YMMV / Brynhildr in the Darkness

• Alas, Poor Scrappy: Many fans were not happy with Kazumi, especially considering her flanderization. Still, her Heroic Sacrifice in chapter 179 has left the fanbase completely teary-eyed.
• Awesome Music:
  • The anime's first opening theme, "BRYNHILDR IN THE DARKNESS -Ver. EJECTED-" combines a haunting soprano voice and symphony with techno elements, complimenting the mixture of technology, magic, and German myth referenced in the story itself.
  • The second opening "Virtue and Vice" might be unfitting and the vocals are weird, but it's an awesome song in its own right. And did we mention that it was performed by Fear, and Loathing in Las Vegas?
• Base-Breaking Character: Kazumi. While some fans like her straightforwardness and Shameless Fanservice Girl attitude with Murakami, others find her Jerkass and Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male tendencies to be unpleasant. Her tendency to molest the other female characters (even after being begged to stop by a then-immobile Kana in one such situation), as well as her character derailment into a one-note character only interested in sleeping with Ryouta, doesn't help.
• Breather Boss: Rin, Rurumi and Misaki appear directly after Valkyria, but since the three of them are only A and B-ranked mages, they are actually worse than the previous assassins. This is later subverted when Rurumi's Drasil hatches.
• Broken Base: Which opening is better?
• Complete Monster: Loki is a member from an ancient and extinct alien race that created humans as food—and is strongly implied to have caused the extinction of said race. Faking unconsciousness for thousands of years, Loki waits until he is "awakened" to fulfill the plans of Takachiho, leader of Vingulf, before starting a massacre, devouring every human in his way and taking a human form, enjoying the horror that he induces in his victims. After fulfilling his goal of eating a Valkyria class Magician to recover his complete form, his first action is swallowing an entire city with the intention of doing the same to the entire human race.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Kogorou. He seems almost universally well-received by the fandom, who consider him badass, Crazy, and attractive. It also helps that he's actively helping Ryouta as much as possible, rather than being a total Jerkass who's only interested in himself.
  • Takaya, especially after allying with the heroes. He's a total Badass Normal, is a great Bash Brother to Ryouta, and his relationship with Hatsuna is both heartwarming and hilarious (when it doesn't get into more creepy territories).
• Fridge Horror:
  • In episode 2, Kanade, a minor character, is recaptured by Vingulf and is taken back to their facility. Remember the second girl in the van with her, who the former says was just a normal girl? Considering what Kuroha told Ryouta about the organization murdering people who find out about witches, it's very likely that girl was killed shortly after Kanade was ejected.
  • Remember that guy Nanami turned into an adult 5 year-old because he was annoying? Yep, he's probably still calling for his mom in a mental institute.
  • Hexenjagd warns Ryouta about the Drasil hatching at any given time, and that it would be a horrible fate for the girl it hatches from, hence why they felt it was better to just kill Neko and the others at the observatory. They weren't bluffing about it either, as a witch suffers this exact fate in chapter 110, specifically Rurumi, one of the witches assigned to kill Kurofuku after he somehow managed to survive his assassination by Vingulf. A horrific looking beast emerges from her harnest, and then devours the now dead girl's body.
  • Machina's explanation of Vingulf's motivations is filled with this. As if wiping out all life on Earth wasn't horrific enough, the fact that Vingulf, as a whole, and he, in particular believes, wholeheartedly, that Sorcerians are completely immune to Granii's effects, despite the fact that Vingulf's founder discovered alien corpses in a "manmade" artificial construct which is evidence that begs to differ. In addition, the self-proclaimed "Adam" is piss-poor father material, a Domestic Abuser at best, a murderous thug prone to Offing the Offspring, at worst. And he calls ''humanity'' a failure. Not to mention that the "Eve" is merely a host to an alien parasite that could hatch at any time, with little to no warning, and, is dependent on a "medicine" that Machina has shown neither the ability nor the knowledge to produce or procure, and those that do would all be dead if Vingulf's plan succeeds.
  • Chapter 163 reveals that "witches" are girls that Vingulf has reconstructed from the corpses of young girls. This means that every single one of the children kidnapped on behalf of Vingulf is long dead, and an impostor, programmed with her memories is walking around, completely unaware in her place. Worse, those girls are all undergoing horrifically abusive "experiments" purely for the sake of "slaying the gods" which may well mean the end of all life on earth. By extent, Ryouta also is this since he too got reconstructed.
• Hollywood Pudgy: Several characters (notably Kazumi) comment on Kotori's weight and her very sugary diet. Of course there are two sandbags that make her heavy, but despite eating quite a lot, she isn't fat by any means. Kotori's character card mentions that she has not much fat and she would be nothing more than a snack.
• Magnificent Bastard: Chisato Ichijiku is the director of the experiments performed by a mysterious organization known as Vingulf and the man responsible for the events in the first half of the manga. Initially appears as an apathetic person in his teenage years, Chisato is heartbroken after his sister's death and tries his best to revive her, even joining Vingulf to do so, and participates in their unethical experiments. He even implants a parasite capable of annihilating the human race in one of Vingulf's subjects, "1107", in order to revive his sister. Despite his seemingly failed attempts at bringing subject 1107 to Vingulf's higher ups, he manages to do so after persuading a Valkyria class witch, Mako Fujisaki, to capture the escaped test subject and raids the hero's hideout along with her. Encountering the soul of his sister in the final moments of 1107 after she got ejected, Chisato finally regains his humanity and spends his last moments protecting Mako from harm.
• Moe: A staple of Lynn Okamoto. He usually combines moe and gore elements together, which is pretty effective.
  • Neko's various antics makes her both, funny and cute.
  • Hatsuna's moe-level sky-rockets after doing "Moe Moe Kyun" twice in chapter 116. Not to mention that is moe In-Universe.
  • Kana's smile in chapter 144 is both unexpected and too moe to withstand.
• Moral Event Horizon: While many of the characters do absolutely despicable things, most of them tend to have good reason. Vingulf's agents and witches are motivated by threats to their own lives. Valkyria was Driven to Madness. Ichijiku was ultimately trying to revive his sister, and understand the truth about life and death (why a corpse, even if all the parts are intact can't be revived). Machina has no such excuse or motivation. While his killing of the US president can be excused, in universe, as protecting the Masquerade, the fact that he immediately, of his own volition, teleports to Kuroha, breaks her arm when she, out of fear for her well being, refuses to go with him, decapitates Ryota when the latter simply asks "Why" and attacks Kana with deadly force, bisecting Mina in the process simply for showing up at the scene is a series of actions that he can not come back from, not that he even wants to.
• Narm:
  • The anime likes to use a lot of conveniently-placed Censor Steams or strategically-positioned pieces of environment (like a log for Shino's death) in order to censor the gorier parts, likely due to the infamously traumatizing Elfen Lied preceding it (which is made by the same author and anime studio). Unfortunately, the censorship can take a lot of the intensity away from otherwise deadly-serious scenes. Fortunately, there is the uncensored blu-ray version.
  • "I want to eat donuts… I want to eat donuts…" Said by a melting Kotori just after Ryōta had to make the heart-wrenching decision to eject her… You can guess what the author was trying to do, but… it doesn't quite work and it's hard to keep a straight face.
  • During the hospital arc, the security guard charging up his attack gets eaten while he's just standing there going "not yet... Not YET!" It's a very serious situation, but it's hard to suppress a chuckle at the obvious parody of Shonen Jump protagonists.
• Player Punch: The fanbase has taken Mina's permanent death hard. The fans will not be happy until Machina dies gruesomely, preferably screaming... which finally happens in chapter 157, and it was both sweet and wonderfully karmic.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: The last part of the first opening is reminiscent of the X-Men: The Animated Series cartoon's theme.
• The Scrappy:
  • Takaya, whose treatment of Hatsuna goes far past comedic territory into genuine creepiness.
  • Machina has happily thrown himself onto the scrap heap as well for his actions in chapter 152, 153, and 154. While there have been no complaints regarding his killing of the US president, the completely needless murder of Mina, and his utterly horrific I Have You Now, My Pretty treatment of Kuroha taken up to eleven has got the vast majority of the fanbase screaming for his blood, and they don't care who does it or how.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The reaction of multiple viewers to the removal of the Skadi Arc in the anime and the resultant changes to the Valkyria Arc.