Manga / Arachnid

From bottom to top: Alice Fujii, Gokiburi and Yoriko Tajima

A manga written by Shinya Murata, illustrated by Shinsen Ifuji since 2009 and published on Gangan JOKER, Arachnid (アラクニド) provides an unusual take on the standard shonen Fighting Series, with an interestingly deranged cast and a wide variety of exotic fighting styles.

Alice Fujii does not have a fun life. She's spent the last few years being tormented and abused by her drunken uncle, whilst her unusual mental disorder and dearth of social skills have led to poor grades and a complete lack of friends at school. Then a mysterious assassin kills her uncle, press-gangs her as his apprentice, and subjects her to Training from Hell for a few weeks before trying to kill her when her recruitment application falls through. Now she's got an ever-increasing price on her head as she fends off one murderous, arthropod-themed lunatic after another, and the only allies she can turn to are the slightly less murderous arthropod-themed lunatics.

Arachnid ended on December 2015 at 72 chapters. It is a Stealth Sequel to Jackals and is followed by two spinoffs: Caterpillar and Choubu no Shinobi. In 2020, a sequel titled Blattodea continued the story from where both Arachnid and Caterpillar left off while borrowing elements from the 2017 story Himenospia, which was a reimagining of Arachnid.

An official English translation of the series was made available on Square Enix's Manga UP! app in July 2022 and then for Comikey in 2023. Due to the 13-years gap between the original publication and the English one, as well as the existence of the sequel, beware of spoilers below.

For Shinya's other takes on people fighting with animal abilities, see Killing Bites and Konchuki. Yū Sasuga's TerraforMARS and Fujimi Yasutaka's The Island of Giant Insects also deal with this kind of concept.

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This manga features examples of:

#-I

• Abnormal Ammo: One of the assassins is a sniper named Gin Yanma. She sits hidden on some building and kills people from afar. Seems simple enough, but then it turns out her bullets have dragonfly wings for them to travel farther and faster.
• Aborted Arc: Imomushi comes to Alice's school to question Suzumebachi about her sister's death, implying he's still hiding something important about that from her. Nothing comes out of this in Arachnid proper because not only Imomushi gets more or less killed (or was she?) with little fanfare and isn't mentioned again, but Suzumebachi is also killed later.
• Academy of Adventure: A polite way to describe Alice's school. A less polite (though somewhat more accurate) description would be 'death-trap crawling with murderous psychos', from the students to the teachers. Even the Organization Boss is lurking there somewhere and there's a huge incinerator for body disposal. Despite coming to realize how dangerous her school is, Alice still finds herself going there because she has nowhere else to go.
  Alice: You said that... you'd negotiate with the Organization... Specifically, where would we go to? And who should we speak with?
  Oki: School.
• Action Girl: Alice and virtually any other female assassin.
• Aerith and Bob: On one hand "Alice" is a foreign name that her teachers have trouble pronouncing. On the other, the rest of the cast are a bunch of people with fake names and who are codenamed after insects.
• All Men Are Perverts: With or without the Queen's Rule brainwashing, few men in the story aren't always harassing women and trying to rape them.
• Almighty Janitor:
  • The Shidemushi are the Organization's Cleanup Crew and their older leader appears rather ominous. They're implied to be dangerous, but none of them are ever shown in a fight.
  • Suzumebachi worked as a mailman before he got promoted to front man of the Organization.
• Always a Bigger Fish:
  • The narrative exposition on paraponera clavata ants (aka bullet ants) in Caterpillar states they're so danguerous a group of army ants would avoid fighting a single one of them. The exposition on dinoponera ants in Arachnid is practically copy-pasted, except the paraponeras are the ones fleeing.
  • Dinoponera herself is played up as so dangerous she could kill everyone on her own. In practice she ends up as little more than a nuisance whom Alice overcomes very hard. Then Sasori ambushes and makes short work of her.
• Anguished Declaration of Love:
  • Kumo and Alice acknowledge each other as father and daughter... after he's forced her into a duel to the death and she has mortally wounded him. She finishes Kumo off and starts screaming.
  • Just before Yoriko dies for real, Alice expresses regret for how things turned out, thinking that even now she still thinks of her as a friend. Yoriko responds to Alice's thoughts with an awfully joyful look on her face, saying she feels the same for her. She does seem sincerely regretful on some level despite everything she did, and poor Alice is left in a mix of despair and confusion at everything.
• Animal Motifs: ...or rather, an insect motif, each for every assassin. However, given Alice is a protagonist, she gets a handful of different spider species motifs for the sake of versatility.
• Archnemesis Dad: The front-man of the Organization, Suzumebachi, is revealed to be Alice's father.
• Armor-Piercing Question:
  • Yoriko asks Alice if she, a kind person who wasn't able to kill a bully like her, could really be a murderer. Alice had killed two people in self-defense by then, but lies to preserve their friendship. She feels guilty about it and eventually confesses the truth to Yoriko.
  • To break Alice's guard, Imomushi suddenly asks her if she's a virgin. In the background, Amenbo and Riock look like they're actually waiting for an answer.
• And the Adventure Continues: The story ends with Alice facing the rape zombie apocalypse that's overtaking Japan. Kabutomushi and Oki are also travelling on their own through the urban wastelands.
• Armor-Piercing Response:
  • When Kuramoto is talking to Alice about her issues with bullying, Alice insists her troubles are no big deal when compared to people who have it worse. Although she seems to disagree with Alice's reasoning, Kuramoto still protects Alice from being raped, at her own expense, while saying the same. The truth is that she deeply resented Alice for being so forgiving to people who have mistreated her.
  • Dinoponera asks Alice about how her upbringing was like and if she fought in any wars. Alice and Kabutomushi reply she's a plain schoolgirl who's been trained for less than a month. Dinoponera flips out at this, angry that Alice could attain her skills so quickly just because of some ability she was born with.
  • Alice finally admits to Yoriko that she is a murderer, but Yoriko doesn't think that's an issue after all. Alice is so overjoyed that she completely misses Sasori spawing into the room and killing Yoriko right after.
• As You Know: Chapter 26 begins with a recap of the current situation at Shouran Highschool.
• Assassin Outclassin': Same goes for Imomushi in the prequel, who isn't very worried about being on a ship full of people trying to kill her.
• Asshole Victim:
  • Yoshio, Alice's abusive uncle in the beginning. Given how Kumo's murder of Yoshio prevented him from raping her, Alice is practically thankful to Kumo for it.
  • Mudake is introduced while surrounded by unconscious girls he's heavily implied to have raped. He's caught by Sasori and presumably given a gory offscreen death.
• Attempted Rape: Alice from her uncle in the very first chapter, and then Oki from Hibiki's thugs in Chapter 12. The trope recurs every now and then until it escalates to absurd levels, as a major plot point is the entire student body of Alice's school being brainwashed into raping people and turning the whole country into a massive orgy.
• Author Appeal: Arachnid is Murata's second manga about people with Animal Motifs, this time focusing entirely on arthropods. Once or twice per chapter the narrator prattles on about the qualities of bugs and at one point explains that the Organization doesn't actually force its assassins to use a bug motif, but they all do it anyway out of a fascination for those creatures.
• The Bad Guy Wins: Yoriko dies but is easily replaced and Japan is destroyed by the rape zombie apocalypse. The Organization intends to start a whole new society from its ruins and presumably take over the rest of the world later.
• Badass Creed: Alice has a "kill or be killed" motto.
• Barbie Doll Anatomy: No nipples or genitals in this series. Yet Blattodea got nipples later despite also being shonen...
• Batter Up!: In chapter 12, some of the people working for Hibiki are holding Nail Bats. It's rather amusing that one of them has a Nail Golf Club. Even more amusing when Alice swings it into his face.
• Beach Episode: Rather than an episode, there were a series of promotional fanservicey posters depicting some of the female characters on a beach. One color poster for Kabutomushi, another for Dinoponera and some black-and-white ones for the rest. Interestingly, Dinoponera is the only character who is shown alone in her poster.
• Beware My Stinger Tail: Sasori turns out to have a long mechanical scorpion tail attached to her back. How she hides that, especially in the outfit she wears in the prequel, is anyone's guess.
• Big Bad: "Army Ant" Sara Kurokawa claims she's the boss of the Organization. But she is a decoy who follows Kuramoto's orders. And Kuramoto isn't the boss either. Yoriko is.
• Big Bad Friend: Kuramoto is responsible for the school-wide orgy during the Arachnid Hunt and Yoriko is behind everything.
• A Birthday, Not a Break: Alice's mother died on Alice's birthday, just after promising to take her to a theme park sometime.
• Bittersweet Ending: Alice, Oki and Kabutomushi survive the Arachnid Hunt, but it was a complete disaster. Alice loses her trusty living knife and feels terrible about Kuramoto's and Yoriko's deaths, despite them being false friends towards her. She discovers her entire life was a plaything of the Organization, which is still going strong despite Yoriko's death. Japan is in the middle of a zombie apocalypse that the Organization intends to use as an excuse to kill even more people in plain sight and build their utopia. Every other character is either missing or zombified. Finally, Alice gives in to her bloodlust and sets out to crush the zombie hordes all on her own after parting ways with Oki.
• Blade Below the Shoulder: Dinoponera has extendable needles inside her gauntlets, which have the immensely painful effect of her namesake's sting. Paraponera and Suzumebachi also use this weapon type.
• Blade Run: Dinoponera sits on Kabutomushi's halberd when Kabuto first tries to attack her, then hangs on it to avoid being smashed into the ceiling. Later she also walks on the halberd's pole, too.
• Bland-Name Product: Kahen Rider. i.e., Transforming Rider instead of Masked Rider. Later on, Sailor-Force is shown.
• Blatant Lies: A teacher demands to know what Kabutomushi's massive spearlike weapon is. Having used it to shove two people out of the building, she tries to claim it's a mop.
• Blunt "Yes": Hibiki says this when Alice asks if he had a "deep relationship" with Kumo. Oki then bluntly asks if he is gay. He confirms it again but then he backpedals.
• Bolivian Army Ending: The story ends with Alice surrounded by the zombie hordes that destroyed Japan and about to charge against them.
• Bookends:
  • Near the end, Alice confronts her biological father, Suzumebachi, in a rooftop, much like how she had to fight her parental substitute Kumo in the beginning. Ginyanma even watches over both fights.
  • The story begins with Alice's uncle trying to rape her and ends with a horde of sex zombies after her unmentionables.
  • Chapter 1 is titled "No choice but to Kill", which is Alice's Catchphrase. Chapter 72 is titled "In Order to Live", where her catch phrase is the unspoken answer to that title:
    Alice (Chapter 1): Before you kill me... I have no choice but to kill you!
    Alice (Chapter 72): I am Kumo. I have become a single arachnid who, in order to survive the lawless world... in order to live...
  • One of the poster collectibles that came with volume 14 was a redraw of the cover page from chapter 1.
• Boss Subtitles: Used in Caterpillar to introduce each character and their rank. Arachnid also does it late on the plot with characters who hadn't been seen in a while.
• Bottomless Magazines: The Kumoito used by Kumo and Alice has an untold length of special spider thread inside it. It is later explained that the thing is actually a Living Weapon and produces string for as long as it is cared for.
• Bowdlerise:
  • The magazine version of Chapter 54 had a scene about how Sasori murdered her own parents, tearing them open and leaving the organs exposed. This got blacked out in Volume 11.
  • Nazis are referenced with No Swastikas in effect during the transition from the magazine releases and the volumes.
  • Chapters published in the Manga UP! app are censored even in Japan. The first couple ones published in English hadn't gone through this process for a while, though.
• Brainwashed and Crazy:
  • At one point Oki is controlled by a device from Digger Wasp, who gives her a dominatrix outfit and has her believe he is Alice. Oki's colorful personality actually isn't affected, but she doesn't notice how unusual "Alice's" orders (such as torturing her friend Yoriko) are even when Digger Wasp is detailing the effects of his mind control right in front of her.
  • Meanwhile, Sara leads and spreads mindless zombie-like students around for them to overpower and rape her enemies. Kuramoto turns out to be the one responsible. Through exchange of bodily fluids, she can spread a virus that places the infected under her will. Sara retains her consciousness because she's been given a role by Kuramoto, but after Kuramoto is killed both Sara and everyone else appears to go brain dead permanently.
  • Yoriko has the flat-out supernatural psychic ability to mind control a single person at a time. And for as long as she's perfectly in control of her Suzumebachi enforcer, she somehow remains ageless.
• Breather Episode:
  • Chapter 17 in Arachnid, discounting all the sexual harassment on Kuramoto in the end, is about Alice, Yoriko and Gokiburi peacefully hanging out on a mall some days before the battle royale begins.
  • After chapter 50 ended with a character getting gang-raped offscreen, 51 and 52 are nearly all slapstick comedy.
• The Brute: "Sia ferox" Riock, who just recklessly throws Megaton Punch after megaton punch. It's a bit of a Running Gag for him to get countered and easily defeated but he never learns.
• Brick Joke: When asked by a shocked teacher what she is doing with a large spear, Kabutomushi claims it is a mop. Later, Yoriko is seen fending off the zombiefied student mob by swinging an actual mop at them.
• The Bully: Yoriko is terribly cruel to Alice in the early chapters, to the point Alice considers killing her, but after the first encounter with Sasori, Yoriko has to keep Alice with her for protection and the two begin to get along.
• But Now I Must Go: After the Arachnid Hunt is over and Japan is being ruined by the nation-wide orgy, Alice leaves Oki to fight off the zombie apocalypse and take down the Organization for good.
• Butt-Monkey: After an imposing introduction, Hibiki becomes a subject of comic relief as not only Dinoponera repeatedly humiliates and beats him silly, but he's also a victim of his own Dynamic Entry gag and is kicked into a hole. We don't see him again until Blattodea.
• Car Cushion: When Abu gets defeated by Kabutomushi, he's shoved out of the building and falls right on top of a nearby car.
• Carnival of Killers: The "Arachnid Hunt" in the main story sets a prize on Alice's head that increases every time one of the participating assassins is killed.
• Cast Full of Crazy: Nearly every character in the series is an insane bloodthirsty rapist.
• Catchphrase:
  • Alice's "I have no choice but to kill" when she or her friends are in grave danger.
  • Oki's excited "It's great to be hated!" when she's having fun humiliating people like a dominatrix.
  • Sasori's "A scorpion has three friends" pre-torture speech.
  • Dinoponera's "If it's you, maybe you can become my friend" when she has good expectations about her opponents. She's also prone to muttering "mai mi thang!" ("no way!" in thai) over and over when panicking.
• Cerebus Rollercoaster: The manga has a very grim start, what with poor Alice almost getting raped by her uncle, staring death-from-a-random-assassin in the face and deciding to kill him instead, then forming a bond with him only to get forced into a fight to the death. After this, however, the story develops into a battle royale with quirky characters and increasingly absurd powers. Once Dinoponera comes along, everything goes off the rails until the mood crashes down again with the army ant zombies raping the entire school. After Dinoponera's implied rape scene is followed by some more slapstick, the entire supporting cast gets written off so Alice has to handle the three last danguerous evil assassins on her own. Plus, the sex zombies are part of a plan to genocide Japan's population, and they succeed.
• Character Title: Of course "Arachnid" refers to Alice the spider-girl herself and it also fits Sasori the scorpion-girl in the 12th volume cover. The official English translation at the Manga UP! app forces this trope by changing the codename Kumo, which means "spider", to "Arachnid".
• Charles Atlas Superpower: Everybody in this series is a "perfectly ordinary" human. You may need to remind yourself of this repeatedly.
• Chekhov's Gag:
  • A minor one. When Alice is feeling bad about being all hurt and bandaged up with an eyepatch, Yoriko and Oki tell her she looks stylish and cute. Sara was introduced at around the same time, and much later it turns out she's pretty much wearing her eyepatch for the sake of fashion.
  • In Kabutomushi's first two battles, Yoriko gets knocked down on her back when Kabuto sends Jigabachi through a wall and falls down a floor when Kabuto destroys the ground below them. Yoriko repeatedly says she thought she was going to die, but Kabutomushi assures her she won't... die just from falling from 3 meters. Kabutomushi herself is who kills Yoriko at the end of the story, by blowing her off the school's rooftop.
• Chekhov's Skill:
  • Oki is able to secrete oil as an evasion ability. Later Kabutomushi explains she taught her to subtly do it when in trouble to leave a trail behind her for Kabuto to follow. It happens even though Oki was brainwashed at the time.
  • Alice once secretly uses her thread to put a leash on Oki's neck, so she can listen to her conversation with Hibiki from afar and come to her protection if she fails to negotiate with him. Much later, Alice impressively uses this technique to foil a villain's plans and crush their neck.
• Chekhov's Gun: Arachnid has a curious habit of bringing up people and plot hooks that don't amount to much of anything in itself but pay off in Caterpillar. Both during the time the spinoff is a prequel and afterwards.
  • Kabutomushi mentions a "Hercules Horn" weapon at one point in Arachnid. The prequel reveals it is a foldable double sword that belong to the previous Kabutomushi.
  • Amenbo is a mere Villain of the Week in Arachnid, but it is established she's good friends with Imomushi. Way after a small cameo in the prequel, she's the one who gets Imomushi and every other surviving assassin out of the Ageha ship.
• Cheshire Cat Grin: Sasori's default expression.
• Child Soldier: Some characters are shown to have been trained by the Organization since they were small. Among them, Dinoponera was the one doing mercenary work in war zones as soon as she was able to carry a gun.
• Cold Sniper: The moody-looking Ginyanma wanted to just kill Alice after she killed Kumo, reasoning they wouldn't be able to make her one of them.
• Companion Cube: After killing Kumo, Alice spends a week talking to a teddy bear as if it was him, trying to cope with her loss.
• Conveniently an Orphan: Alice. Her father, Suzumebachi, was chosen to be the front-man of the Organization but his concern for his family screws up the Boss' mind control powers. In frustration the Boss tries forcing Suzumebachi to kill his family, but in disgust from killing his wife he manages to resist and refuses to kill Alice. The Boss then makes plans to have Alice become his successor, leading to Alice and Kumo meeting.
• Cosmic Plaything: Alice's life was pretty much ruined from even before her birth. She comes to endure the realization of that along with several other physical and emotional misfortunes over the course of a single day.
• Covers Always Lie: The cover for Volume 14 shows Alice smiling wholeheartedly. Nothing of the sort happens in the ending.
• Crazy-Prepared:
  • Alice to ever greater lenghts, courtesy of her Disability Superpower which is very befitting for a spider-themed string user.
  • Amenbo knows how to inflate like a balloon to avoid drowning. You read that right.
  • Kabutomushi can survive even seemingly lethal attacks to the heart thanks to her implanted exoskeleton armor.
  • Being an experienced mercenary, Paraponera gives Imomushi a lot of trouble.
  • Dinoponera's "Concentration Driving Force" ability gives her heightened senses comparable to Alice's. And while it is mentioned Alice's senses can't save her from sufficiently fast attacks, Dinoponera is agile enough to avoid practically anything. This ends up subverted, though, when it's shown Dinoponera is actually really short-sighted when making plans and relies too much on her super powers.
• Creepy Centipedes: "Caterpillar" Imomushi, "Centipede" Mudake and "House Centipede" Geji.
• Creepy Cockroach: Oki is a perverted roach girl and has this weird ability to make her skin all slimy.
• Crossover:
  • There's a short gag crossover with Akame ga Kill!. Tatsumi and Lubbock are inexplicably visiting Alice's school. Lubbock is eager to meet the fellow spider assassin, but she's nowhere to be seen and instead we get Bulat and Hibiki shaking hands. Also, Alice's uncle is there for some reason.
  • There was a short non-canon Hot Springs Episode between Arachnid, Caterpillar and Killing Bites. And a food contest comic, too.
• Cute and Psycho: Nearly every girl in the series.
• Cute Bruiser: Oki, Kabutomushi, Geji and Dinoponera. Alice has her moments, but she mostly uses string tricks to fight.
• Damsel in Distress: Early on, Oki fakes kidnapping Yoriko to bait Alice. But later Yoriko is captured by the Sand and Digger Wasps to be tortured by a brainwashed Oki. She tries to stay out of Alice's fight against Dinoponera, but Dinoponera jumps behind her anyway to get a reaction from Alice. When Alice reunites with her later, Yoriko is attacked by Sasori.
• Darker and Edgier: Zig-zags between this and Lighter and Softer when compared to Jackals. Arachnid is a campier story and the violence level is maybe a step lighter, but it uses rape tropes far more frequently.
• Darkest Hour:
  • Chapter 61. Yoriko has been "killed" and practically everyone has been captured by the student mob or is missing. And Kuramoto began the mind control process on Alice, who still doesn't have a clue of her true intentions. It gets subverted, though, as Alice had already figured out her plans and easily kills her before moving on to fight Suzumebachi.
  • The aftermath of the final battle. Alice managed to kill Ginyanma but had to sacrifice the Kumoito in the process. Then she collapses on the floor and isn't able to lift a finger anymore. For real this time. Problem is, Yoriko STILL wants her dead and throws her out of the rooftop. That's when Kabutomushi comes back and blows Yoriko off the building while Oki rescues Alice.
• The Darkness Gazes Back: The unknown Organization Boss is represented by a pair of ominous wide eyes staring from out of the darkness.
• Death Seeker: Kumo trains Alice so she could kill him. In the prequel he's shown to not have cared much for his own life for a long time, though he wasn't letting himself go down without a fight.
• Deer in the Headlights: Alice is shocked when Kumo tries to kill her at the beginning, but then she jumps to chomp his neck off. She later becomes feared for being able to avoid being completely frozen even in such dire situations.
• Decoy Protagonist: You know that cool looking assassin that keeps Alice in his house? Alice kills him at the end of the first volume.
• Defeat Equals Friendship:
  • Oki is brought along by Alice after being defeated and becomes her most trustworthy friend. It helps that Oki turned out to not have kidnapped Yoriko and just wanted to make Alice her slave instead of killing her.
  • Dinoponera claims she's looking for strong people to fight and befriend. In reality she doesn't know when to stop beating people and is hardly impressed no matter how much they manage to survive her. And so this never works out for her.
• Depopulation Bomb: The Organization has population control as their main objective because... reasons? The backstory shows the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were intentional on their part and in the story proper a sex zombie apocalypse tears Japan apart and threatens to ruin the rest of the world.
• Deus Sex Machina: The Army Ant Queen is revealed to have a virus transmitted by her bodily fluids that allows her to mind-control people.
• Disability Superpower: Alice's "Congenital Excessive Concentration", which causes her to single-mindedly concentrate on the most inconvenient things. With training, though, it allows her to enter a kind of hyper-aware state and formulate battle strategies in seconds, and serves as arguably her greatest weapon.
• Disappeared Dad: Alice has been told that her father died before she was born, but Kirigirisu reveals that he's actually alive. The father turns out to be Suzumebachi, of all people.
• Disney Villain Death: Seems to be Kabutomushi's favorite way of dispatching enemies, what with her beetle and spear theme and all.
• Disproportionate Retribution:
  • The beginning of the story sees Yoriko and her gang bullying the orphaned Alice. Later we learn that Yoriko made Suzumebachi murder his own wife because his concern for Ayana and Alice messed up Yoriko's agelessness powers. Yoriko not only is responsible for Ayana's death, but she was beating Alice out of spite.
  • Having a Child Soldier background, Dinoponera finds it unacceptable that Alice could get on her level in a matter of days just because of some ability she was born with. She overreacts to that and utterly drops her already twisted kawaiiko ways to torture and kill her horribly.
  • Seeing how Alice had been having a life as miserable as hers, Kuramoto thought she could spare Alice and recruit her. But then she gets to know Alice and finds she is nowhere as cynical as her. Just because of that she decides she will enjoy ruining Alice's life.
• Double Standard: Rape, Female on Female:
  • Gokiburi being forceful on Alice, trying to goad her into having Sex for Solace and declaring out loud that she wants to rape her over and over when that fails is Played for Laughs.
  • At one point, Sara lets a bunch of male delinquents gangrape Kuramoto to convince them to help her schemes in the Arachnid Hunt. The scene cuts away before it happens, with Murata Shinya stating on his blog that he drafted multiple pages of the rape that he couldn't get past the editors. However, when Kuramoto is revealed to be a villainess infecting people with zombifying STD, then of course we get to see a double splash page of her date-raping Sara when they first met, the aforementioning guys fawning over her, and then multiple pages of her molesting Alice.
• The Dragon:
  • Suzumebachi is the Organization boss' frontman. A number of people have held that title in the past, including Hideki Tojo during World War II.
  • Sara helps out Kuramoto by acting as her decoy.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • Sara sends her Media soldiers after Kabutomushi and Dinoponera, apparently not knowing that Dinoponera has been raped and zombified by the army ants by that point.
  • Subverted in regards to Kuramoto being the actual Army Ant Queen while Sara has her and Alice captured, as it is revealed Alice had known about her betrayal in advance thanks to being paranoid enough to set strings on her.
  • At the end, Gokiburi praises Alice for putting the safety of others over her own. The irony here isn't just that Goki is just playing nice to force Alice to have sex later, but how Alice defied the Boss exactly because she values her own freedom over the safety of her friends and the whole world itself.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him:
  • The protagonist of the prequel, Imomushi, was introduced in Arachnid with business of her own to take care of. Not too long after, Suzumebachi stabs Imomushi from behind while she's trying to fight Dinoponera and she apparently dies instantly in a most unceremonious fashion. The ending of Caterpillar gives context for what her motivations and reveals Hanakamakiri showed up right afterwards to rescue her.
  • Hanmyou decides to flee from Hibiki rather than keep fighting him and Alice, but runs straight into Riokku, who instantly beheads him with a punch.
  • After the height of her plot-relevance, Dinoponera is easily defeated by Sasori and is tossed to get raped offscreen by the army ants. A very cruel and abrupt Fate Worse than Death that was only resolved in Blattodea.
  • Hibiki helps out Alice against the Media army ants but is anticlimatically kicked into a hole by Oki and isn't seen again afterwards. Later, Geji starts helping Alice and Oki but is easily captured along with Oki by the army ants and disappears. Oki assumes both of them got rape-zombified offscreen. Fortunately for Mr. "Kahen Rider" and Not-Tomoko, Blattodea eventually revealed, with no explanation, that the two escaped just fine.
• Dub-Induced Plot Hole: In the 2022 Manga UP! app English translation, Goki explicitly says that Kamadouma and Geji got infected by the army ant zombies at the end of the story instead of speculating it. In Blattodea, they both reappear perfectly fine without much explanation.
• Dynamic Entry: Hibiki is fond of arriving from out of nowhere with a Rider Kick to begrudgingly save people. Later he's the one on the receiving end of a surprise dropkick from Gokiburi.
• Enfant Terrible: Digger Wasp, a boy who wants to brainwash girls and put them on dominatrix outfits.
• Evil All Along:
  • Kuramoto pretends to be a friend to Alice, but turns out to be one of the masterminds behind the Arachnid Hunt.
  • Alice spends much of the plot protecting Yoriko and is heartbroken when she gets killed by Sasori, only for Yoriko to return alive and well later, revealing herself as the real Boss of the Organization.
• Exact Eavesdropping: Alice sneaks a string leash on Kuramoto, intending to keep track of her in case they got separated. To her luck and dismay, however, she's able to listen through the strings to a conversation between Kuramoto and Sara that reveals Kuramoto was her enemy all along.
• Exotic Eye Designs: Alice's pupils and Dinoponera's irises turn bright and ripple when they concentrate. Sometimes they get both effects at once when they're ticked off.
• Explaining Your Power to the Enemy: Not only the assassins do it, but then the narrator also lectures us on how their powers relate to their insect motifs, not that it helps make much sense of the supernatural ones. Sasori has this routine in which she paralyzes people and then explains what she did and how much she's going to enjoy slowly killing them. It's also been inverted once, when Alice figures out how Dinoponera is able to concentrate harder than her and then explains to Dinoponera the differences between their methods.
• Expy:
  • Shinya Murata's Jackals already had a spider-themed assassin with a Razor Floss weapon in Turis Spider, who aside from being blonde and older than Alice looks similar to her, down to having the same height and weight.
  • Geji is pretty much the cute and cool assassin Tomoko Kuroki would daydream of being. The extra content of volume 8 freely admits this with a parody chapter focusing on the traits they share and a sketch of Geji by the author which is literally Tomoko. The sequel then has Geji look even more like Tomoko on top of being revealed to be named "Momoko".
• Eyepatch of Power: Sara wears one over her right eye. Alice wore one while recovering from the battle with Hibiki, but then she looked cute rather than powerful.
• Eyes Always Shut:
  • Kamakiri acts like this before attacking Alice.
  • Likewise, Kabutomushi often talks with closed eyes when she's just pretending to be friendly.
• The Faceless:
  • Alice's mother Ayana has her face hidden during flashbacks, until more of Alice's past is shown in chapter 48.
  • The Organization's boss is first depicted a a pair of creepy wide eyes staring from the dark.
  • When Ginyanma first appears, she's completely obscured by shadow and looks like a man wearing googles and a beanie.
• Fanservice: Female characters are shown in various states of undress constantly, and are put into compromising positions with each other practically once a chapter. Caterpillar takes it one step further by actually including uncensored nudity. The fanservice in both series borders on Squick very frequently, however, as it tends to be accompanied by (either attempted or successful) rape.
• Flash Step: The faster characters frequently appear out of nowhere behind each other. And they usually look away from the target, just to look cool. They do have insect motifs, after all. It's later exaggerated in chapter 48, in which Alice practically teleports around Dinoponera, who insists in trying to hit Alice from behind.
• Foe-Tossing Charge: Kabutomushi carves a path through Sara's zombified student mob with no trouble, even when Sara sends giant built men at her.
• Forehead of Doom: Yoriko's hairstyle.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Sometimes Suzumebachi acts like he's actually concerned about Alice's survival because he's her Disappeared Dad.
  • Yoriko once reflects on how she's been alone since "who knows when". She's 100-years-old.
  • From the very first time Kabutomushi and Yoriko meet, there is blatant foreshadowing that Kabutomushi is going to kill Yoriko later by knocking her off a tall height.
  • When a couple of villains try to screw with Kabutomushi's head with nerve gas, it doesn't work on her... or on Yoriko. Which turns out to hint at her supernatural abilities.
  • Alice refuses to escape the Arachnid Hunt without Yoriko because she doesn't want to be seen as a false friend even though this would ostensibly end the conflict right there and then. Once Yoriko is found but Kuramoto goes missing, Alice actually chooses to try to escape with just Yoriko rather than taking anymore risks. We later learn that this was because Alice secretly knew Kuramoto was a traitor at this point.
  • When Suzumebachi was promoted to his current position, the previous hornet told him he was getting too old and the Boss needed "renewed vitality". We later find out the Boss is able to remain ageless for as long as she has a strong mental control over somebody.
• Form-Fitting Wardrobe: Ifuji Shinsen draws the female characters with curiously skintight skirts. The other artists involved in the series don't...
• Ghost City: The final chapter has Japan in middle of a zombie orgy, with people shambling all around and violating anyone they see. But then the epilogue with Oki and Kabutomushi has no one in sight. The city around them seems deserted and nearly every building shows signs of decay...
• Goomba Stomp: Dinoponera at one point almost impales Hikibi's head, but is distracted when she notices Alice is on the floor above her and just stomps Hibiki instead.
• Gratuitous Foreign Language: Dinoponera sometimes speaks in Thai.
• Gratuitous Rape: Half the point of the series is the author rambling about bugs and inserting parodies of series he likes. The other half is this trope. Most of the characters are sexual predators, victims of rape or both. Alice starts out almost getting raped and fights off creep after creep only to become partly responsible for an outbreak of "rape zombies" that tears most of Japan apart. Out of all named characters only poor Dinoponera has the dubious distinction of being raped by the army ant zombies, though others just disappear and are assumed to have suffered that fate too. The story even ends with Gokiburi threatening and failing to rape Alice in a comical way.
• Guns Are Worthless: Some characters do use guns, but hardly get any use out of them and soon completely forget they exist as focus is shifted to the assassins' weird insect-themed abilities and weapons. One exception is Ginyanma, who wields a sniper rifle. How would Alice even deal with a sniper? By hurling her knife and thinking really, really hard so it flies through all the miles to Ginyanma and pierces through her scope and head, that's how.
• Hair Antennae: Oki has a pair of antennae to befit her cockroach theme. They even move while detecting movements around her. Oddly enough, she spontaneously gained those antennae just by identifying with a cockroach she saw back when she was an abandoned baby in a thrashed house.
• Hammerspace: Kabutomushi hides her Kabuto Horn halberd folded in half under her shirt, but it's still far too big for it to make much sense. Then there's Geji who hits Oki with a heavy filled sock that she was still wearing on the previous page. And also Sasori, who hides a scorpion tail larger than herself under her coat.
• Happiness in Slavery: Oki, after her Heel–Face Turn. It helps that Alice isn't remotely interested in having a slave, and just treats her as a friend instead. Sara also feels this way about Kuramoto.
• Hard Work Hardly Works: Having fought alone in wars during her whole life, Dinoponera expected to find a kindred spirit in Alice, but becomes enraged upon finding out she only recently became an assassin and despite this was able to master her ability in a couple of weeks.
• Heel–Face Turn: 'Cockroach' Oki, the Psycho Lesbian assassin, would be the most obvious example (and overlaps somewhat with High-Heel–Face Turn), though Yoriko, the Alpha Bitch who befriends Alice after the latter saves her life, serves as a less extreme case. Geji also tries to help Alice and Oki after she's defeated.
• Hell-Bent for Leather: For whatever reason Anabachi dresses Goki in a stripperiffic dominatrix costume after brainwashing her. A bonus poster◊ features Alice and Geji in their own bondage getups, plus an unamused Kabutomushi in the background, if you ever wondered what they'd look like in those duds.
• His Name Is...: Suzumebachi gets killed right before he reveals to Alice the identity of the Organization's Boss. Yoriko greets Alice right after, so it's like she just killed Alice's father to be a bitch.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: How Alice has defeated some of the assassins thus far.
  • Kamakiri (Praying Mantis) is made into stabbing his chest with his scythes.
  • Hibiki gets bounced back into a wall while peforming his strongest flying kick. He feels ashamed enough over it to admit defeat.
  • Amenbo (Water Strider) is held underwater and drowned, though she holds long enough underwater for help to arrive.
  • Despite her best efforts to defeat Alice, Dinoponera still gets tangled up and is forced to stab her own leg.
  • Ginyanma fails to snipe Alice and this reveals her position, leading her to get sniped by Alice's magical knife in return.
  • Yoriko drops Alice off the school's rooftop, only for Kabutomushi to arrive and blow her off too.
• Hot Springs Episode: The Febuary 2015 short crossover between Arachnid, Caterpillar and Killing Bites had Alice, Gokiburi, Imomushi, Hanakamakiri, Hitomi and Oshie hanging out at a hot spring.
• Hyper-Awareness: Alice, Kumo, Oki, Sasori and Dinoponera have their own ways of feeling the environment around them and instantly countering any attacks.
• Hypocritical Humor: One omake has the author Murata telling Alice and Dinoponera that they can make friends if they are considerate of others' feelings and expand their range of activities. Alice exclaims that Murata must have a lot of friends, which is followed by grim silence from Mr. Animal Motifs Manga.
• I Just Want to Have Friends: Alice has been lonely and shunned by people, Oki doesn't seem completely ok with being alone and hated, and Dinoponera, who also grew alone, would like to meet someone she can symphatize with even though she's too deranged and picky.
• I Know Mortal Kombat: Hibiki based his fighting style on the "Kahen Rider" series, training until he made reliable techniques out of the show's ideas. Riock, on the other hand, took from that show an idea of surviving through brute force alone.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Both Arachnid and Caterpillar are One Word Titles, and named after animals. Each chapter is named after dialogue or monologues said in them.
• Idiot Ball:
  • For a while Alice is made to look like the Arachnid Hunt caught her completely unprepared despite her having heard from Sasori something was going to happen, but she eventually reveals she did spend the past week setting traps everywhere inside the school.
  • Alice carelessly walking into the room Imomushi, Amenbo and Riock are on. Isn't the Kumoito supposed to let her listen to conversations from a long distance?
  • Dinoponera loses her mind while fighting Alice and devolves into trying the same backstab over and over.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Dinoponera repeatedly impales people not necessarily to kill, but to have fun watching them scream because of her stings' "24 to 48 hours of great pain" venom. Alice in particular gets stabbed all over her arms, legs and butt just because Dinoponera was that much pissed off at the time.
• Implacable Woman: Dinoponera steamrolls everyone on her way to meet Alice, completely unharmed by anything she couldn't block or dodge.
• I'm Okay!: Only five "insects" are dead by the 40th chapter, a few of the recurring characters even say so after getting back up from the ground.
• Improbably Female Cast: The Organization sure does have a lot of high school girls under its employ... Played with somewhat, as while there are a decent number of male characters, only a very small few of them manage to stick around after their debut fights and receive any real characterization.
• Improbable Weapon User: If an Organization assassin uses a weapon, it'll be an extremely weird one. Alice's weapon, for instance, is the "Kumoito", or "Spider's Thread", a length of spider-silk with a hooked blade on the end that works rather like a cross between Razor Floss and a Grappling-Hook Pistol.
• Inadvertent Entrance Cue: One scene has Imomushi stating she didn't necessarily come to Alice's school to fight her but is interested on the reward on her head. Cue awkward silence as Alice enters the room.
• Insane Troll Logic: Most of the characters seem to sort of do things arbitrarily to maximize conflict and suffering for Alice.
• Insect Queen: Sara, who is Army Ant-themed, can dominate weak-willed people and is followed around by brainwashed minions. Turns out she's tasked with guiding them, but isn't the one doing the brainwashing...
• Insistent Terminology: Spiders are always referred to as "arachnids" as if they were the only ones, leading to odd sentences when the narrator has to talk about scorpions at the same time.
• Instant Expert: The defining trait of Congenital Excessive Concentration is not the "time-stopping" concentration, but this trope instead. Alice learned all the assassination skills Kumo ever knew in only two weeks.
• Involuntary Group Split: When a bunch of assassins invade Alice's school to kill her, all she wants is to get her friends out of there, but they keep getting separated for some reason or another. It is then subverted in that the splits weren't involuntary at all — Kuramoto and Yoriko were responsible for the Arachnid Hunt and wanted Alice trapped inside the school.
• Irony: The two times Oki told an opponent to be her slave, she became enslaved instead.
• It's Personal: Hibiki hates Alice because she killed Kumo. At first he doesn't realize Kumo forced her to do that, but even after Alice tells him he considers her an enemy.

J-R

• Japanese Beetle Brothers: Kabutomushi is a girly, intense and incredibly strong rhino beetle lady. Caterpillar has four Stag Beetle-themed people trying to pick on her and Blattodea introduces a ladybug girl to complete the trope's typical trio.
• Justice Will Prevail: Having watched a little too much tokusatsu shows, Hibiki claims to fight for justice and love, and regards his opponents as evil.
• Kiai: Hibiki repeatedly shouts "LOVE" while stomping people and Dinoponera laughs madly when pummeling faces.
• Kick the Dog:
  • Rape attempts for the heck of it cover over half of the series' antagonists. Even a guy like Hibiki who is a justice-obsessed Knight Templar and who emulates a guy who wouldn't rape or brutalize his victims attempts to get Oki and Alice raped.
  • Dinoponera kills a poor employee of Alice's school for no reason when she greets Kabutomushi, showing that for all of her talk of wanting friends, she's an unreasonable bitch who feels contempt for normal people. She's also excessively cruel to Alice when she discovers the spider girl's cheesy Instant Expert skills.
• Killing Intent: When in danger, Alice puts all her focus on how she can kill or at least terrify her enemies. Only Suzumebachi gets her afraid enough to flee once.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: The cover for Volume 11 depicts Sasori with her surprise scorpion tail. Volume 12's cover heavily hints at a big plot twist, but at least it had already been revealed in the end of the previous volume.
• Limited Wardrobe: Alice pretty much stays in her school outfit.
• Little Miss Badass: Alice, Oki, Kabutomushi, Geji, Dinoponera, Hanakamakiri and also Imomushi in her childhood.
• Mad Scientist: Jigabachi, who develops brainwashing devices and installed the mechanical tail on Sasori.
• Major Injury Underreaction: People who get injected with Dinoponera's venom seem to endure it impressively well after a few moments of thrashing and screaming. Word has it that real life dinoponera or paraponera venom hurts like hell for around 8 hours and lasts for over a day. Dinoponera claims her venom is worth a thousand stings, so its understandable for her to be surprised at how tough her fellow bug assassins turn out to be.
• Male Gaze: Lots of it. A particular case is how Dinoponera lacks nudity scenes but gets a lot of focus on her devilish lips.
• The Man Behind the Man: Sara is behind Suzumebachi but Kuramoto is behind her— no wait Suzumebachi is actually behind them both. And behind him is the real Organization boss, Yoriko.
• Manly Gay: Hibiki, a tough guy who is very passionate about his obsessions and how he loved Kumo.
• Martial Pacifist: Despite her killing instinct, Alice would rather not murder anyone and fights only to protect herself and the few friends she has.
• Mercy Kill: Alice does this to Kumo after she's forced to fatally wound him.
• Missing Mom:
  • Alice's mother, who was supposedly Driven to Suicide after too much stress.
  • Apparently, Yoriko's mother died while giving birth and her father is always away.
  • Dinoponera's mother died from gunshot wounds while protecting her baby daughter.
• Mood Whiplash: The tone of the story and how seriously it takes itself varies a lot from chapter to chapter.
• My Kung-Fu Is Stronger Than Yours: Or rather, "my bug motif is better than yours". Battles will always have the narrator describing the qualities of the antagonist's bug motif while Alice's having a bad time, and this is followed by her triumphant counter attack being compared to a certain spider species that preys on the antagonist's bug.
  • When it turns out Alice and Dinoponera have similar abilities, Alice's victory comes from analyzing how Dinoponera works up her focus and not only copying it, but also instantly improving on it.
• Near-Death Experience: This trope tends to trigger the killer in Alice, while Dinoponera is shown on a flashback awakening her own super concentration technique to survive an ambush, at a very young age.
• Near-Villain Victory: The Boss nearly kills Alice by throwing her off the roof of the school, but Kabutomushi kills her and Oki saves Alice. Even so, Japan is still torn apart even worse than the Boss planned in the following year.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The zombie apocalypse is Alice's fault as she, under threat of rape-induced brainwashing, was the one who executed the Army Ant Queen rather than defeating her non-lethally beforehand despite knowing in advance that she was evil. As she finds her efforts to save her supposed friends were a waste of time, she flat out declares she'd rather let the apocalypse happen than join her enemies and let them control her any further. Also, Gokiburi assures Alice that she shouldn't blame herself, as the Organization would have caused the incident no matter what.
• No Ending: Both Arachnid and Caterpillar end with little closure, with the latter having more of a Sequel Hook that would lead into Blattodea years later.
• No-Sell: Dinoponera seems immune to blunt damage. She gets blown away by a kick to the face and then just stands up with a smirk. After this she gets stomped countless times and just gets a bit embarrassed, without damage even to her clothes.
• Not Just a Tournament: The Arachnid Hunt involves starting a zombie outbreak fueled by rape to allow the Organization to kill half of Japan's population. The Boss, who had manipulated Alice's whole life, attempts to force Alice into becoming her final Suzumebachi servant. Suzumebachi and Hanakamakiri were plotting to make Alice the new Boss, and Blattodea reveals Kirigirisu also had plans of his own that required both Alice and Sasori to live.
• Not What It Looks Like: After Oki defeats Geji, she undresses her to take her clothes, since Oki had been dressed on a dominatrix getup by Digger Wasp. Alice, who didn't know anything, finds her doing this and gets disturbed. Because she's jealous.
• Nuclear Weapons Taboo: Gleefully averted. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are said to have been arranged to the advantage of the Japanese goverment secretly led by the Organization Boss and, in Caterpillar, the Ageha cruise ship is nuked to cinders when the nuclear reactor within Osamu Tezuka's body is destroyed.
• Older Than She Looks:
  • Kabutomushi is heavily implied to be an adult in a teen's body. How and why she's like this isn't fully explained even in the prequel, but it might have something to do with her cyborg-esque enhancements.
  • Once Yoriko reveals herself as the Boss, she claims she's a hundred years old because of the neoteny traits of female strepsiptera.
• Once an Episode: The National Geographic commentary on bugs happens on nearly every chapter, bordering on self-parody when used in response to a character doing something mundane or silly.
• Once More, with Clarity:
  • Some scenes involving Kuramoto are later retold from her perspective, showing what her true intentions were. One in particular shows her in the position of the person she claimed to be her abuser.
  • One early flashback is framed as Yoriko thinking back to when her father left her, but that actually was her adopted son. This is portrayed awkwardly, however, in that the second scene has reversed dialogue between Yoriko and the man next to her when it doesn't make sense for Yoriko to be an Unreliable Narrator to herself.
• The One Guy: Hibiki is basically the only male character who manages to stick around and continue contributing to the plot after his first defeat, as well as one of the very few with any remotely heroic characteristics. Even then, he's still just as after Alice's head as anyone else in the Organization is, so his status as a protagonist is circumstantial at best.
• One-Word Title: Arachnid, Caterpillar and Blattodea are the names of the main entries in the series.
• Only Sane Man:
  • The story insists Alice is the ultimate killing machine and that she would have grown to be a maniacal murderer no matter what, but unlike nearly everyone else she isn't beyond reasoning, constantly worries about the danger she poses to her "friends" and even at her worst only kills people who had it coming and when she can't avoid it.
  • Kumo is noted for being unusually professional among his peers, but even then he's a Death Seeker who makes a girl whom he thought of as his daughter kill him.
  • Kabutomushi is a ruthless Sadist Teacher, but she's also surprisingly nice and reliable.
• Orwellian Retcon:
  • When Dinoponera first appears, she's walking around with a stern look while Sara freaks out about how dangerous she supposedly is. She greets Imomushi with a similarly deadpan expression, but that was changed to a smug smirk in the volume print seemingly to make the transition from what she looked like to her psycho-Genki Girl personality less jarring. One can wonder if they didn't actually decide to pull a 180º change on her character at the last minute, given even her early artwork was pointing to her being no-nonsense.
  • The volume prints censored the gruesome murder of Sasori's parents and removed swastikas from scenes where Nazis are mentioned. There's some other minor art changes and at least one modified line in there too. Ginyanma's bullets, for instance, originally looked organic but were redrawn to look technological instead.
• Otaku: Hibiki and Riock are obsessed about the Kahen Rider show. Dinoponera doesn't go about it like them, but is still rather disappointed that Japan isn't populated with magical girl warriors like in the Sailor-Force anime she watched as a kid.
• People Puppets: Alice can trap people with her threads to force them to move against their will. And if she happens to be paralysed, she can pull herself around too. She calls it "Marionette del Ragno" in chapter 49.
• It's Personal with the Dragon: Alice believes she can make the Organization collapse if she kills Suzumebachi, who turns out to be her own father.
• Police Are Useless: As per usual for a setting with a omnipotent secret crime syndicate.
• Posthumous Character:
  • Kumo dies early on the main story, but his lessons and commentary on some characters' abilities is remembered by those who knew him.
  • Alice's mother and Imomushi's sister, whose deaths motivate them.
• Professional Killer: The insect-themed assassins. For a given value of "professional", anyway.
• Psycho Lesbian: Gokiburi sets a standard when she tries to make Alice her slave and tells her to crawl naked around the school. After being defeated, Goki makes an effort to build a relationship with Alice and becomes a good friend, but not so secretly wishes she could just flat out rape her as soon as she can.
• Quest for Sex: Arachnid and Caterpillar end with Alice and Hanakamakiri leaving their partners Gokiburi and Imomushi. The latter two swear to find and shag them even if they need to rape them.
• Rape as Drama: Sexual assault is a constant in Arachnid, with several female characters having attempted or successful rape in their backstories and a few becoming unhinged and attempting to get others raped as well.
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: A lot of the bug assassins cement themselves as evil by attempting to rape someone or get them raped by someone else. They are also the ones most likely to fall victim to some Cruel and Unusual Death later.
• A Rare Sentence: The term "Gang-rape Terrorist Attack" is used on a television broadcast of the sex zombie apocalypse that ravages entire cities at the end of the story.
• Really Dead Montage: After Sasori poisons Yoriko to death, Alice cries over her body while reminiscing their times spent together. It doesn't stick. For a while. When Yoriko is about to die for real, Alice goes over the same thoughts, regretting how things have turned out.
• Recycled In Space: Arachnid is a Denser and Wackier Jackals. Caterpillar is much of the same except it is set on a cruise ship. And then came Killing Bites, Himenospia and Choubu no Shinobi, which all have similar plots and carry the animal fun facts narration format Arachnid started.
• Reused Character Design:
  • Alice Fujii is designed as a look-alike of Turis Flag from Jackals and wields the same kind of weapon as her. In fact, the earliest pilot for Arachnid was a side story to that series about Turis. Alice then became the base for Pure Inui in Killing Bites and Himeno Endou in Himenospia.
  • Caterpillar has a very odd one — an official illustration shows the Organization's assassin ranking in detail, and among the characters is one who's never seen in either Caterpillar or Arachnid: Oda Nobunaga as he's presented in Choubu no Shinobi.
• Rooftop Confrontation: Alice fights her master and father figure Kumo on the top of a building. At the end of the Arachnid Hunt, she confronts her evil disappeared biological father, Suzumebachi, on the rooftop of the Ouran High School.
• It Runs on Nonsensoleum: The series presents its world's fixation on bugs and the existence of bug-themed mutants as something so completely ordinary that it's not worth delving into. Other than Kabutomushi and her implanted armor, most of the characters don't seem enhanced. But even when their tricks are just plain supernatural, they're able to do them because they somehow fit in their insect motif, without any further explanations other than "they did special training".

S-Z

• Sacred First Kiss: Alice laments how her first kisses were stolen by her rapist uncle and a crazy girl who wanted to kill her. Her long french kiss with Kuramoto doesn't yield any good memories, either.
• Sailor Fuku: Dinoponera likely wears one either because she assumes that's how japanese schoolgirls dress or just because she likes looking like a Sailor Scout.
• Scary Scorpions: Sasori revels in paralyzing and torturing people to death with her poisons.
• School Bullying Is Harmless: Alice tries to downplay the horrible bullying she suffered from various classmates when Kuramoto asks her about it, unknowingly earning her ire as Kuramoto herself had a past of being bullied and raped and couldn't stand to see Alice attempting to be happy with her lot in life.
• Sequel Hook: Arachnid and Caterpillar close with several loose ends and an The End of the Beginning situation, as the Organization starts a zombie apocalypse in Japan to curb the country's population and start some sort of utopia. It is shown Suzumebachi and Hanakamakiri were plotting for Alice to become the new Boss and start an utopia. Kabutomushi and Gokiburi are then shown looking around for the missing Alice after an unknown amount of time has passed.
• Serious Business:
  • Somehow, this Organization of hardened assassins ended up all bug themed because they all simply like bugs. One character even claims that determining which insect is the strongest is mankind's greatest question, though we never quite see if the entire world really is like that.
  • Hibiki and Riock fight over who is best fit to be a real-life Tokusatsu hero. That the in-universe equivalent of Shotaro Ishinomori is a bug assassin and Imomushi's master does give them validation.
• Sex for Solace: At the end of the series, Gokiburi plans to "comfort" a depressed Alice and is actually willing to flat out rape her if that's what it takes but is ditched without a word. Alice monologues that she actually wouldn't mind letting the roach have her way, but is afraid of eventually going insane and killing her for whatever reason.
• Shadow Archetype: From her looks to personality, backstory and abilities, Dinoponera is pretty much Alice with a more physical fighting style and whose lonely background as a child mercenary made her mean and deranged.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: The story spends over 2 volumes on Dinoponera's time as the primary antagonist and her stupidly violent attempts to make friends. But despite all that focus Dinoponera doesn't really affect the story in any way and after Alice defeats her, she doesn't get to reason with and befriend Dino or beat some sense into her or anything. Instead, Sasori ambushes Dinoponera and gets her gang raped by the army ant students. And then she's never seen again, making her participation in the plot depressingly pointless.
• Shameless Fanservice Girl: Geji gets her clothes stolen by Goki but doesn't complain much. She doesn't want to walk home on her undies, though.
• Shoo Out the Clowns: The entire supporting cast gets Put on a Bus by way of being cornered by a mob of zombie-like brainwashed students who want to rape them, so Alice has to fight through Sasori, the Army Ant Queen and Suzumebachi all on her own.
• Shout-Out:
  • Alice's origin story involves her uncle being killed.
  • The Kahen Rider and Sailor-Force shows within a show.
  • Geji looking and to some extent acting like Tomoko Kuroki is adressed in a parody side chapter.
  • One bookstore bonus poster for Arachnid depicts Alice wearing a black sailor fuku and with a yo-yo in hand.
  • The final chapter is set 28 days after the sex zombie apocalypse begins.
• Shown Their Work: The series incorporates the behaviors and characteristics of real-life bugs into the assassins and they're pretty accurate too. In fact, there are sections where the narrator explains these to the audience and they wouldn't be out of place in a National Geographic Channel documentary. Caterpillar in particular has some interesting trivia about obscure bugs.
• Skyward Scream: Alice screams in despair after she kills Kumo.
• Smug Smiler: A frequent expression on female antagonists such as Sasori, Geji and Dinoponera.
• Smug Super: Each insect assassin is more arrogant than the last. They also tend to get messed up very badly by Alice, who herself has done epic boasts on how spiders are the pinnacle of arthropodkind.
• Somewhere, an Entomologist Is Crying: The series greatly exaggerates insect qualities for the sake of justifying the superpowers of the assassins. And unlike how all the enemies are based on a specific species, Alice jumps all over the place when analogies are made. One chapter she's an Araenid, the next she's a Salticid.
• Spiders Are Scary:
  • Alice normally is a gentle and kind girl, but in battle she becomes much colder and creepier. With her spider threads, she can garrote and hang her victims from out of nowhere.
  • Alice's master Kumo is said to have been one of the coldest and most efficient killers in the Organization.
• Spotlight-Stealing Squad: Dinoponera is pretty much the Villain Protagonist of volumes 8 to 10. She gets abruptly written out afterwards in a quite horrible way, but Blattodea actually brings her back as a tritagonist.
• Stockholm Syndrome: Alice starts thinking of her kidnapper Kumo as a father figure while he trains her. Kumo does return the feelings, but still goes through with his plan to make her kill him.
• Story-Breaker Power: Alice's a Crazy-Prepared Instant Expert with razor-sharp reflexes and a Razor Floss tool that is guaranteed to snatch up her enemies no matter what. She pretty much handles everything by herself and tanks a ludicrous amount of damage until the end. It's no wonder Alice loses the Kumoito at the end, and even then it's because she uses it as a bullet to snipe an enemy miles away from her. Despite this, it doesn't feel like her odds of single-handedly beating a zombie apocalypse with her bare fists and a shovel have lowered at all. The author acknowledges this in the afterword for the final volume, stating Alice became too invincible to be the main heroine any longer, and that he started thinking about what kind of bug could take her place in a future sequel.
• Strong Ants: Some antagonists are ant-themed and have some of the associated quirks.
  • "Army Ant" Sara is helpless in battle but turns the entire student body of her school into her brainwashed minions who eventually bring Japan to ruin.
  • Dinoponera comes equipped with poisoned stings and is shown to be greatly strong, fast and resistent.
• Super Drowning Skills: Alice can't swim. Good thing her sports teacher Shinobu is willing to help her learn, huh?
• Super-Scream: While bored from fighting Hibiki, Dinoponera suddenly stuns everyone in the corridor with a loud scream. She does it again later to escape after being defeated by Alice, but Kabutomushi isn't affected and almost crushes her.
• The Syndicate: The nameless Organization, which targets people they deem worthless to take over their identities and commodities. Their main purpose is to regulate the world's population. They also pick people who have nothing to live for and turn them into cold-blooded assassins with bug motifs. And of course, they have much control over the world and are untraceable.
• "Take That!" Kiss: Dinoponera suddenly hops near Alice and kisses her, telling her to pay attention. The motionless Alice's stunned, blushing expression speaks volumes, especially considering what her previous kiss was like. However, Dinoponera is a very danguerous person trying to pick a fight with her and Oki is right there screaming in rage. Dinoponera then notices Oki and just happily glances at her. It's made even more awkward by how not long before this Alice had accused Oki of cheating on her.
• Talk to the Fist:
  • Hibiki starts a heated argument against Riock over who between the two of them is worthy of the Kahen Rider title but Riock quickly sucker punches him through a wall.
  • Alice brags to Dinoponera she just needs two or three days to surpass her concentration power. Dinoponera defensively crosses her gauntlets and cries that she won't even give Alice the chance, but is interrupted by her own blade suddenly being forced by strings into her leg.
• That Was Not a Dream: After Alice brings Oki home, she dreams about the roach girl sweating oil to bypass the sound detection of her thread and then shooting Yoriko to death. Alice wakes up to see that Oki really escaped from her with that bizarre method... but only to play with Alice's panties.
• These Hands Have Killed: Alice may be determined to kill when necessary but feels guilt over it.
• This Is Reality: At one point Alice is at a villain's mercy and can only hope for somebody to conveniently appear to save her, but reality isn't that easy, says the villain. Guess what follows.
• Thousand-Yard Stare: In the beginning of the story, Alice is seen hyperfixating on a dictionary page for the kanji 想起/souki that translates to "remember" with a blank look on her face. She then monologues about her mother's supposed suicide, which she has Repressed Memories about.
• Time Stands Still: Alice and Dinoponera can freeze time by thinking really hard, or at least their perception of time is what slows down. They're able to teleport around at the drop of a hat, but aren't immune to people attacking them quickly enough.
• Too Powerful to Live: The excuse Kumo uses to fight Alice to the death.
• Took a Level in Badass: Alice every now and then.
• The Ugly Guy's Hot Daughter: The cutesy Dinoponera to Fat Bastard Paraponera, but she's adopted.
• Un-person: The Organization owns all records of their members' existances and will erase those if they die. Alice refuses to join them to avoid being subjected to this.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: A sizable number of the villainous bug nutjobs get a miserable backstory to explain why they had to work for the Organization to keep living, but on occasion it turns out they were sadists even as children.
• Voodoo Shark:
  • It is eventually explained the Kumoito can do everything it does because it is a Living Weapon. This ends up raising more questions about how it was made, but the story doesn't explain anything beyond that.
  • So Kumo decided to make a suicide by Alice and she would become all helpless and homeless after that had Yoriko not helped her, but wait, some volumes later it is revealed Kumo did hire Kabutomushi to take care of Alice after his death and that she took the task seriously. What was Kabutomushi doing between that and the Arachnid Hunt, then?
• Webcomic Time: Arachnid had 54 out of 72 monthly chapters take place over the course of a single afternoon.
• Wham Line:
  • Prior to the Arachnid Hunt, Suzumebachi saying the Organization boss is lurking in the Ouran school.
  • Dinoponera telling Alice about her Concentration Driving Force is more of a in-universe example, as she had practically spelled it out earlier and her role as an Evil Counterpart/Shadow Archetype look-alike to Alice make her having some sort of Hyper-Awareness ability rather obvious.
  • Sasori telling Alice she's going to die to her poison like her mother did.
  • Yoriko admiting she's the boss and explaining that, among other things, she has lived for over a century.
• Wham Shot:
  • Sasori killing Yoriko from out of literally nowhere, right after Yoriko told Alice she doesn't think badly of her for having killed before.
  • Kuramoto revealing herself as the true Arachnid Hunt mastermind.
  • Suzumebachi looking at a locket with a picture of his daughter and ex-wife— a baby Alice and her mother.
  • Yoriko coming back from her supposed death with uncertan motives.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Arachnid and Caterpillar both leave the fates of several characters unclear and several questions unanswered.
  • Imomushi is knocked out and isn't seen again for the rest of Arachnid. The ending of Caterpillar reveals Hanakamakiri went to the school and brought her back safely right after.
  • We last see Alice fighting off the zombie apocalypse on her own, but as a Sequel Hook in the epilogue Kabutomushi brings up the possibility that she's been captured by the Organization. In the spinoff, we see Suzumebachi had hoped for her to take over the Organization and that he asked Hanakamakiri to support her.
  • Dinoponera, Hibiki and Geji are presumably raped off screen and turned into zombies, but we don't see the results. Amenbo and Riock are likewise unaccounted for.
• The Worf Barrage:
  • Alice often pounces at her enemies like a salticidae spider, but beyond ripping off a chunk of Kumo's neck at the beginning, she always gets knocked away before she can do any harm.
  • Any attempts by Kabutomushi and Hibiki to harm Dinoponera. She dodges through her Kabuto Slide and either blocks or completely shrugs off his Rider Kicks.
• The Worf Effect: All the time. Tough characters are frequently introduced only to get easily beaten up or even killed by the next in line, who then also gets schooled by another person. In detail:
  • Oki claims she's the fastest among the assassins, but gets easily beaten whenever someone turns out to be even a little more danguerous than her. The one character she defeats turns out to be completely disposable.
  • Kabutomushi and Imomushi, as strong as they are, can't harm Dinoponera at all. Dinoponera goes on to casually slap around some other assassins only to lose to Alice and also fall victim to this trope when she meets Sasori.
• Yandere: Played for Laughs when, after befriending Alice, Oki tells her she would kill any boys Alice liked.
• You Killed My Father:
  • Kumo killed Alice's uncle but since he was an abusive asshole who was about to rape her, she doesn't care. However, when Alice figures her mother's suicide must have been staged by the Organization, she vows to kill the ones responsible, which turn out to be her own father, Suzumebachi, who killed his ex-wife with poison he got from Sasori.
  • Imomushi killed Paraponera, who was Dinoponera's foster father. Dinoponera doesn't mind it, apparently glad that her father died in battle against a Worthy Opponent.
• Zombie Apocalypse: The disturbing sex-induced mass brainwashing that happens among the students during the Arachnid Hunt, with the Army Ant Queen as their leader. The situation worsens until the story ends with Alice facing a country-wide rape zombie apocalypse on her own.

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"The "Arachnid Hunt" isn't over. I am Kumo. I have become a single arachnid who, in order to survive this lawless world, in order to live..."