Visual Novel / Mr. Love: Queen's Choice

"So many things were happening all at once, trying to change my life in tremendous ways—Were they all truly just coincidences, or had they always been destined to happen?"

Mr. Love: Queen's Choice, collectively known by its Chinese title Love and Producer (戀與製作人 / 恋与制作人 Liàn Yǔ Zhì Zuò Rén) is a SF Romance Mystery Visual Novel mobile phone game developed by Chinese company, papergames (of Love Nikki fame), and distributed by Elex for the English localization market, launched on December 20, 2017. After its explosive commercial success in its home server, the game was localized for South Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan starting in year 2018, UK and Japan in 2019, and South Asia in 2020 under title—Mr. Love: Dream Date.

You play as the heroine, a young 22-year-old woman living in a modern-day city called Loveland somewhere in China, and is the head of a media company that was previously run by her father. The company's flagship show, Miracle Finder, is on its final episode due to a lack of financial support for the company. The Heroine and her team attempt to petition Loveland Financial Group (LFG) for their investment renewal.

Brainstorming program contents while on her lunch break, The Heroine bumps into Kiro, a popular Idol Singer with a massive fan following while maintaining an impossibly clean record of zero negative press. Taking his record to account, The Heroine jumps at the chance to offer him as their guest star for their show’s final episode. But despite Kiro's affable personality and support, he stated that his agency is the one that plans his job, so if The Heroine’s program has a job offer, she would have to go through his manager.

On her way back to work, The Heroine was saved from being hit by a car by a mysterious Tall, Dark, and Handsome man with the ability to stop time. He seems to think she's something called an "Evolver."

Left without options, The Heroine follows up on a contact named Lucien, an accomplished neuroscientist who is able to provide insights into the kind of people featured on Miracle Finder; people with supposed supernatural abilities. After a fruitful talk, Lucien agrees to be their program consultant.

But then comes the gruesome call from LFG, informing The Heroine that they deemed her program to be unprofitable, and unredeemable. Therefore, they will pull out from investing in her company.

Panicked and furious, The Heroine storms to LFG to meet with their CEO, Victor for a final plea, and at that moment realized Victor was the man who saved her from the car crash. Boasting she will bring up her company in less than 5 years ^note Anime scenario. and vows to submit a plan to him by two weeks,^note Game scenario. Victor agrees to have his company reassess their investment plan with her company, but instead of one plan submission in two weeks, Victor demands The Heroine to give him her company’s planning reports by one week, as well as a successful rating for her supposedly last episode of her program as a requirement. Ending on a casual note, Victor asks The Heroine to keep his supernatural abilities a secret.

With an ultimatum from Victor to come up with fresh program contents that will please him and the public, The Heroine proceeds to produce projects by collaborating with a young police officer named Gavin, her high school upperclassman to follow police investigations with inexplicable circumstances. The more she digs deeper into different cases, the more she entangles herself with the findings of supernatural genetic powers labeled as "EVOL," and the Differently Powered Individuals who has them—"The Evolvers."

As she slowly piece the supernatural cases together, she noticed a linkage between these cases with a key incident that she can’t quite recall; which suggests she may also have an Evolver gene. Unbeknownst to her, the people behind those cases are targeting her for it.

The uniquely interlaced, and intriguing story plot, mysteries surrounding all potential love interests, as well as the mystery behind the heroine herself is the major selling point of the game. Due to current affection values only being used to unlock dating scenarios that have no effect on the main story line, as of date, the heroine's relations to any of her love-interest does not affect the outcome of main story events.

The game is played under four main features:

• Main Story: Play through the main story to unlock and work through television production cases by selecting the best crew members and "Karmas" (see below) fit for the job. The general recommendation for a smooth play-through is to achieve at least Two Star recognition to unlock the quick production option in order to efficiently drop loots and in-game currency needed to unlock stages of Karmas and nurture the heroine's company.

• Card System: Draw cards by the name of "Karma" relating to individual potential love interest; preferably of a high rarity of at least Super Rare (SR) and nurture those cards through key stages to trigger phone contact responses by those love interests. The stronger one Karma becomes, the better and more efficient one production mini-game can item farm, and move the main story forward. Dating events would also appear once Karma stages are unlocked.

• Phone System: Potential love interests would contact and interact with you via your smartphone by text, calls, and social platforms. If player response works well to the love interest's liking, their affection value for the heroine would go up.

• Company Nurture System: Nurture the heroine's company by advancing through the "City News" mini-game to scout for employees by the name of "Experts" using qualified Karmas, then nurture these crew members by paying them salaries with your in-game currency while hold as many workshops possible to boost criteria needed to achieve successful work cases. The heroine's company level is equivalent to the user's level.

Strong Karmas that can withstand challenging criteria are crucially needed to complete missions and advance the story. In addition to the main storyline, the game is interspersed with special events and sideline mini-games to which the player can produce additional different segments for the company, which can also grant loots to strengthen Karmas, in-game currency, and experience points to raise the heroine's company level. To sum up, the player needs to raise the heroine’s company reputation in order to unlock story chapters.

The game is available on both Android and iOS platforms.

Mr. Love: Queen's Choice has gained an anime television adaptation based on the game’s Japanese title, Love and Producer (恋とプロデューサー / Koi to Producer): EVOL x LOVE produced by MAPPA, and is simulcast in both China and Japan localized in their respective languages released on July 15, 2020. China’s international online video streaming site, WeTV has both Chinese and Japanese versions available on-demand.

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SPOILER ALERT: Due to global rollouts being at least one year behind the game’s home server, story plots, and walkthroughs are bound to be spoiled with a good portion being unmarked. Viewer discretion is advised to those newly joined in from the animation adaptation.

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Editing Note: For the convenience of editing, characters will continue to be referred by their English naming. Alternate readings of character names are listed on the character subpage.

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Mr. Love: Queen's Choice contains examples of:

Gaming, Promotion Mechanisms, and General Tropes

• Ability Required to Proceed: To advance in the main story, you have to level up in order to unlock chapters.
• Allegedly Free Game: Inside this free-to-play game, there are the casual-leveled “Footage” side quests to get SR rarity Karmas to farm free from physical payments, then, they also have powerful SSR and SP Karmas that can be obtained only if you invest in the card draws with gems or draw tickets^note or the term "coupons" for Western servers. that players can either purchase or stack up slowly for free. Story-related Karmas are one of the many examples of a full-on gem sink.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • The Gold Karma Pool is free once per day, and the Gem Karma Pool is free every two days. Additionally, daily log-in bonus gives gems every five days and a free rarity "R" Karma if the player signs in for 28 days.
  • A couple of annual month-long events will provide one free rarity "SSR" Karma if players manually sign in to that specific event page loyally for a certain amount of days in a row through the duration of that event. Of course, if players overlooked that event page with little to no participation from the start, they will miss out on that Karma.
  • While remaining as the game’s resident gem sink, The Milkyway Events let the story-related Karmas be unsealed when the main story reaches a Season Finale and will turn into regular Collection Sidequest events called "The Memory Maze" once players unlock the required chapters of the storyline. The materials needed to draw out Karma shards can be stored for future Memory Maze events, which eases the stress to purchase materials in bulk under limited timeframes.
  • With the release of Season 2, the game introduces new rarity levels, "ER" and "SER"; by which one SER can be obtained by merging any two ERs of the same love-interest. Certain series of ERs can be obtained for free via The Heroine’s new company nurture system introduced on S2, while other ERs can only be obtained via gem sink events.
• Cap: As of current development, the player’s maximum company level stands at 70.
• Cast Full of Pretty Boys: Standard practice for otome games. But this work gave pretty much all characters; from the main characters, down to all non-romanceable NPCs of either gender lovable, and attractive traits.
• Character Blog: The four main love interests all have official Weibo accounts.
• Collection Sidequest: Story-related SR and SSR Karmas specifically embed "Rumors & Secrets", a series of side stories in relation to the Hidden Depths of love interests, Plot Hole fillers, and the heroine’s repressed memories. The stories themselves can be be unlocked and collected under incredibly hideous (and often costly) requirements.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Each of the guys has an associated color. Victor is red, Kiro is yellow, Gavin is blue, and Lucien is purple. For her part, The Heroine is pink.
• Crack is Cheaper:
  • Story-related SR and SSR Karmas can only be obtained by purchasing specific tickets named “Starpick Coupons” to draw Karma "fragments" using gems under a 10-day time frame called the “Milkyway Event.” In general, SR Karmas needs 50 shards, while SSR Karmas needs 80 shards to piece one Karma together. Fragment drops are 1-2 shards per one gem-purchased coupon draw on average, and free gem accumulation is a low and slow process. Worse, Starpick Coupons will be auto-converted into normal in-game currency once the event ends, and cannot be saved for future Milkyway Events. So if players want a specific story Karma, they need to break their bank accounts as soon as possible. Otherwise, players will have to wait for the next Season Finale to collect them, which can take anywhere from mere weeks to years.
  • Default Top-up Karmas can be ludicrously expensive if you want to collect more than the first few. Due to Top-Up prizes being determined from the total accumulation amount of real-life money the player spends on the game, this isn't too bad if you space out the payments, but it does serve as a reminder of just how much you've spent on the game. While the first Top-Up Karma prize is essentially given to the player when they make their first purchase, the game requires you to have spent a total of 84 USD to get the following Top-Up Karma, the one after that requires you to have spent a total of 500 USD in the game. While this amount already sounds incredibly high, there are still 5 more Top-Up Karmas to collect—if you want all of them, you have to have spent an accumulation of 8,000 USD on the game.
  • Players in the home field CN server are hit with this the hardest since they are the first to experience new Karma and main storyline rollouts. To combat the gem sink, groups who do game walkthroughs usually use just one player account for the whole group to chip in to draw Karmas.
• Crossover: Doubles as Product Placement.
  • All Chinese region servers:
    • The heroine going on dates with her love interests to Disney Land—Out of all industries, the crossover event with The Walt Disney Company is by far the grandest achievement for a mobile game; let alone a game that’s not developed in Japan nor the United States.
    • The game partnered up with Kentucky Fried Chicken and made KFC-themed Karmas. No, seriously.
  • Japanese merchandise:
    • Sanrio: Kiro with Pekkle, Gavin with Cinnamoroll, Lucien with Kuromi, and Victor with—you guessed it—Hello Kitty.
• Dialogue Tree: Interesting enough for the genre, dialogue trees are used mainly in text messaging, “City News,” "City Strolls," and "Go See Him" systems; of which, aside from the "City News" mini-game (which you have to play in order to obtain experts), are nonessential to advance the main plot. Dialogue trees are still seen in the main storyline, but to a much lesser degree compared to other works.
• Digital Bikini: CN server 2021 Lunar New Year introduced SP Karma series, Code of Passionate Love —was a noticeable official dive into the Hotter and Sexier realm of dates with players head-over-heels in enjoyment. But Moral Guardians caught sight of the Karma visuals, particularly over The Heroine showing a bit too much legs, shoulders, and cleavage; believing it was too risqué for their Chinese women etiquette and reported Papergames to officials demanding edits to the Karma visuals of this batch. Papergames settled in adjusting The Heroine’s outfits by giving her long pants, adjust her skirts and shirts to cover her skin properly, and added innings to cover her cleavage. The censored versions were also carried out for global release for February 2022.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: Unlocking later chapters requires you to pass a company level checkpoint first, which can be seen as your company expanding over time.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: Most character-related trivial digs and dating scenarios experienced in mini-games and Karma Dates were meant to be The Heroine’s personal life with her love-interests. Hence, there’s little to no story linkage to the main plot.
• Mood Whiplash:
  • So, you end one of the main story chapters on a Cliffhanger... then the game tells you that your company needs to gain 5 more levels to unlock the next chapter.
  • This can happen if you switch between the main story, especially after Season 1 Chapter 8, to a newly-unlocked date or the irresistibly cute Super-Deformed shared-house mini-game.
  • Just running the main story alone will prompt up filmmaking mini-games in-between the course of those dramatic story plots.
• Never Trust a Trailer:
  • On western servers, most of the mobile ads for the game feature one or more of the following: events that don't happen in-game, your character romancing characters that can't be romanced in-game, your character being someone who isn't the player character, or gameplay that isn't in the game.
  • The 2020 Anime trailer followed suit in placing cut scenes that happened in-game, but never occurred in the anime.
• Only One Name: The English and Japanese versions of the game omitted surnames for all characters, including the love interests. This practice has extended to their animation adaption.
• Permanently Missable Content: Special event Karmas are only obtainable through limited-time events, so if you miss an event, opportunities to get those Karmas will be sealed off until anytime the developers decide to revive them.

Main Story

In General

• Arc Words: The one phrase that sings throughout the story is "Love Changes Lives."
• Bio-Augmentation:
  • Lucien and Kiro were born normal humans whose genetics were artificially forced engineered into superpowered Evolvers when they were children.
  • Lucien was the unlucky one for being the first muggle of Black Swan's bioengineering experiment, and lost a good chunk of his senses as a result from it. Thanks to that result, he's on life-long medications to prevent his conditions from getting worse.
• Bland-Name Product:
  • Although Loveland Financial Group’s original Chinese name is called “Huarui Conglomerate,” the name itself has nothing to do with that famous tech company. The character “Hua (華)” is a naming favorite amongst Chinese culture in that the term denotes grandeur beauty, people of Chinese ancestry, and ethnic pride.
  • The anime showed the cast using a popular messaging app with an icon similar to WeChat.
• Bridal Carry: All love interests can have their moments with the heroine, but Victor is the one who takes the cake and made it to the story’s Signature Scene.
• City of Adventure: Most of the story setting takes place within the borders of Loveland City.
• Classical Mythology: High ranking Evolver members of The Black Swan Organization are given codenames listed from the presented trope page based on their EVOL powers, with the highest authorities taken from Classical Mythology Olympians.
• Company Cross References: The black cap Kiro wore to the hacker’s summit has the word “Nikki” as its logo. The anime adaptation changed it to “Hero.”
  • There is also a picture of Nikki in the photo shop when you do city scrolls.
• Cultural Cross-Reference:
  • Kiro is a fan of Batman. The anime changed it to Bad Hero.
  • The heroine reveals when she was younger she was a fan of a comic about a girl who transforms into a hero thanks to a talking cat. This reference is no other than Sailor Moon.
  • In S1.C8, there's a reference to Fullmetal Alchemist.
• Deceased Parents Are the Best: The Heroine’s parents, Victor’s mom, and Gavin’s mom were all loving parents to their children. Therefore, these characters grew up in aspiration to become, or yearn for a soulmate like their favorite parent(s) one day.
  • Lucien’s case is a slippery one, as much as Lucien appreciates his parents’ love in a factual sense, things did not sit well for Lucien’s social development. Check his character page to see why.
• Dramatic Thunder:
  • Used to full effect at the end of chapter 6, when Gavin shoots at some unseen person threatening the MC.
  • It initially was used around Gavin, given his wind powers. But then Shaw—who’s powers are lighting, happily takes over the sound effect to convert the scene into his solo rock party.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Each love-interest either came from different affiliations ( Lucien, Kiro, and Gavin), or in Victor’s case, an investigative viewpoint. Once they involved themselves with the heroine, each love interest would have to overcome the challenges that are placed onto them to earn their happy endings with her; and it is on the heroine who has to decide all of their fates, including her own.

• Fantastic Racism: The politics between Muggles vs. Mutants, pro or anti-evolution is the central issue for MLQC’s universe.
  • Season One: The STF ( Anti-Evolver & Anti-Evolution) vs. LFG ( Pro-Evolver and Muggle civil rights. Secretly shelters Evolvers from the STF) vs. Lucien Xu’s Institution of Life Sciences (Pro-Evolution), New Weapon Project (Pro-Evolver), and The Black Swan Organization (Pro-Evolver & Pro-Evolution).
  • Season Two: The Black Swan Organization (Team Evolver) vs. New Weapon Project ( Evolver experimentation) vs. The Gray Rhino Organization (Team Muggle)
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Loveland City is based on contemporary Shanghai, China. Shanghai is also home to the headquarters of Mr. Love: Queen’s Choice’s game company, papergames. The anime designed buildings based on Shanghai’s various real-life locations.
• Genre Shift: Around S1 Chapter 8, the story shifts from mostly romance with a slight science-fiction twist to a 50-50 blend of romance and science-fiction. By S1 Chapter 12, the story becomes a full-blown dark SF suspense.
• "Groundhog Day" Loop:
  • 2020 Anime, and Game S1.Chapters 1-18: The Black Queen sets the time sequence of this timeframe into an infinite time loop as her way to to make her past self escape from the cruelness of reality. The 2020 Anime showcased one of the many unbroken loops, while the official game version successfully breaks the loop.
  • S2.Chapters 13 & 14: The Heroine became an Unwitting Test Subject of an unknown experiment where she endures a potentially infinite one-hour time loop that is solely locked onto her. Had not for her luck of having Lucien by her side, trusting her testimonies, and patiently helping her break the loop, her sanity would definitely be crushed. Later in the day when they both thought The Heroine’s loop was broken, she got shot to death, but then at the same moment, she was found resurrected at the same location from her previous loop. Lucien confirms The Heroine was indeed killed off for real, and her situation became worse; her first death and resurrection triggered a second wave of loops to which each time duration for her to experience death and resurrection gradually shrinks from 6 hours, 3 hours, to less than a second, yet the time on Lucien’s watch is normal for him. Lucien used his social connections to understand the heroine is a target under an EVOL experiment relating to the mechanisms of The Möbius Strip conducted by The New Weapon (NW) Task Force. It took quite some time for Lucien to formulate, but he eventually calculated the best way to stop her loop was by placing the gravity-based EVOL that he has been keeping in his power stock onto the heroine to prevent her from disappearing before her next loop.
• Invasion of the Baby Snatchers: 17 years prior to the beginning of this story, The Black Swan Organization conducted a grand underground EVOL gene experiment project by using children as test subjects under the guise of an orphanage located in Loveland City. It was then busted by news organizations and made light as "The Mass Child Abduction Case of Twin Leaves Orphanage."
  • Childhood Friends Victor and The Heroine were kidnapped together and became the organization’s experimental subjects due to having natural EVOL powers. Victor was rescued out of the facility, but The Heroine was not.
  • The Heroine and Kiro were part of the group of kids led by Victor in an attempt to escape the facility, but Kiro and The Heroine were captured back to the facility while Victor was one of the few lucky ones who successfully escaped.
  • Lucien and Kiro were normal human children whose parents were deliberately killed off by the organization and taken away to be experimented and engineered into man-made Evolvers.

• Mutants: Victor and The Heroine were natural born Evolvers.
• Orphan's Ordeal: The Heroine, Lucien, Kiro, and by extension, Gavin had this plot written for them since childhood. For these four, surviving on your own in society becomes the challenge itself.
• Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory:
  • The Black Queen's "Groundhog Day" Loop is set to infinitely repeat itself, by the laws of time, anyone who breaks out of her time loop would not be able to recollect any memories of their incarnations or reincarnations. But Victor, granted by his Time Master powers, is able to retain his memories by holding on to the right artifacts, in his case, a pocket watch.
  • Lucien on the other side, though he doesn't have the full power to handle any form of time powers, has a hand in Neurology and the research resources from The Black Swan Organization. Throughout The Black Queen's time loop, Lucien tackles by "developing memory-recollecting medications" and mixing them in with the lifetime medications that he has to take every day to trigger memory fragments which his past incarnations believe should be important for the timeline. Through Lucien's Mini House, and manuals, Lucien is also found to have the hobbies of drawing, photography, and cinematography; which may all help him keep records of memories.
  • Throughout the Season 1 timeline, Shaw’s memories relating to The Heroine were intact. He achieved it by one, complying with The Black Queen’s wishes in order to universe travel (he broke his contract once The Heroine safely merges their universe), and two, his discipline as an archaeology/history scholar; where he has the habit of recording events diligently, and “leave messages, and markings” around the city relating to important events for future scholars (and hopefully himself) to dig up.
  • Player Character Heroine herself, and TAB Victor are the only people of Season 2 who knew The Heroine defeated The Black Queen and rewinded her universe to prevent the apocalypse. The Heroine in particular has full memories of everything that has occurred from S1. To get into the central research The Black Swan Organization was conducting on her and her love-interests from their childhood, The Heroine sets herself, and all of her love-interests up to grow into better positions of power.
• Shades of Conflict: As the fate of the universe rests on the shoulders of "The Queen" Evolver; which is The Heroine, anyone she encounters in society will affect her decision on how the course of her timeline would go. Her surrounding key persons have different Evolutionary Levels and stances on different scales of social and morality alignments. The conflicts between the parties each key person represents are what drives the plot:
  • (White) Gavin stands Pro-Evolver as being superhuman gives him the power to protect his loved ones. But his morality alignment stands purely For Great Justice. No matter if a person is an Evolver or a normal person, if they do wrong, he will prosecute them.
  • (Ivory White) Victor is a top-of-the-chain natural Evolver who believes being an Evolver is not a bad thing (Pro-Evolver), but takes the harmony of society, the happiness of his loved ones, and hopefully the happiness for himself as his top priority; he understands he cannot please all parties nor save all humanity, simply because that’s unrealistic, but he will do the best he can with all of his abilities.
  • (White-Grey) Kiro /Helios’ alignment is about the same as Victor in Pro-Evolver and For Happiness philosophy, but due to his circumstances and upbringing, he has to survive within the dark side of society, and empathize with those with status and identity issues.
  • (Grey-Neutral) Lucien /Ares stands predominantly neutral as he is a scientist who only trusts in scientifically proven results; and can be perceived as chaotic if players can’t see him from his POV.
    • For Season One, he respects the laws of natural selection (evolution) and the wills of each person; to be or not to be an Evolver are all fine, as there is no law for forcing "most" people in making their decisions, all but the Queen Evolver MUST evolve and make her decisions for the fate of all humans—because he as a fellow human being, also has his right to choose his way of living; if given the chance, he will choose to fight for the survival of his loved ones; even if it would cost him his own life and happiness.
    • For Season Two, in order to unlock mysteries revolving around The Heroine, Lucien is willing to conduct forceful experiments onto her, even when these experiments will outright kill her off for real.
  • ( Active Neutral) Shaw as of current development, stands true neutral by not aligning himself with any agendas nor alliances to keep his diligence as a historian in check by appraising the persons and events after he verified the truths behind them, and also keep track of events as they unfold. Unlike Lucien, who is a scientist capable of supporting The Heroine in turning the fate of their existing universe, the only gestures Shaw could provide to The Heroine is guidance if she lost her way (when no other key persons are there to support her), discover MacGuffins, unravel mysteries, fact-checking, and his blessings in hoping their universe can have a future.
  • ( Passive Neutral) Hypnos is a natural Creature of Habit who prefers peace and stability and doesn’t like any discord in society that would affect his lifestyle. Be it issues of evolution, devolution, faction, or alliance politics, he doesn’t care for any of those things; he just wants to live a peaceful and stable life, period.
  • ( Grey-Black) Joker as of current development, stands Anti-Evolver due to aligning with Muggles who were abused/bullied by Evolvers and supports Evolvers who wishes to be normal, but he "does not necessarily" rejects the process of Evolution due to seeing Evolvers as a form of "entertainment material".
  • ( Black) Commander Leto stands Anti-Evolver and Anti-Evolution. He believes Evolvers poses chaos and danger to society as a whole, and should be fully extinct.
  • (Black) Hades stands Pro-Evolver and Pro-Evolution. He is willing to go to great lengths in bringing all humanity up on top of the evolutionary chain. His plans are ambitious and meant well by a stretch, yes, but his plans are hasty and rash, which will cost the lives of all those who can’t catch up with his evolutionary process; rendering his ambitions unbeneficial to the world at large.
• Split Timelines Plot: Has its own subpage. Beware of massive spoilers!
• Whole Episode Flashback: Starting in 2020’s CN server, the love-interests birthday events focus on one episode from their childhood as players unlock the story within the duration of their events, with their corresponding birthday Karmas embedding their present-day birthday date.
• Write Back to the Future: Victor’s authority that is made crucial throughout story.
  • Once Victor broke out of the Black Queen’s "Groundhog Day" Loop and got himself into trouble with the Time Administration Bureau, he’s forced to join them. Hence, Victor has full knowledge of all universes that comes and goes, as well as all fates of all of his own incarnations by the end of Season 1. Victor will drop "encouragements," "warnings," "hints," and or “missions” to The Heroine, and, regardless of his in-timeline incarnation is aware of his TAB incarnation or not—himself to safeguard their lives when hazardous situations call for it. Such as how TAB Victor sent a “message from the past” to both in-timeline Heroine and Victor’s minds individually ordering them to head towards a certain location for them to meet up and hide together for safety on S2 Chapter 4.
  • Season Two Ch.40 revealed at the end of Season One, Victor used his TAB authority to prerecord messages necessary, such as the above mentioned examples listed, for The Heroine and himself to act throughout the Season Two timeline within the last minutes before The Heroine triggered the Season Two timeline.
• You ALL Share My Story: Behind The Heroine’s POV, the big four love interests share various relations with each other.
  • Business Owner & Patron: Kiro is a loyal customer of Victor’s restaurant, but is unaware Victor is the owner and chef of the restaurant.
  • Common Affiliation: Lucien and Kiro are Black Swan agents.
  • Common Investigative Purpose: Gavin and Kiro as Helios works together to investigate issues related to the STF.
  • Doctor & Patient: Lucien is Kiro’s EVOL medical physician.
  • Family Acquaintance: Victor and Gavin came from Socialite backgrounds who met only once when they were kids.
  • Investor & Client: Victor is the investor to Lucien’s science lab, and to Kiro’s entertainment agency.

Anime

• Adaptation Distillation: The 2020 anime ran for 12-episodes placing focus on the buildup leading towards the end of "The Darkest Hour" arc (Chapter 18). Therefore, the production team placed effort to either cut, simplify, or rework scenes to speed up the overall pace while adding important scenes that were only available via Collection Sidequest and specific Karmas.
• Easter Egg: The heroine's outfit choices, along with particular scenes in the anime can be found based on Karma and in-game story moments:
  • The animation trailers teased loads of cuts,◊ especially◊ when it◊ comes to◊ Lucian's◊ moments.◊ But these scenes never occurred in the anime, for one mass of a reason.
  • Episode 1: The heroine's business outfit can be found separately in Victor's and Lucien's Karmas.◊
  • Episode 2: The heroine's business outfit can be found in Gavin's Karma.◊ The expression Gavin gives to the heroine upon his rescue scene came from his introduction chapter as well.[1]◊
  • Episode 7: The Chinese version ends with a poster of Victor bathing a kitten. That kitten is Victor's pet Ragdoll named "Pudding." Pudding can be found on Victor's limited rarity "R" Karma--"Victor: Ameowsing," on Victor's Weibo featuring a ''real-life version'' of Pudding, and in Victor's Mini House along with 4 other cats.
  • Episode 11: Victor’s Time Travel segment includes a Freeze-Frame Bonus of a shot in front of The White House—a key location in relation to the beginning of our story’s Split Timelines Plot.
• Fission Mailed: This 12-Episode Anime is only one of the many unsuccessful break-offs tied within The Black Queen’s "Groundhog Day" Loop.
  • Finale ends with the heroine not falling in love, or be more specific, “failed to bond deeper” with neither love-interests; aka. no “dating events” happened, takes event matters into her own hands, banish Hades by herself, and happily goes about her life after losing her powers with no signs of Victor's Mercy Kill taking place. The Black Queen was happy with the result, hence, the "Groundhog Day" Loop was not broken. Either The Black Queen deems The Heroine’s story is done for this time loop and resets the loop shortly after the animation ends, or Victor's Mercy Kill moment has yet to be performed in this timeline.
  • The key word, “Bonds (羈絆 [ZH]/ 絆kizuna [JP])” is fixated as the subtitle for the anime’s final episode. “Bond” is the card term used in the Chinese (including Taiwan and Hong Kong regions), and Japanese servers of the game; which is Lost in Translation for western servers— which uses the term, “Karma.” This subtitle is the giveaway to the demographic who has already played the game; informing the community this anime adaptation is unable to proceed further into the plot due to The Heroine’s inability to form any deeper relationships with her love interests.
• Shown Their Work: MAPPA went surprisingly far by composing the same anime opening and ending theme songs for both Chinese and Japanese localizations, and took the extra time to create customized frames showcasing each region’s local written languages.

Game: Season One

• The Alliance: The big four love interests band together from chapters 32-34 of Season 1 to depose Leto from his position as Commander of STF. The Heroine can follow each of their routes to participate and witness the event unfold from different POVs.
• Apocalypse How: Class Z-1. The Heroine holds the power to trigger either the evolution or devolution of humanity depending on how her powers evolve, this attracts people to her either to become her allies, or use her for power; further causing split timelines, and the multiple fates of her incarnations. Eventually, The Heroine’s selves on the two ends of her power formation spectrum would clash, and form an apocalypse that would annihilate the full universe. See Only One Me Allowed Right Now.
• The Big Bad Shuffle:
  • The 2020 Anime ends with Hades, a Pro-Evolver Super Supremacist who attempts to brutally force evolve all humanity, killing people in the process. But he’s only a mere Arc Villain if The Heroine advances forward.
  • If The Heroine successfully bonds with her love interests, specifically Victor and Lucien, she will breach the "Groundhog Day" Loop that encased her, unveiling former Black Swan member Hypnos as the time loop gatekeeper.
  • After going through Hypnos by peaceful persuasion, she merged and continued the timeline where she left off and needs to join forces with her big four love interests. She particularly needs to bond with Gavin to remove Leto, an Anti-Evolver who’s in charge of eliminating Evolvers in secret, from his position in the STF, she then furthers her bond with Kiro, whose alter-ego Helios is needed to deal with The Black Queen’s dragon, Anole.
  • And finally, with the help of Victor, she has to face herself to determine the future of her world.
• Colony Drop: As to how this world would end thanks to the Apocalypse How. The prologue event towards Chapter 37—Apocalypse Eve is set 7 days before The End of the World as We Know It, with news confirming multiple asteroids are on the path to hit the Earth to its doom.
• Darker and Edgier: As the story plot moves further into the later chapters of Season 1, the tone shifts hard to the point where it doesn't look anything like the light romance game it initially promotes itself as.
• Four Lines, All Waiting: The major story format S1 presents. The more Rumors & Secrets and manuals you collect, the better understanding of a route. From smallest to grandest universal scale order:
  • Gavin’s Route: Starts off with a troubled childhood and family issues for not being born as an Evolver. His schoolmate blessed him with EVOL powers, he then tried his best to bring peace and harmony to his society, but realized his affiliation is shady. Therefore he forced himself to work under his dad’s affiliation in order to get a Mid-Season Upgrade. Then for the final arcs asks for the alliance of the other big three love interests to overthrow his former boss.
  • Kiro’s Route: His childhood as a test subject and engineered into an Evolver for The Black Swan Organization, his upbringing as a member of the Black Swan Organization while working as a performing artist on appearance, his escape from his affiliation and becomes pupil to a cracker hacker, then gets busted by his affiliation with his hacker master being sentenced to jail, befriends The Heroine, and goes down the path to sort out the purpose and relations between The Heroine, himself, and his affiliation.
  • Lucien’s Route: His antisocial childhood, his parent’s death from a car crash, him being engineered into an Evolver, growing up, and becoming a central member under The Black Swan Organization, befriending The Heroine to experiment on her EVOL powers, messing up big time, and is now on an indefinite Redemption Quest loop in hopes to turn humanity for the better.
  • The Heroine’s Route: Player Character point of view.
  • Victor’s Route: His childhood with The Heroine, his childhood experience of being kidnapped and rescued, his investigation journey in search for his lost childhood friend, his reunion with his childhood friend but then gets absorbed into time space, he then realized his childhood friend is in the center of a mass Split Timelines Plot and vows to fix things to bring forth the best future for him, his childhood friend, and for all humanity.
• Mercy Kill: The crucial event that needs to proceed in order to turn S1.Chapters 19 and beyond into canon; whether this event unfolded or not, also determines the futures of each split-off timeline of the MLQC multiverse. The 2020 Anime adaptation and the game were no exception. To prevent The Black Queen from merging with The Heroine’s body to reset the "Groundhog Day" Loop, The Heroine asks Victor to kill her off with his hands, and in his arms. Victor, in tears, promises to find her, no matter where she is. This moment alone has occurred for uncountable rounds in Victor’s life.
• Messianic Archetype: Victor and The Heroine as a joint unit. Their fates of being entangled together through the evolution experiments caused by The Black Swan Organization have forced them to make decisions of taking up sacrifices through the many figurative and literal “deaths, and resurrections” to bring forth a brand new world.
  • The Heroine needs to go through death by the hands of Victor in order to receive the chance to come back and continue the main story’s timeline.
  • Victor must take up his calling as the chosen Guardian of the Multiverse and proceed to Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence in order to perform the proper Second Coming The Heroine needs to take out The Black Queen.
• My Future Self and Me: The central plot of Season 1 is the struggle between the present Heroine and the worst outcome of her future self.
• Only One Me Allowed Right Now: Post Chapter 25 timeline merge results with the present (White Queen) and future (Black Queen) selves of The Heroine being physically present in the same timeline for an excess amount of time, and triggered The Apocalypse. This leads to the two heroines in need to face off and eliminate either one of themselves to determine the fate of their universe before the end time strikes.
• Power Incontinence: Hades’ faction of The Black Swan Organization conducts an at least citywide mass Evolver awakening project by first identifying their “Queen” Evolver, then using their technologies to obtrude her powers around Loveland City. All Evolvers within the region will find their powers go berserk; including Gavin's wind powers cranking up to hurricane level, Kiro’s fans stirring citywide Groupie Brigade riots prompting him to retire from the entertainment industry, and Victor absorbed into time space.
• A Protagonist Shall Lead Them: The routes of Gavin and Kiro; of which their stories also serve as Foils to each other.
  • Unlike The Heroine, Victor, and Lucien who can shake up and change the greater scope of their universe, Gavin and Kiro can only put up, survive, and make good with whatever their universe throws at them. Gavin needs and wants to live up the life of an Evolver, but had trouble receiving EVOL powers, and even had a rough time keeping it. While Kiro attempted to run away, and hide his identity as an Evolver, but can not. The actions from the parties they affiliate with greatly affects their own decisions and actions, but all forms of action will resort to them pushing themselves up to lead their respective affiliations in order to bring the politics of their society to a stable, harmonious state.
  • By the conclusion of Season 1, Gavin successfully took over the STF as their commander. Kiro on the other hand ends up unresolved. Kiro originally attempts to work up the ladder to either dissolve, or take over The Black Swan Organization, but the events post Chapter 25 resulted in The Black Queen inviting herself into this timeline and taking control of the organization; which means Kiro, as BS member Helios, needs to take her on. But with The Heroine stepping up to the plate to face The Black Queen herself, along with Victor reversing plot points with his powers, Helios was cleared from facing The Black Queen, and only needed to get rid of Anole to fix one of the problems for the organization.
• Ret-Gone: The Infinite Future arc (Season 1, Chapters 20-24) takes place in the parallel shadow timeline where that timeline’s Heroine disappeared from her world and all people who should know about her existence has never met her. Therefore, all of her love interests and colleagues see The Heroine, who was transported to this shadow timeline from another timeline, as a total stranger. All except Shaw. (See trope in Main Story's General folder.)
• Right Hand Versus Left Hand: The routes of Lucien and Kiro bring light to the hidden struggles and competitions between factions of the Black Swan Organization.
  • Ares vs. Hades: The entire first half of S1 boils down to the competitions between the factions of Ares and Hades. Both Ares and Hades are their organization’s scientific leaders on a mission to research and experiment with matters regarding the EVOL gene and how to bring the entire human species to enter the next step of evolution. Both leaders have their eyes set on The Heroine to question whether she is “The Queen” Evolver or not. Hades’ thesis is a forced approach by using The Queen’s Evol powers to force awake humans into Evolvers, while Ares on the other hand, attempts on a passive, safer, and humane approach by befriending The Queen to guide her in making decisions that would bring humanity to a productive evolution. Hades’ faction is noted to steal resources from Ares’ lab to push their force awakening project to fruition. Though Hades is aware of Ares’ thesis on appearance, he does not know the full scale and motive behind Ares’ project.

• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: In every S1 "Groundhog Day" Loop, Victor’s route is to try everything in his power to break the loop by himself, but it’ll all eventually leads to The Heroine’s decision as to whether she would ask him to sacrifice her or not. If she doesn’t, the loop cannot be breached. If she does, it’s on Victor to perform the act in the right setup ( his collaboration plannings with TAB officer Zero), on the precise millisecond, holding the right MacGuffins, and by the full maturity of his Time Master power.
• Time Travel: Victor’s route. Upon finding himself 10 years in the future after his powers went haywire, Victor traced all whereabouts of his friends and family within the city to find The Heroine missing, and forgotten by all who had relations with her. Victor then tracked his future self down to find the terrifying revelation of himself heartbroken by stabbing The Heroine to death. But this journey is only the beginning for Victor.
• Time Travel Escape:
  • For this S1 timeline, Victor succeeds in breaking The Black Queen’s "Groundhog Day" Loop on the precise millisecond the moment his Mercy Kill executed to allow The Heroine to land on the space loophole pathway leading towards their timeline’s parallel shadow timeline; making Chapters 19 and beyond canon.
  • As to how The Heroine is transported back to her S1 timeline after she escaped the "Groundhog Day" Loop, it was by the work of Helios’ faction combined with Hypnos’ decision. Revealed in Kiro’s Rumors & Secrets, by using their hacker abilities and computing resources, Helios leads his team to calculate, and track which dimension their queen (heroine) is on. In Chapter 24-10, Hypnos triggered The Heroine’s Black Cabin key to send her up to The Black Cabin, once that’s done, Helios uses his Black Cabin key to open their timeline portal up so that the heroine can descend back smoothly.
• Unwitting Test Subject: The Heroine is the central target of two agents from The Black Swan Organization—Ares and Hades. Their common mission is to first identify, and confirm The Heroine to be their "Queen" Evolver, then use her EVOL powers to trigger some form of mass human evolution by bringing all humans to become Evolvers. Once her identification is out of the way, they go on to two separate roads of experimentations at the same time for competition:
  • Hades uses Ares' neuroscientific-related resources to first, conduct at least a city-wide project to crank up the powers of existing Evolvers up to eleven and resulted in Loveland City's Power Incontinence event. Then, his next major project was to bring Muggle humans into a dream-state to force trigger their EVOL genes to awaken them into Evolvers.
  • Ares' project, on the other hand, is to befriend The Queen to guide, and or influence her in order to make her take action, any form of action, to trigger humanity to evolve. One of his early test results created The Black Queen, which was the most negative outcome he came to note. As The Black Queen continues to wreak havoc through multiple rounds of Chapters 1-18, he works on encouraging The Heroine to take more positive actions with positive mindsets in hopes to awake "The White Queen" to stop The Black Queen.
• Yin-Yang Clash: Player Character Heroine evolves into The White Queen with the power of evolution, while her negative self—The Black Queen manifests the power of devolution. As The White Queen evolves stronger in power, The Black Queen evolves alongside her. When her two selves clash, the apocalypse will be triggered. By then, it’s up to who’s side has the stronger will, and determined allies to conquer their universe.

Game: Season Two

• Action Prologue:
  • The chapter segments between the transition from S1.C37 to S2.C1 tells the story of the Heroine waking up in a lab with her dad by her side—wearing a Black Swan pin, realizing her universe has been reverted back 17 years and located right in the Invasion of the Baby Snatchers event. She wasted no time sneaking out of the lab while her dad is away to find her four love interests: Victor—to help him take the group of kids he’s leading to escape the facility. Kiro—to find him before Black Swan staff gets to him for further experimentation, and place him into the hands of Key senior. Lucien—under the tree they’ve met in the past timeline to introduce herself to him. And Gavin—to encourage him to be strong and survive while he was taken into the facility to be examined by the request of Gavin’s father.
  • Karma dates from ER Karma Series—“Walk With You,” reveals stories on how the Heroine reshapes her encounters with each love interest between the 17 years leading up to the beginning of the main S2 story plot.
• Accentuate the Negative:
  • Season 2 Chapter 10: Victor and The Heroine joint-set the media, and by extent, the public up to nail Victor with a Hated by All label by having The Heroine publicly accuse Victor as a shrewd businessman for making his company buy down all medical industries for his own profits, and have his clients, including The Heroine's company to hide drugs relating to illegal Evolver-enhancing steroids; with LFG declining for comments, all the while their CEO Victor stood steadfast and proud for his business moves. This act is done for several reasons: 1) To clear The Heroine's name for secretly investigating the drugs in name of the Black Swan Organization, 2) to avoid their Black Swan memberships being busted, 3) The Heroine can free herself up to dig on multiple cases further; particularly the links between the Deadly Game events mentioned in trope below with the drugs, and The Grey Rhino Organization, 4) to cut medicine manufacturers from investing the production of the problematic drug so that the drugs can not be provided to the Deadly Game events, and lastly, by giving his employees a jerk of an event to test their trusts, prides, and loyalties for his company, Victor can use this opportunity to give his company a major human resource adjustment to upgrade his company.
• Atlantis: One of the central mysteries that is just touched upon in this part of the story. There are a number of gateways coded as “Lighthouses” leading to properties from a certain lost civilization and is currently set as a series of Macguffin locations. As of Chapter 17, The Gray Rhino Organization is actively seeking all Lighthouses, The New Weapon Project attempts to hold on to one Lighthouse for their own research, and The Black Swan Organization is on the investigation aspect questioning as to what exactly is these properties that make the Gray Rhino so desperate to seek it.
• Badass in Distress: Victor did not participate in the finale of the Deadly Game because he just so happened to be illegally detained by The New Weapon Project days before the game launch.
• Cosmic Retcon: The White Queen’s decision and method to save her Season 1 universe from the apocalypse. See this section’s Action Prologue, Saved by Canon, Wistful Amnesia, and the General section’s Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory to piece plot elements together.
• Deadly Game: One of the central events that is unfolding in Season 2, where The Gray Rhino Organization is, as of development, the central planner of a game show by picking up random Evolvers, without their consent, from their bucket list and throw them into different game zones located around the globe for either a battle royale, or a form of target chase by hunting down named Evolvers as targets. In battle royale, when a player successfully gathers a certain amount of points from defeating opponents, either by just knocking them unconscious or straight out killing them, the player is allowed to live until their next “call back” to the game. In target chase, if the target survives for a time period, or successfully escapes out of the game zone, that target Evolver is allowed to live until their next call back to the game. If the hunting side successfully kills off the target, that hunter can live until their next call back to the game. If participants attempt to leak details regarding the game to the public, that participant will be killed off. The main cast is not exempt from this situation. As of S2.C12:
  • Lucien entered twice, the first time was a battle royale format, where he survived by the luck of holding onto a gravity-based EVOL power from a boy he saved prior to entering the game. The second time was with The Heroine, where the two unknowingly stumbled into a game zone and were labeled as targets.
  • To investigate this case in the name of Black Swan, Victor secretly participated in the game as a spectator/bidder. Prior to him being aware of the game’s existence, he was a named target for one of the games and survived.
  • The Heroine entered thrice, the first time was a battle royale, but Kiro, who has not been called in to enter the game as of that time yet, tracked her location down and jumped in to take her place by taking over her GPS tracker with his hack abilities, and have his friend Liu, a teleport Evolver, to transport her out of the game zone. The second time was with Lucien as targets, and the third time she entered as a bidder all the while sneaked herself within a game zone with the help of Helios’ techs to further investigate multiple cases; including the masterminds behind this worldwide deadly game.
  • Shaw entered twice, on his second game, he bumped into the heroine while she’s on her third game zone ground explained above.
  • Chapters 14-16: The entire city of Loveland became the battleground for the finale of the deadly game. This time around, the gameplay is of Tag format. A selected small population who are assigned to “It” will remain Its, the people they touch that are not Its will disappear from the city, and will gain game points and HP for each tag. Non-It players need to search for “stamina gas” to fuel their HP and kill off Its to gain game points, while Its needs to either get gas or keep tagging people to fuel their HP. If players do not fuel their HPs in time, they will disappear from the city. Anyone who disappeared from the main city is transported into the underground area of the city’s satellite island for a separate deadly game to fight for survival under limited oxygen. Of the six in the main cast, Victor was the only one who did not participate in this part of the game.
• His Story Repeats Itself: Mainly triggered by The Heroine’s , and by chain effect, Victor’s actions. Due to The Heroine being pretty much the only person on her timeline with Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory, she gets to change her interactions with each of her love interests in their key moments to change the course of her universe. But The Heroine learned the hard way there are relation problems where she can’t turn course easily and needed to face them head on.
  • The Heroine was caught off guard with her relationship with Lucien, as he ends up covering up his work for The New Weapon Project and made her his secret research target yet again, this time outright (in biological correctness sense,) kills her off for real; she does not take it well, and became extreeeeeemely upset upon their relationship revelation on S2.C20— R.I.P. Lucien’s car tires. See S2.Chapters 13 & 14’s "Groundhog Day" Loop incident under Main Story’s General folder for details. When the time came for her to meet him post break-up, The Heroine gave herself a good chunk of self-introspection and tried her best to apologize and patch-up with him to the most fitting of their positions.
  • For Victor’s route, S2 Timeline Victor went on a separate adventure messing around with timelines behind The Heroine’s back for some time prior to C25, and got the red card by the end of S2.C25 for saving his own life for the sake of The Heroine; Victor eventually held a talk with the TAB on C26.
• Hotter and Sexier:
  • Season 2 Heroine ditched her former default S1 “innocent girl” outfit style for the more strong, and mature woman’s fashion.
  • As The Heroine matures up for Season 2, the storyline, along with Karma dates will gradually push the boundaries to sultry mature relationships as they roll out.
• Our Hero Is Dead: S2.C13 ends with The Heroine being shot to death, and vanished from existence in front of Lucien. But in the following chapter, The Heroine was found resurrected at the same location where she first met up with Lucien during the day; to which Lucien figured it might have something to do with The Heroine’s EVOL genetics.
• Saved by Canon: To save her world from S1’s apocalypse, The White Queen rewinds her world backward by 17 years, granting all lives that were lost between the 17-year period in S1 a new chance to relive a new life. This includes The Heroine’s father, Hades, Anole, and Leto.
• Soap Opera Disease: An ongoing investigation The Heroine has been tracing based on the links between the Deadly Game, and the chemicals The Gray Rhino Organization has been feeding the players during the deadly games. As of S2.C16, The Heroine denotes that an Evolver’s over-usage of power while being exposed to those certain chemicals might deteriorate the health and or power quality of an Evolver.
  • The Heroine caught signs that Kiro / Helios is having hearing problems, while unbeknownst to her, Gavin is physically Fading Away.
  • S2.C31 confirmed Victor’s In-Universe identity went Ret-Gone after using Time Rewind; with The Heroine unable to recognize him for the first few minutes since his power usage. The Heroine was one of the lucky ones to recover from memory loss. As of C37, Victor’s loss of identity/existence from the public takes effect on the scale where The Heroine, Goldman, and the Black Swan Twelve were confirmed be the only few who still recognize him.
• Sword of Plot Advancement: S2.C26 introduces a batch of black cubes left behind from the Deadly Game that can grant normal humans random EVOL powers. In which prompted Victor to “fire” The Heroine from her Black Swan identity in order for her to freely investigate, and gather informations on these items.
• Wistful Amnesia: Season 2 of the game starts from the point where The Heroine warped her timeline by rewinding the universe she settled in back to when she was 5 years of age, and in the middle of the Invasion of the Baby Snatchers event. All living beings, including the love interests, rewinded back to where they were 17 years prior to Season 1’s setting to relive their lives again. All love interests, however, felt a great degree of "oddness" as they grow up, and knew they have to find the identity of “someone” (The Heroine) to unlock their sense of confusion.

Spin-Offs

Special Events

• Classical Mythology: CN server July 2021 released a Karma series named the “Oracle;” which is MLQC’s play on Greek/Roman mythology. Gavin is a Warrior Prince demigod, Kiro is the god of day/life, Helios is the god of night/death, Lucien is the god of the sea in a similar position as Poseidon, while Victor is the ruler of the underworld in the position of Hades.
• Fairy Tale: MLQC’s take for their 2020 Halloween Karma series, named “Wonderland After Dark.” Lucien is “Prince Snow White”, Kiro is “Prince Rapunzel,” Gavin is The Wolf from Little Red Riding Hood, while Victor is The Beast from Beauty and the Beast.
• Multiple Game Openings: Or rather, “Different Love Stories.” With each set of limited monthly-released special event Karmas, The Heroine is assigned to different roles and positions as each Karma Date is a different romance tale with her love interest. As of this writing, the only spin-off featuring the full cast together in one universe with The Heroine in one fixated position is "The Westmoon Kingdom."
• No More Emperors: The 2019 "If Time Flows Back" Chinese Valentine's Day event takes place between 1920's to 1930's Loveland City.
• Wuxia: "The Westmoon Kingdom Series" and "Indigo Night Vista" events are based within Chinese high fantasy worlds. The "Indigo Night Vista" in particular holds elements based on Chinese Mythology.

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