On a week-long break from college, Chou Soran visits his old hometown to see the grave of his grandfather, Chou Shakurin. There is a problem: someone stole the body. An attempt to investigate the grave robbery engulfs Soran in the secret conflicts of ki manipulators, the Outsiders.
The family martial arts just so happened to centre around Ki Manipulation, and Chou Shakurin was a very powerful Outsider. Naturally, many factions of Outsiders are very interested in the Chou grandfather and grandson. Not all of the interested parties are friendly, though.
Hitori no Shita: The Outcast (Yi Ren Zhi Xia in China) is a webmanhua written by Dong Man Tang and illustrated by Mi Er. An anime adaptation, a Chinese-Japanese co-production, premiered in July, 2016. It is available streaming on Crunchyroll
. Season 2 aired on January 16 until June 26, 2018.
Tropes in both seasons of this series include:
- Covert Group with Mundane Front: Express Delivery, a plain-looking delivery company, is the public front used by Houhou and Jo San's faction. It is entirely staffed by Outsiders.
- Grave Robbing: The robbery of Chou Shakurin's grave sparks the plot.
- Ki Manipulation: Used by most major characters. You can't be an Outsider if you don't have this ability.
- Ms. Fanservice: Natsuka, usually. Though Houhou and the other female characters have their moments.
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Season 1 Tropes
- Bait-and-Switch: Houhou leans into Soran's face seemingly for a kiss only to transfer her ki techniques to him by touching foreheads.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Compared to Season 2, Season 1 has a few:
- Basically everyone Houhou fought against
- Soran against the zombies
- The battle that eventually led to Chou Shakurin's death
- Flashback: We get scenes of young Soran with his grandfather as well as some of Houhou's past as told by Jo Shou.
- Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: In episode 5, this is applied by Jo Yon against Kenken.
- Male Gaze: The viewers are treated to a view of a knife passing through Natsuka's shirt and some Houhou shower scenes.
- Mercy Kill:As revealed via Ro Ryo's ability, Chou Shakurin gets Houhou to kill him after a long and hard battle with a poison user.
- Mysterious Past: Soran is on his way to find out the truth behind his grandfather's mysterious past as well as that of Houhou's.
- Necromancer: Kenken is a variant, raising and controlling zombies to do her bidding.
- Shirtless Scene: Soran gets a couple, and both are unintentional.
- Sinister Silhouettes: The identity of Zensei's actual leader is set to be revealed in Season 2, so he's blackened for now.
- Training Montage: We get to see scenes of Soran training with his grandfather and scenes of Soran training his Ki with Houhou.
- Virgin Tension: Soran feels this everytime a female tries to break through the chastity seal his grandfather placed on his member for an unexplored reason. It can only be broken through an Act of True Love.
- War Was Beginning: The Raten Taishou in Season 2 is hyped to make Soran join in order to find out the truth of his grandfather's story.
- Welcomed to the Masquerade: Season 1 is all about getting Soran to join the world of the Outsiders and to embrace his identity and heritage.
Season 2 Tropes
- Animation Bump: The increase in budget is pretty obvious for Season 2, especially during the fight scenes.
- Break the Badass: While Outsiders train their abilities and secret arts usually from childhood, there's Always Someone Better.
- Combo Platter Powers: While some Outsiders specialize in only one ability, most consider knowing more than one ability to be useful. As these are martial artists showcasing their skills, here are some examples:
- Mixing Elemental Powers with other techniques, like what Shokatsu Sei and Ouya do in their duel.
- Mixing Ki Manipulation with Soul Power, such as Shoushou with his ability to blow souls out of their bodies and one participant with the ability to separate his soul from his body to directly attack his opponent's soul.
- Weapon users may mix things up with Elemental Powers, Soul Power, Ki Manipulation, and even a combination of some or all.
- Others mix Ki Manipulation with various combined martial arts principles.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Some of the fights are totally one-sided.
- Fake a Fight: That one hilarious "fight scene" with Soran VS Houhou. Bad "Bad Acting" ensues.
- Not Just a Tournament: While the main purpose of the Raten Taishou is to select the Tenshi successor, it's actually a bait laid out by the Ten Elders to lure Zensei, which have been stealing secret arts and causing overall chaos.
- Rope Bridge: Getting to the venue of the Raten Taishou itself involves crossing a deep chasm which forces participants to find their own way across, with this as an option.
- The Chosen Many: Soran eventually finds himself at home with people who have abilities as peculiar as his.
- The Shangri-La: The Raten Taishou is held regularly at the Ryuukosan/Longhushan, a mountainous area with a tourist site for a front.
- Tournament Arc: Basically the entire season focuses on the Raten Taishou, also known as the World Sacrificial Rites tournament which all major characters join.
- To Win Without Fighting: Some contestants just outright surrender before even starting the match while others just don't show up at all. Houhou's enemies surrender to her in the group stage while Soran makes one of his one-on-one opponents default on him, wins against Ouya in an eating contest, and stages a hilariously fake fight with Houhou.
- Riku Rinron's second round pits her against Kumo, who Wouldn't Hit a Girl. Not willing to break his principles, he surrenders once the match begins. Doubles as a small Chekhov's Gun: since Kumo never displayed his abilities in the tournament, the Zensei spies never saw his abilities and had no intel on him when the attack on the Raten Taishou began.
- Treachery Is a Special Kind of Evil: According to Chou Jiei, The Koushin War was caused by the 36 Traitors who defected from various martial arts schools to join Zensei. Plus, Chou Shakurin was one of them.
- Xanatos Gambit: Masterfully pulled off by Chou Jiei with the assistance of the other elders, Express Delivery's Jo San and Jo Yon and Ouya. They set up this year's Raten Taishou with additional perks such as offering Riku Kin's secret art Records of the Stairway to Heaven as a prize to lure the power-grubbing Zensei and offering the truth about Chou Shakurin to make Soran participate and eventually become the Tenshi successor.
- Even pulls off a Failure Gambit to make it so that his disciple Reigyoku gets Riku Kin's secret art, as Soran has different motives.
