The ultimate virtual reality game!
Wan Jia was the highest ranking player in the worldwide VR game, King of Gamers. Just as he was about to lead his team to victory in the final round, he gets betrayed and player killed by one of his own teammates, taking him out of the game. Before he got ejected from the game, Wan Jia suddenly wakes up a year in the past, the day King of Gamers had been officially launched. Already a master of the game and possessing knowledge of its contents, Wan Jia orchestrated his return to the King of Gamers to not only punish the traitor, but to achieve victory!
Player Reborn provides examples of the following tropes:
- A-Cup Angst: Zhou Dui Wan isn't flat in any way as she has quite the figure. However when she sees Lin Xun's rack, she couldn't help but feel she lost to her in something. In the Mons War round, the both of them and Alice felt inadequate after seeing the NPC guide Danse and her over the top boob size. Xiao Shan Ying is a loli who is jealous of Lin Xun and Alice's rack size, but takes a bit of comfort being near Dui Wan (who is not amused at the reasoning).
- Backstab Backfire: Early in the first round, Wan Jia easily defeats an armed group of players. One wounded player offers to join him, claiming to be strong but was secretly hiding a gun behind his back. Wan Jia pretends to accept his offer, but then quickly kills him off with a hidden knife, saying he's not strong at all.
- Badass Longcoat: Wan Jia acquires the Demon Dragon Coat after killing the hydra boss monster.
- Battle Couple: Wan Jia and Lin Xun, especially in the Mons War round where they partner up in a pairs tournament. The lovey-dovey onesie-clad couple they go up against first (as well as their Mons, a male/female Everlove Elf couple) counted in the beginning, as they were coordinated enough to cause great harm to Lyle and Lin Xun’s Steelwings Mon. Wan Jia gets Lyle to shape shift into an Everlove Elf using Lin Xun as a base, resulting in an even sexier female Everlove Elf, so attractive that the opponent’s male elf tried to pick her up, much to the anger of his significant other who then angrily attacks him, leaving them both wide open for a finishing blow and losing.
- Beautiful All Along: In the second round's maze stage, Wan Jia meets up with Dui Wan, who then introduces him to her old schoolmate, Alice. Wan Jia is shocked and perturbed when he sees that Alice looks like a big muscular man in a girl's school uniform acting very girlish. Turns out the reason for her manly appearance was because of an ability card she used. When its effects wore off, she reverts to be an actual cute girl.
- Inverted with Qiao Bi Luo who uses her beauty and sexiness to sway men to her favor. Turned out her beautiful appearance was due to a magic pearl she had acquired in the round and when Wan Jia shattered it, her real self gets revealed as an ugly fat gonk.
- Best Served Cold: A weird example. Fan Zhi Hong was the one who betrayed Wan Jia in his first life until he got sent back a year into the past. Wan Jia encountered him again early in the first round who shamelessly offered to join after Wan Jia and his friends took out the group he had been a part of. Knowing how he operates now, Wan Jia makes Fan Zhi suffer small humiliations for what he will do a year from now until he predictably tries to backstab him until getting a wounding shot from Lin Xun. He tries to survive until the round is officially over so he could advance, but is killed off by Wan Jia.
- Black Magician Girl: Zhou Dui Wan uses this as her player character archetype.
- Broken Pedestal:
- Qiao Bi Luo who had soldiers bowing and scraping to her every whim, willing to do anything for her as she's a stunning beauty. once Wan Jia destroyed her magic pearl, she reverts to her ugly fat self. When she tries to order the soldiers she charmed to attack Wan Jia, they instead nearly gag at what they realized what demeaning things they've done for her and immediately cut ties with her, saying they could never follow an ugly bitch pretending to be hot.
- Yu Gui Liu in the Mons War round is a girl with a few male followers waiting on her hand and foot, acting like a spoiled princess. When she confronts Wan Jia to take the Mon egg given to him by the Demon Dragon, she fuses with her Mon to transform into an ugly fishman monster with boobs, disgusting not only Wan Jia, but her male followers as well.
- Caught on Tape: Xu Tian Ling had one of his underlings attempt to player kill Wan Jia by tossing him into the sea with a rock in order to prevent him from competing in the pairs tournament and remove him fro the KOG competition. Unknown to the underling, it wasn’t Wan Jia she kicked into the sea, but actually Lyle shapeshifted as him while the real Wan Jia recorded the whole thing on camera, which he then plays after defeating Tian Ling in the pairs tournament. Because of his blatant cheating being revealed to the public, not only does Tian Ling get disqualified from the pairs tournament, he becomes a pariah among all gamers, ruining his reputation and likely banned from ever competing in professional circles again.
- Chivalrous Pervert: After Lin Xun accidentally drank a beer spiked with a powerful aphrodisiac, Wan Jia escorts her back to his home to prevent her from getting taken advantage of. He lays her down on his bed to let her sleep it off, but just as he was about to leave, a sensuous and pleading Lin Xun begs him to stay with her. Wan Jia then attempts to go the Handsome Lech route, but gets interrupted by Dui Wan who suddenly barged in.
- Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Fan Zhi. He betrayed Wan Jia the first time through, which started the story. The second time through, Fan Zhi betrayed the group he was in to save his own skin, then betrayed Wan Jia again out of spite during the zombie stage of the first round. It was because of this Wan Jia made sure he took him out early the second time around.
- Clingy Jealous Girl: Lin Xun and Dui Wan get angry when they see Wan Jia returning with Su Mei Er in tow. The two comically pound on Wan Jia who wsn't given a chance to explain himself.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: The CEO of Ge Mu Qin is an asshole bent on trying to eliminate Wan Jia from the game as he views him as a “cheater destroying the game’s balance” while ignoring what he himself is doing is also breaking the game’s balance by attempting to have the game rigged against Wan Jia in every way possible.
- Crazy-Prepared: Wan Jia thanks to retaining his memories of going through the KOG in his first life.
- Cute Monster Girl. Lyle the slime. Lin Xun when she fuses with her Mon to become a harpy woman.
- Damsel in Distress: In the Chinese Dynasty round, Lin Xun gets kidnapped and held for ransom by Qiao Bi Luo to force Wan Jia to surrender his territory.
- Defeat by Modesty: Wan Jia requests for Lin Xun to join him. She refuses, telling him to just go ahead and kill her. He says he doesn't need to do that as it would be a waste. Instead, he blackmails her to join his side by threatening to cut her clothes off and expose her naked body to all the viewers watching. Lin Xun quickly caves in and agrees to join him.
- Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?:
- Wan Jia gets forced to fight a hydra, a high level boss monster, right at the start of the second round. Normally, the hydra is meant to be fought with a party as trying to take it on alone is suicide. However, Wan Jia was quite strong himself and managed to chop a head off, giving him points. When he finds out he could get points from decapitating a head and that the hydra can regenerate its heads, Wan Jia took the opportunity to farm it for points by repeatedly chopping its heads off. After gaining a motherload of points, Wan Jia asks for the hydra to regenerate again, and it was actually bowing its lone head for mercy.
- Almost quite literally in the Mons War arc where Wan Jia faces off against Xu Tian Ling who possessed an Eldritch Horror Mon called Lord of the Abyss. Lord of the Abyss then devoured Xu Tian Ling, effectively player-killing him and evolves into a system-wide virus that threatened to contaminate the entire network, endangering all the players online. Wan Jia managed to barely destroy it in time.
- Dirty Coward: Xu Tian Ling is the captain of his own “pro player” group, but is really a conniving vulture who uses dirty tricks to weaken his enemies outside of battles to make it easier for him to take down anyone he sees as a threat, or even force players to forfeit before a game with blackmail in order to lessen the competition for himself. Before the Mons War round even began, he had Su Mei Er try to eliminate Wan Jia out of the running, which ultimately failed. In the round itself, Tian Ling and his minions tricked other players to fight each other, then took out the survivors themselves to steal their Mons. Before the finals of the pairs tournament, Tian Ling gets his followers to kill Wan Jia and Nohara while they were drunk so they wouldn’t be present for the finals and he would win by default (which ultimately failed).
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: In the Mons War round, after Wan Jia subdues Lyle possessing Alice’s body, he ties her to the bed spread eagle, demanding she get out of his companion’s body. Lyle smugly tells Wan she’ll remain in Alice’s body and that the only way to force her out is to kill Alice, so then Wan threatens to douse her with salt which will kill her and spare Alice, getting her slightly intimidated, but tells him it’s useless since she had made sure there would be no salt within the area to be used on her. Wan then smugly tells her there is a way to force her out and began undressing before mounting her, much to her shock and embarrassment. However, it turned out Wan Jia was only doing push-ups above her in order to sweat hard, which his sweat acted like acid to Lyle since it contained trace amounts of salt. She quickly agrees to release her hold on Alice.
- Everything's Better with Samurai: Nohara Kenta is a professional player who uses a samurai archetype.
- Fake Relationship: In the Chinese dynasty round, Wan Jia and Lin Xun pretend to be in an engagement as part of a plan to overthrow a player's city.
- Four Eyes, Zero Soul: Xu Tian Ling.
- Funny Background Event: When everyone comes to Wan Jia's home in reality. Lin Xun and Dui Wan were cooking in the kitchen. While Alice peeks in asking if she could be of any assistance, Wan Jia and Wei Hu were in the background playing a fighting game. Judging from the scene, Wan Jia was losing badly while Wei Hu was mockingly yawning.
- Fur Bikini: Wan Jia, Lin Xun, and Wei Hu kill a white tiger monster which dropped an equippable fur defense item. Wan Jia suggests giving it to Lin Xun, followed by an Imagine Spot of her posing sensually in a tiger fur bikini. Lin Xun immediately punches out Wan Jia for the perverted thought. Played straight with Ye Mi Sheng.
- Fusion Dance: During the Mons War round, high level players can gain the ability to biomerge with their Mon to create a more powerful being.
- Gender Reveal: The hydra back at the Tower round (which Wan Jia had been repeatedly decapitating to farm points) makes a surprising return as the demon dragon rumored to be roaming the area to take on trainers. Once it sees Wan Jia, it immediately began bowing its heads for mercy. Lyle then reveals that the hydra is not only a female, but a mother as well.
- Hate Sink: Xu Tian Ling is a Jerkass Smug Snake and a cheating Dirty Coward who's a "pro player leader" in name only, relying on cheating others to get ahead with little to no effort on his part and beating on those unable to fight back just to establish his superiority.
- High-Heel–Face Turn: Su Mei Er defects to Wan Jia's side after seeing Xu Tian Ling for what he really is.
- Hollywood Tone-Deaf: In the locked room stage of the Endless Tower round, Wan Jia proved to be a horrible piano player when he volunteered to play the piano to unlock the sealed box.
- Honey Trap: Su Mei Er is a woman who approaches Wan Jia at a bar and tries to seduce him. She spikes a mug of beer with an aphrodisiac in order to ruin him with a sex scandal. Unknown to her, Wan Jia was familiar with her tactics due to his memory of his first life and doesn’t fall for it (though was unexpectedly spared when Lin Xun suddenly snatched said drugged beer and downs it).
- Human Shield: Lyle when first encountered in the Mons War round possesses Alice’s body to use as a shield against Wan Jia. To her surprise, Wan Jia still gut punches her to knock her out.
- Hypocrite: Lu Jie attempts to player kill Wan Jia with the group of soldiers he’s bribed to follow him. However, it turned out Wan Jia outbribed him and the soldiers are on his side now. Angry, Lu Jie tries to fight Wan Jia himself, bragging he can’t penetrate his barrier shield. To his surprise, Wan Jia’s soldiers attack Li Jie from behind, who angrily calls out Wan Jia’s tactics, never mind the fact he had tried to do the same moments earlier.
- I Have Boobs, You Must Obey!: Qiao Bi Luo in the Chinese dynasty round is a bewitching woman who can turn men into her willing slaves just by being looked at. Wan Jia almost fell for it before Lin Xun whacked him awake. Is averted when it’s revealed it was just an illusionary disguise and is really ugly.
- Kill It with Fire:
- Wan Jia uses this method to take out zombie mooks for good in the zombie stage.
- In the Mons War stage, all the surrounding players attempt to gang up on Wan Jia since he had a supposedly weak Mon. He uses his Mon’s string shot ability to entangle all the players and their Mons before taking them all out in a sea of flame with a match.
- Laser-Guided Karma: The Ge Mu Qin CEO gets fired after his blatant rigging came to light once the Chinese dynasty round ended.
- Leeroy Jenkins: Dui Wan and Alice form a team to compete in the pairs tournament of the Mons War round. While Dui Wan analyzes their opponents, she tries to relay a plan of attack to Alice, who instead immediately charges in and takes out their opponents in her muscle ape fusion form.
- Let Us Never Speak of This Again: Lin Xun gets affected by an aphrodisiac slipped into a beer she downed that was meant for Wan Jia, who in turn takes her to his home to sleep it off. When she begs him to stay with her, he decides to oblige until Dui Wan comes in and tosses him out for the attempt. Unfortunately for her, Lin Xun, still under the effects started coming on to Dui Wan, much to her shock and embarrassment. The following morning while Wan Jia prepares breakfast, he asks the two what happened, to which the two overly humiliated women tell him not to ask and forget it ever happened.
- Marshmallow Hell: Lin Xun happily hugs Wan Jia's head into her breasts after he had woken up in a hospital bed from the aftermath of the Mons Wars round.
- Meaningful Name: During the second round's locked room stage, Dui Wan plays the piano with the provided sheet music, which opens the box containing the keys. Wan Jia asks what the name of the piece was, which Dui Wan replies "Like a Moth to a Flame". Chu Yue, another player, was about to go check the open box, but then Wan Jia realized too late the meaning behind the song used as the passcode. Chu Yue wound up getting caught in a flame thrower trap.
- Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal:
- The lead programmer the Ge Mu Qin CEO fired for disobeying his orders to make the game cheat against Wan Jia gets the last laugh by secretly burying an event code that would activate when certain parameters are met. Because of this, Wan Jia managed to pull off a win against the overly buffed Lu Feng Xian despite the cheats the CEO ordered his programmers to put on. He was also the one who most likely exposed the CEO’s rigging scandal, resulting in his termination of office.
- In the Mons War pairs tournament, Tian Ling abuses his Mon, Azurhawk, treating it as expendable when he knowingly uses a banned drug to mutate it to a stronger form to win the tournament then forced it to act as a shield against Lyle fused with Wan Jia's attack. During the scuffle, Wan Jia managed to convince the Azurhawk to turn on its former master, which it was more than happy to do. After Tian Ling gets smashed into the ground, the Azurhawk spitefully spits on him before abandoning him.
- Morph Weapon: Wan Jia manages to get a special weapon than can switch between a sword, a spear, a bow, and a hammer.
- Ms. Fanservice: Lin Xun. Danse in female form and her doppelgänger judges. Ye Mi Sheng also counts as her debut introduces her in a Fur Bikini. Lyle the Slime Girl in the Mons War round makes it a goal to become the ultimate sexy girl by getting DNA samples of any attractive woman she comes across.
- My Greatest Second Chance: Wan Jia literally gets stabbed by a traitorous teammate before getting to the final round in order to not be dealt with and increase the traitor's chance's of victory. Before he gets deleted from the game, Wan Jia is returned a year into the past when the game launched, giving him a chance to do things over, but with prior knowledge of his experiences.
- Not So Above It All: Nohara paints himself as a mature samurai, but during the cage team match stage of the second round, he sides with Wan Jia's decision to play strip rock-paper-scissors with the hot female streamer (even getting a nosebleed at the thought).
- Official Couple: Wei Hu and Ye Mi Sheng get engaged.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: Wan Jia, Lin Xun, and Wei Hu get cornered in a bunker in the first round by a gang of players. They take advantage of the situation when zombies of players they killed inside began shambling out, making the gang distracted. The three pose as zombies by wearing stupid-looking masks before carjacking the leader's car.
- Peggy Sue: The series started off with Wan Ji leading his group to the final round of the King of Games contest. Before he was about to advance to the final round, he suddenly gets stabbed by Fan Zhi, as he wanted to eliminate Wan Jia since he'd be a tough opponent he'd rather not deal with. As Fan Zhi mocks Wan Jia for being too trusting, Wan Jia suddenly finds himself a year in the past, just before the start of the contest with all his knowledge retained. He uses this opportunity to do things differently and deal with Fan Zhi, whom he player-kills in the first round to effectively end his conspiracy before it even starts.
- Real Men Wear Pink: Dans the host is a punkish muscular man wearing a pink suit and tie with pink hair. At the hospital in the real world, a guy who looks like Dans is seen in a pink nurse's outfit pushing Dui Wan in her wheelchair.
- Reassignment Backfire: The CEO of Ge Mu Qin, the company that created King of Gamers, noticed Wan Jia's unnatural rise in the ranks far above the other players. He then orders his staff to deliberately set his path to lead to a hydra, a boss monster that was intended to be fought on the later floors of the Endless Tower round. Wan Jia is forced to fight the supposed overpowered monster right from the get go. However, Wan Jia was able to fight it off, each time he decapitated a head, he'd win some points. The hydra was able to regenerate its heads, but instead of being intimidated at its supposed immortality, Wan Jia sees it as an opportunity to farm it for points (which freaks the hydra out).
- Right Behind Me: In the Mons War stage, Wan Jia and Alice arrive at Battle City where players seem to constantly battle just from bumping into each other in the streets. Wan makes a comment that such a place would be considered paradise to Lin Xun as he describes her to be a typical “big-breasted woman with no brains”, all while failing to notice Alice’s frantic signals to stop. An angry Lin Xun greets him with a German Suplex.
- Screw the Rules, I Make Them!: The Ge Mu Qin CEO shamelessly alters the rules through his team of programmers to thwart Wan Jia's progress once he noticed his unnatural success rate, thinking him a cheater of some sort. In the third round in the Chinese warring period stage, Wan Jia drew from a character class lot to determine his role, but his choices had been hacked so that he'd draw a bandit card, the worst possible role to be in.
- He gets even more despicable when Wan Jia manages to rise in the player ranks despite the rigged handicap placed on him. The CEO demands for the lead programmer to drastically increase the difficulty on Wan Jia, who calls out that what his employer is suggesting is practically cheating when they’re supposed to be impartial. The company CEO in turn fires him for disobeying him and gets someone else to do it. This later bites him in the ass.
- Shout-Out: The fourth round is the Mons War stage, which is a blatant ripoff of Pokémon and Digimon. It even has bio-merging.
- In the same round, Wan Jia fused with his mon to become Kamen Rider Leaf.
- Slime Girl: Lyle the Phantomslime in the Mon Wars round.
- Undignified Death: Lu Jie in the Chinese dynasty round gets player killed from getting ganged up on by soldiers he tried to bribe to his side. His beaten corpse is also a Shout-Out to Yamcha’s death against a Saibaman in Dragon Ball Z
- Villains Want Mercy:
- Fan Zhi let in the zombies into the fortress where Wan Jia and his group were holing out in until the round ends. When it was almost over, he tries to crawl to safety after being shot by Lin Xun, but is stopped by Wan Jia.
Wan Jia: Where are you going? (Fan Zhi looks up to see Wan Jia) Aren't you going to come to celebrate our victory with us?Wan Jia: You've said it till I cannot bear... I even want to forgive you.Fan Zhi: Really?(Wan Jia shoots Fan Zhi between the eyes, killing him dead)Wan Jia: I Lied .- Yu Gui Liu picked a fight with Wan Jia in the Mons War round in order to take his Demon Dragon Mon but loses badly after being on the receiving end of a Spinning Pile Driver. He asks her to choose how she will be player killed, in which she demands to be given human rights. Wan Jia obliges and let’s Alice deal with her; she uses fusion to turn into her muscled monkey form where she and her equally muscled rabbit Mon proceeded to give Yu Gui Liu rights and lefts with their fists.
- Zombie Apocalypse: The first round devolves into this scenario in order to whittle down surviving players from the game.
