Visual Novel / Akatsuki no Goei

Akatsuki no Goei is a 2008 Visual Novel developed by Syangrila, later renamed Tigre Soft. It has one fandisc, one sequel and a distant future spinoff of sorts known as Reminiscence.

Renou Academy is a high class institute for wealthy girls and the boys who will eventually be their bodyguards. Asagiri Kaito is near the bottom of the bodyguard class and plans to drop out to return to his home. Unlike the other students, Kaito is doing as poorly as he can without failing because he is not actually interested in becoming a bodyguard, but an old acquaintance of his father searched for him in the hellhole slums and convinced him to attend, promising that he would get answers about his father. After a year, Kaito submits his withdrawal notice, which is rejected after he saves the richest girl in school on a whim and she blackmails him into becoming her bodyguard as thanks. A real charmer.

Unable to leave school, he contents himself by embarking on a new mission to annoy absolutely everyone to the best of his ability and, like his nearly supernatural physical skills, he has great ability when it comes to harassment. You see, Kaito only has two real hobbies. One, he reads everything. Two, he pushes his luck as far as he can to dare people to punish him as a way of relieving the monotonous lifestyle he has to lead now. At least his new principle won't be too boring.

This page shares tropes from the fandisk. Akatsuki no Goei also has a sequel known as Akatsuki no Goei: Tsuumibukaki Shuumatsuron.

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Tropes:

• Abusive Parents
  • Kaito’s father wanted his son to grow up strong, so he beat him and taught him to take advantage of others or withheld food. Years later Kaito eventually learned that Masaki actually did love him. Still a dick though.
  • Kanzaki’s grandfather has similar ideas of how to raise children, which includes locking her in the dark as a kid and once denying her food for three days. She doesn’t mind.
• The Ace
  • Kaoru and Tominori both get excellent grades and have physical results at the top of the class. However, the real ace is Kaito, who at the very least is much stronger than both of them even when holding back. He also intentionally gets questions wrong to avoid standing out with test scores, which is pretty good for someone that was almost entirely uneducated and barely literate only a year before the story started.
  • Tae is like some weird inverse Ace that is terrible at absolutely everything. She’s dim, weak, lazy, weak minded, can’t keep a secret, can’t cook, doesn’t really have any friends thanks to her bad personality and is entirely unsuited to inherit her mom’s company. But hey, she’s reasonably cute?
• Actually Pretty Funny: Aya and Tominori are initially offended when Kaito names his online character Nikaidou Reika, but when he makes it a short pink haired character with no bust and twintails they can’t help sniggering.
• A-Cup Angst: Reika gets pissed when Kaito mocks her small chest.
• All of the Other Reindeer: Many servants hate Tsuki with two maids in particular bullying her as they please. Tominori doesn’t like her either, but that’s different though his story about how they used to be engaged until she was raped is a lie.
• Almighty Janitor: Kaito is ranked pretty much dead last in his class, but he’s actively hiding his abilities such that he’s considered one of the worst students overall, though there’s a small number of people who notice that he doesn’t try his hardest or that he has no openings when he walks. Yuuki in particular is curious about his true abilities.
• Alternate Character Reading
  • Takanori generally gets called Son because that’s one way of reading the first kanji in his given name.
  • When Reika keeps pressing Kaito demanding to know what he intends to feed Genzou, he relents and says that it's poultry, which is pronounced the same as chicken but written differently. After tasting it, she eventually catches on to his wordplay and he reveals that it's sparrow meat. It's delicious, but she's still disgusted until he begins lecturing her and she retracts her complaint.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: Reika’s afterstory in the fandisc begins from Son’s perspective, lamenting the failure of his first love. Kaito takes over the protagonist chair once or twice from there, but he agreed to give Tominori the protagonist chair and sticks with it for the most part.
• Antiquated Linguistics: Kaito has to patiently explain to Kyouka that no one has spoken like her for a long, long time. She sucks as much at speaking normally as Kaito does at keigo. Or so it seems: It’s just an affectation.
• Apologizes a Lot: Kaoru apologizes when asked not to apologize, for which she apologizes.
• Arranged Marriage: Akiko barely knew her husband and he died before Tae was even born.
• Ascended Extra: Kyouka, a very minor character from the original, got full heroine billing in the fandisc, which was otherwise just a bunch of epilogues for the original stories. From the point in the story her route splits off, it could easily have been included in the original story.
• The Atoner
  • Dengorou is a rather helpful old man in part because he recognizes he was kind of a dick to harass Masaki as much as he did after he eloped with Yuri.
  • On the other hand, Satake deeply regrets letting Masaki run away with her years ago and hatched an insane scheme to get Kaito and Reika to reenact their elopement so he can shoot Kaito, but when Kaito refuses to run he snaps.
• Attempted Rape: Roughly thirty seven seconds after Reika enters the slums looking for Kaito a group of men try to rape her. They only draw back when Kaito’s name leaves her lips, causing them to draw back in terror.
• Award Snub: In-Universe, the top student is completely ignored for the position of Reika’s bodyguard and has to settle with her younger twin sister, Aya. Aya is easier to work for, but she’s not nearly as important. What makes it worse is that Kaito meets Aya about thirty seconds later and she immediately thinks she wished she’d picked him instead. Double snub, though he doesn’t know about the second. It becomes clear fairly soon that a lot of girls find him annoying.
• Babies Ever After: In Tae’s epilogue Kaito gets Akiko pregnant. That’s going to be hard to explain away, huh? Though Tae is pregnant too.
• Bad Liar: Kaito is an amazing liar when he wants to be, which is only sometimes. Tae… isn’t. Even when she really wants to be.
• Bad Santa: Neither Tsuki nor Kaito really like Santa much, so they write a puppet show with a serial killer Santa. He takes away unwanted children and butchers them.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: Tsuki and Kaito spend most of their time fighting and ‘hating’ each other.
• Beware the Nice Ones
  • Yuuki is the most easygoing bodyguard around apart from Kaito himself and probably a good deal nicer as well, but you do not mess with the Kurayashiki’s in front of him. Even Tominori instantly backtracks when Yuuki gets serious.
  • Aya is easily the gentlest of the heroines, but when in her afterstory her dad tries to fire Kaito she grips his arm hard enough that Kaito can hear bones grinding and she practically blackmails Genzou into at least talking it out with Kaito. She also scares Tominori.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Akiko is incredibly goofy, but when she gets serious for a moment she blackmails Satake into shutting up about trying to keep Kaito in the dark. Her presence is dominating enough that Satake and Genzou won’t stand against her and Yuuki and Tae imply she has a nasty temper if you get her upset.
• Big Eater: Kanzaki:
  ‘’Kaoru’’: Kanzaki’s greatest happiness comes only when it is time to eat.
• Big Little Brother: When Aya says that Tominori and Kaito look like brothers at one point, Kaito instantly claims the older brother position because he’s about four inches taller. Tominori says that while it might be pathetic, not all older siblings are taller, at which point Reika reveals that she’s been listening for awhile.
• Bittersweet Ending: Unlike all the other happy endings, at the end of Tae’s Yuuki dies because of a memory overflow error.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: In the lawless district, rape, murder and theft aren’t crimes but rather being weak enough to fall victim to them.
• Bodyguard Crush: Averted, much to Tominori’s annoyance. He likes Reika, but was passed over for her bodyguard position and then Kaito ended up getting it.
• Boke and Tsukkomi Routine
  • About 75% of the dialogue between Tsuki and Kaito is an extended routine between them, though which one plays which role varies.
  • Tae manages to train Sonata and Kanata to perform an extended comedy routine, Dope Slap and all.
• Bookworm: Kaito’s main hobby is reading anything he can get his hands on. It helps him get along with Genzou a little and Kyouka quite a bit.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: After Reika calls Kaito Tae’s boyfriend, bodyguard, teacher and more, his only response is that that’s way too many kanji in a row. She replies with the same thing as a string of hiragana to make it ‘easier’ on him, which is essentially an incomprehensible spewing of syllables. That’s why kanji exist in the first place.
• Bromantic Foil: Tominori normally wouldn’t apply for this given that he’s basically The Ace, but people tend to find his formal, arrogant attitude obnoxious even while they feel comfortable around Kaito’s equally arrogant rudeness. They’re both jerks too.
• But Liquor Is Quicker
  • Aya drinks some alcohol so she can go from a slightly flirty but perhaps stagnant relationship with Kaito to sleeping with him. Or rather, so she can pretend to be drunk.
  • In Reika’s afterstory Tominori seems to want to try to get her drunk and see if he can seduce her then. The next stage of the plan is trying to act like the classic “nice guy” that listens to a girl’s complains to try to get on their good side.
• But Thou Must!
  • No, Kaito doesn’t get to avoid being handcuffed to Tominori. Though if you refuse long enough he eventually decides he’s a Yugioh character. Eventually, Reika takes away your ability to say no.
  • You also can’t declare that anyone but Reika or Kyouka made the best dish. If you try to pick Tae or Anzu in particular he’ll even say that he won’t tell that huge of a lie.
  • A But Thou Must! is actually used to unlock an omake in the fandisc. You take the same option fourteen times and eventually another bonus scene opens up.
• Buttmonkey
  • Kaito loves making things difficult for Tominori. Once, Tominori begs him to help him practice talking to Reika, to which Kaito only agrees if he gets to punch him every time he screws up.
  • Raita has the best grades after Kaoru and Tominori, who are both The Ace, and can match them in a fight. However, he looks like a short fat thirty year old man and smells bad so everybody hates him.
• Chained Heat: Invoked for shits and giggles by Reika, who handcuffs Kaito and Tominori together. While Kaito could pick the lock fairly easily, she then says that if Kaito removes the handcuffs before she says it’s okay, then she’ll fire Tominori.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: Kaito can dash up the wall and through a second floor window in under three seconds. He tries to pretend that any bodyguard can do this, but stops Tsuki from trying to confirm it.
• Comforting Comforter: Locked in a library overnight with no heating, Kaito hands Kyouka his jacket since he’s used to sleeping with less clothing in colder environments anyway.
• Consummate Liar: Animals can tell through intuition when someone is lying. Kaito can still fool them.
• Covert Pervert: Tominori always tries to act with utmost propriety, but he’s actually pretty easily aroused, especially since with his sheltered upbringing he hasn’t faced any real temptation.
• Cutting Off the Branches: Want to know which heroine's ending is canon? None of them. The canon ending is Kaoru's, which is actually just a sequel hook. The sequel has another ending for Reika, which overlaps with Kaoru's route and alternate omake scenes for the original heroines where Reika's route would have begun.
• Damned by Faint Praise: Everyone insults Kaito’s play until Aya comes forward trying to cheer him up. Unfortunately, the only thing she can think to say is ‘Yeah, that was um a thing. Yes!’
• A Day in the Limelight: In the fandisc, Reika’s afterstory is split into three different omakes. However, they’re actually about Tominori, who even gets the protagonist chair for the second and longest part after begging Kaito to let him be the main character.
• Deadpan Snarker: Despite being every bit as sarcastic as Kaito, Tsuki’s voice never changes from a polite monotone.
• Defiled Forever: Tominori claims that he broke up and engagement with Tsuki after she was raped, considering her a filthy woman beneath his interest. However, when Kaito next talks to Tsuki, she says that she asked him to tell Kaito that story. In truth, she’s the one that feels that way about herself. The story Tominori told never happened.
• Definitely Just a Cold: Yuuki starts getting increasingly absentminded and sluggish during the latter parts of Tae’s route and her epilogue, but everyone just sort of brushes it off until eventually he simply drops dead, his memory unable to be reconnected to his body. Even at the end of the fandisc he hasn't been 'revived' thanks to damage to his memory core proving difficult to repair.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: Surprisingly, Kaito was very aloof when he first arrived at Renou Academy. The only one he had halfway decent conversations with was Kaoru and only then because they were roommates. Yuuki and especially Tominori annoyed him. He has a soft spot for Kaoru as a result, who helped him learn to behave like an actual human being.
• Different as Night and Day: Reika is short, aggressive and demanding. Aya is quiet, polite and fairly friendly.
• Dismotivation: Kaito does his best to avoid standing out or excelling in any way. Most people buy it, but a few teachers are aware that he's hiding something and Yuuki can tell that he's much stronger than Kaoru or Son and simply isn't trying. He's the only one that Yuuki isn't sure he can beat in a fight.
• The Ditz
  • Tae is pretty dim, contrasting her rival Reika. At one point, she gets a zero on a test because she forgot her name, which she calls unfair. The teacher reassures her since forgetting her name didn’t change her score anyway. After Yuuki dies, with Kaito’s prodding she vows to figure out a way to fix him. In theory, anyway, since it’s really way too complicated for her. In the afterstory, she’s amazed that she managed to get a 25% on a test with questions you’d expect a child to be able to answer easily.
  • Yuuki, her bodyguard, is only about a hair better than her. For him, though, it’s because the process of memory retrieval was flawed: He has perfect memory, but it takes him a long time to recover memories.
• Ditzy Genius: Tae’s mother, Akiko, is as ditzy as her daughter. More so, really, given that she gives Kaito huge hugs the moment she lays eyes on him because of how hot he is as well as calling Genzou Genzou-kun. That said, she also invented a device to talk to animals, worked in weapons projects and created Yuuki.
• Dogged Nice Guy
  • When Kaito gets interested in Tsuki, he decides he doesn’t care that she already has a boyfriend. Causes her to freak out since the whole reason she invented Yamada is so that men would give up on her.
  • Kanzaki gets pretty blatant as her and Kaoru's route progresses, but it mostly just makes Kaito uncomfortable and unwilling to admit that she feels anything more for her than the friendly feelings she stated publicly. In the true ending for the VN, she seemingly gives up, though in the sequel there actually is a possible continuation for her. While it is in the omake section, it's very easy to tell where it would fit into the primary route. And, of course, she does have her own ending that you have to get before the true ending anyway.
• Do Not Call Me Sir: Aya calls Kaito with the very respectful sama honorific, which bothers him professionally if nothing else. Having a client refer to a bodyguard so respectfully kind of goes against the point of his job. For her part, she tells him not to use keigo when he remembers that he’s supposed to be polite.
• The Dreaded: The moment Reika mentions Kaito’s name, all her attackers instantly draw back in horror because of who they’re surely pissing off at the moment.
• Dude, Not Funny!: In-Universe, Tsuki is genuinely angry when Kaito gropes Reika as a joke. Reika is too, but she gets over it after she gets to hit him once and is an angry person in general.
• Dude, She's Like in a Coma: Thinking he’s asleep, Kyouka plans to kiss Kaito when they’re locked in the library together. He speaks up when she talks to herself.
• The Dulcinea Effect: Kaito’s most consistent virtue is that if a girl is in trouble in front of him he’ll jump in to rescue, no matter who they are. He dislikes being acknowledged for it.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Near the ending of Reika's route in the prohibited district she runs across a man who goes unidentified who, upon hearing Kaito's name, directs her on where to find him. Not long after, Kaito tells her how he killed his father. It's not until the sequel that we learn who ??? was and only then because they share a voice actor. Kaito didn't go as good a job of killing his old man as he thought, though he does consider himself a dead man.
• Engagement Challenge: Kanzaki’s grandfather declares Kaito must defeat him if he wishes for her hand in marriage. Trouble is, Kaito has no interest in even going out with her.
• Engineered Heroics: Raita begs Kaito to help him prove he’s not worthless to Kyouka by having him dress up as a pervert so he can fight him off. However, Raita attacks him for real and pisses him off, so he beats him up on accident.
• First Love: Much to Reika’s shock, Kaito has never been in love before. Comes as a surprise to him too when he finds himself increasingly interested in Tsuki.
• Foil: While Kaito legally isn't even human and grew up in a hellhole, Kanzaki has grown up with such wealth and privilege that she honestly didn't even know poverty existed. Despite this, they both had abusive childhoods including food deprivation and so on from their guardians, who did it in order to make them strong. However, while Kaito rather resents his father for it, Kanzak iaccepts that it was for her own benefit.
• Forceful Kiss: When Tsuki is a crying wreck begging for mercy from something Kaito can’t even understand, he kisses her to snap her out of it.
• Foreign Queasine: In order to fulfill the wishes of a girl who insisted on having him cook bizarre, trashy dishes, the school chef of Renou would often go out to collect strange recipes and ingredients, never able to satisfy her. One day in Egypt, a meteorite crashed down in front of him, apparently attached to a dead alien. Considering this the ultimate bizarre dish, he brought it back to the academy. Mind you, this stuff is literally poison and nearly kills Kaito when he’s made to try it.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: It becomes clear that no matter how good his grades are, nobody much likes Tominori. Some like Kaoru are reasonably friendly, but even those like Tae or Reika who don’t know him at all hate him. At one point, even the otherwise kind Aya accidentally admits that she’s more worried about a lizard than him. However, he really is a good bodyguard and a classmate, so there’s no way to get around it.
• Friendship Moment
  • Tsuki likes to pick on Kaito, but she takes responsibility for bringing Aya out of the mansion without Tominori’s consent even though it would get her fired and generally unemployable. In the fandisc, she was also clearly crying when Kaito had food poisoning bad enough to put his life at risk, though she denies it.
  • Kaito in turn likes to pick on Tominori, but in Tominori’s Day in the Limelight he follows him and help retrieve his date’s contact information if he wants to use it. He chooses not to since she’s gotten engaged since then, though.
• The Gadfly
  • If it’s the right person, Kaito really enjoys pissing them off. And by the right person we really mean everyone, including people who could kick his ass or fire him. Of course, getting fired probably sounds ideal given that he didn’t want the job in the first place. Hardly a surprise that Takinori hates him. In truth, he’s actually inviting punishment because he hates normal boring life more than anything.
  • Tsuki also enjoys screwing with Kaito while being formal and polite to everyone else. It’s clear she’s just teasing him, though, because she doesn’t carry through on her jokes or threats.
• Gamer Chick: Aya really likes video games. Kaito has never really played any before. Somehow, she’s surprised that he’s unhappy about being one-sidedly destroyed when she doesn’t even bother to explain the rules. There’s a bad end in the fandisc where he forces himself to play her games and becomes an addict.
• Generation Xerox: Averted. When put in the same situation as his father, Kaito rejects the idea of eloping with Reika. Satake is confused and angry because otherwise they look and speak exactly the same.
• Girlfriend in Canada: Tsuki’s boyfriend Yamada-kun, who according to Reika is more handsome than Kaito, richer, stronger and better at everything than he is. Not surprisingly, he doesn’t exist.
• Girlish Pigtails: Reika gets the classic tsundere twintails.
• The Glomp: The moment Tae’s mom meets Kaito, she gives him a huge hug. Because he looks just like his dad, who Akiko had a crush on. It’s apparently a habit of hers relating to that. Also, he’s hot. That always helps.
• Good Angel, Bad Angel: In Tominori’s Day in the Limelight his good angel and bad angel fight over whether it’s okay to just sleep with a normal woman that he doesn’t know simply to lose his virginity.
• Graceful Loser: Subverted: Tominori looks supportive of Reika and Kaito for a moment, but then his irritation gets the better of him and he actually asks Kaito to help him get closer to Reika and doesn’t understand why Kaito refuses.
• Green-Eyed Monster: The cheetah cubs don’t like Kaito not because he’s scary, but because Reika is always talking about him at night.
• Groin Attack: Kaito has a dream at one point about the Castration Woman. It involves teeth. He found the dream rather interesting, truth be told.
• Headbutt of Love: The first time Tsuki tries to speak poorly about herself and leave the room, she gets kissed. The second time, she gets headbutted.
• Heavy Sleeper: Kaito won’t get up on time early in the morning, mostly due to dismotivation.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation: Aya considers herself worthless compared to her sister. She’s less intelligent and athletic and doesn’t speak her mind frequently. She doesn’t even seem to have any friends, though Reika doesn’t either.
• Hidden Buxom: Kaoru wears a cloth around her chest to suppress her bust.
• Hopeless Suitor: Reika just finds Tominori obnoxious and avoids him as much as possible. For his part, he’s baffled as to why she picked Kaito when Kaito won’t even put her on a pedestal by calling her the most beautiful woman in the world.
• Hot for Student: Akemi openly admits that Kaito is hot in the middle of class. She also says that good looks are the most important quality in a bodyguard.
• Hypocritical Humor: Kaoru says Kaito is too forceful for trying to bully a butler into going out to get lemonade, but as soon as Kanzaki says she wants some Kaoru threatens to cut the butler in half if he doesn’t go get some right now.
• I Am Not Pretty: Aya’s low self esteem is such that she’s easily convinced that she’s ugly, though Kaito admits that when he saw her he thought for the first time in his life that he had seen something beautiful. That was years ago, mind you.
• Idiot Ball: Despite usually being very wary, Kaito is really vulnerable to conmen and buys an instant pasta maker for twenty five times what it’s worth without thinking. Unfortunately, Kaoru is just as prone to conmen even when she goes in knowing it’s a scam.
• Ignored Enemy: A man breaks into the school intending revenge on Kanzaki. She has no idea who he is. He then takes off the bandages covering his face and she looks surprised. No, she still doesn’t know who he is, her stomach just growled right then.
• Ignore the Fanservice: Tominori drags Kaito with him so that Aya will forgive him (though she was never mad at all) and the pair walk in on him changing. He apologizes on Tominori’s behalf and then closes the door and walks out without showing any sign of having seen her in her underwear.
• I Just Want to Have Friends: Tae is very lonely but doesn't want to admit it. The closest she has to friends are Reika, who finds her annoying, and Yuki, a robot built by her mom. Unfortunately for her, she's kind of a huge failure at everything: She's incredibly dim, unsocial, kind of snotty, weak and all around incompetent at everything but being moderately cute.
• In-Series Nickname: Several people call Tominori Son, which is how the first character of Tominori is pronounced when read by itself.
• In Vino Veritas: Aya drinks some sake before mustering the nerve to try making a direct attempt for Kaito, after which they end up sleeping together. Of course, it seems she was faking intoxication given that it was only 1 proof. Yes, only a half a percent alcohol.
• I Owe You My Life: After Kaito saves Reika from some kidnappers, she demands that he allow her to repay the favor and if he can’t think of anything better she’ll hire him as her bodyguard. As a sign of her gratitude, she tries to repay him with her stungun as well.
• I Resemble That Remark!: Tominori tries to deny that Kaito is his best friend and the next to candidates to cross his mind are Raita and Yuuki, both of which he’s unwilling to call his best friend either.
• It Amused Me: Why does Reika insist on making Kaito carry the sixty kilo springbok instead of just letting it rest on the ground inside its crate? Because she thinks it’s funny.
• I Was Just Passing Through: When Kaito sees Reika getting kidnapped, on impulse he decides to save her. When she asks who he is, he says he’s just a passerby. Basically true!
• Jerkass: Reika is singularly unpleasant at all times, starting with using stun guns on Kaito and forcing him to work for her through use of Exact Words. At least with Tsuki it actually feels like she’s just teasing him. Her good side does eventually come up a few times, especially in regards to Tsuki.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold
  • Tominori is rude, arrogant, entitled and very status conscious. He won’t even save a kitten stuck in a tree! And he wonders why Reika didn’t want him as a bodyguard. However, his treatment of Tsuki seems motivated by finding her very suspicious and he doesn’t hate Kaito as much as he pretends. Plus, he might not like Tsuki, but he did help her test whether Kaito truly cared about her, making himself look like complete scum that broke up with his girlfriend after she was raped when he doesn’t really know her at all.
  • Kyouka looks really obnoxious, but she’s actually fairly nice so long as you’re decent to her, which is apparently fairly rare.
• Lap Pillow: After the fight at the end of Aya’s route, he takes a nap on her lap in public.
• Last-Name Basis: Kaito uses Kanzaki’s last name until he loses a bet to her when her grandfather sabotages the competition. Why he was using her last name in the first place is kind of unclear given how ridiculously rude he is.
• Lethal Chef
  • Aya’s soup is so terrible it causes Kaito to hallucinate and begin apologizing for ever being born. Turns out Aya had mixed some mystery powder into her food. That said, nobody who tries her food can actually remember how it tastes.
  • In Kyouka’s route Reika eggs the girls into having a cooking contest with Kaito as the judge. When he’s called down to begin tasting, tragic music begins to play as he thinks back fondly on (fabricated) memories of days gone by. He decides to tackle them from worst to best, assigning scores as he goes along.
    • Tae puts a dead fish on a plate with what appears to be a lump of wasabi on top and some soy sauce to the side. Apparently, she thinks this is how sashimi is prepared. Out of a hundred points, she gets a score of one. She’s scored lower on tests before, so this is maybe an improvement?
    • Anzu made good looking egg salad sandwiches, but mixed in the shells. It doesn’t taste like egg salad either. Score: Zero points. Good job, Tae, you didn’t come in last place.
    • Tsuki prepares a burned black item that Kaito manages to identify as takoyaki. Just kidding, it’s actually delicious despite appearances.
    • Kanzaki (50) and Aya (70), surprisingly enough, produce food that tastes just fine, though they lost points for picking simple foods. Well, he assumes the omelet Aya made tasted good because he doesn’t remember it at all despite eating the entire thing. Reika and Kyouka make really good food, even though Reika hasn’t cooked before and Kyouka cooked something as simple as fried rice. So only two of them are completely terrible.
• Lonely Rich Kid
  • Aya feels rather isolated. While Reika might enjoy such treatment, Aya just gets lonely and depressed.
  • Tae hides it better, but she doesn’t really have anyone she considers a friend either. In fact, she attends Reika’s birthday party even though she doesn’t like her so she might have the chance to talk to someone.
• Love at First Punch: When Kaito fights seriously and pins Kanzaki to a wall without knowing it’s her, she blushes when he lets her go because she’s never been beaten that easily before. The next day, she comes over to him at lunch and declares she wants to be friends, which at their school is about 90% of the way to a declaration of love.
• Love at First Sight: The moment Raita lays eyes on Tsuki, his heart goes Kyun! Or, well, his mouth does, which creeps out Kyouka and Anzu.
• Love Dodecahedron
  • Averted for the most part in the future in that it doesn’t really become much of an issue, but a generation ago Yuri and Akiko loved Masaki, but Yuri was engaged to Genzou, who had Satake as a bodyguard. Satake loved Yuri. Masaki loved Yuri and eloped with her. It’s a big snarled mess that’s only gradually uncovered.
  • In the present it’s still complicated enough with both Aya and Reika liking Kaito as well as probably Kaoru. If he goes for someone like Tae or Tsuki it just gets even more complicated, though rarely to direct conflict given Aya’s timidity and Reika mostly treating Kaito like a toy.
• Mad Scientist: Akiko is a rather friendly version, performing baffling experiments with a rather ditzy attitude and yet inventing a genuine AI that can pass for human, a device to allow people and animals to talk to each other and a modified hair dryer that forces the target to tell the truth. She rather regrets the last one when Kaito impulsively uses it on her and finds out a lot she didn’t want him to know about her sex life and that she wasn’t joking like she pretended when she flirted with Kaito.
• Manchild: Akiko acts like a flirty high school student, which suits her since that’s about how old she looks.
• Mandatory Unretirement: One morning Kaito quits school. That afternoon he rescues Reika. Ten minutes later she calls the principal and overrules Kaito quitting to hire him.
• Marry Them All: After getting the other Tae endings on the fandisc, a Tae and Akiko ending opens up. Yes, Akiko was not kidding.
• Mars Needs Women: The first thing the animal voice sensor picks up is a puppy complaining about Tae’s small chest and wishing a prettier girl would hold him.
• Massive Numbered Siblings: Tominori has fourteen older siblings. Fourteen.
• Maybe Ever After: Kaoru's ending implies he has feelings for her and she all but confessed herself, but returned to her home to have an arranged marriage. Kaito goes to interrupt the wedding, but we don't see the conclusion. It's a bit of an odd example because while this is actually the canon ending, some details have been changed in the sequel to make it slightly more neutral, leaving her the secondary heroine with the first arc of the story revolving around the arranged marriage.
• Meaningful Name: Though read as Tae, the kanji for her name would more generally be read as Weird or Strangeness.
• Meido: Reika’s maid Tsuki, who is simultaneously polite and insulting.
• Misery Builds Character: Kaito grew up in a lawless hellhole made worse by his incredibly strong father abusing him rather than protecting him. Beatings and food deprivation were only the start of it. Kaito has as a result grown up to be incredibly strong, resilient and even intelligent, much more so than any of his peers. However, beneath his joking facade he's also rather mentally ill by any normal definition of sanity.
• Mistaken for Gay: Seeing the secretly female Kaoru getting angry and possibly possessive of Kaito, Yuuki and Tominori can’t help but read the obvious signs.
• Mrs. Robinson: Akiko really likes flirting with Kaito and she’s absolutely serious. When offhandedly giving permission for him to date her daughter she adds in a moment later that if it doesn’t work out between them, Akiko can always grab him then since he’ll be free.
• Mum Looks Like a Sister: When first meeting Tae’s mother Akiko, Kaito thinks she looks about twenty.
• My God, What Have I Done?: At the end of Tsuki’s route, Kaito freaks out upon remembering what he almost did to Tsuki and starts strangling her before snapping out of it. He feels awful not just for strangling her, but for having sexually assaulted her in the first place, even if the choice was assault Tsuki or get killed by his father.
• My Skull Runneth Over: The largest obstacle to creating an artificial intelligence that can pass for human is the problem with memory capacity. Yuuki runs out of memory and his system crashes irreversibly.
• The Napoleon: Reika is always cranky and sarcastic, but she's particularly annoyed whenever Kaito points out how short she is.
• Near-Rape Experience: Kaito’s father brought him up to be a man who would take anything he pleases because that was what it meant to be a strong man in the forbidden district. He caught a woman and her daughter and started raping the mother while making it clear he would kill Kaito if he didn’t rape the daughter. But Kaito still couldn’t do it and paid the price. Tsuki thought it might be him when he entered the Nikaidou household and doesn’t hate him. Rather, she’s almost grateful in a weird way.
• Neat Freak: Tsuki lives to clean and will die cleaning.
• Never Bring a Knife to a Fist Fight: Subverted. Kanzaki’s grandfather tells Kaito that in their match any weapon is allowed, so Kaito asks for a knife. He gets called a coward, sighs and agrees to fight barehanded.
• Nice Girl: While most of the cast seems comprised of varying degrees of jerk, Aya is quite friendly if perhaps a little timid and openly likes Kaito both platonically and romantically.
• Nice Guy: Yuuki is probably the nicest male character in the story. He’s rather helpful and supportive thanks to being emotionally intelligent if not intellectually.
• Nice to the Waiter: Kaito is something of a dick sometimes, but the first real point of contrast between his brand of being a jerk and Tominori’s comes when Tsuki accidentally bumps into him.
  • Tominori is angered that a servant bumped into him and warns her not to do it again. In Aya’s route, his dislike for her is enough that he almost tries to get her fired because he simply doesn’t like her.
  • Kaito, by contrast, just calls her a dojikko because he’s largely status blind. In Tae’s epilogue he’s more or less her fiancée since her mother also doesn’t care about status, so when he comes to their building the guards are very deferential, but Kaito remembers their names, faces and that one of them just had a kid, so he gives that guard a present to pass along. They love him.
• Noblewoman's Laugh: Kyouka the walking stereotype naturally gets a ridiculously stereotypical laugh. When he gets annoyed at her super rich girl speech and tells her to knock it off, she at first pretends she doesn’t know how and then eventually admits that her parents expect her to talk like that, so she’s going to do it even if she knows actual normal Japanese.
• Official Couple: While the other routes only provide a few hints at best regarding Kaito’s past, Reika’s explains essentially everything of note. He’s also her bodyguard and even in the sequel still gets her own ending. The other heroines don’t, unless you count Kaoru as a heroine.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Sonata beats up Tominori offscreen when the latter refuses to tell him where Reika is. He also beats Yuuki at rock paper scissors. Sonata is badass.
• The Ojou: The students are all working to be the bodyguards of various rich girls. The most ojou of the ojous is Nikaidou Reika, but she has a heavy dislike for bodyguards or anyone else being too close to her, so she refuses to pick one at the start of the story.
• Old Master: Dengorou, a seventy eight year old man, is even better than his granddaughter, who is above all the actual bodyguards apart from Kaito.
• Otaku
  • Raita, Kaito’s self appointed “friend” that he really hates. Despite being a rather annoying nerd and looking out of shape, he’s actually as strong as Tominori.
  • Aya is also something of a geek and spends most of her time playing video games or reading manga. Coupled with her being the politest character in the story, Raita crushes on her a little.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Kaoru has long hair, a ribbon, uses a feminine pronoun, has a fairly feminine voice and actually bathes with guys so long as she has a Modesty Towel around her chest. Still gets away with calling herself male.
• Panthera Awesome: Motivated mostly by pure contrariness for her family that doesn’t like animals, Reika keeps a pair of cheetahs in her room. From the way she talks, it almost sounds like she considers Kaito her new pet human.
• Parental Marriage Veto: Just as Reika said would happen, her father rejects her going out with Kaito, but not because of the status difference. Rather, it’s that Kaito’s father Masaki eloped with Genzou’s fiancée, Yuri, and Kaito looks just like him. That said, after Kaito refuses to run away with Yuri like Masaki did, Satake tries to kill Kaito and Genzou stops him. He won’t grant his blessing, but he won’t get in the way either.
• Pretty Boy: Kaito’s looks make him fairly popular. Tae’s mom instantly begins cooing over him while his teacher says he’s hot in the middle of class.
• Primal Fear: Tsuki is absolutely terrified of the dark, which reduces her to a shivering wreck that can only scream for help. Kaito has similar problems, but only to the extent of having terrible nightmares if he sleeps in the dark if he manages to sleep at all.
• Princess Curls: To show just how ojou she is, Kyouka has huge curly twintails.
• Promoted to Love Interest: Kyouka, Anzu and Akiko all get the heroine treatment in the fandisc. Kyouka gets to share a route with Reika while Anzu is a bonus that’s unlocked after completing everything else. Akiko, the final of the three promoted, apparently wasn’t entirely kidding back in Tae’s route, though she’s still just a side character.
• Properly Paranoid: When Tae and Kaito use a Kurayashiki invention to talk to the cheetah cubs, Sonata is pretty paranoid of Kaito trying to trick them. He can’t even understand Kaito most of the time, but he recognizes that Kaito is a complete liar.
• Psycho Ex-Girlfriend: Anzu is implied to be Kaito’s ex girlfriend and is determined to track him down and beat the crap out of him. He kinda has it coming though given that he simply vanished from her life a year before without a word and has been avoiding her the entire time. However, it’s later clarified that she is not and never has been his girlfriend.
• Puppy-Dog Eyes: Tae may be dumb and she may be weak, but she’s certainly good at begging for what she wants, thus acquiring residence in Reika’s home for as long as she pleases when Reika won’t just hand Kaito over to her.
• Rape as Backstory: Kaito has been raped by both men and women before. When he was just a kid too. His father also tried to make him rape a woman, which he has blocked from his memory. That woman? Tsuki. Short of actual penetration, which he couldn’t make himself do even under pain of death. When he remembers where he’s seen her before in the middle of sex, he nearly strangles her before snapping out of it. The sequel elaborates on this: When he couldn’t bring himself to rape her, he was sold as a sex slave to a bunch of criminals, where he spent the next few years.
• Real Men Wear Pink: Real men are huge romance buffs.
• Refuge in Audacity: When Reika commands Kaito to grope Aya, she neglects to leave out the subject of the sentence, Aya herself. Kind of insulted at what he’s being asked to do, he gropes Reika instead for about thirty seconds. In the middle of the street. Until she falls down. Subverted, however, because it’s made abundantly clear that this was way out of line and was intended to be out of line.
• Rescue Romance
  • Subverted. Kaito rescues Reika from kidnappers at the beginning of the story, but all she does is hire him and only then because he fits well into her concept of personal space. Double subverted: She didn’t realize how she actually felt about him until he was gone.
  • Played with. Fairly early in Tae’s route Kaito works as her bodyguard during an exchange of sorts and a Rescue Romance is set up, but it’s actually just an exam and she was in no danger. However, Kaito looked so badass when figuring out that it was just a test and then beating up the examiners during the combat portion of the test that she can’t help but start crushing on him anyway.
  • When Kyouka was wandering aware from home, a mysterious man defended her from dangerous men that were perhaps about to attack her. When she looked up, he was gone, but she had fallen in love anyway. Kaito eventually admits it was him when she points out she knows he still has the book she dropped, but says he mostly just wanted the book.
• The Reveal: Subverted in Tae’s route where her mother almost explains everything she knows about Kaito’s father but at the last minute simply goes “Eh, changed my mind, it’s none of your kids’ business” and goes on her merry way.
• Rich Bitch: When Kyouka wants to see a movie, she barges in and uses her name to get a seat that already belonged to a mother and her little kid, who Kaito could hear crying outside their special seating.
• Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense: Son and Tae refuse to believe that someone could be so poor they couldn't even buy shoes. It's played for laughs, but this class discrepancy is the largest conflict in the series. The only one among Kaito's social circle who acknowledges that kind of poverty exists is Kaoru, though she doesn't realize it occurs in Japan as well. Of course, Tsuki is from the prohibited district as well, so she's only faking her ignorance.
• Ridiculously Human Robot: For some reason, Yuuki is a robot. Tae’s mom made him. He eats normal food and is kind of a ditz. In fact, he’s so ridiculously human that he hasn’t the slightest idea why people call him a robot.
• Sacred First Kiss: After a lizard lands on Tominori and causes him to faint, Kaito and Aya go off to look for insects. When they eventually return, he’s still out of it, so Kaito tries to wake him up. A mostly sleeping Tominori thinks he’s Reika and kisses him, then almost cries when he realizes how he wasted his first kiss. More importantly is that Aya gets a little upset when she realizes it wasn’t Kaito’s first kiss.
• Secret-Keeper: Kaito actually does know that Kaoru is a girl, which he not only hides, but also helps cover up.
• Selective Obliviousness: Kaito appears uncomfortable with how Kanzaki obviously has a crush on him, so he pretends he’s unrelated.
• Secret Relationship: Aya’s route ends without the relationship being uncovered. Her fandisc afterstory deals with the consequences when Genzou DOES find out.
• Self-Made Orphan: Greatly abused throughout his childhood, deprived of food and raised to be an animal, Kaito eventually snapped and killed his father.
• Sensei-chan: Akemi acts cheery and energetic all the time.
• Sequel Hook: Kaoru’s mini route ends not with a romance, but with Kaito going to the Nanjou estate to find Kaoru. This leads directly into the sequel and most of the common route revolves around the situation.
• Serious Business: Some of the most serious music in the game plays when Tominori and Kaito futilely attempt to successfully drink bottled lemonade, swearing they will succeed before their opponent.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: Feeling bad for Reika’s cheetah, Kaito spends most of his day trying to get into the Kurayashiki building to borrow a device that will let him talk to it to find out why it’s depressed. By the time he gets back home, it’s already feeling better. He does borrow is in Tae’s route, though.
• Sheltered Aristocrat: Most of the girls don’t seem entirely aware that poor people exist. Kanzaki at one point follows a little kid who stole some food back to the prohibited district and gave a speech along the lines of ‘Let them eat cake’ which did not endear her to the locals. Kyouka is aware of how sheltered she is, but is frustrated that there’s basically nothing she can do about it.
• Shooting Gallery: Part of the training at Renou involves marksmanship. It doesn’t occur to Tominori until much later that maybe it’s a little suspicious that Kaito hit every civilian target but not one criminal.
• "Shut Up" Kiss: When Tsuki tries to withdraw from Kaito because she feels she’s been Defiled Forever he shuts her up the quickest way he can.
• Single-Target Sexuality: Tsuki planned to go through life avoiding men, but when Kaito shows up she begins teasing him and hanging out with him, much to Reika’s surprise. This despite the fact that he’s the reason she’s scared of men in the first place.
• Sins of Our Fathers: Played with. Kaito is the son of Asagiri Masaki, who eloped with Genzou’s fiancée. As a result, he’s rather hated by people who know the full story like Genzou and Satake. However, despite this, while Genzou might find his presence painful and aggravating, he’s still willing to hire Kaito and never bothers to seek revenge. And it’s not the only reason he doesn’t like him either.
• Smug Smiler: Tsuki and Reika don’t really have smiles, they have twisted grins.
• Speaks Fluent Animal: Akiko invented a machine to allow people to talk to animals. It also works in reverse. That said, when Tae and Kaito try to trick Sonata and Kanata the cheetah cubs into repeating things that Reika has said, they simply reply that they haven’t the faintest idea because normally they understand little more than their own names.
• Starcrossed Lovers: Reika laughs at the idea of a bodyguard and one of the high class ladies ever becoming an item. Even putting aside that the rich girls would be unlikely to show any interest in low class boys like them, their parents would forbid it anyway. Further, it’s outright against school rules.
  • For Aya’s route, they don’t even bother trying to seek approval and just sneak around behind the scenes. Tominori knows, but he’s not saying anything. At least, so long as he doesn’t walk in on them in the act. In her afterstory, Genzou finds out and tries to fire Kaito, but Aya’s spine grew three sizes that day and delays him.
  • For Reika herself, she has to run into the ghettos where the poor and the criminals all gather. When they return, they gamble on Kaito’s father Masaki having been someone important. He was, but in a bad way for Kaito. However, her dad takes a neutral position because Kaito proved he was different from his father Masaki, who ran away with Genzou’s fiancée.
  • Completely subverted with Tae’s mom, who thinks Kaito is ridiculously hot and had a crush on his dad so she actually sends Tae to try stealing him from the Nikaidou family. After they sleep together, she casually calls up her mom and gets consent easily, bypassing the relationship blockade between principal and bodyguard. In response, Kaito just spends the rest of the story pointlessly worrying about it. Maybe he only likes dating people when people tell him he can’t?
  • With Kanzaki, it’s hinted that any false moves might even get Kaito assassinated. Dengorou eventually says that if Kaito can beat Kaoru, he’ll replace her as Kanzaki’s bodyguard and he’ll pretend not to notice. Kaoru, on the other hand, will be barred from the bodyguard profession in that case. Kaito is officially adopted into the Kanzaki family.
• Sweet on Polly Oliver: Firmly believing that Kaoru is a guy, Yuuki, Tominori and Raita all get really turned on when she has to kiss Kaito during the King’s Game. Just too pretty.
• Their First Time: Kyouka and Kaito have theirs in the middle of a locked library at night. Kyouka even seems a little amused at how odd it seems compared to all her romantic fantasies.
• Thinks Like a Romance Novel: Kyouka reads a lot of romance novels and does think in terms of them when it comes to love. She even puts her confession in the form of a story about her first love. However, she knows it’s silly to do so, which makes her said since she’s sheltered and doesn’t know how else to think.
• Tiny Tyrannical Girl: Kaito finds it hard to believe that someone as short as the domineering Reika could actually be old enough to be a student at his school.
• Truth Serum: In her spare time, Akiko modified a hair dryer to make the person it targets tell the truth. It’s immediately used on her, after which she’s forced to reveal that she really does have the hots for him, though she’s just teasing normally and wouldn’t act on those feelings.
• Tsundere
  • Reika forcibly hires Kaito and then demands that he feel grateful for it. She might get it from her picky eater of a dad, who at one point rejects a dish made from sparrows that Kaito had prepared as a novelty, but then added it to his highly exclusive personal menu the next day.
  • Tominori says that he hates Kaito, but he mostly just finds him annoying because Kaito IS annoying. In fact, if you take his sleep talk seriously, he likes him almost as much as he likes Reika. The one he really does hate is Tsuki.
  • Finally, Kaito himself acts tsuntsun around Tsuki, like wanting to carry luggage that is too heavy for her so he intentionally loses a rock paper scissors contest where only one hand was really available to her unless she dropped what she was carrying. Since it would break, she obviously couldn’t. In his case it’s probably necessary since Tsuki most likely won’t take anything from directly.
• 20 Minutes into the Future: Takes place in the future, though only enough that the story can say crime has increased to the point where there are elite bodyguard schools. That is until you find the Kurayashiki inventions, which include sapient robots that can pass for human and devices that can read what animals are thinking.
• Unequal Pairing: The main couple is Reika and Kaito, which is kind of awkward since she’s his boss and legally he isn’t even considered human.
• Unknown Rival: Tae considers Reika her rival. Reika considers Tae the annoying stupid girl that doesn’t do anything right.
• Uptown Girl: The basis of almost every relationship. However, Kaito being Kaito, he’s generally the one being pursued by the girls, who are for the most part intrigued by the obvious markers of having come up in the prohibited district even if that’s being kept secret.
• Ventriloquism: Kaito can both throw his voice and imitate Aya perfectly, making it sound as though she’s being ridiculously mean to Tominori. He doesn’t catch up for quite awhile.
• Virgin-Shaming: Tominori is the butt of jokes thanks to his virginity, though mostly it’s just that he’s bad with women in general. On the other hand, Kaoru is upset that Kaito isn’t one and that isn’t suspicious at all, nope. There’s an omake where Kaito tries to have him go get laid, but he’s a little too gentlemanly for it to work out as planned. In a good way: He’s gentle, kind and soft in a way that Kaito really couldn’t be, which is good for her. For him, it makes him sad because he had grown to like her somewhat, but it was just a fling.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Tae and Yuuki squabble a lot, but Yuuki is genuinely determined to look out for Tae’s best interests and Tae is absolutely frantic when Yuuki collapses.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Kaito gropes Reika and it’s played for laughs since he doesn’t act like he thinks he’s really doing anything worse than normal, but the next few scenes establish that he really was being a huge dick and should be grateful that Reika ONLY hit him as hard as she could since he should have been expelled and fired. Perhaps worst of all, he betrayed her trust when he’s one of the few people she actually believes in. When Tsuki confronts him, he admits that he was intentionally seeing if he’d be punished since even punishment is better than tedium.
• What the Hell, Player?: When Kaito and Aya have their underwear stolen, you have the option to Ask Around, Rush Around or Grope Around, meaning Aya’s breasts. Kaito will scold you at length if you pick this option and won’t actually do it. Nor will he lie and say that Tae’s food was edible, let alone the best.
• Wholesome Crossdresser: Kaoru dresses as and pretends to be a man. Women can’t become bodyguards.
• Willfully Weak: Kaito pretends to be much weaker than he is, such as having a C- in physical strength and yet being able to scale a wall in seconds. Having seen Kaito get truly serious once, Kanzaki doesn't believe that he was truly unable to retrieve his badge from Dengoro. In Aya and Kanzakis routes as well as Kaoru's subroute, he faces off against Tominori and Kaoru and trashes them with the margin of victory largely dependent on how hard he's trying to avoid giving them permanent injuries.
• Wing Ding Eyes: When Kaito tries to defend a bet Kanzaki proposed, Kaoru is disinclined to listen because his eyes have turned into dollar signs, to which he claims he’s not a foreigner so it should be the yen sign.
• Worthy Opponent: After beating Tominori and depriving him of the chance to become a bodyguard in the future Kaito admits that if things had been a little different they might have been good friends rather than Tominori’s constant irritation. But then he just becomes Reika’s bodyguard.
• Would Hit a Girl
  • Kaito doesn’t have a problem with hitting girls. Either lighthearted chops to random rich girls or even beating Kaoru black and blue in order to take her spot as Kanzaki’s bodyguard, though after winning he becomes more like her fiancée instead.
  • In Tsuki’s route he’s forced into confronting Anzu and takes her out with a single punch.
• Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: At the end of a route, there’s generally an epilogue with a short sex scene followed by the conclusion to the story. For Tae, however, the conclusion actually addresses a plot point that had only been hovering around the edges and extends for quite a bit.
• You Were Trying Too Hard: All the other bodyguard students get offended when Kaito lazily declares that if they stay tense all the time they’re just going to get themselves killed, but the teacher agrees with him. Staying intentionally tense even in a safe environment is pointless and tiring.
• Zero-Approval Gambit: When Tsuki asks him to, Tominori pretends that he used to be her fiancée until she was raped, after which he cruelly tossed her aside because she wasn’t good enough for him anymore. Kaito immediately punches him as hard as he can and beats him up. Afterward Tsuki tells him she was testing Kaito to see how he would react if the story were true.

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