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The true eternal does exist here.

Eternal Fighter Zero is a Doujin Soft Fighting Game made by Twilight Frontier, who are known for other doujin games such as Higurashi Daybreak and Immaterial and Missing Power. Eternal Fighter Zero stars characters from various visual novels made by Key/Visual Arts (and Tactics, before Key split off from them). The original version featured characters from ONE ~To the Radiant Season~ and Kanon. Later versions added characters from Moon and AIR, for a total of 23 unique characters.

The gameplay is based largely off of other popular 2-D fighters, including Street Fighter, Guilty Gear, and The King of Fighters. Several of the characters' stances and attacks can be traced to characters from these games, along with many Shout Outs. This game is also known for its many in-jokes and references to the original visual novels. The game has a large cast, but aside from SNK Boss Kanna, the characters are all very balanced, as tier lists don't really make as much of an impact as most other fighting games

Playable characters:

now with a character page (Under construction).


Provides Examples Of:

  • Actionized Adaptation: It's a fighting game with characters from visual novels that have little to no action.
  • Adaptational Badass: Virtually none of the characters come from stories that have anything to do with combat.note  In EFZ, though, they can all throw down in spectacular fashion.
  • An Ice Person: Shiori Misaka.
  • Ascended Extra:
    • Several of the seconday characters in Kanon (Namely Kaori Misaka, Mishio Amano and Akiko Minase) appeared first as playable characters in subsequent revisions of the game, with Sayuri Kurata being playable from the beginning.
    • Kano Kirishima and Minagi Tohno were given a second chance after they were Demoted to Extra in AIR.
  • Assist Character: Several of them.
    • Akane Satomura can call her friend Shiko to attack her opponent, as a reference to the Striker System in The King of Fighters 99.
    • Mai Kawasumi can call a Cute Ghost Girl with multiple attacks to assist her in battle, as a reference to the Stand system in Jojos Bizarre Adventure.
    • Misuzu Kamio can summon Yukito, the protagonist of AIR, to keep distance, and extend combos.
    • Minagi Tohno fights on par with her best friend Michiru; you control Minagi directly, and Michiru via special moves.
  • Black Magician Girl: Kano Kirishima is able to cast tiered versions of fire, ice and lightning spells to fight. Her powers are also a reference to her wishing for magic in AIR, although it's very likely that becoming a magician, and a strong fighter as a bonus, was not what Kano had in mind.
  • Bloody Murder: Ikumi Amasawa, who uses both her own and her victim's blood for various attacks.
  • Blow You Away: Misaki Kawana.
  • Captain Ersatz: Several of the characters take some of their moves, or even their whole fighting styles, from characters in other games. Most obviously, sweet, innocent Sayuri Kurata uses moves based on Rugal Bernstein!!
  • Changing Clothes Is a Free Action and Cosplay Otaku Girl: Mio Kouduki: Like Kirino in Dengeki Bunko: Fighting Climax, she dons several costumes of characters from other fighting games and animes, and use their moves, such as Kyo Kusanagi, Sakura Kasugano, Akari Ichijo, among others. She goes back to wearing her normal clothes after finishing the move.
  • Clothing Damage: Occurs temporarily when hit by a fire attack; all damage is regenerated when the character hits the ground.
  • Combos: Most notably, using the reinforce gauge to cancel almost any attack.
  • Confusion Fu: Mayu Shiina, who uses animal-like moves, as well as some acrobatic moves: for example, she can do cartwheels in mid-air at (seemingly) random directions, to finally dive kick her opponent, or grab her mid air and pound her into the ground..
  • Cute Bruiser: While the whole cast of characters counts to varying degrees, being cute girls in a fighting game, Kaori Misaka and Doppel Nanase stand out among the rest: The former fights with her unmatched boxing skills, and the latter specializes in grapple moves and hard punches. Rumi Nanase also counts, specially when fighting bare-handed.
  • Demoted to Extra: Yukito, who appears as an Assist Character to Misuzu, very likely reflecting a similar event in AIR.
  • Desperation Attack: Final Memories, which can only be used at less than 1/3 health and with a full super bar.
  • Difficult, but Awesome: The Recoil Guard system, similar to the Parrying in Street Fighter III or the Shielding in Melty Blood; mastering this can make a huge difference in high-level play.
  • Double Jump: All characters have this. It makes sense for Kanna. since all she has to do is flap her wings again. Played straight for the rest of the cast.
  • Drunken Boxing: Parodied with Nayuki Minase, with her sleepy boxing.
  • Extremity Extremist: Kaori with punches and Nayuki with kicks.
  • Family-Unfriendly Violence: EFZ is normally a pretty light hearted and colorful fighting game, but then, we have Ikumi, whose fighting style involves using her victim's blood, and her own blood to power up her attacks, and is the only character able to shed blood. Her command grab, for example, involves stabbing her opponent with her fingers, and creating a small explosion to shed more blood to absorb, and this can be pretty unnerving for some of the younger gamers (Yeah, the blood looks more like ketchup or red paint, and it's so cartoonish and over the top that sometimes it's fun, but still...)
  • Feather Motif: When performing Level 3 supers or Final Memories, White glowing feathers appear for a while surrounding the character.
  • Fire, Ice, Lightning: Kano Kirishima's tiered spells. Her spells are a Shout-Out to the MMORPG Ragnarok Online—The elemental bolts, Soul Strike, Frost Driver, Jupiter Thunder, Storm Gust, etc.
  • Flaming Sword: Mishio Amano's fighting style; she can use the elements of either fire or thunder to enchant her spear and use them for special attacks; her Final Memory enables her to use both at the same time.
  • Flash Step: Mai Kawasumi is able to use this tactic to confuse her opponents. One of her supers starts this way.
  • Harmless Freezing: Shiori Misaka. In general, any ice attack produces this effect.
  • Heavy Sleeper: Nayuki Minase; she actually has two forms: a sleepy form that parodies Drunken Boxing, and an awake form that unleashes a variety of alarm clocks for her "Special Collection" final memory.
  • High-Pressure Blood: Ikumi Amasawa.
  • Iaijutsu Practitioner: Mai is a master of this technique, drawing and attacking at lightning fast speed, and resheathing her sword after each strike. Fighting style-wise, she's pretty similar to Hibiki from The Last Blade, with shades of other iaijutsu practitioners in the mix, such as Johnny and Baiken, for example.
  • Improbable Weapon User: Almost everyone.
  • Kick Chick: Awake Nayuki Minase. Michiru also does most of her fighting with kicks.
  • Lag Cancel: Instant Charges (Or IC for short) can be used to cancel almost any attack, and escape otherwise inescapable situations, it allows not only to reset the frames of the character and extend combos, but also increases the power counter (The amount of increase depends on the color of your RF gauge) to rack up the damage; done correctly, you can deal extremely long and painful combos.
  • Lethal Joke Item: Akiko Minase fights with a formidable array of household items, such as a broom, a vacuum cleaner, a duster, a ladle, a fire extinguisher... even a washing machine!
  • Limit Break: Final Memories can only be performed with less than 1/3 of your life bar, and with three levels of Super; Doppel Nanase is a special case, as she can automatically activate hers only at the last round, and she has to be with less than 1/6 of her life bar.
  • Loading Screen: The game uses a large collection of Fan Art for loading screens.
  • Magic Skirt
  • Magic Wand: Sayuri Kurata has a Magical Girl wand; Kano Kirishima uses a fantasy role-playing game staff.
  • Mental World: The Eternal World is a plot-important location in ONE, located within Kouhei's mind; in EFZ it serves as Unknown's stage, where you fight her boss version.
  • Mirror Match: The game allows a character to fight herself, complete with unique winquotes.
    • A curious case is Misuzu Vs. Kanna; fans of AIR surely know what's wrong with this matchup.
    • And yet another curious case for fans of ONE, Mizuka Vs. Unknown.
    • And for fans of Kanon, Awake Nayuki can fight her sleepy self.
  • Morph Weapon: Sayuri Kurata's magic wand.
  • Moveset Clone: Doppel Nanase is this to Rumi Nanase: Doppel is basically a copy of Rumi when she's fighting bare-handed, as they have the same normal moves, and they even both share a few combos, but aside of that, thay can be easily distinguished: Rumi has a Stance System where she's stronger with her wooden sword, or more combo-friendly when bare-handed (At the cost os some special moves and her Super Armor), and her moveset is distributed accordingly; Doppel fights exclusively bare-handed, and has a good variety of grapple moves and other special techniques. Such differences make this a downplayed example.
  • Musical Assassin: Mizuka Nagamori, can create exploding music notes.
  • My Little Panzer: Unknown uses toys to fight: such as toy knives, plushies, a squeaky mallet, and can also drop a surprise barrel to catch her opponent.
  • Nerf Arm: Rumi Nanase's wooden sword. Interestingly enough, her sword deals more damage than Mai's, despite the fact that Mai is an Iaijutsu Practitioner, and uses a real sword.
  • No Plot? No Problem!: 23 cute characters from diverse visual novels (22 girls and one adult woman note ) are fighting amongst themselves for no particular reason.
  • Original Generation: Doppel Nanase, a presumably evil clone of Rumi Nanase who fights bare-handed; she's the only original creation for the game.
  • Paper Master: Minagi Tohno fights with rice tickets, whether by throwing them, or striking directly.
  • Perfect Play A.I.: Kanna fits this trope quite well at higher difficulties; her AI will block practically everything you throw at her, and her range, attack, speed and priority will rock you when she gets close. Ayu is also able to pull this in highest difficulty.
  • Power Gives You Wings: Ayu Tsukimiya has a winged backpack behind her, whose wings grow to attack her opponent, and to perform air dashes. Ayu herself fully transforms into an angel for her Final Memory.
  • Prehensile Hair: Akane Satomura.
  • Punch Parry: The Recoil Guard, a well-timed block, which enables the player to cancel out any attack from the opponent, take the initiative and start a combo.
  • Puppet Fighter:
    • When playing as Minagi, you actually play as two characters, as you can control Minagi directly, and Michiru via special moves, however, only Minagi can take damage.
    • Also, when playing as Mai, she can summon her ghost partner to appear at any spot of the screen; So, the key with Mai is to control her ghost partner to control space, keep pressure, and keep her opponent guessing where she's going to summon her.
  • Short-Range Long-Range Weapon: Makoto wields a gun as her primary weapon, but only one of her specials (and one super) actually uses the gun as a long-range attack. It doesn't make much sense why her firing the gun straight forward only counts as a close-range attack.
  • Shout-Out: Lots of references to both the original visual novels and to various other Fighting Games. Makoto Sawatari's stage also features CLANNAD in the background, a later Key/Visual Arts visual novel.
    • See Kano Kirishima's spells above. Also, her staff is a special staff from the same game, called a "Mighty Staff."
  • SNK Boss:
    • Kanna: Subverted on difficulties 1 and 2, where she hardly attacks and generally just waits for you to kill her. Played straight on difficulties 3 and 4. You pretty much need to be an EFZ god to beat level 4 Kanna (or use extremely cheap tactics, but even that takes a lot of luck).
    • Unknown, in her boss version, is amazingly fast and her attacks have priority over practically everything; she also has a tendency of filling the screen with giant orbs of energy, and a barrage of huge, vertical lasers that deal big damage. And you can't recoil guard against her at all.
  • Spotlight-Stealing Crossover: Kanon has the most player characters here (10).
  • Stance System:
    • Mio Kouduki has two modes: a Short-Range Mode, which is more like a rushdown style; and a Long-Range Mode, which plays keepaway with her opponent.
    • Minagi's friend Michiru can also adopt two stances following Minagi's command: a normal stance for some special moves; and a "fighting" stance, for enhanced versions of her special moves.
    • Rumi Nanase also counts, as she has two stances, whether she's fighting with her wooden sword, or bare-handed.
  • Symbolic Wings: Ayu with her winged backpack, referencing that she was associated with angels in Kanon, and Misuzu also grows wings to air-dash, guard herself and for some attacks, a reference to the fact that she's Kanna's decendant.
  • Trademark Favorite Food:
    • Akane with waffles, she uses her hair to transform into a huge waffle for one of her specials.
    • Ayu with taiyaki, she rides on a giant taiyaki to strike at her opponent, for her "Taiyaki Assault" special.
    • Nayuki with strawberries: In her sleepy form, she uses strawberry jam to power up her attacks and mobility.
    • Makoto with nikuman (Meat buns), which she uses in her Final Memory to recover some health.
    • Shiori with ice cream, the names of some of her attacks are references to her love for ice cream in Kanon: for example, her ice-beam super is called "It's an ice cream beam", and her Snowball Fight super is called "Wide-Spread Megavanilla cannon".
    • Misuzu uses her favorite juice for some attacks, and to place sticky traps in the air.
  • Trap Master: Fighting style-wise, Misuzu is pretty similar to Testament from Guilty Gear, as she is able to place invisible traps in the ground and sticky traps in the air, as well as use tiered curses to drain her opponent's life bar (The difference is, while Testament uses his own blood, Misuzu uses juice).
  • The Trickster: Makoto's fighting style is a reference to her fondness for pranks, as she uses fireworks in battle, as well as a canister of gas to lock her opponent, leaving her wide open for a combo.
  • Updated Re-release:
    • The game originally featured 12 playable characters, six from One ~ To The Radiant Season (Mizuka, Rumi, Akane, Misaki, Mayu and Mio) and six from Kanon (Ayu, Nayuki (asleep), Makoto, Shiori, Mai and Sayuri), with Unknown as the final boss. This version was later re-released as Eternal Fighter Zero -RENEWAL-.
    • The next version, Eternal Fighter Zero: Blue Sky Edition added Misuzu, Kano and Minagi from AIR, it also marked the debut of Kanna as the True Final Boss, it also turned Unknown in a playable character.
    • Later, Eternal Fighter Zero: Bad Moon Edition, added Ikumi from MOON, Mishio and Kaori from Kanon and Doppel Nanase, plus a little graphic tweaks.
    • Then, in October 2005, Eternal Fighter Zero -Memorial- added Akiko and Awake Nayuki, as well as adding Kanna as a playable character, and moving the reinforce gauge to the lower part of the screen.
    • Much later, a new version was released, named Revival, which enables the game to be run on modern operative systems, without taking the risk of modifying the archives of the game; it also adds a netcode to play online.
  • Winged Humanoid: Kanna's wings are not just for decoration, she knows how to use them in battle.
  • Wrestler in All of Us: Both Rumi and Doppel Nanase have some wrestling moves in their arsenal (Both have, for example, a powerbomb as their grab move).

DOWN! Don't give up. Be prepared for the next round.

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