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  • Adorkable: Silver Crow is insecure, socially awkward and a very cute and endearing little guy.
  • Alternative Character Interpretation:
    • Noumi. Was he always a nice guy with a whimsical side before getting corrupted by Brain Burst, or is his new personality a result of brain damage when he loses Brain Burst?
    • Also, was he always bullied by his brother, starting his descend into Jerkass, or did he only get bullied only after he installed Brain Burst?
    • Kuroyukihime's parent, her older sister White Cosmos, refused to let Kuroyukhime join the same Legion or the Acceleration Research Society. Was this because she didn't trust Kuroyukihime to help her with her plans, because she thought Kuroyukihime would be more useful as a pawn than as a member of the legion, or because she may not have wanted Kuroyukihime to end up being caught up in her schemes?
  • Broken Base: Volume 6 of the manga skips over the vast majority of Volumes 3-4 of the novel (the second half of the first season of the anime), except for Chiyu becoming a Burst Linker, as Haruyuki recounts the events that happened when Kuroyukihime was away. Some people are furious that one of the most exciting parts of the series was glossed over in such a rushed manner, while others are glad that the manga is moving on to events that haven't been adapted into the anime yet.
  • Catharsis Factor: Episode 24/the end of Volume 4 has Noumi, who'd tormented Haru, Taku and Chiyu the entire arc, suffer a very humiliating defeat as a result of being betrayed by Chiyu, who helps Haru get his wings back. He then lies on the ground, begging for mercy in an attempt to avoid losing Brain Burst, just like what had happened to his older brother, before Haru finishes him off. As a bonus, Sugeno and Ishio, who'd wrongly accused Haru of planting the camera in the girls' shower room, are forced to swallow their pride and apologize to him.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse:
    • Ash Roller is by far one of the most popular secondary characters, with fans loving his boisterous hamminess and his gratuitous swearing.
    • Yuniko/Scarlet Rain is another fan-favorite due to being a little girl with psychotic bloodlust on the battlefield.
    • Graphite Edge, due to the possibility he could be Future Kirito.
  • Epileptic Trees:
    • A pretty popular theory among the fandom is that Kuroyukihime is Kirito and Asuna's daughter. This has repeatedly been debunked by the author, especially considering that Kuroyukihime came from an unhappy, loveless family. Although many fans are convinced Kirito must've been involved in the creation of Brain Burst somehow.
    • Fans have also begun to speculate that Graphite Edge is Kirito himself, considering he has even more similarities to him than even Kuroyukihime. This is heavily teased in the crossover Accel World VS Sword Art Online: Millennium Twilight, where Kirito notices several things about Graphite Edge that seem familiar like his swords, his dual wielding style, and how he's dressed in black. However Graphite Edge keeps insisting it's all coincidence. To top it all off his voice actor is credited only as "???" and has a heavily modulated voice, but closely listening to his voice it has a striking resemblance to Yoshitsugu Matsuoka (the voice actor for Kirito).
  • Fandom Rivalry: There's a relatively minor, but still significant one with Sword Art Online, due to both being written by Reki Kawahara. Accel World is usually considered to be better-written overall by fans, or that at least it's significantly better in the areas where SAO is considered most lacking. Namely, better main characters (especially the protagonist), more coherent plot, and less Otaku pandering (although this doesn't mean it doesn't have flaws in any of these areas). Plus, SAO is massively popular (albeit extremely divisive), while Accel World only has a niche audience, so it has a bit of an underdog appeal. Another important thing is that critics have given mixed reviews for the first light novels in the Accel World series. The fact that SAO is getting more support in the anime and merchandising areas doesn't help either.
  • Harsher in Hindsight: Haru's speech about how it's better for a game to be completed, even if it means the end for all the players, than to let it languish unfinished while fans lose interest and move on to other things takes on an ironic twist given that the anime's first season only adapts Volumes 1-4 and 10 of the light novel series, leaving almost 20 volumes worth of material un-adapted. Likewise, the manga only gets up to Volume 5, and unlike the anime, there is no chance of a second season.
  • Les Yay:
    • Kuroyukihime says that she used to be quite fond of her guardian, who's implied to be female, and Haru likens that to how he feels about her. Of course, it turns out that Kuroyukihime's guardian is actually her older sister.
    • Kuroyukihime and Megumi. It's implied that Megumi seems to have feelings for Kuroyukihime, and Kuroyukihime says Megumi's essentially her anchor in the real world.
    • Megumi has a similarly close bond with her parent, Saffron Blossom, to the point at which she would join up with the White Legion and become Kuroyukihime's enemy for a chance to see Saffron Blossom again.
    • Fuuko and Kuroyukihime:
      • They had a very close friendship before their estrangement, which gradually recovers over the course of Volume 5, and is kickstarted by Kuroyukihime calling out to Fuuko that she "needs" her. They're also quite familiar, with Fuuko calling Kuroyukihime "Sa-chan" and Kuroyukihime using Fuuko's first name without honorifics (by comparison, she uses "-kun" on Haruyuki, so she's a bit more formal with him).
      • When Fuuko sees Haru with Kuroyukihime, she gets jealous of Haru, and even manages to troll Kuroyukihime in the resulting scene, which indicates a level of closeness above and beyond most of Kuroyukihime's other friends.
      • There's also how Fuuko came to decide on her Child, since most people only have one attempt at giving someone else Brain burst (success or failure) and it can only be used on a "child" who shares a close bond with the "parent." She describes certain people in terms of how much she was compelled to make them her Child- Haru had a score of 100, Utai had a score of 200 and Rin/Ash Roller, Fuuko's actual child, had a score of 1,000. Fuuko then says that if Kuroyukihime hadn't already had Brain Burst installed by the time they met, she'd have scored 100,000 points.
    • Fuuko and Rin. While Rin is a distant second to Kuroyukihime in Fuuko's rankings, the two have a fairly close bond in real life, and Rin even calls the former "Master Fuuko." During the school festival, Fuuko chides Rin for getting closer to Haruyuki.
  • LGBT Fanbase: Chubby characters appeal to bara fans, so Haru has a fandom amongst gay people. It helps that he has a pig net avatarExplanation , which appeals to gay furries.
  • Magnificent Bastard:
    • White Cosmos is the King of Oscillatory Universe, the secret leader of the Acceleration Research Society and the older sister of Black Lotus. Aware that all previous Virtual Worlds were destroyed, Cosmos became determined to finish Brain Burst by all possible means, like leading the brutal murder of Saphron Blosson and lying to her pupils or manipulating her own sister to murder the Red King when he was trying to create a lasting peace, causing Lotus' exile in both real and virtual worlds. Years later, Cosmos summons the virtual ghosts of fallen Burst Linkers, leads experiments on living players and uses the Luminary to control powerful virtual beings to deal with the unbeatable Tezcatlipoca. When Tezcatlipoca is born, Cosmos immediately seizes control of him, thanks her enemies for their unwilling help for her plans and kidnaps Lotus' boyfriend while using the threat of Tezcatlipoca to blackmail him to be her spy, confusing Silver Crow with the contrast between her affable attitude and her atrocities.
    • "Black Vise" is the vice-chairman of the Acceleration Research Society. Actually Ivory Tower, one of the Seven Dwarves of Oscillatory Universe and the right-hand of White Cosmos, Vise uses his ability to change forms to maintain dual identities and run hidden experiments in the Accelerated World. Having participated on the brutal murder of Saphron Blossom in the past, Vise offered mercy to her boyfriend, who became the infamous Chrome Disaster out of grief. Fascinated at such power, Vise used and discarded other Burst Linkers such as Dusk Taker and the unwilling Wolfram Cerberus to create a second Chrome Disaster using the Negative Incarnation stored on the ISS Kits. When Nega Nebulus discovers links between the Society and the White Legion, Ivory Tower evacuates the Society members and participates on the defense of White Legion Territory, showing respect towards his enemies and being forced to expose his Black Vise form to save himself. When his secret identity is revealed to the other Kings, Vise sacrifices himself to trap them into a death loop after declaring his excitement at seeing that the impulsivity of Nega Nebulus could challenge his careful planning.
  • Memetic Mutation: "Being Taku is suffering."
  • Moral Event Horizon:
    • As if his bullying of Haruyuki wasn't enough for Araya, him trying to run Haruyuki and Kuroyukihime over with his car over getting him expelled put him way beyond the point of redemption.
    • Yellow Radio manipulates Cherry Rook into using the Armor of Catastrophe and becoming Chrome Disaster despite knowing first-hand what Chrome Disaster is capable of. As part of a gambit to take the head of the Red King, he then allows Chrome Disaster to run rampant and drive members of his own legion to total point loss so that Scarlet Rain will be blamed for Cherry's actions as a member of her legion.
    • White Cosmos crosses this by tricking her younger sister, Kuroyukihime, into thinking that Red Rider was plotting to put the other Kings at his mercy by establishing the nonaggression pact, thus causing Kuroyukihime to kill him.
  • Popular with Furries: Due to being a piglet, Haru's avatar form is this.
  • Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
    • Chiyu's Fake Defector gambit to help her friends defeat Noumi once and for all helped redeem her in the eyes of those who'd hated her from betraying Haru and Taku.
    • Haru, for some, used to be The Scrappy for being a whiny protagonist. Unlike a lot of whiny anime leads, he DOES grow out of it.
  • Ron the Death Eater: A lot of fans judge Kuroyukihime harshly for killing Red Rider, not considering that she suffers crippling guilt over doing so. Some fans who've only watched the anime don't realize that Kuroyukihime's own sister (who, as Kuroyukihime's parent, is someone she trusted implicitly) manipulated her into thinking that Red Rider was plotting something, and she only realized the truth too late.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Purple Thorn was the girlfriend of Red Rider, the King Black Lotus slew at the start of her rebellion. One would think that would paint an exceptionally big target on Silver Crow's back, as a possible means of seeking Revenge by Proxy. Of course, if Silver Crow hadn't cleansed the Armor of Catastrophe in time, she'd have the perfect pretext to go after him. Out of the five Kings besides the White King, Purple Thorn is by far the least trusting of Kuroyukihime, but puts up with her in order to fight their mutual enemy, the Acceleration Research Society.
  • Woolseyism: Sky Raker calls Silver Crow "Karasu-san," even though Duel Avatars' names are in English. While the dub of the anime goes for a literal translation of "Mr. Crow," the localization of the light novels and the manga has Raker call Haru "Corvus" instead.

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