Literature / Rising × Rydeen

Rising x Rydeen is a light novel series written by Youchi Hatsumi and illustrated by Piroshi Pulp, which was published from 2012 to 2014 for nine volumes. It has a manga adaptation illustrated by Renji Fukuhara, which was serialized in Age Premium more or less concurrently with the novels.

Takara Shimonone is an Ordinary High-School Student who wants to be extraordinary. He wants to be a stranger - strangers are individuals who have developed superhuman powers called strange abilities. Takara wants a strange ability so he can become a superhero.

As luck would have it, he is approached by a woman named Aria. Aria is the lab chief of the government-approved stranger disaster prevention office and informs Takara that he may be a stranger.

This news excites Takara, but his excitement doesn't last very long, as he soon discovers his strange ability: He can release a white slippery gel of unknown properties from any part of his body. It's as embarrassing and useless as it sounds, and gets him evaluated as a Rank E stranger, the lowest rank.

In spite of this, Aria sees potential in him. She wants him to join a team with other low-level strangers to go on missions to capture outlaws: strangers who use their strange abilities for nefarious purposes. They're incredibly dangerous, so the government only recruits high-ranking strangers to go on solo missions to capture them. Unfortunately, the government is understaffed when it comes to dealing with outlaws, so Aria is using Takara's team as an experiment to see if low-level strangers using teamwork can effectively capture outlaws.

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Rising x Rydeen provide examples of:

• Accidental Pervert: Takara can't go a few chapters without accidentally walking in on a girl changing, or finding his face or hands planted on a girl's breasts or crotch.
• The Ace: Mikan's been a government stranger since she was a child, and hasn't failed a mission to capture outlaws since. That is until she finally does fail a mission by only capturing two of the three outlaws. She privately breaks down in tears afterwards.
• A-Cup Angst: Yowabi gets saddened by the fact that Sanagi is the same age as her and has much bigger breasts.

• Affectionate Nickname: Aria likes to give cute nicknames to the outlaws Takara's team has to capture. For their first mission, she names the two outlaws "Gorrilla-san" and "Frog-san", fitting given their appearance. Mikan calls them by their actual names "Strength" and "Agility". On another mission to catch an outlaw named "Bullet Girl Thief" Aria nicknames her "Tama-chan". She nicknames the outlaws to make them easier to bond with, but in both cases Sanagi points out the faulty logic in trying to make them bond with the people they're supposed to be capturing.
• Authority Equals Asskicking: While the identity of the leader of Re-birthday is a mystery, Aria tells the team that whoever it is must be a very powerful stranger. With the exception of Takara's team, strangers don't usually work in teams, so someone very powerful must be keeping the outlaws under control.
• Batman Gambit
  • Thank's to Takara's planning his team pulls one on Mikan that almost works. They still win, just not how they intended. They lure Mikan in a warehouse where she first confronts Yowabi. Takara gambled on the chance that Mikan wouldn't ask Aria what his team's abilites are because of their rank. This allowed them to cause her to misinterpret how powerful their abilities are. Yowabi points at Mikan to fire her ability which (see Playing with Fire) wouldn't have even reached Mikan but since Mikan doesn't know that she flash steps behind Yowabi to counter attack. At that moment Sanagi uses her ability to land a cockroach on Mikan, which momentarily freaks her out (see Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?) until she zaps the bug with her the lightning dust. At that moment she's unable to dodge because she can't use her lightning dust and lightning dash simultaneously. Takara, who's shirtless, jumps from the roof and on top of her and pins her down so she can't use move or hit him with lightning dust. At that point she should have given up but she refused to do so. Takara knew she wouldn't hence why he took shirt and starts release gel all over his body which drips all over in an an attempt to make her surrender by grossing her out. Something else happens (see Super-Power Meltdown)
  • In chapter 17, Takara does it again. Once he learned that the leader of the Re-birthday strangers is unknown to Aria, he correctly guesses that the group is made up of weaklings. He is able to play on their unease and stalls for enough time for the rest of the team to ambush them, taking out the majority of the terrorists
• Battle Harem: Takara is the only boy in a team with four other superpowered girls, all of whom hold some sort of affection for him.
• Battle-Interrupting Shout: Takara's and Mikan's first fight quickly ends Aria yells "intriguing" right as the two are about to clash. It's not that she didn't want them not to fight, she just wanted Mikan to fight Takara's whole team.
• Beauty Equals Goodness: While there are some attractive outlaws (all of whom are female), a good portion of them have freakish and/or animalistic appearances. This is in contrast to the main cast of a normal looking boy and some very attractive females.
• Beast Man: If a stranger has an animal in their title there's an very good chance they'll have features typical of that animal.
  • Gorrilla-san is muscular, hairy, really long arms, eats bananas and oohs like a gorilla.
  • Frog-san is short, has a long tongue and ribbits like a frog.
  • Golden lion king is large, muscular, has large teeth and maned hair
• Bedmate Reveal: Takara wakes up one morning to his hand on Aria's breasts. She went to his house to help him move to her organization's headquarters and decided to crawl in his bed.
• Berserk Button: Takara and Mikan's is hurting the other in front of them. Toya pushed Takara's so much, Toya was even unsettled by Takara's rage
• Beware the Nice Ones: Takara's Homeroom teacher Rika-chan-sensei seems to have some kind of Split Personality. She's usually cheerful and always smiling but when she's get the slightest bit annoyed or angry she pulls a Death Glare than can silence a classroom and even scare the likes of Mikan. Immediately after that she goes back to her cheerful and smiling self.
• Blow You Away: Wind Child Fan is an outlaw that control wind. This lets her fly and lets her create powerful blasts of wind.
• Bunnies for Cuteness: Sanagi always wears a bag with a bunny face design. It's the first thing shown when she's introduced and is fitting for someone as childlike as her. It's revealed that was the very first present her parents gave her and she calls it Totto-chan. In the same chapter it ends up getting torn, which is devastating to her, but it's used as an opportunity to reveal Ruri's strange ability, which she uses to repair it.
• The Cavalry: In his first mission, Takara takes a punch from Gorrilla-san, whose punches are strong enough to smash concrete. Lucky, Gorrilla-san gets electrocuted out of nowhere by Mikan. She reveals that Aria had told her to watch over Takara's team and assist if necessary.
• Childhood Friend Romance: As of chapter 15, Mikan and Takara, who have known each other for years, seem to be a couple.

• Conspicuous Gloves: Mikan always has on a pair of opera gloves and Ruri always has glove on her right hand. The gloves serve as power limiters both characters.
• Date Peepers: Sanagi and Yowabi don't like how clingy Ruri is around Takara so they decide to spy on her to see if she has any weakness they can exploit to keep her away for Takara. Much to their dismay they soon find out that she's actually shopping with Takara.
• David Versus Goliath: Takara, Yowabi, and Sanagi vs Mikan. Three low rank strangers against a top ranking stranger like Mikan, considered one of the strongest. None of the three have any offensive abilities. The situation is lampshaded by the caption on the first page of the chapter that reads
  All-out brawl between the pitiful and the ultimate! Is there any chance of victory against such an overwhelming power difference?!
  They actually manage to win by exploiting Mikan's fear of cockroaches, her lack of knowledge of Sanagi and Yowabi's abilities, and the NecessaryDrawbacks of her strange ability.
• Defeat Means Friendship: As part of the conditions of the fight Mikan has to join Takara's team if she loses. Other than a little gloating that they beat her the team welcomes her with open arms and consider her a friend. It takes her a while realize the later (see You Are Not Alone).
• Depraved Homosexual: Gorilla-san and Frog-san both reveal themselves to be infatuated, not with Fumi, but her two underlings, much to the latter two's horror. Had Takara's team not stepped in when they did the outlaw duo probably would have had their way with the two boys.
• Discard and Draw: After his team's fight with Mikan, Takara seems to have lost his strange ability. While he seems sad on the outside, he's actually elated because he think he'll awaken a new stronger power in its place. Shortly after that thought he accidentally falls face first on Mikan's chest and starts producing gel again.
• Double Agent: Ruri is revealed to be a spy sent by Eden to watch over Aria. In actuality she's working for someone else whom she refers to as a "hero of justice" and has also infiltrated Eden as well.
• Double Knockout: Takara's team's fight with Mikan end up with Takara and Mikan knocked out because Mikan lost control of her ability. Since the fight was three on one and Yowabi and Sanagi are still standing, Takara's team wins.
• The Dreaded: Most Outlaws usually try to flee once they realize they're up against Mikan aka the "lightning god".
• Drives Like Crazy: While Aria brags about never having been in a car accident, her driving is fast and dangerous enough to leave her passengers vomiting
• Embarrassing Rescue: Takara's team doesn't even thank Mikan for saving their lives on their first mission. Instead Takara asks why she was in the area to begin with. She tells him it's because Aria told her to assist with their mission Takara gets annoyed and states they could have handled it on their own.
• Faint in Shock: Most of the girls who get covered in Takara's gel pass out in sheer shock and disgust.
• Fantastic Racism:
  • Most people tend to be cautious around strangers since a lot strangers have unstable abilities that can cause a lot of damage.
  • Ruri's dad left her and her mom after her stranger powers awakened.
• Fatal Flaw: Takara's ego. He knows that his strange ability is largely useless but that doesn't stop him from thinking he's the ultimate stranger. As a result of this mindset he takes missions a lot less seriously than the rest of his team. Which usually results in him confront outlaws more powerful than him with no plan of attack, even though he's very good at coming up with plans, and making the mission more difficult for his team.
• Fights Like a Normal: Golden Lion King has a rank E strange ability but he's not entirely weak since Re-birthday taught him how to fight so he can rely on hand-to-hand combat. Still though, while he puts up a good fight against Takara he's no match for Mikan.
• First-Name Basis: Aria pouts when Takara refers to her as "Aria-san" despite her just telling him to refer to her as Aria. When Takara corrects himself and calls her Aria she enthusiastically refers to him as "darling".
• Form-Fitting Wardrobe: Just about every top on a female character in this series wraps around their breasts. The most noticeable case being Mikan, whose top for her Sailor Fuku is open in the from the collar down, she doesn't wear anything underneath it, and manages to avoid Wardrobe Malfunction because it behaves like it's glued to her breasts.
• Glasses Are Sexy: The first thing Takara notices about Aria is how attractive she is, mentioning her large breasts, long black straight hair and glasses.
• Glasses Pull: When Golden Lion King activates his strange ability and emits a blinding light both Wind Child and Aria who's watching the fight via a monitor put on sunglasses.
• Harsh Word Impact: Aria tells Takara that in her five years of training Mikan mentioned him a lot. When he asks what things she said about him he gets skewered by the arrows from word bubbles. Mikan had nothing nice to say about him.
• Hospital Hottie: Takara decides to go a hospital to a see if he can get rid of his rid of his strange abilities. He is attended to by a busty nurse whose uniform is a tight form-fitting top and a miniskirt. The first panel she appears is her bent over with her boobs full view.
• Hostage Situation: Outlaws from Re-Birthday take a department store full of people hostage and threaten to kill one hostage every hour if their demands of all the outlaws imprisoned to be released are not met.
• Humanizing Tears: After failing a mission for the first time Mikan goes to the roof of the headquarters and cries. Which is one of the few moments she's shown her vulnerable side. This is shocking to Takara who spots her and is at a loss of how to help her. Lucky Ruri knows what to say (see You Are Not Alone).
• Human Shield: Takara gets used as one by a female outlaw who wraps him with her whip and uses him as a hostage to deter Mikan from attack her. She quickly unwraps Takara (which leaves him spinning for a while) to attack Ruri, who seems to have figured out what her strange ability is.
• Idol Singer: Ruri is a very popular idol singer. A lot of people consider her the ultimate idol singer and Yowabi and Sanagi were already huge fans of her before she joined the main cast.
• Improbable Weapon User: Ruri defeats an unnamed female outlaw with a small hoop. She throws the hoop at the outlaw, who breaks it to pieces using her whip. However, Ruri threw the whip with her right hand, which means she can use her strange ability revert the hoop back to its original state. The pieces fly back together around the outlaw pulling her and Takara, who is spinning right next to her the whole time (see Human Shield) together and binding them together so she couldn't move properly. It's unclear whether she meant to bind Takara as well.
• Ineffectual Loner: Mikan's refusal to work as a team ends up causing her to fail a mission for the first time. Takara tells her to leave Golden Lion King to him and go after Wind Child since the latter can fly and Mikan is the only one with the abilities to catch up with her. She refuses, stating that she'll take on Golden Lion king then go after Wind child. Unfortunately by the time she defeats Golden Lion King Wind Child is long gone. Later on she notes that had she listen to Takara, they would have most likely caught all the outlaws on her mission
• Ignored Enemy: Mikan and Takara get into an argument about Mikan being assigned to be Takara's supervisor without Takara's approval. During their argument another student and stranger, Fumi Kudou, and her underlings barge into the classroom, introduce themselves and demand that Mikan and Takara become her servants. Despite her grand appearance Mikan and Takara don't even acknowledge her presence. When one of underlings tries to get their attention the two yell at him to shut-up and then there's a twelve page flashback scene. All this, including the flashback, angers Fumi enough to activate her strange ability but she isn't able to use it because Mikan sends lightning blasts all over the classroom to show Takara just how strong she is and one of those blasts would have hit Fumi had Takara not tackled her out of the way.
• I Just Want to Be Special: Despite Strangers being maligned by most of society, Takara has always wanted to become one. He gets his wish but not with the powers he wanted.
• Improbable Age: Aria is the lab chief of a government agency and even has a PhD at the age of 18.
• It's All My Fault: After hearing about the Hostage Situation which involves outlaws from Re-Birthday with one of whom being Wind Child, Mikan blames herself for failing to capture Wind Child when she had a chance. Takara flicks her on the head and tells her the whole team is at fault not just her.
• Late for School: Fumi tries to set up a Meet Cute scenario with Takara by pretending to be late for school and accidentally bumping into Takara. Her underlings point out the glaring flaw with her plan in that she's doing it after school but she goes with it anyway. Takara actually sees her running towards him, though unaware of her plan, he also sees it as an opportunity to have a Meet Cute scenario and runs towards her. Things go hilariously wrong when Ruri, who decides to visit Takara's school comes right in the middle of the two's paths. Takara bumps into Ruri face first into her breasts, bouncing off her, and Fumi bumps into Ruri from behind causing the two girls to fall on Takara ending up in a very sexually suggestive position. Takara, gets aroused by this causing his powers to activate covering the two girls in gel and prompting a very angry Mikan, who saw the whole thing, to electrocute him.
• The Leader: Officially Takara is the leader of the team. Unfortunately, he doesn't act like one. He's more concerned with looking heroic than accomplishing the mission. However, when he does act like a leader, plans for the situation, and coordinates with his team he can accomplish a lot.
• Leeroy Jenkins: Takara frequently confronts outlaws, usually more powerful than him, head-on with no plan of attack. Even when there's already a set plan for the mission he'll go for the head on approach if he thinks it'll make him look cool.
• Light Is Not Good: Toya's power seems to be light based, yet he is a ruthless antihero that tried to kill Takara for caring for an enemy's health.
• Lightning Bruiser: At the start of his first mission, Takara is warned by Aria to be careful of the Outlaw "Gorrilla-san" a large muscular outlaw whose strange ability lets him increase his physical power. Takara almost learns the hard way that Gorrilla-san's strange ability gives him more than just superhuman strength. When "Gorrilla-san" tries to punch Sanagi, Takara uses his strange ability to produce gel around his feet, letting him slide at high speeds, grab Sanagi and move them a good distance away from "Gorrilla-san". However in an instant Gorrilla-san appears right behind Takara ready to punch him. Luckily, Mikan electrocutes "Gorrilla-san" and reveals his true power to Takara. It turns out his strange ability lets him increase his muscular strength. So anything using muscles, like punching or moving, is increased to superhuman levels.
• The Load: Takara, Yowabi, and Sanagi, due to not having any powers that are helpful in capturing outlaws. Takara, in particular has a bad habit of running into fights with no plan of attack against strangers with abilities far more powerful that his. Most of their missions end with Mikan subduing the outlaws and saving them in the process.
  • Later subverted with Takara who proves that he may not be useful in a fight but that he is a very good strategist. His planning is instrumental in defeating a group of Re-birthday outlaws.
• Master of Illusion: The unnamed female outlaw with Golden Lion King and Wind Child has the ability to create holograms of people. She makes a hologram of Golden Lion King which has Mikan fooled into believing her attacks don't work on him, when they were just going though the hologram, and she almost leads Yowabi and Ruri on an endless chase to capture a hologram of her they couldn't catch up with. Fortunately, Ruri is able to deduce what her powers are.
• Marshmallow Hell: Takara being, well, Takara often finds himself getting a face full of a girl's breasts. Because of how his powers work, most cases end up with him and the girl covered in gel. Some of the more noticeable cases include:
  • In the hospital his powers reawakening when Mikan helps him up and he accidentally falls face first on her breasts.
  • Intentional or not Ruri uses a hoop binds him and a female a busty female outlaw to prevent the outlaw from moving. Being unable to move and because of the outlaw struggling he gets smothered by her breasts causing him to release his gel, which causes the outlaw to faint out of shock.
• Mutant Draft Board: The government's solution to dealing with outlaws is to recruit high-ranking strangers to capture them.
• Mrs. Robinson: Subverted when Aria tells Takara she's open to the idea of being in a relationship with him. Takara thinks she's joking since she's much older than him but she informs him that she's only 18 years old, three years older than him. She just looks a lot older.
• Naked First Impression: Takara's first meeting with Ruri is him accidentally walking in on her changing clothes in her dressing room after a concert. At first it looks like she's going to hurt him since she screams and grabs his arm before he tries to flee but it turns out she was just excited to see him since she's been a fan of him ever since news about him beating Mikan got around.
• Nebulous Evil Organisation: Re-birthday, which is an organisation comprise of outlaws. Their objective has not been revealed but Aria considers them especially dangerous since, with the exception of Takara's team, strangers teaming up is largely unheard of.
• New Transfer Student: Mikan transfers to Takara's school and is also his new classmate. She introduces herself to the rest of the class by warning them that she's a dangerous person whom they should not try to get close to.
• Nightmare Fetishist: Most female characters are usually grossed out when covered in Takara's gel. Sanagi isn't, in fact she loves being covered in his gel. The first time she gets covered in gel she plays around in it and tries to eat it.
• Not What It Looks Like: Takara shows a nurse what he means by being able to shoot "white gel in huge loads" (see That Came Out Wrong). He ends up covering her in gel which causes her to scream and faint. A doctor and two nurses barge in to see what the commotion is about and find Takara panting and an unconscious nurse covered in white liquid right next to him. Unsurprisingly, they immediately assume the worst and call the police.
• Non-Answer: After her match with Takara's team Mikan wakes up on a hospital bed with Aria at her bedside. When she asks what happened to Takara after the match Aria simply apologizes for setting up the match in the first place. This causes Mikan to think Aria is hiding an awful truth about what happened to Takara and she rushes to his room. Turns out he's fine and celebrating his team's victory over her. Aria comes in the room annoyed that Mikan didn't let her finish talking.
• Older Than They Look: Aria only being 18 years old comes as a shock to Takara. She looks like she's in her mid-twenties and is significantly taller than the main cast.
• Oblivious to Love: Ruri, Yowabi and Sanagi have literally thrown themselves at Takara. Ruri even tells him upfront that she's pursuing him. In spite all this Takara can only see them as good friends.
• The Omniscient Council of Vagueness: Eden is a group of men that are the government's highest executive council and Aria's superiors, so she reports to them. Each member appears through video screens as dark Silhouettes, they refer to Aria as their daughter, and Aria refers to them as her fathers. Despite the mysterious vibe of their introduction, most of it is quickly undone when they reveal their big plan, "The Government beautiful all-girl stranger idolization plan", the goal of which is to have a team of cute female government strangers. While it's unclear how Takara fits in all this, it's not exactly a lofty goal. It's quickly revealed after their introduction that Aria is manipulating them and has plans of her own. Eden, may have known about that since they sent Ruri to spy on Aria, but it's revealed that Ruri is really working for someone else and is spying on Eden as well.
  • It turns out Aria doesn't have as much control of them as she would like, as they email her orders to capture a mentally unstable little girl who's a rank A stranger. It angers Aria that they would treat a unstable little girl like a criminal and they didn't even bother to inform her about the situation earlier.
• The One Guy: All the strangers on Takara's team are female even the ones that join later.
• Outlaw Town: Old town is a town that's a safe haven for outlaws since laws don't exist there. Unfortunately, it's right next to New town where all the civilians live.
• Overly Long Name: Aria's actual name is Aria Kurumu Elinor Walter. She prefers it that most people just call her Aria.
• Paper Tiger: Golden Lion King is a big muscular outlaw with lionesque features. His intimidating name and appearance have Takara thinking he's a powerful stranger but his strange ability is basically that he can glow. When it's revealed Takara thinks he's in for an easy fight. Only it's not as Lion King reveals and shows that Re-birthday taught him hand-to-hand combat. Though it's useless against Mikan who quickly enters the fight and easily defeats him with one lightning blast. Or maybe not. When the debris settles it's revealed that Lion King is unharmed and brags about how her lightning blasts won't work on him. Only that's not the case. Mikan hit a hologram of Lion King created by a female outlaw with him. When Ruri defeats that outlaw and reveals what's really going on the real Lion King goes for a desperate suprise attack on the two but Mikan easily defeats him.
• Parental Abandonment: Of the main cast only Takara's parents have been shown in the present story. It's only for a panel where they leave Takara in Aria's care, and he moves out of the house to live in the headquarters.
• Pervert Revenge Mode: Thanks to his powers Takara can and will get electrocuted by Mikan if he does something perverted around her and especially involving her. She doesn't care if it's accidental.
• Pest Controller: Sanagi's strange ability "marionette worm" lets her control any kind of insect. Unfortunately, it has a huge drawback in that she can only control one insect at a time.
• Playing Nice for Now: Aria and Ruri have a very tense conversion revealing that both of them know the other has ulterior motives. In the end they both decide to treat each other as they've been doing before but they're still suspicious of each other.
• Playing with Fire: Yowabi's strange ability lets her create flames. Unfortunately, the flames she creates are too small to be useful.
• Power Glows: Golden Lion King glows when he roars. The first time Takara sees this he's worried that Lion King is preparing to use a powerful strange ability but Aria informs him that Lion King is a rank E stranger and that is his strange ability.
• Power Incontinence: A lot of strangers don't have full control of their powers and unintentionally activate them.
  • A Running Gag with Takara is that his gel powers always activates when he's extremely aroused.
  • Ruri has to wear a glove on her right to keep her from accidentally using her powers.
  • Mikan has a more serious version. When she was younger she was shunned by all of her classmate including her best friend, (everyone except Takara) because her powers would constantly activate shocking things and people. In the current story she has more control over her powers thanks to training and specially made rubber gloves and socks but Aria tells Takara in private that her powers are still dangerous, not just to other people but also to Mikan herself. If her powers activate when she's asleep, unconscious, or emotional unstable, she could end up shocking herself which could result in her losing her limbs or dying. This is why she's rarely seen not wearing her rubber gloves.
• Power Levels: All strangers have a strange ability rank. This takes into account things like their powers effectiveness, versatility, and danger it may have on user. Rank ranges from E to A with rank E usually being useless powers and rank A being far more powerful than the rest of the ranks.
• Power Limiter: Mikan's gloves and socks keep her from unintentionally activating her powers. She doesn't need to remove them to use her powers but they keep her powers from going out of control. Ruri's glove on her right hand serves the same purpose but she needs to remove them to use her powers.
• Power Perversion Potential: Aria has a special table that can project and manipulate holograms. She shows this to Takara's team by projecting a hologram of Mikan then making her do sexy poses. Unfortunately, Sanagi won't let Takara watch it.
• Precious Photo: Mikan has a photo of her and Takara together as kids which serves as an indication that their relationship may not be as antagonistic as the two make it seem.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Takara's team started of with just him, Yowabi, and Sanagi. Despite being three low ranking strangers whose powers just awoken, and have had no training Aria wants them to capture outlaws.
  • The team are actually reserves. The government usually sends high ranking strangers to capture outlaws but they're understaffed so Aria is testing to see whether low ranking strangers working as a team can get the job done as well.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Mikan gives one to Takara's team after Takara tells her that they didn't need her to save them on their first mission. Mikan then points out the mistakes they made and calls the team a disgrace and full of flaws from the beginning to the end of the mission. It's no wonder they aren't grateful to her for rescuing them.
  • Aria gives one to the whole team even though they accomplished their mission. She criticizes Mikan and Takara for not following the mission plan and confronting the outlaw head on and she criticizes Sanagi and Yowabi for not arriving on the scene in time. She states that doing things like that only creates unnecessary risks and will get the team in a lot of trouble if they don't change their methods.
    • She does apologize to them moments later for being so harsh but she does want them to take what she said to heart.
• Rescue Romance: Fumi falls in love with Takara after he saves her (really her underlings. See Depraved Homosexual) from "Gorilla-san" and "Frog-san".
• School Uniforms are the New Black: Mikan, Yowabi and Takara both go on missions wearing the school uniforms.
• Security Cling: Ruri, Sanagi and Yowabi have all at one point grabbed onto Takara's arm. Usually when they're scared but sometimes because they're possessive of him. Whatever the reason it usually annoys Mikan, who will tell them to get off of him.
• Sex Sells: It turns out Aria has had plans to form teams of strangers for a while, however Eden rejected all of her proposals. It wasn't until she proposed forming an female team that they accepted her proposal.
• Shock and Awe: Mikan's strange ability lets her turn her arms and legs into lightning. "Lightning dust" turns her arms into electricity allowing her to fire powerful lightning blasts that usually take out most of her enemies with one shot. "Lightning dash" lets her turn her legs into lightning letting her travel at Super-Speed. She also has a technique that lets her create orbs of electricity that surround her and most of the area and electrocute anyone they touch.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Takara has always thought of himself as a big shot hero who's better than everyone else even before his strange ability has awoken.
• Smarter Than You Look: Ruri's ditzy idol persona is in stark contrast to her computer hacking skills and deductive reasoning.
• Something Else Also Rises: As if Takara's powers aren't suggestive enough, it also activates when he's extremely aroused. This usually happens when he's getting Glomped by a girl or on top of them in a suggestive manner so the end result is both him and the girl being covered in his gel.
• Stab the Scorpion: When Aria first introduces herself to Takara she kicks dangerously close to his head. The next panel shows that she was aiming for a bee right behind him.
• Superpower Lottery: Rank A strangers a lot stronger than the other classes. Mikan curb stomps just about every outlaw, who's either not smart enough to or can't run away from her.
• Super-Power Meltdown: For Mikan the stress of losing to Takara and her inability to state her true feelings for him during her fight with his team causes her to become emotionally unstable. Which resulted in her losing control of her strange ability, by turning her legs and arms into electricity simultaneously, something Aria previously said she wasn't able to do. The end result is that most of the warehouse the fight took place in was demolished and Mikan and Takara got knocked out.
• Team Spirit: Aria's theory about strangers being more powerful working together gets proven by Takara's team. Team work is essential for most of their victories. With a well-thought out plan and team coordination they manage to defeat Mikan and later, with Mikan and Ruri on they team, they diffuse a hostage situation by defeating a group of outlaws from Re-birthday.
  • Team work is also what makes re-birthday so dangerous. Wind Child, along with just two low ranking outlaws were able to take out four government strangers before being confronted by Takara's team. While most government strangers work alone, they're supposed to be very powerful. The two low ranking outlaws by themselves give Mikan some trouble, and she's supposed to be one of the best.
  While individually your ability may overpower us several times over, we can be so much stronger as a combination. That's what our boss taught us.
• That Came Out Wrong: Takara goes to the hospital to get rid of his strange ability but doesn't tell the nurse releasing gel is his ability. The nurse thinks he's talking about well, semen. Things go from bad to worse when Takara decides to try to clarify his condition by stating he can "shoot out white liquid, in gigantic loads" and he wants her to "relieve" him of it. This cause the nurse to accuse him of sexual harassment. At that point Takara decides to show her what he actually means by activating his powers (See Not What It Looks Like).
  • When trying to capture Wind Child, he yells "I want you". This freaks out his team since they all have crushes on him. What he meant to say is that he wants her strange ability.
• Took a Level in Badass: Yowabi's power is laughably weak. Despite being able to use fire, she can only produce enough of it to be used as a lighter. However, a mysterious character unlocks her full potential. Now, instead of simply spouting a bit of flame, she can now turn anything to ash with a simple glance of her left eye. This power launches her from E rank all the way to A rank. Took several levels of Badass, in fact.
• Third-Person Person: Ruri generally refers to herself by her name or third-person pronouns.
• Time Master: Ruri's strange ability, "chain of lost memory" allows her to revert anything or anyone she touches or has touched with her right hand back to the state it was five minutes ago. This allows her to fix broken items and heal people provided they were damaged within five minutes. She notes, however, that it makes cutting her own hair a pain as it returns to the old style.
• Tsundere: Mikan and Takara towards each other.
• Vapor Wear: Mikan doesn't wear a bra under her school uniform. Were it not for the fact that clothes in this series behave like their stuck on a female character's breasts a Wardrobe Malfunction would be a given with her.
• Victorious Loser: Mikan loses the fight against Takara's team and per the condition has to becomes their new member. This lets her stay close to Takara, and since the team is quick to befriend her she gets new friends.
• What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: Rank E strangers have some laughable useless abilities. Takara's gel ability just tends to gross out people, and Yowabi can't produce enough fire for her ability to be used for anything other than a lighter.
  • Not even rank C strangers are immune to this. Because Sanagi can only control one bug at a time her powers are useless in most situations causing some characters to treat her like she's a rank E stranger.
  • Heart Is an Awesome Power: Though later it's revealed that Takara's and Sanagi's powers may not be completely useless.
    • Takara's gel is slippery, so if he produces some gel around his feet he can slide at high speeds. It's later It's revealed that his gel and his entire body have highly insulative properties, meaning he can take multiple lightning blasts from Mikan, and only end up with minor injurys whereas most people are usually unconscious after just one. This discovery gets him reevaluated as a rank D stranger.
    • More than that, Takara is subtly hinted to be more powerful than he appears, at least enough that he generates an outright demonic Battle Aura when he's royally pissed off. Said aura is so intense in fact that it causes Toya, who had just finished curbstomping Mikan to oblivion, to lose his smug grin, hesitate in attacking Takara any further (in fact, he decides to withdraw right after) and actually acknowledge him to some degree^note He leaves claiming Takara as he is now will never be a hero. Though this is obviously a taunt, it also shows Toya doesn't dismiss Takara's potential. Whether this aura is in relation to Takara's powers or is simply his force of will remains to be seen.
    • While Sanagi's powers are useless in a fight, she can use flying insects to track people.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Despite being one of the strongest strangers, Mikan is extremely scared of cockroaches. During her fight with Takara's team she freaks out when Sanagi uses her powers to land a cockroach on her.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Mikan calls out Aria for sending Takara, Yowabi, and Sanagi on a mission to capture two outlaws, despite knowing the three were ill-prepared for such a mission and Aria really was just gambling on Mikan to save the three. Had Mikan not done so the three probably would have been grievously injured or killed. Aria agrees and apologies for her recklessness. However, to make sure that never happens again she decides to have Mikan join Takara's team, much to both Mikan's and Takara's dismay.
• You Are Not Alone: Ruri breaks Mikan out of her depression by reminding her that even though she feels useless for having failed a mission she still has the rest of the team who are her friends and care about her regardless.
  • Oddly enough Ruri tells Mikan she's jealous that Mikan has friends like Takara, Yowabi, and Sanagi despite the latter three not too long ago telling Ruri that they consider her a friend too.

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