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  • Alternative Character Interpretation: Keima gets a lot of this, specifically about just how much he cares for other people.
  • Anti-Climax Boss: The Omniscient Council of Vagueness that is Satyr is portrayed as an Ancient Conspiracy responsible for significant amounts of evil. Vintage serves as nothing but their Unwitting Pawn and Dokuro describes them as being nothing short of unstoppable without the aid of a mysterious extremely powerful devil. In the end, they serve only to harass the goddesses. When the heroes turn around to actually fight, they all get defeated within a couple of pages.
  • Arc Fatigue:
    • Shiori's Conquest Arc in the anime has rather stretched-out scenes, all of them from Shiori's perspective. If these scenes hadn't been so extended, then the story arc they spent three episodes telling could easily have been told in just two.
    • The awakening of the final Goddess, Mercury, drags on throughout the entire second half of the Goddess Arc due to the Love Triangle mess between Keima, Ayumi, and Chihiro. By the time Keima was on the final route after realizing Mercury was in Ayumi, people just wanted the arc to be over and done with already.
    • A similar case occurs with the "Third Memory Fragment" Arc, as most of the interesting stuff involves Keima and Kaori's clashes on world view, helped along with her extreme Freak Outs. After that though is the string of events that repetitively broke most readers' HSQ meters like they were glass figurines.
  • Ass Pull: FLAG 266's revelation that ELSIE is actually the reincarnated soul of a Weapon of Mass Destruction-slash-Eldritch Abomination, and also Satyr's ultimate weapon, is either this or the most brilliant thing to ever come out of Wakaki's mind. Especially because it's implied that she had at least some involvement in dismantling Satyr, at the very least being powerful enough and friendly enough to Keima and friends to stop time and explain things to him; it's a very short jump to assume she may very well have prevented the whole disaster by merely being the weapon to cause the disaster in the first place, leaving the goddesses' power unneeded.
  • Awesome Music:
    • The anime's first opening theme song, "God only knows" by ELISA.
    • The second opening, "A Whole New World God Only Knows", is done in the same style and, despite the studio version being considerably shorter than the first, is quite epic too.
    • The third opening, "God only knows -Secrets of the Goddess-", not only keeps up the tradition of awesome openings, but the full version is nearly a whopping 13 minutes. And for added awesome, Haqua takes center stage in this one.
    • As background music tracks for the anime goes, none are more awesome (and more heartwarming) than "Love~Distance to Kiss (Main Theme)", the one that plays every time Keima caps off a conquest.
    • And from the manga:
      The Dream Traveler of the Integrated Circuit [集積回路の夢旅人]
      Composer: Katsuragi Keima
      Singer: Katsuragi Keima with 2D Galz
      And now it's a real song!
    • "The Memory of My First Love". Sounds great, but is it just as heartwarming? Or as tear-jerking as the scene where it's played? YMMV on that one...
  • Base-Breaking Character: Chihiro, especially after the events of FLAGs 189, 267, and 268. Some fans argue that, being The Generic Girl, she is just too bland to be even involved in any way in Keima's story. Others would retort that this makes her serve as a proper contrast to Keima's Dating Sim-oriented idealism, being the character that rarely pops out in games, and the one person who, in Keima's own words, "can knock me down that far".
  • Bizarro Episode: FLAG 94. It teases the continuation of the Kasuga sisters arc before it's interrupted by Elsie (as a bunny girl) and Haqua (as a cat girl) popping up and going through a faux-anime intro. They present Keima with a letter while the supporting characters stand on the soundstage aidelines and watch. The letter is from Tamaki Wakiki's editor, who's promised to give them a vacation if Keima lectures the audience on modern gal games. Keima knows he'll have the chance to play video games if his creator takes a vacation, so he enthusiastically accepts. What follows is ten pages of hanging lampshades on visual novel tropes and Breaking the Fourth Wall meta humor. After he's fulfilled his end of the bargain, Keima rushes off to enjoy his vacation, only for the others to drag him back and finally make the announcement the manga is getting an anime. So while the manga is taking time off, it's so he can work on the anime instead. As Keima bemoans his fate, the mangaka promises us he'll return to the Kasuga sisters next time.
  • Broken Base:
    • The contents of Keima's last letter to Tenri. While FLAG 263 has a large part of the letter revealed to the readers, the last bit is apparently left out, causing a lot of fans to speculate that said portion of the letter would resolve the Ship-to-Ship Combat of the story by revealing whom Keima actually likes. Comparisons to Laplace's Box and other similar items are abound. The final FLAG reveals what was not disclosed to the audience: a statement written by Keima addressed to Tenri where he reaffirms that he and Tenri will not end up together, thus leaving Tenri saddled with the knowledge that her love will be forever unrequited.
    • Then there's Keima's Love Confession to Chihiro in FLAG 267. Just hours after its release, it caused massive fragments among the fan base, particularly between those who were in favor of it, those who wanted him to end up with another girl, those who were expecting a Harem End, and those who didn't want him to end up with anyone at all. The final FLAG apparently did little to rectify this, and the worst part of it is that it made most Keima×Tenri fans even more cross. See Die for Our Ship.
    • The anime adaptation of the Goddesses Arc. The other capture target arcs between it and the second Season that had no relevance to it were completely ignored, while the ones that weren'tnote  got brief flashbacks in the first episode instead.
  • Die for Our Ship: Chihiro, particularly to fans who would rather have Keima be paired with any one of the Goddess Hosts.
  • Ending Fatigue: Happens twice in the manga. Doubles with the Arc Fatigue examples mentioned above.
    • The first time was part-way through the Goddesses saga, when people were sick and tired of dealing with the Keima/Ayumi/Chihiro Love Triangle and just wanted to see the final Goddess actually get awakened so that the reader could finally witness the ending of the Goddess saga.
    • The second time was the Heart of Jupiter saga in its entirety, with people wondering why the manga even needed to be continued after what looked to be a good cut-off point at FLAG 189. People ended up less invested reading arcs from this saga that just didn't seem that particularly interesting, going away from the "capture targets" method that people read the previous sagas for.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse:
    • Shiori is apparently very popular among the Japanese. In fact, her first capture arc really put this series on the map. Despite her long absence at the time, she ranked number 3 in an official poll, right behind the neck-to-neck contenders for the number one spot, Tenri and Haqua, both of whom appeared in many more FLAGs compared to Shiori (at least until it became rigged by 2channers after the first few days).
    • Despite having a short early arc and rarely having any further appearances, Kanon was the most popular character by FLAG 156. Elsie, by contrast, only manged sixth place.
    • Chihiro became one during the later events of the Goddesses Arc, due to having been confirmed to have liked Keima before her original conquest had even occurred. As FLAG 267 came rolling, some fans immediately shafted her into Die for Our Ship status.
    • Lune, the New Devil antagonist of the Goddesses Arc, is this to many for being one of the few relatively evil characters seen so far in the manga, and having a refreshing personality to go with it. The anime producers caught on and changed it around to have Lune stabbing Kanon instead of Fiore to enhance her role in the arc.
    • Despite a rough introduction, Urara quickly became one due to her... naughtiness as a minor. Then later on, a Weiss enters her and she suddenly ages into a fine-looking woman.
    • Nikaido was always an incredibly popular character as Keima's Hot Teacher, with people wishing for the day that she'd become one of Keima's capture targets. However, once the revelation came that she's Dokuro from the Heart of Jupiter saga, a character that Keima kissed on more than one occasion, her fanbase skyrocketed.
  • Fan Nickname:
    • Yuima - Yui in Keima's body during the "Freaky Friday" Flip arc.
    • Some fans have also made a pun on Haqua's name as "du Lot of Deathflags", due to the serious mistakes she has made throughout the story.
    • Then there's "Nikaidokurou" as prominently used from FLAG 250 onward. The spoiler is there for everyone's protection.
  • Harsher in Hindsight: During Chihiro's capture arc, Keima says that there is a weird factor about her — "there is a boy she likes" — and Elsie speculates that the "crevice in her heart got bigger because of her love". Everyone forgets about it after the capture, and then in FLAG 166, we get to know that the boy she likes is Keima, and it was her inability to cope with the fact that she likes probably the least popular boy in the whole school that made it possible for a Weiss to possess her.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight:
    • Keima's line in FLAG 28: "That real girl... There's absolutely no way I would even be concerned about her!" Guess whom he confesses to 239 FLAGs later...
    • The idea of a megane male lead savvy in dating sims eventually warming up to the most comparatively normal/"boring" heroine in the cast is the entire selling point of How to Raise a Boring Girlfriend.
    • Remember the plan he devised in order to reconquer Ayumi? Try checking his actions in the final two FLAGs; it is the same plan he thought up!
    • Keima's highly in-depth gal game site, "Capturing God": "[...] It has a very unique way of thinking, and once you've taken a look at it... it'll change your life forever."
    • In FLAG.183, Keima proclaims that the Marriage Ending ("an ending among endings" ...in games) must be at the very least destined since childhood. It's later revealed that thanks to Mental Time Travel shenanigans around ten years prior to that point, Keima in his younger self's body had to make sure that all the goddesses' hosts would become capture targets, hence "destining them since childhood" to meet and be saved by him.
      Ayumi: Destined from childhood?! What I'm supposed to do about that, you idiot!
      Keima: The ideal is a dual fate of past and future.
      Ayumi: That's impossible.
    • Urara's introduction has her trying to act like an adult. A few FLAGs later, she turns into an adult.
    • Remember the early FLAGs where Nikaido keeps on taking Keima's PFPs and beating him for playing dating sims in class (not even counting the teasing and torture she subjects Keima to during the Nagase Capture Arc)? Yup, it's all because she's jealous that her "onii-chan" was paying attention to the girls, in games and later out of games too, and not to her.
    • There was a fan video which put Homura of Puella Magi Madoka Magica in Keima's place during the series's first opening, which became amusing given the nature of the final arc's Mental Time Travel. For those unfamiliar with Madoka, Homura's whole plotline focuses on her trying to Set Right What Once Went Wrong via time travel.
    • The interpretation of the existence of Keima's third letter to Tenri (see Broken Base entry) probably comes off as this, considering Keima's seiyuu also voiced a character who got indirectly dragged into the chase for Laplace's Box.
    • In Mitsudomoe, Hiro Shimono portrays an optimistic yet put-upon teacher who tries to get his students excited for school and fails in every conceivable way, while Aki Toyosaki plays his romance fiction-obsessed pupil. Here, their roles are essentially reversed.
  • Ho Yay: Sort of, in FLAG 124. Yui, in her masculine clothing apparently trying to seduce Keima. Made worse by Keima's rather feminine response probably due to spending time in Yui's body.
  • Iron Woobie: Keima. Though he says he doesn't like real "girls", it becomes apparent that what he hates is in fact everything real—he finds himself at such odds with the real world that he actively rejects it and takes refuge in games. What he's doing is going outside an incredibly small and restrictive comfort zone in order to do something he would run away to avoid if he had the choice, but he's shouldering the burden and putting his everything into this thing he hates doing. And, though he might moan, he never runs away, never breaks down - he always keeps his cool and goes through with it.
  • Memetic Mutation:
    • "I can see the ending!" Hear the line anywhere, and the first thing that comes to mind will always be Keima.
    • "Reality is just a Crappy Game!" Explaination 
    • "Game Over". The orb breaks, the world becomes blank except for the goddess hosts. There have been many other The End of the World as We Know It jokes concerning FLAG 260, but this one is agreed to be the best fit for this scenario.
    • This screenshot of Elsie crying is now constantly used online as a reaction to any particularly tragic scenes in anime.
    • Some fans noted the (coincidental) resemblance of Keima's school uniform to that of Austin Powers (particularly the cravat).
  • Moe: The girls that Keima has to court are plays on Moe stereotypes in varying degrees. Being a Genre Savvy Otaku, he goes into a rant when he encounters one that doesn't seem to fit with the archetype.
  • Narm: Some of the lines can be downright cheesy.
  • One True Pairing:
    • Keima×Elsie, though the popularity of this pairing waned after the first couple arcs. Being Put on a Bus during the Goddess arc didn't help, especially as it allowed Keima to interact with many of the other female characters of the story while she was gone.
    • Keima×Haqua, due to being one of the only girls who knows Keima, rather than a persona he's putting forth for a capture.
    • Keima×Tenri for similar reasons to Haqua.
    • Keima×Diana as a bonus for Tenri fans. Diana openly admits this in FLAG 167 (appropriately titled WHAM), where she realizes that her power has been limited by her own guilt over being attracted to Keima.
    • Keima×Yui gained ground fast. Yui is pretty much the only girl that has actually made Keima flustered, and he admitted that even though he was trying to just put on an act, he wound up letting her take the lead a lot and she made him feel "fuzzy headed". Haqua even notices and comments on it, teasing Keima that maybe his "real" girl type is one with a forceful personality. Not to mention the fact that she's the first human girl he's seen naked because they swapped bodies for a time. Actually, the reverse holds true as well.
    • There's also a lot of support for a Keima×Kanon pairing, especially in the Goddess Arc where Kanon is the first girl to confess to him, and was the catalyst for a big chunk of Keima's Character Development.
    • The Keima×Chihiro pairing got more fans supporting it thanks to the last few events of the Goddesses arc, as fueled by the revelation that Chihiro had probably genuinely loved Keima before her capture arc, absent any manipulations on his part. Add the fact that Keima was forced to dump her (possibly out of confusion as to what to do next), and the shippers decided that he must end up with her as a way of redeeming themselves and everyone else from the backlash.
    • Surprisingly, Keima×Ayumi is gaining ground as well, being Keima's very first capture target, and the last Goddess host to be revealed, and due to his (much-debated) declaration to her as his "First and Final Heroine". Also, she appears in the third memory fragment of the Heart of Jupiter arc, along with Chihiro.
    • There's also a slow-but-steady rise in support for Keima×Nikaido/Dokurou as soon as FLAG 250 was released. (For security purposes though, this sub-entry will be a massive spoiler entry): She was chronologically Keima's first kiss; she was one of those persons who, like Tenri, was all the more supportive of his actions (even calling him onii-chan while Keima's in his 7-year-old self); and apparently, her identity was one of the biggest surprises of the Heart of Jupiter Arc, having been conveniently concealed (even from the readers) from the time she was revealed to have an involvement with New Hell.
  • One True Threesome:
    • Keima/Tenri/Diana FTW. Quite complicated because Diana is inside Tenri's body, and some of the fans like her via Tenri's body.
    • One FLAG title played with this trope, but it was talking about Keima/Haqua/Tenri or Diana, most likely Tenri.
  • Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
    • In Kanon's first arc, she wasn't well-liked due to her Attention Whore / Yandere tendencies, but in her later appearances she's a much more endearing and likeable character, even turning into something of an Ensemble Dark Horse.
      • Breakout Character: The ending result. She now stars her own spinoff, Magical☆Star Kanon 100%.
    • Urara was disliked in the first few events of the Heart of Jupiter Arc for being nothing more then an annoying Bratty Half-Pint trying to act older then her age, but eventually, people warmed up to her once she started getting along with Keima, and learning of her back-story as to why she acts the way she does.
  • Ship-to-Ship Combat: (See the One True Pairing section above for why this can get kinda ugly amongst the shipping debates)
    • Pick the woman among Keima's capture targets (or someone else) that has the best chance to end up with him and let the debating begin. Tenri and Chihiro led the way for majority of the story's run due to being the only girls Who actually fell in love with Keima long before he got involved in their conquests. Elsie, Haqua, Diana and the other Sister holders are also worthy choices among the fan base.
    • Then again, if one doesn't side with any of the ladies mentioned above...there's always Yokkyun.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: This type of reaction was bound to happen for some fans from the moment it was announced that the 3rd anime season was going to be adapting the Goddess arc; effectively skipping the remaining conquest arcs that occur after Jun's conquest entirely. (With the exception of Tenri's arc, which was adapted in prior OVAs). After the first episode of the season aired, most fans were, predictably, disappointed that they weren't able to see the final conquests animated. However, on a brighter note, the first few minutes recapped the skipped conquests, with most of the footage being from Tsukiyo and Yui's arcs; showing that the skipped material has at least acknowledged to exist, and that the anime is mostly staying true to the manga...with the exception of Fiore being adapted out. What also didn't help was that the Goddess Arc and the Mai-High Festival Arc add up to 76 chapters, considered by many to be far too much just for a 12 episode season. For comparison, the first two seasons only covered 43 chapters.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Ugly Cute: Yokkyun, Keima's digital crush.
  • Values Dissonance: While it's Played for Laughs, goddesses are apparently cool with polygamy, rape and pedophila.
  • Viewer Gender Confusion: Dokuro Skull, revealed to be female (like all other New Devils) in FLAG 151. The anime missed the memo; her Japanese voice actress uses such a gruff voice to the point of sounding male, while her dub VA is male.

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