Ash continues his battle with Bea while Goh takes his first shaking steps to recovery. Meanwhile, Chloe has a makeover and enters a car that's...a little on the nose regarding her issues.
This arc contains examples of:
- Adults Are Useless: During Parker’s trial, he brings up many examples of Chloe’s teachers failing to help her, such as Mr.Pepper always scolding her (while complimenting Sara's cooking) and Coach Zee not punishing Yeardley for his physcal abuse, even when he once broke Chloe’s arm. It is flat out said that this is because most of them just didn’t want to deal with anything regarding Chloe.
- Age-Appropriate Angst: Amelia notes that it seems unreasonable for Chloe to hold a grudge against Goh for forgetting a promise they made when they were six for so long, and over something as trivial as curry. Chloe reluctantly agrees, realizing that her anger was less about the curry itself and more about all the other baggage their strained friendship had accrued.
- A Lesson Learned Too Well: Goh again, though slightly played for laughs this time. His flashbacks of what he should've done with Chloe make him give a sobbing comfort hug to Ash so he doesn't run away...over a tie that he's just slightly bothered about.
- And Call Him "George": Finny, the teddy-bear gardener, wishes to do this to Atticus.
- Armor-Piercing Question:
- When Delia says Chloe needs to do more than cook him something for forgiveness. Ash points out both Trip and Parker did far worse to him, and asks her what more Chloe needs to do for him.
- Trip derails Delia's attempts to explain how he's more deserving of forgiveness than Chloe for hurting her son by asking her exactly what he's done to make amends.
- During Parker’s trial, after Parker confesses to everything (both his own crimes and everything that has happened before) he breaks down, asking one thing to Chloe’s classmates and her teachers that they are too ashamed to answer.
Parker: Why did you all hate my sister?! - Birds of a Feather: Romin Kirishima and Chloe Cerise are very similar in that both were trying to make curry for a boy but got on the train due to their fears and hurt taking over them. They also have insecurities over something that they weren't (Romin's bad singing voice and Chloe not being into Pokémon).
- Beary Friendly: The Curry Prince has a teddy-bear gardener who is sweet and friendly...and decides to play fetch with Atticus using marble statues.
- Both Sides Have a Point: The argument between Delia and Ash. Delia feels that Chloe needs to make a more serious effort to earn forgiveness, while Ash feels that she's going to be working more than enough to do so.
- Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: Reflecting upon lost opportunities, Chloe notes that she has no idea whether she could try to serve Goh anything without him crying, running away, or running away crying.
- Break Them by Talking: The Curry prince/Soma outmatches Chloe in a straight fight, so she has to resort to this to talk him down.
- Call-Back:
- Chloe smiles a little as she makes her trial fishball curry laksa as it reminds her of the meatball soup she made in Azada.
- Chloe decides to slam a plate of curry into someone's face, like she did to Goh.
- Caught on Tape:
- It's revealed that the backstage confrontation where Sara and her cronies threw red paint on Chloe was also recorded, as the security footage is shown during Parker's trial.
- Footage from the lab is also shown, capturing how often the Professor turned away from his daughter to focus on Ash and Goh, as well as her looking on in silent yearning.
- Comically Small Demand: Chloe asks that she do something to earn Ash's forgiveness for everything she put him through, clearly thinking 'saving the three people he knows on the train from horrible fates' will qualify. Ash says that he'd be happy with food. This baffles Chloe and Delia.
- Contrived Coincidence: On route to the Fog Car, the Train just so happens to put Chloe in a car where she must cook curry to pass. Chloe complains about this seeming a little too 'on-the-nose'. Oh and the Prince? He's originally from a manga that Chloe is a fan of.
- Courtroom Episode: Part 2 takes place during a trial that has Parker explaining his actions.
- Crippling Overspecialization: Romin's duel disk can only allow her to face three opponents at a time due to how it's based on Yuga's Rush Duel program...which is bad when she and Chloe have to fight four guards.
- Cynicism Catalyst: The Curry Prince was once a beloved and happy prince in the Curry Car, but a stranger with butterfly wings arrived and started asking questions that made him hurt...
- Didn't See That Coming: Henry starts seriously panicking about the plan when Paul relaxes upon being told that the Apex have arrived and Chloe is on her way. Alain's new mural doesn't improve his mood, and he hears Alex's warning go off in his head like an alarm bell.Alex: "No plan survives contact with the enemy..."
- Does This Remind You of Anything?:
- Chloe admits that being a Girly Girl with a Tomboy Streak made her isolated. The girls found her too rough, the boys hated that she was a girl. She brings up a time where her class divided into gender-based clubs; both rejected her.
- Narration during the trial points out the implications of how Sara, a blonde, pale-skinned girl, led her class in mob mentality while lording over others with darker skin tones "justifying" her cruelty by claiming that the strong must crush the weak and those who are different must be punished. The implications aren't lost by many people, particularly since one of her classmates had Asperger's. Not to mention that she has plenty of insults at Goh who does have a darker skin tone.
- During the argument, Trip points out that Delia has given him far more leeway than Chloe in regards to making things right with Ash.
- "Eureka!" Moment: Atticus notices how his opponent, a teddy bear gardener named Finny, has strings fraying around his leg. He uses this to his advantage, pulling one as far as he can go to unravel the leg and causing him to trip.
- Exact Words: Lucy asks if Hop could get her a power pack for her phone. The narration notes that he could, but not that he would.
- Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: Amelia starts making plans for her group to investigate four separate hallways while looking for Agni's urn - only to remember that Chloe is currently fighting the Curry Prince and there shouldn't be four of them present, but there is.
- Famed In-Story:
- Chloe was already becoming this, but when she states her identity in the Curry Car, the entire car is freaking out at her arrival and get her and Romin dressed up and a parade so they can present curry to their prince. Same for Atticus and Lexi (Amelia doesn't get that honor but she's fine, given the atrocities she committed).
- Judge Powell makes several references to 'The Ash Ketchum Files' that she and her fellow judges apparently make quite a few bets on.
- Five-Second Foreshadowing: Before Chloe reveals the prince's identity, the first memory she sees has said prince shout, "Agni." Now who was associated with Agni and curry?
- Food Slap: Chloe stops one guard by slamming Romin's curry to his face. It actually works because to refuse a curry that was given to you — even in such a manner like this — is considered a sin.
- Foreshadowing:
- Romin revealing bits and pieces of the Curry Prince — always wears black, carries an urn and his right arm is bandaged — makes Chloe nervous, as if she recognizes their description. The identity of the prince is Soma from Black Butler which Chloe is a fan of as said in an early author's note.
- Larkspur warns Chloe that there are individuals who have splintered off from the Apex, guessing that they either grew too old for Grace and Simon to control... or too extreme for even them.
- We also learn that a denizen with butterfly wings has been asking many questions regarding how the train handles reincarnation and doesn't seem to care about the effects of those questions. Chloe bumps into him in the Ryokan Car and he cryptically tells her he's "Someone of no consequence..."
- Forgiveness: Ash points out that everybody keeps telling him that everybody says that those looking for forgiveness need to do more than apologies to earn it, but nobody is saying what those things are, and nobody will tell him. So he's decided he needs to start telling those looking for forgiveness something they can specifically do for it.
- Friendly Enemy: It turns out Jessie and James gave Ash a disguise kit for his last birthday.
- Gasp!: The entire Curry Car does this when Chloe states the Wham Line, and again when she reveals that she's read the entirety of Soma's story.
- Harsher in Hindsight: In-Universe; watching the video of the backstage incident, several students cringe at how they mocked Parker's attempt to protect his sister, sneering about how "There's no way a kid like him can do anything anyhow!"
- Hoist by His Own Petard: How Lexi beats the cook, tricking him into attacking his own weapons and neutralizing himself.
- I Hate Past Me: All the students of Class 5-E that's involved in the hearing hate seeing themselves gloating over the paint can incident and how horrible they were to Chloe and Parker.
- Internal Reveal: Ash and Chloe trade notes on their respective situations and Ash learns that Gladion had been on the train before. Ash and co. also learn about Zeno and his connection between Goh and Parker. Meanwhile, Chloe learns that Larkspur and Gladion encountered the Apex once before. Finally, Goh finally tells his parents about the train.
- Jerkass Realization:
- Chloe has one upon realizing that, as bad as it was for Goh to forget their childhood promise, she herself never made any effort to uphold it either.
- Trip has one for himself, since he never actually did anything to apologize to Ash for causing his boyfriend's guilt complex, or really did much of anything to act like a loving boyfriend.
- Karma Houdini: Zigzagged; while many of the teachers didn't lose their jobs like Miss April, they were still called out for their apathy and ignorance over Chloe's bullying problems and there are news cameras and journalists outside the court house, not to mention videos online, so that everyone remembers their sins. Their actions have tarnished Vermillion International School's reputation to the point that they'll be lucky that parents enroll their students in it for the next school year or if they'll even have jobs next year.
- Motive Rant: Even after recognizing what he did wrong, Parker has to frequently stop himself from getting into these and trying to justify himself.
- Multi-Armed and Dangerous: The chef for the Curry Prince has four arms.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Parker demonstrates to the court that he does understand how horrible his actions were, and how much responsibility he holds for letting things get so bad in the first place.
- Never Heard That One Before: Professor Cerise begs Bradbury to stop making any more snide remarks about his failures - he has heard it from so many people at this point, and quite a few of them didn't care about Chloe and just wanted to pat themselves on the back."And you should know that it's not making me reflective or guilty or strengthening my vow to do better or even hurting that much anymore. It's. Just. Annoying now."
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: While going through Goh's online profiles, his parents discover that he was being harassed by somebody very interested in his Mew Tracker. And their last message asked whether he was in Vermillion City. Kurune fires back a response before deleting the profile; unfortunately, this just confirms to the stalker that they hit the mark.
- Noodle Incident: Whatever Larkspur and Gladion did to confront the Apex. All we know was that it was a difficult battle and the Apex were mad about Lucy being wrong about "the boy with the weird hand poses".
- Prophecy Twist: Walter shrugs off Chloe no longer having the 'flowing hair' of the prophecy, since "prophecies are tricky at the best of times." Just wait until he sees that she's now dressed in yellow instead of white.
- Rage Breaking Point: Downplayed, but Professor Cerise tells Mr. Bradbury off for repeatedly reminding him how he'd warned him about his family's issues. What tips him over the edge is Bradbury commenting on how he didn't mention that little detail in his testimony, making it sound as though he wants the personal satisfaction of hearing Aldrich admit that the teacher warned him before a judge and jury more than he actually wants to see them improve.
- Rejected Apology: More gentle than most, but Chloe makes it clear that she cannot forgive Sara for everything she's done. However, she wishes her the best in her life.
- The Reveal: Soma never made it to India, but instead landed in the Curry Car, dying in despair before being reincarnated as the Clockwork/Curry Prince.
- Rule of Symbolism:
- Chloe puts a lot of thought into giving herself a new look after a bad experience involving ink. Good thing there's a cosplay car handy. This is even Lampshaded by Amelia when she sees that Chloe is now dressed as Fran Bow.
- Alain's room now has a mural of a holy figure shining with light causing fire to be pushed away and Alain reaching out to said light, presumably mimicking how Ash helped him fight off the Heroic BSoD he had from Lysandre.
- A Denizen fixated on rebirth and reincarnation is associated with butterflies...
- Serious Business:
- Curry again. The trial is about making one's own curry for the Curry Prince to taste and it is a sin to waste curry someone gave you...even if it is via Food Slap as a guard stops fighting to eat it.
- Chloe's reputation is this for the denizens as they decide to make the curry tasting into a parade.
- Ship Tease: It is implied Renji has a crush on Delia Ketchum... even though he knows that she's married.
- Sympathy for the Devil:
- Downplayed; Larkspur states that she almost feels sorry for Grace, given that the Apex are almost certain to turn upon her upon realizing just how monstrous she encouraged them to be, and that it was All for Nothing. She also notes that Grace ending up as a denizen after death would be a Karmic Transformation.
- Judge Powell clearly shows a lot of sympathy towards Parker in his trial, as despite everything, he is still a young boy that had to watch his sister get mistreated for no good reason, and life isn’t going to get any easier for him.
- Tempting Fate: In hindsight, Patricia during the paint can incident royally screwed herself and her classmates' fates by stating that there's no way Parker could do anything to hurt them. Oh was she so very, very, wrong.
- This Is Gonna Suck:
- Chloe is not happy upon entering a car where she must cook curry to pass and she's also pretty sure just who the Curry Prince is given the hints Romin gave about them.
- Atticus just sighs when the teddy bear gardener throws a marble statue at him.
- Verbal Backspace: Parker does this when the judge sternly reminds him that there's to be no swearing in her courtroom.
- We ARE Struggling Together: It's made clear that the Apex would've come apart on their own if not for Grace and Simon, as they start bickering while planning an escape from Hop's waiting room.
- Wham Line: Chloe drops one when she reveals the identity of the Curry Prince. It's also one in-universe because most of the denizens in said car don't even know his true name (due to him having been on the Train for a century at this point).Chloe: Agni would never forgive you for how you're acting, Soma Asman Kadar!
- What the Hell, Hero?: Parker specifically calls out Coach Zee for allowing Yeardley to break Chloe's arm during gym class and passing it off as normal roughhousing.
- Whole-Plot Reference: To Black Butler as the act of making curry comes from the curry arc while the rest of the Red Lotus Quarto fight off the Curry Prince's servants similar to the fight between the Noah's Arc Circus and Phantomhive Servants in the Circus arc.
- Wrong Assumption: Chloe and Walter assume that the name Hop has a... delirious reaction to is Kabu, not Ash. Even Ash comes to that assumption. Only Alex seems to realize that it's Ash but only because Hop told him personally.
