as Sage, Prince, and Legal Loli.
• One-Man Party: Magic Maid is a Level 92 maid who was assigned to the hero's party of Level 50 characters. She was so overpowered that she easily pulverized everything in one explosive hit, including the demon lord, without help from the rest of the crew.
• One-Steve Limit: Similar handles among users are inevitable, so the name of the hero's home world is always written in parentheses next to it.
  • There were two heroes named "Magician" until one of them eventually changes her name to "Magic Maid". There was also a second hero named "Student", but she quickly changes her handle to "High School Girl" because she was from the same home world as the first Student. A third Student shows up later, only to soon change his name to Scrawny Cheater, revealing that he was the hero from a previous chapter.
  • When a demon lord who was summoned to another world as a hero gains access to the forum, he gives himself the handle "Demon Lord (Alunt)". Everyone simply calls him Demon Lord anyways.
• Online Alias: "Hero" is the default handle for new members, but most users adopt a handle based on their profession with a world of origin attached. It's also possible to forcibly impose a new handle on someone, as Student did to Magical Girl (AKA, Pastissier Macaroon).
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Naturally, since the dialog is all done through a message board, everyone is only known by their forum handles.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: When Student gives a newbie some useful advice on the forum's conventions, everyone breaks out their strongest defenses, assuming the Apocalypse must be around the corner (or claims to, to troll Student). Student is less than amused at this, saying he's just doing it because they're from the same world.
• Opt Out: The Forced Return provided by the Hero Union allows any summoned hero to return to their home world if their journey becomes too difficult or unreasonable to handle. Unfortunately, the service is useless to heroes who are in a pinch in their home world, as Magic Maid finds out in Chapter 19.
• Overshadowed by Awesome:
  • The hero from Nua Norvail has three party members who are so overpowered that he barely gets the chance to kill more than one opponent and gets the feeling he is unneeded as result.
  • Magic Maid, who has level 88 in sorcery and level 92 in servant, overshadows the three heroes (at level 50s) she is supposed to serve as liaison officer for.
• Playful Cat Smile: The Sage of the Forest often uses it when he comes up with silly ideas or is just plain confused.
• Power Levels: The Hero's Association ranks heroes and demons on a scale of 1 to 10. Individual hero statistics, such as magic and swordplay, are sometimes ranked using this scale.
• Pretty Boy: Prince, Scrawny Cheater, and the Holy Sword all have girls throwing themselves at them. Holy Sword loves it. The other two, not so much.
• Reckless Gun Usage: The Kogal and the Samurai are two heroes summoned to Carasmarta who clearly have no idea how to handle firearms. The Kogal, who has never used one before (and doesn't even know what a rifle is called), insists on messing with the rusty old guns despite the thread's warnings against doing so. The Samurai, who has never even seen one before, decides to peep inside the musket and wield it like a sword. Most of the thread's participants react with horror to the entire fiasco.
• Red Baron: Many.
  • Sage of the Forest is what the villagers call him, as he is The Hermit.
  • Waitress is called as "War Maiden of Reformation" in her home dimension.
• Retired Badass: Many of the forum regulars are retired heroes who spend their days conversing with others or helping out the active heroes.
• RPG Mechanics 'Verse: The setting is basically an RPG Mechanics Multiverse as seen through the eyes of 2chan, although other genres occasionally get involved, too.
• Salaryman: One of the most commonly seen heroes is Company Employee. It hasn't been said what he did to become a hero yet.
• Samus Is a Girl: Many heroes aren't revealed to be female until late in their chapter. Examples include the Japanese schoolgirl who had to put up with a divided party, Wandering Sword who wondered if "cat ears really are justice," and the hero in chapter 23 who wanted to kill her partner (a womanizing "holy sword").
• Shout-Out:
  • The 8-bit world of "Darkness Quest" strongly resembles Dragon Quest III.
  • When shopkeeper is stealthily following a group of new heroes, Student makes him use the codename "@Snake" and even dresses up as Big Boss, going so far as to hide inside a box.
  • Veggievorn shares the same appearance as Kamen Rider, with his finishing move resembling the Rider Kick.
  • The enemies from Magician's world resemble the slimes from Dragon Quest.
  • The iconic Dragon Quest III hero outfit appears frequently, including on the hero Magician maid rendered obsolete and the 9-year-old hero who was offered immortality.
  • The demon lord's castle in Honshiju Continent, with its numerous and trollish deathtraps, is one to Dark Souls. The ending of the arc reveals that it's also one to Takeshis Castle and Ninja Warrior as the entire jaunt was actually a live TV broadcast made for the demon world's entertainment, and the demon lord himself graciously allows the heroes to kill him without a struggle as a reward for beating the dungeon.
  • Wandering Samurai is a female Kenshin Himura in appearance, albeit lacking a cross-shaped scar.
• Shrouded in Myth: Wayfarer hasn't visited his home world in 300 years and is rather taken aback at how people have elevated things he did to solve minor annoyances on his previous stay (or possibly his original quest there before departing to wander the multiverse) into world-shaping events: Discovering water in the desert, purifying a cursed tree, creating a bridge over a poisonous plain, all of these are attributed to the Holy Lord of Miracles who practically remade the landscape of the world.
• So Beautiful, It's a Curse:
  • Scrawny Cheater, full stop. Before he was summoned he was just an average-looking college student who did not know how to talk to girls. When he is summoned, as part of his "cheat", he is made incredibly good-looking. Now he is the subject of intense female interest and hates it. Even worse, women who are around him for too long tend to pass out due to how attractive he is. After he went back home, even his own mother is attracted to him.
  • Yenly Hero has it worse: a self-described short, fat otaku with zero experience with women was summoned into the world of Yenly...the problem is that the mechanic there is possession, and he possessed a body of a stunningly beautiful woman whose body was even enshrined and worshipped. He/she had to fight off the massive amounts of attraction by the other males in the world, including his/her own companions (all of whom are male) because the king in the world started the whole mess by wanting to sleep with him/her which inspired the others to follow suit (normally it would be forbidden).
• Stock Light-Novel Hero: A Deconstructed Trope with the Hero of Estrard. Summoned into a fantasy world in Medieval Stasis? Check. Given a magic sword that turns its wielder into an Instant Expert? Check. Surrounded by a Battle Harem of beautiful and powerful companions? Check and check. Is this an ideal situation for the hero? Hell no. Medieval setting means medieval, classism-filled Values Dissonance where everybody looks down on a commoner hero. Being made instantly capable of fighting doesn't make you psychologically prepared to take lives left and right and the Ordinary High-School Student doesn't ever get used to it.
  The Battle Harem? Well, four beautiful girls won't do much for you if they're a snobbish princess and a self-entitled priestess and each of their attendants who hates each other's guts because the aristocracy and the clergy in their world had fought for political power since forever, to say nothing of the fact that the only thing that unite them is their contempt for the hero who's too shy and soft-spoken to lead them and get them to focus on their mission. Not even Unresolved Sexual Tension between the hero and the Battle Harem is a thing here that could at least distract them from their infighting because the summoned hero is a girl who isn't a bit attracted to them or vice versa.
  And the worst part is yet to come: Everything was set up to Shoot the Shaggy Dog. Estrard doesn't have a tradition of summoned heroes because the upper classes conspire to kill them once the kingdom is saved out of fear of their resulting fame could change the political status quo and then they censor their accomplishments from history. The Hero Union quickly interferes to get the summoned heroine out of that mess.
• Strictly Formula: One of the most common scenarios is a demon lord appearing and a hero showing up to defeat it, as noted by the forumites. Variations include being ordered to do so by a king and party members showing up.
• Summon Everyman Hero:
  • The series is full of them, and their problems are Discussed in great detail since several of the board's threads are created by these freshly summoned heroes seeking help or advice from veteran heroes.
  • The hero of Estrard is a Deconstruction where the Ordinary High-School Student simply does not get used to the violence required by the role, neither suddenly becomes enough of a Guile Hero/Magnetic Hero to get things done in a different way, nor is even capable of stopping the infighting among the party members. The Union quickly agrees that a "Forced Return" is necessary before the hero dies or breaks down.
  • Lampshaded in one chapter, where the forum regulars mention that people from Earth have an unusually high affinity for the hero summoning ritual.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Being forced to wear ridiculous outfits, fight monsters, interact with party members, use cool powers and pacify mischievous Non Human Sidekicks is not as fun or as quirky as most anime would have you believe. Unlike other fantasy outings which explore similar topics, however, Hero Union prefers to take lighthearted and comedic jabs instead of getting angsty about the whole thing.
  • The very first chapter brings up the issue that in Sage of the Forest's universe, heroes marrying the local kingdom's princess isn't a reward but a way to keep them under control. On top of that, said princess also views Sage as a Humanoid Abomination due to how ridiculously powerful and eccentric he is.
  • One chapter focuses on a Japanese Ordinary High-School Student heroine who is unaccustomed to violence, causing her to have issues with being at the forefront of a life-or-death struggle between two fantastic races.
  • Also in the first chapter, an interesting situation arises when two tropes collide: the local kingdom needed a hero to vanquish the then-resurrected Demon Lord, so they performed a summoning ritual in order to call one to their world. Unfortunately, another hero had already been born in a remote area unknown to them, which threatened to upset the balance of power on multiple levels. Sage spends three chapters agonizing over this predicament and very nearly worsens it.
  • One chapter deals with the ramifications of being trapped in a world where the characters have limited intelligence and can only rely on pre-scripted dialogue; suffice to say that the hero who ended up in said world felt very isolated and would have gone mad if he hadn't been able to access the message boards.
  • Freeter gets his nickname from the fact that he spends much of his time hopping between worlds and heeding the Call to Adventure wherever it takes him. Unfortunately, it left a negative impact on his personal life as he barely has enough time to make lasting friends, something even he laments. His goal is to eventually break the habit of succumbing to But Thou Must!.
  • Years after you accomplish something, people will forget that deed no matter how grand it is. Sage reacts with indifference due to how long-lived (at least 200 years old) and solitary he is while Oracle Hero — who (only!) spent twenty years away fighting in the Demon World — doesn't like the thought of being forgotten after he'd already sacrificed so much.
  • In a world where resurrection magic is easily accessible, Death Is a Slap on the Wrist right? Not so with the hero of Honshiju Continent and his compatriots, who were forced to traverse a castle filled with numerous and unpredictable death traps. Despite their thief spending all of his gold on resurrection charms, they still have to experience every single agonizing death they go through. By the time they reach the demon lord and the whole thing is revealed to have been a parody of Takeshis Castle, the entire party is nearly a shell of their former selves and can only react in disbelief regarding their ordeal.
  • Arming an oblivious Brainless Beauty and a clueless medieval samurai with firearms despite the two of them not having any relevant training is a very bad idea. Fortunately, most of the guns were useless and Sage mails an Infinity +1 Sword to the samurai, removing the need for said firearms and averting any further disasters.
  • What if The Call Knows Where You Live...but you totally missed it anyway? This happens to the hero of Yggd Debas who had no idea he was their respective world's Chosen One, while the demon lord's armies ravaged every town and city around his rural village. By the time he realizes it, he's 72 years old and already has grandchildren; once the clergy and royals find out the truth, they promptly get pissed.^note The reason being that said old man didn't go to be baptized at his local church when he was young, thinking he didn't need to, when it was actually the method for revealing heroes all along. His only clue was his tremendous ability to learn combat and magical techniques very quickly which allowed him to singlehandedly repel the demonic forces that threatened his hometown each time they appeared, and even then the thought never occurred to him that he might be somebody special. If he had known about this fact from the start then their world wouldn't have suffered for as long as it did.
• Talking Weapon: Chapter 23 has the "holy sword" entrusted to a female knight. It refuses to be wielded by men, starts the quest by insulting her figure, and carries on womanizing throughout the journey. It even abandons her mid-battle to hit on a female demon. She starts the thread with, "I want to strangle my partner."
• Telepathy: The BBS is designed to be accessible telepathically because not all worlds have computers to do it conventionally.
• Teleportation Misfire: The subject of Chapter 11's thread. Star Alloy Robot 1's warping program gets mixed up with another world's summoning ritual, causing him to become summoned to that world instead of his home world. Chapter 24 reveals that this was Sage's fault.
• That One Boss: Accidentally Invoked when the Sage of the Forest gives the under-leveled demon lord a powerful magic sword to keep the two heroes from easily wiping him out. Thanks to stress-induced sleep deprivation, Sage makes the sword too strong, resulting in the demon lord becoming far too powerful for the heroes to handle themselves.
• Transformation Sequence: Discussed. Since many heroes have difficulty understanding the concept of Earth's "transforming heroes", Magical Girl and Veggievorn have to describe the process to them in great detail. Reactions range from "What the hell?!" to uncontrollable laughter.
• Translator Microbes: The BBS automatically does this, since the creators knew that the language barrier can be a problem, given how diverse where the heroes are.
• Troll: Student frequently likes to mess with both the regulars of the board and some of the newbie heroes. Every once in a while, he'll get serious for a minute and give out some legitimately great advice.
• Unwanted Harem: The hero summoned to Estrard is stuck with a party of four beautiful but unpleasant females who are usually too busy fighting each other to get anything done. Becomes justified to the rest of the thread's jealous posters when the hero reveals that she's actually a girl.
• Villain Forgot to Level Grind: One of the reasons Sage of the Forest has so much trouble dealing with the two heroes his world summoned is because the villain is still a useless level five, two-hundred years after Sage first fought him. At one point, he goes off on a bit of a rant about this. Unfortunately, his solution ended up empowering said villain.
• Villain Protagonist:
  • Demon Lord (Alunt) in chapter 20 is either this or a Hero Antagonist, if his description of his homeworld is any indication: his realm is constantly invaded not only by human soldiers but also by monsters from Hell that happen to be far more sinister than anyone in his realm, himself included. However, he outright refuses to kill his opponents as much as possible, preferring instead to use sleep spells or teleportation to disable them. Even after discovering that the king who summoned him as a hero knew all along that he wasn't a threat and only wanted him out of the way in order to expand the human kingdom, he instead follows Battle Maid's advice to reform the human society. Still, his demeanor overflows with Blue-and-Orange Morality, seeing as he has no qualms with using mind control magic to make people tell him the truth.
  • Bewitching Maid is actually worse. For all intents and purposes, she has used her charm magic to enslave most of her dimension, killing anyone who she can't charm, including her dimension's demon lord.
• Weird Trade Union: The Hero's Association, sometimes called the Hero's Union, is a uni-dimensional union that runs the BBS, provides miscellaneous services, and helps resolve conflicts.
• Welcome to Corneria: Hunter is summoned to a retro video game called "Darkness Quest". During his attempts to communicate with the game's characters, he learns that every single NPC repeats the same lines of dialogues over and over again, much to his frustration.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?:
  • One reward a lot of heroes get for their victory is immortality. Some heroes love it, while others aren't happy with it at all.
  • Prince is a special case; instead of being offered immortality like most heroes do when they defeat the Demon Lord or other threat, he was actually cursed with it against his will by the Demon Lord. He isn't happy about it because he lost his chance to succeed the throne as a result.
• Worse with Context: A hero starts describing their party members to other regulars, who realize it's a harem situation and pour scorn on the hero. Then it's revealed the four girls hate each other, united only in their contempt for the hero. While the forumites show minor sympathy (after all, there are some men into that kind of thing), only when the hero reveals that she's a girl do they realize just how much the situation sucks and tell her about the teleport rescue.
• Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: Taken to a ridiculous degree with Oracle Hero. Every time he thinks he's beaten the final demon lord, it turns out that there's yet another one to defeat. This trend continues for about 25 years and spans 103 different demon lords.
  Every single demon lord he defeats: You may have defeated me, but the true *insert new demon lord title here* demon lord still remains, you cannot stop the calamity!

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