YMMV / Power Academy

• Alternate Character Interpretation: Considering her very Moe behavior, it can be questioned whether Eve specifically modified Lightning's behavior to replicate her deceased daughter, or if Layla was just always very cutesy, cheerful and energetic. The latter even has a Heroic BSoD when considering the former possibility.
  • Is Alexei an unsympathetic would-be tyrant who's just as bad as the people he fights? Or is he still a genuine hero, albeit one who uses extreme methods?
    • Furthermore, does he make a better job of running the Academy than James?
• Crazy Is Cool: Gill wouldn't be nearly as awesome if he didn't have such profound tendencies for improvisation.
  • Talan and Lightning are Awesome in the form of a cute couple.
• Evil Is Cool: Especially with Affably Evil in full play for many of the villain characters. Swilium, Alexei and Selene border on Draco in Leather Pants at times.
• Ho Yay: Plenty of both the male and female varieties to go around.
• Moe: Invoked in-universe. In one party conversation, Val jokes that she, Layla, Sam, and Dawn qualify as this.
  • Tala could also qualify at times, considering her vulnerable moments around her close friends.
• Moral Event Horizon: If he hadn't already crossed it before, Jonathan's Moral Event Horizon came when he ordered his guards to imprison Sam and use him as a test subject.
  • There are many points where Vilhelm may have crossed it...
    • Trying to repurpose Blaze, Hydro and Lightning as super-soldiers against their will.
    • Attempting to convert Dr. Ulrich into one of his cyborg lieutenants, ending with her suicide.
    • Offering to "modify" people who misbehave in his class.
    • Going on a mass-abduction spree, butchering and experimenting on innocent people to create his cyborg army.
  • When they were still together, Eris once dared Talan to wear a dress for her in private. She crossed the line when she took pictures and posted them on the Internet for all to see, driving Talan to deep depression. Upon learning this, Layla vowed to make her pay.
  • For Jane, she drugged and raped James to have his child, only to isolate herself from him and later tell him that Jackson was stillborn. She believes she has long since crossed the horizon, though she is trying to redeem herself through her work.
  • The many times where the Arbiter kills people, though he tries to justify it all for the greater good.
  • Terminus casually wiping out a small town with a wave of her hand.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Everything about Vilhelm. His plans for immortality boil down to cybernetic butchery, turning people into cyborgs in an attempt to prolong the inevitable.
    • His cybernetic minions. They are half-organic, half-synthetic monstrosities not unlike Husks, assembled as if by someone with only a rudimentary understanding of human anatomy.
  • Snare, the cyborg spider—as the arachnophobic Valerie discovers. It's only in appearance, though, as Snare turns out to be quite mild-mannered.
  • The goal of the Shadow Court? In Warpen's words, to "destroy cities in mass sacrifices to unlock one of the thousand gates that block the daemon lord." It is seen first-hand in the Battle Re-Enactment Room, where Wardson destroys nearly an entire city.
  • In the past, Gill's leg is gruesomely hacked off from the knee below with his own shovel by Ezekiel.
  • Everything about the legend of Terminus...and the fact that she turns out to be real.
• Ugly Cute: Alderon's skeleton wolf familiar and Midori, Lily's pet venus flytrap.
• The Woobie: Long story short: most characters. For a detailed breakdown (no pun intended)...
  • Layla, upon her spoileriffic backstory being revealed.
  • Sam, especially with the horrors he's been through.
  • Dawn, thanks to being so painfully shy, as well as being the newbie of the team.
  • Iron Woobie: Val.
    • Alice certainly counts; though outwardly tough, she's clearly more vulnerable around her friends. She also lived in a hellish, irradiated wasteland with her family for most of her life.
    • Alexei (no pun intended). He has had multiple close brushes with death, and most of his family is dead; the latter is part of what drives him to his Knight Templar tendencies, making him double as a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds.
    • Tala, who was kidnapped at birth and raised by a supervillain family, was treated less like a person and more like an asset. Though outwardly harsh and belligerent around most people, she only shows her vulnerable side to Val, Alderon, and Talan.
    • Surprisingly, Talan qualifies, given the revelation about the incident Eris put him through.
    • As a Living Emotional Crutch for James, Lily provides a lot of emotional stability for him. She does, however, show signs of vulnerability after she talks about her past. Her mother was horrifically abusive, but it just ended up inspiring Lily to be the nurturing mother figure she never had.
  • Jerkass Woobie: Swilium, especially when he is shown breaking into tears.
    • Emily has trouble showing her pain, coming from (and being rejected by) the same project that created Lightning—hence her (albeit fleeting) resentment of Layla. She also mentions that she nearly drowned in a huge flood during a hurricane when she was 13, and it's only because of Magi that she's still alive.
  • Stoic Woobie: James, easily. Power Academy is his life's work, and he fears he will have nowhere to go if it fails—and it's already in danger of failing. It's not until he opens up to Lily that his inner turmoil is made apparent. His unpleasant past with Jane only increases the woobie factor. And now his life is on the line thanks to a Deal with the Devil he made to get the school built on time.