Literature / Arifureta: From Commonplace to World's Strongest

From Zero to Hero.^note Center: Hajime Nagumo, Yue. Counterclockwise from top-right: Tio Klarus, Liliana S. B. Heiligh, Shea Haulia, Myu, Shizuku Yaegashi and Kaori Shirasaki. In the background: Noint.

Arifureta: From Commonplace to World's Strongest (Arifureta Shokugyō de Sekai Saikyō) is a Web Serial Novel written by Ryo Shirakome (under the pen name "Chuuni Suki") and was first published on the website Shousetsuka ni Narou in 2013. It was later adapted as a light novel series illustrated by Takayaki and published by Overlap under its Overlap Bunko imprint from 2015 to 2022, for a total of 13 volumes. The light novels are licensed in English by J-novel Club, and can be found here. An anime adaptation directed by Kinji Yoshimoto and produced by asread and White Fox (with Pierrot Plus for episodes 2, 8 and 11) began airing in July 2019; a second season, now with Studio MOTHER co-helming with asread and directed by Akira Iwanaga, premiered in January 2022.

One Japanese high-school class has been transported to another world, where on short notice they are told they are summoned to be heroes and save it from an onslaught of demons. Each student is given overpowered stats and incredibly useful jobs...except Hajime Nagumo, otaku and bully magnet. As if being looked down upon by the "cool kids" for his hobbies, let alone being the object of affection of class sweetheart Kaori Shirasaki, is not enough, in this world not only does he get mediocre stats, but also the equally-mediocre-at-best "Synergist", a job otherwise restricted to such support functions as blacksmithing and alchemy that allows him to transmute anything.

During one live training at the Orcus dungeon, a trap puts the entire class, their homeroom advisor Aiko Hatayama, and their instructor Meld Loggins, at the mercy of a dangerous monster. Against all odds, Hajime makes some really creative use of his Synergist abilities to defeat the monster. Unfortunately, a stray fireball hits him, sending him hurtling down into an abyss.

Barely surviving the fall, Hajime then struggled to survive the even greater dangers deep in Orcus, nearly losing his sanity with thoughts of vengeance against what he perceived to be the treachery of his class...until he meets Yue, a powerful vampire-girl sealed for centuries in the depths of Orcus. Bound together by similar experiences, Hajime and Yue together successfully escape Orcus and confront anew the world which seemingly betrayed them.

Spin-Off media includes:

• Arifureta: From Commonplace to World's Strongest Zero/Arifureta Zero (ありふれた職業で世界最強 零, Arifureta Shokugyō de Sekai Saikyō Zero) (LN:2017-, MN:2018-): A Prequel series about the Liberators.
• Arifureta: I Heart Isekai (ありふれた日常で世界最強, Arifureta Nichijō de Sekai Saikyō) (2018-): A Yonkoma comedy series.
• Arifureta: From Commonplace to World's Strongest - Short Story Collection (ありふれた職業で世界最強 小篇集, Arifureta Shokugyō de Sekai Saikyō Shōhenshū) (2019): A compilation of all the extra short stories written for the early volumes of Arifureta.

Compares to series like Failure Frame, Garbage Brave, I'm The Only One With Unfavorable Skills, Isekai Summoning Rebellion, Nito's Lazy Foreign World Syndrome, Suterareta Yuusha No Eiyuutan where a group of students are isekai'd to another world, and the main character is ostracized for his weak skills before being betrayed.

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This series provides examples of:

• 2D Visuals, 3D Effects: Many of the monsters in the anime are animated with CGI, especially the Hydra.
• Adaptational Dumbass: In the anime, Hajime's so busy embracing Yue, after freeing her, that he doesn't notice the steel-scorpion until it's pierced him with a rain of javelins. In the light novel and manga, he does not lower his guard and uses "enemy scan" to search the area, thus noticing the metal-scorpion, and avoiding the ambush.
• Adaptational Intelligence: In the manga, Ishtar and the nobles have even less justification for calling Hajime "incompetent" as he's noted asking intelligent questions and trying to gather as much information about the world of Tortus, his own abilities and the abilities of others while everyone else is too busy preening and pumping themselves up with their own perceived superiority.
• Adaptational Modesty: In the anime, Hajime skins the talon bear, so when he meets Yue, he provides her a dress made of bear fur, rather than having nothing for the poor girl to wear than an ill-fitting cape that doesn't really cover much.
• Adaptational Nice Guy:
  • Since the scene where the class is served by very attractive maids is removed in the manga, Kaori's Yandere mode is not seen, making her seem like the perfect girlfriend to Hajime.
  • With the anime removing some of his more prominent Kick the Dog moments, such as his Condescending Compassion to Hajime, trying to encourage the members of Hajime's party to leave him in favor of the Hero Party, or him trying to challenge Hajime to a fistfight in order to keep Kaori from joining Hajime's party, Kouki comes across as a benevolent if naive young man.
• Adaptation Dye-Job:
  • The original web novel describes Kouki as having silky brown hair and chocolate brown eyes. In the manga, he has typical Japanese black hair. The anime brings him closer to his web novel description but has blue eyes instead.
  • Aiko has brown eyes in the light novel, but they're green in the anime.
  • The anime gives Ryoutarou black hair and green eyes, along with a notable tan.
  • In the anime, Kaori still has brown eyes after her soul is transferred to Noint's body. In the light novel, her eyes turn blue because that's Noint's eye color.
• All of the Other Reindeer:
  • Due to his otaku status and his relationship with Kaori, Hajime is treated like an outsider by the rest of his classmates, with Daisuke Hiyama as the ringleader and Hajime's harem as the noteworthy exception.
  • Shea's whole race was the outcasts of the demi-human peoples. Then Hajime came along...
• And I Must Scream: Yue, before the start of the story, and before the end of the story, and both times she was rescued by Hajime.

• Anti-Magic: The Great Reisen Labyrinth, and the entire gorge the dungeon resides in, seriously screws with the usage of magic. This makes Shea, who only uses body-strengthening and precognition magic, at most, the best choice to conquer the dungeon. Though she ended up getting trolled the most.
• The Apocalypse Brings Out the Best in People: Just about everybody in Tortus throw all conflict away and form a Badass Army to fight the Mad God, with Hajime as the spearhead.
• Apocalypse Maiden: Anyone with the inherent ability to wield magic without having to build it up with chanting can be the target of the Big Bad. The more powerful, the more likely, just ask Yue. This is probably why the Beastmen tribe try to off the likes of them as soon as they're discovered. And also explains why Yue got imprisoned (as well as immobilized) in the depths of Great Orcus Labyrinth.
• Applied Phlebotinum: The God's Crystal. It's the crystalized Mana, and as a mineral it can store large quantities of it inside. When naturally charged it produces a healing elixir of the highest quality. Oscar Orcus had one made which was accidentally dropped by Miledi when it overcharged her Signature Move, and found millennia later when Hajime discovered it and allowed him to survive eating monster-meat and saved him and his friends several times.
• Automatic Door Malfunction: Kousuke Endou is such an Invisible Introvert that he reportedly sometimes went unnoticed by automatic doors back in Japan.
• Badass Adorable: Yue and Shea can cause men to instantly fall in love with them yet have stats come damn near close to the otherwise overpowered hero of Hajime's class.
• Badass Normal: Many melee fighters. Hajime could have been one, but things happened.
• Be Careful What You Wish For:
  • Hajime curses Shirasaki and the three top "cool kids" in his heart, wishing they'd all be whisked away to another world, so he'd be left alone. His whole class winds up being thus whisked away, including himself.
  • Shimizu spent his whole life wanting to be whisked away to another world so he could become the "hero" and get a harem devoted to him. He gets the first part and finds he doesn't like it.
• Black-and-White Insanity: Since Kouki is literally the Hero, he believes the class comes with Omniscient Morality License, meaning he would be the good guy no matter the situation, which often leads to him engaging in Insane Troll Logic level mental gymnastics to justify why he is still right and his opponents are wrong.
• Blackmail:
  • A comedic version. It is how Shizuku got Hajime to accept and look after Kaori: she threatens to give Hajime over-the-top and embarrassing nicknames and spread them among the general population.
  • Not played for laughs where it concerns Hiyama, as Eri Nakamura convinced him to help her because she knew that he had murdered Hajime.
• Boom, Headshot!: Hajime routinely aims for the head and usually hits it.
• Brain Bleach: Everyone is noticeably disturbed by Hajime sodomizing the black dragon and it only gets worse when it is revealed to be female.
• Brutal Bonus Level: The Seven Great Labyrinths are a rare non-video game example, and how. As Miledi Reisen explains, they had gone all-out into their design to avoid a repeat of the tragedy that befalls them.
  • Special mention goes for the Great Orcus Labyrinth. As this Labyrinth was intended to be cleared last, it was so difficult that it was split into two 100-floor sections, with only a handful of demons ever knowing the lower section even existed. To put it into perspective, the dungeon's Final Boss was so tough that it nearly killed Hajime and Yue despite their overpowered firearms, medicine and magic. Ironically, Hajime fell right into the abyss within the True Labyrinth and was forced to clear this Labyrinth first, making the rest of them look weak in comparison (though they are still psychologically challenging).
  • The Great Reisen Labyrinth. On paper, it was an Anti-Magic dungeon intended to test the challenger's ability to overcome their reliance on magic. However, this dungeon was filled with humiliating pranks if not downright lethal traps. To top it all off, the dungeon resets and restructures itself over time, often several times throughout the challenger's attempt to clear the dungeon, all the while having insults thrown to the challenger every time they encounter a trap, making it notoriously frustrating to clear. To top it off, the final boss is a golem that is armored with layers and layers of Azantium protecting its core, making it nigh-impossible to clear unless the challengers are similarly Crazy-Prepared.
  • The Haltina and Schnee Labyrinths are the worst possible Labyrinths for Kouki to challenge, as Haltina Labyrinth has a Lotus-Eater Machine that conforms to his idealistic world followed by a rain of milky-white slimes with powerful aphrodisiacs, while Schnee Labyrinth has him fighting against his Evil Knockoff that was so good at his "The Reason You Suck" Speech that he managed to convince Kouki to lash out to Hajime in bloodshot rage.
  • Ironically, the Divine Mountain Labyrinth that houses the incredibly broken Spirit Magic is relatively easy to clear for magic that allows their user to swap bodies. Granted, you need to clear two labyrinths beforehand and people who had any belief in the resident Mad God can't enter it at all (especially since this labyrinth is built right at the Holy Church's doorsteps). And if you had killed any servant of said Mad God, then you can skip the labyrinth's trial altogether.
• Bullying a Dragon:
  • Exists as a proverb which involves literally bullying a dragon.
    "Kick the butt of a dragon" is a proverb of this world, it referred to the Ryuujin race and dragons. They boasted their defensive power as an impregnable defense because their whole body was covered by scales, excluding their eyes and mouth, the butt hole that wasn’t covered by scales was their only weak point. Because of their high defense, as they were deep-sleepers, they wouldn’t awaken once they fell asleep, but they would wake up at once, once their Butt that was their weak point received stimulus, and became enraged like raging fires. A long time ago, it was not known why that was done, but the fool was completely crushed. From that, it became the meaning of someone who is foolish enough to purposely disturb someone that was harmless as long as they weren’t disturbed.
  • Hajime used a Pile Driver to do just that, as Tio Klarus (who got Brainwashed and Crazy up until that point) can attest.
  • Later, a seriously injured Hiyama makes the mistake of taunting Hajime that he will one day kill him. This causes Hajime to kick Hiyama across the courtyard into a horde of monsters, who proceed to eat him alive.
• The Call Knows Where You Live: This trope is why Hajime wants to create a tool to prevent his team from being summoned against his will again. This doesn't stop Kouki from being resummoned, however.
• Came Back Strong: Hajime ended up having his body rebuilt from the resulting overcompensation from consuming monster flesh along with doses of God's Crystal Elixir. Later on, Kaori's soul was transferred into Noint's body after she was killed by Hiyama.
• Cannibalism Superpower: What allowed Hajime to survive the Abyss. Eating Demon flesh is technically fatal, but by drinking the God's Crystal Elixir, Hajime managed to survive. Not only that, but his body also gained the ability to safely consume their flesh and obtain some of the demons' abilities.
• Capture Balls: In volume 11, Hajime crafts Suzu Taniguchi several artifacts to store and summon her monster familiars. He introduces them as "Monster Orbs", but can't help thinking of them as Pokéballs.
• Chuunibyou: Word of God the series is a love letter to all that is Chuuni. As if it wasn't obvious (pen name Chuuni Suki).
• Complexity Addiction: Both Ehitoruje and Eri Nakamura go about their plans in the most convoluted manner possible. For the Mad God, he's got both insanity and sadism as an excuse. For the Yandere...
• Compressed Adaptation:
  • The primary problem with the manga adaptation is how the story had been either water-down or outright cut out in order to streamline it. On the one hand, this makes the story progress quicker at the cost of HUGE amounts of characters and characterization. The story focuses solely on Hajime's POV which removes several critical scenes and even then, several scenes featuring him are also cut for no other reason than for the sake of getting the story further along faster.
  • The anime is similar, cutting out the entirety of the opening sequence at the kids' school and essentially starting the kids off when they enter the Great Orcus Labyrinth. It also skips over the entire visit to the beastman city-state of Verbergen when Hajime and the Haulias go into the Haltina Woods, and consequently the Haulia's defeat of the bear-men.
• Cool Airship: Fenrir, Hajime's new ship.
• Cool Car: Brise, Hajime's main vehicle.
• Corrupt Church: The Holy Church of Ehit certainly counts, as it was influential enough to start and end wars between states at a whim, and encouraged self-centered racism among the many races residing in Tortus. To make matters worse, their God and Angels had specifically fashioned Tortus as his own chessboard and locked its inhabitants into a Forever War, complete with similarly racist faith at the demon's side, just to sate his twisted pleasure.
• Covert Pervert: At one point in volume 3, Shea and Tio watch Hajime and Yue having sex in their inn room from outside the window.
• Crazy Jealous Guy: Hiyama. Kouki as well, but he never goes over the line because of his jealousy like Hiyama until he was Brainwashed and Crazy.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Considering that, compared to the average denizens of the world, Hajime's party is extremely overpowered, this happens a lot.
• Cuteness Proximity: Shizuku. Myuu also causes Hajime to go into this.
• Dark Is Not Evil: The main party mostly consists of dark heroic individuals, Hajime has monster blood and dressed in black and red, but leans more towards Good is Not Nice, Yue is a heroic vampire princess and Tio has the form of a sinister-looking black dragon that can breathe black flames but lacks a malicious bone in her body.
• Determinator: Hajime. Kaori as well, to a lesser extent.
• Deus ex Machina: What the "God's Crystal" Hajime found could be considered.
• Didn't Think This Through:
  • Hajime knew eating magical beast meat was a lethal poison, but being half-crazed with starvation, and having no other food source, he did it anyway. If it wasn't for the God Crystal he found, he would have died. Even with the God Crystal, he was given a nice taste of hell.
  • If only Cattleya had managed to stay calm for a few seconds, she could've understood Hajime's power by the fact he pierced the supposedly indestructible floor between levels, instantly killing her best monster. She still lived to regret her rashness for a few minutes.
  • Shimizu taking Aiko hostage was a sound plan to avoid arrest and execution for treason... or would have been if not for saying the Demons tasked him with assassinating her first.
  • Kouki rarely thinks of long-term consequences, makes incredibly snap judgments about others and how to deal with certain situations, and is overall helpless in the cynical medieval world of Tortus. He asks the members of Hajime's party (except Hajime) to defect and join the Hero Party, claiming that they could save the human race together. This fails because not only do the members of Hajime's party have Single-Target Sexuality towards him, but Kouki and the Hero Party are working for the Heiligh Kingdom which is in turn influenced by the Holy Church, which persecuted their races.
• Doomed by Canon: The Liberators, as they failed in their fight against Ehit and his propaganda; Zero showed how it transpired.
• Drama-Preserving Handicap: The God's Crystal gives an unending supply of perfect healing and completely charges magic reserves too. It makes sense that it also stops overflowing just after Hajime is healed from his fight with the Hydra, since keeping that supply of elixirs would have made any and all of the following fights even more trivial, and no one Hajime cared about would be in danger.
• The Dreaded:
  • Just about everyone learns the hard way that it is a really bad idea to go against Hajime and his party.
  • After being armed and given a Training from Hell by Hajime, the Haulia tribe becomes this for the other beastmen tribes and The Empire.
• Drill Sergeant Nasty: Hajime acts like this toward the Haulia tribe. Later on, Cam acts like this as well, even while being tortured.
• Dungeon Bypass:
  • Dungeon flooring is usually so hard as to be impenetrable, but by Volume 4, Hajime was able to use his Pile Bunker to skip roughly twenty floors of Orcus's starting labyrinth in one shot when he goes to rescue the hero party, and the spike still has enough kinetic energy left to One-Hit Polykill two of Cattleya's chimeras when it reaches the room they're trapped in.
  • The Divine Mountain will take you straight to the magic circle provided you have done three things. One: Cleared at least two other dungeons. Two: Are not a servant of the gods. And Three: Killed a servant of the gods. Hajime fulfilled the last one by killing Noint, while Aiko and Tio fulfilled it by blowing up the entire leadership of the church of Ehit in their attempt to bring down the church's barrier.
• Dying Declaration of Love: Hajime and Yue toward each other when they almost died at the deepest level of the first dungeon. They became the Official Couple afterwards.
• Entitled to Have You: Subverted. Several characters learn that just because you're Childhood Friends with someone, or developed an obvious crush on them, that doesn't mean they're obligated to return those feelings. Also, trying to drive a wedge between them and their current lover doesn't mean that you're a shoo-in to get them on the rebound, either.
• Fanservice Pack: As attractive as Kaori already is, she managed to get an even more attractive body than her own when she requested her soul to be transferred into a stronger body, the angel Noint, that previously gave him a run for his money, thereby giving her a boost in pursuing Hajime's affections.
• Fantastic Firearms: Hajime's primary weapon beginning in volume one is a revolver (later a pair after he acquires a prosthetic arm to replace the one that was torn off by a monster) that fires bullets accelerated by using his electric magic to produce a railgun effect.
• Forced Orgasm: Played for Laughs. After defeating the black dragon, Hajime interrogates it by attacking its weak spot: which means shoving a pile bunker on the dragon's backside, which quickly leads to the reveal that it's a female dragon, much to the horror of the female onlookers. But Hajime doesn't care and keeps torturing her by repeatedly hitting and twisting it. But it takes a comical turn when it actually awakens the dragon's masochistic side and she actually starts experiencing an involuntary orgasm instead.
• Fragile Speedster:
  • Shizuku's job specializes in dealing damage as quickly as possible, but she can't receive any, surviving only because of her armor and Hajime's tools.
  • The Haulia tribe are trained like this since is the only thing in which they are competent. It works really well for them.
• From Nobody to Nightmare:
  • It's even in the title! The main character goes from a scrawny nerd who was bullied viciously by most of his class, to a One-Man Army who rarely faced an actual challenge since his forced foray through the entirety of the first dungeon. Granted, he kinda had to if he wanted to survive it, and everything that came after.
  • Hajime in turn trains the Haulia tribe, who are rabbitmen, a beastman race normally capable of little more than running away, into some of the best fighters in the setting. In their second appearance, they use guerrilla warfare to annihilate a demon army that had just attacked Verbergen.
• Gondor Calls for Aid:
  • Verbergen towards the Haulia tribe, when they were invaded by demons. Their defenses were overwhelmed, and in desperation an elder went to the Haulia tribe for aid, knowing that they were elite combatants.
  • After Hajime declares his intent to fight the god Ehit, he sent the other students to call for the world leaders' aid.
  • The reason Hajime, Kouki, and the rest of their class are in Tortus is because humans almost lost against demons, and the God Ehit summoned them to turn the tide of the war in their favor.
• Gone Horribly Right: Played for Laughs There's sometimes Hajime found out that what he does is gone too far, and regrets it.
  • When he trained the Haulia tribe into the literal Killer Rabbit tribe, not only did they lose their aversion to kill, they also became so Drunk On Power that they outright enjoy killing and cornering their enemy. It takes Shea reminding their faces resembling the Imperial soldiers to snap them out of it.
  • He wakes up Tio Klarus for interrogation, by driving a piledriver into her ass, turning her into Casual Kink in the process. Aiko Hatayama along with the students escorting her are understandably terrified.
  • Aiko uses her fermentation ability to ferment everything within the Holy Church’s main cathedral to produce flammable gas that Tio could use to destroy the cathedral's barrier. The resulting explosion not only destroys the barrier, it utterly annihilated the whole cathedral and everyone within.
  • Ehitorujue tried to Create Your Own Hero, He really didn't take Nagumo Hajime into account.

• Gratuitous German: Everywhere, from Hajime's weapons and tools to locations.
• Green-Eyed Monster: The reason why Hiyama tried to kill Hajime was because he was jealous of Kaori's fondness of him
  • Later on, Hajime and the girls get in trouble more than once because people want to court, kidnap or outright enslave Yue, Shea or one of the others. In fact, thugs, nobles and even random passers-by try to literally steal the obviously high-level girls followed by a ridiculously badass-looking guy so often, it becomes a Running Gag.
• It's Personal: Hajime's M.O. is that if you ever try to harm people he holds dear, all bets are off. However, he doesn't give a damn about the ones who wronged him or bullied him before his transformation, as he simply has no time for it. A bunch of kicks for Daisuke Hiyama, getting rid of his ability to struggle, then sending him straight to the den of monsters. And it's a bad idea to take Yue from him without properly killing him.
• Heart Is an Awesome Power: Eventually Hajime managed to use his transmutation ability to hold off the Behemoth and narrowly avoid being Eaten Alive by the bear after he fell into the abyss. And then it enabled him to craft the firearms that helped him to clear the Orcus Labyrinth.
• Heroic BSoD: While Kouki, Hiyama, and Ryoutarou all form parties to go back and "avenge" Hajime by taking on and defeating Orcus dungeon, Yuka, along with many other students cower in the royal castle, too scared of their own shadows to even set foot outside their assigned quarters, for weeks, until she decides to go with Aiko on an expedition to restore the kingdom's crops and solve the food crisis.
• Heroic RRoD: When Hajime fell into the abyss, instead of having Heroic Willpower, he had a mental breakdown and nearly went insane. And instead of relying on hope, he relies on pragmatism and ruthlessness. Eventually, he has indomitable willpower but lost his drive to help anyone in need, choosing to fight for himself and his comrades. This also shows that not everyone can be a Nice Guy after a horrific experience.
• I Have No Daughter!: After Liliana tried to stop Eliheid from labeling Hajime a heretic, he gave her a Death Glare as if she was an enemy and acted as if she didn't exist from then on.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Kaori was stabbed by Hiyama In the Back and was killed. Fortunately, Tio had arrived in time to preserve her soul to be transplanted into Noint's remains.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: Hajime virtually never misses a shot, and can ricochet rounds off walls to get around people's defenses. Justified in that he practices constantly in his off-time, and often re-transmutes his weapons to improve them.
• Insistent Terminology:
  • They accepted the ring, they didn't steal it. Don't call them graverobbers.
  • And the items in the study were transferred to them, not stolen.
  • Hajime orders Kouki's party members, or at least the guys, to use honorifics when addressing or referring to his harem, or else he gets pissed.
• I Will Find You: After Hajime fell into the Abyss, Kaori refused to believe he was dead and worked tirelessly to become stronger so that she could look for him.
• Japanese Delinquent: The Haulia tribe, after Hajime trained them, adopted stereotypical delinquent lingo and mannerisms.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Hajime temporarily becomes a jerkass after leaving the Abyss, but he loses some of his edge over time and lets his original personality shine through.
• Kaizo Trap: Right after clearing the Sunken Ruin of Melusine, the party would be flushed out straight to the Devourer.
• Kill Sat: By the time the demons invaded the capital, Hajime managed to create Hyperion, a high-altitude beam cannon capable of razing an entire demon's army. It had broken after one use, but Hajime had made good use of it to force them to retreat.
• Killer Rabbit:
  • The Haulia tribe was considered to be the useless hippies of the demi-human races. Then they underwent Hajime's training, turning them into Crazy Is Cool Blood Knights Combat Pragmatists. Oh, and they are actual rabbit people to boot.
  • The Kicking Rabbit Hajime encounters in the Abyss is a literal example. It's a rabbit, and it's second only to the Talon Bear in raw killing power.
• Leeroy Jenkins: Kouki often acts on his instincts first.
• Left for Dead: During their training, Hiyama sends Hajime to fall down an abyss with the Behemoth and leaves him for dead. Hajime later inflicts this fate on Hiyama by kicking him into a horde of monsters, where he's eaten alive.
• Lethal Harmless Powers: One wouldn't think Aiko's "Farmer" class would be dangerous, but one of her "fertilizing" abilities produces methane. She all but single-handedly annihilated the royal Church of Ehit when they were weakening Hajime in his fight with Noint while the "angel" was trying to straight-up murder her. All she really needed from Tio was to keep the gas from dissipating by using wind magic, and a small spark.
• Lethal Joke Character: Ms. Aiko as Farmer and Hajime as Synergist. They both look useless on paper when compared to Heroes and Wizards, but after a couple of levels, Aiko single-handedly kick-starts a global agricultural revolution, then creates a fuel-air bomb to kill the Holy Church's leadership by using her Fermentation power to produce methane, while Hajime is...well, Hajime. He starts out using Transmute to create traps to immobilize monsters so he can kill them, then single-handedly holds off the Behemoth on the 66th floor by burying its feet and head in the ground while the others regroup, then builds on it further as he levels up out of sheer desperation deep in the Orcus Labyrinth.
• Light Is Not Good: The otherworldly nature of the Apostles of God terrified even the Atavists that served the Holy Church, as Belta Lievre and Laus Barn could attest. Despite being incredibly beautiful Winged Humanoid in appearance, they are described to be soulless to the point that Ehit's machination can be seen through them.
• Loads and Loads of Races: There are many sapient races in the new world.
  • Humans Are Average: The most populous race.
  • Little Bit Beastly: There are many tribes of these people. The Haulia Tribe is one of them.
  • Our Vampires Are Different: Yue is one of them, the Last of Her Kind and possibly their pinnacle.
  • Our Angels Are Different: An antagonistic faction, and they are all more like angels of Islam in terms of mannerism: they are artificial and therefore lack emotion, and they are Elite Mooks of god.
  • Our Dragons Are Different: They are humans that are able to shapeshift into dragons.
• Magnetic Weapons: Hajime uses his Lightning Field power on his gun barrels to further accelerate the rounds he fires.
• Malevolent Architecture: The primary challenge in the Great Reisen Labyrinth, along with being a Mobile Maze that changes its layout over time.
• Mama Bear: If you scare or try to hurt Myuu, you had better hope Hajime finds you first because Shea is even more brutal. The leader of a criminal organization that kidnapped Myuu and tried to sell her off in a black market? Squashed into a stain on the floor very, very slowly.
• Mentor Occupational Hazard: Meld is killed battling a legion of undead created by Eri during her Face–Heel Turn.
• Mood Whiplash: The manga's chapter 38 deals with the dragonmen kingdom's fall in the war against the humans, and leads to Tio's decision to return to the world in order to find the person with the power to defeat the gods. It ends with her being manhandled by Hajime and getting excited over it.
• Mook Horror Show: Generally happens anytime Hajime shows up and decides that you're his enemy, such as the slave traders who kidnapped Myu a second time. Or the 60,000 monsters led by Shimizu, who all get wiped out by Hajime and his group by themselves.
• Morality Pet:
  • Yue and Hajime to each other and to a lesser extent, the others in the party...that is until they too become more accustomed to killing.
  • Myu becomes everyone's since they want to preserve her innocence. Of course, it doesn't work, but at least they tried. And Myu was able stop Hajime's outlash, almost entirely all on her own.
• More Dakka: Yukitoshi Shimizu sends an army of over 60,000 monsters to sack Ur and kill Aiko. Hajime guns down most of them with Metzelei, his Gatling gun, before it gets anywhere near the walls (in combination with Yue's and Tio's spells and Shea using a missile launcher).
• Mugging the Monster: A racist knight on Aiko-sensei's guard detail starts harassing Shea while she's eating with Hajime and Yue shortly after they arrive in Ur. Hajime is annoyed by him, but the knight doesn't listen to his soft-spoken warning to back off. Hajime pulls a gun and shoots him in the shoulder, sending him flying backwards into the wall.
• Mysterious Waif: Yue fills the bill, Not only is she immensely powerful, she's the one and only reason for Hajime to returned his humanity, motivated him into fighting Big Bad (which he didn't give it a whit otherwise), she also become a vital key for the plan of said mastermind to destroy everything. She's really the main drive to the entire story.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Hajime rescues the entire class from the Behemoth, at incredible risk and effort, only to get blasted by one of the fireballs that was supposed to be the cover-fire for his own escape, sending him down into the Abyss for his troubles. This clearly does not do good things for his mental stability. Freeing Yue also got him attacked by a Magical Beast that was way out of his class, but at least he got rewarded for that, and big time.
• The Nondescript:
  • Endo Kosuke. At first, he is so average and unnoticeable that he becomes a joke, but it gets to the point where the heroes send him to get help by passing through a huge dungeon because even the monsters don't notice him.
  • In a later arc, After Story, he even becomes a hero of his own while posing as the Right-hand man of the demon king, the demon king being Hajime of course.
• No One Could Survive That!: After Hajime falls into the abyss during their misadventure in the labyrinth, nearly the entire class assumes he's dead (except Kaori, who seems to insist he isn't, mostly to keep herself sane). Of course, he's the main viewpoint character. Hiyama lampshades it in abject terror.
• Old Shame: In-universe. Hajime, towards his Chuunibyou days. It was so effective that Hajime regarded Shizuku as the last boss when she blackmailed him about it.
• Older Than They Look: Aiko, the 25-year-old young-looking teacher.
• One Cast Member per Cover: The light novel's covers usually feature a girl from Hajime's party on each volume, although Shizuku and Eri from the Hero Party have at least one cover. Only the main heroine Yue appears in more than two covers.
• One-Man Army: Practically every member of Hajime's party. It took only four of them to wipe out an army of 60,000 monsters. Hajime takes the cake as usual though, as he killed 100,000 monsters by himself with the help of a Kill Sat and drove back another 1,000,000 through intimidation.
• Only the Knowledgable May Pass: Lyutilis Haltina built the entrance to the "true labyrinth" in such a way that it can only be unlocked with proof from at least four other Labyrinths plus the magic from one specific Labyrinth. To Hajime's chagrin, the magic needed is from the Sunken Ruin of Melusine, which is literally on the other edge of the continent and would've taken a year to cross without the modern vehicles that he had made.
• Orcus on His Throne: Zigzaged. Initially invoked by the Chruch of Ehud in describing the Liberators as Mavericks. Downplayed when Hajime and Yue finally get to the bottom of the Orcus Dungeon, they find Oscar Orcus's skeleton sitting on his chair. Played straight with Miledi Reisen. Subverted in that while the Liberators built their dungeons to hide from the world and test prospective candidates, the goal was not to conquer the world but to prepare worthy successors to take on Ehud.
• Ordinary High-School Student: The premise is a whole class of high school students getting summoned to become heroes in a magic world.
• Otaku: Hajime was one. Not only that, his father is a game developer and his mother is a manga artist.
• Physical God: Ehitorujue, from whom this status is usurped by Yue, which makes sense since said power didn't belong to him to begin with, being a Body Snatcher and all.
• Please Put Some Clothes On: Hajime's very first reaction after unsealing Yue.
• Power Copying: Hajime full stop. Listing each individual ability would take far too long. He can not only acquire the powers of his fallen enemies, he can also find new and novel ways to use them, such as taking a fairly weak ability to generate electric fields and turning it into the basis of all of his railguns, which are ridiculously devastating.
• Powering Villain Realization: The final challenge of the Frost Caverns in volumes 8 and 9 is for the dungeon-delvers to battle Doppelgangers of themselves, which are meant to mirror their character flaws to them and encourage them to overcome them—lest the god Ehit use those flaws against them. The duplicates are powered up by the flaws and weakened by overcoming them. Most of the characters figure this out and find ways to address the flaws, breaking the duplicates' power. However, Hajime instead uses the duplicate to spot small flaws and inefficiencies in his fighting style and thereby destroys it by simply becoming a better fighter on the fly (justified by the fact the duplicate was based on a magical scan from when he entered the dungeon and has Creative Sterility), while Kouki fails utterly to overcome his Fatal Flaw, gets possessed by the duplicate and turned Ax-Crazy, and has to be beaten into submission by Hajime.
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: At the end of the sixth volume, Hajime says "Good luck surviving out there. Knowing you, you probably won't make it." shortly before he leaves Hiyama to be Eaten Alive by the horde of monsters.
• Prequel in the Lost Age: The Arifureta ZERO novels are a prequel set about a few thousands years before the main series, following the lives and adventurers of the Liberators and their journey in their fight against the evil god Ehit.
• Readings Are Off the Scale: Hajime's status card starts out normal, showing him as a level 1 Synergist. By the time he and Yue leave the Orcus Labyrinth, it gives his level as "???" (the previously stated number being 72, the next-highest-level character up to that point being Captain Meld at 62).
• A Real Man Is a Killer: Hajime harshly criticizes Kouki for freezing up against the demon Cattleya after realizing she was an actual person instead of one of the mindless monsters they had fought previously. Kaori soon realizes Hajime was the only one of the class to have figured out that This Is Reality and they might actually have to kill people from the beginning, though she's still shocked by his willingness to kill people in cold blood.
• Really 700 Years Old: There's Yue, a 300-year-old vampire who stopped aging at 12 years old and Tio, a 500-year-old busty dragon girl.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: This series has quite a few, though their degree of power and influence varies due to their positions. Including but not limited to Meld, Elder Alfrerick, Princess Liliana, Aiko-sensei herself, etc...
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Hajime gives an absolutely scathing one to Hiyama right before he gives him what's coming to him.
  • Sometime after, he also gives a much-deserved one to Kouki for his double standards, soft-hearted naivety, and all-around lack of resolve to do anything needed to protect those around him.
• Rescue Romance: Hajime had rescued most of his harem members at least once at some point.
• Rings of Activation: The process of Hajime's summoning of his vehicles is preceded by a large ring made of glowing green code materializing above the area the vehicle appears.
• RPG Mechanics 'Verse: People can check their stats, skills and job thanks to a card-like device attuned to the user. Unfortunately, they are relics and no one knows how to make more, so they cannot be given to everyone.
• Screw Destiny: Miledi concluded that Hajime would do what the Liberators failed at and defy the cruel fate created by Tortus' Jerkass Gods.
• Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere: Where Yue was sealed in for centuries.
• Secret Test of Character: The Haltina Labyrinth is big on this, as no lines are too sacred for its absurdly difficult challenges to test the challenger's forged bonds.
  • First, some of the party members was replaced with slimes while the real ones were transformed into monsters which they could accidentally kill. Hajime managed to see through the fake and identify the real Yue in an instant, but had to use Demon Eyes to detect the other fakes and find the transformed members them the hard way, as even the Ancient Magic was unable to restore the transformation.
  • Secondly, everyone was put into a Lotus-Eater Machine and had to break out of their ideal worlds on their own. It is possible to break other members out, but while it allows the party to proceed, those who were still in the Lotus-Eater Machine would be disqualified from acquiring the Ancient Magic.
  • Thirdly, the challengers are subjected to a deluge of milky-white slimes that keep raining down until the party ends up Kissing Under the Influence. They either had to resist the influence or rebuild their trust after succumbing to the aphrodisiac. Hajime ended up Take the Third Option by coating himself with lightning followed by burning down the whole forest, but Hajime's harem had to resist the aphrodisiac throughout the process.
  • And finally, the party have to face a tsunami of cockroaches that can form giant humanoid cockroaches. Worse, they are capable of stealthily forming magic circles that reverse their emotions, forcing them to maintain a Teeth-Clenched Teamwork and remain unfettered by their infatuation to their enemy.
• Sensei-chan: To her chagrin, Aiko is treated more as a mascot character than an authority figure by her students.
• Sentai: Later on, the hero's party - Kouki, Suzu, Ryoutarou and Shizuku - were "persuaded" by Hajime to become one such group to act as a diversion. Hilariously enough, Shizuku is Pink.
• Shout-Out:
  • In volume 1, Shizuku teases Kaori for staring at Hajime, saying that It’s Wrong to Try to Pick Up Guys in a Dungeon.
  • In volume 7, Hajime makes Super Sentai masks for several members of the hero party as disguises.
  • The second season's OVA has Yue performing Takeshi Hongo's henshin motion, albiet mirrored.
  • In volume 11, Hajime crafts Suzu Taniguchi an artifact to store and summon her monster familiars, based on the same principles as his own Hyperspace Arsenal. He introduces it as the "Monster Orb", but he mentally refers to it as a Pokéball.
• Sickeningly Sweethearts: Hajime and Yue have a bad habit of getting lovey-dovey at the drop of a hat, usually resulting in sex if the mood isn't interrupted. This becomes a Running Gag, commented on and complained about by the rest of Hajime's Unwanted Harem. This gets turned up to eleven once Hajime is finally persuaded to start accepting the other girls as lovers.
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: What attracts most of the girls to Hajime.
• Something Only They Would Say: When Aiko meets Hajime in Ur and she realizes who he is, he accidentally calls her "Sensei" before trying to convince her that she mistook him for someone else. Aiko accurately points that out.
• Speak of the Devil:
  • Ur's inn owner is telling Aiko-sensei about the adventurers sent to deal with the trouble at the mountains just as they (Hajime, Yue and Shea) arrive there.
  • When Kaori is about to be killed by the demons in Orcus' Labyrinth, she mentions wishing to call Hajime by his name when they met again. Cue Hajime piledriving his way down the Labyrinth and landing on the demon threatening her.
• Stepford Smiler: Suzu, the mood maker of the team, admits to doing all that just to be accepted. In short, she fears rejection.
• Stock Light-Novel Hero: Double subverted, Deconstructed, and Reconstruction.
  • Hajime is double-subverted and reconstructed in that he originally looked like a straight case. Despite all the abuse he got from his class, the school idol, Kaori, was fond of him, and he was ardently striving to use his lack-luster "synergist" ability in clever and creative ways, even managing to restrain a Behemoth the rest of the class, and the royal knights together couldn't even scratch...until his classmate betrayed him, knocked him down a pit and left him for dead. Then, after being driven to madness with only his survival and revenge on his mind, he meets and falls in love with Yue, and she brings back enough of his original caring nature to leave thoughts of revenge behind, and then he finds himself being pursued by women he's not romantically interested in, who are trying to get into his pants so hard that even shooting at them doesn't make them stop.
  • Kouki is deconstructed. He gets into Tortus, is given the "Hero" job and it goes straight to his head. Already an Obliviously Evil twit full of Selective Obliviousness, he goes full tilt Tautological Templar, believing himself the paragon of virtue destined to save the world, and that everyone must follow him, regardless of how stupid or straight-up suicidal his actions are. He even drags Hajime into training early, and when Hajime gets dragged off the training field by Hiyama and his three flunkies, whereupon the four of them start using him as a practice dummy against his will, which would have put him in the hospital in any other setting, he turns and blames Hajime for it.
  • An invoked deconstruction happens with Yukitoshi Shimizu, Hajime's Shadow Archetype introduced in Volume 2, and named in volume 3. This character is an even bigger "other world" Otaku than Hajime is, always dreaming of being whisked away to another world to become the "hero" and surrounded by a harem to tend to his every want and need, but instead of channeling his imagination and creative energies in a productive direction, like Hajime did, he chose to delude himself deeper and deeper into his "other world" delusions and fantasies. Upon coming to Tortus and seeing how wrong his fantasies were, since he fixated on the benefits of being "the hero" but never paused to consider the perils, especially once Hajime "fell" into the abyss, he withdrew from the class and into himself so far that he's downright ecstatic when a Demon comes along and promises to make him a "hero" if he betrays humanity, starting with his teacher, Aiko.
• Stupid Evil: Ehitorujue was dumb enough that he left Hajime alive after pissing him off so hard. To be fair, he was in Yue's body at the time, and she had fiercely resisted against the Grand Theft Me.
• Stupid Good: Kouki fits this trope to a T. For all of his attempts to uphold justice, his envisioned justice often veers off into the Black-and-White Insanity.
• Supporting Harem: Hajime declares that he only loves Yue, much to the other girls' chagrin. However, that doesn't stop them from pursuing him with all their might. Eventually, however, Hajime keeps Yue as his Top Wife while marrying the rest of his harem as well.
• Technically-Living Vampire: In Tortus, vampires are a near-extinct race that drinks blood to increase their strength, life force and mana. However, they're capable of gaining nutrients through normal food and sunlight isn't harmful to them. Being Long-Lived, regular vampires can live up to 200 years, but a very powerful one like Yue is over 300 years old. They also reproduce naturally, either with other vampires or members of different races.
• This Means War!: After Ehit stole Yue's body, Hajime had a Big motivation to Kill the God, with a literal war no less.
• Token Mini-Moe: Myuu is a cute Dagon child who ends up hanging out with Hajime's party a lot.
• Took a Level in Badass:
  • Hajime took hundreds. It got to the point that his stats were over 9000 each after he left Orcus' dungeon. Hell, his level is ???.
  • Shea, after she joined Hajime's party. Also, the entire Haulia tribe after Hajime trained them.
  • As well as everyone in Hajime's class, including Ms. Aiko. From Ordinary High-School Student to being able to fight monsters on daily basis.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Hajime, after getting his psyche shattered by the isolation he experienced while in the bottom of the abyss, hardens and becomes more pragmatic and colder. Thankfully, he mellows out due to the girls' influence.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Hajime gradually rediscovers his kindness as he met Yue and his eventual harem members.
• Too Kinky to Torture: Tio. While the others escape the Lotus-Eater Machine in the Sea of Trees Dungeon because of the bonds they share with one another, Tio escapes because the fake Hajime in her dream didn't abuse her as severely as the real one.
• Torture Is Ineffective: While being tortured by the Empire Cam not only did not break but started to mock his torturers about how much they sucked at it, to the point that one of them had to be prevented from killing him because of how annoying he was.
• Training from Hell: Hajime trained the Haulia Tribe after protecting them from the Empire. The result? The next time they met one member of said tribe, he took on multiple Imperial soldiers and won.
• Trapped in Another World: Hajime and his class were summoned to Tortus by the god Ehit because humanity almost lost against the demons. Only Ehit has the ability to send them back, or so Pope Ishtar Lombard claims.
• Troll:
  • Miledi Reisen, full stop. All the signage in her Labyrinth is written in an overly cutesy and energetic tone clearly intended to irritate, annoy, and seriously piss off anyone who reads them, and the traps would have been deadly if not for Yue and Hajime being grossly overpowered thanks to their experiences in Orcus Labyrinth.
  • Hajime has recently started to become one himself, particularly towards Shizuku.
• A Truce While We Gawk: The immediate reaction of Cattleya and the hero party she's about to finish off when Hajime's Pile Bunker crashes through the ceiling of the room and two of Catt's chimeras.
• Two-Person Pool Party: Hajime and Yue have Their First Time in a hot tub in Oscar Orcus's estate at the bottom of the Orcus Labyrinth, towards the end of volume 1.
• Unwanted Harem: Hajime's suitors include all the girls in his party, two of his hottest classmates, his teacher, a princess and a merwoman single mother. He's alright with showing affection for Yue, but mostly ignores the other girls' advances and might straight up shoot at them if they get too annoying. However, he does eventually learn to care about and even love the girls in the harem besides Yue.
• Unwinnable by Design: The Great Reisen Labyrinth was designed by a Troll with the intention of pissing off anyone who tries to clear it. Even getting past all of its traps is no guarantee that the party has beaten the dungeon. To add injury to insult, and insult to injury, trying to map out the dungeon is useless as it randomly, and completely, morphs its basic design after a certain amount of time has passed, making any maps useless.
• War Is Hell: Just ask those dead Liberators, Melusine will shove this trope right into your memory.
• What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: Hajime Nagumo as a Synergist is this at first, as the best this class could do is to forge weapons. Ms. Aiko, the loli teacher, thought so as well, as a Farmer, but Meld who saw it, commented that he never knew the Farmer Class existed before and recognized her potential to cause a new era of food production, a.k.a. an agricultural revolution.
• Wrong Context Magic:
  • Atavist in general, as they can freely manipulate magic without having to build it up (either via chanting or magic circle)
  • Hajime though certainly takes the cake: He's able to take the ability of the magical beasts by eating them, effectively becoming an Atavist himself in all but name. That being said, he only gained such an ability because he had drunk some Ambrosia along with the meats, which would've been downright lethal for anyone else, as the guy himself can attest to. The feat itself also rendered his body so badly that Ehitorujue considered him too impure to be possessed by him. And Yue find his blood more delicious and effective than anything else.
  • Weredragons of Tio's kin implied to expose Ehitorujue to the same effect as Hajime's body does.
  • Not to mention his magically-enchanted modern firearms, as Aiko's (self-proclaimed) guardian knights realized and noted.
• Yamato Nadeshiko: Hajime comments from time to time about how Shizuku acts like one. Of course, this is only after she falls in love with him.
• Your Head Asplode: What usually happens when Hajime shoots somebody in the head since he uses a railgun effect to accelerate the rounds from his guns.

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