Literature / Fake Saint of the Year

Fake Saint of the Year: You Wanted the Perfect Saint? Too Bad!^{Original title} 理想の聖女？　残念、偽聖女でした！　～クソオブザイヤーと呼ばれた悪役に転生したんだが～, literally "The Perfect Saintess? Too Bad! It's a Fake One! Reincarnated as the Villainess known as 'Shit of the Year'" is an Isekai Web Novel, Light Novel and Manga adapted series featuring a neurodivergent self-employed Otaku shut-in from Japan named Fudou Niito, who rages about his favorite character, Eterna, in a Romance Game never getting a happy ending. Falling asleep raging at the game's ugly villainess Ellize, he wakes up Reincarnated as the Opposite Sex in said Villainess' body in the game world.

What unfolds is a comedy and mystery romp: In order to avoid being exposed, this new Ellize acts out the role of a Messianic Archetype, all while having flippant, lustful, and sadistic thoughts, contrasting with people’s Hero-Worshipper reactions to her all too good acting. All with the goal of avoiding being lynched for being a fake saint, and aiming for a Happy End. Some mystery unfolds, as Ellize keeps returning to her old apartment, where things change to reflect her actions in the game…

For simplicity’s sake, the original game version of the villainess will be referred to by Niito’s nickname for her, Pizzarise, and the Niito-inhabited version will be called Ellize.

The light novel was licensed by J-Novel Club for an English release.

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Fake Saint of the Year: You Wanted the Perfect Saint? Too Bad! provides examples of:

• Abhorrent Admirer: This was part of Pizzarise’s role in the original game timeline, pestering and harassing Verner with her authority as a false saint.
• Accidental Pervert: Alfrea not realizing that the clothes she’s wearing are just illusions created by light magic, and hugging Ellize.
• Adaptation Expansion: Fan-favorite Supple Ment getting additional scenes.
• Adaptation Personality Change: Compared to the original web novel, Layla is made into a bit of a female counterpart of Supple Ment.
• Affectionate Gesture to the Head: Ellize says there is no way she would be won over by this when reading it being done to her in a Self-Insert Fic. When she pats Alfrea, her positive reaction makes Alrice ask if Alfrea is a dog (she has Anime Hair that makes her look like one).
• After the End: What happened to the world of the first timeline. Witch Alexia was killed, and Eterna was Driven to Suicide rather than become the new witch. As a result, the true form of the witch curse was partially unleashed and spread devastation to the world. As The Heartless, a Pure Magic Being made of corrupted Mana, the Witch curse was invincible. The Witch curse completely annihilated civilization and killed plants and wildlife, until there was nothing left but isolated despairing villages in a wasteland. After Ellize saves the second timeline, the Genius Loci of the first timeline begs the Genius Loci of the second timeline for her help. By the time of her arrival, everyone is either dead or dying, and the world clearly only has a few years left until it is completely beyond recovery. Ellize saves the Verner of this timeline from death, uses her obsession for a happy ending as a substitute in a world where The Power of Love is almost dead to purify the Witch curse, resuscitates the Only Mostly Dead Eterna, and revitalizes the land as best as she can before she is summoned back to the second timeline.
• Allergic to Love: Witches. Also, Ellize has a Heroic BSoD from feeling too much love, which is Played for Laughs.
• Ambiguously Bi:
  • With Verner, it’s a running joke in the game’s fan communities that the "bodybuilder ending", where he does nothing but train, is the gay route, and there’s a Non-Standard Game Over joke ending where he accepts the confession of a male guard.
  • With Ellize, it’s the romantic subtext to the bonding events, and her First-Person Perspective pointing out Verner’s muscles as much as women’s chests. She has some shock about the bonding events challenging her sexuality, suggesting her spiteful thoughts about men around her are a form of Armoured Closet Gay.
• Anachronism Stew: Discussed Trope as it’s explained that the Knight’s training room is just a modern day japan gym because the game creators were lazy.
• Anime Hair: Alfrea’s hair coloring that makes her look like she has dog ears.
• Apocalypse Not: Ellize spent her seven years before joining the Knight Academy reclaiming more than half of the entire world from Daemons, terraforming the land, and improving living conditions. She single-handedly turned the world away from being post-apocalyptic.
• Aristocrats Are Evil: It’s mentioned how much more the nobles and higher ups in the church eat than the commoners, with the King having to repeatedly execute noble houses to the ground for hoarding food. And then there are the three idiotic princes who try to sneak into Ellize’s chambers only to be intercepted by Supple Ment.
• Ascended Extra: In-Universe, because of the changes to the timeline, this happens to Fiora and John, the latter of whom Ellize dismissed as "Mob A".
• Attack Reflector: One of Ellize’s most potent spells is to cast this on herself against boss monsters, allowing her to act naive and self-sacrificing for onlookers while making her enemies underestimate her. This strategy actually backfires with Verner Taking the Bullet and nearly dying.
• Back from the Dead:
  • Verner Taking the Bullet for Ellize, before she recreates his heart and uses Magical Defibrillator magic.
  • Ellize due to collecting Niito’s remaining life force and her body having been preserved in a stasis field.
• Badass in Distress: Verner and Eterna being kidnapped by Farah and bound to try and force Ellize’s hand.
• Balance Between Good and Evil: The cycle of Witches and Saints serves as this with human emotions, with Saints supposed to serve as a Hope Bringer. The Witches have been doing so well since Grisilda killed her Saint counterpart, that when Ellize was born it was already at an Unstable Equilibrium in the Witch’s favor, but Ellize turned that right around.
• Bare-Fisted Monk: It’s noted that Verner can take this approach, but it would yield no weapon in the event where Ellize makes him one. Having learned of this after the first tournament, she makes a special knuckle duster for one of the winners of the second.
• Becoming the Mask: Ellize starts to do this towards the end of the story, with her thinking starting to match her persona better. Wielding The Power of Love is blamed.
• BFS: Verner goes with using one of these for the Tournament Arc. It’s mentioned if the player equips him with a radish joke weapon, he’ll get a super long leek sword.
• Big Bad: The Witch as a metaphysical presence, ergo, The Power of Hate.
• Black Magic: Only usable by a Witch or Saint, and is essentially the ability to manipulate space itself.
• Bodyguarding a Badass: The Saint is tremendously gifted in magic, but the Witch has more experience and demons to protect her, and as such, the Saint needs sacrificial elite knights to make up the difference. Ellize is the World's Strongest Woman and doesn't need her knights for protection at all, but they still feel compelled to at least try and fulfill their duty.
• Boomerang Bigot: Ellize’s dismissive thoughts about how men are disgusting and creepy, considering she has Niito’s memories and personality, and is quite the Covert Pervert herself.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Those possessed by the black miasma.
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: A group of people prey to Ellize within expectations, and then one offers to stop lusting after her if she’ll help.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: The body of Ellize is ridiculously talented. She has a Photographic Memory, is an Instant Expert, she gains physical strength easily, and her Fictional Disability gives her With Great Power Comes Great Insanity. The Ellize of the original timeline (who has a completely different soul from Niito) was unmotivated, lazy, and ignored all her training, yet was still strong enough to be considered a boss fight inside of the game derived from the original timeline, with her remarked on as a character who wasted her god given talents. In the second timeline, Niito is able to put the talents of his new body to good use and become the World's Strongest Woman by orders of magnitude.
• Broken Pedestal:
  • In the original game timeline, Supple Ment felt this way upon meeting Pizzarise and thus tries to force his ideals of sainthood onto whoever Verner’s partner is. Coming to the conclusion that Saints are overhyped by the religious is actually quite a reasonable conclusion given what we learn from the Prophet.
  • Those who find out that their Crystal Dragon Jesus Alfrea is a jabbering moron with no manners or shame.
• Bulletproof Human Shield: Alfrea used her sapient magic turtle pet as a shield, since her shell was magical.
• Bully Hunter: Deconstructed Trope with Niito’s backstory. He ruined his life on earth by becoming known as a bully himself by doing this, scaring a girl he liked and seeing himself as evil, with his actions being driven by some kind of disassociation causing disorder. It also highlights Japan’s attitudes about mental illness.
• Cannon Fodder: It’s noted repeatedly that the purpose of Guardian Knights is to cut through the demon forces of the Witch to allow the Saint to directly engage with Witch. The Saint being a One-Woman Army like Ellize is definitely not the norm.
• This Cannot Be!:
  • Ellize has this reaction when watching her bonding events with Verner through videos on earth.
  • The witch Alexia during her confrontation with the heroes, thinking she’s facing three Saints. Technically, she's facing two Saints and an overpowered fake Saint, but its still only possible because of loopholes in the Genius Loci's rules regarding saints.
• I Cannot Self-Terminate: It’s noted that multiple Saints infected by Witch Miasma have tried this to end the Saint-Witch cycle, but the dark power prevents it. This also applies to Verner, having a piece of the Witch’s power within him.
• Cartesian Karma: The fact that a demon puppeteered Fara into an assassination attempt on the saint would not have protected her from a death sentence if Ellize hadn't argued on her behalf.
• Cast from Lifespan: Saint/Witch magic can involve this.
• Censor Steam: This is used in the Manga adaptation. With the obvious exception of Ellize using sparkles to cover herself.
• The Chains of Commanding: The King of Bilberry is greatly troubled by the Dirty Business he has had to make in his Hobbesian world of starvation and Forever War.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: Verner’s muscle training lets him bust out of being tied up in rope, as well as other feats of heroism. The first timeline's Verner has reached the real life equivalent of level 99, allowing him to perform superhuman feats that stun even Ellize.
• The Chosen One: The first witch, and her successors, the saints. Every generation, the World chooses a pure hearted human female infant to be its primary representative and protector. That infant is blessed with enhanced magical ability, the unique element of Space reserved only for them, Mystical White Hair, and a constitution that does not physically age (Though they still have normal human lifespans). When, as far as the World can tell, the current generation's saint has either died or been corrupted into a witch, it picks a new one. Alfrea, the First Saint, was sealed into suspended animation by the First Witch, which was close enough to death to cause a loophole, meaning there were always technically two saints after her. The question of whether the Genius Loci will establish two or even three lines of saints, wait for the most recent of the saints to die, or dispense with the saint system as no longer necessary from now on is brought up, but remains to be seen.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: Verner moves on instinct and jumps into danger to protect Ellize, usually injuring himself needlessly and causing trouble for her.
• Church Militant: The vast majority of characters are either Holy Knights or in training to be one. In the original timeline, this served to give Pizzarise tyrannical power for the protagonists to overcome. Overall, it helps to accent the comedy of the saint they worship being a massive pervert, as well as one of the instructors (Supple Ment).
• Combination Attack: Ellize and Verner do multiple of these, what with it being a Romance Game and our story being the Ellize Route.
• Combined Energy Attack: The Power of Love being collected like this and sent at the Witch’s final form is how it’s killed.
• Cooldown Hug: Ellize does this several times, starting with Verner. It’s noted she looks motherly even doing it to people taller than her.
• Cosmic Plaything: Witch Alexia continually complains that it feels like the world itself hates her. During her days as Saint, she was placed under intense pressure to defeat the Witch, who had a lot more subordinates than normal due to the failure of the previous saint. When she did manage to kill the Witch, she became the next witch and was betrayed. Then, she couldn't even get any satisfaction from embracing her position as the new witch since the next saint to hunt her down was the strongest in all history, hundreds of times stronger than her predecessors. And on top of that, two more saints show up when there is supposed to only be one at a time. Even her final fate as a witch is the most gruesome out of all witches, to become a Sealed Evil in a Can trapped in an And I Must Scream situation, a Fate Worse than Death.
• Covert Pervert: The reincarnated Ellize has inherited Niito's interest in women and occasionally takes advantage of certain situations, such as when a female teacher falls under a mind controlling curse placed near her large bosom. Sometimes, her overzealous bodyguard messes up the moments by not letting anyone near her sacred saintess. Ellize is very careful not to reveal this side of herself as she is a Slave to PR and this would mess up the image she has built for herself.
• The Corrupter: The Principal of the Knight Academy Diez corrupts well meaning students into working for the Witch through lies and half-truths.
• Crazy Sane: This is how Ellize is able to manage her Fictional Disability that normally drives people mad with power and the absorbed negative feelings of others.
• Crystal Dragon Jesus: Saints. The image Ellize builds for herself inspired by prophets from earth vastly surpasses the standards of their world and religion, however, while Saint Alfrea is a downgrade even from their perspective.
• Cycle of Revenge: The cycle of Saints killing Witches is in part one of these, due to governments turning on the Saint each time.
• Damsel out of Distress: Verner using the power of his weight trained muscles to bust out of his ropes to save Ellize from being stabbed, as she marvels.
• Decoy Damsel: Ellize enjoys playing the role of princess in a tower so she can go back to living as a NEET. Not as part of any particular ploy, but because there is nothing more pressing for her to do. This is a little odd, as she repeatedly thought to herself that there is no entertainment to be found except for killing daemons.
• Demoted to Extra: Discussed Trope. Niito, in his commentary playing the altered game, bemoans how Eterna didn’t get much screen time, before coming to the conclusion that compared to the other game routes where Eterna is driven insane and/or killed, not being involved in drama is the best thing for her.
• Destructive Teleportation: A power only the witch can use without dying, and even she would experience an equivalent to a Level Drain.
• Dogged Nice Guy: Verner for Ellize, in the form of training.
• Dope Slap: Alfrea sometimes earns these.
• Downer Ending: In the first timeline, they were unable to find any way to put down the witch for good. No matter which ending you get in the game derived from the first timeline, the entire world is doomed, though some of the nonstandard endings don't cover it. The Ellize of the second timeline is eventually summoned late into the first timeline to turn it into a Bittersweet Ending instead.
• The Dreaded: In the second timeline, Ellize is the World's Strongest Woman by orders of magnitude. Upon seeing Ellize Curb-Stomp Battle a greater demon, the Witch Alexis stops trying to destroy the world and runs away in panic, becoming ill out of sheer terror.
• Driven to Suicide:
  • Verner accidentally destroying his home and being hated by everyone at the start caused him to try to kill himself by many means prior to meeting Ellize, but his dark power means I Cannot Self-Terminate.
  • In some of the game scenarios, Eterna is able to end the witch cycle by overcoming the dark power and killing herself after turning into the next witch.
  • One of the predecessors to the Saint’s Knights, Gonzalas, drown himself in the sea after his wife left him for cheating on her with five other women. The sea was named after him.
  • Ellize’s death drives Verner to try multiple times again, only to face the same result. Layla very nearly goes the Together in Death route when Ellize seems about to die for the second time.
• Dirty Kid: According to one of her teachers, Ellize used to flip the skirts of female servants before she turned five.
• Disability Superpower: Ellize, due to her psyche being severely disassociated, is able to constantly circulate mana and grow her power, something that would drive any normal human insane.
• Dual Wielding: John, AKA Mob A, specializes in this fighting style.
• Embarrassing Browser History: Niito's search history revealing his Naughty Tentacles fetish.
• Empire with a Dark Secret: The fact that the saints they worship are destined to turn into the next witch. It’s pointed out how it bites them in the ass, since Saints have no chance to come up with Take a Third Option ploys due to not knowing about this in advance.
• Evil Costume Switch: The story notes that it's hardly a rule, and there were probably plenty of witches that kept their old look after their corruption, but certainly, in Alexia's case, she switched from a white saint outfit to black robes.
• Executive Meddling: In-Universe. It is unknown what was going on in the creator's head in the first timeline, but in the second timeline, she wanted Ellize to be the Player Character and only relented on making it Verner because they had a valid point about Ellize being Overpowered. Making the game a Dating Sim on top of being an RPG wasn't her idea at all.invoked
• False Prophet: Pizzarise, with Eterna being the true one. Subverted with Ellize, who is actually much more messianic than any other Saint.
• Fertile Feet: According to Gossip Evolution, Ellize has this ability. It’s actually merely an exaggeration, as it took a lot of work for her to terraform demon-desolated areas using overwhelming amounts of mana.
• Fictional Disability: Ellize and the very first Witch suffered from a disability in their mana circulation, which serves to make one more powerful in magic, but at the cost of sanity. This condition is also part of the reason Pissarise was a villain.
• Flying Weapon: Alfrea’s unique fighting style is to hold 10 short swords in the air to fight several opponents at once or surround one while cowering behind her pet turtle’s shell.
• Forever War: Between humanity and demons due to the Witch-Saint cycle, with only 5 year truces breaking it up.
• Forgiven, but Not Forgotten: With Alexia Only Mostly Dead and free from the witch curse, Ellize decides she may as well resuscitate her and free her from stasis. But even if Alexia was herself a victim, the fact remains that she killed hundreds during her reign as witch leaving some very bad feelings, so she is sentenced to life in house arrest.
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: While it is true that Alexia had been dealt a very bad hand. Being forced to fight against the strongest witch in history because her predecessor failed, while being saddled with the unreasonable expectations of the people, and then being betrayed by the human kings, it is no excuse for the horrors she has caused. The group, even Elize intially felt sorry for her, until she starts going on a rant, about how she's done nothing wrong in causing unleashing all those untold horrors, and that since the world never treated her well, she has every right to inflict the same suffering onto them. The moment she goes on a Motive Rant, is the moment everyone loses any form of sympathy for her and no longer cares if she dies.
• Friend to All Living Things: Animals hate demons just as much as humans do, seeing them as corrupted members of their own kind. While the demons are primarily trying to wipe out humanity, they often do so by poisoning and wrecking the land itself, leaving fewer resources for ordinary animals too. The animals of this world have some form of collective communication, so when Ellize puts an end to the witch and most of demon kind, they know. Additionally, Ellize's mastery over magic reaches the point of making her The Empath, and the animals can tell that she is somehow making them healthier with her Healing Hands, so it becomes common for them to flock and surround her like a fairy tale maiden.
• Gender Bender Angst: Occasionally rears its head for Ellize, most significantly when looking back at her apparent feelings for Verner despite adamantly thinking she has Incompatible Orientation.
• Gender-Restricted Ability: The Genius Loci only ever picks females as Saint. Verner is the closest thing there is to a male witch, due to likely having a witch ancestor and being possessed by a fragment of one.
• Genius Loci: The world is alive and has a mind of it's own. It is The Chooser of the One, picking a girl in each generation to become Saint and giving her power to become the world's protector.
• Gilded Cage: The Saint’s castle is meant as this for after Saints defeat a Witch.
• God Was My Copilot: Verner having a good Soul Jar part of Alexia’s soul come out and help him during the Final Battle.
• Golden Ending: Ellize's Omega Ending. In order to unlock the Ellize route, you must start a New Game Plus, choose not to retain any advantages from your previous playthrough, have Verner, the Player Character never take off his Memento Macguffin, and then obsessively train his muscles until it attracts Ellize's attention as she would rather not risk the Joke Ending.
• Government Conspiracy: How Saints turning into Witches is handled by the royalty of the world, betraying each saint in turn despite them supposedly being above kings in political stature.
• Gratuitous English: Ellize’s Calling Your Attacks names are random English proverbs, and it’s a Conversed Trope in her Inner Monologue, noting how doing this is Chuunibyou.
• The Guards Must Be Crazy: The guards who let Octo grow in strength by feeding on other demons before launching a prison break of the Witch Alexia in their backstory.
• Healing Shiv: Ellize bombards allied troops with golden swords of energy that heal them.
• The Heartless: The Witch curse is actually a mass of Mana, polluted by the collective malice of mankind and the past witches. When it loses its host, it is still able to take form and harm people on its own. Its structure is independent of physical shape, so Ellize is unable to destroy it, and sending it elsewhere fails, but she eventually figures out how to channel the Power of Love to purify it.
• Hegemonic Empire: The Bilberry kingdom where most of the story takes place is dominant like this.
• Heroic Sacrifice: The myriad endings from the game timelines involve several of these, due to the nature of the Witch’s power that flows into whomever kills it. Naturally, most previous saints ended up making these.
• Hit-and-Run Tactics: This is Alexia’s trademark strategy, both as a Saint and Witch, which she was forced to adopt due to the apocalyptic state of the world when she grew up after a double length dark age caused by Grisilda.
• Hobbes Was Right: The way human nations behave, spending much of their five year periods of peace between Witch dominated dark ages clawing at each other for resources. But then Ellize comes as a Hope Bringer and forces at least the King to face shame over this.
• Homage: The character of Alfrea is a divine being who actually turns out to be a hopeless The Ditz, much like Aqua from KonoSuba.
• Homoerotic Subtext: Ellize can't help but repeatedly bring up this happening with Verner in his "Body Builder Route" amongst other places, and other fans of the game comment on Let's Play videos about it.
• How Do I Shot Web?: Eterna learning to use her awakened Saint powers, nearly killing several people in the process.
• Human Sacrifice: In a sense, the Kings of the world do this on a 15-20 year basis by not even giving the Saints a chance to plan an alternative to the cycle of them killing a witch and becoming the next one.
• Humongous Mecha: Supple Ment’s mid-boss form is a gargantuan earth golem.
• Implausible Deniability: Ellize repeatedly insisting on not being interested in Verner despite responding so positively to him in bonding events and fixating on his muscles.
• Incredibly Lame Pun: Some of the names are this in English.
• Insanity Immunity:
  • Ellize, due to having severe disassociation carried over from her past-life as Niito, is immune to the Sanity Slippage that comes from her mana circulation Fictional Disability.
  • Supple Ment is later able to do the same, only using his obsession with the Saint to protect his mind instead.
• Instant Messenger Pigeon: Diez uses repeating birds with an invisibility spell to communicate with his spy network. Justified in that most of the network lives on one campus.
• Invincible Hero: Discussed Trope, this is explained as the reason why Ellize wouldn’t be the protagonist for the game in the second earth timeline.
• I Surrender, Suckers: Double example: A greater demon surrenders to Ellize, and she pretends to come down and accept it, casting an Attack Reflector shield on herself, so when the demon inevitably attacks her, she stands there seemingly helpless.
• Jabba Table Manners: Alfrea with Ellize's cooking, much to the guard's dismay.
• Jerkass to One: The one person Ellize will break her persona of constant niceness for is Verner.
• Joke Ending: Overdoing Verner's muscle training inside the game tends to result in him either saying he doesn't need women or accepting a confession from a man. Ellize isn't sure if this was entirely a joke on the game creator's part or if Verner is genuinely bi, but as a Verner&Eterna shipper, she decides not to take the chance.
• Just Before the End: The witches are Omnicidal Maniacs who have been driven by madness and despair to destroy the world. The witches cause more damage than the saints can heal, and they are slowly but surely winning. The story takes place during the era of Witch Alexia and Saint Eterna, which, one way or another, will be the final iteration of the cycle. Humanity has lost 90% of the world to demons. If they don't stop the witch now, she will finish them off. The first timeline was a Downer Ending, and even after the second Ellize's intervention, a Bittersweet Ending, with the witch ending civilization and killing almost everyone. In the second timeline, Fake Saint Ellize is the World's Strongest Woman and a One-Woman Army, completely turning the tables. Even without the ability to kill the witch, she is able to wipe out armies of demons and heal the land single-handedly.
• Kick the Dog: Half the time Pizzarise is mentioned, she’s doing this, once to a literal dog.
• Kiss of Life: Used for one of the game’s bonding events.
• Lady and Knight: The previous Saint Alexia and her knight Diez were a White example turned Dark. Verner and Ellize are a White Knight and Lady.
• Laser Blade: Ellize uses magic to conjure one of these for close combat.
• Laser-Guided Karma: While she will forgive anyone for practically anything with her persona as an All-Loving Hero, Ellize lets out some rare out loud sarcasm about sticking some of her “loyal guards” with tending to Womanchild Alfrea.
• Last Stand: With Ellize crushing demons everywhere and Witch Alexis nowhere to be found, the crows, the smartest of demons, realize that if this keeps up, demons will soon be extinct. The crows kill one another until one of them becomes a greater demon and it gathers every demon it can for one last desperate battle for survival. Afterwards, even harmless demons like horned rabbits are nowhere to be found. As far as the knights can tell, demons are all but extinct. There might be a handful hiding somewhere, but since demons lose the ability to reproduce on their transformation, humanity won't need to worry about demons much longer.
• Lethal Joke Weapon: It’s shown in visits back to earth that players found out that custom weapons created for the Player Party by Ellize will be a better version of whatever was equipped, which can be weapons such as a Mackerel or Leek.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: You know things are serious when Alfrea can utter a sentence without displaying her Idiot Hero status.
• Life Energy: Everyone receives a fixed amount on birth, which gets used up as you age, and cannot be replenished by any known means (other than, in theory, transferring it from someone else, using up their lifespan). No matter how healthy your body is, you will drop dead when you run out of it.
• Light 'em Up: Ellize is able to come up with many creative uses for light magic, including Invisibility, illusions, fake clothes, and Lens Flare Censor effects.
• Loss of Identity: Niito’s memories waking up in the body of a woman, whose character he hated, naturally result in issues relating to this. The technique she uses to grow her magical power, circulating mana, normally results in such, due to it absorbing the dark emotions of those around you.
• Magic Skirt: Averted, to keep flying while wearing a skirt, Ellize uses light magic for Lens Flare Censor effects.
• Mana Shield: Ellize uses them extensively, especially to pretend to be as invincible as Saints are proven to be. Can double as an Attack Reflector.
• Maybe Ever After: The main series ends with a Ship Tease between Ellize and both Verner and Layla, with Ellize becoming less averse to having a relationship with men.
• Meaningful Name: A lampshaded Subversion. At the beginning of the series, Niito narrates his surname sounds like NEET, and that's exactly what he is—then he corrects himself: he might be a shut-in, but he is gainfully self-employed.
• Messianic Archetype: Ellize acts as this for multiple reasons: To make sure nobody doubts her being Saint, so that the real one won’t be seen as evil by association after being awakened, and to assuage her massive guilt complex stemming from Niito’s past life.
• The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body: Mostly averted. Ellize may or may not be rationalizing feelings regarding Verner, but she regardless fully retains Niito's interest in women.
• Misplaced Retribution: One of the game events Elrice wants to avoid most is Eterna having her family massacred by the public in retribution for Pizzarise’s crimes, causing her to go mad and become the Final Boss.
• Mix-and-Match Critters: The Squid-elephant demon.
• Multiple Demographic Appeal: While it’s primarily aimed at men, the story’s unique take on the "Reborn as Villainess" Story serves as a hook for women. And then there's Verner being Mr. Fanservice.
• Mundane Object Amazement: Much of the food and other technology introduced gets this reaction. And then there is Alfrea being from an even more primitive period.
• Mundane Utility:
  • Ellize using her Light Magic to make Lens Flare Censor effects both in the bath, and for under her skirt while flying.
  • Ellize using Shock and Awe powers to force her brain to fake smile more convincingly.
  • Ellize using Mind over Matter magic to grate cheese without a grater.
  • The Prophet using omniscience to entertain herself by watching some lover’s quarrel, since it’s not like a medieval world has TV.
• Mushroom Samba: The psychedelic flower a delusional girl wears, which feeds her delusions of being the real Saint. The flower falling on the ground makes Eterna go berserk.
• Naughty Tentacles: Niito reveals that he has a fetish for this, only to be horrified to find a doujin of Ellize receiving this treatment. Octo is a demon officer that controls people as People Puppets using his octopus tentacles, but outside of Ellize’s overactive imagination, only Combat Tentacles actually appear.
• The Nicknamer: Ellize prefers to call people by nicknames. Layla she calls "Scotterbrain", which is a mix of Scatterbrain and Layla’s last name. She calls John Mob A. She calls Supple Ment Perverted Glasses B***.
• Nigh-Invulnerability: It’s an important plot point that Saints and Witches can only be hurt by one another, when it comes to the Fake Saint and true saint being revealed to the world.
• Nightmare Fetishist: Niito’s soul enjoys negative emotions, and struggles with positive ones. In contrast, absorbing feelings of love makes Ellize feel sick.
• Non-Standard Game Over:
  • The early mentioned speed runner’s Bodybuilding Ending, which players often made fun of as the gay route. This was before Niito’s reincarnation into Ellize, then it served as important foreshadowing to Verner’s muscle powers.
  • One of the game’s joke endings, was that is Verner was able to impress the guards of a noblewoman’s home but not manage to get in three times in a row, one of the male guards would confess to him, and if he accepted it was game over.
• No Place for Me There: This is Ellize’s attitude from day one, expecting to trade her life for Eterna’s.
• Oblivious to Love: Ellize to Verner and Layla, Verner to Eterna. Ellize’s being oblivious is part of a larger issue she has with disassociation and applies on a larger scale too, so it’s quite a Justified Trope.
• Older Than They Look: Saints and Witches stop physically aging when their power awakens. They will still die at the limits of a normal human lifespan since everyone receives a fixed amount of Life Energy at birth, but will remain in perfect health until then. Of course, waiting out the witch's lifespan isn't really an option since she will have most likely destroyed the world by then, and the world desperately needs the break in the witch cycle in order to get at least some healing in.
• Omega Ending: Ellize's route in the game
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: All the ways Alfrea mistreated her pet turtle.
• Only Mostly Dead: Once Ellize tries to heal someone after having their heart crushed, and restoring the organ isn’t enough. She reasons she has some minutes before brain death, and then uses Shock and Awe for a Magical Defibrillator.
• Only the Pure of Heart: Deconstructed. The past saints were originally pure of heart, but did not have the quality of Incorruptible Pure Pureness. Because they were pure of heart, they cannot tolerate being exposed to malice, which harms them more than it would a regular person. Hence why every single saint exposed to the Witch curse ultimately gave in and became a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • Ellize using Brutal Honesty with Verner.
  • Several characters have this as part of the finale.
• Our Demons Are Different: They’re specifically normal animals mutated by the Witches Black Magic. They become stronger and gain abilities derived from what type of animal they used to be. When a bunch of demons kill one another, the survivor has a chance of evolving into a greater demon, giving it human level intelligence. Demons are imbued with small amounts of the Witch's Space Master magic, just enough to reduce the damage they take. Demons stop physically aging, but actually have slightly reduced lifespans and lose the ability to reproduce. While there have been attempts to turn humans into demons, it has never worked, with the victims simply dying. Attempts to turn plants into demons has also been regarded as a failure since the results didn't live long enough and weren't strong enough to make them cost effective.
• Our Dragons Are Different: Fairy tales speak of dragons capable of human speech and intellect far surpassing humans. There is a type of demon referred to as a dragon, but none of them are confirmed as living up to the legend.
• Our Minotaurs Are Different: One of the boss demons guarding the witch.
• Our Wyverns Are Different: One of the boss demons guarding the Witch.
• Out with a Bang: In an after-story, Supple Ment dies from the ecstasy of accidentally receiving Marshmellow Hell from Ellize. She resuscitates him.
• Overrated and Underleveled: Discussed Trope. Ellize complains that in the videogame, Marie was That One Boss in the Tournament Arc, but that once you got her in your party, she lost that overpoweredness.
• Pair the Spares: Fiora and John.
• Protectorate: Niito’s original main motivation is to protect his favorite character Eterna from getting a "Shaggy Dog" Story treatment. However, this seems to extend equally to the rest of the game cast.
• Point of Divergence: The divergence between the Pizzarise and Ellize worlds at first appears to be when she is five years old, but upon speaking with an early educator it’s revealed to be at Ellize’s birth.
• Power Perversion Potential: After receiving the Prophet’s vision power, Ellize sarcastically notes there is no way she would use it to peep on Eterna in the bath…
• Psycho Supporter: Due to the reversal of his original timeline Broken Pedestal breakdown into villainy, Supple Ment becomes a Comedic Sociopath Hypercompetent Sidekick. Adaptations of the original web-novel point out how much Layla has in common with him.
• "Reborn as Villainess" Story: Only this time it’s a Galge! When having dinner with visiting royals, the more conventional otome villainess plot of dumping a fiancé for another woman is mentioned to have occurred, with the Surprisingly Realistic Outcome of said poor, uneducated and, unconnected wife driving said kingdom’s economy into the ground.
• Refuge in Audacity: Ellize groping Farah’s breasts for some time right in front of everyone after Verner knocks her unconscious.
• Reincarnated as the Opposite Sex: Niito in Ellize’s body. There is occasional Gender Bender Angst.
• The Resenter:
  • The previous First Knight’s daughter resents Layla for taking her father’s place.
  • The mentally ill girl who wishes she were in Ellize’s place and develops delusions in that direction thanks to a hallucinogen.
  • Eterna wishing she got Verner’s attention instead of Ellize.
• Rewatch Bonus: The reveal that Ellize has The Empath type of interactions with those around her to train her mana, makes the several scenes of her being in ecstasy at people being in awe of her make a lot more sense.
• Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: When visiting Earth, this becomes apparent, to varying degrees in different people.
• Rivalry as Courtship: The Witch had a route in the original game, which Niito really hates because of how the couple would smile while Eterna suffered.
• Parental Abandonment:
  • Verner after awakening to his witch-given powers and destroying everything he touches, hearing I Have No Son! from his father.
  • Saint Alfrea after her mother, the First Witch, discovered her White Magic.
• People Puppets: Octo, the Octopus demon seen in Verner’s introduction, controls people through a venom from his tentacles as a Puppeteer Parasite.
• Power Born of Madness: The secret to Ellize’s overwhelming magical power is that she circulates magic 24/7, a practice that increases someone’s mana capacity at the cost of absorbing the emotions of people around them. She is able to handle this because of the dissassociative disorder that plagued her past-life on earth; normally it’s only done in controlled bouts as training.
• Powers via Possession: Verner has access to the Dark Power due to a fragment of Alexia's soul that she split off when she was still resisting the curse. The Dark Power would be incompatible with most people and kill them, but Verner can somehow bear it, possibly due to descent from a previous witch.
• Sadistic Choice: The Prophet has for a thousand years had to weigh the pros and cons of revealing the new Saint to the world, since it’s a combination of a Mercy Kill to the current witch, and Human Sacrifice for said Saint. She always settled on telling but it ate away at her.
• Save the Princess: Discussed Trope when Ellize is locked in a tower. Her conclusion is, it’s not so bad being locked in a Gilded Cage.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Alfrea offers to use the same technique her mother used against her against the current witch, placing her in suspended animation. That way, the Witch curse will not transfer to a new host. Ellize wonders why this was never tried before, and then realizes that the saint is the only one who can try it due to it requiring a Space Master, a power reserved for the Saint. Previous saints usually weren't told where the Witch came from since it created a risk of the Saint rebelling against her duty. Ellize feels uneasy since this risks creating trouble for future generations if something ever goes wrong with the seal. It ends up as a moot point since Witch Alexia becomes the first witch to successfully commit suicide rather than face a Fate Worse than Death, using Verner as a proxy. To ensure Verner doesn't become the next host, Ellize deals a mortal injury to Alexia the instant before the manipulated Verner can.
• Sealed Good in a Can: Alfrea, known as the First Saint. Apparently, The World considered suspended animation the same as being dead.
• Secret Character:
  • In the game of the first timeline, the Witch, Alexis, is a secret heroine. Niito hated this route because unlocking it involves mistreating Eterna.
  • In the game of the second timeline, Alexis is too busy being absolutely terrified of Ellize to be an option, but Ellize herself can become a capture target if you meet certain conditions.
• Self-Insert Fic: The fanfiction Niito reads about Ellize being rescued is a parody of Marty Stu fics.
• Senseless Sacrifice: Verner nearly gets himself killed doing this to protect Ellize multiple times, which gets him some rare Anger Born of Worry from her.
• Serious Business: The men of the academy get into a massive brawl at the dance, over… who gets to dance with Ellize.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: Discussed Trope. Niito’s starting motivation is to Screw Destiny for Eterna facing this fate. And then there’s the witch’s pet dog Pochi, who at least gets a hug from Ellize after his tragic backstory.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: Pizzarise could have looked well if she took care of herself, as shown by Ellize.
• Shipper on Deck: Niito was a big fan of the Verner and Eterna ending and was very upset that all of her endings were tragic. With Verner bring the Player Character, bringing them together gives Niito vicarious satisfaction as Niito sees Verner as an extension of himself. When he gets his chance to do so by being reincarnated as Ellize, she accidentally wins Verne's heart herself, squashing the ending that she wanted. As a former man, she is reluctant to return his feelings, resulting in a Maybe Ever After. She does ultimately get her wish in the first timeline, when the Genius Loci of the first timeline recruits her help from the Genius Loci of the second, allowing her to save Eterna from her miserable fate and reunite with her Verner, albeit long after civilization has completely collapsed.
• Shout-Out:
  • The subtitle You Wanted the Perfect Saint? Too Bad! refers to the Puella Magi Madoka Magica meme "You thought it was a cute girl? Too bad! It was just Sayaka-chan!"
  • The Dirty Mind-Reading of someone talking about getting a boner from looking at Ellize is a reference to Kira Yoshikage from Jo Jos Bizarre Adventure Diamond Is Unbreakable.
• Skewed Priorities:
  • Played for Laughs. Ellize having Covert Pervert thoughts when in mortal danger… later a Deconstructed Trope when it’s revealed what kind of damage that disassociation did to Niito in his past life.
  • Two of the princes lust after Ellize and attempt to rape her, despite knowing full well that as humanity's ultimate defense, even princes like themselves would receive a Public Execution for harming her.
• Some Kind of Force Field: Ellize puts one around her bedroom when sleeping, that’s apparently strong enough to keep the omniscient Prophet from seeing what’s inside.
• Soul Jar: The section of the Witch’s power given to Verner and contained by his necklace.
• Space Master: The strongest of the magical elements, often referred to as darkness. The Genius Loci of the world only permits the Saint to control this element due to its unbalanced power. It gives the Saint Nigh-Invulnerability against anything that is not also imbued with this element. Very few Saints have achieved much skill in this element, but in theory, it allows for freezing an object in time or Destructive Teleportation.
• Stable Time Loop: The time between different worlds isn't entirely in sync, but the Genius Loci will filter events to minimize mixing up cause and effect.
• Stylistic Suck: The amateur doujin of Eterna Niito draws (and later cringes about), as well as the writing of the fanfic for the game he reads.
• Superpowerful Genetics: Normally, the Dark Power, the Witch's corrupted mana, also imbued with the space element, will kill any non-saint it goes into due to their bodies not being compatible with it. Despite this, Verner is somehow able to host a fragment of Alexia's power without burning away his Life Energy. Ellize muses that the original game hinted that he had inherited an atavism from a witch ancestor.
• Super-Power Meltdown: Verner’s origin story is getting this from the Witch’s power.
• Supporting Protagonist: Verner from the game player’s perspective in the Ellize Route.
• Supreme Chef: Ellize having basic cooking knowledge from earth gets her regarded as this. It's said to be because as a previously dire setting with repeated dark ages and starvation, they haven’t had much leeway to come up with such basic solutions.
• Switched at Birth: Subverted. Ellize thinks this is what happened to her and Eterna’s bodies. But the truth is, each of their parents were friends and decided to change the baby’s names after the Propheter had said Ellize’s name.
• Sympathy for the Devil: Ellize fakes this as part of her performance as a Saint for demons, but is genuine with it for humans acting as The Redeemer. Notably, in the game story there is an Alexia route that Ellize hates because it’s at the expense of Eterna.
• Through His Stomach: Ellize cooking for Verner.
• Tiny Tyrannical Girl: Both Pizzarise and Ellize had this in common in their youth, the latter ceasing to be so at five.
• Traumatic Superpower Awakening: This is how Saints start to be able to use Black Magic.
• Undying Loyalty: The Witch’s Alexia's followers, and especially her dog Pochi.
• Unfinished Business: A party member with a crush on Alfrea stood guard at her tomb as Animated Armor, vanishing upon her revival.
• Uninhibited Muscle Power: Ellize hands out swords that grant this, being enchanted with healing magic to counteract the inevitable damage to the wielder.
• Unreliable Narrator: Between disassociation, and a massive guilt complex, and just a flippant personality, Ellize’s First-Person Perspective is often this. Any comment on Ellize’s exact motivations by others are this Played for Laughs.
• Uriah Gambit: Discussed. Fans of the game wished they could do this to Pizzarise. Eterna once seriously considers whether Ellize set her up like this.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: The Witch’s dog turned monster.
• Utopia Justifies the Means: Kings of the world deciding to imprison Ellize using hostages to prolong the golden age she created. Of course, they Did Not Think This Through.
• Villainous Breakdown: Witch Alexia starts having one of these even before confronting the heroes and it only gets worse from there.
• Villainous Crush: Pizzarise’s crush on Verner served to motivate much of her villainy in the original timeline.
• Villainous Parental Instinct: The very first Witch went to great lengths to spare her daughter despite them being Arch-Enemy.
• Wacky Marriage Proposal: Alfrea proposing to Ellize due to how good her cooking is, despite them both being woman. She decides to laugh it off.
• When She Smiles: Verner gets dazzled whenever Ellize genuinely smiles during their bonding events, which is different from her magically augmented fake smiles.
• Wild Child: The Prophet offhandedly mentions one of the past Saints was Raised by Wolves and couldn’t speak.
• Willfully Weak: Ellize often holds back to give others a chance to make a difference, with the most direct example being at the end of the Tournament Arc at Layla's pleading.
• Womanchild: Alfrea as an Idiot Hero and The Ditz who Desperately Craves Affection.
• Workout Fanservice: Verner’s constant work outs and Ellize generally over-reacting to his muscles.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: The Fictional Disability relating to mana circulation Ellize/Pizzarise’s body has, as well as the original witch, and several unnamed villains through history. They take in more negative motions than they can filter out of their bodies. It’s just Ellize's detatched personality can somehow manage it.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: All of the witches. The first witch was The Chosen One, given special power by the world's Genius Loci to act as it's representative and protector. To make it possible for her to gain great power quickly, the world gave her a large mana vessel that circulated mana a lot quicker than normal. Unfortunately, the world did not anticipate that the first witch would not be able to handle the flood of negative emotions polluting the excess mana she was circulating, driving her mad. The world fixed this problem with the witch's successors, the saints, reducing their mana circulation to normal levels, but whenever a Saint killed a Witch, the polluted mana would transfer to the Saint as a new host, corrupting her as well, and growing stronger with each generation.
• World's Strongest Woman: Ellize is an Instant Expert, grows strong quickly, and has a Fictional Disability that causes With Great Power Comes Great Insanity. Combined with her Insanity Immunity, she can use a training method 24/7 that would drive normal people insane. Due to this, she has hundreds of times as much mana as any single witch. Where your average Saint can kill a greater demon in a single blow, Ellize fights on a completely different scale, levelling armies.
• Yaoi Fangirl: It's hinted that Ellize has become this in her new life, with the enthusiasm she thinks of Verner getting along with other men.

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