Round two of Castle Whimsical is set in Ira Academy, a boarding school where children will learn to be upstanding members of society! Don't worry too much about how none of them remember how they got here...
This game provides examples of:
- All for Nothing: The third case involved Yuta discovering Valmont's nefarious intentions towards Dylan, ultimately killing Valmont and being executed himself. Victim of the fourth case? Dylan.
- Asshole Victim: Valmont was already perceived negatively in the school for such actions as treating Yasu like his servant and threatening to cook and eat a turtle. Then, he made the decision to threaten Dylan with a knife, widely assumed at first to be a murder attempt which Yuta interrupted. The document for the third case is quite literally named "will anyone blame Yuta tho".
- Axes at School: Axes distributed at school, even—multiple characters have weapons as regains.
- Boarding School of Horrors: Ira Academy. Even before the whole murder aspect, it's brainwashing the students.
- Bonding over Missing Parents: "Unspoken: How many of us have dead parents, exactly?"
- Do Well, But Not Perfect: The culprit of case one didn't want everyone to be executed, but making an effort to get away with murder was a condition of the motive. She admits she didn't really have a plan for threading this needle.
- Elevator School: The "students" range in age from 5 to 17.
- Entertainingly Wrong: After finding a note mentioning "Nigel Uno" from Round One, Emma assumes that he's Father's son instead of his nephew.
- Even Evil Can Be Loved: Sympathizing with the fourth culprit, Kuro shouts that "Dylan isn't the only person here with a friend!"
- Friendly Ghost: There's at least one. There might have been another, but she didn't make it out of her part in one of The Seven Mysteries.
- Hated by All: The Principal. On top of all the students hating him, even Kakuya hates him.
- High-School Dance: One is held at the end of week 0. It's rather ruined by the big murdergame reveal.
- Hive Mind: The "Little Brothers" are described this way.
- If You Kill Him, You Will Be Just Like Him!: Subverted - there was some pushback when it was first suggested that they kill the Principal, but it went out the window by the time of the second execution.
- I Have Your Wife: The second motive.
- Internal Reveal: The fourth motive, which threatens to reveal characters' secrets, involves several secrets that even the characters themselves didn't know at their current canon point.
- Ironic Echo Cut: Adorabat discovered the first body and immediately wished Dewey wouldn't find out. Cue the body announcement, which Dewey heard.
- Late To The Rescue: At the end, when the characters from round 1 arrive, some of them are planning to rescue the students from the murdergame, not realizing it's already over.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: None of the characters can remember what happened between their arrival and the intro log.
- Losing a Shoe in the Struggle: The most critical evidence in case four is a piece of white fabric caught in the latch of the library window.
- Make the Dog Testify: In Trial 5, the group gets Koishi's parrot, Toritorika, to take a look at everyone and see how she reacts, making them realize she's only reacting to human girls.
- Mass Hypnosis: The intro log wasn't the characters' arrival, but their sudden and then-unexplained recovery from being brainwashed.
- Monster Clown: One of these executes the culprit of case 1, in reference to Pierrot and the Akanbes.
- Morality Tropes:
- Black-and-Gray Morality: The main initial flow of the game between the Principal levying the motive and the culprits who neutralize his threats, though this can be flattened into Black-and-White Morality depending on who you ask.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: When Kakuya usurps the principal, she sincerely explains that she's doing something good and fun by freeing the children from the Principal's brainwashing and putting them into a killing game instead, where death is not exactly meaningful. This also applies to her devoted girlfriend Yasu, though she can at least understand human reasoning better.
- Non-Malicious Monster: In Week 5 it's revealed that several of the monsters attacking the students during the weekly mystery are actually just hungry, and have been forced to feed on fear instead of their usual diet.
- Nothing Is Scarier: Several days of week 0 have passed without the characters being informed that they are expected to commit murder, raising the question for the audience of how they will be informed. Eventually it happened at the dance.
- Not in Front of the Kid: Several people try not to swear in front of Adorabat, the youngest member of the group. Eventually, when tempers run high in Trial 4, multiple people start using the word "fuck" at each other, causing her to learn it and start using it casually during Week 5.
- Put Them All Out of My Misery: The culprit of case four is the first to aim for the mass execution outcome, having decided that a small chance of being able to resurrect everyone afterwards is better than continuing to endure.
- School Is Murder: Literally the premise.
- School Uniforms are the New Black: Characters end up spending a lot of time in uniform by necessity, since they start out with few other clothes to wear.
- Shoot the Dog: How the culprit of case 1 sees their murder: better for one person to die than for everyone to be subjected to monsters like Joker.
- Spelling Bee: One of these takes place on Saturday of week 0, just before the dance.
- The Seven Mysteries: One is revealed per week, along with a fragment of the setting's history. They even started with the classic "ghost in the music room"!
- Universal Translator: It even works on Emma's sign language, and Thomasin finds herself able to respond in kind.
- Unusual Euphemism: The "alternate capstone project" is the murdergame classic of getting away with murder.
- Villain Team-Up: For the first motive, the Principal threatens to bring in everyone's enemies. Although several of the characters think it would turn into Evil Versus Evil instead.
- Wham Line: "You even tried to murder my Prefect!"
, says the Principal, letting it slip that he isn't actually all-seeing and all-knowing. - X Meets Y: Cabin In The Woods meets Danganronpa.
