Trapped In A Dating Sim / Tropes 0 to F

Tropes for Trapped in a Dating Sim: The World of Otome Games is Tough for Mobs
Tropes Zero to F | Tropes G to O | Tropes P to Z

#-B

• 0% Approval Rating: Alzer Nobles, due to the fact that commoners are so helpless against them, due to tree Crest granted powers, and nobles like Pierre can Kick the Dog all they want without repercussions, as long as the victim isn't a noble.
• 100% Completion: What Leon's sister in the previous world forced him to get on her Otome Game. The reason being is the voice actors will call out the names of people who were able to achieve it.
• A-Cup Angst: In multiple of the side-stories taking place during the third volume, Marie angsts about her small chest, comparing herself to Olivia. What makes it especially frustrating, is that she was very curvy in her previous life.
• Absurdly Sharp Blade: The Black Knight's Lost Item blade, which is a Hungry Weapon that is made of Unobtanium and can cut open even the toughest airships.
• Abusive Parents: Leon in his past life was kicked out of his parents' house for having yaoi in his room, and they refused to listen when he tried to explain it was hidden there by his sister.
• Abusive Precursors: The New Mankind faction that destroyed Luxion's creators, the living remnants of whom seem to be Always Chaotic Evil. They (almost completed) their Final Solution via Atmosphere Abuse.
• The Ace:
  • Leon's past-life little sister appeared to be this, which Leon blames for his parents believing her over him when he's Mistaken for Gay. However, her life went completely downhill when her parents held her responsible for her brother's death and kicked her out too. Unlike Clarice, she never recovered.
  • Clarice was a model student, popular in school and revered by her subordinates, before becoming a Broken Ace. She gets her act together thanks to Leon's encouragement and returns to it.
  • Since Chris focuses on Leon's martial achievements, he sees Leon like this as a Worthy Opponent.
  • Julius, in an Inner Monologue, comes to think that Leon would be one, if he weren't Brilliant, but Lazy.
  • Dorothea Roseblade is this as a Proper Lady, especially after defrosting.
• Achilles' Heel: As powerful and Dreaded as the Black Knight is, his main weakness is Team Spirit. He focuses too much on one opponent, leaving him vulnerable to distractions, which is his downfall in any fight against the heroes.
• Action Dad: Leon's father Balcus, taught him rigorously how to sword fight, leads his airships, and suits up in a Mini-Mecha when summoned by the crown to fight.
• Adaptational Early Appearance:
  • Leon's (second life) younger sister Finley makes an appearance (with dialogue) in the manga adaptation long before she did in the novels, where she was The Voiceless for a while even after appearing.
  • Noelle Beltre is introduced in the first chapter of volume 4 of the light novels, whereas she appeared significantly later in the original web novel.
• Adaptational Villainy: The manga adaptation does this moderately to Marie compared to the Light Novels. Additional Inner Monologue lines are given to make her more of a Hate Sink, such as being excited to receive a slave. Some sympathy earning moments, such as her having to explain to the princes that she cannot afford a dress, are cut as well.
• Adaptation-Induced Plot Hole: The manga adaptation has Nicks sold off to a noble woman, which serves as a method for Leon learning about Zola's Forest Of Ladies. However, the light novels deal with Nicks being unable to find a wife, and him finally receiving a suitor is a major plot point in the eighth.
• Adorably Precocious Child: Kyle. This is partly justified due to elves being long lived. As well, Kyle wants to set himself apart from his bumbling mother.
• An Aesop: Not making children into Spoiled Brats is an omnipresent one.
• Affectionate Nickname: Angelica and Olivia go by Angie and Livia to those close to them, and Olivia is The Nicknamer. The Principality's Princesses Hertrude and Hertrauda, use shortened versions of their names for each other.
• Ain't Too Proud to Beg:
  • In the third volume: When Marie says Angie and Olivia must kowtow publicly before she'll help free Leon from his unjust imprisonment, thinking Angie would be too proud to do it, the two comply out of desperation and as an Act of True Love for him. This leaves Marie quaking in terror when she realizes the response Leon will have, and the five princes take up the task of freeing him in their own ways.
  • In the fourth volume, Pierre begs for Leon to stop his Extreme Mêlée Revenge at the end of their duel, resulting in Leon targeting his mouth to stop anyone from hearing his pleas.
  • Marie shows a general willingness to beg Leon. It comes from knowing how to get the most out of him from their past-life.
• Allegedly Free Game: The in-universe otome game the main character's sister saddled him to play is almost impossible to complete unless you shell out money to pay for premium items.
• All Just a Dream: Invoked Trope in the title of a side story, where Leon meets Distaff Counterpart to himself and Luxion, the former of whom Livia and Angie are smitten by. Leon just had his sleep medication drugged by Cleare.
• All There in the Manual: The Marie Route SS spinoff expands upon the lore and history of the first game's setting.
• Alpha Strike: In the third volume, The Principality focus all of their firepower on Partner during their Capital Offensive. Leon knew how much stronger Partner was than other ships, and planned on this, but both it and the Royal Airship it was protecting end up falling, albeit after serving their purpose.
• Altar Diplomacy: Angelica was betrothed to the Kingdom's Crown Prince Julius from birth, to form a solid support base for his succession and rule. Ending that engagement creates a power vacuum, filled by Duke Redgrave's rival, Marquess Frampton.
  • In Volume 3: After the Principality of Fanoss loses its second invasion of the Kingdom, Princess Hertrude Fanoss is set to marry Julius as part of the peace treaty, to help the citizens of the separatist Duchy accept annexation. Naturally, Julius gets it cancelled by pretending to attack her. Hertrude then proposes to Leon as an alternative, only to be rejected.
• Always Someone Better:
  • Marie is envious of Olivia having more talent at magic than her.
  • Serge sees Leon like this, more successful and more accepted by the Rault Household Serge was adopted into than himself.
  • Jenna sees Dorothea like this, her seeming perfect and being adored by everyone while she herself is dissatisfied and is regularly criticized.
• Ambiguous Situation: A couple of Angelica's followers who plant a Principality tracking device in her room, are talked about by Angie and her brother Gilbert. Gilbert gives a Psychotic Smirk while asking if Angie wants to know their fate, but she's not interested.
• Amplifier Artifact:
  • Leon obsessively tries to collect a bunch of these at the game's vacation event, trying and failing to buy all of the hand-made charms to pick the best of them. He, Olivia, Angelica, and Chris each end up with ones that boost their potential anyway, glowing when activated.
  • Luxion can use his drone that follows Leon around to help him manage his magical power somewhat, as shown when he first fights the Principality.
  • One of these activated by The Power of Love is how the game's protagonist was supposed to defeat the first game's Final Boss. It's noted that its power would make the wielder subject to assassination attempts if publicly known, and the Royal Family have been keeping it hidden as a trump card since the kingdom's founding. The first saintess used it for Mass Hypnosis to unify the kingdom, resulting in her being worshipped. Olivia and Angelica use it to mostly win the Final Battle, destroying both of the third game's Optional Boss that were part of the enemy fleet. The Black Knight is immune due to his Bio-Armor and killed by Leon, and the Final Boss is talked to death by Marie.
• Anachronism Stew: The setting is all over the place. The political system is essentially feudalism, with nobles having full leave to abuse commoners and lower-ranking nobles, and slavery of demi-humans is legal and prevalent. Life standards seem to be in line with 20th-21st century, with luxuries for the nobles but not a lot of consumer goods or electronics. But there are also flying ships (necessary due to the world consisting of floating islands) and jet bikes, as well as powered armor. And people can use magic, swords and rifles are equally standard choices for combat, and there are dungeons with respawning monsters and treasure that allow for "adventurer" to be a legitimate profession. This is partially justified by the setting being an otome game converted from a more straight-forward RPG game and designed specifically to appeal to female gamers.
• And Now You Must Marry Me: After many failed attempts at threats and persuasion, Loic finally forces Noelle to agree to this by using his own Household's soldiers as hostages. Much Domestic Abuse ensues, until Noelle is forcibly rescued by Leon.
• And the Adventure Continues: After the events of the first game, Leon just wants to settle down and retire... and then he learns that there were sequels made after he died in Japan, with another world-ending Final Boss that's still alive in the Alzer Republic.
• And There Was Much Rejoicing: The common folk's reaction to the No-Holds-Barred Beatdown of Pierre, who had been living above the law until that point.
• And Your Little Dog, Too!: Shows up a lot.
  • Jilk, created as a Beware the Quiet Ones cliché, will do this when pushed far enough. During his duel with Leon, first, he does this to threaten Leon's sister Jenna into planting a bomb on his mech. And then, he tells Leon that he'll kill his family if he doesn't surrender. The latter instance backfires badly, when his voice is recorded and used to blackmail him.
  • Earl Offrey's daughter, while bullying Olivia, threatens her family to get her to join Leon's expedition to fight Sky Pirates in her Uriah Gambit. She also coerced Carla this way to have her bait Leon into said expedition.
  • Pierre, who will happily Kick the Dog at the slightest excuse, has his dirty merchant associate kidnap Carla and Noelle (the dog), to use as a hostage to force Leon to accept defeat when dueling him. As soon as Leon finds this out, he has Luxion give Marie a tommygun, and she and the princes rescue them while Leon delays the duel.
• Anger Montage:
  • Serge destroys his room in his father's manor in anger at being overshadowed within his family by a stranger.
  • Marie trashing her room screaming about how the five idiot's antics must be past-life karma.
• Angrish: Luxion lets out a digital equivalent whenever he's involved with, or even just discussing, remnants of the Old Mankind civilization that killed his creators.
• Anti-Magic: Alzer nobles each have Sacred Tree Crests, letting their user nullify a target's (non-tree related) magic, via summoned roots from the ground that restrain the target.
• Appearance Angst: Olivia suffers from his as part of her low self-esteem, comparing herself to Angelica.
• Applied Phlebotinum: The reason the series can have Mini-Mecha, Cool Airship, and be a World in the Sky, is because of "Float stone". This is of course, a strategic resource.
• Arc Words: Luxion tells Leon when they first meet, that being called a coward is the greatest compliment one can receive on the battlefield. Leon thinks and brings this up multiple times to justify his gambits.
• Aren't You Going to Ravish Me?: Non-sexual example, Leon is disappointed that the dateable cast are being scolded by Mylene but not him.
  • This is Played for Drama with Dorothea Roseblade, who was quite happy to have Nicks tell her to wear a Slave Collar and be his pet, while he was actually just trying to scare her away, and she was devastated to find out the truth.
• Armor-Piercing Question: There is a recurring one of these: Confronting aggressive Unrequited Love with the question of 'What is my favorite thing?', to demonstrate that they're Loving a Shadow.
• Artificial Human: Elves, as it turns out, were created in a laboratory ran by the old humans.
• Artificial Intelligence: Leon befriends one named Luxion, who is a sapient Cool Space Ship that follows Leon around with a Surveillance Drone, hiding his ship's existence. Leon also later discovers a feminine blue A.I. named Cleare, within elven territory that oversaw biological experiments which lead to the creation of said elves.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership:
  • When Holfort Kingdom was first founded by adventurers, the most successful group, Holfort, Marmoria, Arclight, Field, and Seburg, were installed as the five most powerful noble families, with the rest of the adventurers that cleared the continent of monsters making up the lower nobility. Thus, the culture of the kingdom venerates adventurers and expects each of their children to clear a dungeon.
  • Leon's promotions amount to this and/or a Bribe Backfire.
• Astral Projection: Olivia's eventual expertise in magic allows her to take people into the Spirit World like this. It has a side-effect of allowing one to see other's memories and feelings.
• Atmosphere Abuse: This is part of the world's backstory, that the atmosphere was flooded with magical particles as part of a war, that Old Mankind couldn't breathe but their enemies could. Various science experiments took place to help them survive, including the creation of demi-humans (which were meant to be soldiers but outlived that role), the creation of Luxion to escape the planet, and the creation of the World Tree of Alzer to Terraform the planet to a more hospitable state by consuming the particles from the air much like normal trees do Carbon Dioxide.
• Attack Drone: Often deployed on Leon's Mini-Mecha Arroganz. Brad's mech was equipped with a magical equivalent.
• Audio Play: The series received one as a result of winning a poll, a Holiday Special where Leon asks around for what to give as gifts. It mostly consists of Fanservice (albeit equal opportunity fanservice). It seems to take place near the beginning of the sixth volume.
• Aura Vision: Elves and Half-Elves, can see an individual's magical capabilities, and it's also how they judge beauty. This leads to Kyle's mother Yumeria being shunned due to her odd magical talent.
• Author Appeal:
  • In contrast to much of Japan's geek media, this author really hates little sister type characters, and that shows here. It gives the impression that he has a real one, and vents about her through his fiction.
  • The physical description of Leon's type is how the author designs most of his protagonist's admirers in other series as well, with the addition of Everybody Loves Blondes.
  • It's become abundantly clear that he thinks Girl on Girl Is Hot and loves putting hints of it.
• Author's Saving Throw: In-Universe, the titular otome game was accused of being unbeatable without paying extra for cheat items. In response, the developers lowered the price within a month of its release and made the sequels easier to complete.
• Aw Look They Really Do Love Eachother: The manga adaptation shows Leon's older sister Jenna terrified of Leon's fate during his duel with Jilk despite the two's harsh interactions.
  • The Drama CD serves as this for Leon and Marie. Leon gets very upset with Jilk implying he would cheat on Marie, and gives her the gift she wants, all despite his supposed hatred of her.
• Badass Biker: This is a theme for Jilk and his ex-fiancée Clarice, who has several followers who are this, and attack Jilk during a race until he's incapacitated on her behalf. Clarice and her followers turn out to be good people, and they help evacuate civilians from a conflict zone.
• Badass Boast: Leon declaring that he'll take on the Black Knight and his elite squadron with the Arroganz's bare hands.
• Badass Bystander: The academy students, who go through dungeons as part of their education, can put up a surprisingly good fight against invaders when properly motivated, as seen when the Principality takes their luxury liner hostage.
• Bait-and-Switch: The first novel makes it sound like Leon was eagerly anticipating peeping on Angelica and Olivia while they bathed in his hot spring, but he's actually about to eat Japanese food for the first time in a decade.
• Battle Discretion Shot: The seventh volume does this partially for the arc Final Battle.
• The Battlestar: Pretty much every military airship in the franchise qualifies as one, if you count Mini-Mecha as strike craft. That would make Luxion and his created airships Drone Deployer versions.
• Beach Episode: Chapter 13 of Volume 11 has the cast visiting a lake in Leon's family property. Leon even had Luxon prepare bikinis for his fiancées.
• Beam Spam:
  • The flying whale monster Princess Hertrude uses as her flagship shoots these, out of its Extra Eyes. From its mouth.
  • When Luxion unleashes his main body's firepower, it often takes the form of this.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Averted surprisingly often.
• Becoming the Mask: When Leon tries to act, he tends to fall into this. He feigns interest in tea ceremonies, and then becomes obsessed with them. He feigns interest to the Queen to tease her, then finds himself genuinely interested.
• Befriending the Bullied: After Leon sees a bunch of noble girls bully the commoner Olivia, Leon steps up and offer a helping hand and a friendly face, becoming her first actual friend at the academy that was previously only open to the aristocracy.
• Berserk Button: Anytime Luxion sees or hears about Living Weapon Ancient Artifact left over from the New Humans who killed his creators, it leads to some combination of ranting, Angrish, and attacks from his main body.
• Beta Couple: Nicks and Dorothea Roseblade.
• Betrayal by Inaction: Leon's allies in the Alzer Republic do this on his mission to rescue Louise from becoming a Human Sacrifice, with Narcisse, Emile, and House Rault holding their troops back from his incursion.
• BFS: Black Knight Vandel's standard weapon, is a Fantasy Metal sword that's so big, it requires two hands to use in a Mini-Mecha, and is powerful enough to cut through airships.
• Big Brother Instinct: A big reason Leon didn't just cut and run when he was being sold off into Zola's Uriah Gambit, was because his little brother Colin would have been sold in his place if he had.
  • Despite his grudge against her, Leon gets very angry at Jilk for implying that he would cheat on Marie.
  • Leon also protects his little sister Finley from being bullied by male nobles, a situation made possible due to Holfort's Full-Circle Revolution.
• Big Brother Worship: Leon's little brother Collin really looks up to him
  • Marie feels this way about Leon after remembering the time he carried her home on his shoulders as a kid in their past-life, and wanting to return to how she was spoiled by him back then.
  • In the seventh volume, Loic colors his courtship of Marie like Big Sister Worship, calling her neesan. This offends the five idiots even more, but Marie (and Leon) find it endearing.
• Big Damn Heroes: A big enough staple of the series to make a drinking game. If you want to live particularly dangerously, drink twice if it involves a Damsel in Distress.
• Bigger Stick: Lelia ends up seeing Luxion as an equal threat to Alzer as the second game's Final Boss. So she resorts to recruiting Serge Sara Rault, one of the game's love interests and one of the few adventurers of Alzer, to locate the second game's equivalent to Luxion.
• Big Good: Invoked Trope, Leon gives a huge pile of money to Angelica's father Vince Redgrave, one of the most powerful and feared aristocrats in the Kingdom, to cover for him politically. Vince's good impression of, and willingness to gamble on Leon's success, and Leon taking huge risks to prove his loyalty to Vince, is one of the key drivers of the plot.
  • Louise' father Albergue plays a similar role in Alzer, despite supposedly being the second Otome game's Final Boss. Instead of being impressed and paid, he's instead biased in favor of Leon, due to Leon's astounding similarity to Albergue's dead son.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: According to Deirdre, this is the norm for noble families and notes that Leon and his family are unusually close, even considering his Sibling Rivalry with his sisters.
• Bisexual Love Triangle: The Alzer Republic arc confirms that Livia and Ange don't just love Leon, but are also romantically and sexually interested in each other. This was more or less clear when they used the royal family's ship that runs on The Power of Love, but the next arc has one character realize that if Leon didn't exist they would probably just be in a relationship with each other and there's a fade to black scene where it's implied they're about to have sex.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing:
  • Leon originally thought Olivia was one of these when he played the game, only to be proven wrong when he finally met her. In fact, the main example, Marie, is basically impersonating Olivia's personality, to charm and wrap the five dateable cast around her little finger, while her Inner Monologue show her true colors. Eventually, Marie develops and drops the façade during a Heroic BSoD, due to nearly being burned at the stake for being a fake saint, but her grip on the five's hearts is too tight for them to mind. She also Took a Level in Kindness after reconciling with Leon.
  • Carla Fou Wayne, tries very hard to seem appealing, flattering and pretending to be a Damsel in Distress while attempting to manipulate Leon. However, Carla just can't pass up any opportunity to mistreat Olivia, and bullies her severely when he's not around, even trying to pass the blame onto Olivia when she's exposed as The Mole.
• "Blackmail" Is Such an Ugly Word: Invoked Trope. Leon prefers to call it The Power of Friendship! He offers his fellow poor noblemen free state-of-the-art airships, using the excuse of promoting his factory. Then he promises to cut them off from repairs and maintenance if they don't fight under his command, since they can't get them anywhere else due to the technology on the ships.
• Blasting It Out of Their Hands: Jilk does this to Pierre's crooked merchant associate when he tries threaten his hostage Carla, after his goons are taken out.
• Blood from the Mouth: Repeatedly used to show a character has gotten Power at a Price.
  • The Black Knight gets this from using Bio-Armor that's gradually killing him.
  • Subverted during the fight between Leon and Serge, when he coughs up blood after receiving a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown. It's later revealed Leon was using fake blood and wasn't actually in danger.
  • Leon gets this and other side-effects from using Bottled Heroic Resolve, since unlike in a videogame, there's no such thing as a drug without downsides.
• Blue Blood: The vast majority of characters in the franchise count as this, with the noble ranks being based on England, both being the norm for Otome Isekai. Tracking character's peerage rank compared to one another is a major element in the first three volumes, since Leon is compelled into marriage hunting, and nobles cannot marry someone too different in status, what Leon calls his "strike zone". This is part of the reason he's annoyed by the repeated Rank Ups for his various exploits in the series, since in theory they would mean he'd have to seek a higher-status (and therefore of greater jerkassery) bride to keep up appearances, instead of getting hitched to an ordinary girl he could get along with (this is mooted when Angie and Livia fall for him).
• Bluff the Impostor: In the sixth volume. Angelica breaks Louise free of the illusion of her little brother's ghost that's being used to manipulate her, by asking it if he played with Noelle as kids, when the two had never met.
• Bottled Heroic Resolve: Used by Serge in the Alzer Republic. Leon and Luxion debate about the merits of using such drugs; in the game, they had no drawbacks, but Luxion notes that in the real world all drugs have drawbacks. Serge overdosing leaves his body in a sorry state with Tainted Veins and bloodshot eyes. Luxion agrees to make a cocktail custom tailored to Leon's body to minimize the damage, before the two agree that even that is too risky after using it. It granted speed and Super-Senses.
• Bowdlerise: The anime makes no explicit mention of Exclusive Servants being used as sex slaves.
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: Happens when Leon compares his older sister Jenna to Louise, trying to describe how Louise treats him better, but getting sidetracked talking about her breasts. Before Digging Himself Deeper.
• Breakout Character: The author held a poll to determine which character to write a What If? side story about, and much to the author's surprise, Marie won overwhelmingly. Thus, Marie became Deuteragonist of Marie Route.
• Break the Cutie:
  • Following some cutting words delivered by Earl Offrey's brat, Olivia suffers acute self-doubt and personal insecurity regarding her ability to stand with Leon and Angie through volume 2.
  • Subverted with Colin in the eighth. Considering his age, he handles his Love Hurts circumstances remarkably well.
• Break the Haughty: This happens to so many characters, it'd be easier to name the ones it doesn't apply to. Sometimes happens on a societal scale, such as the noble women of Holfort Kingdom losing their superiority, and the great Houses of Alzer losing their sacred crests en masse.
• Break Them by Talking: Leon does this constantly to his opponents, often punctuating duels with it. Suffice it to say, there's good reason Leon's been a Hero with Bad Publicity.
• Breather Episode: The eighth light novel volume is essentially a Slice of Life break before the Story Arc centered on the third dating sim game begins. It's also an Dénouement Episode, as it features Leon planting the Sacred Tree sapling in his territory.. It is also justified as Leon is forced by Luxion, Ange and Olivia to rest in the Bartfort Territory as as his battles and kills is taking a toll on him mentally.
• Bribe Backfire: One of Leon's principal means of effecting political outcomes, is sending out huge piles of cash to influential families, which in turn, leads to him being promoted, which he absolutely hates.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory: How Leon beat the otome game in his past life, by buying cheat items, Luxion in particular. Pay to win items were still a thing in the game's sequel.
• Brilliant, but Lazy:
  • This trait is In the Blood of the Bartfort noble household, best exemplified by Leon, but also applying to Balcus, Nicks, and even Jenna. It's not wise to back them into a corner.
  • King Roland shows signs of being this as part of his Hidden Depths, impressing Leon with the extent he'll go to get petty revenge on him.
• Brutal Honesty: These are key traits of Kyle and Noelle. Kyle only shows it after he stops putting on a servant facade after coming to trust Marie, generally acting as an Only Sane Man among her group. Noelle tends to insult nobles to their faces which constantly gets her into trouble. Neither of them shy away from telling Leon his moral shortcomings.
  • Leon's second-life sisters also have this, when trying to advise their brothers with their The Cynic mindset.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: The daughters of House Roseblade, are heavily BDSM themed. They also make extremely talented and helpful political allies.
• Burn the Witch!: After Marie fails to stop the principality's second invasion with Frampton's fleet, she admits to not being the real saint. Since neither Leon nor the capture targets are with her, the temple nearly burn her at the stake. The Palace rescues her at Leon's behest, but she's having a Heroic BSoD.
• The Bus Came Back: After meeting with an uncertain fate, Zola, her children, and the Forest Of Ladies show up in Volume 9. At which point, their fate becomes no longer uncertain.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: Ideal thinks that Leon and Luxion's fierce arguments mean he can turn Luxion against Leon. Since the two are Vitriolic Best Buds, Luxion basically tells Ideal this after he fakes switching to his side.
• Butt-Monkey: Brad due to being a Leeroy Jenkins, King Roland as The Chew Toy, Leon's brother Nicks because he Can't Catch Up, and Emile due to being an Extreme Doormat.
• By "No", I Mean "Yes":
  • Leon starts his prayer at the marriage shrine by saying that he won't ask for more than the bare minimum he needs from a wife, but then his wish gets more and more lavish until Angie and Livia finally have enough and drag him out.
  • During the Drama CD, Marie at first says that she wanted more modest holiday gifts from the dateable cast, before excitedly realizing that she's surrounded and being pampered by half-naked hot guys.

C-D

• Call-Back: Livia gives a number of these in the eighth volume. Teasing Noelle about the Slave Collar she shared with Leon, confirming that she enjoyed it, reminiscing about being too excited to sleep before Leon's early tea parties, and humiliates him by bringing up the cheesy things he said about Angie during their school trip.
• Calling Your Attacks: The Arroganz' IMPACT Power Fist strike.
• Call That a Formation?: Holfort Kingdom's airship fleets are a hodge-podge with different training regimen and readiness, resulting in them often scraping into one another during Epic Ship-on-Ship Action.
• Canon Foreigner: Louise Sara Rault, Noelle's rival in the Alzer Republic arc, is original to the Light Novels: she never appeared in the original web novel.
• Canon Immigrant: Dorothea Roseblade was a character realized in the Marie Route spinoff timeline, later to be introduced as part of a similar plot in the main continuity.
• Can't Catch Up: Played for Drama. Leon and Angelica take up the task of protecting the Otome game's Wide-Eyed Idealist protagonist Olivia, after Marie steals her original love interests by impersonating what she'd do in the game scenes. Since Olivia is a commoner in an academy of Royal Brat nobles, and associated with the most hated person there (Leon), she gets bullied quite a lot, being told that her friends only see her as a pet and that she's useless. Olivia takes it to heart, leading to a lot of Angst, and Heroic Self-Deprecation all around.
  • Also dramatized with Nicks Successful Sibling Syndrome, comparing himself to Leon.
• Cast from Lifespan: The Ancient Artifact Hertrude tricks Frampton into sending to the Principality, is an Evil Weapon Bio-Armor, that sucks the user's life out of them, in exchange for Super-Strength, Extra Eyes that can shoot a Magic Missile Storm, and more.
  • The Summoning Flutes used by the Principality, can summon and control regular monsters freely. However, using them to summon the Final Boss, consumes the user's life, if they aren't interrupted in the middle.
• Casual Kink: In the fifth volume, after Leon steals the Slave Collar Loic put on Noelle and equips the master part himself, Noelle and him casually flirt using it, before his fiancés walk in on them. Noelle later gets confronted by Livia saying she enjoyed it, causing Noelle's whole face to turn red.
• Cat Fight: Subverted. It's noted by observers when Marie and Lelia get into a hair pulling girl fight, it's actually quite ugly.
• Central Theme: The series has a few:
  • Karma. Both in the Laser-Guided Karma sense of villains getting punished, but also having Leon and Marie constantly punished for selfishness, and rewarded for selflessness.
  • The franchise explores the effects of children being spoiled quite a lot, accompanied by related issues such as Parental Favoritism, sibling-complexes, and Sibling Rivalry. Just about every variety of spoiled and sheltered personality imaginable is present, and the consequences explored.
• The Chains of Commanding: This is a recurring element of the franchise. Leon notes that unlike a videogame protagonist, as nobles, people like him and most of the other characters have to work to uphold their social status constantly. Escaping from this is a main part of Julius' character as a Rebel Prince.
• Chameleon Camouflage: How Luxion is able to be in so many scenes without anyone besides Leon noticing him. It's only by the middle of the second volume that anyone besides Leon speaks to him.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Some of the third game capture targets are introduced like this, several volumes before that Story Arc begins. They're: Julius' roguish little brother Marie tells Leon about, and the delinquent formerly male commoner named Aaron.
• Chekhov's Skill:
  • Luxion shows he is able to adjust his sphere's trajectory mid-air when Leon throws it at Loic, since it would have missed otherwise. Later, Luxion does the same thing when Leon is dueling Pierre who's wielding the stolen Arroganz, diverting Pierre's attacks away from an unarmored Leon.
  • Kyle's mother Yumeria has a rare talent for manipulating and growing plants magically. Later, this lets her speak to the sacred tree sapling. And once again, after Ideal makes her Brainwashed and Crazy, she uses her magic to strip all of Alzer's nobles of their Power Tattoo, and give them to Serge's rebel army.
• The Chew Toy: King Roland Holfort's Glory Seeker and Lazy Bum desires constantly being crushed serves to make him this.
• Childhood Friends: Subverted Trope. Angie had friends from childhood come to the Academy with her as followers, which didn't keep them from abandoning her when she challenged Marie. A small sidestory also shows her female followers kept her from visiting food stands and other activities, furthering the gap between her and Julius. Some of these female childhood friends try to frame her as being a Principality spy. Vince and Gilbert seem to have something brutal in mind for them, after they were caught and exposed by Leon.
• The Chosen One:
  • In the otome game, Olivia was a commoner who would be discovered to be a saint during the game's plot, which is why she would be able to marry beyond her station. As part of her hijacking Olivia's role, Marie claimed the Saintess position as well. However, because she left the difficult parts of the game to her brother, Marie didn't realize how important that Olivia had to be the Saint in the Final Boss battle, meaning that had Leon not intervened there would have been a Bad Ending.
  • Noelle is the one with the aptitude to be a priestess, and therefore the protagonist, of the second game.
  • Leon himself gets chosen by the sacred tree's sapling as its Guardian, with Noelle as its priestess.
• Cincinnatus: Invoked Trope. In order to defeat the Principality and its multiple Final Boss, Leon convinces the Queen to grant him the role of Supreme Commander, which he later happily gives up. Leon actually specifically arranges to be further demoted, and retire to the countryside, but since he unknowingly gained the hatred of the King for upstaging him, he winds up Kicked Upstairs instead.
• Citadel City: The capital of the Roseblade Household's domain is an elegant stone city like this, ruled from their castle.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Subverted Trope with Angelica. Prince Julius, is simultaneously running away from all his duties and responsibilities as heir, and essentially cheating on her with a woman who has four other boyfriends. From Leon's point of view, Angelica is the victim, not Marie.
  • Subverted yet again later, when Angelica actually tells Leon to get engaged to Noelle instead of herself, for the strategic interests of their country.
• Close-Range Combatant: Chris has the Crippling Overspecialization of only using a sword to fight, which was an issue in the game that Leon complains about, and takes advantage of during his duel by shooting at him with drones.
• Clothing-Concealed Injury: Marie is able to recognize that Noelle has been covered in wounds by Loic, at their engagement ceremony. It is later covered up at their wedding as well.
• Cock Fight: Serge and Emile come to blows over their Love Triangle with Lelia.
• Cold-Blooded Torture:
  • In volume 4, Marie does this to a merchant working for Pierre, using a chipped knife, to get useful information to give Leon, because Marie is absolutely terrified that she'd angered Leon too much.
  • It's strongly suggested by Deirdre, that after Pierre's defeat, his older brother, the heir he was trying to usurp, is keeping Pierre in a secret location to torture him.
• Combat Tentacles: Common, in two forms. Monsters and other Organic Technology remnants of New Mankind's Precursors use these. As well, the World Tree of Alzer and those empowered by it to have Green Thumb magic for a root-based version.
• Combining Mecha: When Luxion realizes Leon needs help against the Ancient Artifact empowered Black Knight, he reforges Leon's Cool Bike Schwert to combine with, and power up Arroganz.
• Commonality Connection:
  • Angelica is cold and at first disgusted by Olivia being a commoner, before bonding over being a fan of Leon's celebrity as an adventurer.
  • Serge and Lelia each feel alienation from their families, and it strengthens their connection.
• The Conspiracy: Multiple:
  • Luxion wonders aloud, why female nobles have the upper hand seeking marriage, when the number of men are fewer, due to war casualties. The reason for women's special treatment: Generations ago, the Royal Family ran into a problem: The lower ranked nobles could easily and cheaply build fleets of warships to rebel. The favorable laws for women, served the dual purposes of reducing the wealth of those nobles, and concentrating the wealth in the capitol. The higher ranking nobles caught onto it, and it's why women above the Earl rank aren't allowed Exclusive Servants. Thus, Angelica has been aware of this conspiracy. The end goal, is to centralize the country into an Absolute Monarchy, replacing nobles with commoner bureaucrats.
  • After our protagonists first defeat the Principality of Fanoss, Marquess Frampton, and his faction, who are competing with House Redgrave, and have been empowered by the cancelling of Julius' engagement with Angelica, collude with the Principality. Frampton arranges for Princess Hertrude to be an Exchange Student as a front, sends a powerful Organic Technology Ancient Artifact to the Principality, and Frame-Up Leon in order to try to steal Partner and Arroganz.
  • The reason the Principality of Fanoss is so hostile to the Kingdom, is due to bloodthirsty nobles known as the war party, rewriting their history books to cover up their past brutal plundering of Kingdom territory, and making their citizens think they're the victim. They had Hertrude and her sister's parents assassinated, because they were anti-war, and manipulated the two princess as puppets. The Black Knight was in on the conspiracy, despite his Villainous Friendship with the princesses, due to his desire to avenge his family, slaughtered in a previous conflict, no matter what.
• Contrasting Sequel Main Character: In-Universe, the second game's protagonist was one of these, serving as a contrast after Olivia was widely hated by players for being manipulative. Why players, including Leon at first, felt that way, is explained in the Marie Route.
• Control Freak: In Alzer, capture target Loic constantly telling Noelle what she ought to like and do, is what crushed any chances of her reciprocating his feelings. Not realizing this, Loic turned into a Stalker with a Crush Crazy Jealous Guy. He later has a Heel Realization after Noelle explains this to him in a "The Reason You Suck" Speech, eventually culminating in his Heel–Face Turn.
• Cool Bike: Schwert, an air-bike gifted to Leon by Clarice, for using a favor to get Jilk to apologize to her. Luxion modifies it immediately, in ways that disturb Leon. Later, Schwert is "reborn" inside of Luxion's factories, to form a Combining Mecha with Arroganz.
• Cooldown Hug: Leon gives one of these to Louise when she rages at Lelia, before proceeding to go into a Motive Rant about her hatred towards her.
• Cool Teacher:
  • Leon's tea ceremony sensei, Master, who acts as his Mentor Archetype.
  • One of the manga adaptation extras has Leon, Daniel and Raymond admiring an Action Girl female teacher whose passion is adventuring.
  • One of the second game capture targets is Narcisse, an Adventurer Archaeologist. He becomes one of Leon's allies in that nation, being probably the most responsible and reasonable of the capture targets.
• Courtly Love: Depending on ones interpretation, it's arguable that this is the relationship between Leon and Queen Mylene. Considering that, Mylene is in a mutually Unwanted Spouse marriage, and on Leon's part, he actually has his fiancée personally deliver risqué letters to her.
• Crapsaccharine World: Part of the basic premise, is that behind the glimpse that the game players would see, there is a great deal of inequality and misery in the world. There are Feudal Overlord nobles abusing their power, wars where men die as Cannon Fodder, and society has warped moral values. But at least there are plenty of places to go on dates in the capital!
  • The Alzer Republic is rich in resources, more technologically advanced, and unlike Holfort, doesn't have blatant gender inequality and allows commoners and nobles to attend classes together. However, its nobility and military are scornful towards outsiders and have even less regard for the lower class because they hold absolute power over them.
• Crossing the Burnt Bridge: Leon was planning for his humiliation of the prince and his entourage to result in him being expelled from the academy, which he wanted all along, so he didn't mind practically financially ruining all the other students who bet on him to lose. However, the way he explains his actions to Angelia's family ends of causing them to see that Leon is rewarded for his actions instead, leading to Leon going up a noble rank, meaning Leon still has to attend the academy, now full of students who are rather unhappy with him.
• Cruel to Be Kind: Played With. It turns out that Noelle's bad treatment by Louise, was in part an excuse to keep her safe, at the request of Louise's father, who saw Noelle and Lelia as innocent of their parent's sins. However, after Noelle delves into Louse's mind in the Spirit World, it's revealed that Louise had in fact been jealous of Noelle, because of her little brother Leon having been excited about his engagement with her.
• Crusading Widow: The Dreaded Black Knight Vandel Him Zenden. His wife and child were killed by Holfort troops in front of his eyes, and has been determined to get revenge at any cost. To the point of laughing like a maniac at the prospect of making Leon's father watch as his sons die. As well as conspiring to kill his King and Queen, the Princesses' parents, because they were against war with the kingdom.
• Culture Clash:
  • Leon and Princess Hertrude both agree that Holfort Kingdom being Lady Land is repulsive, to the shock of witnesses nearby fearing Leon might defect. The Royal Family's Government Conspiracy that made it that way, was partly a reaction to the Fanoss' duchy splitting off, so it doesn't effect them. On Leon's part, dealing with it leaves him with a Trauma Button when visiting the more normal Alzer Republic, which they struggle to understand.
  • Noelle from Alzer goes through one, when it comes to Holfort's casual Polygamy. To start off she's uncomfortable and implied to have accidentally walked in on Marie with the princes. Later, Noelle feels guilty for for falling in love with Leon when he has two fiancée, and struggles to understand how the two could accept and help her.
  • The eighth volume deals with the differences in culture and methods between Low Nobles and High Nobles in the Kingdom.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: The Mini-Mecha duel between Leon and Marie's Reverse Harem easily ends in Leon's favor, due Leon's armor Arroganz being a cheat item.
  • In the fourth volume, Luxion's Roaring Rampage of Revenge for his creation Einhorn being stolen and trashed, via False Flag Attack rampage through the Alzer fleet and Feivel territory. The ships guns outrange theirs, and he rams through their flagship.
• Cute Little Fangs: In the manga only, most of Leon's family members share this trait. This includes Marie.
• Cuteness Proximity: When people besides Leon eventually see Luxion's drone that follows him around, they tend to react like this.
• The Cycle of Empires: Holfort Kingdom is in the Decline stage. It already had a Duchy break away from it, and to discourage further seperatism and stem the decline, encouraged hedonistic consumption centered in their capitol where it would be easily taxed. Their plans in this regard backfire spectacularly; up and coming nobles are spoiled rotten with mostly no idea how the world works or how to lead, and the men who do the fighting are so unappreciated and abused that they'd often rather save their own skins.
• Cycle of Revenge: Leon gets into one with the majority of the student body of the Academy, starting with his Zero-Approval Gambit to get expelled that backfired. Leon takes sadistic pleasure in seeing people who hate him suffer, so he wastes no opportunity to gamble against them and berate them, while the students in many cases outright assault him, at least the ones who don't fear the ruthless Duke Redgrave's retribution. There is no telling how bad this would have gotten without his alliance with the Redgraves protecting him.
• Dare to Be Badass: Leon's speech to the Academy students when their luxury liner gets taken hostage by the Principality.
• A Day in the Limelight: The eighth volume serves as this for Nicks to the point of being an Ascended Extra, and to a lesser extent, the entire Bartfort family, as well as Clarice and Deirdre.
• Dead Person Conversation: In Volume 6, The spirit of Leon Rault, visits Louise and Leon in their dreams, after they defeat an entity that had impersonated him, to provide comfort to Louise, and help Leon earn her trust.
• Deal with the Devil: This is what heirs of Barons and Viscounts have to do generally in the Kingdom, being forced to either languish as Cannon Fodder, or marry a Royal Brat as an official wife, who is likely to have at least one lover, and drain his accounts to pay for their lavish lifestyle in Royal Capitol. Leon's father and Zola being the main example of this arrangement we see.
• Death Glare:
  • Angelica gives a lot of these.
  • When Leon gives one to Princess Hertrude, she misreads it as lust, which causes her mild humiliation.
  • Since servants and retainers can't get away with speaking out, due to the difference in status, they tend to do this when the person they serve is being disrespected in some way.
  • The rivalry between Clarice and Deirdre brings out a lot of these between them.
• Death Seeker: In Alzer, Loic becomes one after his Heel Realization, given to him by Noelle's "The Reason You Suck" Speech, after he was bested by Leon. Marie intervenes before Loic can go through with Suicide by Cop, talking him out of it with a beat-down and Do Not Go Gentle speech, starting his Heel–Face Turn.
• Decon-Recon Switch: The five dateable cast are a general Deconstruction of Otome Game capture targets morals, as well as The Champion trope of honorable knights romantically serving one person. Love Ruins the Realm, Love Makes You Dumb, they believe in Honor Before Reason, and were raised Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense. But, despite all of those issues, after getting at least one Break the Haughty moment each, the five are ultimately badass heroes who help save the day multiple times.
• Deconstruction: Many.
  • The Disposable Fiancé is deconstructed, as it typically is in the Otome Isekai genre, in this case, with Angelica and Clarice. Leon himself points out that both women are only thought of as villainous (or villainess, ha) characters because they provide opposition for the intial protagonist.
  • The five dateable cast deconstruct of The Champion trope of noble men going against anyone and anything to serve their Love Interest. They are pampered nobles so can't properly take care of themselves, they ruin the kingdom politically by breaking their engagements and getting disowned, always follow Honor Before Reason, their inferiority complexes get in the way of them properly fighting, and they care more about proving their feelings than actually listening to said girl.
  • Olivia has quasi-divine lineage in the Kingdom in order for her to have been an In-Universe example of a Suddenly Suitable Suitor in the game. But, Olivia's secret status being revealed would actually make her less suitable for Leon, due to it having been for the five princes, who are much higher in status than a minor noble like Leon, and he keeps it a secret, which results in them both seeing each-other as unattainable.
  • Princess Hertrude tries to be a Femme Fatale to get Leon on her countries' side to give it a strategic advantage. But, as she is a sheltered Princess, she is too impatient and lacking in worldliness. As well, she's simply not her target's type, and can't change that.
  • Due to women having superiority in the kingdom, The Unfair Sex can get into play. Instead of showing women to always be sympathetic and in the right regardless of their behavior, it instead shows that they are instead capable of being incredibly vile and sexist towards men.
  • Another Otome Isekai trait is it being a Feminist Fantasy. To attract a female audience there would have to be women having most if not all the power. However, this also means that men end up getting the short end of the stick.
• Deconstructor Fleet: Marie's story-line tends to serve as one for the concept of an isekai protagonist being inserted into an Otome game. Marie, only knowing the basic story-line and endings concocts a plan to insert herself into the role of the heroine, stealing Olivia's "role" in the story and all of her potential love interests. The major issue here is that Marie is not the Saint, lacks the Compelling Voice that Olivia has, and doesn't actually love any of them and thus can't power the key item needed to finish the game. Defeating the final boss would been impossible and resulted in a Bad Ending.
• Deer in the Headlights: Often used to make female characters into a Damsel in Distress, even if they have shown combat capability in the past. Sometimes more justified than others, such as facing The Dreaded.
  • Greg having a moment like this, serves as a turning point for his behavior.
  • Deirdre's legs freeze up after being confronted by Principality forces while she's helping evacuate the capital.
• Defeat Means Friendship: In Alzer, being defeated by Leon, Julius, and Marie, as well as speeches from Noelle and Marie, all eventually culminate in Loic having a Heel–Face Turn
• Defector from Decadence: This is how the Principality of Fanoss, a separatist duchy from the Kingdom, see themselves. It turns out that they separated out of greed of the Warhawk Government Conspiracy controlling them, and their history was Written by the Winners. Furthermore, the Kingdom's decadence mainly came about as a reaction to their separation, to prevent further cases.
  • Given how massively arrogant the Smug Super nobles of the Alzer Republic are, pretty much anyone helping or rooting for the protagonists when they go there are this to some degree.
• Deflector Shield: Airships typically use either technological (for ones built by Luxion), or magical ones. They're shown to be generated by women during battle scenes, and Saints can form special shields that One-Hit KO monsters, as well as on a smaller scale. Eventually, Luxion gives portable shields that protect against bullets on foot, to Leon and his allies.
• Defrosting Ice Queen:
  • The Marie's School Life side story reveals this was part of Julius' romance arc in the game. She smacked the ice out of him.
  • Dorothea Roseblade, with Nicks.
• Department of Redundancy Department: Whenever Leon lists what he's looking for in a wife, big breasts are sure to come up at least twice.
• Depower: Alzer Nobles who break a vow made to their Sacred Tree, are forcefully stripped of their Crest, and its powers. It's common practice to disinherit such people, since their descendants cannot receive Crests.
• Designated Villain: In-Universe. A Discussed Trope, with Leon explaining that the Otome Game has Protagonist-Centered Morality, meaning characters like Angelica, Queen Mylene, and Clarice are actually good people with entirely legitimate reasons to have opposed the game's protagonist.
• Didn't See That Coming:
  • Leon whenever he does something that he fully expects will get him demoted only to further raise his standing in the nobility due to reasons he didn't expect such as betting on his career (in the case of Angie's dad), or just plain spite.
  • Leon was unaware that Princess Hertrude of Fanoss had a sister, and had another flute to summon giant beasts with. Justified has she was introduced in the third game, which was released after Leon died in his previous life.
  • When Leon and Marie find themselves going to the school which happens to be the setting of the game's sequel, they didn't expect to find the would be heroine has been made into twin sisters. As it turns out, the younger twin, Lelia, is also a reincarnator who was trying to ensure the True Ending of the sequel game happens, unknowingly setting things up for a Bad End for that particular route.
  • Ideal was aware of Luxion opposing him, but it didn't realize that another AI, Cleare was also active and working with Luxion and Leon.
• Died in Your Arms Tonight: Princess Hertrauda dying in her older sister's arms during the first arc Final Battle, which pushes Hertrude past her Despair Event Horizon.
• Digging Yourself Deeper: Leon gets oddly sexual when trying to say how much better of an older sister Louise would make than Jenna, digging himself deeper trying to excuse it, in front of his entire family, who are disgusted.
• Dirty Mind-Reading: Downplayed. Luxion describes in detail the physiological reaction Nicks' body has to going on a successful date. To Nicks entire family and his date's father.
• Disappointed in You: Jenna disappoints her father Balcus by whining and being rude in front of a high noble guest, Dorothea.
• Disappointing Older Sibling: Leon's older brother Nicks is looked down upon for being average while his younger brother Leon overshadows him, causing Nicks to struggle to find a wife and feel down about it.
• Discussed Trope: While this tends to happen a lot in Media Transmigration storylines, there are some notable examples:
  • Leon discussing about various characters being Designated Villain in the original game.
  • Leon musing that the academy's dungeon and its functioning like in a videogame doesn't make sense, and there's no point thinking about it. Before eventually providing a proper explanation.
  • Leon's personal analysis of the five dateable cast, talks about their character tropes (which he derides as cliché), and their gameplay tropes (assessing how useful each prince is before dueling them).
  • Leon himself makes his decisions with Munchkin mindset, Whoring whenever possible, which is Played for Laughs and he denies when confronted about it by Luxion.
  • Whenever The Black Knight comes into the picture, Leon is sure to bring up how he was That One Boss, and how he wishes the world were nice and fluffy like a typical Otome Game.
  • When discussing the second game's capture targets with Marie, Leon and her discuss how Narcisse's route is a Teacher/Student Romance, and the contrast between doing that in a harmless dating sim and doing it in reality.
• Disinherited Child: A major recurring, formal punishment, given to characters, is being disowned, which in Noble society, means losing claim to inherit land and titles, as well as access to their family's wealth. In the Alzer Republic, this is automatically done to any noble who angers the Sacred Tree enough to lose their Crest.
  • After all five of the first Otome game's dateable cast lose duels to Leon, they each get disowned, and since they were all previously Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense, end up being an albatross around Marie's neck. Over the course of the story, Brad, Greg, and Chris, are all reinstated after Leon pushes his achievements onto them and bribes their families. Only for them to be disowned again after going on a rampage against the church in response to an attempted assassination of Marie.
  • Carla Fou Wayne is disowned after being caught red-handed leading Leon and co. into an Uriah Gambit to get them captured by Sky Pirates.
  • Pierre Io Feivel is disowned, after being framed by Leon for both attacking the audience of their duel with missiles, and his crew going on a rampage through his house's territory. As well as for losing his Crest, due to violating a sacred tree oath.
  • Loic is disinherited for stealing the Tree Priestess from her rightful groom, attacking the Tree Priestess, and losing his Crest.
• Disposable Fiancé: Deconstructed Trope. In the original Otome Game, Angelica and Clarice were this. Leon points out, how they are Designated Villain and how the game had Protagonist-Centered Morality that gave them the short end of the stick despite not truly being bad people:
  • Angelica is mistakenly blamed as having ordered other students to bully Marie, and is trying to keep the heir of the Kingdom from tarnishing his reputation, and encourage him to make as many friends and allies as possible to ease his rule. As well, Marie is intentionally stoking her jealousy, holding other men's hands in front of her to set off her Hair-Trigger Temper and cause her undoing when she challenges Marie to a duel.
  • Clarice had her reputation tarnished and became victim of gossip, due to Jilk's behavior around Marie. And then Jilk broke off his engagement via "Dear John" Letter, and ignored her completely, driving her into a mental breakdown and to lashing out in revenge.
  • Earl Offrey's Daughter was this for Brad in the game, only she's actually evil so she plays it straight.
• Disproportionate Retribution. An Alzer patrol officer insults Luxion's creation, the Cool Airship Einhorn, during an inspection. Luxion later shoots down the officer's patrol ship using Einhorn, shoots his lifeboat, and terrorizes him by bombarding the area he landed.
  • A bar owner asks Pierre to pay his tab and stop harassing other customers. Pierre reacts by trashing the bar, tying up the owner, having his flunkies drag out the owner's wife and daughter to have their way with, and burns down the bar.
  • Dorothea Roseblade plotting to break Jenna's spirit, just for trash-talking her beloved Nicks.
• Distinction Without a Difference: Leon tends to do this in his hypocrisy.
  • Saying that he hates gambling, but loves winning. To put this in perspective, Leon will only gamble if it's a sure win, meaning Fixing the Game.
  • Arguing to his sisters that he's not an unfaithful man, by emphasizing that he has three fiancées, therefore proving their point for them.
• Distracted by the Sexy: Leon when Yumeria does a dance as part of a magic ritual, which gets his eyes forcibly covered by his Love Interests.
• Divided We Fall: Partially due to all the chaos caused by the dateable cast breaking their engagements and thus breaking up political alliances, the Kingdom of Holfort is absorbed in political squabbles which take precedence to fighting invaders. Their feudal system also limits their fleets effectiveness, as there is no standardized equipment or training.
• Doing In the Wizard: The lore of the setting is filled with this. Humans can use magic? They're descended from a Transhuman offshoot of mankind enabling it. Fantasy monsters? They're Organic Technology Ambiguous Robots that are built out of particles that polluted the environment during Hostile Terraforming. A World Tree grants magical powers? It absorbs said particles, collecting that energy to give out, and et cetera.
• Domestic Abuse: An abusive boyfriend directly caused Marie's past life death; she is also able to recognize other victims of it.
  • Loic blackmails Noelle into a relationship after finding out she's the priestess, has no reservations with beating her if she shows any defiance and blames it on her making him violent. Marie immediately realizes that Noelle was hiding bruises under her clothes at their engagement party. And's that's to say nothing of him attaching a magical collar to her so she can't escape him. Even his own father was appalled at that one.
• Dope Slap: Luxion sometimes uses electric shocks on Leon as a form of this.
• Doppelgänger Gets Same Sentiment: This is a major component of the second game storyline. Louise and Serge Rault project their feelings for the dead younger version of Leon onto him, Louise her attachment, and Serge his jealousy and resentment.
• The Dreaded:
  • Downplayed Trope with Angelica, and her father, Vince Redgrave. Angelica is often feared, for her ability to invoke her father's wrath. After Leon's sister Jenna informs him how dangerous crossing a Duke house is, Leon is more terrified of upsetting Vince than anything else, and desperately tries to keep him appeased, motivating many of Leon's risky actions. All while Vince is actually Leon's biggest fan.
  • The Black Knight, Vandel. His presence is enough to send entire airships crashing into each-other trying to get away.
  • Eventually applies to Leon, leading to a Mass "Oh, Crap!" moment from his opponents, and the Holy Kingdom of Rachelle launching a military intervention in part to contain him.
• Dub Personality Change: The Seven Seas translation cranks Leon's Jerkass qualities up to eleven and reduces his sarcastic wit. Leon was in his mid-twenties before dying, but in their translation, he acts more like a teenager.
• Dull Eyes of Unhappiness: Angie and Livia get these after Cleare tells them Luxon's log and Leon's "alleged" cheating.
  • In the seventh volume, Kyle's mother Yumeria has these after being Branwashed And Crazy by Ideal to perform Super-Empowering for Serge's rebels.
• Dungeon-Based Economy: Holfort Academy's dungeon is somewhat of an example. It's considered a strategic source of rare materials, and used to train up and coming nobles to pay tribute to their adventurer ancestors. Getting to the end of it is considered a noble Rite of Passage, although actually conquering it would be considered a disaster for abovementioned reasons.
• Dungeon Crawling: There are multiple scenes of this, evoking the sort of gameplay one would see in a hand-held RPG.

E-F

• Earth All Along: Having memories and speaking the language of an "Old Human" culture (Japan), is one of the main things that gets Luxion to trust Leon. Luxion even does a Secret Test of this, by making him a Katana to see if he'd recognize it. Also, many "Lost Items" are objects from the modern world, like a Thompson Submachinegun.
• Eating the Eye Candy: This is Marie's one salvation from having to deal with the five idiots, she gets to enjoy their (often half-naked) bodies. In the Drama CD, she gets quite verbally excited about this.
  • Leon, gets more scenes like this in the later volumes, where it's become apparent he's turning into a Chivalrous Pervert.
• Elective Monarchy: While each of the major Houses of the Alzer Republic, is essentially a hereditary royal family of their own region, the Chairmanship of the Republic as a whole, is decided like this. It was always Lespinasse House, due to them always containing the tree's Priestess, until the Ruling Family Massacre a decade before. The current rulers, are Rault House, who did the killing.
• Empire with a Dark Secret: What unified the Kingdom of Holfort, was the power of The Saintess's Compelling Voice, massively boosted by the Royal Airship.
• Entitled to Have You: Partly driven by Lelia's Shipper with an Agenda meddling, Loic thinks it's his destiny to be with Noelle, fueling his Stalker with a Crush tendencies. Loic later gets over it, after his defeat, and Heel Realization.
• Epic Ship-on-Ship Action: There is a good deal of this, of the Cool Airship variety. Typically, an arc Final Battle will have one as part of a Big Badass Battle Sequence. They seem to line up their cannons for broadsides (although more advanced factions use turrets). These airships tend to carry Mini-Mecha for sortie.
• Escort Mission: The first scene has Leon getting repeatedly stuck on one of these playing the dating sim, protecting Julius in his airship. It's what prompted him to cave in to the Pay To Win microtransactions that got him Luxion and the Arroganz.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: Discussed In-Universe in regards to the second game. The Final Boss is the Sacred Tree of Alzer Republic, which also serves as the source of the Republic's economic and military power. The ending has a newly found sapling planted in its place, with the heroine serving as its priestess and her chosen lover its guardian, but nothing is mentioned about how the country is able to move on without the Sacred Tree, as the sapling would take a while to grow to provide the country the same might it had before.
  • They end up deciding to mitigate the fallout, by having Alzer's chairman Albergue swear vassalage to Holfort Kingdom.
• Even the Girls Want Her: Yumeria the elf is said to garner this reaction from humans.
• Even the Guys Want Him: According to Clarice in the fourth volume, Leon's heroics have earned him some especially ardent male admirers.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": The author has a bad habit of not naming significant characters; this leads to some reader confusion, with Earl Offrey's Daughter being referred to as "The earl's daughter", right after Clarice, another earl's daughter, was introduced. Leon's tea ceremony teacher is called Sensei or Master.
• Everyone Can See It: Discussed Trope, by Angelica's father Vince, and brother Gilbert. She was raised to be with a specific person (Julius), from birth, ending up Loving a Shadow. So, she doesn't have a good understanding of her true feelings in her current relationships.
  • The general reaction Leon gets from proclaiming Louise and him are Like Brother and Sister.
    Julius: "Is this what they call a siscon?"
• Everyone Loves Blondes: All but one of Leon's several romance interests are some form of blonde.
  • Later on, his brothers' romantic interests are also blonde.
• Evilutionary Biologist: Some elves in the third volume are classic Mad Scientist types with this mindset and Fantastic Racism, creating Humanoid Abomination, and trying to enslave mankind, thinking mankind Turned Against Their Masters the elves. But it turns out elves as a whole were the biology experiment, and just using old human lab equipment, promptly being corrected and left terrified.
• Exact Words: When about to duel the five dateable cast, Leon asks Luxion to prepare my best blade. So Luxion equips a giant shovel on Arroganz for the battle, calling it Leon's best weapon.
• Excellent Judge of Character:
  • Angelica's father Duke Redgrave has a lot of faith in Leon as a rising star, while seeing Julius as The Load, and would happily trade Angie's engagement to him for one with Leon.
  • Queen Mylene surprises people by seeing and pointing out their true feelings, such as why Angie is happy despite her engagement ending, and why exactly she finds Leon surrounding himself with impressionable young ladies.
  • After many years of experience of rough living in both her lives, Marie has gained a talent in reading people quickly, such as realizing the daughter of Earl Offrey is a sadistic bully, or that Loic is a severe domestic abuser to Noelle, and Noelle trying to cope through it.
• Exhausted Eye Bags:
  • The manga adaptation shows Leon like this to illustrate how hard a time he's having at the Academy. His older sister Jenna seems to have them too.
  • King Roland gets these from dealing with the political fallout from Leon's actions in the Alzer Republic.
  • The maid Cordelia gets these over Kyle's rebellious phase in the seventh volume.
  • Marie gets these from the mischief of the five idiots, when Leon is away on vacation.
• Explosive Overclocking: The illegal modifications Luxion makes to Leon's air-bike for his race in the second volume, leading to it catching fire and exploding at the end.
• Extra Eyes: A giant monster summoned to house a mobile fortress by The Principality has many, in its mouth.
  • Ancient Artifact Bio-Armor suits tend to have these, and use them all to launch a Magic Missile Storm. As well as to show their emotions.
• Extreme Doormat: Noblemen at Holfort Academy in general behave this way around the women, since they can't afford bad rumors among the Royal Brat girls about them ruining their already difficult marriage prospects. It's bad enough that Deirdre, who's from an especially feared House, tells Leon that no boy has ever praised another girl in front of her.
  • A more specific example, would be Emile, a capture target in the second Otome Game who was known by the game's players as "Easy-Pick Emile". He is bossed around, and generally mistreated by his girlfriend Lelia.
• Eye Beam: Some monsters, and other Organic Technology remnants of New Mankind's Precursors, shoot lasers out their eyes.
• Eyes Do Not Belong There: The giant-whale like monster used to house The Principality's mobile fortress has Extra Eyes in its mouth.
• Failure Is the Only Option: Leon's dream of having an easy, quiet life in obscurity.
• Fair-Weather Friend:
  • Angelica's followers and retainers aren't there for her when she issues her Throwing Down the Gauntlet challenge to Marie, and after that, she ignores and avoids them while they try to beg her forgiveness. After they betray her for a second time during the Principality's first attack, her father enacts The Purge of his vassals.
  • The poor nobles group Leon belongs to subvert True Companions by being this, by giving in to Jilk's demands that they vandalize Leon's room after he volunteers for Angelica's duel. Leon keeps this in mind when giving them contracts that they didn't Read the Fine Print for so he can blackmail them into fighting under his banner.
  • Except for Deirdre, Chris, Olivia and Angie, the students who fought beside Leon during the Principality's attack on the luxury cruiser are this mixed with Ungrateful Bastard, since none of them vouch for him after the event.
  • When Marie gains followers after being declared the Saint, she figures out quickly that they're not the least bit trustworthy and so doesn't depend on them.
• Fake Defector: When Pierre wins the Einhorn as a result of a bet, Luxion claims as a result he is also loyal to Pierre. In truth, this is so Luxion can dig deeper into the affairs of the Alzer Republic and be in a position to undermine Pierre.
• False Flag Operation: Luxion, seizes control of his creation, the Cool Airship Einhorn, that had been stolen and repainted in House Feivel colors, apprehending the thugs crewing it, and going on a rampage through Feivel territory. Luxion even fakes voices of the crew over the radio. This was in part Revenge for damaging and disrespecting Luxion's beloved creation, and part of Leon's plan to Frame-Up Pierre.
• Famed In-Story: Leon, before he enters the Academy, earns acclaim for discovering a floating island and clearing its dungeon, making him the greatest adventurer in decades, with adventurers being held in high regard in the Kingdom due to being founded by adventurers.
  • Leon quickly earns widespread hatred, both for disrespecting the five princes, and for causing most of the Academy to lose money they gambled against him. Leon only reinforces this opinion further and further, until finally, Leon is framed for treason, then overturns it and is declared a Hero for saving the country, becoming looked up to by men in particular for easing their plight. When Leon moves to Alzer, he starts fresh, quickly earning reverence among commoners for standing up to their Smug Super nobles, as well as becoming The Dreaded in the process, due to very public martial feats.
• Famous Ancestor: The five capture targets, are each descended from the five adventurers who founded Holfort Kingdom; it's the origin of their their family names.
• Fantastic Caste System:
  • Holfort Kingdom's system is essentially medieval feudalism (of the English flavor), with the added element of institutionalized misandry, both combining to light a fire under Leon to escape from it. The misandry was Invoked as part of a wider absolutist Government Conspiracy to rein in disloyal vassals.
  • The Alzer Republic on the other hand, has its Smug Super nobility separated by Power Levels. A lower noble must do what a higher noble says, and a commoner what any noble says. Nobles have carte blanche to Rape, Pillage, and Burn as long as they don't hurt another noble, as displayed by Pierre. This results in Leon being cheered on when he confronts them.
• Fantastic Naming Convention: Each country in the setting has noble's middle name determined by their peerage rank at birth. The Alzer Republic is technically made up of six (formerly seven) kingdoms with their own royal families and middle names. Holfort Kingdom's system is the only one that's fleshed out.
• Fantastic Racism:
  • Downplayed, but Luxion was a weapon designed to be used against the modern magic-using humans, who had replaced the normal humans. Leon only manages to gain Luxion's loyalty because he knew Japanese and somehow has genetics of the previous human race within him. Nevertheless, Luxion would suggest once in a while that Leon could easily solve his problems by wiping everyone out.
  • Kyle's mother faced discrimination from other elves… for the type of magic she can use. This is apparently because Elves have Aura Vision based on magical signature, with this being how they perceive beauty.
• Fastball Special: In a rush to stop Loic from assaulting Noelle, Leon throws Luxion at him, causing Nasal Trauma. Leon never apologizes, and Luxion develops a strong grudge over this.
• Felony Misdemeanor: Nicks gets yelled at by his father for "Hugging a woman before marriage".
• Feminist Fantasy: Invoked and deconstructed. As its in an Otome Game setting, Holfort is most certainly this. The world is a matriarchy where women have the final say, men are always waiting hand and foot on them, and the protagonist is destined to become a Jeanne d'Archétype who defends the kingdom with her reverse harem. Beneath the surface, however, nearly every woman is shrewd, bitchy, arrogant, condescending, and insufferable because of the fact that it's a matriarchy, only going after the top 10% of boys while treating the other 90% like dirt.
• Femme Fatale: Deconstructed Trope: Princess Hertrude tries hard to be this and win Leon over to the Principality's side. However, she is too sheltered and impatient to pull it off. Not to mention, Leon Has a Type, and she's not it.
  Hertrude: "W, why are you looking at me with pity now? What are you doing that for?"
• Feudal Future: This is how the setting mixes its typical Isekai Fantasy elements with Science Fiction, implied to be Earth All Along.
• Fictional Currency: Dia is the in-game currency and exists in the form of coins and bills; 1 dia is equal to 100 yen. Gold and silver coins are also used, with platinum coins being the most valuable of all.^note The values have not been specified, but it is implied that 20 gold coins equal 1 platinum coin, and 1 platinum coin is worth between 20,000-40,000 dia. However in Volume 2, a single platinum coin is treated as being worth more than 300,0000 dia.
• Filler: The eighth volume is a Breather Episode, focusing on comedy, fanservice, and developing previously neglected characters such as Leon's siblings.
• Final Boss: Each of the dating sims that form the framework of the world has one. Figuring out how to deal with them is the primary motivation for reincarnators seeing through, and trying to salvage the game's events after they're inevitably derailed.
• First Kiss: In the seventh volume, Louise gives Leon his, at his request (which he had excused as a joke).
• Fixing the Game: Leon loves doing this, for betting on events he participates in, and card games. Clarice's top racer borrows a page from Leon by betting on him during the arena event.
• Fling a Light into the Future: The seventh volume reveals this is the backstory to The World Tree of Alzer, which was made to counteract the Hostile Terraforming New Mankind did to the planet.
• Foil: Leon and Marie, fittingly since they were brother and sister in Japan; both stole the title of "Protagonist" from Olivia. However, while Leon wants nothing to do with the world, is a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, and only wants to live with his new family yet keeps racking up achievements and fame that he does not want, Marie only cares about getting the Reverse Harem, is a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing, and is screwing up everything by causing societal upheaval thank to Love Makes You Dumb and ends up just as miserable as before she enrolled in the academy.
  • Being Leon's foil sees Marie gradually slide into the position of The Lancer, after the two find out they were past-life siblings.
• Forced Sleep: Leon favors using rubber bullets magically enhanced to this effect, since he (usually) wants to avoid killing.
• The Foreign Subtitle: The original title is simply The World of Otome Games is Tough for Mobs. The English localization added Trapped in a Dating Sim to it, probably due to the possibility that the potential readers not knowing what an Otome Game is, as well as it is not clear from the original title that it's an isekai series.
• Formula with a Twist: When compared to other otome isekai, the story has a male protagonist who reincarnates as a background character that doesn't exist in the game. As such his goals are to build a comfortable life for himself and keep away from the events of the game. However, circumstances lead him to attend the academy where the game takes place, where he discovers a reincarnated girl who plans to take the heroine's role for herself and gain herself a Reverse Harem of all the love interests. The story is more Shōnen in tone compared to other otome isekai, with the protagonist battling monsters in dungeons and enemy knights in a Mini-Mecha.
• Fortune Teller: An extremely old elven lady, who needs an assistant to speak for her. Her fortunes allude to the What If? side story, ^*Marie and Leon being together. and What Could Have Been^* Princess Hertrude getting a happier ending.
• Founder of the Kingdom: The Kingdom of Holfort is believed to have been founded by five adventurers: Holfort, Marmoria, Arclight, Field, and Seburg, (the ancestors of the Five Dateable Cast), as well as The Saintess, whos worship is the most widespread religion in the Kingdom. The Saintess is said to have left for one last adventure. The first five bloodlines have remained, but the Saintess' bloodline was lost; if the Saintess' bloodline were to return, it'd only be acceptable for her to marry into one of the five families.
• Frame-Up: Multiple cases, and not all done by villains:
  • Two of Angie's female followers she knew from childhood, put a Principality tracking device in her cabin on the luxury liner. Leon catches and exposes them, thanks to Luxion's surveillance. Angie's brother Gilbert seemingly enjoyed their punishment.
  • At the behest of Frampton and Hertrude, Miauler and other Exclusive Servants plant forged letters in Leon's room, getting him arrested and brutalized until Mylene and Gilbert can pull him aside to be bait to draw out traitors. Later overturned when Luxion reproduces Frampton's burnt letters discussing the frameup.
  • In revenge for Pierre Io Feivel attacking Leon's allies and stealing his Cool Airship Einhorn, Leon frames Pierre in two ways. Firstly, by having Einhorn, crewed by Pierre's minions, attack Feivel House territories while impersonating the minions over the radio. Secondly, while Pierre is in the stolen Arroganz to duel Leon, Luxion takes control away, and impersonates Pierre's voice, attacking the audience, which included nobles, with missiles.
• Framing the Guilty Party: Leon and Luxion frame Pierre for bombarding his home territory in a False Flag Attack, smashing up the Alzer fleet, and assaulting the audience during their duel.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Leon goes from a dirt poor Farm Boy third-son of a baron, to one of the most infamous people in the world, to the point where a foreign country intervenes to contain him. All while he wanted a peaceful, quiet life.
• Full-Circle Revolution: The treatment that Finley gets from men when she enters the Royal Academy, mirrors the abuse Leon received there before internal reforms ended the Lady Land system.

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