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Definitely not your typical mecha or harem anime. Clockwise from right: 

"The director said 'Eh? Is this really okay?', and did oppose the idea, but Higuchi-san, the producers, and I agreed on this development."
Creative Producer Mitsuo Fukuda

Cross Ange: Rondo of Angels and Dragons (Tenshi to Ryuu no Rondo) is a Sunrise original anime produced and written by Mitsuo Fukuda (Mobile Suit Gundam SEED) and directed by former Studio 4°C alumn Yoshiharu Ashino (Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox, Tweeny Witches) that aired starting in October 2014.

Since obtaining the information technology known as "Mana", humanity has used its near-magical power to eliminate global crises such as war, food shortages, and pollution, creating an age of peace and freedom.

Princess Angelise Ikaruga Misurugi (Nana Mizuki) is the First Princess of the Misurugi Empire, set to become the next Empress. However, during the Baptism Ritual, she is unable to use Mana. Everyone realizes that she is a Norma, a person who is unable to use Mana, and are seen by society as outcasts.

She is exiled to a remote island, where she meets a group of Norma girls who fight using humanoid machines called Para-mails. They fight against beings called DRAGONs from another dimension who have come to invade their own as Angelise prepares to get revenge on both her brother Julio (Kosuke Toriumi), the newly-crowned Emperor, and his master Embryo (Toshihiko Seki), the supreme leader and god of the world and the man who oversees the oppression of Norma, for turning her into an outcast.

The show was simulcasted in its original run by Crunchyroll; however it has since been removed from the platform. It is also licensed by Sentai Filmworks for an English-language release. The show also has a Yonkoma parody manga entitled Cross Ange: Tenshi to Ryuu no Gakuen (Cross Ange: School of Angels and Dragons) and a game by Bandai Namco and Graphinica (with assistance from Q Tec) entitled Cross Ange Rondo of Angel and Dragon Tr. with an original protagonist. The series also appears in Super Robot Wars V and Super Robot Wars X.


Cross Ange provides examples of:

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  • 2D Visuals, 3D Effects:
    • The mecha and Aurora are rendered exclusively through this method while the dragons alternate between 2D and 3D depending on the scene. Ange and several of the other girls also turn CGI at times throughout the series as well.
    • Hilda's animated through this method in one scene of "Beyond Time". And it's really noticeable.
    • Reversed in the game, where it's the CGI that's normal and the odd bit of 2D is what stands out.note 
  • Accidental Pervert: Tusk in "Ange Loss", complete with all the fanservice clichés and Pervert Revenge Mode. Him digging himself deeper wasn't helping his case.
  • Ace Custom: Para-mail pilots are encouraged to invest in their customization, and aces can afford to invest more than everyone else. The best example would be Hilda, whose Glaive para-mail started life just like any of its mass-produced counterparts, and was modified with a focus on high mobility.
  • Achilles in His Tent: Jill lost the ability to pilot the Villkiss after her first "Libertas" rebellion failed thanks to Embryo's machinations. By the end of the series, Jill gets back into action after Ange tells her about what happened to Salia.
  • Action Prologue: The anime starts with Ange already a skilled pilot of Villkiss, and two of the Para-mails shot down by the Brig-class Dragon.
  • Actor Allusion:
  • Adaptation Distillation: The game removes several characters (including Tania, Irma, Liza, Misty, and outside of one screenshot, Sylvia)note  and condenses or extensively alters several plot points, such as how and where Chris, and later Embryo, are killed.
  • Adaptation Expansion: The manga and the PS Vita game expand the characterization of many characters.
  • Aerith and Bob: This series has some pretty normal names like Vivian, Rosalie, Chris, and Hilda, to the more outrageous names: Salamandinay, Embryo, and Tusk to name a few.
  • After the End: "Ange and Tusk" reveals that Ange, Tusk and Vivian, following their emergency teleportation in the previous fight against Embryo, landed on Earth, which had suffered World War Seven more than 500 years ago, and humanity had all but gone extinct. Conveniently enough, it's also become the homeworld of the DRAGONs.
  • Airborne Aircraft Carrier: It turns out that the subersible carrier Aurora can also fly, and can do so without Mana to boot.
  • Airstrike Impossible: The Norma sure love flying into extremely dangerous spaces to destroy enemies.
  • The Alliance: The Ancient Humans form an alliance with the Norma in the backstory against Embryo and the World of Mana. And in the final episodes, Team Libertus join with the Dragons to fight against Embryo.
  • All Your Base Are Belong to Us: Julio orders an assault on Arzenal in, appropriately enough, "Arzenal Burns".
  • Alpha Bitch:
    • Hilda, who leads her pack of of wicked friends, and wishes to assert her dominance over others after obtaining her upping in the ranks. Even following in her predecessor's, Zola, footsteps in seducing the other pilots. Later subverted, as she undergoes Character Development and becomes a genuine friend of Ange.
    • Zola herself too, though to a lesser extent, as her actions were also to break in stubborn pilots like Ange, to prepare them for the tough roads ahead and make them realize the cruelty of life.
    • Chris drives her new posse after Ange and Hilda left her for dead, not realizing that Embryo could resurrect someone who exploded.
  • Anti-Magic: This is why Normas are so feared and hated - they disrupt the use of Mana in a society that relies on it, like a Walking Techbane in modern New York.
  • Another Side, Another Story: The game offers the player to make choices Ange did not make in "Arzenal Burns" in the series: leaving with the Aurora or joining Embryo, with the side effect of making Embryo nicer and not suffer Motive Decay, he kept his word in making the restarted world better, by making it the lighthearted High School AU.
  • Anyone Can Die: The impression the first three episodes give, with four named characters (Ange's mother, her newest two groupies, and the sexually-abusive Team Mom Zola) dying right after being introduced. The party gets a breather for the remaining first half, and then names get crossed off. King Jurai is also executed, and confirmed dead in "Goodbye From the Gallows". Julio took a Wave Motion Gun to the face in "Arzenal Burns", and the final act throws the kid gloves off: "The Survivors" where Marika, one of Rosalie's pupils, is executed by Chris in an ace maneuver, and 10 Norma children were killed in the crossfire during a battle between the DRAGONs and the Diamond Rose Knights. Then, of course, the last two episodes adds Tanya, Irma, Jill, and Embryo into the death count as well.
  • Archaic Weapon for an Advanced Age: While set in the far future after World War Seven, the soldiers still use guns and Para-mails still have swords and guns equipped. Justified because the world of Mana is more peaceful, and because it's heavily dependent on Magitek that the fighting force we mostly follow can't actually use. And as it turns out, said Mana users and their Mana are disabled by the invading DRAGONs.
  • Arc Words: "Destroy the world." It's said by everyone who has some dream of ending the society of human Mana users, but what that means differs from user to user.
  • Army of Thieves and Whores: "Violent, evil, antisocial" Normas have only one possible use in the eyes of Mana states - Cannon Fodder.
  • Artistic License – Biology: Sucking out venom from a wound is pure pseudoscience, as it doesn't remove any venom and can possibly contaminate the wound.
  • Ass Shove: Jill subjects Ange to a cavity search during the latter's recruitment at the end of "The Fallen Imperial Princess".
  • A-Team Firing:
    • In "Goodbye From the Gallows", Ange gets into firefights with policemen and guards, but nobody gets visibly hit. Justified because policemen and guards are ordered to capture Ange and use mana shields to protect themselves from her counter-fire.
    • In "The Tuner of Time", Ragna-mails piloted by Ersha and Chris don't even hit a stationary submarine.
  • Attempted Rape: Zola sexually assaults Ange in episode two but is interrupted by a Red Alert.
  • Award-Bait Song: Nana Mizuki's Necessary. Sparkly synth? Check. Love song? Check. Reserved for Tusk x Ange scenes? Check.
  • Bait-and-Switch Lesbians: Fans hoping for serious lesbian romance were sorely disappointed when Tusk quickly turned into Ange's main love interest, on account of being one of the rare guys in the show and The One Guy of the heroes. In general, romantic relationships between women seem to be used mostly for titillation, and then even those often turn sour after a while. This changes by the final few episodes, which put forth two lesbian relationships (Ange and Hilda, then Chris and Rosalie) quite seriously without any fetishization. Ange even throws in a little aesop about changing the world that doesn't accept that kind of love to reassure Hilda that she needs her as much as Tusk.
  • Batman Gambit: In "Goodbye from the Gallows", Julio claims that he intentionally let Momoka leave the empire and sneak to Arzenal knowing that she would help Ange to return and give him a reason to execute her.
  • Beam-O-War: Done by Ange and Sala twice: first was during the DRAGON invasion of Arzenal; the second during the defense of the DRAGON inhabitants near the Aura Temple.
  • Be Careful What You Wish For: On the night before her Baptism, Angelise wishes for a challenge. She got more than what she bargained for—Julio exposes her as a Norma and banishes her to Arzenal, where she is forced to fight the DRAGONs.
  • Bedmate Reveal: At the end of "Lonely Mutiny", Ange wakes up tied and naked and Tusk is beside her, sleeping.
  • Big Bad: Embryo, an ex-scientist who is Julio's superior, Earth's ruler, and The Creator and God of humans, is the one who oversees the oppression of Norma by the humans, making him the main enemy of Ange. He is also responsible for transforming the humans fighting against him into DRAGONs, and not only steals Aura but uses the humans in general as pawns so he can annihilate all life on Earth to make it anew.
  • The Big Board: Embryo uses one when planning out his next moves in "Distorted World".
  • The Big Damn Kiss: Appropriately enough in "Ange and Tusk", Ange kisses Tusk complete with epic music from one of Nana Mizuki's award bait insert songs. It's even a two-for-one that starts off with a light hesitant peck that quickly escalates into something much more passionate.
    • Ange surprisingly does the same to Hilda in episode 23, cementing them both as girlfriends right when Hilda started believing she lost her shot at becoming Ange's girlfriend. Hilda is absolutely delighted at Ange reciprocating.
  • Big, Screwed-Up Family: The Misurugis. The father and mother lavished attention at the middle child making the oldest child a bit inferior and jealous. Then said older brother found out that her younger sister was a Norma and decided to get rid of her alongside their father who kept it a secret on the biggest day of her year. Meanwhile, the youngest child is devastated at finding out her older sister is a Norma and decides to kill her for making her a cripple and in her own words, "killing their parents because she's a Norma". Family of the year, indeed.
  • Bittersweet Ending: The Norma and DRAGONs manage to repel Embryo's space-time convergence, and Embryo himself is no more. However, Misurugi and the other Kingdoms are destroyed and hundreds have perished thanks to the space-time convergence; Ange and Sylvia are estranged; many DRAGONs and Norma, including Tania and Irma, are killed during the final battle; the citizens in the other world can no longer use Mana and must survive on their own and at least Ange has inspired Sylvia a bit to change the way of thinking of these people they can survive without being addicted to Mana; and Zola, Sophia, Jurai, Marika, and Jill are dead.
  • Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism: The huge DRAGONS are males, while the smaller ones are females. Female DRAGONS can transform into a humanoid form, while the males apparently cannot, judging by their fascination with Tusk.
  • "Blind Idiot" Translation: The word "Assault" for Assault Mode in this series is spelled as "Assult". This is both present in "The Fallen Imperial Princess" and "Villkiss Awakens". It gets fixed in later episodes.
  • Book Ends: In the very first episode, Ange sings The Endless Song as she fights off a group of dragons. In the final episode, Ange sings this song to summon Villkiss when Embryo is about to rape her.
  • Boom, Headshot!: In "Arzenal Burns", right after Ange blows away the rubble blocking the hangar, the Para-Mail squadron takes off and then a Misurugi soldier still barely alive from the explosion blindfires his rifle and headshots Chris, followed by her Para-Mail crashing and exploding. However, Embryo then appears on the scene and revives her.
  • Both Sides Have a Point: Jill and Ange's views on freeing the Norma. On Jill's side, while she's correct that they must kill Embryo to free the Norma, her methods of using the DRAGONs as a sacrifice so she can exact revenge on Embryo for what she did to her was taking it to an extreme. On Ange's side, she's correct that the Norma's forces have become unreliable since Embryo took Salia and Chris under his wing, Jill must take responsibility for all the damage she has done, and the Norma must help the DRAGONs stop Embryo.
  • Bread and Circuses: The mainlands are a very nice place to live, with no crime or poverty. That is, unless you're found to be a Norma, which means you're sent off to a prison colony and conscripted to fight against DRAGONS until you die.
  • Break the Cutie:
    • While telling that mother of the Norma baby that she should have another child was cruel, what happened afterwards to Ange was a bit much. Her only sins were her ignorance of such things and her pride, natural byproducts of her upbringing. With the swift and abrupt escalation with little explanation or demonstration, it's little wonder she was stuck in such a state of denial throughout the first couple episodes, leading to the deaths of three of her comrades.
    • Getting taken away from her mother and being taken to Arzenal did a number on Hilda. When she finally gets back, her mother has willingly forgotten her and moved on with a new daughter named Hilda. And then she gets beaten and arrested. She bottoms out after being detained in Arzenal before Ange suggests destroying the status quo.
  • Break the Haughty: Towards the end of the series, the chinks finally start showing when, after failing in an attempt to force Ange's hand by holding Momoka hostage, Ange counters an assault from Jill, leading to Jasmine, who has been in disapproval of her latest methods, to lock her up. In short order, the truth about her past with Embryo comes out, and she is forced to step down as commander, though by this point, having reacquainted to her guilt, she calmly accepts defeat.
  • Bring My Brown Pants:
    • Ange wets her combat suit when she's confronting a dragon that was about to kill her in "Villkiss Awakens".
    • Sylvia wets her clothes after Ange's Tough Love treatment in "Distorted World".
  • Brooding Boy, Gentle Girl: A Gender Inverted example occurs between Ange and Tusk. After she becomes a Broken Bird during the first episodes, he's one of the few people capable of bringing out her nicer side with his kindness, and this eventually leads her to fall in love with him.
  • The Cake Is a Lie: In "Arzenal Burns", Julio disguises the massacre against the Normas on Arzenal as a relief effort. Only Momoka, and maybe Emma are fooled. This doesn't last.
  • Casting Gag: Ersha is not the first pink-haired girl voiced by Christina Kelly, as she previously played Mine in Akame ga Kill!.
  • Cel Shading: The CG models in both the show and game, to varying degrees of success.
  • Censor Steam: The bath area is covered with steam at strategic levels whenever the characters are naked there as well as rainbows. In the uncensored Blu-ray version, the women are simply drawn without nipples.
  • Cheer Them Up with Laughter: While the return of Tusk is what brings Fallen Princess Ange back from the massive Heroic BSoD she suffered after believing he died protecting her from Embryo, she is completely thrown off when she finds out her maid, Momoka Oginome, also survived the altercation after seemingly getting killed herself. When Momoka reveals that she did so because she was carrying her lucky pan underneath her uniform when she got shot, Ange succumbs to cheerful laughter before hugging her.
  • Child Soldiers: Norma as young as 12 are forced by The Empire to take part in battle.
  • Closed Circle: Arzenal is isolated from the rest of the world, and nearly inescapable. That is, until, Ange and Hilda do it first at the end of Episode 8, and the surviving Norma do it by the end of Episode 13.
  • Clothing Damage: Happens repeatedly in the intro, and then rather viscerally at the end of "The Fallen Imperial Princess" when Jill strips her for a cavity search.
  • Coming of Age Story: For Ange, who has to prove herself as a capable leader and fighter.
  • Conscription: Anyone who can't use magic is forced to become a soldier and fight DRAGONs.
  • Conservation of Ninjutsu: Anytime Para-mail pilots have to eliminate DRAGONs, they're always short on numbers. Even when some of the pilots upgraded from Para-mail to Ragna-mail. Salamandinay even lampshades this.
  • Crapsaccharine World: The World of Mana is (supposedly) a magic utopia, but for Normas (who can't use magic) it's a living hell. Normas have no basic human rights, and generally the population is conditioned to hate and fear them and treat them as sub-humans, having no qualms about gleefully beating them to a pulp and feeling justified in it, and have zero sympathy for Normas. To add insult to injury, Normas are forced into service as Para-mail pilots to fight and die against dragons for their magic oppressors. And not just for the Normas: humans who can use magic (actually information materialization) are the result of genetic engineering in the aftermath of World War VII, when humanity nearly wiped itself out. Humans who use magic were engineered to be more submissive, thus the use of those humans who are actually normal (normas) as an institutionalized scapegoat.
  • Create Your Own Villain:
    • Salia ends up siding with Embryo because Jill disregarded her, which Embryo promptly capitalized on. Getting knocked into the sea by Ange didn't help matters, eather.
    • Liza capturing and mind controlling a traumatized and unstable Sylvia comes back to bite her in the ass when Embryo frees Sylvia and allows her to whip her as payback.
  • Cruel and Unusual Death:
    • Zola dies in the wreckage of Ange's failed first deployment with blood pouring from her missing eye socket.
    • Miranda gets ejected from her paramail by a DRAGON and then devoured by three of them.
  • Cut Short: The manga adaptation ended this way, most likely due to low popularity. When it was announced that the third volume would be its final volume, its publisher, Kadokawa, announced that it will feature a different ending than the anime. This turned out to be true... in an Exact Words kind of way. The manga ended with an And the Adventure Continues right before Ange's first fight with Salamandinay... Meaning it was canned before the main plot even began.
  • Darkest Hour: "The Survivors": Everybody failed in their objectives, Tusk and Momoka seemingly died and Ange is separated from the rest of the crew (again), but this time with absolutely no morale left.
  • David Versus Goliath:
    • Anytime someone fights a DRAGON, the character is usually the David and the DRAGON being the Goliath.
    • The Aurora and its crew against the rest of the world, not to mention Embryo. For some reason, the Norma are treated as a genuine menace.
  • Dead Star Walking: Megumi Hayashibara voices Empress Sophia Ikaruga Misurugi and dies during "The Fallen Imperial Princess"note  Minori Chihara and Michiko Neya, who are Miranda Campbell and Zola Axberg respectively, have their characters killed off at the beginning of "Villkiss Awakens".
  • Death by Irony: Jill spent years planning to free the Norma from their oppressors, but ends up fatally wounded when she tries killing Embryo during Last Libertas.
  • Defiant Captive: Whenever Embryo indulges in a I Have You Now, My Pretty upon seeing Ange, she always rejects his advances.
  • Department of Redundancy Department: One of the lines Ange says when trying to kill Embryo is "I'll kill you until you die". Due to Embryo's ability to always come back after death the line makes sense.
  • Didn't Think This Through:
    • Jill physically dragged Ange out of orientation, early, despite the fact that Ange was taking notes, thrust her into the squad completely unprepared, and then gave Zola permission to take her into "the room". Although the ending of Episode 3 implies that she wanted the sortie to go badly. Which has a whole different level of idiocy to it.
    • Zola somehow expected sending out a raw rookie with severe denial issues, whom she just sexually assaulted, and who made it abundantly clear she'd peace out at the first opportunity, was a good idea. Unsurprisingly, it proved a deadly lapse in judgement.
  • "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune: The opening. "Kindan no Resistance" is sung by Nana Mizuki, who plays the main character Ange. The ending theme "Rinrei" is sung by Eri Kitamura, who plays the character Salia.
  • Do You Want to Copulate?: In general, because DRAGON girls almost never get to see a male in human form, they are quite forthright about "examining [Tusk's] adult male body." Doctor Gecko even tells him, "Next time, we must experiment with mating."
  • Dramatically Missing the Point: After failing to get Ange to follow her plan because of how callous the latter found it, she is more upset about how she didn't realize that Ange isn't her Unwitting Pawn after all.
    Jill: I failed. It's my fault Ange didn't turn out to be more submissive.
  • Earn Your Happy Ending: At the end of "Beyond Time", after everything Ange was put through, she's finally able to live a peaceful life and open a cafe. Meanwhile, the surviving residents of Arzenal as well as the DRAGONs are able to make peace and coexist on old Earth after years of fighting each other.
  • Earth All Along: While it's quite obvious that the main setting is an alternate Earth, the world where the DRAGONs come from turns out to be a post-apocalyptic version of our Earth.
  • Earth That Used to Be Better: When Ange, Tusk and Vivian enter a different Earth, it turns out that this world was where the the DRAGONs come from after Embryo wrecked havoc on it.
  • Easily Condemned: By the end of "Distorted World", Ange refuses to help the Mana users because they tried executing her when she first returned to Misurugi.
  • Easily Forgiven: Towards the end of the series, Ange forgives Liza for helping Julio cause the events of the series to happen in the first place.
  • Ecchi: It's got very strong sexual themes, references (Including rape scenes and a reference to sexual intercourse), lots of breast and butt shots (with Barbie Doll Anatomy) and loads of strong Yuri overtones, such as girls groping each other as well as lots of Stripperiffic clothing in the form of the pilot suits. It's to the point where it gets constantly lampshaded, and occasionally the show doesn't seem to take itself seriously meaning it could be an Affectionate Parody of fanservice shows itself.
  • 11th-Hour Superpower: In the last battle, Villkiss and the allied Ragna-mails gain new more powerful modes.
  • Emasculated Cuckold: Tusk pulls this in a Shut Up, Hannibal! to Embryo during the Grand Finale: the Big Bad starts taunting Tusk about how he'll never know Ange the way Embryo does, and Tusk says he already knows her better—including the number of moles she has on the inside of her thigh (having consummated their relationship a couple episodes ago).
  • Empathic Weapon: Ragna-mails and DRAGON-mails. Over the course of the series, Villkiss saves Ange and responds to her wills. In the last episode, Aura reveals that Ragna-mails respond to people's strong wills which is later delinvoked by Salia and Hilda to throw off Embryo's control of their Ragna-mails.
  • Empire with a Dark Secret: Any mainland mana-using nation, mainly the Misurugi Empire as it is the main enemy faction. All norma are sent off to a prison colony to fight DRAGONs.
  • End of an Age: At the end of the series, the Mana are now powerless and Embryo is no more.
  • Enhanced on DVD: The Blu-Ray and DVD release fixed several Off-Model shots and animation errors.
  • Eternal Recurrence: Apparently Sala and Ange keep meeting each other in different lives. Though Fukuda said it's alternate worlds, not reincarnation.
  • Evil Costume Switch: The girls who side with Embryo gets new uniforms and rider-suits which are noticeably darker and much less skimpy than their old ones.
  • Evil Plan: Embryo's plan is to use Aura as the source of Mana before cutting of the network, merge the dimensional gaps and kill all life on the planets, and create a new world, still ruled by him.
  • Fallen Princess: Ange becomes one once she is exiled to Arzenal, and the trope's name is also alluded to in the first episode's title. Jill reveals herself to be one as well, and had the potential to pilot the Villkiss due to her royal ring, which she lost along with her arm.
  • Fan Disservice:
    • In "The Tuner of Time" and "God's Soul-Searching", we are treated to very gratuitous shots of Ange stripping and masturbating, though it's because Embryo is subjecting her to mind control and artificially heightened senses. Suddenly, the scene loses its titillation factor.
    • On the earlier episodes, while Ange's tribulations had the marks of being played for Fanservice, it ended up causing this instead because she was basically threatened with Prison Rape without consent.
  • Fantastic Racism: The humans do not like the Norma and frequently use them as weapons of war. The level of anti-Norma bigotry in this world has to be seen to be believed. Essentially, when someone is revealed to be a Norma, every man, woman, and child (regardless of if its a family member or a best friend they've known for years), will suddenly turn on them and hatefully treat them like animals that deserve to die for simply existing. They all gleefully spout their belief that all Normas are "violent, vicious, anti-social monsters," both because their Anti-Magic breaks down the Magitek Mana society is built on and because Mana-users were genetically engineered to be more submissive to authority, making normal human rebelliousness seem strange and monstrous.
  • Fantastic Nuke: Dracinium, the power source of all mana. It can cause explosions and seems to leave fallout, too, which is what the DRAGONs are engineered to clean up.
  • Females Are More Innocent: The series, being an Ecchi show, has mostly female characters (including The Heroine Ange), all of whom are portrayed either heroically or sympathetically. Meanwhile, there are a grand total of three recurring male characters, and only one — Tusk, the Love Interest — is good. The other two, Julio and Embryo, are solely meant to be hated, and every female antagonist is shown to be a victim of their machinations. Hilda merely wants to reunite with her mother after Julio's men separated them, and her two flunkies follow her out of love; Ersha, Chris, and Salia make a Face–Heel Turn only because Embryo charms them; Zola and Jill, the former of whom rapes Ange and the latter of whom tries to sacrifice allies to win the war, are both simply "doing what they need" to get revenge on Embryo; the DRAGONs were only fighting to rescue their ancestor from Embryo; Liza is a Well-Intentioned Extremist trying to accomplish the mission of her fellow DRAGONs; and Sylvia, the Decoy Damsel who betrays Ange, tries to have her executed, tortures Liza in her spare time, and is hateful towards Norma, does so only because Julio and Embryo have convinced her that it is the right thing. By the end, with the exception of Zola who was killed, all of them have made a Heel–Face Turn, while Julio and Embryo die unmourned.
  • Fighter-Launching Sequence: Always happens whenever the pilots have to launch in their Para-mails.
  • Final Solution: Julio and Embryo invoke this trope against the Norma throughout the series:
    • Julio orders the genocide of the Norma in "Arzenal Burns". His allies launch an invasion of Arzenal, killing nearly all of the Norma save for those on the Aurora and Ange. Unfortunately for Julio, Embryo kills him for failing to follow orders.
    • Towards the end of the series, Embryo cuts off the Mana network and launches the space-time convergence to kill off all lifeforms save for a new humanity he's creating, but he doesn't get that far thanks to Ange and Tusk.
  • First Kiss: Ange and Tusk share one to signify their growing love for each other in, appropriately enough, "Ange and Tusk".
  • Foil: Jill to Ange. In short, she's what Ange would have become without the support base of Tusk, Momoka, Sala, and Hilda. Both are fallen princesses who ended up with the unique ability via royal heirloom to operate Villkiss but Jill is a Manipulative Bitch who uses her subordinates as Unwitting Pawns. And while Ange decides to help free the Norma by cooperating with the DRAGONs and releasing Aura, Jill wants to use the DRAGONs and her former subordinates as cannon fodder in her plans to kill Embryo. And like Ange, she fell for Embryo's temptations, but where Ange becomes an idealistic and open leader and resists all of Embryo's temptations, Jill suffered a Mind Rape and wanted to avenge the deaths of her comrades at the hands of Embryo.
  • Forced Orgasm: Towards the finale Embryo manages to capture Ange and force one of these on her using his Mind Rape powers.
  • Foreshadowing:
    • The "friendly fire" incident in "Ange Loss" was seen as stupid by fans and everyone laughed at how inept the pilots were when they encountered a loose DRAGON. Turns out, they get overcome with Berserker Rage whenever they hear a DRAGON roar as shown by Emma in "Dragon Song" when she suddenly becomes too aggressive. In fact, that same episode is known by fans as the "foreshadowing episode" as it foreshadows a lot of things despite the fanservice hijinks.
    • In ""Dark Angel of Destruction", Tusk wants to open Cafe Ange when the battle with Embryo is over. They finally do in the series finale.
  • Fragile Speedster: Vivian's prototype Para-mail Razor has enhanced mobility and a lighter armor than other Para-mails.
  • From Dress to Dressing: In a flashback in "Momoka Has Arrived!", young Angelise rips the hem of her dress to treat a wound of young Momoka.
  • Fun with Acronyms: Dragon, in this series, is an acronym for "Dimensional Rift Attuned Gargantuan Organic Neototypes".
    G-L 
  • Genre Shift: It was subtle, but the series slowly went from a dark Real Robot series in the first half into a campy Super Robot series as the show went on.
  • Girls Behind Bars: While technically not a prison but a military organization, Arzenal is a Penal Colony in all but name. And of course, it is played for full Fanservice potential, complete with Double Standard: Rape, Female on Female and a lack of Norma boys in the camp.
  • A God Am I: This is zig-zagged with Embryo, the immortal scientist who re-engineered humanity to be able to use magic after World War VII virtually wiped the human race off of the planet. Now he plans to completely wipe them out and "reset" everything. Embryo is called "God" by others, but while he does not call himself that, he doesn't think that this label is really that wrong, either.
  • Golden Super Mode: During the opening, the Villkiss turns gold and fires lightning bolts towards another Para-mail that also fires lightning bolts.
  • Grand Theft Prototype: Though whether it is a prototype or not is a matter of debate, this is how Villkiss ends up in Arzenal: the Ancient Humans jacked it while raiding one of the Columns of Dawn.
  • Grey Rain of Depression: During "Villkiss Awakens", this trope was in full effect when Ange pulls a cart full of tombstones for Zola, Miranda, and Coco with Ange being suicidal. This happens again in "Necessary" when Ersha mourns for the kids who got caught in the blast during the fighting that happened.
  • Gullible Lemmings: Embryo comments among his regrets about the World of Mana that people have become stagnant and lack free thought, and have been duped all too easily into abhorring Norma.
  • Hated by All: Embryo is the most scorned person outside the Mana society — Norma, DRAGONs, and Ancient Humans hate his guts. Even Salia, who remains loyal to Embryo, found this out the hard way when Jill calls her out towards the end of "Eve of Destruction", as she is the last person to realize that Embryo doesn't love anyone but himself and has no qualms about abandoning her. The game version plays around with this: Embryo is a dick, but if the player to chose to side with him, he became nicer and succeeded in his plans while making it less self-serving because his approval rating raised above zero with the player on his side.
  • Heroic BSoD:
    • Ange is left in a shocked state when she sees DRAGONs up close and personal for the first time.
    • In "Traitorous Homeland", Ange and Hilda are devastated when their former friends turn on her and wish they never existed.
    • Salia, when she finds out that Villkiss won't unlock its full potential to her and when she finally sees the Golden Super Mode. After seeing it, she finally accepts that only Ange should pilot Villkiss.
    • In "The Right Arm's Past", Vivian goes through a brief one after she realizes she's actually a DRAGON, followed by Ange after realizing that she has been killing human beings who were transformed into DRAGONs to the point that she vomits.
    • Jill undergoes one in the backstory when her first Libertas ended in failure thanks to Embryo's manipulations. Then, she goes into yet another one towards the end of the series when she willingly steps down as commander and contemplates on how she pushed Salia away.
    • In "Necessary", Ange goes through yet another one when she thinks Momoka and Tusk are dead.
    • Ersha seeing the Arzenal kids die devastated her... twice.
    • In "Arzenal Burns", Chris collapses into a state of complete fear when the mana fleet arrives to eradicate Arzenal.
    • After the encounter with a DRAGON, Emma starts fearing them and is shell-shocked. Getting betrayed and left for dead by her mana superiors also does quite a number on her.
    • Chris is shocked out of her mind to the point that she goes on a murderous rampage during the finale of "Eve of Destruction" when Embryo abandons her.
  • Heroic Sacrifice:
    • Sophia tries to evacuate Ange when the truth comes out and is killed shielding her from a bullet.
    • Marika rushes into battle against an Embryo-influenced Chris, who has her sights trained on Rosalie and Hilda from behind. Chris responds by instantly killing her. At the very least, this does give Rosalie and Hilda the time to respond in kind.
  • High School AU: An official one in Tenshi to Ryuu no Gakuen. No dragons, no robots, no deaths, and an Ange that is just short of being a Cloud Cuckoolander.
  • Hoist by Their Own Petard:
    • In a desperate attempt to avenge her comrades' death at the hands of Embryo, Jill uses her subordinates as Unwitting Pawns to advance her plans to kill Embryo, to the point of using the Dragons as a decoy. It backfires when Ange kicks her after Jill attempts to force her into a mission that would involve killing the Dragons to help liberate the Norma and later when Hilda learns that Jill has lost her sanity thanks to Embryo. After being cornered by Hilda and her allies, she willingly relinquishes command to Hilda.
    • Embryo's Evil Plan is foiled when the DRAGONs form an alliance with the Norma to stop Embryo's Time Crash. Embryo also sows the seeds for his demise when he showed a complete disregard for the Diamond Rose Knights, which leads Chris, Ersha, and Salia to rejoin The Alliance and kill him once and for all.
  • Humans Are the Real Monsters:
    • Many humans state that all Normas are "violent, evil, anti-social monsters" and use it as their justification for their hatred, abuse, and murder of Normas. However, through this series most Normas are shown to be decent, normal girls who just happened to not be able to use the Light of Mana. On the other hand, most humans are vicious and outright monstrous in their treatment of Normas, and gleefully feel like they're justified in their bigotry and abuse simply because they're Normas.
    • Ange states this trope outright in "Goodbye From the Gallows" during her execution, as many of her former friends, family and acquaintances happily call for her hanging, and giving no real reason for why she needed to be executed outside of "she's a Norma". She fully realizes the utter insanity and stupidity of their hatred of Normas, and wonders why Normas had to fight and die for these horrible people.
    • This is more or less zig-zagged - it turns out that the Normas are, well, normal people, while the Mana-users have some very nasty genetically-engineered skeletons in their closets that make them psychologically deviant from the human norm in addition to giving them superpowers. Humans, however, are still treated as villainous despite this, because the standard 'human' in the setting are the Mana users, the ones genetically modified by Embryo. The anomalies like Norma, predecessor humans (like Tusk) or even DRAGONs, minus the fact that they turn into dragons, are closer to normal humans in other settings since they're not tampered with Embryo's modification, and they tend to be grayer. In other words, genetically modified humans have taken over normal humans as the one bearing the term 'human', and they're bastards, giving a bad name to the term 'human', while non-modified normal humans aren't such bastards.
  • I Have You Now, My Pretty: Embryo attempts to make Ange become his wife several times, even through a Mind Rape. Unfortunately for him, it doesn't work out thanks to her being resistant to his manipulativeness.
  • I Know Madden Kombat: During her first time piloting a Para-mail simulator, Ange notes that it's like piloting a hoverbike for the Iaria sport.
  • Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: In "The Tuner of Time", Ersha and Chris' attacks on the Aurora miraculous don't hit even when it's in plain view and not moving.
  • Important Haircut: Ange cuts her hair at the end of "Villkiss Awakens" to symbolize that she has accepted her fate.
  • Improbably Female Cast: The story is about a military unit for which only females fulfill the criteria for getting drafted and which is isolated from the rest of the world, so there are mostly female characters around. The only male characters are Tusk, the main Love Interest, and the first and second Big Bads, Julio and Embryo.
  • Inconsistent Spelling:
    • The subtitles spell out "Salia" but the English text on the apology letter that was typed up by Momoka in "Salia's Gloom" refer to her as "Thalia". The official spelling in the website is Salia regardless. It could also be inferred that Momoka has no idea Salia is supposed to be "S" rather than "Th", though out-of-universe, it could be inferred that Mitsuo Fukuda, who wrote the letter, didn't know what the spelling of her name was.
    • Official spellings of the show's full title aren't sure whether it's supposed to be "Angel and Dragon" or "Angels and Dragons". Some such as the Super Robot Wars games use the former spelling while the physical release by Sentai Filmworks uses the latter spelling.
  • Innocent Bigot: Despite her prejudice against Norma, Ange never seems to bear any actual malice toward them.
  • Irony: The end of the series leaves the humans mostly as what they accused Norma of being: violent and antisocial. The Norma, meanwhile, finally get to live in peace.
  • It Is Beyond Saving: Embryo plans to merge both the mana world and the DRAGON world because he feels that people in the mana world have become too complacent and prejudiced, so he decides to recreate it again.
  • It's All My Fault: This is how Jill feels about the first Libertas. Embryo managed to snatch her and brainwash her to betray her comrades in the first attempt, resulting in all their deaths. She's so guilt-ridden over it to the point where she decides to kill Embryo to avenge her fallen comrades.
  • Karma Houdini Warranty:
    • After several episodes of not suffering any repercussions, Jill suffers a string of humiliations, starting with Ange kicking her down in "Conclusive Ocean" and later steps down as commander when her subordinates find out about what happened between her and Embryo.
    • After years, if not centuries, of getting away with genocide, manipulation and rape, Embryo finally gets what's coming to him at the end of the series, courtesy of Ange and Tusk.
  • Kill Steal: In "Lonely Mutiny", Hilda is about to take out a large dragon, but Ange pushes her away so she can score the kill instead. Ange apparently did this a lot in "Momoka Has Arrived!", so much that she took out a squad of Dragons single-handedly. Ange did this so she could buy Momoka, who was going to be killed in order to keep Normas and Dragons a secret.
  • The Lady's Favour: Ange slips her panties into Tusk's pocket as a "good-luck charm" before the final battle.
  • Laser-Guided Karma:
    • Ange is outed as a Norma—the species she ridiculed while she was a Princess—and drew public disfavor for it. In an ironic twist, she is taken to Arzenal and forced to fight the DRAGONs alongside the other Norma.
    • Had Zola focused more on teaching Ange to fight DRAGONs than trying to get into Ange's pants (consent be damned), chances are Ange would have had a better showing and Zola might have lived through it.
    • Jill's ruthless efforts to free the Norma from Embryo's control (such as using her subordinates as pawns) and avenge her fallen comrades eventually cause her to willingly step down as commander when her subordinates learn the truth, and ultimately get gunned down by Embryo during the Final Battle.
    • Sylvia whips Ange after attempting to rescue her and not only blames her for causing her paralysis, but for causing the death of her family (or so she thinks). Then, during the final episodes, Ange forces her to walk and leaves her sister behind. This actually causes her to feel remorse and become a better person (it helps that much of her evil is a result of Julio and Embryo manipulating her).
    • Liza was complicit in helping Julio kill his parents, expose Ange as a Norma and open a portal over Arzenal, resulting in half the island getting destroyed along with serious casualties. At this point it should have been clear enough that the Arzenal residents, of which former Misurugi Ange was now one of, had been used as dragon-killing tools, and she could have came as an envoy and clarified her role. Finally, when an already distraught Sylvia stumbles on her in the act, Liza puts her under her draconic thrall, leading Sylvia to whipping her later as payback (albeit for various petty reasons included). However, by the end of the series, Liza's eventually spared, joins forces with the surviving Norma and DRAGONs and never appears to suffer any further consequences for her earlier actions.
    • The Mana-wielding humans in general are depowered by the end of the series, leaving them exactly like the Normas, regardless whether they were high and mighty because of Embryo's machinations or not, karma is still catching up on them for their unrepentant high-and-mighty pampered attitude and abuse towards the Norma all while being entitled bastards and dirty cowards in the same time, when it has been proven that some humans like Momoka could get past such bigotry. Meanwhile, the Normas and DRAGONs, after a long time of suffering thanks to Embryo and the Mana society (for the former), are in a better position as they rebuild the old Earth, enjoying peace while the Normas no longer have to worry about prejudice, and since they were already self-sufficient enough through the harshness of reality in the past, rebuilding for them seems like a smoother road.
  • Latex Space Suit: Embryo's pilots show no skin at all.
  • Leeroy Jenkins: Ange recklessly charges at the DRAGONs whenever she's fighting against them. Somehow, it works for her just fine.
  • Let's You and Him Fight: The DRAGONs want their leader Aura back, however they are stopped by the Norma who aren't told anything about the aliens invading their world except to kill them per orders from their Mana masters from The Empire and other nations.
  • Limited Animation:
    • Initially, the second opening animation were stills and reused animation from the first opening.
    • The episodes themselves, to some extent as well, until the Blu-ray and DVD releases. Partially because this is an anime, and partially due to Sunrise's uneven production schedule during the 2014 Fall Anime season.Note 
    • The visual novel has extremely limited animation to the point where it becomes incredibly uncanny. Which isn't helped one iota by the CGI and Live2D Animation used for it looking incredibly cheap, resulting in that uncanny look.
  • Limited Wardrobe: Enforced with Arzenal, as its inhabitants only get two outfits- A set of prison clothes that can be customized to a degree, and a pilot's uniform.
    • Taken to jarring extremes in the Vita game, where the characters are only seen in just three outfits at best. Making scenes like saving Ange from being executed by Julio incredibly ridiculous when the former is still wearing her standard prison clothes and not the potato sack like in "Goodbye From the Gallows", and it's only made even more jarring when a screencap taken from the anime shows her in the combat outfit from "Traitorous Homeland" instead, despite not wearing it in the game either.
  • Line in the Sand: A rhetorical version. When Julio's forces attack Arzenal, Jill tells everyone that they can surrender to the attackers, or else take up arms and join Libertus. Except for Ange, the one person who distrusts her. She orders Salia to capture Ange by force, because she and the Villkiss are too vital to be allowed to either fall into Julio's hands or cut and run. It backfires.
  • Little Miss Badass: About a quarter of the staff at Arzenal are pre-pubescent, as most have been identified as Norma and sent to Arzenal when they were born. Nonetheless, a good portion of these kids are combat engineers and most can use artillery cannons. Special mention goes to Vivian for being a DRAGON with DRAGON-hunting combat experience.
  • Living Prop:
    • This is what the roles of both Tania and Erma essentially boil down to, as they have ultimately have no effect on the plot beyond filling out Embryo's troopsnote  and being Sacrificial Lambs in the second half of "Eve of Destruction". Their roles in the series' appearances in Super Robot Wars V fare little better, being reduced to just mere mooks who can't be saved, though X fixes this by having them be party members should they be spared from death. The visual novel avoids this by just cutting them out altogether and have the player character, Naomi, take their place.
    • Emma also fits quite snugly into this. And most of the cast become this too at different points- even Ange herself gets to be one in a couple episodes.
  • Lost Aesop: Anti-bigotry was one of the themes this series is going for, considering that it decries the horrible treatment of the Norma by the Mana people, and the story is about the Norma fighting against their oppression and gaining freedom. Part of Ange's Character Development is about learning not to judge others, and that Norma are people too. But on the other hand, the majority of the Mana people were designed as Hate Sink unless they managed to rise above their prejudice and bigotry (it is possible, as it happened to Momoka and Emma, later on), making the event where Embryo destroys Mana and leaves the Mana people to fend for themselves and Ange refusing to help them since they still clung to the old prejudice and bigotry looks more like a well-deserved Laser-Guided Karma. The show did convey that bigotry is bad; in a way that if you either rise above it or fight against it, you're good, but if you cling onto it, you deserve some karmic hammer drop onto you, but the sight of the oppressed delivering those to the Mana users might cause some cracks on the Aesop.
  • Loving Details: Towards the end of the series, the Big Bad Embryo, who is unhealthily obsessed with the title heroine, tries to demoralize her boyfriend Tusk by telling him how exactly he will seduce her. Tusk quickly no-sells his attempt, saying that he already knows Ange in more intimate ways than Embryo can ever hope to, including how many moles she has on her inner thigh.
  • Ludd Was Right: The world of Mana, of the magical dystopia variety. As soon as Embryo severs the mana network in "Necessary", everything comes crashing down in the mainland.
  • Lust: Embryo's misstep in "Beyond Time" is completely in line with a lustful character. He hand-selected Ange to be his wife and give birth to a new generation of humanity, but his undoing came when Ange rejects his advances and Hilda, Salia and Sala help her destroy Hysterica, while Tusk cuts him down.
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  • The Magic Goes Away: At the end of "Necessary", as part of Embryo's plan to merge the two worlds, all humans lose the ability to use mana.
  • Magic Music: In "Dragon Song", Sala and Ange both activate the true power of their respective mechas by singing their theme songs.
  • Make Way for the New Villains: In the first half of the series, Julio is touted as the enemy Ange has to face since he exposed her as a Norma and kickstarted the entire plot. By the time of "Arzenal Burns", however, it turns out that Julio is working for Embryo, the real Big Bad of the series, who eventually kills Julio.
  • Meaningful Echo:
    • Tusk says "Nobody knows what's right or wrong" when Ange tries to form The Alliance between the DRAGONs and the Norma. Ange repeats the line when she and Jill battle during the finale of "Conclusive Ocean".
    • After Ange tells Sylvia that fighting is the way to survive in "Distorted World", the latter takes her word to heart and repeats it to a fellow citizen at the end of "Beyond Time".
  • Meaningful Name: Liza Landog's last name is an anagram of "dragon".
  • Mid-Season Upgrade: Subverted with Ange, who only replaces her machine gun/bazooka hybrid weapon with Sala's beam rifle. Instead, it's played straight by Salia, Chris, and Ersha when they sided with Embryo in "Dark Angel of Destruction".
  • Mind Rape: Ange gets subjected to this trope when Embryo simply touches her head with his finger.
  • Mind Screw: Academy of Angels and Dragons ends with the students of Arzenal Academy saying that they'll be able to live happily no matter what time or world they live in... and then it cuts to the main universe Arzenal, where the main universe Cross Ange characters find a faded Arzenal Academy class log. What this means is anyone's guess.
  • Moment Killer:
    • Just when Ange and Tusk almost kiss in "Ange Loss", the DRAGON that Ange failed to kill in the previous episode arrives and causes a friendly fire towards the helicopters that were transporting the Brig-class DRAGON in the previous episode.
    • In "Ange and Tusk", they finally get the kiss and was about to go all the way, till a Brig-class DRAGON showed up with two new characters from the opening show up to see what was going on.
  • Morality Pet: Momoka to Ange, and later Tusk. Momoka's appearance is the first thing to snap Ange out of her antisocial funk, and Tusk is what allows her to open up to romantic love again.
  • Motive Decay: Embryo had a plan to restart the world because the Mana users he created has truly become decadent beyond saving. Somewhere in the middle, he decided that being a villainous, creepy harem seeker is much more profitable.
  • Mouth-to-Mouth Force-Feeding: Ange is tricked into drinking water that is laced with a laxative. One kiss later, and Rosalie, who placed the laxative in Ange's water, is stuck on the toilet for quite a while.
  • The Multiverse:
    • A (really) minor plot point, and how the DRAGONs are able to exist.
    • At the end of the series, it's implied that Embryo not only destroyed humanity on past Earths in his own universe on purpose, but on other ones outside of it as well.
  • Mundane Made Awesome: Ange and Salia's little Cat Fight in the bath in "Salia's Gloom" is a lot more epic than it has any right to be thanks to Akiko Shikata's soundtrack.
  • Mutant Draft Board: Inverted - technically all Mana world people are mutants. It's the normas, people who break mana on contact due to a defective gene, who are detained and secretly taken to Arzenal.
  • My Greatest Failure:
    • As revealed in "Bikini Escape", Ange making Sylvia a cripple with the latter falling off the horse they were riding on. She didn't know that she was a Norma at that time.
    • Jill's first Libertas. It ended in the loss of her comrades, her ability to pilot the Ragna-mail, her arm and her hope for liberating the Norma.
  • Mythology Gag:
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
    • Liza's plan leads to Embryo instigating his world reset plan after Arzenal is half-decimated in the DRAGON attack, and her getting caught leads them into a trap that nearly results in a TPK if not for Ange strongly urging Sala to order a retreat.
    • Jill unwittingly causes Salia to abandon her and join Embryo. Jasmine and Ange call her out on this.
    • Tusk earns one himself in "Conclusive Ocean". Despite having the best intentions for Ange, knocking everyone out from gas, (when just the briefing room where Jill was in would have sufficed), and rising the Aurora was too extreme. For one, Salia happened to be scouting in the area at the time, and caught them on sonar due to the Aurora rising. Also, with everyone else, including the ones that check the monitors for enemies, knocked out, no one is aware Salia and the other Ragna-mail pilots are on the way until it's too late. The Norma remnants are left helpless with mostly everyone asleep, and Ange is captured by Salia and at the mercy of Embryo.
  • Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: When Embryo captures and attempts to rape Ange for the umpteenth time in "Beyond Time", it results in Tusk using her Villkiss to rescue her while Ange sings. Then, Tusk helps Ange and her allies kill off Embryo for good.
  • Non-Uniform Uniform: Para-mail pilots are allowed to customized their uniforms to a certain degree as the page image shows.
  • No Flow in CGI: The game zig-zags this a bit. While most of the cast, namely Ange, Vivian, Naomi, Chris, Momoka and Maggy, have visible bounce or swing to their hair during and after body motions. Salia and Hilda's pigtails remain stiff as a board. Ange also gains a bit of chest physics during her turning animations.
  • Nothing Is the Same Anymore: By the end of the series, the Mana world is reduced to nothing but rubble due to Embryo's machinations.
  • Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Ange pulling off a One Woman Army against a squadron of dragons in "Momoka Has Arrived!". Unfortunately, we only get to see the aftermath.
  • Older Is Better: Para-mails are outmatched by the much older Ragna-mails.
  • Only One Name: All Norma characters in Arzenal. They got their full names back posthumously.
  • On the Next: Feature character voiceovers that constantly complain about the show.
  • Oral Fixation: Vivian is never without a lollipop in her mouth, even when in the shower. Turns out it's laced with chemical treatments for a medical condition. One hell of a medical condition.
  • Order Versus Chaos: What Ange and Embryo's debate boiled down to in "The Tuner of Time", naturally with the former being on the freedom side and the latter being on the order side. Ange believes that the world should be destroyed and rebuilt because the minor Norma are discriminated. Meanwhile, Embryo believes that humanity needs guidance and a purpose by railroading them with tasks.
  • Original Position Fallacy: Humans exile Norma (humans who cannot use Mana and negate Mana that comes into contact with them) to an island in the middle of nowhere to act as Slave Mooks to protect their Crapsaccharine World, making them Un-person. Princess Angelise of the Mitsurugi Empire considers this entirely appropriate... until it turns out in the first episode that she's a Norma herself and her royal parents had covered it up. The fallacy is pointed out to her face in episode three.
  • Our Dragons Are Different: From what we know, they are no different from alien invaders in terms of the plot. As it turns out, they're descendants of humans left behind in the old Earth who altered their DNA to survive and clean up the planet.
  • Overdrawn at the Blood Bank: Whenever someone dies, they tend to bleed a ridiculous amount of blood.
  • Pay Evil unto Evil: Since the humans revel in copious amounts of bigotry, prejudice, and racism towards Norma and none except a few like Momoka even makes effort to get past that, it's kind of hard to feel sorry for them when Ange states that she doesn't give a damn and leaves them to fend off for themselves... or even Embryo when he decided that the Mana society has become decadent and should be wiped out. And beforehand, there's also Embryo's direct murder on Julio. Embryo is no saint himself, but no one's going to pity Julio being killed by him after the atrocities that he has done.
  • Penal Colony: Arzenal is run mainly by Normas, with a single Mana overseer that apparently just watches over with no real power.
  • Poor Communication Kills:
    • A lot of Ange's problems could have been avoided or at least discussed if she said something to other people. Then again, she does have trust issues.
    • The DRAGONs want to liberate Aura who is used as a power source for Mana. Norma, who are constantly in fear against DRAGONs, have to fight and kill them for cash and livelihood. Unfortunately, they can't communicate with each other so both sides are at constant war with each other with the other side not knowing what's going on. There's also the fact that the Mana world leaders are keeping tabs with what's going on.
  • Portmanteau Couple Name: invoked In one of the On the Next segments, Rosalie says she wants more RosaChri scenes. Chris firmly reminds her that it's supposed to be ChriRosa.
  • Powered by a Forsaken Child: The Mana Society has a multi-layered example of this going on, applying it both metaphorically and literally. Right at first, it becomes clear that the peaceful, quiet, pleasant lives of the mana-users are secured by Normas fighting and dying hideously at Arzenal - most of them having been torn away from their parents literally in infancy and raised to accept that they're only allowed to exist by serving as disposable slave-soldiers protecting the World of Mana.
    • And then, later on, you find out that the very source of the Mana is Aura, the ancient, benevolent progenitor/goddess of the Dragons, held prisoner beneath the Dawn Pillar and force-fed the hearts of her slain children in order to serve as a living power-generator. The utopian, post-scarcity society has a lot of skeletons buried under the porch.
  • The Power of Rock: What activates the Golden Super Mode and the Wave Motion Shoulder Cannons on Ange's Villkiss, Sala's Enryugo, and Embryo's Hysterica. It all involves a variation thereof of the song "Endless Story" on each Ragna-Mail (or advanced Para-mail in Sala's case). This is justified according to Embryo: "Endless Story" is actually a distillation of the Grand Unified Theory of particle physics, which underpins all the Ragna-Mails.
  • Pragmatic Adaptation: The Visual Novel adaptation reworks and merges a few events and removes some characters in order to accommodate Audience Surrogate Naomi into the story. With some changes being more extensive than others.
    • Coco, Miranda and Zola still die at Ange's hand; but are given some additional screentime before then to flesh them out.
    • The events of "Salia's Gloom" still play out as they did, but it's shown that Salia also got sick after her fight with Ange.
    • Naomi is the one who finds Chris already dead in a corridor during the events of "Arzenal Burns", with Embryo encountering them both and reviving Chris at that moment.
    • The events of the story between "Ange and Tusk" and "Dark Angel of Destruction" are Out of Focus in most routes. The Vivian route does bring up the DRAGON world, but the story's told through her and Naomi's point of view.
    • One notable change done to the events of "Conclusive Ocean" features Hilda rescuing the Bound and Gagged Momoka instead of Ange if both she and Naomi go with Embryo to Misurugi.
    • Due to the inherent nature of the format, the ending varies based on the route taken. Including one where Embryo actually succeeds in his goal in the most outlandish way possible.
  • Prepare to Die: Once Ange resists Embryo's temptations for the last time in "Beyond Time", Embryo decides to kill her instead.
  • Princess Protagonist: Ange starts off as a Princess Classic in a perfect magical kingdom, before being outed as an Un-Sorcerer and publicly cast out to the very bottom of society. Her royal lineage and upbringing become plot points on multiple occasions later, but she never once lets them define what she is and how she acts.
  • Prison Rape: Zola attempts this on Ange, but is interrupted by the alarm.
  • Pun-Based Title: As revealed in the final next episode preview, the title is a pun about how Ange is "cross" (angry and callous) all the time.
  • Punch-Clock Villain: The Diamond Rose Knights, for the most part.
  • Race Against the Clock: Towards the end of the series, the Norma and DRAGONs race to free Aura in the Column of Dawn and stop Embryo before his Time Crash kills off all lifeforms.
  • Readings Are Off the Scale: When the number of DRAGONs in "Dragon Song" appeared, the numbers piled up to 200 before the computer showed an error on the screen.
  • Real Robot: Para-Mails are a standard, commonplace military weapon and the pilots who use them undergo intensive military training and must employ squad and team tactics to be successful. Case-in-point, Ange's attempt to desert gets a fellow squad member killed.
  • Rebellious Spirit: The heart of Normas' reputation as antisocial monsters - they don't have Mana-users' genetically-ingrained respect for authority and tradition, and are more likely to act out and ask inconvenient questions. Of course, this is only relatively speaking - they're not abnormally rebellious by our standards, they're just throwbacks to ordinary humanity before Embryo started messing with the genome.
  • Refuse to Rescue the Disliked:
    • A variation of sorts in "Bikini Escape". Ange attempts to leave Hilda behind at Arzenal, having already been attacked by her. However, she changes her mind Hilda reveals she did everything she did to survive life at Arzenal, and bided her time long enough to escape and finally make it back home and reunite with her mom.
    • In "Distorted World", Ange refuses to rescue the Mana users and Sylvia from their world's destruction, having been already betrayed by the former when Ange was exposed as a Norma and the latter when Ange returned to her homeland a previous time. Only makes sense to ditch someone if they're clearly not gonna change for the better.
  • Reincarnation: Although according to Mitsuo Fukuda, it's more of an alternate destiny/timeline rather than real reincarnation, this is what Ange and Sala's relationship has been. They were gladiators in one time, another a soldier and a relief helper, high school students, and a lot more. Also included are the residents of Arzenal who also appear in the montages.
  • Replacement Goldfish: Inge names her second daughter Hilda after she disowns her first daughter, also named Hilda.
  • The Reveal: Arzenal, the real one, is where Embryo and his team of scientists conducted the Ragna-mail and dracunium experiments. Also, the DRAGONs are really good-natured humanoids, and the Mana people were simply brainwashed by Embryo.
  • Riddle for the Ages: The burst of visions of their various alternate lives together between Ange and Salamandinay indicate that their destinies have always been linked to one another regardless of what timeline they are in. How and for what reason is ultimately never explored nor explained.
  • Ring of Power: Necessary in order to fly and master a Ragna-mail.
  • Running Gag: Tusk's face is constantly gravitating towards Ange's crotch.
    • Reversed one time when Ange's face accidentally fell onto Tusk's crotch while he was naked.
    S-Z 
  • Sacrificial Lion: Jill perishes from injuries sustained in her fight with Embryo at the beginning of "Beyond Time".
  • Sanity Slippage: Jill's failure of her first Libertus has taken a severe toll on her well-being thanks to Embryo's machinations.
  • Schizo Tech: The guns and grenades used look sorta out-of-place.
  • Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
    • A subverted example occurs when Ange attempts to leave on her first mission. It doesn't work out and results in the deaths of Miranda, Coco, and Zola.
    • In the finale of "Conclusive Ocean", Ange finally beats Jill and flees the Aurora to meet up with Sala.
    • When things go to hell for the World of Mana with the Dragons and Arzenal residents at their doorstep, they step back from Embryo's plan and beg him to save their world. Embryo just leaves them to their fate.
  • Screw You, Elves!: Ange doesn't take too kindly to Sala's audacity towards attempting to recruit her at first, and especially the latter's accusations of the Norma being violent, and killing dragons, when it was mainly in self defense as they were used as involuntary Cannon Fodder against said dragons, and Sala had very recently launched an attack that annihilated most of the Norma, which, given their Child Soldier conscript status, would count as a war crime in the real world. (And that's not even counting the dehumanization the Norma race from the Mana people.)
  • Sealed with a Kiss: Ange and Tusk seal their love with a kiss in, appropriately enough, "Ange and Tusk".
  • Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Mana believe that Norma are violent and antisocial. They send the Norma to a hellhole prison (most of them from a young age) where their only purpose is to fight, and generally treat them like dirt. Surprise, surprise, most of them are violent and antisocial. There's a bit more to it than that, though - Mana-users are right about Norma inherently being unusually antisocial, but only because they themselves are abnormally hypersocial.
  • Self-Parody:
    • The On the Next segments have the characters commenting on - and complaining about - the events of the episode. Sometimes even bringing the show's staff to task.
    • Tenshi to Ryuu no Gakuen parodies the series, episode by episode.
  • Sensible Heroes, Skimpy Villains: Inverted. The outfits of the antagonists show less skin.
  • Sensor Suspense: Anytime there's trouble, one of the Bridge Bunnies will see something bad happening on the display.
    • The one time they fail to do this is when Tusk gases the sub causing them to fall asleep. This prevents them from noticing Salia and the other Ragna-mail pilots coming their way.
  • Sex Slave:
    • Zola keeps three of the other Normas in her room. Their consent is dubious; they love her, but Hilda at least indicates that she was also using Zola to survive and isn't too sad to see her go.
    • After Zola kicks the bucket, Hilda buys "everything that belonged to her", which includes her room and the other two girls. However, this arrangement is clearly 100% consensual.
    • When Momoka arrives at the base, Chris has some rather crass ideas about what Ange will do with her maid. Momoka isn't used for this; Chris is just being nasty.
  • Shoot the Rope: How Ange is saved from her execution.
  • Shoot the Shaggy Dog:
    • Jill's life becomes this by the end of the series. She starts off as a Fallen Princess and a respected leader of Libertus to free the Norma, only for her to be mind-raped at Embryo's hands and cause the first Libertus to fail, and by the time she recruits Ange for the second Libertus, she is already using her subordinates as pawns to exact revenge on Embryo. When all is said and done, she's failed to get her revenge on Embryo again and is killed off during the final battle. Even the one silver lining — having her dream of freeing the Norma by killing Embryo — is bittersweet because Jill died before even witnessing its resolution.
    • Liza's efforts to infiltrate the World of Mana, which result in the crumbling of Ange's once idyllic life and near death at least twice, and also the annihilation of a good chunk of the Norma, fail on their own when she is captured by Embryo, resulting in the dragons' plan to infiltrate and save Aura getting found out and them almost obliterated. Their savior? Ironically, the one who was put through hell and almost killed by them, Ange.
  • Shout-Out: The paramails tends to attract shout outs from other mecha series.
  • Shown Their Work:
    • Controversial sexual undertones notwithstanding, Episode 2 is actually a reasonable facsimile of what life is like for a new recruit in the military (albeit a couple of decades in the past). The food is terrible, the quarters are substandard, the only place to shop is a little on-base market that sells little conveniences. Because you're a newcomer, hazing is not uncommon and much of the unit treats you coldly until you prove yourself.
    • Even much of the sexual tones can be chalked down as a study of an environment where gender segregation has led the majority of the cast to have never seen a boy before, and the said military hazing being led by an Alpha Bitch mentality of asserting dominance. Of course, it does not help that it's all played for Fanservice.
    • The use of a hated minority as cannon fodder during war time while the popular majority lives in comfort is rife in real world history. Greece used the Spartans. Rome used the Gauls. Both Rome and Israel used the Philistines against each other. (As an added insult, Rome renamed Israel Palestine when Israel lost.) And the most recent example is in the U.S. civil war where both the North and South used slaves or former slaves against each other. Of course, there were typically members of the privileged class who were nevertheless sympathetic to the oppressed class, something that none of the Mana people display with the sole exception of Momoka, Ange's maid.
    • Attempting to disguise murder as friendly fire has been common throughout history, though typically it was directed upwards by soldiers to disliked or incompetent officers.
  • Shut Up, Hannibal!:
    • In the finale of "Conclusive Ocean", when Jill tries to invoke her shared circumstances with Ange, Ange cuts her off for being as manipulative as the ones she's fighting.
    • When the Misurugi citizens and Sylvia demand her to rescue them in the finale of "Distorted World", she gives a Boom, Headshot! to one of the citizens and forces Sylvia to walk.
    • During the finale of "Beyond Time", Ange cuts off Embryo's "If I Can't Have You..." speech and uses Villkiss to destroy Hysterica.
  • Sick Episode: Ange spends the most of the second half of "Salia's Gloom" in bed suffering from a bad cold after her fight with Salia.
    • This is also carried over to both the PS Vita game and Super Robot Wars V. The former instance also alters the events a bit and gives Salia a slight rasp and cough to her dialogue to imply that she also got ill from their encounter.
  • Soiled City on a Hill: This is the final fate of the once World of Mana when the space-time convergence is stopped.
  • Sorry to Interrupt: An aversion occurs when Sala stumbles in on Tusk and Ange in yet another Not What It Looks Like position. Her response is "Morning intercourse, I see. Please, continue."
  • Space Elves: The DRAGON race are fighting mainly to reclaim their kidnapped leader, live in a harmonic society where nobody is at odds with each other based on Magitek, fulfil their lives by cleaning their world from junk, all of their women are shown to be very attractive (who also make up all of the leadership) and those mechanical parts some of them wear at the side of their heads even look a tad like pointy ears. Oh my...
  • Spared by the Adaptation: All characters who died in the series live in the High School AU.
  • Sparing Them the Dirty Work: The titular character is on the verge of annihilating her treacherous brother Julio when Embryo, the series' Big Bad who takes an interest in her, does the deed for her, not wishing to see her stain her hands.
  • Spoiler Opening:
    • There's a reason why Zola, Coco and Miranda are absent in the opening- they die early on.
    • The first ending animation shows off both Sala and Embryo long before their first appearances in the series.
  • Stock Footage: A Fukuda staple. From Villkiss' transformation from Flight to Assault Modes, the action sequences when Vivian throws the boomerang, and Ange singing The Endless Song inside Villkiss.
    • Ange shifting gears in the Villkiss is also used a lot. For extra mileage, the animators have also recolored it and used it to represent Salia doing the same in "Dragon Song" and slightly re-animated it in "God's Soul-Searching" to reflect the different outfit Ange is wearing.
    • It doesn't even have to be mecha. Here's Sylvia's whipping animation. The left is from "Goodbye From the Gallows", and the right from "God's Soul-Searching".
    • It got so bad that a fan made a comparison video of Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny's opening with this anime's opening and it almost looks exactly the same.
    • As much as "Distorted World" was pretty cool, there was a lot of stock footage used to the point of crossing Off-Model territory. Specifically, after the Aurora's already in the air, Ange, as the squad's commander-in-chief, orders everyone to take off. Suddenly, the Aurora's back in the water again.
  • Stock Sound Effect: This trope happens a lot regarding the DRAGONS.
    • The roars for the most part seem to be cribbed from either Godzilla, Rodan, Mothra, and/or Anguirus depending on the class size or scene.
    • Similarly, in "The Right Arm's Past", when Vivian becomes a dragon, her roars consist of a mix between Houko Kuwashima's vocals and dialogue, with roars from the T-Rex and Frank Welker's Sharptooth underneath.
    • The DRAGON in "Ange Loss" has Predator growls mixed in with its roars.
    • Quite a few sound effects are from the Hanna-Barbera sound effects library.
  • A Storm Is Coming: In "Necessary", a thunderstorm brews when Tusk and Ange decide to return to the Aurora and when Ersha bails out of the Diamond Rose Knights.
  • Stripperiffic:
    • The pilot suits leave little to the imagination. Lampshaded by Ange who complains that the suit she is handed is too indecent.
    • In "Lonely Mutiny", Ange walks around the base in a shredded uniform which shows even more than the already skimpy intact ones, but at that point she doesn't care anymore.
    • DRAGON fashions also show off a lot of skin.
  • Suck Out the Poison: In "Ange Loss", Ange gets bitten by a snake while trying to find a shelter from the rain. She finds Tusk on the same spot where she left him tied up earlier and he sucks out the snake's poison to rescue her.
  • Sudden Lack of Signal: When Ange and Tusk accidentally warp to the original, post-apocalyptic Earth, the first weird thing they notice (apart from the ruins) is a complete radio silence all around them.
  • Suggestive Collision: In "Ange Loss", Tusk trips over a beer bottle and accidentally ends up slamming his face into Ange's naked crotch. She promptly goes into Pervert Revenge Mode before running off with her flight suit. After that, Tusk getting a pie to the face becomes a Running Gag.
  • Super Prototype: Villkiss and the other six Ragna-mails would end up forming the basis for the mass-produced Para-mails, despite the fact that the former have superpowers and the latter don't.
  • Super Registration Act: Inverted - norma are oppressed and forced into military service.
  • Super Robot: Ragna-Mails are quite similar to Para-Mails, until they activate their Golden Super Mode and they cross into this territory.
  • Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
    • Ange gets sent to Arzenal, but she has no actual training in war, and has to learn how to fight from the ground up.
    • Disobeying an order from your commander won't exactly give you a hero's welcome. Ange and Hilda get some brig time for deserting Arzenal, and Salia herself gets taken to the brig when she disobeys Jill's orders and steals the Villkiss for herself.
    • Jill learns the hard way that when your superiors find out that you're planning to use your subordinates as unwitting pawns in their plans to kill Embryo, they will no longer trust you. Just ask Ange and Hilda.
    • While well-intentioned, Jill's attempt to personally kill Embryo behind Hilda's back and not telling anyone about the aftermath of the first Libertas both end up making things worse for their fellow comrades, which leads to Jill relinquishing command to Hilda.
    • The Mana users never experienced war and discrimination despite calling themselves a kind without them, which turns them into a Hypocrite as a species. It doesn't help that their creator and resident Big Bad Embryo is also a Control Freak who never taught them about why war and oppression are bad things. Sure enough, the users find this out the hard way when Embryo starts merging the two worlds at the end of the series.
    • In the second half of "Distorted World", when Sylvia begs Ange to save her, Ange understandably refuses, saying that she can't stand on her own two feet. Ange may be a heroine, but Sylvia hasn't given Ange any reason to rescue her again if the first time didn't stick.
    • Once Embryo has had enough of Tusk and Ange getting in his way at the end of the series, he resorts to just killing them in cold blood.
  • Take That, Audience!: Embryo is typically considered to be an Audience Surrogate for the Otaku audience, in particular his habit of becoming enamored with women and lavishing them with praise and attention until they either stop being useful to him or he finds a new girl that he likes more, at which point he callously discards the former subject of his affections. He also has a strong obsession with female chastity, another common part of Otaku culture, and grows furious at the thought of a woman he's currently smitten with having sex with other men. The show isn't shy about repudiating these bad habits, and presents them as a big part of what makes Embryo such a Hate Sink.
  • Team Mom: Ersha, oldest member of the first squadron and Team Chef.
  • Theme Naming: The DRAGONs are classified by size using ship classes from the Age of Sail like Brig, Galleon, and Schooner. Though a poor translation uses "Scuna" instead of schooner.
  • There Is Only One Bed: In "Ange and Tusk", in the ruined world, there's only one bed and one sofa available for Tusk and Ange, and the sofa collapses when he tries to lie on it. Ange helpfully suggests that he join her. Both are aware of the implications.
  • Third Party Stops Attack: Ange is about to finish off Julio, when Embryo shows up and kills him.
  • Throwing Off the Disability: Ange's sister Sylvia injured herself in a horse-riding accident when she was young, and as a result is paraplegic. In the final episodes, however, Ange guesses that the disability isn't physical and that Sylvia's used her injury as an excuse to rely on others, and gets her sister to start walking again to tie into a lesson about standing on your own two feet. The thing is, she does this by threatening her sister's life, forcing her to walk out of sheer terror that she was about to be killed. Also, it's glossed over how her legs would be capable of supporting her if she hadn't used them in years.
  • Thwarted Coup de Grâce: At the end of "Arzenal Burns", when Ange is about to kill Julio, Embryo intervenes and does the deed himself.
  • Token Heroic Orc: While those who use Mana will eventually end up being decadent and racist, there were also a few Mana users that were portrayed to be rejecting this mindset. Chief examples include Momoka and Ange's parents Jurai and Sophia (and perhaps Misty as well). Emma started like the rest of the Mana users, but after hanging around with Arzenal and experiencing their own tribulations and being tossed away by the population, she develops to be more decent and in-line with the trope.
  • Tonight, Someone Dies: The preview for "Dragon Song" points out that the next character death might be long overdue. And there were a lot of deaths in the episode indeed. However, all of them were Red Shirts so no named character died.
  • Tragic Mistake: Jill causes the first Libertus to fail when her unrequited crush, Istvan, marries Vanessa. It gave time for Embryo to do a Mind Rape on her and kill her comrades.
  • Transforming Mecha: The Para-mails can transform into 2 forms: The motorcycle/plane-like Flight Mode and the humanoid Assault or Destroyer Mode.
  • Tron Lines: The Ragna-mails used by Embryo's Knights have these which glow on occasion. Ange's Villkiss gains this in the final episode via Power-up Full Color Change.
  • Turn the Other Cheek:
    • The DRAGONs don't hold personal grudges against the Normas who fight against them, despite the number of casualties caused on both sides, and vice versa, despite the initial distrust. Likely because it was the Mana people who tricked them in the first place.
    • Momoka and Ange also forgive Liza for what she did, indirectly or otherwise, to the latter of the two, while acting as The Mole under Julio.
  • Underboobs: While Ange is getting almost raped, these are showing. The battle outfit also shows these, but not too much.
  • Undying Loyalty: Momoka, Ange's former maid, is very loyal to Ange despite knowing from the start that she's a Norma.
  • Ungrateful Bastard: Ultimately how Ange, Hilda, and the Arzenal girls view the Mana-using citizens for how harsh they treat the Norma.
  • Unperson: Once outed, Norma are officially erased from human society and are not allowed to use their full names until death. Ange finds this out when her petitions to other countries are rejected, with no one acknowledging her former name and title.
  • Un-Sorcerer: Norma, who not only cannot use mana, but are unaffected by it as well. A Norma can simply walk through the strongest mana barrier like it was wet rice paper.
  • Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Liza opening up the portals to a DRAGON invasion over Arzenal leads to Embryo's decision to merge the two worlds together and once again destroy all life. Embryo catching her also results in her allies being led into a trap.
  • Unwitting Pawn:
    • Julio to Liza, who he somehow refers to her as "Mama", and Embryo.
    • Everything that Sylvia did to Ange, and later Liza, was allowed to happen by Julio and Embryo, respectively.
    • Jill considers herself one for Libertas in "Conclusive Ocean".
  • Void Between the Worlds: By the end of the series, it is revealed that the true Arzenal exists outside of space, time, and all universes. Time does not pass there, granting Embryo immortality and unlimited time in which to develop technology and manipulate worlds. It also cannot be accessed from the outside, except by a Ragna-mail capable of space-time jumps - in other words, the Villkiss.
  • Villain Has a Point: Embryo wanted to restart this whole world by destroying it. His reasoning is that humanity has become decadent, and the viewer was directly shown how much humanity has degenerated with racism and prejudice towards the Norma. Embryo might have a point in thinking that his mankind-building attempt was a failure (even including his suggestion to do the racism thing to keep order) this time and he could only think of restarting the world as a solution. A point he could have kept if he didn't suddenly decide he'd rather be a creepy harem lord with Ange on top.
  • Visual Pun: When Ange and Tusk finally consummate their relationship, the camera switches to a view of the ocean - i.e. "wet".
  • Vitriolic Best Buds: Ange and Hilda's antagonism evolves into this after their escape and return to Arzenal.
  • Voodoo Shark: After Momoka apparently sacrificed herself to buy enough time for Ange to escape, she returns no worse for wear, apparently thanks to a hidden frying pan that blocked a bullet from Embryo. It is unexplained how she survived getting hit by a car, falling down a cliff, and then having the car explode on top of her.
  • Wave-Motion Gun: The Spacetime Convergence Cannon which all the Ragna-mails (and Sala's Enryugo) are equipped with it. If another counters with it however, space and time rips itself and the pilots can see alternate timelines.
  • We ARE Struggling Together: Salia's squad only knows one thing: kill the DRAGONs. How is another story.note  This is the one thing Salia calls out the team on in "Salia's Gloom" and that they should all follow her orders. Only Hilda disagrees.
  • Wham Line: Liza gives one to Sylvia about Julio's death in "The Survivors".
    Liza: You poor child. To think... you don't know that the man you call uncle is the one who killed Julio. (cue an "Oh, Crap!" from Sylvia)
  • We Hardly Knew Ye:
    • The three newbies of the First Troop get very little screentime before they are offed. This goes double for Tania, Irma and Marika during the second half.
    • The Mana society as a whole, minus Julio, also get very little screentime; and Sophia and Jurai are killed after the first episode.
  • "Well Done, Son" Guy: Salia has this relationship with Jill. Her desire to pilot Villkiss stems from Jill's promise to let her pilot Villkiss and her vow to avenge her childhood's hero. Unfortunately for Salia, her attempts to pilot Villkiss doesn't work out.
  • Wrestler in All of Us: Ersha does this to both Rosalie and Chris but isn't shown (she does it with Calling Your Attacks and the latter two are shown to be pulled by the former for more punishment).
  • Wham Episode: Tons of it.
    • "Ange Loss":
      • It is strongly implied that Tusk is a male Norma (and not the first or only one) and that he used to be a part of a unit similar to the one Ange is now a part of. What's more, he seems to know both the Villkiss and Jill, as shown by his flashback.
      • A convoy is seen transporting a dragon's body (still encased in ice), hinting that there is more to the dragons and the fight against them than what has been revealed.
    • Throughout "Salia's Gloom", the episode is how Salia makes the crew finally work together with the exception of Hilda. At the end, it's revealed that Sylvia contacts Momoka and is begging for Ange to help her.
    • "Traitorous Homeland". Sylvia attempts to stab Ange with the latter having a Heroic BSoD and Hilda is chased out of her home by her mom who disowns her.
    • "Dragon Song" is a Wham Episode of epic proportions. We already start off with Liza revealing herself to be a DRAGON and putting something in Julio's mouth while choking Sylvia, Arzenal is invaded by DRAGONs, Sala decimating half of Arzenal with her Golden Super Mode and thus "destroying the plant" according to Maggy, Ange, Sala, and the rest of the main cast have met in different timelines and eras, and Vivian is implied to be a DRAGON.
    • "The Right Arm's Past." DRAGONs were formerly humans as Vivian has shown. Turns out the Magi were created by a scientist in order to create a new world where conflict doesn't exist after war fucked the planet, and Norma's are a defective byproduct. And the royal rulers of the Magi kingdoms plan to eradicate the world of dragons and Normas all together, and once again rebuild with Julio about to knock on Arzenal's door.
    • "Arzenal Burns": The place gets ransacked, anyone who isn't on the priority list (Ange, Villkiss, and the other Para-Mail riders) gets gunned down or roasted, a ship hidden underneath Arzenal named Aurora, Embryo armed with magic healing power, demonstrating it to a gunned down Chris and Ersha, with the latter's case by healing a dead Norma, implying the two will be with Embryo. All of this ending with Ange, Tusk, and Vivian vanishing thanks to Villkiss' Blue Assault Mode's teleporting ability.
    • The shocking revelation in "Ange and Tusk" that Earth waged world wars all the way till seven. No wonder Embryo was fed up with wars.
    • "The Survivors." Villkiss gets sniped in one hit even in its Michael Mode by Chris, sinks at the bottom of the river, and at the end of the episode, Marika, Momoka, Tusk, and Ersha's kids die. And this is before getting into the reason why Chris sided with Embryo in the first place, as she got little respect from either Hilda or Rosalie.
  • Wham Shot:
    • In "Dragon Song", the moment when three Para-Mails emerge out of the singularity point fighting for the DRAGONs completely turns the premise of the plot upside-down.
    • In "The Tuner of Time", Salia shoots Ange. Not Villkiss, Ange. She got better though, although she pointed out that she was hit with a tranquilizer.
  • What the Hell, Hero?:
    • Ange sometimes receives this from her other teammates. She also fires one back to Salia for not telling the other members of the squad to stop firing at her countering Salia's accusation towards Ange not being a team player, as Salia is trying to shank her no less, and Momoka for leaving her out of the loop about being a Norma. She later compares Salia rather unflatteringly to Jill for underprioritizing the safety of the rest of the squad when ordered to the Aurora in "Arzenal Burns". In "Another Earth" she angrily questions Sala about why she had to kill all of the people in Arzenal if her goal was to just protect her kin and rescue Aura. Then "Dark Angel of Destruction" has her calling out on Salia on why she sided with Embryo. In "Conclusive Ocean" and "Distorted World", she calls out Jill for her irrational behavior towards everyone, especially Salia.
    • Salia calls out Ange for her loner attitude. Ange calls her out for not keeping her teammates from harassing her, something Ange never bothered despite requests to report to her.
    • Tusk gives this one to Ange when she thinks about that Libertas is nothing but garbage. Tusk then enumerates how many people sacrificed for that cause, which made Ange shut up. And she apologized for it.
    • In the second half of "God's Soul-Searching", Maggy calls Jill on why the latter never told anybody why the first Libertas failed.
    • In the second half of "Necessary", Jasmine lectures Jill for how the latter treated Salia.
    • Hilda gives one to Chris in "Eve of Destruction" when the latter denies ever being friends with her and Rosalie.
  • "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: In the series finale, Ange and Tusk manage to open up Café Ange with Perolina as a mascot and the Bridge Bunnies are staffed there. Meanwhile, the mana world is in flames and Sylvia is now leading a group of survivors to survive the wasteland, wearing the same outfit Ange wore when she was attempting to rescue her.
  • World of Action Girls: Deconstructed. The Amazon Brigade are little more than Cannon Fodder who live in a Penal Colony and there often casualties everyday. Moreover, a few of these girls used to be normal until their capture and exile as Norma warped them into different people. This trope later becomes reconstructed following the game-changing mid-series escape from Arzenal to restart Libertus.
  • World of Badass: They might be cowardly jerks, but the Mana commoners can use magic, they're just being really lazy and decadent to fully utilize those, so the trope isn't shown clearly on them. Everyone else is just plain better at killing people through trial by war and sheer willpower. Also, the people of Old Earth are all were-dragons, with the exception of the men, who are freaking massive giga-dragons.
  • World of Jerkass: The world created by Embryo actually at first looked nice, until you realize that they were over the top racist and prefers to stay that way, trampling the Norma along the way. Of course, that's because Embryo specifically made these Mana people with a small modification in their DNA to be more submissive to his will and ordered them to persecute the Norma that by luck failed to look exactly like these people of his design while using the somewhat legit excuse of 'preventing another destructive world war'. Ange eventually came across the world of DRAGONs, where while they had their own flaws, they're at least not full of jerkasses, so her origin world fit the trope where there are other worlds that avert it.
  • World War Whatever: This is what devastated Earth and why Embryo made a different world. Though the Earth was finally devoid of life after World War VII''.
  • You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Embryo to everyone: Julio, the humans, the Norma, the Diamond Rose Knights, the World of Mana itself and eventually Ange, though that last one bites him back big time.
  • You Killed My Father: Sylvia blames Ange for causing her to fall and also the death of her family. She gets better when Liza reveals that Embryo killed Julio during the final episodes.
  • Zerg Rush: "Dragon Song" has so many Scuna-class DRAGONs approaching Arzenal, that the counter showed an error because there were too many.

Salia: Wait, I never figured it out. Why is it called Cross Ange?
Ange: Ummm... Because I'm cross all the time?
Salia, Hilda & Ange: That's lame!

 
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Ange faces the OP Fallacy

"Vilkiss Awakens". Angelise questions why the Norma and she in particular have to be imprisoned in Arzenal and enslaved to defend the world against the invading DRAGONs. Jill retorts that it was "normal" humans, like Angelise herself thought she was until recently, who made that rule. We're then shown a flashback to the pilot episode where Angelise supports soldiers seizing a toddler from her mother's arms only a day before her parents' deception to hide their Norma princess was uncovered.

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5 (15 votes)

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Main / OriginalPositionFallacy

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