For all of Monark's focus on horror and it supernatural elements, the parts that hurt the most are how mundane much of the problems and issues of the cast are. This is a broken, twisted world full of broken, twisted people, traumatized and hurt by a cruel, irrational world.
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- The enemy Pactbearers' motivations and reasons for making a Pact with their Monarks in the first place:
- Hayate was once a kind man who wanted to be the sort of man Ryotaro's grandfather Taro was. In pursuit of his dreams, he managed to become the dean of a prestigious academy, only for his family to leave him because of his Workaholic tendencies. Worse, when he lost his position as dean, he lost all his political clout and contracted a crippling, terminal disease. In other words, in living a selfless life for the sake of others, he had no one when the time came he needed someone.
- Subaru is the poster-boy real-life bullying victims taken to a whole new level, targeted for simply "just being there" and being creepy-looking to his classmates, and when his mother saw the state of his clothes, his ruined textbooks, and injuries, she could only weep and apologize for being so weak and poor. Yoru takes further advantage by telling him he's responsible for the anomalies when he made a pact with Ira. Though it was twisted into a murderous revenge streak, his founding Ideal explains he just wanted strength to defend himself and keep his mother from crying again.
- The Tono twins aren't just women scorned because one got dumped by her first boyfriend and said boyfriend dated her twin sister behind her back without even formally telling her they broke up. Their father was cheating on their mother, who stayed with him in a loveless, broken marriage. Further complicating matters was the twins developing incestuous feelings for each other, with Akane unwilling to reciprocate and hurting Sumire's feelings when the latter confessed. It gets further gut-wrenching when, in Act 2 after having their Ideals shattered, Sumire doesn't remember Akane at all, much to Akane's horror and dismay.
- The Pactbearer of Greed is perhaps one of the most sympathetic of the lot. Kakeru lost his younger brother when he promised to take him out on a trip, and spent the next ten years of his life working to become a doctor. Upon making a Pact with Avaritia, he wants to use his new power to rewind time to when he could have prevented his little brother's death, even despite knowing that doing so would cover 20% of the world in Mist. The Vice-President asks if there's any way their confrontation can be avoided, but Kakeru states neither one of them is willing to abandon his Ideals and makes it clear to the protagonist he will not go down without a fight. Not that he would have lasted for very long, as Yoru dealt him a severe injury that hampered his fight with the TSC.
- It turns out, it's not just the Tono twins who were victims of Haruka's womanizing. One of Haruka's exes confronts him while holding a knife, tearfully begging to know why he broke up with her and asks if she just wasn't good enough or she crewed up (her Alter Ego reveals she even had dinner dates planned for the two prior their break-up and tears up every time she looks at it). Haruka at first tries to make half-assed lame excuses why he suddenly dumped her before calling her a nuisance to her face. Haruka tries to justify himself, saying it's what his first girlfriend did to him and he doesn't know why he keeps doing it, but Shinya calls him out on it.
- It's implied during the arc that Haruka might have been genuinely developing feelings for Sumire rather than seeing her as a one-time fling and the two even admitting they weren't all that into each other to begin with. Just when it seems like he finally has the girlfriend he's been waiting for, Akane (secretly posing as Sumire) incinerates him in the Baseball team locker room. Just damn. It doesn't get much better after the Time Loops begin, because Sumire loses all the emotional baggage and memories that drove her to Haruka's arms in the first place, and she calmly tells Akane that she dumped Haruka because she wasn't in love with him after all. Poor guy completely disappears from the overworld, with everyone commenting about what may have broken the unbreakable heartbreaker. Even his now-alive baseball team can only huddle up and swear they're going to find him.
- It becomes a Heartwarming moment when he shows up in the True Ending post-game, alive, well, and swearing off romance and swearing he will dedicate himself to baseball for the foreseeable future. His team members don't buy his noble speech and believe he's just trying to cope with Sumire being the second girlfriend to have dumped him first rather than vice versa, but they support him all the same.
- The game's first four party-member specific endings are an absolute Player Punches, and for good reason. All end with the protagonist dying and the TSC left so traumatized and hurt by their failure to save the Vice-President they are implied to have stayed behind in the Otherworld out of grief. Kokoro's is by far the one that is guaranteed to hurt the most because she gives an Anguished Declaration of Love to the Vice-President as he suffers Cessation of Existence. The worst part? She doesn't even get to finish it, too choked up in grief and shock to fully get the words "love you" out.
- Intermission: Dusk follows after the depressing conclusion of Act of Greed where Sora formally disbands the TSC as the enemy Pactbearers have been dealt with and only the Vice-President, Ryotaro, and Kokoro remain. The Vice-President looks for any way they can avoid fighting each other, but no one is willing to budge an inch. So how does the Intermission end? Trumping Kakeru's death by killing off Chiyo. The Vice-President is so overwhelmed by grief after taking her to the nurse's office, thinking she's still alive, that he collapses and faints in shock. The scene is made far worse by the fact that the Vice-President's lines are voiced, and both Japanese and English tracks do a terribly good job of vocalizing just how bad Chiyo's death is hitting them.Vice-President: No way... This can't be... No... AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!
- Kokoro's backstory is a depressing look into how gifted children can end up suffering as a result of circumstances, their talents and advanced intelligence be damned. Due to a combination of unresolved personal issues, lack of resources for the expensive education and support that Kokoro requires, and social pressure from how Kokoro was isolated from her peers because of how much smarter she is compared to them, Mrs. Surugudai just up and leaves the family, leaving Mr. Surugudai to raise Kokoro alone. Things don't get much better in the friends' department: Kokoro had but one friend who tried to reach out to her, but they ended up getting severely bullied and mocked for being so "average" compared to Kokoro, which eventually leads them to stop being her friend. Kokoro's intelligence managed to propel her to a prestigious college overseas in her early teens... but her severe lack of social skills and all the lingering trauma of being so ostracized and isolated, coupled with her inability to read social cues causing all manner of awkwardness and negative interactions, causes her to drop-out, return to Japan, and enroll in Shin Mikado instead. After being so alienated and unable to connect with anyone despite her strong desire to make friends and be normal, is it any wonder that she initially just wants to live somewhere totally disconnected from the world, where she'll never be hurt or hurt anyone again?
- "Birth of a New World" is just one big Shoot the Dog. She seemingly, finally gets the wish she dearly craved when the Vice-President, in her previous chapter, is willing to remain in the Otherworld with her, and when Sora starts running rampant after she snaps, she forgoes the original plan of staying in the Otherworld and instead wants to continue living with the Vice-President in their world instead. That never comes to pass since the Vice-President ends up Taking the Bullet from her when Sora goes for a Mutual Kill and he ends up disappearing while she's trying to give him an Anguished Declaration of Love. She can't even get out those three beautiful last words before the Vice-President suffers Cessation of Existence right before her eyes.
- Although he had a better upbringing than Kokoro, Ryotaro's life took a downhill turn for the worst when his mother was killed by a collapsed building. While this would understandably hurt anyone who learned or witnessed this, it was especially worse for him because Ryotaro grew up in a family business that specialized in architecture, and more or less witnessed his family's trade claim his mother's life. As his father and older brother were overseas for work and couldn't fly back on such short notice, he was sent to live with his grandfather, Taro, who taught him everything he knew and took him around the world to teach him about the beauty of architecture and distract him from his grief, succeeding in both goals. But, sometime after Taro Date passed away, Ryotaro's father took over the Date Group and began dealing in shady business practices, cozying up to corrupt politicians, and favoring Ryotaro's older brother over him. Ryotaro was so disgusted by what his father and brother were doing to his grandfather's legacy, especially their creating shoddily made "paper houses" for the sake of kickbacks and corruption, that he made a pact with Gula, the Monark of Gluttony, so he could have the power to oust them from their positions and take back the Date Group himself.
- During "Unhinged Darkness", he finally opens up to the Vice-President about his abusive birth parents and all the serious emotional, psychological, and possibly physical trauma they've subjected him to. It all culminates with his birth mother literally begging him to ask all of his relatives to adopt him "if he cared about" his mother, with all of them declining. As he tries to justify the abuse he's gone through as just his birth parents' way of showing their love, the Vice-President cuts through the cognitive dissonance, leaving Shinya reckoning with the fact that his birth parents never loved him and crying as he asks, was it too much for a child to want to be loved by their parents?
- Nozomi, at the start of the game, is not in a good headspace, both because she puts herself down for not doing much to help the students and also because of Kurama's harsh criticisms. When one of her friends tries and fails to get her to do something about Kurama, not aware that they're doing just that but can't tell him about the Otherworld, he coldly remarks about how he shouldn't have expected so much from the person who left her best friend to die. Like Kurama's criticisms, Nozomi just takes the abuse because it's all she can do.
- The process of convincing Nozomi to partner with you so you can start her Act 2 chapter "Shield of Hope" is difficult for more than a few reasons. Out of everyone in the TSC, Nozomi is the one who takes Chiyo's death the hardest, so much that for most of her dialogue with the Vice-President before her Act 2 chapter begins shows her with Dull Eyes of Unhappiness, stating she wished she could have died in Chiyo's place since it's the only thing a "fake" like her is good for.
- Remember how, in "Blind Fool's Hope" it was mentioned Nozomi left her best friend for dead? Well, she reveals the incident, and suffice to say, it was horrifying for everyone involved. Nozomi's best friend, who was the braver and more courageous of the two, went into a park that was supposedly haunted because a bunch of kids bullying Nozomi hid her backpack there. Nozomi waited hours for her friend to return, and when it got dark, she called the police. It turned out the park wasn't haunted, but was inhabited by a serial killer, who murdered Nozomi's friend Hikari. Nozomi blamed herself for what happened, as did Hikari's parents. Is it any wonder she puts herself down or thinks she's a "fake" for trying to emulate her friend?
