Video Game / Touken Ranbu

Touken Ranbu, starting!^note Clockwise from upper left: Kogitsunemaru, Mutsunokami Yoshiyuki, Izuminokami Kanesada, Yamanbagiri Kunihiro, Horikawa Kunihiro, and Mikazuki Munechika

Touken Ranbu (刀剣乱舞, literally "Wild Swords Dance") is a free-to-play browser Card Battle Game developed by DMM and nitro+, featuring an RNG-controlled turn-based game revolving around the Anthropomorphic Personification of historical Japanese objects. Wait, this is sounding suspiciously familiar...

Players assume the role of a sage, referred to as Saniwa, who travels back to the past to destroy an evil that wants to change the course of history. Being a sage, you have the ability to bring inanimate objects to life—in this case, historically famous Japanese swords, all of which take on the forms of handsome young men called Touken Danshi (刀剣男士, literally "Sword Man"). The object of the game is to bring the swords to life, create an army of them, and defeat the enemies. Battles are largely automated and manual actions by the player include smithing, repairing and creating troops.

The game officially launched on January 14, 2015 and is hosted on DMM (the same home of said above-mentioned suspiciously similar game). While being nearly identical to its predecessor save for a few key mechanics (something both fanbases quickly embraced, to the point where this game is considered KanColle's Spear Counterpart), the playerbase exploded to the point where a full-on doujinshi event opened for it only two months after the game's initial opening.

The franchise boasts several manga adaptations (including an official High School AU manga), eight Musical adaptations, eight stage play adaptations and two anime adaptations; one called Touken Ranbu - Hanamaru by Dogakobo which aired as part of the Fall 2016 season, then had a second season in the Winter 2018 season and a movie in 2022, and Katsugeki/Touken Ranbu made by ufotable which aired as part of the Summer 2017 Anime season. There are currently more adaptations for the musicals and stage plays in the works, including solo performances for certain characters.

A live-action movie adaptation was released on January 18, 2019, which saw the major stage play actors reprising their roles despite not taking place in that continuity. A manga adaptation of it was also made, with each chapter being posted up until the movie's release to cover each story.

Touken Ranbu had its first official mixed-media exhibit called "Touken Ranbu - Honmaruhaku -" where visitors could explore the world of the game, first held in Sunshine City, Ikebukuro in January 2017.

A mobile version of the game, Touken Ranbu Pocket, was released on March 1, 2016.

The game received an official English translation on April 27, 2021. It is hosted on Johren.

A Warriors Spin-Off on Nintendo Switch and PC, Touken Ranbu Musou, has been announced, with its release date revealed to be Feburary 17, 2022 on the September 24 Japanese Nintendo Direct. A worldwide release on May 24, 2022 was announced later.

Visit the character page for specific character-related tropes.

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Touken Ranbu features the following tropes:

• Absurdly High Level Cap: While swords have a maximum level cap of 99, the player level can be as high as 300. The Kiwame system plays this trope straight, as it will reset your swords' level to 1, giving players a chance to further raise their swords' already maxed stats.
• Achievement System: The missions act like this, granting you some resources when you fulfill certain objectives. There are separate sections for missions which can only be completed once, daily missions, and monthly missions.
• Anachronism Stew: Despite being swords from varying eras of the past, some of them wear clothing that wouldn't be worn in Japan for decades or centuries.
• Animate Inanimate Object: The swords are technically this, as the player has the power to bring them to life, though they appear completely human. Though they now have human bodies, several lines of dialogue make it clear that the swords don't view themselves as human.
• The Anime of the Game: Both Hanamaru and Katsugeki serve as this for the franchise, though both have different interpretations of how the game world works, similarly to the the various Manga adaptations.
• Anthropomorphic Personification: The characters are all personifications of famous Japanese swords. The younger-looking boys tend to veer into Moe Anthropomorphism.
• Anyone Can Die: Saniwa beware, swords broken in combat will be lost forever if not careful. They can be protected from fatal damage with omamori, but the item itself is one-time-use and can only be otherwise purchased with real money.
• April Fools' Day: Nitroplus' 2017 prank was a fake trailer for the second season of Thunderbolt Fantasy, featuring a puppetified Mikazuki Munechika fighting with Lin Xue Ya over a meat bun as well as a little voice actor fun for Kosuke Toriumi. The 2018 prank had Shang Bu Han face off with Sengo Muramasa, again playing on their shared actor Jun'ichi Suwabe.
• Augmented Reality: The otomo feature released in early 2020, which allows one to take photos with sprites of the swords overimposed on top.
• Badass Adorable: The younger-looking sword boys, like Hotarumaru and Gokotai, are definitely this. Gokotai's Kiwame form leans to the badass side, as he trades in his five tiger cubs for a large adult tiger.
• Barbie Doll Anatomy: Zigzagged, like in all cases of Depending on the Artist, most swords do not have nipples and quite a few of them have no navels as well.
• Bash Brothers: Touken Ranbu gives us a huge amount of duos on the grounds that they have belonged to the same owner (or belonged to two different owners who knew or worked for each other), and/or are actual family and therefore have met or at least know of each other. For example:
  • Hirano and Maeda
  • Taroutachi and Jiroutachi
  • Mikazuki and Kogitsunemaru.
  • Izuminokami and Horikawa.
  • Honebami and Namazuo
  • Imanotsurugi and Iwatooshi.
  • Kiyomitsu and Yasusada.
  • Ookurikara and Mitsutada.
  • Oodenta and Sohayanotsurugi
  • Higekiri and Hizamaru
  • Tonbokiri and Muramasa
  • Hizen and Nankai
  • Suishinshi and Kiyomaro
  • Jizō and Kokin
• Belly Buttonless: Depending on the Artist, but most swords' Awakening sprites show their navels despite not being born from wombs.
• Bishōnen: Most of the swords are this.
• Breaking Old Trends: The One-Steve Limit was broken with the introduction of Yamanbagiri Chougi in Jurakutei 2018.
  • In 2019, an entirely new sword class, the Tsurugi, was introduced after 4 years. They apparently serve as a support class for teams.
• Cast Full of Pretty Boys: You bring swords to life, and they all take the forms of good-looking men or cute boys.
• Cast Herd: Due to the size of the cast, this was inevitable. In fandom, cast herds usually depend on sword types or who historically made them/wielded them. Popular examples include:
  • Shinsengumi swords, swords that belonged to the Shinsengumi.^note As of writing this, swords include: Kashuu Kiyomitsu, Yamatonokami Yasusada, Horikawa Kunihiro, Izuminokami Kanesada, Nagasone Kotetsu. Occasionally, Mutsunokami Yoshiyuki is included as he belonged to Sakamoto Ryouma, who clashed with the Shinsengumi.
  • Dategumi, swords that belonged to the Date clan.^note Tsurumaru Kuninaga, Shokudaikiri Mitsutada, Ookurikara, Taikogane Sadamune. Occasionally, Kasen Kanesada and Sayo Samonji are included with them, having once belonged to the Hosokawa clan which had close relations with the Date clan.
  • Odagumi, swords that belonged to Oda Nobunaga.^note Heshikiri Hasebe, Souza Samonji, Yagen Toushirou, Fudou Yukimitsu.
  • The Awataguchi swords, swords that were forged by Awataguchi Yoshimitsu, Awataguchi Kuniyoshi, or Awataguchi Kunitsuna.^note All of the Toushirou brothers including Hakusan Yoshimitsu and Ichigo Hitofuri; Nakigitsune; Onimaru Kunitsuna.
  • The Gou swords.
  • The Tenka Goken, a group of five swords renown for their beauty and the legends surrounding them.^note Mikazuki Munechika, Juzumaru Tsunetsugu, Oodenta Mitsuyo, Onimaru Kunitsuna, and the yet-unreleased (as of writing this) Doujigiri Yatsusuna.
• Cast of Personifications: The aim of the game is gathering various Japanese swords and give them life and human forms - as pretty boys, that is. Specifically, they're the swords used by various historical Japanese figures, particularly the Sengoku era, such as Date Masamune or Oda Nobunaga, and brings with them characteristics and history of each swords in question (along with their former owners).
• Character Roster Global Warming: While plenty of new swords have been added, the number of ootachi has stayed at just 4. It wasn't until December 2018 that the developers teased a new oodachi.
• Cherry Blossoms: A very common motif in this game. The loading bar is in the shape of a cherry blossom, a sword's rarity is represented by a number of petals, and when a sword reaches toku status (level 20 or 25, depending on the sword) they'll have petals blowing in the breeze behind them.
• Chromosome Casting: Being a Cast Full of Pretty Boys, this is expected. Played Straight in most of the adaptations as well but averted in the live-action movie adaptation in which that citadels Saniwa is a little girl.
• Clap Your Hands If You Believe: An odd variation. Given that the Saniwa is able to bring inanimate objects, swords in this case, to life, one would think that the corporeal swords would have to exist somewhere, even if in the present they are currently lost or don't exist (such as Hotarumaru or Kogitsunemaru). However, when Imanotsurugi leaves for his Kiwame training, his letters reveal that he didn't really exist in history, implying that swords can be revived even if they just exist in legend, despite never being real in the history in-game.
• Clothing Damage: Like in Kantai Collection, this is a visual representation of how much damage the swords take (though unlike in KanColle, Bloodless Carnage is averted, since the swords do bleed as well). Major damage will make their clothes dirty and slightly torn in places, but their Awakening modes will ruin their clothes even more, sometimes resulting in Shirtless Scenes, usually seen as torn, open shirts. This aspect is intensified in Kiwame forms, where all swords' Awakenings result in proper Shirtless Scenes regardless of how damaged their clothes got originally.
• Combat Medic/Healing Hands: In February 2019, Hakusan Yoshimitsu of the Tsurugi class, the only sword capable of healing in combat, was introduced. His Shingi feature allows him to restore HP of anyone but himself..
• Common Crossover:
  • The game has frequent crossovers with KanColle in fanart, due to being made by the same developers and hosted on the same site, not to mention their gameplay being near-identical and Tourabu being considered KanColle's Spear Counterpart due to all these factors. Fanworks of this crossover is tagged "TouKan Love" (刀艦らぶ)
  • Shinken!!, also hosted by the same website, often gets crossed over with Tourabu as well. The crossover is done so often that it's garnered the Pixiv tag "Shinken Ranbu".
  • Oshiro Project sometimes gets folded into the mix when they want to depict the swords with the castles they historically protected.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: The types of troops that can be equipped by your swords are limited by their sword types, but enemy swords can equip any troop, regardless of type.
• Costume Porn: The swords' clothes are consistently detailed, even though the characters are drawn by multiple different artists. Some outfits reference the sword's or the sword's master's history. Exaggerated in their Kiwame forms .
• Color-Coded Characters: For the Sanjou swords in particular, this seems to be a running motif. Mikazuki Munechika is blue, Kogitsunemaru is orange, Ishikirimaru is green, Iwatooshi is purple, and Imanotsurugi is red/pale blue ( but mostly classed as red ). Sata3, Mikazuki Munechika and Kogitsunemaru's official artist even highlighted this in her third year anniversary art for them.
• Crossover: A few in different forms. The game had a collaboration with Cardfight!! Vanguard in 2016 ( With Touken Ranbu - Hanamaru following suit in 2017), a fight between Rin Setsua and puppet Mikazuki Munechika (and the following year, Shang Bu Huan against Sengo Muramasa) as an April Fools joke in 2017-8 with Thunderbolt Fantasy, and one of the Anime adaptations, Katsugeki/Touken Ranbu, having crossed over with Granblue Fantasy in September of 2017.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Despite this game being extremely similar to KanColle, players of both games are suspect to get thrown off by the minor differences, the most significant probably being that while in KanColle, ships can only be taken down if they're sent forward in critical damage, in this game - to the horror of some unsuspecting saniwa - swords can be destroyed at theoretically any degree of damage provided certain factors.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Most swords have violent and tragic background histories, which is understandable, considering that they are weapons.
• Depending on the Writer: Practically everything about Touken Ranbu as a franchise runs on this trope, from the characterization of the swords (though their vague in-game characterization is always used as a "starting point"), to how they interact with each other, to how the citadel operates. Even whether Konnosuke is actually a talking fox, can speak at all, or is a robot varies on the adaptation, if he shows up at all. The main thing every portrayed citadel has in common is the basic plot line of personified swords fighting to protect history, but everything else seems to be fair game. Even then, some adaptations don't focus on that in favor of portraying everyday life in the citadel.
• Dem Bones: The enemies are typically accompanied by bone-like creatures.
• Double Meaning: Tonbokiri's quote about people's misconceptions of Muramasa can be viewed as him talking about both the man who forged him and his similarly-named uchigatana contemporary.
  "Many misunderstand, but Muramasa is not a bad person."
• Dress-Coded for Your Convenience: While not for the sake of telling heroes and villains apart, you can often tell which swords are from the same schools, the same masters and etc. by the clothes they wear, as they tend to have similar motifs exclusive to that group. Several examples can be made for:
  • Sanjou Swords: Their outfits are color coded, all wear traditional horse riding hakama with a gray to white ^note  or white to gray gradient on them, neckguards and their outfits overall are more traditional compared to other swords due to these swords being forged in the Heian Era.
  • Awataguchi Swords: The most distinguishable sword family due to their outfits appearing to be more like military uniforms.
  • Sadamunes: All have primarily white motifs for their attire.
  • Osafune: All wear suits and appear to be suave in appearance. They also have a bit of asymmetry, with one pauldron on one side of their body.
  • Miike: Wear grey suits with gold accents, especially gold leg armor.
  • Muramasas: Have similar purple/white sleeveless clothes, as well as a fully black kimono for casual wear.
  • Kunihiros: They wear a navy blue pinstriped shirt and grey pants, though how they wear them is more customized to their tastes. All of them share a red track suit in their casual outfits.
  • Samonjis: All wear traditional clothes, as well as a shroud matching their motif color.
• Dude Looks Like a Lady: Several characters, but Midare Toushirou is the best example. This especially goes for his Kiwame form, where he looks notably girlier.
• Early-Bird Cameo: The Mikazuki Munechika puppet seen in the 2017 April Fools' Day joke made a brief appearance at the Nitro+ booth in the 2016 winter Wonder Festival.
• Every Japanese Sword is a Katana: Averted. The game features several different kinds of Japanese swords and makes clear differences between sword types, ranging from their stats, combat mechanism, availability to equip troops, smithing time, and many more.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Most of the swords address the Saniwa as either Master (主, aruji or 主君, shukun) or General (大将, taishou).
• Excuse Plot: The "Go back in time to prevent historical revisionists from changing the course of history" backstory is more or less an excuse to make cute boys fight for you in a Jidaigeki setting. However, the game has less of the No Plot? No Problem! aspects of its predecessor, KanColle (for example, while in Kancolle the nature of the shipgirls' origins are extremely vague, to the point that various official sources have different explanations for what they are, Tourabu makes it very clear that the swordboys are swords that have been brought to life and they don't consider themselves human).
• Ensemble Cast: The adaptations tend to do this, namely Touken Ranbu: Hanamaru and the musicals which focus on a different set of swords each episode/time. The manga adaptations tend to follow this trend as well.
• Field Power Effect: Beginning in world 6, the game introduces different types of maps which give advantages and disadvantages to certain types of swords and troops.
  • Night battles: Tantou and wakizashi are buffed; tachi, ootachi, yari, and naginata are nerfed. All swords have a chance at evading long-range attacks (only Kiwame tantō can do this in daytime battles).
  • Urban battles: Swords will not receive stat bonuses from equipping horses.
  • Indoor battles: Same as urban battles, with the addition of ootachi and naginata only being able to attack one enemy at a time and catapults and archers being unable to attack (however, the stat bonuses from equipping the troops still apply).
  • Rainy battles: Musketeers are unable to attack, though swords will still receive stat bonuses from equipping them.
• Flat Character: Applies to most of the Touken Danshi, particularly pre-kiwame due to the limited amount of dialogue they can have in-game. For the most part, every Touken Danshi is given some sort of establishing trait that is the most prominent part of their character, such as Houchou's desire to meet and be with married women ontop of his genki boy personality, and there isn't much to them beyond that. Returning from Kiwame tends to flesh them out a bit more through Character Development, though they still tend to be fairly one-note, particularly if their post-Kiwame dialogue is Saniwa-centric. The adaptations tend to pick up where the browser game falls short, though at times the way the characters are portrayed aren't consistent due to each adaptation being written by different writers who interpret the characters differently.
• Gameplay Grading: After a win, you get graded on a scale (C, B, A, S) based on how much damage your swords sustained and how many enemies you defeated. Winning a duel grants you a special "Duel Victory Rank S" grade regardless of how much HP your team has left.
• High School AU: The official manga spinoff Touken Ranbu Gakuen is this, though technically it takes place at an Elevator School so it can accommodate all the characters.
• Hunk: If the sword isn't a Bishōnen, then they'll be this.
• Leitmotif: Each sword has their own theme music – their attendant BGM – that can be unlocked via Village of Treasures events and will play if said sword is set as the attendant. Swords that have connections to one another will have their tracks share a particular melody.
• Level Scaling: Justicar encounters scale based on the level of the highest-leveled sword in your party, regardless of the party's average level or the level of the stage's normal encounters. It's a very good idea to keep the swords in your party around the same level if you're doing a Justicar-infested map; depending on the makeup of your party, having a sword that's just one level higher than the other swords^note Justicar encounters increase in difficulty every 10 or 20 levels; a team of six level 69 swords will spawn the level 60-69 Justicar pattern, while a team of five level 69 swords and one level 70 sword will spawn the level 70-89 pattern can result in massive damage for the rest of the team.
• Limited Wardrobe: Unlike many DMM games, the Touken Danshi are stuck with either their default outfit or their casual outfit. It wasn't until four years into service that they got an extra set of clothes, the yukatas.
• Long-Haired Pretty Boy: Since the game takes place in a country and time period where long hair on men was normal, plenty of the characters are this.
• Magikarp Power: Naginatas, with the ability to hit the entire opponent party at once...at the price of an aggravatingly slow damage to level-up ratio curve (to the point where even after their rank-up at level 25, they still regularly be doing only one point of damage per opponent). Once they're properly leveled up and maxed, they could clear high-level maps almost by themselves.
• The Musical: Like many successful franchises in Japan, it has one. It also has a stage play adaptation.
• Necessary Fail: Every continuity runs into this trope. The general idea that they accept is that the major failings and deaths in history are ultimately part of what makes the historical figures who they are for us in the present, so some Touken Danshi prefer to honor their legacy by ensuring the mission goes as history recorded it.
• Nipple and Dimed: Most swords are not drawn with nipples in their Awakening sprites.
• Non-Entity General: Much like the Admiral from KanColle, the Saniwa functions as this. This rule is lifted in the some of the adaptations.
• Noob Cave: Hakodate. There's only up to two skrmishes per sortie, only one branching path, and the Justicars can't be summoned here.
• Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: Tantou and wakizashi (though especially tantou) play this very straight on World 6, Memory of Ikedaya. While high-leveled tantou/wakizashi are not weak per se in previous worlds, they are definitely outshined by the other more powerful swords, namely ootachi and tachi, who have higher HP and more powerful blows. Then comes World 6, where all battles take place at night, giving huge advantage to tantou and wakizashi and weakening all other sword types (save for uchigatana, who in this world are So Okay, It's Average).
• Older Than They Look: Due to being Anthropomorphic Personifications of centuries-old swords, all of the characters fall under this. Additionally, the physical age of a character has nothing to do with how old the actual sword is; it's usually determined by the type of sword they are, with short swords like tantou and wakizashi looking like children or teenagers and the larger swords usually looking like adults. The youngest sword is the older-looking uchigatana Izuminokami Kanesada (forged in 1867), while the younger-looking tantou Imanotsurugi (forged in 989) is one of the oldest.
• One-Gender Race: As the name "Touken Danshi" would suggest, there are no female sword Tsukumogami in the Touken Ranbu universe, exemplified by the fact that even the sword that embodies what would be considered a "feminine weapon", in this case the naginata, is simply a feminine-looking male. Houchou's dialogue with Saniwa further confirms that there are no female Touken Danshi, much to his disappointment.
• Play Every Day: Encouraged with the daily missions, which are one of the primary ways of gaining resources.
• Player Data Sharing: The Practice mode relies on this. Twice a day, the game matches you with five random players on your server (four around your level, one at a much higher level), and you can fight against their primary party with no consequences for losing. Since one of the daily missions involves winning five practice battles, some users will intentionally put weak/underleveled swords in their primary party when they're not playing in order to make it easier for others to get that mission's rewards. It can be amusing to engage in battle with a level 216 user whose primary party consists of a single level 6 tantou.
• Piñata Enemy: The rare golden tantou (dubbed "kunai" by the Japanese community) serve this purpose in the Edo Infiltration event: they're easy to kill, give more experience than regular enemies and will always drop several keys, which are the main resource players will be hunting in this event.
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: Each sword gets one of these when they land a critical hit, trigger a duel, or go into Awakening mode.
• Public Domain Artifact: Almost all of the swords in this game did actually exist, though some are myths, such as Kogitsunemaru or Shishiou. However, many of the swords are lost in Real Life due to various factors (particularly after World War II, when America confiscated many nihonto from Japan). This game is popular enough that many fans have visited museums that hold the actual swords their favourite characters are based on (if they haven't been lost).
• A Quest Giver Is You: Expeditions, where you send out teams of swords to do tasks in real-time for resources and XP.
• Random Number God: Much of the gameplay depends on this.
• Rated M for Manly: While many of the larger swords resemble young, slender, and good looking adults, there are some of the larger swords that have a more muscular and manly appearance instead. Nagasone Kotetsu, Kogitsunemaru, Yamabushi Kunihiro, Tonbokiri, and Nihongou are notable examples with Badass Baritone voices.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Other than Kashuu and Yasusada that are clearly this, some other swords can be seen to have this dynamic too.
  • Namazuo (red) and Honebami (blue)
  • Shokudaikiri (red despite dark blue color theme) and Ookurikara (blue despite red color theme)
  • Aizen (red) and Hotarumaru (blue)
  • Jiroutachi (red) and Taroutachi (blue)
• Series Mascot: Mikazuki Munechika serves as this for the franchise with the five starter swords (Kashuu Kiyomitsu, Yamanbagiri Kunihiro, Kasen Kanesada, Hachisuka Kotetsu and Mutsunokami Yoshiyuki) occasionally filling in when he isn't used to promote it. He's even the face of the game icon as well as the official twitter account.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: What kickstarts the plot. A group of historical revisionists go back in time to change history in their favor, and you are sent to stop them.
• Shout-Out:
  • One of Mikazuki Munechika's dialogue lines used to go like this (it was eventually removed and replaced with a more generic line):
  "The admiral is in the base... Hahaha, as expected, that is not quite right, is it?"
  • Both Kashuu Kiyomitsu and Yamatonokami Yasusada shout "Ora ora ora!" when attacking.
  • The designs and lines of swords of famous historical figures pay homage to their owners. Shokudagiri Mitsutaida, the sword of Date Masamune, wears an eyepatch. The crest of Mutsunokami Yoshiyuki, which was owned by Sakamoto Ryoma, has an anchor. Heshikiri Hasebe mentions temple burning and servant killing, which his owner Oda Nobunaga was infamous for, and so on.
• Sickly Green Glow: The weaker enemies have this effect to them.
• Slipknot Ponytail: This can result for swords with longer hair if they take enough damage.
• Spear Counterpart: The game is essentially this to KanColle, which is hosted on the same website.
• Stepford Smiler: Most swords are quite disturbed by their past or still miss their former masters, but try to look cheerful in front of the Saniwa.
• Super Move Portrait Attack: The Awakening mode, complete with unique art. Double attacks (randomly triggered when you have at least one wakizashi and uchigatana in your party) also have this, though with the normal battle art.
• Team Dad: Some characters are called 'dad' by fans, but the shout-out goes to Ichigo Hitofuri.
• The Team: In the musical, the main characters form a group. As we see from the main website:
  • Team Sanjou with Kashuu Kiyomitsu^note Mikazuki Munechika, Kogitsunemaru, Iwatooshi, Ishikirimaru, Imanotsurugi,and Kashuu Kiyomitsu)
  • Team Shinsengumi with Hachisuka Kotetsu ^note Hachisuka Kotetsu, Nagasone Kotetsu, Horikawa Kunihiro, Izuminokami Kanesada, Yamatonokami Yasusada and Kashuu Kiyomitsu
  • Team Mihotose^note Sengo Muramasa, Nikkari Aoe, Ookurikara, Ishikirimaru, Monoyoshi Sadamune, and Tonbokiri
• The Movie: The live action movie that was released in 2019 acts as this for the franchise. This film uses the casting from the first stage play, but follows a different set of stories.
• Original Generation: At times, there will be Touken Danshi introduced into other aspects of the franchise. "Nue-to-Yobareru" is this for the stage plays, and Kurikara Gou is this for the movie continuity.
• Too Awesome to Use: You get three ema (charms to boost your luck for smithing or troop forging) for free; the rest must be either bought with real money or obtained in events, so saniwa are understandably hesitant to use them.
• Took a Level in Badass: Kiwame training. You send off your sword on a journey to become stronger, and after 4 (real-time) days, they come back with new artwork, Character Development, and hugely improved stats.
• 20 Minutes into the Future: The story takes place in the year 2205.
• Walking Spoiler: Yamanbagiri Chougi, the real identity of the mysterious hooded figure in the Jurakutei 2018 event.
  • Hosokawa Gracia, the only active female character in the game as the one-time final boss of Keichō Kumamoto Special Investigations.
• Wham Episode:
  • The Kiwame Training segments, while very useful gameplay-wise, have this effect on some of the sheltered Touken Danshi. The notable examples are Midare and Imanotsurugi, learning that humans are frighteningly flawed and that his (Imanotsurugi's) existence is fictional, respectively.
  • The Resistance Against the Great Invasion event begins with Mikazuki Munechika missing in action after giving a curbstomped team time to retreat by distracting a gargantuan foe, then the Citadel's background locked to a large, mist-covered full moon in the centre and front of the horizon. The gameplay highly reflects this.
• Youkai: The swords are a type of youkai called Tsukumogami, spirits born from inanimate objects.
• You Require More Vespene Gas: The primary resources are charcoal, steel, coolant, and whetstone, which are required to smith and repair swords and create troops. These regenerate slowly up to a cap that increases with the player's level, but you can also get them via expeditions, daily missions, and resource nodes on maps. There's also request tokens, which are required to smith swords; help tokens, which allow you to instantly smith/repair a sword; and koban, which is usually just used to buy backgrounds for the main screen, but which can also be used for extra attempts on certain event maps.