Visual Novel / Diabolik Lovers

Yui Komori is a positive-thinking girl who nevertheless is troubled by seeing spirits and experiencing poltergeist phenomena. She lives with her father, a priest, until he is called overseas due to work and she is not allowed to accompany him. Instead, she is given a certain address and instructed to go there, saying the people living there are "relatives". Yui follows her father's orders and arrives at a mysterious mansion as the address had suggested. As she discovers what's in the house, she meets the six Sakamaki brothers (Shu, Reiji, Ayato, Kanato, Laito and Subaru) who are actually vampires. In order to have some control, she requests to be able to choose who sucks her blood. As she she spends more time with them, she discovers a shocking secret inside her body.

Diabolik Lovers started out as a series of Drama CDs which were developed into a otome game developed by Rejet and distributed by Otomate. It became a popular series and has spawned more games and Drama CDs, an anime series, and Character Songs, to the point where it serves as Rejet's flagship franchise.

Games in the series:

• Diabolik Lovers ~Haunted Dark Bridal~: The first game of the series. Released in October 2012 for the PlayStation Portable.
  • Diabolik Lovers Limited V Edition. Play Station Vita port with additional content. It was released in December 2013.
• Diabolik Lovers ~MORE,BLOOD~: The second main title; it features four new characters. Released in October 2013 for the PlayStation Portable.
  • Diabolik Lovers ~MORE,BLOOD~ Limited V Edition: Play Station Vita port with additional content. It was released in January 2015.
  • Diabolik Lovers VANDEAD CARNIVAL: A fandisc for MORE,BLOOD featuring mini-games. Released in December 2014 for the Play Station Vita.
• Diabolik Lovers DARK FATE: The follow up to MORE,BLOOD which adds two additional characters. Released in February 2015 for the Play Station Vita. Includes an Original Video Animation episode.
  • Diabolik Lovers LUNATIC PARADE: A fandisc for DARK FATE similar in content to the prior fandisc. Released in Feburary 2016 for the Play Station Vita.
• Diabolik Lovers LOST EDEN: A continuation of the story after DARK FATE that adds a new vampire to the lineup. Released Feburary 2017 for the Play Station Vita.
• Diabolik Lovers Grand Edition: Collects Haunted Dark Bridal and MORE, BLOOD in one package; released on PlayStation 4 in March 2018 and Nintendo Switch in November 2019.
• Diabolik Lovers CHAOS LINEAGE: Based off of the CHAOS LINEAGE CD series; also an alternate continuity from LOST EDEN. Released for the Nintendo Switch in March 2019.

Comics in the series:

• Diabolik Lovers YOUNG BLOOD: A three-issue mini series following the childhood of the Sakamaki triplets.

An anime adaptation by ZEXCS premiered in the fall of 2013, with a second season based off of MORE, BLOOD following in the fall of 2015. It is licensed by Sentai Filmworks for English release in December 2014.

As part of Rejet's Archive YouTube channel project in 2020, the entire first series of Otome CDs was made available for free listening, but they were taken down with the first channel's termination in 2021.

Has nothing to do whatsoever with Diabolik.

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This series provides examples of:

• Aborted Arc: The second season of the anime adapts some elements of the third visual novel, Dark Fate, including introducing Carla and Shin Tsukinami so the two existing vampire groups have a common foe to team up against. While the team-up does occur, the show ends on a cliffhanger right as the Tsukinami brothers move into action.
• Actually Not a Vampire: Carla and Shin are not vampires. They belong to the First Blood demon clan, a.k.a. the Founders - a proud and isolationist group who are the progenitors of not only the vampires, but several other demon clans, and possess the powers of all of them combined. That said, from the heroine's perspective, they drink blood, live at night, and are far too strong for a human girl to resist, so they are functionally identical to vampires.
• Adults Are Useless: Parents are neglectful, abusive, or incapable of protecting their children, and authority figures like school faculty and church officials all prove to be complicit in Yui's fate. In the More,Blood visual novel there is one teacher that really does support her, but to call him complicit is a gross understatement since he's actually Karlheinz in disguise.
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: Basically by default; since bad boys are the selling point, there are no Nice Guys on offer.
• Alternate Timeline: Every sequel VN is a partial alternate timeline to the VN that preceeds it, but they still have a linear progression. The franchise generally is not big into Multiverse shenanigans, but there is one exception. The events of the Lost Eden and Chaos Lineage visual novels are mutually exclusive, and both of them introduce Kino.
• Amnesiac Lover: There are multiple takes on this trope in the Para-Selene drama CD series and Chaos Lineage titles.
  • In Para-Selene, the heroine loses her memories of her love interest due to an unusual atmospheric phenomenon (the titular paraselene.) There are Journey to the Center of the Mind elements as well, with the pair caught in a shifting illusion world made from her lost memories, which include call backs to significant events from the visual novels.
  • The Chaos Lineage dramas are a Role Swap AU, while the Chaos Lineage visual novel uses that AU as the set up for an Ontological Mystery where the main characters are subjected to memory manipulation. Yui is the first to regain her memories, so her love interest serves as the primary amnesiac.
• And I Must Scream: Yui is fully aware of what is going on around her when Cordelia takes over her body in the first VN, but is unable to move or communicate. She does a surprisingly good job of keeping her cool through this experience, possibly because Cordelia continues to interact with her.
• Armies Are Evil: In the MORE;BLOOD Visual Novel's flashbacks of the Mukami love interests, every single member of the unnamed country's military that appears is an Ax-Crazy Sociopathic Soldier that kills compliant civilians and children with glee, sometimes only for annoying them. In Kou's route, it's revealed that a officer sold him to the orphanage, being responsible for the extreme abuse he would suffer there. (and even gloating about it.)
• Beach Episode: The Blood & Love Sweat audio drama is a scenario where the Sakamakis go on a beach vacation.
• Beautiful Dreamer: Every love interest gets a moment where Yui finds him napping and reflects on how gentle he looks, often with an option to do something affectionate and mildly inappropriate, like touch his hair or pinch his cheek. In these cases, he is absolutely feigning being asleep, and will turn the tables on her once she's close by.
• Berserk Button: Kanato is liable to blow up at any time over almost anything, but nothing provokes him as readily as a slight against his stuffed bear, Teddie. After Yui accidentally rips off Teddie's arm, he snaps. To say nothing of Teddie's grandiose demise in the anime and Kanato's epic but probably hilarious Howl of Sorrow.
• Big Bad: Each story arc has its own conflict-driver, but the character who is ultimately responsible for all of this madness is Karlheinz, who foresaw it all and steers it to play out the way it does.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: The Sakamaki family is a disaster. Family patriarch Karlheinz, the impossibly powerful vampire king, married three women and has a long history of neglecting both them and their six sons. He seems to breed enmity wherever he goes.
  • His first wife, Cordelia, was a real piece of work who took out her frustration over being ignored by her husband on Ayato, Kanato, and Laito, mentally scarring them so badly that they eventually murder her.
  • His second wife Beatrix overburdened Shu while neglecting Reiji, causing their Cain and Abel relationship and inspiring Reiji to have her killed as well.
  • His third wife, Christa, was so traumatized by the reality of her marriage that she went mad and unwittingly vents her misery on Subaru, which drives his rebellious behavior.
  • His brother Richter conspires occasionally with him, but mostly against him. The brothers were close once, before Cordelia came between them. Now, there are no depths Richter won't stoop to if wins him Cordelia's affection.
• Break the Cutie: The love interests were at some point sweet, adorable children who went through some sort of traumatic experience. Excluding Reiji, who was an adorable little schemer that caused traumatic experiences.
  • Ayato was Cordelia's personal choice to succeed Karlheinz, and she was convinced that if Ayato distinguished himself, Karlheinz would favor her again. She singled Ayato out for unreasonably strict treatment, insisted that he only had value if he was superior to everyone else, and would physically abuse and humiliate him for perceived failures. Due to this he ended up believing that he must always be the best at everything, becoming a selfish jerkass.
  • Kanato was practically invisible to Cordelia unless he was entertaining her by singing or making dolls, and over time his loneliness morphed into rage that he takes out on everyone around him. He acts childish, needy and Ax-Crazy.
  • Laito had it the worst of the triplets. Cordelia sexually abused him, treating him like one of her many flings, but with the added bonus that he loved her unconditionally. He really did love her despite himself, and as a result came to believe that love is fundamentally a lie. The situation came to a disastrous end when Karlheinz intervened, with Laito taking most of the blame and Cordelia cruelly ripping away any remaining pretense that Laito mattered to her at all.
  • Subaru is prone to rages that are fueled by feelings of powerlessness and self-loathing. He wants to help his mother, but his attempts make him miserable. If she is not begging Subaru to kill his father, she is standing Subaru next to him as the cause of her pain. It's become a self-fulfilling prophecy - he's been told he is a monster enough times that he believes it.
  • Shu felt stifled by the constraints of being firstborn even as a boy. He made a habit of sneaking out of the castle, where he met Edgar, a human boy who became his first and only friend. Reiji, who disapproved of his brother fraternizing with humans, decided to teach Shu a lesson and burned Edgar's entire village to the ground, leaving Shu traumatized and feeling powerless. The nail in the coffin was Reiji twisting his mind by constantly telling him that he brought it on himself through his weakness and impropriety.
  • The Mukami brothers were also adorable kids with a partially shared tragic backstory. Each coming from a different profoundly unfortunate circumstance reminiscent of something from a Tear Jerker Victorian novel, the four of them met at an orphanage that was a prison in all but name. They joined forces to escape, but were violently re-captured, and in that moment of despair are offered new lives as vampires.
• Bowdlerise: A very, very slight case of this happens in the Mexican Spanish dub. The voice actors have no problems using words derived from sex and excrement like the Spanish for "shit". However, due to recent Mexican laws against the use of misogynistic language in Mexican media (including dubs), Laito's use of the phrase "little bitch/bitch-chan" is toned down to the "slightly" (emphasis on slightly, due to the very hammy performance of his voice actor and the tone of his voice) tamer "little vixen", which is a euphemism for "little whore" in Spanish.^note This also a case of Distanced from Current Events as well, due to a recent legal case against a Mexican Banda singer named Gerardo Ortiz, who was arrested after doing a music video where Ortiz is shown killing a woman, dumping her body in a car and setting the car alight afterwards, and "borrowed" official police cars and police officers as extras for the video, making it obvious why the Mexican voice cast cannot use the much stronger equivalents of "bitch" in Spanish. Meanwhile, this is averted like hell in the Brazilian Portuguese dub.
• Breeding Slave: Horrifyingly, this is what the Tsukinami brothers want Yui for. Yui is the closest thing to a Founder woman left in the world, so whether she likes it or not, she is their best chance to avoid dying out. Fortunately for her, the Tsukinami brothers have to invest a lot of time into getting her fit for baby-making, because she is extensively vampire-tainted. Enough time that they may develop feelings for her, and certainly enough for an established love interest to mount a rescue. In some Dark Fate routes they decide she is too much trouble and only use her as a bargaining chip.
• Broken Bird: The traumatized, cynical, and emotionally detached brigade includes Shu, Laito, Ruki, and Kou. Shu and Ruki are easy to spot based on aloofness. Laito and Kou are not aloof at all, and their types of emotional detachment are more specialized.
• Calling the Old Man Out: Ayato gets to call out Karlheinz for his callousness as early as his More,Blood route, plus a few more times thereafter. When Laito gets his turn, it is the perfect repudiation - no anger, no insults...just armor piercing questions that not even a vampire god-king can face up to.
• Casting Gag: It's not the first time Takahiro Sakurai (Ruki Mukami) voicing a handsome vampire. Neither Toshiyuki Morikawa (Carla Tsukinami).
• Chess Motifs: Lots of them, in varying aspects of the series.
  • All the smart boy love interests are skilled chess players, and Karlheinz is a literal chessmaster with a streak of 183 wins against his buddy Socrates. The love interest with the most chess references is Reiji, whose Dark Fate route is just full of them.
  • Chess imagery pops up briefly in the second season of the anime, and more extensively in the Chaos Lineage VN, starting with its checkerboard and chess piece themed user interface.
• Church Militant: The Church, which played a minor role in the first storyline before receding from the plot, shows up again in Lost Eden trying to exterminate demonkind under the direction of Yui's adoptive father, Seiji Komori.
• Color-Coded Characters:
  • Sakamaki brothers: Ayato - Red, Kanato - Purple, Laito - Green, Shu - Yellow, Reiji - Blue, Subaru - Grey.
  • Mukami brothers: Ruki - Black, Kou - Pink, Yuma - Orange, Azusa - Teal.
  • Tsukinami brothers: Carla - Dark Red, Shin - Dark Blue.
• Daywalking Vampire: Sunlight is one of the many traditional vampire weaknesses that do not apply in Diabolik Lovers (along with stakes and for the most part crosses). Pureblood vampires like the Sakamakis are nocturnal and draw power from the moon, but the sun doesn't hurt them. The Mukami brothers are even active during the day.
• Death Is Cheap: Due to the in-universe Story Resets, the conclusion of each of the routes is nullified and anyone who died snaps back to life in the next story arc none the wiser.
• Deep Sleep: Ayato and Reiji experience this in their respective More,Blood endings. In either case the chosen guy is unconscious for months, with Yui watching over him. Ayato's has elements of a Vision Quest and he is out for over a year, while Reiji's doubles as an Angst Coma.
• "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune: Several cast members can sing well, so it is not surprising that they get tapped to perform the theme songs.
  • 真夜中の饗宴(MIDNIGHT PLEASURE)[1], the opening theme of Haunted Dark Bridal and 極限 (UNLIMITED) BLOOD [2], the opening theme of MORE,BLOOD, were sung by the voice actors for Ayato, Shu, and Subaru respectively.
  • 幻日理論-Parhelion Logic- [3], the ending theme of Haunted Dark Bridal, was sung by Ayato's voice actor. 月蝕(Eclipse)[4], the ending theme of MORE,BLOOD, was sung by the voice actors for Kou, Yuma, and Azusa respectively.
  • Mr.SADISTIC NIGHT, the anime's opening theme was sung by Ayato and Shu's respective voice actors.
• Downer Ending: The bad endings are usually dark and depressing, but occasionally bittersweet instead.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Yui has to go through an unreasonable amount of physical and psychological pain for it, but she can reach a place of love and understanding with her love interest. It's destined to work out, since she has god-vampire who can rewind time maneuvering her toward a happy relationship.
• Elopement: In some endings, Yui and her love interest do this in order to be together. It is a likely outcome for Black Sheep like Shu and Subaru. The Mukamis tend to elope, since a happily ever after with Yui requires them to betray their own goal.
  • Ruki gets special mention on this trope. Not only is it part of his backstory - his mother abandoned him and fled with her secret lover when his family lost their fortune - but he himself goes on the run with Yui in multiple VNs. A good portion of his Dark Fate route is a Fugitive Arc.
• Engagement Challenge: A variant on this underlies the plot of the initial VN and the first season of the anime: the member of the Sakamaki clan who successfully awakens sacrificial bride will become the next head of the family. Or put another way, whoever turns Yui into a vampire (while falling in love in the process) will become strong enough to defeat the vampire king and take his place.
• Epigraph: The first visual novel opens with an in-universe epigraph written by Richter of all people. After Cordelia chose Karlheinz over him, he spent centuries Walking the Earth, some of which went to writing poetry. All of it is about Cordelia.
• Every Car Is a Pinto: The anime dialed up the drama of the car wreck at the beginning of More,Blood to the point that the vehicle goes airborne and explodes after colliding with a tree. There is no indication that the car wreck is that dramatic in the the visual novel; the event is described only through sound effects, and none of the sounds are explosions.
• Evil Doppelgänger: The premise of the Zero drama CD series. The heroine and her love interest find themselves trapped in a Menacing Museum where a mysterious portrait of the love interest comes to life. As such, it is very aware of how to push the boy's buttons. One of the more plot-driven drama series; unlike some that use a Closed Circle setting, this one focuses on the protagonists figuring out how to escape.
• Familiar: Vampires have magical personal servants which they use for information-gathering, sending correspondence, and small tasks around the house. Normally Yui can't see them, but if they appear to her they take the form of a bat. A notable exception is Kanato disguising a familiar as Teddie and making Yui carry it to school to keep tabs on her. Shin's familiars are also exceptions - they take the form of wolves and they are never subtle.
• Family of Choice: The Mukami brothers are not blood-related, but chose to become a family when they became vampires. Their interactions with each other are warmer and more lively than those of the Sakamaki brothers and it's clear that they care for one other a great deal.
• Featureless Protagonist: The mainline audio drama products for this series are "situation CDs," where the protagonist is more of a protagonist-shaped void in the narrative that listeners can imagine themselves filling. The POV character in these stories is a nondescript heroine that has no lines, although most of dialogue is addressed to her. This also partially explains the panoply of demeaning nicknames the the love interests have for the heroine, because it would get boring if they all called her "hey, you" non-stop.
• A Fête Worse than Death: Appears in several Dark Fate routes, although not even the people planning the party are aware that it is a set up for a massacre.
• Foil: Contrasting the Sakamaki brothers and the Mukami brothers is one of the main themes of the More,Blood visual novel, which uses a character from the other faction as the external antagonist in most of routes.
  • Ayato and Ruki (prideful Book Dumb hot head vs. prideful aloof smart guy)
  • Shu and Yuma (low key unmotivated Blue Blood vs. boisterous industrious common man) plus there is their shared history to explore
  • Kanato and Azusa (creepy deranged vs. creepy affectionate)
  • Subaru and Kou (volatile loner vs. volatile charmer)
  • Kou is also foil to Laito (clingy normal vs. clingy Dysfunction Junction) but this one-way traffic. Laito is not involved in Kou's route, and only in comparison to Laito would Kou seem well-adjusted.
  • As usual, Reiji is the exception to the trend. His foil is Shu.
• Friend to All Living Things: At one point, Yui finds Subaru in the middle of a throng of Woodland Creatures he befriended. Surprisingly, Reiji gets this treatment also, but he accomplishes it through a science project; plus he leaves Yui to deal with the animals he attracted.
• Garden of Eden: Book of Genesis motifs are widespread starting in More,Blood and continuing in the subsequent visual novels.
  • Yui is identified as the "Chosen Eve," and if she forges a mutually loving relationship with one of the boys, he may become "Adam," advancing a mysterious plan that seems to function better the less she knows about it.
  • The seat of Karlheinz' power is an otherworldly castle called Eden.
  • Vampires even have their own take on the Garden of Eden story: The difference is that Adam and Eve were vampires, and God's punishment against Eve was making her human.
• God Was My Copilot: In the More,Blood VN, the substitute school nurse Reinhart is obviously Karlheinz in disguise. The Mukami brothers are aware of him (or at least Ruki is,) but the Sakamaki brothers are not. Yui, who is the main recipient of his interventions, has no idea and just thinks he is a very open-minded and supportive teacher.
• "Groundhog Day" Loop: The series does not lean heavily on this trope despite the time manipulation going on in the background, but it does not completely avoid it either.
  • Seen in some bad endings in the later visual novels. In one of Shu's Dark Fate endings, Karlheinz rewinds time all the way back to the start of More,Blood but Yui keeps her memories.
  • The More,More,Blood audio dramas revolve around a magical hourglass that rewinds time in short increments, and the user gets to decide who can remember the loop. These dramas aim to get back to the franchise's "do-S" roots, so the hourglass is absolutely used for Power Perversion Potential.
• Hands-On Approach: There are a few instances of this, like Kou teaching Yui some of his dance choreography or Ayato walking her through basketball fundamentals. The love interest always get more up-close and personal than is really necessary - unless sexual tension is the entire point. Which it is.
• Hates Their Parent: The main two recipients of this are Karlheinz and Cordelia.
  • Karlheinz' natural born sons resent him, but his turned-vampire "sons" are tremendously grateful to him. From the perspective of the Sakamaki brothers, Karlheinz has never been there for them and merely lords over them from afar. Reiji flips this; he respects his father and hates his mother instead.
  • The Mukami brothers owe Karlheinz a life-debt, and though they only talk about Karlheinz as a father-figure in really sentimental moments, they have a closer relationship with him than his blood-related sons.
  • The triplets have very complicated feelings towards their mother. Ayato probably the least so - he hates her and doesn't regret acting against her. Laito is undoubtedly scarred for life, but he is glad she's dead. Kanato probably loves her more now that she is dead.
• Hemo Erotic: The franchise mainstreams its erotic content by positioning it in this trope. Scenery Censor and Sexy Discretion Shot are in full effect in the instances where characters get intimate in more conventional ways, (especially in the VNs,) but blood-sucking is inevitable, and indeed, a key part of the appeal. Many of the scenes have the boys feeding from Yui in sensual poses with noises to match. Case in point, Kou feeds from her from the back in one of his character CDs, seemingly for no other reason than to have a little variety in his feeding.
• Hollywood Atheist: The love interests don't believe in God and many of them mock Yui for believing in religion. While it is typical of their jerk behavior, there is an implied justification that getting squicked out by religion is some sort of vampire racial trait. For the most part the boys' behavior does not impact Yui's belief in God, although as the series progresses and the plot increasingly focuses on external threats, the topic of religion rarely comes up.
  • Subaru has no patience for Yui hanging around the church she used to call home, and threatens to demolish the whole place unless she promises to do whatever he says. But he doesn't cash in that promise until after he reveals that he wants to help her.
  • Laito starts out actively trying to Break the Believer, and possibly succeeds. His route has Religious Horror elements, but it shifts to favoring Transformation Horror as it goes on. At the end of Laito's route, Yui's attention is taken up by her transformation into a vampire and how Cordelia is becoming her Enemy Within, and she doesn't have time for abstract dilemmas.
• Holy Burns Evil: Vampires have a mild aversion to religious symbols and churches. It's not strong enough to protect Yui from any of the boys, but her religiosity, affinity for churches, and the rosary she carries will annoy them. However, Yui's rosary wards her from vampire influence at first, and makes it difficult for Cordelia to possesses her. Interestingly, Shu is so unbothered by this that he sometimes sneaks into church because no one will trouble him there.
• Home of Monsters: Vampires come from an Uberwald-style parallel demon world, which has always been at least a minor setting in the VNs. The first trips are part of one-shot "Yui accompanies her love interest to a vampire ball at the Sakamakis' ancestral castle" scenarios. They get back and forth to the demon world through a Portal Door in an underground waterway beneath their mansion. In the later VNs, at least a third of any given route takes place in the demon world, and it is the primary setting of both of the fan discs.
• House Squatting: Turns up in the first VN courtesy of Shu, who has an abandoned house Runaway Hideaway.
  • Dark Fate uses this trope frequently. Yui and her love interest often need to lie low someplace where pursuers wouldn't expect to find them, and since the main characters all decamp to the Demon World at the start of the story there's no one to stop them from just walking into the Big Fancy Houses as they please. Kou and Yui push this really far by spending several days at Banmaden, the Founders' castle, while Carla and Shin are elsewhere. Predictably, it goes pear-shaped when the owners come home.
• Informed Ability: Played for laughs.
  Shu: "Because we’re vampires?"
  Yui: "Eh? Va-vampires?"
  Ayato: "Aaah. Did you have to spoil it that quickly?"
• Intimate Healing: Expect at least one incidence of Finger-Suck Healing or Wound Licking per route (even with bites excluded.) It almost seems like a vampire cultural thing; their first instinct when Yui injures herself is to lick her, regardless of whether he cuts her hand or twists her ankle. They ask - or rather, demand - that Yui licks their injuries too. It always doubles as Lecherous Licking.
• It's All About Me: Ayato, Laito and Kanato seem to have internalized their mother's selfishness.
• Jerkass: Every love interest except for Azusa is demeaning, coercive, and delights in Yui's pain. Well, Azusa delights in Yui's pain too, but not in the same way.
• Lighter and Softer: The Diabolik Lovers franchise been around for long enough that all the love interests' Freudian Excuses have been explored and most have a few levels in kindness under their belts. The boys that have been around since the beginning are quite sweet to Yui by Dark Fate, but the series introduced a new boy or two at kindness level zero to maintain its "do-S" credibility.
• Kinky Cuffs: There's very little reason for handcuffs to feature in this series other than kink, so when Ayato and Laito have pairs in their respective HDB routes you know that's precisely what they're for.
• Kiss of the Vampire: Vampire bites always hurt, at least at first. If the vampire wants to be nice it may barely hurt at all, but the vampires are all bad boys, so it's nothing to count on. Yui seems to find the experience of having her blood sucked paralyzing, in part because it feels good, but also because she enjoys it more than she thinks she should.
• Lap Pillow: Being that it's a cute, intimate thing to do with a significant other, this is more common in the later VNs than the early ones, and particularly widely encountered in Dark Fate.
  • Shu is an outlier - he uses Yui as a pillow early and often, with the first example appearing in HDB.
• Love Makes You Evil: Cordelia's unanswered love for Karlheinz underlies her abusive behavior towards her sons and her dalliance with Richter - they are all tools she hopes to use to draw his attention.
  • Richter has nothing if he doesn't have Cordelia, and he will never truly have Cordelia. The anime did him a favor by having him betray her - it is at least a way out of her clutches.
• Lunacy: Vampires in this series are moon-powered, and they become more powerful and more inclined to predatory behavior as the moon waxes. Often Played for Drama in the early VN plots, where Yui is either not aware, or not sufficiently cautious around her love interest on a full moon night, and he pulls out the stops on the meanness.
• A Match Made in Stockholm: Every relationship in the series begins with the heroine being held captive by the love interest, but in most cases they are only interested in blood at first. Except for the Tsukinami brothers, since they are specifically instances of Abduction Is Love.
• Matricide: The majority of Karlheinz' wives are Posthumous Characters via this trope. Ayato, Kanato, and Laito all had a hand in killing Cordelia, although Ayato was the instigator. Reiji hired a vampire hunter to kill Beatrix.
• Meaningful Name: "Sakamaki," which is usually parsed out as "reverse-winding" in English. There are many potential meanings for the elements of this name, but the most applicable one describes winding up clockwork, which is where the anime's clock imagery comes from. "Reverse-winding" is effectively "rewinding," which accounts for the clocks spinning backward in the More,Blood anime opening. And of course, it's suggestive of the time manipulation that become more obvious as the series progresses.
• Mischief for Punishment: Love interests regularly accuse Yui of intentionally provoking them into tormenting her and/or feeding from her, claiming that she wants the attention and likes being manhandled. Having Yui admit to doing so generally does not lead to a good ending, although there are some exceptions.
• Muggle in Mage Custody: The heroine is at the mercy of her potential love interests and there is nothing she can do about it. She's been isolated from what little family she has and the vampires will catch her if she tries to escape. There is a lot of ambiguity regarding what kind of relationship she has with her vampire beau in the beginning - is she a meal on legs? A pet? A girlfriend? The goal of the vampires, at least at first, involves making her more like them - but ultimately she changes them more than they change her.
• The Nose Knows: Vampires and demons have a very keen sense of smell, which poses various problems for Yui. Above all is that she smells so delicious that they won't leave her alone. It also makes it very difficult for her to keep secrets from them. If they are feeling possessive and detect the scent of another man on her, expect big trouble ahead.
• Not Afraid to Die: Vampires tend to be casually fatalistic, and they often mention that among their kind, death is something to celebrate. The more frequently a character brings this up, the greater their existential ennui.
• Omniscient Morality License: Deconstructed. Karlheinz secretly uses his family as guinea pigs to achieve his goal, and repeatedly alters the timeline in pursuit of his desired outcome. That's obviously unethical, but true love is an essential component of the plan, so surely it is all for the best! And yet, even if the goal is the most noble thing in the world (and is it really?) there is no way it could justify all the suffering he turned a blind eye to. He knew about the pain his children were in and let it happen. His family's misery was all part of the plan. And even Karlheinz, powerful though he is, does not have the nerve to tell Laito to his face that what he went though contributed to some kind of greater good.
• The One Thing I Don't Hate About You: In their early appearances, love interests are unanimous in their opinions that the only good thing about Yui is her blood, and they seem to get off on telling her so.
• Orphanage of Fear: The Mukami brothers ended up in their childhood. It's also where they met.
• Our Vampires Are Different: After a decade-worth of content, the franchise has built up a bunch of vampire lore.
  • Vampires are a distinct species - the Sakamaki brothers were born as vampires to vampire parents (well, mostly vampire parents.) They age, or at least grow up, but they are immortal. Their physiology is nearly impossible to sort out, since different installments do not agree on how alive they are. Some elements are consistent, though - they are always cold to the touch, they bleed, and they also blush (Laito, Kanato, and Subaru blush a lot.)
  • No one seems to mind the Masquerade much, possibly because the Sakamakis are so privileged that they can get away with it and it's no sweat to the Mukamis; if worse comes to worst they can go back to the vampire homeland in a parallel world. The Sakamaki brothers were raised there, pay visits there frequently, and it becomes a setting in later VNs.
  • All vampires have superhuman strength and speed and they heal very quickly. Sunlight is not a hazard for them, although they are nocturnal by nature. Stakes do not play a part in Diabolik Lovers vampire lore at all, and stabbing a vampire in the heart is not a sure way to kill one. Beheading specifically is, though. They have a minor weakness to religious symbols and a major weakness to silver. An otherwise survivable injury delivered by a silver blade or bullet will eventually kill if it goes untreated.
  • They can turn humans into vampires, but it is a slow process that does not always succeed (unless a very powerful vampire is behind it). Former human vampires are weaker than born (pureblood) vampires in basically every respect, but they are not nocturnal by default.
• Parental Abandonment: This is one element in the spectrum of parental failure in this series, best represented by Yui’s father travelling abroad for work and leaving her behind. For most of the VNs and all of the anime, it is a mystery whether or not he is aware of, cares about, or was involved in Yui ending up with the Sakamaki brothers.
  • This also also applies to all four Mukami brothers since they are orphans. Azusa and Kou's parents are unknown, Yuma's are dead, and Ruki got one from each column.
• Patricide: Much rarer than matricide, but one of the love interests has a father-killing Freudian Excuse. It's Carla, whose murder of his father was reluctant, obfuscated, and doubles as regicide.
• Playable Epilogue: The Heaven routes, which unlock after completing the good ending for a given character, have dialogue options although they don't count toward anything. These were added to the updated rereleases of the first two VNs, and they are a regular feature in the following two.
• Power Dynamics Kink: Many of the VNs begin with the heroine choosing a love interest to have some sort of control over her, be it to guard her from rivals or simply picking one boy to avoid having them all gang up on her. The selected boy will consider this arrangement ownership over her, and is almost certain to dominate her and employ sexualized discipline on her based on this extremely flimsy pretext. The thing that prevents the this from being purely romanticized slavery is that as the characters get to know each other and the boys figure out how to not be jerks, the dynamic evolves into Kinky Role-Playing.
• Power Incontinence: One of the points of conflict in Lost Eden is the struggle of the Sakamaki brothers to control the powers they inherit from Karlheinz. In the Sakamaki routes, odds are good that the love interest will lose control of his powers and wreck the Sakamaki manor.
• The Power of Blood: Yui’s blood is significant for a variety of reasons and has differing effects depending on the story.
  • In the first visual novel, her blood is empowering and several love interests grow powerful enough to kill Karlheinz after repeatedly feeding from her.
  • In the More,Blood audio dramas the heroine's blood seems to be an intoxicant, but there is no resolution regarding exactly what is going on. This set of dramas is 70% kinky make-out ASMR after all.
  • In the later VNs her blood is suggested to have a Morality Chain effect - but that could just as easily be her personality.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The Tsukinami brothers have this dynamic - Shin is Hot-Blooded, likes to run his mouth, and considers violence a hobby (it's even on his character bio,) while Carla is methodical, calculating, and taciturn. Curiously, their theme colors are flipped. Carla's is dark red and Shin's is dark blue.
• Relationship Upgrade: The CD series Bloody Bouquet portrays each of the vampires on the day of their wedding with Yui.
• The Reveal:
  • Yui is revealed to be Cordelia’s vessel. Her heart was transplanted to Yui after the triplets killed her, thus the Sakamakis' attraction towards her. Ayato, Kanato and Laito are especially attracted to her because they are Cordelia’s children.
  • Dark Fate reveals that Christa, Subaru's mother, willingly chose to be a part of Karlheinz's experiments, and therefore her madness was not the result of rape, but because she realized that she was being used.
• Revenue-Enhancing Devices: The visual novels themselves are self-contained, but the franchise is extensively merchandized the old-fashioned way: with a never-ending array of collectable goods and trinkets. Interested in keychains or art cards of the love interests bundled up for winter? Dressed as host club hosts? Or as Yōkai? Or as priests? It's all out there, and most of it retails as limited edition Blind Bag Collectables.
• Romantic False Lead: The role the Mukami brothers play in Karlheinz' plan is complicated and varies depending on the adaptation, but in the VNs, this trope is the starting point. Ruki actually suggested to Karlheinz to send the four of them to Yui and try to seduce her, just to force the Sakamakis grow closer to her so she will chose her Adam. In the Sakamaki More,Blood routes that is exactly how it goes down. But in the Mukami routes, they are trying break out of the false lead box to become Adam themselves. Karlheinz told them that they were qualified to do so. However there is no way to know if he really believed it, or it was a cruel Motivational Lie.
• Romantic Vampire Boy: The whole point of the series, and the numbers just keep increasing with each installment. The longer a boy has been in the series, the more this trope applies.
• Royal Brat: The Sakamaki brothers are vampire princes in a sense (although no one actually calls them that) and they certainly all have troublesome personalities. There is only one love interest who explicitly refers to himself as a prince: Kino.
• Self-Made Orphan: Several of the Sakamaki brothers are partway to this trope by killing their mothers, and they may be destined to complete the set since their father actively wants one of the to kill him.
  • In Subaru's good ending in the first VN, he mercy kills his mother and avenges her by killing his father all in one go.
• Sex Changes Everything: Some routes of the first VN draw attention to a plot point that Yui's blood will taste different after losing her virginity. Played for Drama in Ayato's route, where Ayato is shocked to discover that Yui's blood tastes like Cordelia's after they have sex.
• Sexy Discretion Shot: There are many chapters that cut out as Yui and her love interest get more intimate than blood drinking, leaving it up in the air if there was intercourse or not. The anthology manga, however, tends to be more explicit.
• Sharing a Body: Cordelia's presence operates under these rules in the visual novel. Yui starts out too pure to be affected, but as she gets closer to the Sakamaki brothers, Cordelia is able to influence her actions and she finds herself spontaneously saying and doing things that are out of character for her. As Yui becomes more vampire-like, Cordelia appears in her dreams and eventually initiates mental conversations with her while she is awake. By this point, Yui is vulnerable to losing control over her body.
• Shower of Awkward: This trope is very widespread in the visual novels, and obligatory in the the first two of them. Occasionally Yui will walk in while her love interest is bathing, but the other way around is much, much more common. The later VNs mainly reserve it for newly introduced characters.
• Slow Transformation: A horror element found mainly in the first visual novel is that Yui is slowly turning into a vampire over the course of the story. Her strange new life with these dangerously alluring men is making her into a different person; even a different creature, who sees past the pain to the pleasure of being with her love interest, and starts to react to the world the way they do. The anime alludes to this with Yui's final line in the first season: "I'm thirsty."
  • Averted in later installments - Yui can only become a vampire in the first storyline. The sacrificial bride plot is dropped after the first VN in favor of the Adam and Eve plot for the rest of the series, and it requires Yui to be human. The visual novels set this up with Karlheinz rewinding time a bit and removing Cordelia from Yui's body at the beginning of More,Blood. However, the anime cannot follow suit on this since Cordelia was exorcised the old fashioned way in that continuity, and it simply never mentions Yui becoming a vampire in the second season.
• Something about a Rose: Christa was known as the White Rose among the vampires due to her beauty. Subaru likens Yui to a white rose as well, but picks a different flower for her in the end - the night-blooming cereus, otherwise known as the Queen of the Night.
• Son of a Whore: The triplets, Ayato, Kanato, and Laito. Having their mother sleeping around with other men, including their uncle. It also doesn't help that Cordelia often flirted with other men in front of her children.
• Soul Jar: Yui, of Cordelia. It becomes worse in Reiji’s route, after Cordelia possesses Yui.
• Story Reset: At the start of each sequel visual novel, Karlheinz appears in the prologue and makes cryptic comments alluding to rewinding time. He is so powerful that he keeps Soft Rebooting reality so events can take a different course while retaining certain character development story beats. More,Blood is a sort of second beginning; it opens with Yui having lived with the Sakamakis for a month, but she did not pick one of them to feed from her like she did at the start of the first VN. As a result, she is not particularly close to any of them, stalling out Karlheinz's plans. So he adds extra variables - he clears Cordelia from the board and allows the Mukamis to position themselves as rivals to his sons to spur them into action.
• Tangled Family Tree: Most of the love interests are related, and it's not just the multiple wives and the many half brothers. The Mukamis are like adoptive brothers that the Sakamakis never knew they had, since Karlheinz took them in when they were children. Carla and Shin are cousins to Cordelia on her mother's side, making them second cousins to the triplets. Kino claims he is Karlheinz's illegitimate child - which also happens to be a Conveniently Unverifiable Cover Story.
• Title Drop: References to a dark fate awaiting the protagonists is common at the end of Dark Fate routes. It's the only VN in the series that really goes for this trope - well, certainly a lot of characters ask for "more blood," but that goes for all the games and not just More,Blood.
• Torture Cellar: The Sakamaki manor has a torture chamber. And an underground dungeon. And a Wax Museum Morgue. And these wretched vampire boys will use them to try to scare Yui out of her wits...but usually don't go any further than chaining her to the wall.
• Total Eclipse of the Plot: A lunar eclipse features prominently in the plot of Dark Fate drama CD series and VN. Eclipses have strange effects on vampires, causing erratic behavior - this first shows up in the Versus II dramas, where the love interests all get quite maudlin. In Dark Fate proper, a lunar eclipse diminishes their powers and makes them vulnerable to attack, which the Tsukinami brothers use to their advantage.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Many of the characters' favorite foods are utilised in the plot in some way - Reiji's teatimes, Kanato's sweet tooth, and how Ayato is easily distracted by takoyaki are stand-out examples. Subaru represents an inversion in that his characterization is based on being so ambivalent to human food that he doesn't have a favorite dish.
• True Love is Exceptional: None of the love interests go into the story expecting to fall in love with their prey, and many of them mention to the heroine that she's not the sort of girl they prefer. But it turns out that they all just wanted a nice girl all along.
• Two Guys and a Girl: The Versus audio drama series are based around a pair of love interests competing over the Featureless Protagonist. It's evidently a winning idea, because four Versus series have been released over the years. The setup gives the boys a chance interact with one another in ways that the ensemble dynamic does not allow for, plus there is almost always a two-on-one Kiss of the Vampire scene.
• Vampires Are Rich: All the vampires, and indeed all the suitors, live in huge, beautifully appointed mansions and castles, and they all either aristocrats or attached to aristocratic households.
• Vampires Sleep in Coffins: Zigzagged; they mostly sleep in beds like anyone else. Except for Subaru, who does actually use a coffin as a bed because no one can bother him in there. Ayato puts this on its ear by sleeping in an Iron Maiden (sans spikes) simply because he thinks that's cool.
• We Used to Be Friends: Yuma and Shu were friends when they were young, but tragic circumstances drove them apart. They grew into very different people in the intervening years, to the extent that when they meet again they don't recognize one another which isn't surprising, since Shu thought Yuma died, and Yuma's amnesia sticks. While they are ultimately glad to reconnect, they don't get particularly close.
  • Karlheinz had positive relationships in the past, but his powers and ambitions spoiled almost all of them. He was once friends with Giesbach, the king of the Founders, but his vast powers led to the Founder king's Inferiority Superiority Complex that eventually drove him mad. Karlheinz snatched his younger brother's girl away from him and their relationship never recovered.
• Wedding Finale: Good endings often conclude on Yui and her love interest's wedding day, though it is not universal.
• Yandere:
  • Kanato can form a strong attachment to Yui, but love is so closely linked to death in his mind that in the first plotline even his good ending is unsettling. He does undergo some growth in More,Blood such that he isn't guaranteed to break Yui in the end, but it takes as long as Dark Fate for their relationship to seem anywhere near sustainable.
  • Yui snaps in some bad endings - such as Kanato's Manservant Ending in Haunted Dark Bridal, where she takes on too many Cordelia traits and does a bunch of killing. In More,Blood, she takes pages from Kanato's playbook in Shu's Brute Ending and Ayato's Manservant Ending by disabling her love interest so he can never leave her.
  • Reiji can engage in some yandere-like behavior in Shu’s routes in the first two VNs, but he is Driven by Envy rather than romantic fixation.
• You Kill It, You Bought It: Karlheinz wants one of his sons to kill him and take his place and the purpose of his machinations, at least in part, is ensure that the Sakamaki brothers are powerful enough and motivated enough to do the deed. The finale of the Sakamaki Dark Fate routes is a duel with Karlheinz (except for Laito, who refuses to participate,) and if Karlheinz loses, he passes his powers on to the victorious son whether he wants it or not.
• You Taste Delicious: The vampires love to tell Yui how delicious she is. They get a kick out of licking blood from any injuries she sustains (and she is conveniently accident-prone) or just licking her; even her skin tastes good to them. The Tsukinami brothers make for an interesting inversion - she tastes of vampire, and they find that repulsive. Thus, they constantly complain that her blood tastes foul instead.
• Your Days Are Numbered: In Bloody Bouquet, Yui is mysteriously given a bouquet of black roses that curse her, spoiling her blood so that the vampires can't drink from her (which at this point, is just consensual intimate time), but poisoning her so that she will eventually die without intervention.

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