YMMV / Violinist of Hameln

• Adorkable:
  • Raiel is all about this, he is obsessed with giving long speeches and constantly tries to look cool but always fails, is both incredibly nice and clumsy and attempts to reenact shoujo manga on a regular basis.
  • For a giant flaming phoenix, Firebird is pretty sweet, loyal and adorable. Just like his master.
  • Clari Net was absolutely adorable as a kid and still occasionally lapses into this as an adult.
• Complete Monster: Even among the vile Mazoku, Chestra and Bass are especially bad:
  • Demon King Chestra is the overlord of all demons. He seduces the kindhearted Pandora to father children so he could fill their lives with anguish and pain in a grand plan to force Pandora to open the seal to his Mazoku forces and regain his original power. When he was done, Chestra intended to devour Pandora and his own children as well to serve as power-ups. Having killed so many humans he cannot even remember the exact number, Chestra murders his own minions and many humans to use their blood and souls for power, while intending on obliterating all humanity to reign supreme as a god.
  • Hell King Bass, a cold, emotionless Mazoku who is the second-in-command of their evil forces, is responsible for countless atrocities. Attacking the kingdom of Prince Lute with his forces, Bass attempted to ravage the land while attempting to massacre the royal family. Stopped only by Lute, Bass sadistically murdered him and removed his soul to make him a mindless puppet of Bass, intending to repeat the process with Lute's sister. Reviled by all the heroes, Bass terrorizes them relentlessly, being responsible for more tragedy than almost any villain in all the series.
• Cult Classic: Its Japanese fan base is already pretty small, but its American one is downright tiny, only enjoying a brief moment of popularity at the very end of the nineties that died out by the mid-[2000s]. In spite of this, its fans are interested in its use of Bathos balancing out the hilarious and over-the-top comedy that is especially audacious at times with genuine drama underneath the comedy with tragic backstories that are very soul-crushing to learn about.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Sizer came second after Hamel in the popularity poll while Raiel came in third. Lute, who up to that point had absolutely no characterization or backstory besides being Bass' puppet came in sixth place.
• Ho Yay: Done very intentionally in the manga with Hamel and Raiel - the other characters flat out accuse them of being gay a few times. And let's not even get into Olin harassing Hamel. And then there's that scene when Clarinet is introduced, and the heavily implied crush Clari may have had towards either Lute or Horn (or both? It's never truly clarified) for most of his life.
  • Watanabe hangs so many damned lampshades in the manga that it's a wonder no one's mistaken it for some kind of deranged chandelier. He draws roses in the background during the yaoi parodies, for crying out loud.
  • Vocal acts no less touchy-feely with his male adversaries as he does with his female ones.
  • Examples of Ho Yay above at no point go beyond gags, though. In Schelkunchik, on the other hand, you cannot help but suspect this, when Schel and Great fall into the same roles that Flute and Hamel played in the original series.
• It Was His Sled: Sizer joins the team and is Hamel's sister.
• Les Yay: Flute and Sizer, though not as much as the Ho Yay.
• Iron Woobie: The entire Team Hamel and some of the supporting cast. After all the horror and torment piled on them, it's amazing that they aren't suicidal wrecks with the temporary exception of Sizer, anyway.
• Narm: A lot of people consider the anime just as hilarious as the manga, only in a different way.
• No Problem with Licensed Games: The video game is as fondly remembered as the manga, with its only major criticism being the short length removing ninety percent of the cast entirely.
• Nightmare Fuel: In spite of the over-the-top comedy, it is filled with surprisingly dark elements.
  • Drum who is seemingly just a stereotypical reptilian thug is actually a multi-headed Draconic Abomination hinted through his ability to generate draconic arms and fully showcased with his One-Winged Angel.
  • Guitar when not being the butt of a joke is a murderous and backstabbing individual who occasionally shows his vicious side, especially his One-Winged Angel of a Cerebus that he uses to brutally maul Ocarina with his death, leading to her death.
  • The real reason that Bass is a head held by Lute is both nightmarish and utterly soul-crushing. Reaching the limits of his body, Bass willingly discards his body and has Lute, the beloved hero of the country of Sforzando, turned into his glorified host- a corpse partially aware of his hellish existence.
  • Orgel, when not being made into a Butt-Monkey, is a Monster Clown that sadistically breaks down his victims via raising the dead- his favorite tactic is reviving the loved ones or the murdered victims of certain characters in order to emotionally torture them.
  • Vocal is a violent brute that upon being resurrected proceeds to wipe out a village that Hamel had befriended and had also given Sizer a ruthless beating.
  • Chestra is a ruthless boss who willingly feeds on his own men to empower himself and is both feared and hated enough that outside of Bass, the only reason the other Mazoku tolerate him is due to him being their life source- if he dies, they will eventually die without him.
  • When Guitar comes back from a failure, Chestra proceeds to ruthlessly eat him alive and spit him out extremely depowered.
  • Chestra's backstory with Pandora; he initially courts her, has two children with her, and then tricks her into releasing his Mazoku Army who look far more demonic and eldritch than their usually silly appearances. He then revels in having duped the poor woman and intended to eat his own children before Oboe helped to seal him away once more. No wonder why Pandora became a nervous wreck after this.
  • Whenever Hamel turns into his fully demonized form, the first being an extremely gaunt, bat-winged reddish demon with the upgraded look having the appearance of a monstrous devil in order to face his father.
• The Scrappy: Corr Nett was intended to be a Love to Hate type character but she ended up being so unpopular that her role got severely reduced from a major supporting character to a Joke Character forever trapped in a Humiliation Conga with no real plot significance after repeated fan complaints about her character.
  • Trom is a much lighter example. While he's not hated by the fanbase by any means, he is the least popular member of the main group by far and ranked considerably lower on the popularity polls as a result. In response to this, he was Put on a Bus for a large chunk of the story and is completely Adapted Out from the OVA.
• Sequelitis: Violinist of Hameln: Shchelkunchik has gotten this reaction from some, many of whom think it fails to capture the same feel as the original.
• So Bad, It's Good: The anime adaptation was an attempt to make the the plot of the manga, a comedy that parodied similar shounen series (albeit with a dark and serious overarching plot, resulting in strong Mood Whiplash every time something important happened), Darker and Edgier by removing almost all of the comedy. Unfortunately, they had almost no budget to work with (rumor has it that they spent most of it on the rights to Hamel and Raiel's classical music), meaning that the writing was incredibly shoddy and they didn't have enough money to actually animate most of it, making 90% of the anime a sort of slide show of pastel chalked freeze frames with endless whining voice acting on top. In the end, it was cut off at 26 episodes (as opposed to a planned 31) due to poor ratings and ended up with an incredibly unsatisfying Downer Gecko Ending. The anime still manages to be popular today because it's so Narmtastic that it's almost funnier than the manga.
• Tear Jerker:
  • Anything involving Lute (in the manga). He's tortured to death protecting his mother, Flute, and Sforzando— having his eyes cut, his throat and legs stabbed, and his arms crushed. He is then possessed by Hell King Bass, and abused as his puppet for fifteen years... dying again upon his release.
  • Sizer's backstory. Kidnapped by and raised among the Mazoku since she was a baby, with Ocarina as her only friend. Forced to destroy countries since the age of six. Being lied to that her mother abandoned her in favor of her twin brother, then finally meeting her mother... who is sealed inside crystal. Spending the next 10+ years of her life massacring humans and rising through the Mazoku ranks, pretending to be on their side while waiting for her chance to strike back.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: Do not be fooled by cartoonish-looking characters and colorful covers. Between gags and parodies, this manga is chock-full with graphic violence, tragedy and horror. But despite this, it was published in a shonen magazine anyway.
• The Woobie: The entire main cast, more or less. All of them have lost at least one loved one, been betrayed, or experience fates far, far worse than death. Standout examples include Sizer, Trom, and Lute.
  • The King of Sforzando! His wife, children, and subjects all have no idea who he is, completely ignore him when he sacrifices himself, and continue to ignore him whenever he tries to encourage them from beyond the grave.
  • Jerkass Woobie: Hamel and Cornet.
    • Hamel is a massive asshole, but when you learn about the awful stuff that's happened to him throughout his life, it explains exactly why he's so bitter.
    • Cornet is an absolute harpy, but she gets so severely punished by karma that you can't help but feel sorry for her.

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