Fanfic / The Reaping of Hatsune Miku

DIVA District - or so it was popularly known; a peaceful, if somewhat busy, area on the northwestern edge of the city of Diola. Although there had been certain unpleasantries in the past years, and more than one tragic occurrence lately, the District for Imaginative and Vocal Attitudes yet remained a place where warm-hearted, enjoyable people tended to gather.

The opening lines of the first six works in the series

The Reaping of Hatsune Miku is a Vocaloid/The World Ends with You (with some Black★Rock Shooter thrown in) Crossover fanfic written by Aura X-Y on Archive of Our Own. The story and its sequels can be found here.

The story starts with Megurine Luka waking up facedown on the pavement of Cybernation Plaza. She has died, and been entered into the Reaper's Game, offering her a second chance at life - if she can survive, and complete the missions she is given. She soon finds a partner in the silent, but pleasant Miku, and the two of them endeavor to complete the missions together. As the source is ripe for, there's much more than that beneath the surface.

The first story was written in 2017; it was succeeded in 2018 by The Return of Hatsune Miku, a short sequel taking place three months after the end of Reaping. Aura X-Y later began The Precedent of Hatsune Miku in 2020, a prequel sub-series with a Framing Device surrounding events following Return.

The Performance of Hatsune Miku is a Formula-Breaking Episode; a script for a theater performance based on the Night ∞ Series by Hitoshizuku-P. The author has expressed that the script was written without influence from (or knowledge of) the existing manga adaptation.

After being foreshadowed it several times in the notes for Precedent entries, The Journey of Hatsune Miku was written in 2022, a full-length sequel taking place a year after Reaping. It was followed by The Resonance of Hatsune Miku in 2023.

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Folders for the sequels will not spoiler-mark plot points in the previous works

Tropes throughout the whole series

• Adaptational Badass: Some of the characters use psychs based on those of The World Ends With You, but many work slightly differently than they do in-game.
  • Most pins can apparently be used perpetually as long as the user can afford to stand still, with Miku's Piercing Pillar being the exception. Every psych in TWEWY had either a duration and a cooldown, or a fixed number of uses, which was extended to partners in the Remix versions due to the reworked gameplay.
  • Miku's Dark Barrier pin allows her to heal as long as it's active in the manner of Aqua Barrier, rather than only healing while she inflicts damage.
  • Luka's psych is the "hold"-based Psychokinesis, but deals damage while simply holding Noise rather than requiring them to be flung or shaken. This references a moment of Cutscene Power to the Max early on in TWEWY.
• Adaptational Heroism: The Reaper's Game is presented in a much more positive light than it was in TWEWY, with very few of the Players showing anger towards the nature of the Game itself.
• Adapted Out: The Light Puck of the original DS release of TWEWY is disregarded in favor of the Remix versions' Cross Combos, as noted in the tags of each work.
• Apocalypse How: City scale, Physical Annihilation. Utau City is a coastal town that faced destruction shortly before the start of Reaping; a tsunami hit the coast so hard that "there's not even an Utau City anymore". Everyone in the UG was erased by the cataclysm, and the civilians were inducted into the Reaper's Game and exported to another Underground. When it turned out they were all Death Seekers, they were sent to DIVA for the Mercy Kill.
• Age Lift: Miku, Luka, Rin, and Len are all noted to be 19 at the time of Reaping; Kaito and Meiko's ages aren't specified, but are noted to have been in their senior year of high school when the others met them.
• Code of Honor: It's mentioned several times that "Reapers always repay their debts". If a Player does something to earn a Reaper's favor, the Reaper Collective will repay them at some point.
• Close on Title: In keeping with the source material, the chapters of each story are named in AO3's table-of-contents based on the timeframes involved; the actual name of each chapter is given at the bottom of each chapter. The last chapter of each story ends with the story's own title, as well.
• Dead All Along: As in the source material, Players in the Reaper's Game are dead by default. Unlike in TWEWY, however, Reaping makes no effort to hide it, instead dropping the reveal early in the first chapter.
• Department of Redundancy Department: Civilians and most Players refer to "DIVA District" despite the acronym below. Reapers, in contrast, refer to "DIVA", averting the trope.
• Doppelgänger Spin: Reapers form pacts with their shadows to fight by themselves; a Reaper who practices their pact can manifest the shadow as a partner in battle. The shadows can't be hurt directly, but the Reaper can switch between them as they wish.
• Fun with Acronyms: "DIVA" stands for "District for Imaginative and Vocal Attitudes".
• Framing Device: The Precedent stories start most chapters with the current-day events before transitioning into the prequel content.
• Good Wings, Evil Wings: Reapers maintain their skeletal black wings, although their less "evil" and more "doing their jobs". A few Angels also appear, with the expected white-feather wings. Fallen Angels, which were indistinguishable from the normal in TWEWY, get wings described with a white-to-black gradient, although it later turns out that they must be specifically "branded" as Fallen to get these.
• Goroawase Number: Miku's favorite "39"^*3-9 can be read as "mi-ku" or "san-kyu" makes several appearances, most prominently in the 39 Building that sits in the center of DIVA.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Most of the chapters are named after songs featuring the Vocaloids being focused on, with the exception of Machine Muzik and the last few chapters of Ghost Town due to focusing on Calne Ca and Haku/Neru, respectively. The content of the song is not necessarily relevant, but the name always is.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: It's noted on several occasions that a Game Master can do this; if the instructions on the final day are "defeat the Game Master" rather than "erase the Game Master", the Game Master can choose to admit defeat. Relatively few Reapers play it straight, however.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: Return starts off with a quick recap of the events of Reaping, giving away such events as Miku's six-Game tenure and Gumi's grudge against her in the third paragraph. The author acknowledges this in the notes at the top of the first chapter, warning readers that no spoilers will be spared. The Precedent stories aren't quite so blatant, but still raise a few key points within the first chapter.
• One-Winged Angel: Averted; unlike the bosses of TWEWY, most of the Game Masters lack Noise transformations, instead fighting the Players in human form with Power Tattoos. The straight example, Calne Ca, is a major plot point.
• Power Gives You Wings: Inverted; in the Reaper's Game, the wings give you power. Reapers don't carry over their wings to the Realground, and so are normal humans there; when a Reaper's wings expire from a low score, they lose their power with them.
• Punch-Clock Villain: Most Reapers aren't actively malicious so much as just doing their jobs. Precedent: Ghost Town reveals that the trope is taken literally.
  IA: We don't get anything out of it. Nothing more than we'd get out of working nine-to-five in an office, anyways. It's a job - a little more physically active than most jobs, maybe, but a job all the same. Some Reapers take other gigs on the side because DIVA doesn't run every other week like some UGs do, but that doesn't change the fact that it's a job that needs to be done.
• Recycled Plot: A few individual missions are recycled from missions in TWEWY, with the most recognizable examples being giant bat Noise in the concert stage and every Game starting with a trip to 39, and some missions return in later Games. The last Game of Reaping also has Miku starting off on her own, and a Reaper defects to resolve that problem. The events surrounding said occurrences, however, vary enough that it only really counts on a technicality.
• Running Gag
  • Every story begins with the quote at the top of this page, verbatim.
  • The first mission of every Game is to find a partner and reach the 39 Building.
  • When long conversations ensue in the elevator of 39 Building, the elevator tends to get interrupted by a Black★Rock Shooter character with a bag full of Noodle Implements.
• Sdrawkcab Name: The city's name, "Diola", comes from reversing the last two-thirds of "Vocaloid".
• Shout-Out:
  • The DIVA District map is admitted by the author to be an edited version of Lumiose City's map.
  • Hotel Hearts, a Love Hotel hidden inside a regular hotel, is a reference to a Kingdom Hearts fanfic of the same name. The first scene inside even features dialogue lifted directly from an early chapter of the story.
  • Akita Neru's twin pistols are based on Bayonetta's default weapons in the first two games; one from Scarborough Fair, one from Love Is Blue.
• Your Days Are Numbered: Reapers have to score points by following instructions in order to keep their lives up; a newly-joined Reaper starts with thirteen days on the clock. When there are six days left, the wings disappear; in DIVA, the Reaper in question will get saddled with Support duty, which can be done with just keypins.
• Watsonian versus Doylist: Any legitimate Vocaloid songs that appear in the series are treated as written by the characters In-Universe; the end notes of the chapters in which they are mentioned include credits to the genuine songwriters.
• Wham Shot: Literature being a non-visual format, they can't necessarily be called "shots" in the sense of the trope name. However, the author narrates certain scenes in a way that is clearly meant to invoke the trope.

The Reaping of Hatsune Miku

Megurine Luka. Hatsune Miku. Honki Kaito. Sakine Meiko. Kagamine Len. Kagamine Rin. Over the course of six Reaper's Games, the members of Glory Music die, find themselves in the Reaper's Game, and must fight for survival.

The Reaping of Hatsune Miku provides examples of:

• Affably Evil: Not that the Reapers are technically evil in the first place, but Kokone makes no effort at being confrontational despite being Game Master. It turns out that she is trying to give Miku a fighting chance in her bet against Gumi.
• Armor-Piercing Question: Gakupo asks one of Gumi on Day 6 of Game 5, which he specifically words to avoid Exact Words.
  Gakupo: In the thirteen years since you became Composer, I have never lied to you. I ask only one answer in honesty. No half-truths, no false rhetoric. Just answer me. Do you have something personal against Hatsune?
  Gumi: ...Yes.
• Big Bad: Ultimately revealed to be the Composer, Naka Gumi. She assumed Miku's popularity was undeserved, and trapped her in the Reaper's Game against her better judgement.
• Big Good: Naka Gumi is the Composer of DIVA, which puts her in this position due to the Adaptational Heroism. Subverted when her true nature is revealed, placing her in the Big Bad position instead; the real Big Good is Black Rock Shooter, the Producer. When Haku succeeds Gumi as Composer, she plays the trope straight, with BRS being shifted to a Greater-Scope Paragon.
• Brought Down to Normal: Yowane Haku is in a weird subversion of this trope; her Reaper wings have expired, which means she doesn't have access to the Reaper's powers, but by all accounts that means she should have died five years ago. No one knows why she hasn't, but the fact remains that she's still powerless, so she just keeps an extra eye out when it's needed. It turns out that she's actually been initiated as an Angel, and is faking being Brought Down to Normal to keep herself Beneath Suspicion.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Kaito dies when a shipping container for frozen goods is dropped on him. Rather than crushing him underneath one of the flat sides, the opening leaves him trapped inside, in freezing cold, long enough to freeze to death.
• Cute Mute: Miku has lost her voice as her entry fee for the Reaper's Game. She gets around it by typing memos on her phone when they have the luxury, and using charades in combat situations. Gumi demanded the fee under the assumption that she was only popular because of her voice.
• Dating Catwoman: Lily develops a minor crush on Len; this has apparently happened before, with the object of her affections usually not making it to Day 7.
• Deal with the Devil: Gumi cuts one with Calne Ca; if she serves as Game Master a second time, then Gumi will unmake her suffering. Calne Ca turns out to be the devil in this scenario, having learned how to create Taboo Noise and intending to take the Composer's throne if Gumi reneges on the deal.
• Death Equals Redemption: Haku enforces this on Gumi after the Post-Final Boss confrontation, entering her into the Reaper's Game at the cost of her hatred of Miku. When she's erased in the Game, the Composer brings her back with her entry fee non-refundable, eliminating all her worst aspects and providing the opportunity for her to redeem herself as an ordinary Reaper.
• Double Meaning: During her Motive Rant, Gumi lists several songs written by other members of Glory Music; the last one is Close and Open, Demons and the Dead; "Everyone pitched in, Hatsune provided the scat." Taken literally, it refers to the practice of "scatting", which is to vocalize without actually speaking words. Taken emphatically, however, it comes across as a Sophisticated as Hell Precision F-Strike.
• The Dragon: Gakupo defies this one. When he realizes what Gumi is doing, he immediately cuts ties with the Composer and leaves DIVA until Miku is returned to life.
• The Dreaded: Calne Ca is the only Reaper in DIVA to have achieved 100% erasure as Game Master. She's also the only known Reaper in DIVA to have gone One-Winged Angel. When Gumi "pulls her out of the hole", the Underground collectively soils itself.
• Driven to Suicide
  • This is how Luka entered the game. She goes into a Heroic BSoD on Day 3 and into Day 4 after being reminded, due to the fact that she can't remember why she died. Miku's forged Suicide Note was found atop the 39 Building, and Luka intended to follow suit.
  • Lily chooses to jump off of Pain Crave Bridge and let the fall erase her rather than try to fight Miku as Game Master.
  • After the last Game, Gumi challenges Miku to a shootout on the rooftop of 39. When Miku refuses to pick up the pistol, Gumi shoots herself instead.
• Duel Boss: Ryuto enforces this on Miku during her second Game, trapping Kaito in a Ring of Fire so that he can't attack the Game Master without risking attacking Miku.
• Dwindling Party: A (pseudo-)villainous example, with the Reapers' numbers gradually dropping as Games go on with no Reapers joining in.
• Eldritch Location
  • A very much downplayed example; the 39 Building is considered the 'heart of DIVA', and all the stray emotions from around the district gather on the rooftop. It's usually benign, but Miku does have headaches whenever she's on the roof. It turns out that the headaches are an unrelated symptom of dying to Gumi's Composer power.
  • Machine Muzik is a straighter example. The personal domain of Calne Cantus, it's ripped straight out of the music video for the song of the same name; it's a formless horizon of light-on-dark, with a computer setup that's not connected to anything, bodies hanging on giant racks, and something in the distance that looks like trees or tentacles. It's also fixed to Noise frequency. Gumi spends the minimum amount of time in there to enlist Calne Ca's help and practically faints when she gets back in the elevator.
• Enfant Terrible: Gacha Ryuto is one of the worst Reapers in the Collective, and is small enough that his (rather large) Reaper wings drag on the ground behind him. He's been a Reaper for ten years, and hasn't left the UG since. A close second place is Otomachi Una, who is of similar profile, spends more time in the RG, and has a mean sadistic streak.
• Everyone Lives: Haku brings back the fallen Game Masters after being made Composer, with the exception of Kokone and Calne Ca.
• Exact Words
  • Reapers can't attack Players directly, except in self-defense. During Game 1, Lily tries to bait Luka and Miku into attacking her under the assumption that she is going to attack her. Gumi is impressed, and lets it slide on the grounds that she didn't end up hurting them. Ryuto and Una later try the same tactic to similar (lack of) success, narrowly avoiding a penalty for Ryuto's GM fight.
  • The Game Master can't assign a mission that is impossible for the Players to complete. When Una is GM-ing for a game with more than one pair of Players, she has the Support Reapers set up walls so that only one pair of Players can complete it, with the understanding that the walls will go down if the accessible Players get erased.
  • Day 4 of Game 3, Una confronts Lily over letting Len go, assuming that it was because he was defenseless. Lily honestly answers "no". Una immediately figures out that it happened because Lily's got a crush on Len.
  • Gumi spends most of the story using this to dance around Gakupo's questions regarding her and the ongoing Games. He eventually cottons on and gives her a question that demands a straight yes-or-no answer.
  • In the lead-in to Game 6, Gumi enlists Calne Ca as Game Master, telling her that all that is required of her is to "Issue one mission. Erase one Player." When Haku interferes and forms a pact with Miku (thus turning "Erase one Player" into a fight with the GM rather than an easy win against a helpless player), Gumi reiterates that that is still all that is required of Calne Ca... but since she is still Game Master, she is allowed to issue further missions if she wants to.
• First-Episode Twist: The first seven chapters focus on Luka as the viewpoint character, with her friendship building with Miku in a similar manner to Neku and Shiki's friendship/relationship in TWEWY. Then Chapter 8 reveals that Luka is Miku's best friend, and a member of her band. The next two chapters have another twist when Kaito partners up with Miku for her second game and reacts with surprise when her name is revealed, as well as when Miku tries to reveal their past friendship the next day.
• Fountain of Youth: Meiko ends up in her high-school body during the Reaper's Game, which confuses everyone who meets her. It turns out that, as the most business-minded of the members of Glory Music, what she values most is the respect of others, so the Reapers took her appearance so as to make her seem less respectable.
• A God Am I: Calne Ca has complete control over Machine Muzik, claiming that even the Composer is inferior within her domain, and referring to herself as "goddess".
• Goodbye, Cruel World!: A suicide note was found atop the 39 Building from Hatsune Miku. It's later revealed that Gumi forged the note in preparation for the Reaper's Game.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Gumi's reason for forcing Miku into a weighted Reaper's Game. Gumi sings at a bar and has a small personal following; Miku is the face of a band that is famous throughout DIVA and has several Hall of Legend entries on Nico Nico Douga, and the less-informed listeners credit Miku with everything. When Gumi's singing slot got cancelled because "no one is going to waste their time on a bar when Hatsune frickin' Miku is rocking in Silent Beat", things boiled over.
• Human Notepad: Lily does this during Game 4 to circumvent Gumi's "no one remembers Miku" effects, cutting the names of Glory Music's members into one arm and the names of the recent Players on the other.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Each chapter is labelled as "The [X]th Day", depending on which day of the current Game it takes place in, with the chapter following the seventh being named as "The Next Day". In keeping with the source material, the Very Definitely Final Game has its days marked as "X Day(s) Left".
• Immortality Begins at Twenty: Averted. It's noted that one doesn't age in the UG, with no limiter on what that causes; Ryuto, who looks like a little kid, has been in the UG for ten years and hasn't aged a day.
• I Have Your Wife: During their respective second games, Rin and Len serve as each others' entry fees. Len observes that Gakupo would have done something similar if they hadn't died at the same time; when they both choose a second game, he flips a coin to decide who goes first.
• Ironic Death
  • Kaito, who loves ice cream, dies in a freezer.
  • Rin and Len are killed when a runaway roadroller causes them to swerve into a High-Voltage Death.
• Instant-Win Condition: For the majority of the story, Miku and her partner are the only Players involved, which means that if either of them gets erased, there's no one else to form a pact with, and the current GM has won the Game.
  Haku: A Game with only two players? It's erase or zero. If anyone erases either of you, they get the credit for single-handedly giving the GM 100% erasure.
• Impeded Communication: Miku is prohibited from communicating to her friends about their past experiences when she remembers them. This includes both typing it out digitally (on her phone) and writing it out physically (with pen and paper).
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: Gumi starts Miku's first Game playing fair, punishing Ryuto and Una when they violate GM orders and stopping Ryuto from issuing illegal missions. Then she starts overlooking certain rule violations. After Lily reveals she knows about the wager and Cul gives Miku a free pass on the GM fight, she loads up Lily with the power of Instant Player Erasure, breaks out Calne Ca, and starts the last game with one Player.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: In four flavors.
  • The living start to gradually forget the events surrounding the death of a Player who has earned their return to life. It's implied to have its limits, as Miku's "disappearance" kicks up a media storm in Diola; Return reveals that she had to dispel things personally.
  • Luka cannot remember what caused her to be Driven to Suicide, and Miku suspects that it was her entry fee. As it turns out, Miku not remembering Luka was Luka's entry fee. As for the other end...
  • None of Miku's friends remember her while they're in the Underground. Neither can the Reapers remember Miku's relation to Glory Music while they're in the Underground. This turns out to be part of Gumi's grudge.
  • Miku herself can't remember how she died. Gumi killed her atop the 39 Building with the Composer's power.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Gumi gradually stacks the deck against Miku throughout her games, culminating in giving Lily an Instant Player Erasure bullet for the last round before Calne Ca serves as GM. When she's restored to life and is entered into the Game again, Gakupo suggests that Gumi be subjected to the same sort of Game, and Haku agrees.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: Kaito spends most of his Game afraid of everything. During the GM fight against Ryuto, when he pins Miku down and is about to erase her, he fights down his fears and starts quoting "Ashes to Ashes", using the full power of his pin on the Reaper to erase him in two hits.
• Lovable Coward: Kaito is a nervous wreck during the Reaper's Game. Miku observes that he used to be the boldest of the group and suspects that his courage was his entry fee. She's proven right come his return to life.
• Love Hotel: There's one in Cybernation Plaza, hidden inside a regular hotel. The Reapers have set it up so that Players can get a free room at the love hotel portion (but not the regular hotel) as a sort of mid-mortem solution to Must Not Die a Virgin.
• Moral Event Horizon: Calne Ca has learned how to create Taboo Noise from scratch since her last tenure as Game Master. Siccing them on the Players when she's made GM again puts her over the line. She ends up un-crossing it in Return. invoked
• Motive Rant: Gumi gets one on Day 5 of Game 5, listing all of Miku's most famous songs that were written by other members of Glory Music. Miku gets the credit for the good music, which Gumi thinks is undeserved; if she returns to life, she won't contribute anything but her voice.
• Multishot: Kaito's pin works on this principle; the more targets he aims it at, the less damage it deals. When he focuses it on one enemy, it one-shots common Noise.
• Murder by Mistake: Meiko dies when someone poisons a drink and has it delivered it to her. The killer turns himself in later that week because he had intended it for someone else.
• Noodle Incident: Kaito apparently racked up a sizeable dental bill in the past, but Miku doesn't get the chance to share what led to that before her anti-communication curse kicks in.
• Post-Final Boss: After defeating Calne Ca, Miku and Haku confront Gumi at the Composer's throne... and Gumi ends up forced out of the seat without a fight. The next morning, Miku ends up facing off with Gumi atop the 39 Building, as living humans.
• Red Baron: Calne Ca is referred to by many characters as "Calne Cantus", in reference to the 'Cantus' bosses of TWEWY. Her inhuman limbs, rather than being mechanical or insectoid, are Noise constructs.
• Red Herring: Day 3 of Game 4, Gumi and Gakupo discuss a rumor that the narration elaborates on regarding a Fallen Angel, suspected to be responsible for an increased death rate in DIVA, with Gumi suggesting that it's the cause of Miku's lack-of-communication. It turns out that Gumi's bullshitting Gakupo, and she's responsible for the communication failure. There is a Fallen Angel, but it's got nothing to do with the death rate.
• Refusing Paradise: Miku is offered the chance to join the Angels after she wins her last Game, given the choice of ascending to the Higher Plane proper or taking up the Composer's chair. She turns the offer down in favor of going back to her friends.
• Screw the Rules, I Make Them!: When Calne Ca calls out Gumi for letting rule violations pass, Gumi tries to retort with this trope; as Composer, she decides what is a violation or not. Calne Ca observes that she hasn't even bothered to change the rules before letting the violations pass.
• Spontaneous Weapon Creation: Rin and Len's psychs create weapons for them to use; Rin gets two small blades, while Len gets a staff. Most Reapers' weapons also appear to manifest at will.
• Sibling Rivalry: Rin and Len exhibit this during the Reaper's Game. This turns out to be their entry fee; Gakupo notes that their relationship is normally devoid of hostility, averting this trope.
• Something Only They Would Say: Meiko initially refuses to admit that she's talking to Luka, prompting Luka to try several of these.
  Luka: Would 'not Luka' know about your personal sake stash in high school?
  Meiko: She would if she spoke to the teachers who confiscated it before grad.
  Luka: Okay, would 'not Luka' know about your favorite salted caramel and mint chocolate combo from Cryptic Confectionery?
  Meiko: Everyone who works at Cryptic Confectionery knows about my combo.
  Luka: What about your collection of silver dil-
  Meiko: (muffling her) Oh my god you're Luka.
• Superpower Lottery: It's noted that 93% of players in the Reaper's Game get one pin to work with, 6% get two pins, and the remaining 1% is thought to be a myth. Not only does Miku amass a full deck of six pins, but they turn out to be based on TWEWY's Darklit Planets. (Journey later reveals that these numbers only apply for DIVA's specific pin rules.)
• This Was His True Form: When Haku manages to finish off Calne Ca, her Cantus form disappears to reveal her real body before she gets erased.
• Those Two Girls: Kobayashi Matcha and Masaoka Azuki, the only permanent support Reapers in DIVA. They try to stay on relatively friendly terms with the Players as a consequence.
• Uncanny Valley: Calne Ca appears for most of the final Game in a pseudo-body that falls deep into this trope. The narration notes that she looks a little like Miku, but that's not particularly disturbing next to the fact that she doesn't quite look human.
• Unwinnable by Design
  • The Game Master position has earned a reputation in DIVA as this; only one Game Master has managed to pull off 100% erasure, and most Reapers don't know when to quit.
  • As in TWEWY, a one-Player game is unwinnable for the Players; Gumi tries to force this by starting Miku's sixth Game while she's the only Player.
• Voice of the Legion: Calne Cantus speaks in what seems to be an attempt to convey this trope in a literary medium. Her voice is described as rough and hoarse, reaching across the landscape of Machine Muzik, with monospaced syllables that don't pause between words (a common effect of trying to make a real Vocaloid talk without melody); in text, it's visually represented by Bold Inflation and hyphenating the syllables of multisyllabic words.
• Wham Episode: Miku's fifth Game. Gumi is up to something, and it involves breaking up Glory Music somehow. Lily is being forced to serve as Game Master by proxy, which means Gumi gets to issue the missions, and something is going on involving "Calne Cantus".
• Wham Line
  • During the first day of Miku's second game, after Una taunts her by name:
    Kaito: She said your name's... Miku?
  • The next day, she tries to user her memo communications to resolve this, which gives the narration a Wham Line.
    She blinked - and the memo was empty.
  • When Rin and Len enter the game, they end up splitting up for Day 3, leading to Len having a She Is Not My Girlfriend moment with Lily. Note that this is after they've been established as friendly in the RG.
    Len: She's my partner.
    Lily: Besides your pact.
    Len: She's a stranger I met on Day 1.
  • After Day 7 of Game 4; Cul tries to Face Death with Dignity and gets approached by the Composer.
    Cul: You think every GM needs to pull off a TPK? Some of us just want to tell a good story.
    Gumi: (Suddenly Shouting) I didn't brand you Game Master to tell a story! I ordered you to erase Hatsune!
  • Lily gets two good lines in relatively close succession in a flashback at the start of Day 2 of Game 5.
    Lily: I can't imagine keeping her in the UG is earning you any points with Black Rock Shooter.
    (Gumi halts)
    Lily: Oh, come on. DIVA under judgement? Not even DVIA, but the Underground? If the Composer's part of the jury, the judge has to be the Producer. [...] What do you get out of breaking up Glory Music?
  • The exchange between Gakupo and Gumi on Day 6 of Game 5.
  Gakupo: In the thirteen years since you became Composer, I have never lied to you. I ask only one answer in honesty. No half-truths, no false rhetoric. Just answer me. Do you have something personal against Hatsune?
  Gumi: ...Yes.
  • After the end of that Game, we get a recreation of two Wham Lines from TWEWY at the start of the next one.
  Galaco: Let's just say that, with me in the RG, the Game won't have any Harriers on duty. Not while there's still a Player to harry.
  Mission message: Day I / Destination - 39 / Time limit - 1:00:00 / Cost of failure - Erasure / Current Player Count - 1
  • Game 6, Day 3; Gumi finds Calne Ca creating a Taboo Noise refinery sigil and confronts her over it.
  Gumi: If I were to allow you to continue creating Taboo Noise, the Producer would blow a hole in my head! The Angel who taught you to do this will have fallen!
  Calne Ca: There was no An-gel to in-struct me.
  • At the end of the last Game, while confronting Gumi:
  Haku: What, does it hurt? Knowing that your violations, your unfair trial, did not go unnoticed? Does it hurt, to hear all your cruelty... coming from the lips of an Angel?
• Wham Shot:
  • During the above-mentioned flashback on Day 2 of Game 5. Lily shows off the cuts carved into her arm, listing the members of Glory Music... and then the cuts on her other arm, listing the Players that have been involved in the past few Games. The lists match.
  • On Day 3 of Game 6, Gumi tries to erase Calne Ca personally in the same way she erased Cul earlier, by inflicting her with direct pain. She snaps her fingers... and nothing happens.
• Who Watches the Watchmen?: Akita Neru does. She serves as an enforcer in the Reaper Collective, keeping troublemakers like Ryuto and Una from crossing the lines. After Haku is made Composer, Neru is made Conductor, but the sequels reveal that she still mainly holds the enforcer role.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: After losing her bet with Haku, Gumi assumes that she's been reduced to a common Reaper and tries to erase herself. In actuality, she's been restored to life, and the gunshot that does it puts her in the Reaper's Game again.
• You Kill It, You Bought It: Defeating the Composer gives the Composer's throne to the one who did it. Haku makes a wager with Gumi for the Composer's throne under the guise of Black Rock Shooter, and the story ends with Haku as Composer.

The Return of Hatsune Miku

Three months after the long gamble, Glory Music is back in action, and Miku has been writing songs. The band plans to put on a concert to celebrate Miku's "reappearance", and Miku plans to send the proceeds to a charity run by one of the Reapers. Unfortunately, the Reapers have problems of their own: an invading Reaper from another Underground is en route to Diola, and intends to take vengeance against the Reaper's Game for the mass erasure of Utau City's population.

The Return of Hatsune Miku provides examples of:

• All of the Other Reindeer: Yukari died in Utau City as an outsider, and was treated poorly by the Reapers there after she chose to join them. The end result is that she ended up perpetually close to erasure from lack of score.
• Amplifier Artifact: Haku modifies the Player Pins of Glory Music so that they let the ex-Players see the Players and Reapers from the Realground. It ends after/during the concert, which helps Miku identify Yukari as the invader.
• Back from the Dead: Calne Ca is resurrected by Yukari in an attempt to find an ally. This backfires on her in a big way.
• Barrier Warrior: Kaai Yuki's pin allows her to create barriers that harm Noise on collision.
• Big Bad: The invader from Utau City, a Reaper who happened to be out-of-town when the tsunami hit. Said invader turns out to be Yuzuki Yukari, who presented herself as a Player in an attempt to hide under the radar of the Reaper Collective.
• Body Horror: Calne Ca's transformation into Calne Cantus is not pleasant. Her left eye catches fire and melts, her left arm is burned down to the bone before growing in a decidedly not-human way, and her jaw breaks clean off. This is all before the Noise parts kick in.
• Didn't Think This Through:
  • In the first chapter, Miku suggests hosting the Reappearance concert atop the 39 Building, only for the other members of the band to point out the numerous flaws in that plan and shut it down.
  • During the horde of Noise on top of 39, the party sets up a well-calculated defense against the swarm, which is undermined when a raven Noise steals Zunko's pin and takes off with it; Zunko proceeds to dash out of formation and chsee the thief. This turns out to be her entry fee; she's normally rather level-headed.
• Emotionless Girl: Kaai Yuki seems to be like this during the Game. That being said, she has a few Not So Stoic moments. This turns out to be her entry fee; due to her young age, her emotions are the most precious thing to her. Since the Reapers can't take them outright, her emotions are instead buried deep.
• Erasure Seeker: Calne Ca chooses to accept peaceful erasure rather than continue living a painful existence in the Underground.
• Exact Words: When Una is asked about how to get someone's entry fee back, she says she'll "give [them] a hint. ...On Day 7." Merli discovers that "On Day 7" is the hint; by surviving to the end of the last mission, her entry fee is returned automatically.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: After hearing about the invader, Glory Music starts to talk about how they might try to make things easier. Kaito guesses that the invader will still need to score points to keep their wings, and after exhausting the existing options, the idea of Conductor or Composer is shot down on the grounds that the Producer wouldn't leave something like that out.
  Luka: ...How does someone become the Composer?
• Fearless Fool: Discussed with Yuki, who doesn't show fear in front of the Reapers or Noise.
  Yuki: Sensei told me... being brave isn't not being scared. It's not letting being scared stop you. I'm not scared... so I'm not really brave, right?
• Godzilla Threshold
  • When Haku realizes that the invader is effectively the Composer of Utau City, she gets permission from Black Rock Shooter to enlist Glory Music as extra watchers.
  • Merli's entry fee turns out to be this; Haku took Lapis as her fee in the hopes of making the invader hesitate to go through with her mass erasure. It works, but she still feels guilty about it.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: The chapters are labelled as a countdown to Glory Music's concert, in the form of "X Days to Stage". The last four chapters are labelled "Concert Day", "Backstage", "Post-Concert", and "Afterparty".
• Invisibility: Nekomura Iroha is invisible to the other Players - but not the Reapers. This turns out to be her entry fee.
• Immediate Self-Contradiction: Yuzuki Yukari is a Reaper's Game veteran, and points out that only so many Players get to return to life; at the end of the Game's third day, she tells the other Players that they're each others' opponents, and reaffirms the point at the start of the fourth day... right before the mission comes in, which is a Metal Slime hunt.
  Yukari: I take it back. Joining forces sounds like the best idea ever.
• I Have Your Wife: Aoki Lapis turns out to have been her sister Merli's entry fee.
• Ironic Echo: "The position of Game Master is a sentence to death in DIVA." Calne Ca said this in Reaping to point out the fatality rate to Gumi, and says it again in Return to point out the lack of Cantus transformations that have happened even so.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Anon and Kanon enter the Game with no memories of who they were, except their own names (and apparently the rules of the Game). With their erasure at Yukari's hands, their fees are lost forever.
• Oh, Crap!
  • Yukari has this reaction when the last Pig Noise of Day 4 is a Pig Butoh; the other Players quickly realize that they should follow suit.
  • Merli has one of her own when she sees Miku speaking to Yukari; Players aren't capable of going to the RG to talk to civilians.
• Razor Wind: Nekomura Iroha's pin lets her generate "anime-style flying blades wind" for offense.
• Schmuck Bait: Miku plans her Reappearance concert to be this. The invader of Utau City wants vengeance against the Reaper's Game of DIVA, so Miku invites all the Reapers and Players, and opens up the concert with a hint that she's a surviving Player. Yukari admits that she fell for it without a second thought.
• Someone Has to Do It: It's pointed out that every Underground has to have a Composer; because the invader is the only survivor of Utau City, they ended up with the Composer's seat before Utau City stopped being a thing.
• Shout-Out: When Calne Ca confronts Yukari, she describes erasure in much the same way as Maleficent described darkness.
• Spontaneous Weapon Creation: Tohoku Zunko's pin gives her a bow, apparently with unlimited arrows.
• Summon Bigger Fish: Yukari tries to revive 'Calne Cantus' in her crusade against the Underground. It backfires on her very quickly; not only does Calne Ca have no intention of aiding an invader, but she was at peace in erasure, and does not appreciate being forced back to the Underground.
• To Be Continued: Subverted; the Concert Day chapter ends with "Chapter To Be Continued" rather than "Chapter Closed", but the author notes that it's only meant to indicate the Backstage chapter taking place on the same day.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Viola Flower turns out to be both sides of this one. She's normally a tomboy, and as her entry fee, her appearance became that of a girly girl.
• Unwanted Revival: Calne Ca gets revived by Yuzuki Yukari. She does not appreciate it. Precedent: Machine Muzik is pretty much devoted to explaining why.
• Wham Line
  • Gumi and Neru are talking on Day 5, and Gumi relays Miku's suggestion to invite the Players, pointing out that twenty-five targets would be too tempting for the invader to pass up on.
    Neru: Your math's a bit off, though.
    Gumi: Huh?
    Neru: No Kokone, remember? I mean, it is going to her charity, I don't blame you, but there's only eleven Reapers.
    Gumi: Yeah, plus Glory Music's six, and the eight Players.
    Neru: Eight!?
  • Miku deliberately opens the concert with an In-Universe example.
    Miku: Hello, DIVA! Can you hear me, Underground? Can you hear me, Realground! This one goes to the Players - to make sure you don't hate the Game!
  • After the concert, Miku steps outside for a breath of fresh air... and Yukari speaks up behind her, giving the narration one.
    Not wanting to be eyeing Players all show, Miku had taken off her Player Pin - which meant this girl was in the Realground.
  • The narration gets another one shortly afterwards, when the other Players are attacking Yukari.
    Hellish blue flames ripped out of the ground from beneath the two mirror images - and neither of them had the chance to scream before their bodies vanished into the blaze.

The Precedent of Hatsune Miku: Machine Muzik

Present: Miku begins asking around the Reaper Collective for information on Calne Ca, to little success.
Past: High-schooler Chiyuki Shiie is crippled and murdered in Diola, entering the Reaper's Game with a significant disadvantage.

In addition to the existing Vocaloid cast, Machine Muzik features numerous characters from Black★Rock Shooter The Game, as well as the light novel adaptation of The Disappearance of Hatsune Miku.

The Precedent of Hatsune Miku: Machine Muzik provides examples of:

• Allergic to Routine: Sing Love brings the PSS into the Underground for this. She thinks that the Reaper's Game is too repetitive, and intends to see what outsiders to the situation will do if they can kill the Composer and take her place.
• Adaptational Context Change: The PSS of Black★Rock Shooter The Game is changed from the Primary Support Service to the Player Survival Squadron. Rather than trying to fight of an Alien Invasion, the soldiers want to unmake the Reaper's Game by killing the Composer and taking her place.
• Artificial Limbs: Shiie's right arm and legs are prosthetics developed at the robotics lab of her friends' college. When she turns into Calne Cantus, they're replaced with Noise-style limbs.
• The Atoner: Black Rock Shooter unintentionally caused much of Shiie's suffering, and has tried to atone since. When Miku confronts her in the penultimate chapter, BRS lets the ex-Player fight her as a final penance.
• Body Horror: The Calne Cantus transformation from Return returns, and somehow manages to be even worse; where Calne Ca took the transformation relatively quietly in Return, here she's left screaming in pain as the transformation changes her.
• Break the Cutie: The entire world seems to conspire to break Shiie. The Apostles cripple her, and then their leader kills her; her entry fee causes everyone who knows her to completely forget her; illegal Players endanger her and her partner; a Fallen Angel attacks her; her partner is (seemingly) erased, and she's forced to watch the Producer strike down the killer rather than trying to fight for herself; she's forced to serve as a Reaper to try and win her entry fee back, which she fails; her first friend in the Reaper Collective dies before her sentence is up; she watches her killers victimize their newest member; said killers are entered into the same Reaper's Game as said victim when Calne Ca defends herself against them; she tries to save the innocent at cost to herself and fails; and she's permanently trapped in Cantus form, which the Composer 'rewards' by giving her solitary confinement.
• Charged Attack: Shiie uses a pin with the Massive Hit psych, which manifests a BFS that deals more damage the longer she holds it.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Shiie's attack at the hands of the Apostles involves having her legs and one arm shot open by rounds big enough to break the bones outright, then attacking the wounds to cause nerve damage. Her remaining arm gets doused in whiskey and set on fire. The intention was to kill her then, but they get driven off before they can finish her off; enough time passes between this and her getting killed that the missing limbs are part of her in the Underground.
• Doomed by Canon: Calne Ca's backstory was laid out in Reaping: she conspired with an illegal Player, saved some Reapers from a Fallen Angel, and ended up losing her entry fee - the memory of her existence from everyone else - for good, then joined the Reapers and discarded her old name. As the story goes on, it turns out that certain elements of the story had been altered over time.
• Everything Is an Instrument: Miku approaches Gumi and Gakupo regarding vocals in an 8-man song; Gakupo warns Miku that "the last thing he did with music was find out you could achieve pitch with a sword".
• For the Evulz: The Apostles literally operate on the mentality of "Why not?" As Shiie observes, they don't need a reason to do cruel things so much as they need a reason not to.
• Friendless Background: Shiie's dead eye led to people avoiding her while she was growing up. Shinosato Yoruko was the first person to try and make friends with her, which led to Shiie meeting Asano and his group.
• God Was My Copilot: Shiie's partner, Viialless, is Black Rock Shooter, disguising herself as a Player in order to investigate Sing Love's plot.
• Heroic Suicide: Calne Ca tries to do this during her time as Game Master, intending to erase the Apostles save for Nafe and then erase herself. Nafe gets erased before she can do so.
• Japanese Ranguage: Viialless's name is the result of applying this to Black Rock Shooter's initials.
• Mythology Gag: On the last day of her tenure as Game Master, Calne Ca quotes the inscriptions on TWEWY's Eden pins, describing five warring kings and an innocent who earns a goddess' favor.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • Black Rock Shooter is much more vocal when she appears on Day 7 of Shiie's Game than she is in Reaping. She reveals to Miku that she's tried to punish herself by burying her emotions since Shiie lost her entry fee.
  • Cyber Diva's communications with Cyber Songman invoke this trope. If she can, she avoids talking to him in person; if prolonged discussion is required, she speaks to him but doesn't look at him; and if she appears in front of him, things are serious.
• Please Kill Me if It Satisfies You: Black Rock Shooter invites Miku to kill her as penance for causing Shiie's suffering.
• That Man Is Dead: When Shiie joins the Reapers, she discards her name, and takes up the name 'Calne Ca' instead.
  Calne Ca: Chiyuki Shiie is dead. Her memory has been burned from the records of this world, and no one will hear her lament. You cannot welcome her, for she does not stand before you. From this day forth, my name is Calne Ca.
• The Stoic: Viialless has the same entry fee as Yuki in Return, the loss of her emotions. Where Yuki turned into an Emotionless Girl as a consequence, Viialless is a more composed Stoic. It's later revealed that Black Rock Shooter was faking such an entry fee rather than actually applying it to herself.
• Token Good Teammate: The Apostles consist of five Jerkasses and Nafe, who was forced into the gang. When they all end up in the same Reaper's Game, Calne Ca tries to save Nafe in the hopes of being remembered.
• Two-Part Trilogy: Discussed in the present-day storyline, with Meiko and Kaito writing Bad ∞ End ∞ Night and the group inviting Gumi and Gakupo to perform with them. The other members of Glory Music realize the "bad end" sets things up for a continuation, which Meiko admits to openly.
  Len: What were you gonna do if everyone hated it?
  Kaito: That's why we wrote it the way we did. If everyone hates it, it's a conclusive end - an ugly end, sure, but still an end. You don't have to know there's more to it. If they like it, we can write another.
  Rin: And are you gonna make the next one be a cliffhanger?
  Meiko: That is the stupidest thing I've ever heard.
• Prophet Eyes: Shiie is blind in her left eye, with the eye itself being described as 'cataracted' in Reaping and Return. When she turns into Calne Cantus, the eye burns and melts.
• Wham Line
  • Day 6 of Shiie's time as a Player, when she and Viialless confront the woman in white and demand her identity.
    "My name is Sing Love. I'm an Angel from the Higher Plane."
  • The Framing Device disappears while Calne Ca is Game Master, but returns for the chapter after Day 7; Miku finds a file folder from the Reaper's Game sitting on her writing desk, which gives her the chance for a Wham Line.
    File: Suggested investigation into unknown Player: Viialless
    Miku: Viialless? Vii-all... arr? Bii? BRS?! The Producer!?
• What the Hell, Hero?: Miku confronts Black Rock Shooter over the Producer's actions during Shiie's time as a Player. Although BRS gives reasonable answers to most of Miku's questions, she does agree that her self-inflicted punishment doesn't qualify as penance, and invites Miku to issue a punishment that will.

The Precedent of Hatsune Miku: Away From You

Present: Miku has long forgiven Gumi for her actions, and tries to convince Gumi to forgive herself.
Past: The current Composer of DIVA is known as Cyber Diva, and many of the Reapers suffer at her whims.

The Precedent of Hatsune Miku: Away from You provides examples of:

• Bad Boss: Cyber Diva. She promotes Reapers based on personal preferences, and officers apparently get to slack around however they want. If a field Reaper tries to request an officer promotion, they have to serve as Game Master first, which has a reputation in DIVA as being Unwinnable by Design; and as was revealed in Machine Muzik, when it seems like a Game Master is terribly likely to achieve 100% erasure, they don't get an officer promotion in return.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Machine Muzik noted that Cyber Diva had only appeared in front of Cyber Songman three times in the past, and he hopes there won't be a fourth time. As far as we know, there isn't.
• Big Bad: Cyber Diva, Gumi's predecessor as Composer. The entire story builds up to Gumi arranging a coup d'etat.
• Call-Forward: Gumi and Cyber Diva's confrontation has several references to events of Reaping.
  • When Gumi tries to give Cyber Diva the Kirk Summation, Cyber Diva asks, "Do you think you can stand in front of the Composer and demand answers?" Gumi said the same thing to Lily when she was confronted over Glory Music.
  • Cyber Diva proclaims herself to be DIVA, prompting Gumi to retort that "DIVA must be a hellish yard". When she confronted Miku before her last Game, Gumi had claimed that "DIVA is a hellish yard, and [she] is its master."
• The Coup: Gumi organizes the field Reapers into one against Cyber Diva. Most of them keep the officers out of the way while she and Gakupo march on the Composer's throne; Gakupo keeps Cyber Songman busy, and Gumi confronts Cyber Diva.
• The Dragon: Cyber Songman, the Conductor, is devoted to Cyber Diva without question. When Cyber Diva is erased, he chooses to get himself erased rather than serve Gumi.
• Hot Blade: Gumi rips out Cyber Diva's wings by applying heat on contact and then adding pressure, turning the frames into this trope for the finishing blow.
• Light Is Not Good: During her fight with Gumi, Cyber Diva uses Light 'em Up attacks. This makes Gumi's shadow-induced Doppelgänger Spin a bit harder than it would have been otherwise.
• Old Shame: Played with in the opening chapter, where Miku walks in on Gumi performing "Gifted". Gumi isn't ashamed of the song itself so much as the vocal quality of the old version, which was "written and recorded when Gumi was in high school". Miku apparently feels the same way regarding the two versions of "Electric Angel".
  Gumi: Is it weird to be proud of something but embarrassed of the old version?

The Precedent of Hatsune Miku: Ghost Town

Present: So long after her time in the UG, Miku finds the Reapers to have varying degrees of comfort around a surviving Player.
Past: A cherry-picked selection of days from the Games of various Reapers, exploring their motivations for choosing to become Reapers rather than play the Game again or accept peaceful erasure.

Though listed complete as of this writing, the author has expressed the possibility of returning to Ghost Town to explore other Reapers' backstories.

The Precedent of Hatsune Miku: Ghost Town provides examples of:

• Action Bomb: Puffer Noise show up during Matcha and Azuki's Game, erasing their partners before they can react.
• Anti-Mutiny: Kyo, serving as Game Master during Ryuto's time as a Player, is attempting a belated version of this trope, trying to unmake The Coup that occurred during Away From You even if he has to use Taboo Noise to do it.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: When Black Rock Shooter appears to offer Haku a place among the Angels, Haku asks to be branded as a Fallen Angel, refusing to accept the Reaper's Game for what it is and knowing that she's going to Fall anyways. BRS obliges... and threatens Haku with exorcism if she refuses to repent.
• Call-Forward: Many characters' pins as Players reference their abilities as Reapers in Reaping.
  • Ryuto uses a Flame Blast psych with black fire, which he used during his GM fight.
  • Una uses a Burst Rounds psych, which hits a target and then bursts into shrapnel, referencing her Doppelgänger Spin battle.
  • Matcha and Azuki both have Barrier pins, which means after they have to partner with each other, they can't attack directly, alluding to their roles as Support. They also take an interest in the psych pins, which alludes to their pin shop.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: During Neru and Haku's Game, Neru ends up in a Gun Kata parry with Piko and describes the weapon-size discrepancy in a way that comes across like someone discouraging a sexual aggressor.
  Neru: Normally, I'd say the size doesn't matter as long as you know how to use it. But when the girl you're trying to intimidate has a bigger one than you do... I think you might want to reconsider.
• Doomed by Canon:
  • As Calne Ca has pointed out, "The position of Game Master is a sentence to death in DIVA", which means any GMs that appear during Ghost Town are not going to survive the station, regardless of their intentions.
  • Admitted by the author to be the case during Ryuto's chapters; his motivations for becoming a Reaper were laid out by Una in Reaping.
  • Haku's reasons were also explained in Reaping, although like with Machine Muzik, there turns out to be more to the story than we were originally told.
• Evil Is Petty: During the modern-day portion, Miku happens to be in Fire Child Sports Park during a mission being held there while Ryuto is GM. He decides to inflict her with negative Noise just to spite her, and makes the mission a 'quota' that can be fulfilled without freeing her.
• Karmic Transformation: Akaza has been in over 100 Reaper's Games since she arrived at the UG, and according to Kyo, has looked different in each one as her entry fee. This denies Kohaku the ability to rub her survival in the officers' faces, at least until Kyo goes out of his way to confront her about it.
• Know When to Fold 'Em:
  • Ryuto's chapters explore the consequences of Kohaku conceding defeat during her time as Game Master. She's been playing the Reaper's Game since Cyber Diva was erased, with her entry fee being the ability to be recognized by the Reapers, and seems to have been biding her time as a Player until the former officers have been erased.
  • IA plans to do this during Haku and Neru's Game, but Haku strikes her down before she can concede defeat.
• Needle in a Stack of Needles: Five out of seven days of IA's Game are assigned to finding and erasing five Progfoxes in DIVA... which has been filled with Psychidelifoxes and Ambiefoxes besides.
• Not Cheating Unless You Get Caught: Utatane Piko has this attitude during Haku and Neru's Game, attacking Players directly while unobserved in order to curry favour with the Game Master. Unfortunately for him, he does get caught, and punished with erasure.
• Mythology Gag: Black Rock Shooter paraphrases Neku's Title Drop of TWEWY to Haku during her sentencing.
  If you will not let your voice be heard, nor will you hear the voices of others, then the world ends at your borders, and all the potential your life or death could hold will vanish into the aether.
• Sacrificial Lamb: Anri Rune ends up getting unceremoniously erased by Taboo Noise during Ryuto's Game.
• Say My Name: Said verbatim by Akaza, after she reveals who she really is to Kyo.
• Show Within a Show: Tin Pin Slammer apparently exists In-Universe as a tabletop-turned-mobile game, and is the origin of the term "pin deck".
• Shut Up, Kirk!: IA gives Haku a hell of a lecture regarding the Reaper's Game, culminating in revealing the existence of the Angels and the Higher Plane in an attempt to make her understand the Game's benevolence.
  IA: The Reaper's Game is the will of the Higher Plane. It is by the command of Angels above that the dead are tried and tested. We Reapers are nothing more than their agents on the ground. We are the scale on which you Players are weighed and measured. On the orders of heaven... the earth sings this aria of judgement!
• Spontaneous Weapon Creation: Haku and Neru's weapons from Reaping and Return are revealed to have been available to them as Players.
• Steel Eardrums: Neru's guns are described as having a realistically loud shot, but neither she nor Haku suffers any hearing loss. Haku lampshades it and wonders if maybe the Reaper's Game just prevents them from suffering that.
• Straw Misogynist: Una's partner Bruno has a very sexist attitude, disregarding her advice and generally thinking highly of himself. As the author points out, however, there are a lot more female Vocaloids than male ones, which means this kicks him very hard in this ass. Bruno does NOT get chosen to return to life, and Una becomes a Reaper specifically so she can show him up for his attitude.
• Wrong Genre Savvy:
  • Kyo assumes that Akaza, who has had a different appearance every Game for a hundred Games straight, must have had her entry fee taken out of vanity. In fact, Kohaku's entry fee is, in her words, "the ability to be recognized".
  • Bruno and Una start their Day 2 at the Flower Fight Memorial; the mission for the day is at Fire Child Sports Park, relatively close to the park. Bruno assumes there's going to be a trap on the fast path and insists on taking a roundabout route. Ryuto informs him that the only thing on the fast path was other Support Reapers.
  • When Neru first summons her handguns, she's stupefied that she would be provided with two of them, because the recoil from a Hand Cannon is going to break something if she's Firing One-Handed. After grabbing one in a Weaver grip and pulling the trigger, she finds out that the Law of Inverse Recoil is firmly in place for psychs - which means Guns Akimbo is an option.
  • Haku's position on the Reaper's Game is a lot more akin to those of the main cast of TWEWY and NEO, seeing it as a sick joke propagated by the Reapers for their own ends, with the Players' ability to fight back being nothing more than the fantasy of Challenge-Seeking Blood Knights, oblivious to the Adaptational Heroism of the Game.

The Performance of Hatsune Miku, or, Bad ∞ End ∞ Night

And now for something completely different... a theater adaptation of Bad ∞ End ∞ Night and its sequels. Following a failed attempt to make a melodic performance of Bad ∞ End ∞ Night, Miku has written up a script for classical theatre, performing it alongside her friends at the usual venue on Silent Beat Alleyway.
Meant to evoke the same attitude as TWEWY's "Another Day", the work only has passing references to the Reaper's Game, being presented in screenplay format (with between-act remarks by Matcha and Azuki). As such, it can be read independently of the rest of the series.

The Performance of Hatsune Miku provides examples of:

• Adaptation Expansion: Largely averted; there are very few elements in the theater performance that weren't involved in the songs the theater performance came from.
• Alternate Universe: Averted; despite the "Another Day" vibes, the story (or rather, the specific performance that Matcha and Azuki are attending) explicitly takes place in the same universe as the rest of the series, on the grounds that Bad ∞ End ∞ Night was inspired by the events of the Reaper's Game.
• Arc Words: "As the man said, all the world's a stage..."
• Didn't Think This Through: Matcha and Azuki mention that Glory Music prepared squibs to produce realistic blood splatter during the performance. The last chapter of the story is a list of production notes advised by Miku, and includes this gem:
  Also, if you're gonna use squibs, consider laying down carpet. Yes, it's gonna make set-maneuvering that much harder on your stage crew, but trust me, you're all gonna appreciate not having to scrub that out of the stage. (No, we didn't learn that from experience. I don't know what you're talking about.)
• Either/Or Title: One matches the Theme Naming of the rest of the series, while the other is the title of the Show Within a Show.
• Formula-Breaking Episode: The rest of the Reaping continuity is a prose series revolving around the Reaper's Game, exploring events in the UG and the consequences surrounding them. Performance is a script for a Show Within a Show performed by characters in the RG, telling a story completely unrelated to the Reaper's Game. The story summary, in contrast to the vague descriptions of the rest of the series, is presented as a series of Twitter posts announcing the performance. It's not even tagged as a TWEWY story.
• Gosh Dang It to Heck!: Gumi's Twitter handle in the story summary is @heckishyard.
• Role Reprise: In-Universe, the members of Glory Music (plus Gumi and Gakupo) reprise their roles from the songs on which the play was based for the performance in Diola.
• Shout-Out: Luka (who played violin during the Reappearance concert) has the Twitter handle @lukastomp in the story summary.
• Show Within a Show: The script is for a theater performance that Glory Music (and guest stars) are putting on.
• The Stinger: The only reference to the Reaper's Game happens in a couple lines after the end. Haku warns Ryuto that he's not going to get another stint as GM if he intends to make the Players perform Bad ∞ End ∞ Night for his own entertainment.

The Journey of Hatsune Miku

Nearly a year after Miku returns from the Underground, an influential individual visiting from the city of Pyntroc offers to provide Glory Music with a residence/private studio in their home city. They accept the offer, planning to visit the shore where Utau City once lay and provide a tribute from everyone in DIVA... which quickly goes awry when Miku seems to find herself in Utau City, playing the Reaper's Game once again.

Journey expands the series' already-extensive cast list to include several UTAU characters, as well as the teams from Hatsune Miku: Colorful Stage!. It also breaks the trend of using Remix-inspired Reaper's Game elements, instead taking inspiration from NEO: The World Ends with You.

The Journey of Hatsune Miku provides examples of:

• Adaptational Heroism: The Reaper's Game in Utau City uses a variant of the "Shinjuku rules" depicted in NEO, albeit one much more conducive to the personal growth that the Reaper's Game is built on. In addition to the still taking entry fees like DIVA at least under normal circumstances, the Player Versus Player mechanics are only mentioned in passing rather than being required for the Game (and in the case of Miku's allies, serve more to enable them to fight Reapers than other Players). The final day of a Game, rather than being a free-for-all between the Players, is a trial for the leading team set by the Game Master, whose victory guarantees their return to life.
• All There in the Manual:
  • Invoked in the notes of the last couple chapters, which bring up the names of the two original Noise that couldn't be worked into the story. Miku's Noise form is titled "Kaiserin Cantus", while the giant Noise is identified as "Dissonance Lapin".
  • The author later added a extra "Pin Guide" chapter, serving as a detailed description of all Players' pins throughout the series so far, providing names and mechanics that had not been shared with the audience within the works themselves.
• Apocalypse How: More light is shed on the cataclysm that befell Utau City. It turns out that the tsunami was not, in fact, enough to completely wipe the city off the face of the map; that was Artemis' doing, after creating a pseudo-parallel world for the Game to take place in. Utau City's UG still resonates on the shore until the Dissonance Lapin is eliminated; by the end of the story, the city is gone for good.
• Ascended Extra: Black Rock Shooter has a much more active role in Journey than she has previously, actively working with Haku and Neru to figure out what has happened to Miku and contributing to Artemis' demise by branding her as a Fallen Angel.
• Audience Surrogate: Miku's reactions in regards to such things as the team-based Reaper's Game or group pin rules is clearly meant to mirror those of TWEWY veterans on playing NEO.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: Namine Ritsu, the Game Master at the time of the cataclysm, and Artemis, the Producer of Utau City, turn out to have worked together to create the pseudo-parallel world and hold the Reaper's Game in perpetuity.
• Borrowed Catchphrase: Miku ends up borrowing Calne Ca's on the last day in Utau City.
  Miku: You want to know how it feels?! Knowing there are Reapers like you who think the Game is your playtime?! Who fail to understand the point of this task? The Reaper's Game is supposed to be a fair, unbiased judgement of the deceased! You pervert it for your own desires, and you want to know how it feels?! ...It hurts. It hurts. It hurts! It hurts! It hurts!
• Call-Back:
  • Black Rock Shooter gives Miku the pin that she forged a pact with for their battle in Precedent: Machine Muzik, explaining that it contains the Soul of Utau City's deceased.
  • Haku tried to use a blank pin to deceive Miku regarding her Angel status in Reaping, which Miku had taken from her. Journey reveals that she's neglected to give it back to Matcha and Azuki, and it ends up formatting itself into her first pin in Utau City.
  • When the Harrier from Day 1 attacks Miku and Vivid BAD SQUAD on Day 6, she uses the same attacks Yukari did when she attacked Miku in the RG during Return. A fakeout facepalm-turned-punch at faster-than-sight speed, and a cutting strike by swinging her arm from a distance.
  • The members of Glory Music still have the psych pins they had earned in the Reaper's Game, offering them up with the Reapers' pins for the Utau City tribute. Kaiserin Cantus also uses the Darklit Planet-parallel psychs that were Miku's pin deck during her Games, as well as a Nexus Ray-esque attack clearly meant to evoke Calne Ca's/Viialless' Photon pin.
  • When Artemis proclaims her intention to exorcise Miku for interfering with the cycle, Haku happens to be in earshot. Hearing the same threat that she was issued when she was made an Angel terrifies her enough that she doesn't act in Miku's defense before the other Players do.
  • In the same chapter, Artemis reveals that she was aware of Sing Love's plan with DIVA - namely, bringing living soldiers into the Game with a warped perspective of its purpose, encouraging them to try and change it, because she thought that change alone is better.
• Chekhov's Boomerang: Miku ends up thinking about entry fees on her fourth day with Leo/need, with a flashback to post-Return reaffirming that Utau City does in fact take entry fees, and wonders why Honami doesn't seem to have lost anything. Ruko later ends up discussing entry fees with MORE MORE JUMP, observing that the ideal Reaper's Game would have the Players unaware of their entry fees so as to more objectively compare-and-contrast after the fact. Artemis later describes the Players as "uncharged", deliberately subverting the rules of the Game to make it as entertaining as possible.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • When speaking with Black Rock Shooter, Miku asks whether the Producer's absence has any adverse effects on the UG in the way that the Composer's absence does; BRS replies that there is no effect, and she usually isn't in the UG. When trying to figure out what has happened to Miku, BRS is able to go inspect the wake of Utau City with an Angel's eye, whereas Haku has to stay in DIVA until Neru puts the UG on Emergency Call. More lightly, Miku invites "Viialless" to visit her in Pyntroc sometime, and she does indeed during the Where Are They Now epilogue.
  • During a fight with a Cornix Canor with N25, Miku discovers that if she loses her currently-equipped pin, she can grab another one and employ it for the remainder of the fight. When fighting Ritsu on the last day in Utau City, she deliberately tosses her pins for a varied onslaught of the type she used to employ in DIVA.
  • The first time Miku sees the tsunami on Day 6, the civilians around her stop moving when the tsunami halts. The second time, she's in combat when it happens, and the Reapers and N25 are shown still moving. When she's fighting with the wingless Harrier during her third week, the Harrier also freezes, despite Support and the Players continuing to move; this gives Miku an idea as to what is going on, and ultimately gives her an escape route.
  • In the last Game, Yukari reveals that Miku still being alive means that she "has more in common with Reapers than Players". Come the battle with Ritsu, she puts that to the ultimate test by invoking a Cantus form.
  • Miku misinterprets Oniko's as a partial Cantus transformation; Oniko insists that she "knows better", indicating that she's aware that a partial Cantus like Calne Ca's can't be unmade on one's own. When Miku invokes a Cantus of her own, the transformation seems to halt at legs and one arm; Oniko warns her to let it run before the form solidifies, prompting Miku to keep transforming into a reversible full Cantus.
  • Shortly before Miku meets the Game Master, she comes across a large hollow sakura in the Village of Trees, in which she finds "jewels collaged together like stained glass" depicting a crane, deer, iris flower, and butterfly. These are the creatures that inspired the Cantus forms of the Shinjuku Reapers from NEO (plus Shiba's necklace); a similar stained-glass depiction of TWEWY's Cantus forms was depicted in Black Illusion back in DIVA, and turned out to be Black Rock Shooter's entry point. Sure enough, when the seemingly final battle takes place in the Village of Trees, the Producer of Utau City emerges from that tree.
  • When she reaches the "design drive" with MORE MORE JUMP, Miku comments about hoping for a "full deck" from Utau City. She explains to the confused idols that a "pin deck" caps out at six, prompting Shizuku to remark that "it's a shame [they]'re only a team of five". Come the finale with Artemis, Haku ends up bringing the rest of Glory Music to the remnants of the UG so they can fight Artemis, and Miku is able to arm them with her Utau Ciy deck.
• Cherry Blossoms: The Village of Trees is a park in the center of Utau City that hosts a small forest of cherry blossoms. Miku notes when she arrives that they shouldn't be in bloom at the time of year when she ended up in Utau City. Artemis brings them up during her Motive Rant, claiming that the unchanging Reapers, Players, and sakura are her entertainment for the Game.
• Eldritch Location: The "Utau City" that the story takes place in is in fact a pseudo-parallel world contained within a giant Noise, as depicted in Final Remix.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Artemis not only enabled Ritsu's endless Game for her own entertainment, she sees absolutely no reason why Haku shouldn't just ignore it and look away.
• Experienced Protagonist: Despite being caught off-guard by Utau City's different rules, Miku still manages to apply most of the knowledge she applied in DIVA's Underground - especially in regards to Noise identification - to the Game in Utau City.
• Faceless Mooks: Utau City has a dress code for non-officer Reapers, marking the first time that red-hooded Support and gray-hooded Harriers appear in the Reaping continuity. This prevents Miku from realizing that the Harrier who attacks her at the start of the Game is Yuzuki Yukari until her second-to-last Game.
• Faux Affably Evil: Namine Ritsu acts amicable to the Players when he meets MORE MORE JUMP on Miku's fifth week, but promptly sics the Conductor on Miku out of concern that she'll break his "cycle". It's revealed in the last round that he sees every Player and Reaper in Utau City as pieces for his endless Game.
• First-Episode Twist: After Miku first ends up in Utau City, the driving plot of the story at first seems to be not only where but when Miku has ended up. Then the tsunami hits... and her phone rings. She gets a short conversation out before she wakes up on Day 1 again, where nobody recognizes her, and it immediately becomes clear that something much more involved is going on.
• The Ghost: Unlike in DIVA, Utau City's Composer remains hidden, with the Players only knowing about them due to Miku's knowledge about the Reaper hierarchy. Subverted; they've been exorcised by Artemis by the time Miku ends up in Utau City, meaning that there is no Composer to allude to.
• Groin Attack: An unintentional one on Miku's sixth day with Wonderlands×Showtime. When a Harrier attacks the team, Miku hits him with her Piercing Pillar psych; he is described as giving "a scream of pain that implied he hadn't exactly had his legs closed before the psych struck."
• "Groundhog Day" Loop: Miku experiences a strange variation on this in Utau City; she keeps reaching Day 6, seeing the cataclysmic tsunami, and then being sent back to Day 1 again. Nobody recognizing her - and erased individuals being back in the Game - initially makes her think that she's being sent back in time, but her slowly-growing pin deck eliminates that theory. Turns out that modified Player Pins (which have been distributed to Reapers and Players alike) are sealing away everyone's memories, and Artemis is bringing back the erased to keep the Game going.
• Heroic RRoD
  • Kanade mentions that she died because she had overworked herself in the composing process, referencing a similar event that almost happened in Colorful stage
  • Miku takes on a Cantus form while fighting Ritsu, and ends up using it to escape the giant Noise that is the false Utau City. Her body starts shattering as she appears before Haku and the rest of Glory Music; Haku reveals that Miku is burning her Soul away by trying to sustain a Cantus form as a living person, and when Miku reverts to human form, Haku has to channel the Soul of her bandmates in order to keep her away from the brink of death. Black Rock Shooter observes that she will be "lesser" while her Soul recovers, and if she were to die before it does, she wouldn't survive entering the Reaper's Game.
• I Am Not Left-Handed: When fighting the Players and officers, Ritsu initially starts off deflecting the Reapers' assaults barehanded. Then the Players give him hell with their psychs, leaving an opening for the Reapers to attack; Ritsu proceeds to draw his rapier and hand the Players most of a Curb-Stomp Battle.
  Ritsu: Feeling saucy, are we? Let's get serious then.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming:
  • The chapter labels on AO3's table of contents are once again given as "The Xth Day" during the Reaper's Game, with the introduction chapters being labelled "Days of Farewells", "Day of Departure", and "Day of Tribute". This time, the Very Definitely Final Game is given the labels "Chaos, Day X"; the author notes that it didn't feel right to use "X Days Left" given the ambiguity of the six-day game... and that she wanted to do "Day...?" for the aftermath of the battle with Ritsu.
  • The chapters' actual titles also break from the convention of using Vocaloid song names, instead attempting the bizarre punctuation/capitalization combos seen in TWEWY proper. For the aforementioned final Game, songs are again used, this time using the Colorful Stage songs from each group's storylines as they are recruited to Miku's team, SEKAI.
• Loophole Abuse: Ruko explains the rule of the Reaper's Game in Utau City to Miku in an attempt to discourage her from helping other Players - the leading team gets a trial on Day 7, and success means they return to life, and the other teams get nothing, thus helping another team only reduces the chance that the assisting team won't return to life. Miku immediately spots the loophole big enough to fit a Cantus through: if all the Players in the current game are part of one team, then everyone gets the trial, which means everyone has a chance to return to life. Sure enough, Miku forms the team SEKAI in the final Game and has the others all disband their teams to join hers; Artemis gives them a "trial" to erase the Dissonance Lapin, and when they succeed, Yukari respects the rules and restores them all to life as members of the leading team.
• Meaningful Name: In addition to the individual teams using the unit names from Colorful Stage (with the same symbolism for each), Miku invokes this during the last game, when she convinces everyone to form one giant team with her.]]
  Ichika: The team is called SEKAI?
  Miku: Yeah. We're getting out of this Game, and back to a world where we're not just pieces on someone's board.
• Not His Sled: The story uses some of the groups' plots from Colorful Stage, but gives them a unique angle even beyond the Reaper's Game affecting circumstances.
  • The members of Leo/need never ended up reconnecting before they all ended up dying, but Miku encourages them to reconnect with each other now that they've met each other again. She insists that if they're willing to put in the effort, they can still achieve their dream, but the narrative observes that putting in the effort seems to be the biggest obstacle, thanks to everyone's personal hang-ups holding them back.
  • Mafuyu is still a Death Seeker, and ended up in the Reaper's Game after being Driven to Suicide. Whereas Empty SEKAI!Miku approached Kanade to try and stop Mafuyu from disappearing, Reaping!Miku is perfectly willing to let Mafuyu disappear... on her own. She tears into Mafuyu for risking getting others erased in the process, and treats keeping Mafuyu alive as retribution for her selfishness.
• One-Winged Angel: Another Cantus transformation appears in Journey, after years of Calne Cantus being the only example of this trope in the series. Kaiserin Cantus, a Noise form taken by Miku in a fit of desperation when fighting Namine Ritsu; it's described as being based on Black Rock Shooter's limiters-off form from Black★★Rock Shooter: Dawn Fall.
• Precision F-Strike: Artemis drops the series' first F-bomb in the penultimate chapter of the story. Fitting, considering her origin is full of Cluster F-Bombers.
  Haku: Artemis. You have perverted the Reaper's Game for your own desires, and desecrated the judgement of the deceased. We of the Higher Plane-
  Artemis: Fuck the Higher Plane. You think I give half a shit what the rest of the Angels want?
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: Haku tries to do this during the climax, but Artemis interrupts with the above-mentioned Precision F-Strike. Black Rock Shooter gets to deliver it in full, but lets Glory Music deliver the actual erasure.
  Black Rock Shooter: Artemis! You have perverted the Reaper's Game for your own desires, and desecrated the judgement of the deceased! We of the Higher Plane condemn you as a Fallen Angel... and sentence your Soul to oblivion!
• Punch Catch: Ritsu does this to Momo during Day 6 of the last game. The narration describes a crack coming out of his arm when he does, and he later shows pain when he has to use that hand while defending.
• A Rare Sentence: The first time Miku sees a Player Pin from Utau City (whose description implies the Reaper Pins from NEO), the narration notes that "[Miku] never thought the day would come when she would describe a skull as 'curvy'."
• Red Herring: Oniko sports a pair of horns that Miku recognizes as being Noise lines; Oniko explains that one can "add" to their base form "when you know your Cantus well enough". She never ends up taking her Cantus form at any point in the story.
• Reality Subtext: Glory Music moving out of Diola and into Pyntroc mirrors the real Crypton crew being distanced from the Vocaloid program and into a synthesizer program of their own.
• Rocky Roll Call: During the last Game, while Miku is adding everyone to her own team for the confrontation with Ritsu, Nightcord at 25:00 is the last one. She ends up bringing Akito, Rui, Honami, and Emu with her to the meeting, all of whom recognize someone in N25. This trope as they all react to each other's presence with varying moods (Ena is upset to see Akito, Mizuki is excited to see Rui, Honami is distraught to see Kanade, and Emu freaks out on seeing Mafuyu).
• Significant Anagram: Glory Music's new destination, "Pyntroc", is a rearrangement of "Crypton".
• Scars Are Forever: Miku is revealed to still have a scar on her stomach from when Yukari attacked her in Return.
• Small Role, Big Impact: Yukine Sakura, the Pyntroc native who arranged Piapro Studio for Glory Music. They end up calling Miku during the cataclysm on Day 6, confirming to her bandmates that Miku is still alive and enabling her to communicate with the Reapers of DIVA.
• Superpower Lottery: Miku having hit the jackpot in DIVA comes up during her conversation with Black Rock Shooter. She ends up with a winning ticket in Utau City, as well, accumulating a full deck based on the Black Cat Ensemble from NEO.
• Wham Line:
  • The story starts with a Glory Music concert, with the series opener coming after Bacterial Contamination ends... and immediately followed by the line "Miku was going to miss this place." It's a giant proclamation that, barring further chapters of Precedent: Ghost Town, DIVA has had its day.
  • At the end of her first day with Leo/need, Miku asks where she is and gets an answer that shocks her.
    Ichika: Welcome to Utau City.
  • During Miku's last day with MORE MORE JUMP, they are approached by Conductor Utane Uta and enforcer Momone Momo.
    Uta: Worry not; I only have business with one of you. Hatsune Miku. Game Master Namine Ritsu has informed me that you are still alive.
  • Miku promptly follows it up by dropping one of her own.
    Miku: If neither of them^*Ruko, who was observing Miku's Soul, and Momone, who inducts the new Players could figure out I was still alive, how did the Game Master know? Unless... he's responsible for this.
  • Black Rock Shooter realizing what Miku is dealing with in Utau City.
    Black Rock Shooter: I didn't want to believe it when I saw that Noise, and there were other possibilities... but in the face of all the facts, there is no alternative answer. It is Dissonance. Which means an Angel must be involved.
  • Ritsu revealing where exactly Miku and the other Players are.
    Ritsu: You might be the Composer of Utau City, Yuzuki - but this is not Utau City. This is the discord of a metropolis that is always active, day and night. This is the echoes of thousands of footsteps and tens of vehicles going to and fro at any given moment. This is the chaotic tones of three dozen districts that never stop moving. This is the sound of Utau City, given form!
    This is Noise!
• Wham Shot
  • Glory Music arrives at the wake of Utau City in the third chapter. Miku offers up their tribute... and the rest of Glory Music sees a giant Noise appear before her.
  • Miku and Leo/need reach their destination on Day 6... and Miku sees a Giant Wall of Watery Doom encroaching on the shore.
  • Though one that carries much less weight for people who haven't played TWEWY Final Remix, Day 5 of the Final Game has Miku and her allies finding Nightcord at 25:00 in a battle with Noise... blue Noise that flicker. These are Dissonance Noise, which only appeared during A New Day, which give a clue as to where the Players are right now.
• "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: The last stretch of the final chapter takes place a few months later, showing all the Players from Utau City enjoying their new lives in Pyntroc.
• "X" Marks the Hero: Of the "two separate wounds" variety. Ritsu gives Miku a harsh blow to the stomach, which crosses the scar she still has from Yukari attacking her back in Return.
• You Are Too Late: During her first few Games, Miku keeps seeing other teams erased on Day 5, despite her best efforts to avert their erasure.
  • Game 1 - Mafuyu's suicidal tendencies results in her letting the Noise erase her without trying to evade just as Miku and Leo/need arrive at the mission destination; the other members of N25 promptly follow due to the terms of the day's mission.
  • Game 2 - Progfox impersonators try to take the teams unawares; Wonderlands×Showtime ends up burning under a Megaflare just as Miku and N25 show up.
  • Game 3 - Miku and Wonderlands×Showtime hold back Ruko so that Vivid BAD SQUAD can get to the destination without a fuss, but they end up getting erased by the target Noise by the time Miku has won.
  • Game 4 - Defied. MORE MORE JUMP almost gets erased by Popguins in a four-way intersection, but Miku and Vivid BAD SQUAD managed to turn the tables enough for both teams to survive.

The Resonance of Hatsune Miku

A few months after the events in Utau City, Miku notices the Noise attaching themselves to the people of Pyntroc and worsening their moods. She enlists the members of Leo/need, MORE MORE JUMP, Vivid BAD SQUAD, Wonderlands×Showtime, and Nightcord at 25:00 to put on a collaborative performance to help lift everyone's spirits.

The Resonance of Hatsune Miku provides examples of:

• Adaptational Context Change: In Colorful Stage, each unit had a song birthed from their SEKAI at the conclusion of their main story. Some of these songs are given new origins detailed in Resonance.
  • All the songs that Wonderlands×Showtime performs for the concert - The World Hasn't Even Started Yet included - are the result of Rui trying to compose music for their shows in Phoenix Wonderland and getting carried away.
  • MORE MORE JUMP's "Newly Edgy Idols" was originally put together using Mai's vocals sampled from a work-in-progress by her group with ASRUN, back before Haruka triggered her accident. During the concert, they perform it for the opening and have Miku sub in for Mai. ^note It's noted in the author's comment that Newly Edgy Idols" is the only one of the group where Miku's lines can't be adequately substituted by one of the other members of the unit itself, due to the song serving as an introduction to each member.
• Ascended Fanboy: It's specifically noted that all the Players from Utau City being fans of Glory Music is "no fiction". Leo/need has already had the honour of being their opening act at the end of Journey, and for Resonance they and the others all get to perform in a giant concert of Miku's hosting.
• Contrived Coincidence:
  • In addition to the example in Fake Memories below, Phoenix Group happened to be trying to construct a new Phoenix Wonderland location at the time of the tsunami, with assistance from Riley Entertainment. Thus, when Wonderlands×Showtime - and, by extension, the rest of the returning Players - come back following the events of Journey, they find that Phoenix Group was not wiped out with Utau City, thus ensuring they have some support beyond what Glory Music and DIVA's Reapers can provide.
  • Also discussed in a conversation between An and Haruka, where it's revealed that the former idol who inspired Haruka was not based in Utau City. An imagines how Haruka might react if it turned out said idol was in Pyntroc and happened to be in the crowd during Miku's concert.
• Didn't Think This Through: Miku gets accused of this when she initially pitches the concert idea to everyone. Of course, once she explains her motive, everyone rapidly gets on board.
• Driven to Suicide: Mafuyu's case is examined again in Pyntroc. Shizuku notes that, because of the cataclysm in Utau City, something seems to be "missing" that is preventing her from wanting to disappear like she did before.
• Ear Worm: Referenced when Rin listens to MORE MORE JUMP's songs pre-concert, complaining that she's gonna have them stuck in her head all day.
• Entertainingly Wrong: The story opens with Kanade reading comments on N25's newest song; someone observes that their "hiatus" started shortly before Utau City's cataclysm, and theorizes that one of the members lost someone in the disaster. Of course, the real reason is that they were dead before the tsunami, and trapped in Artemis and Namine's Game for the year.
  Kanade: If only it was that simple.
• Fake Memories: The consequences of year-dead Players being restored to life are fully revealed in Resonance, as various people in the environs surrounding Utau City received memories of events to protect The Masquerade.
  • A pileup of Contrived Coincidences meant that the twenty musicians were all on the outskirts of Utau City when the tsunami hit and were "merely" gravely injured rather than killed. As such, several tourists who had been en route to the city at the time found them, realized they were still alive, and took them to various hospitals in nearby towns.
  • Everyone was more-or-less recovered at the time Glory Music made to relocate to Pyntroc, where they happened to cross paths with these "survivors" and help them find the friends they'd been separated from. Afterwards, they all decided to head to Pyntroc, where they had as much support as possible.
• Happily Failed Suicide: Downplayed, but Mafuyu seems to be on her way to this trope, as discussed during a conversation with Shizuku. In contrast to the others, who have tried to "continue what [they] were doing before" upon arriving in Pyntroc, she initially tried to let herself die again, as per Miku's promise that she could "disappear properly" if they were freed from the Game.
  Mafuyu: But there was something... different about it, now. And for some reason, I didn't want the end to come. In Utau City, I got tired of hoping I could find what I'm looking for, but that tiredness didn't come with me, here to Pyntroc. So I started doing things again, one by one. Sleep. Food. Nightcord. Music. School. Archery club. And when I felt like my days had enough in them, I didn't look for any more.
• Heroic RRoD:
  • The aftermath of Miku's Cantus transformation gets brought up again; apparently the "lesser" state of her Soul is making her an attractive target for the Noise in Pyntroc. Black Rock Shooter is terrified when Miku makes it clear that she would be willing to do it again should the need arise, especially if she were to do it as a Player proper rather than as someone properly alive in the UG.
  • Kanade, again, though it's Played for Laughs this time. She overworks herself almost to the point of collapse during N25's first rehearsal, and Mizuki very pointedly takes her shopping for a performance outfit that breathes better than her sweats. A mattress is set up backstage at the concert to help avert this, but even then she's out of breath by the time they finish N25's setlist.
• Incoming Ham: Wonderlands×Showtime, naturally, opens up their turn on the stage with some prime cuts of pork.
  The soaring pegasus born to rule the stage: Tenma Tsukasa!
  The phoenix who rises from the ashes to bring joy to all: Otori Emu!
  Th-The sword whose blade rings with uplifting notes: Kusanagi Nene!
  The god of creation who forges wonder out of the mundane: Kamishiro Rui!
  On behalf of Phoenix Group, we are... Wonderlands×Showtime!
• Mythology Gag
  • Miku sends Ichika, Minori, Kohane, Tsukasa, and Kanade a music file while in a state too tired to write an email or even name the file, so it ends up being designated "Untitled" - a.k.a. the track from Colorful Stage that lets everyone access their respective SEKAI.
  • Each of the groups discusses the concert with a member of Glory Music who corresponds to the initial members of their respective SEKAI in Colorful Stage. Meiko and Len talk to Vivid BAD SQUAD, Kaito speaks with Wonderlands×Showtime, Rin discusses with MORE MORE JUMP, and Luka visits Leo/need. N25 ends up practicing at Piapro Studio with Miku, since she was the only Virtual Singer in Empty SEKAI at launch.
  • Meiko goes a step further by meeting the Vivids at a café, referencing her job as a barista in Street SEKAI.
  • Rui has a bunch of holographic projectors set up for the concert, alluding to not only the usual state of the Virtual Singers outside of SEKAI in Colorful Stage, but also the medium by which real-world Hatsune Miku concerts are performed.
• Required Secondary Powers: Played for Laughs when Saki's synth gets ruined by water damage, and Tsukasa helps her pick out a new one.
  Shiho: Your brother has an ear for quality.
  Saki: When you're that loud, you learn to make sure you're heard clearly.
• Sequel Hook: Black Rock Shooter visits Pyntroc to see Glory Music's concert again, and this time is confronted by someone who is implied to be Conductor or higher. After the show, she and Miku have a conversation about the Reaper's Game, and Miku makes it clear that she's willing to do what it takes if she finds a foul plot happening in Pyntroc like she found in DIVA and Utau City.
• Tomboy with a Girly Streak: An is revealed to have been watching Haruka's idol shows because of their past friendship.
• Wham Line:
  • Similar to the Reappearance concert, Miku litters her crowd-address with in-universe examples to make it clear to anyone listening from the UG that she has been in the Reaper's Game, and she knows what they're going through.
  • In the aftermath of the concert, Viialless shows up, and she and Miku get into a conversation about the Reapers and their responsibilities.
    Viialless: What would you do, if you found their judgement had bias?
    Miku: ...I might take you up on the offer you made me, so long ago. And even if it's off the table, I'm not afraid to burn just as bright as you and yours.
• Worth It: Kanade's opinion of performing on a crowd.
  Mafuyu: How do you feel, K?
  Kanade: I can already tell my body is going to hate me tomorrow. (smiling) But my heart doesn't care.
• Unseen No More: In-universe, Miku's concert is the first public appearance of the members of Nightcord at 25:00.

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