YMMV / The Familiar of Zero

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Is Saito an exaggerated form of an Extreme Doormat that takes Louise's abuse because he loves her or is he a masochist that likes it? The author himself doesn't believe either. That said, it was semi-confirmed in Volume 8 when he had a dream of Tabitha abusing him.
• Base-Breaking Character: Louise and Saito both qualify, depending on who you ask. Louise has the Domestic Abuse angle and Saito gets the Wish-Fulfillment angle that Light Novel heroes often get.
• Designated Hero:
  • Louise herself. She abuses Saito and treats him like dirt for the slightest to stupidest reasons non-stop to the point where she may as well punish him for breathing. She is rude, obnoxious and unpleasant to other females usually out of jealousy and arrogance, and she is never punished for her actions. Yet, we're still expected to root for her for some reason.
  • Saito also counts after his attempted rape of Louise because of all the factors which insist that it's not really his fault such as Louise sending mixed signals or his familiar runes influencing his actions.
• Die for Our Ship:
  • Siesta treats Saito much better than Louise, but is loathed by some of the fandom for that. Part of the reason is flanderization in the anime.
  • Louise suffers from the people who prefer Siesta, Kirche, Henrietta, Tiffania, or Tabitha, or just about anyone else over her. Louise isn't popular among the fans of the others in the female cast.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Fanfics tend to do this a lot for any number of characters in the series. Kirche tends to get her Character Development moved forward so that she starts the series as, say, Vitriolic Best Buds with Louise rather than a mere Alpha Bitch.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: Saito and Louise become lovers in the end, even though the latter spends a large portion of the series abusing the former.
• Fandom-Specific Plot:
  • The amount of Crossover stories where Louise summons someone else instead of Saito is mind-boggling, making up the overwhelming majority of fanfics for the series. It could even be argued that such works helped contribute to the rise of isekai stories where protagonists are forcibly summoned to a fantasy world that would come to populate the website Shousetsuka ni Narou (which originally allowed fanfiction, but would later ban it in 2012 to encourage posting original works) in the years afterwards.
  • Another popular setup for crossover fics has Louise manage to summon herself to the other universe (usually seen by herself In-Universe as an Epic Fail of unheard-of levels), usually followed by her getting massive Character Development and Took a Level in Badass. Whether she makes it back home or not varies.
  • Additionally, Siesta's ancestors are usually changed to be from wherever Louise's familiar is from.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Pope Vittorio Serevare St. Aegis of Romalia is not well-liked on SpaceBattles.com, where the prevailing nickname for him is "Pope McDongcopter" due to his questionable actions and manipulations.
  • "Titania" for Tiffania. Bonus points for Stealth Pun.
  • Melon-chan for Tiffania and Lemon-chan for Louise.
• Fanwork-Only Fans: Thanks to the various criticisms levied towards the characters and plot, it's not uncommon to see fans that have only read/watched a little bit of the source material before quickly switching to the myriad of crossover fics.
• Genius Bonus: If you can read runes, you can identify Saito as Gandálfr long before Colbert.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The ending of the first season can as such, if you know that Saito's Japanese VA is the dub voice of Oliver Queen: Saito almost got killed by a Rain of Arrows.
• Just Here for Godzilla: There are a lot of people who watch this anime just for Kirche, Siesta, or Tiffania.
• Moe:
  • Tabitha; to quote someone from animeblogger:
    "Tabitha has taken over Siesta as my favorite character, and not just because she is channeling Yuki. She is made of pure win, I don't usually like the stoic silent types, but something about Tabitha just makes my inner moe meter go berserk."
  • Louise counts when she's in dere-dere mode. When she is in tsun-tsun mode, on the other hand...
• Never Live It Down:
  • There are fans that lost sympathy for Louise after the first time she whipped/exploded Saito... or the Nth time afterward.
  • Some fans think Saito became an irredeemable creep after his attempted rape of Louise.
• Older Than They Think: Tabitha owes a lot to Rei (from Evangelion). So at first glance her mother's story looks like a tie-in to Rei's Red Oni counterpart. Actually the reason for her mother's madness is directly taken from Princess Kushana's story in Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind manga (which is also where Eva adapted it from).
• One True Threesome: Among those who don’t hate Louise with a passion, Louise/Saito/Siesta is a popular pairing, because Louise and Siesta balance each other out. This was teased a little in the 12th volume, where Louise says she would be disappointed if Siesta gave up on winning Saito so easily.
• Questionable Casting:
  • The European Spanish dub was made with amateur voice actors, something that was highly controversial. The fact that said voice actors also did the critically panned 2013 redubbing of Elfen Lied didn't help.
  • The English dub of Season 1 featured a mostly Amateur Cast with poor direction, despite industry veteran Tony Oliver helming, which most likely played a part in why the other seasons were subbed only.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • For many, this happened to Louise after she gave up her nobility to save Tabitha, and went uphill from there.
  • Louise's scrappiness is often watered down or removed entirely in fanfiction. It was done first by The Hill of Swords and then by about a good number of all ZnT fanfics that came after it. In most cases, it's due to her having to deal with a character that isn't a lecherous doormat and stands up to her, so her violent tsundere behavior won't fly and she lacks the motivation to act that way.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: The familiars of the void from past generations (Vindálfr, Mjöðvitnir and Lífþrasir) were never shown except for the first gandalfs sasha.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • The series as a whole often comes under fire for squandering a terrific premise, mostly due to the focus being on the harem antics centered on a boring Ordinary High-School Student everyguy and his violently abusive and generally unlikable main girlfriend. All the things people like about it are just the window dressing.
  • Aside from the main plot, the setup of the world itself could have worked well without the isekai angle. It's a fantasy Europe on the verge of full continental warfare, orchestrated by a mad king who wants the world to burn so he can feel something. Lurking in the background are the questions of the nature of Void magic and its abrupt reappearance and the distant threat of the legendary and reclusive elves. This could easily have been a grand war epic or intrigue without the harem overwriting it.
  • The anime works at a conversion ratio of three to four volumes per twelve episodes. Due to this, at least two thirds of the source material have been outright omitted, and the rest truncated or chopped up. The manga and novels aren't immune to this criticism, either.
  • An important element of the series that set up its premise was that each magician character had their own familiar. Except for the class of Louise and the familiars of the void, the ones of characters such as the Princess Henrietta, Professor Colbert, Louise's sisters, and other nobles are never revealed.
  • The interesting history of Tiffania's parents is never revealed in full. What is known is that an elf escaped from her home until she reached Albion, and a member of royalty (the uncle of Henrietta and Wales, and therefore a descendant of the founder Brimir) fell in love with her.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: Louise's constant abuse of Saito ended up making this series very hard to enjoy for most people, with most of the other characters being annoying and unlikable. And the characters that are likable take a level in jerkass as the story progresses.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Louise, unsurprisingly. We're supposed to sympathize with her because of her enormous insecurity complex, her miserable school life, an abusive older sister, and emotionally distant and incredibly strict parents who are more interested in their daughter as an asset than as a person. Not to mention that being a noblewoman of minimal magical talent makes her a complete laughingstock due to the norms of Halkeginia society. So while Louise has plenty reasons for the audience to side with her, she still drives off many supporters due to her infamously brutal and non-stop abuse of Saito; which is not only horrible on a basic human level, but also makes her a blatant hypocrite given her home life. As a result, she comes across as an outright bully, rather than a Jerk with a Heart of Gold the story expects us to view her as. While this is eventually addressed in Volume 11 of the light novels, in the anime adaptation, this behavior not only goes unexamined, but is amplified.
• Values Dissonance:
  • While it's meant to be funny, Saito's abuse and overall treatment is horrifying to modern audiences, especially because the other Familiars are not treated nearly as badly as he is. However, Louise is not acting different from what nobles did during Ancient Rome and European Middle Ages. At one point killing a commoner (not to mention beating them up if they displeased you) was not a crime at all (that usually didn't apply to townsfolk, who were under protection of law to the extent that you had to have a valid reason to kill them).
  • In a completely different but similarly controversial light, one has to wonder if the series would be successful at all if Louise's and Saito's genders were reversed.
• Wangst: The author tries to justify Louise's abuse by showing her poor self-esteem, but most people don't see that as a good excuse to beat someone.
• The Woobie:
  • Saito, because of the abuse heaped upon him by Louise. Hell, even the other familiars feel sorry for Saito, and see his treatment as both a familiar and a human as horrible. Unfortunately, he can also be callous and cruel in his own right in response to his treatment, which can kill any sympathy for him.
  • Tabitha qualifies, once you learn of what happened to her parents and what her uncle does to her.
• Woolseyism:
  • The Mexican Spanish dub does this regarding the nicknames of many of the characters, who received more realistic-sounding nicknames compared with both the original Japanese and English ones, while keeping the meanings intact. Character-wise, Saito, while keeping his characterization from the Japanese version, also sounds like a stereotypical Mexico City teenager, without going overboard with it, and is capable of sounding more angry and freaked out in a somewhat more realistic way than in Japanese. Louise and the nobles, on the other hand, sound more mean and arrogant, possibly because that's how many Mexicans tend to depict people of higher social levels in Mexican media, especially in comedy.
  • The European Spanish dub, on the other hand, translated more or less everything literally, without reaching Too Long; Didn't Dub levels with mixed results.

---