In Takakura, there is an urban legend about a mysterious singer known only as Girl A. Most people cannot see her, and those who can are called to meet her. When they find her, they meet four others just like them and are from that day forward forever linked to these people in a group known as a Coμnote . Each of them can summon their avatar, a monster several times the size of a human who follows the will of the connectors.
When this happens to the main characters of the story, they are then immediately attacked by another avatar - a giant metal beast in the shape of an ape. The five summon their avatar, a black dragon they later name Babylon, and destroy the attacker. They they learn that in having done so, they just killed five people: when an avatar is destroyed, all five attached to it will invariably die. The connection is unbreakable and control over the avatar is a majority rules decision. In addition to that, avatars "level up" by destroying other avatars, giving rise to violent Coμs that wish to destroy other avatars in pursuit of greater strength. As time goes on, they discover many other groups like their own with their own agendas, some of them violent and deranged and some of them seeking control over all the Coμ, collectively known as the Coμnet.
Of course, there are enough conflicts within the titular coμ itself even without looking for broader political problems. The protagonist, Akihito, does not know any of the other four he was connected to. One is a self-proclaimed "ally of justice" schoolgirl, one is an otaku girl several years younger than he is, one is a violent thug, and the last is a mysterious and amoral waitress that dresses as a maid. In addition to them, Akihito is also joined by his mysterious childhood friend Kagome, also known as the "black witch".
An English translation was released on July 24th, 2014.
This visual novel provides examples of:
- Accidental Murder: Jango tosses a young woman in front of an avatar, who is unable to stop itself before crushing the woman.
- Arc Villain: Jack the Ripper, the red hound like avatar summoned by a berserk coμ. At first, he targets Akihito’s group because they’re new and weak, but eventually they go crazy and start slaughtering everyone they can find, even those who are unconnected to coμs.
- Asshole Victim
- The man who killed Akihito’s mother was completely unrepentant and Akihito suspected he had a lot of enemies. When he turned up with a cut throat and three stab wounds, Akihito figures his large number of enemies probably kept the police from suspecting Akihito enough to bring him in for questioning, even if he was probably a suspect.
- The small time hoodlums killed by Jack the Ripper are also later shown to have been drug dealers, which is basically a death sentence in this story even from the good guys. Karasuma would have even let them go if they hadn’t tried to attack him.
- Ax-Crazy: Many connectors go mad with power and begin slaughtering other coμs or even civilians, but not as often as is believed. Rondo Rondo is the coμ hunter rather than there being many of them. She targets beginner killers and criminals to ease her conscience.
- Bad "Bad Acting": When the group tries voice acting, they’re almost all terrible. Kagome in particular is shocked that her talents went unrecognized.
- The Bad Guy Wins: In Benio’s route she interrupts what would have been a double kill and turns it into a win for Gasai, who takes over the city. Nanase goes into hiding because she broke her agreement to reveal what David and Kugura had been doing, who get off scot-free. However, Kugura's crimes are now known and the Round Table is in the middle of a civil war, so all-in-all it's not too bad.
- Big Bad Ensemble: In Kagome’s route there is no real Big Bad, only a lot of people trying for the position and dying. Rondo Rondo tries assassinating Gasai but fails, who is trying to keep order. Kugura attempts to continue plotting, but narrowly survives an assassination attempt and is then betrayed. Kajou at first seems like he might end up the villain, but nothing comes of that. The final fight is against Kagome herself, but she’s not the big bad.
- Big Damn Heroes: At the climax of Mayuki’s route, Reclus’ Pantagruel comes in with a clutch save.
- Bittersweet Ending: In Hisoka’s endings, Akihito and Kagome have both killed people with their own hands. In the A ending, Hisoka is in a coma and he’s running the gigs now, leaving his friendship with Benio strained. He doesn’t see Mayuki anymore. In the happier B ending, he’s in a relationship that’s probably not healthy in the long run.
- Bolivian Army Ending: In Kagome’s route but subverted. Babylon’s coμ, a depowered Sting, Yoruko and Rondo all emerge with badly damaged avatars to fight off the powerful Orodruin, but we find out that they won and are in hiding.
- Breaking the Fellowship: In Kagome’s route the coμ splits up when Kagome’s connections to events in the past and present are uncovered. Mayuki rejoins first, then Benio, Haru and Izawa rejoin when they meet up at the park. Seems they just needed some time to cool their heads.
- Breather Episode: Ayaya’s route contains basically nothing of substance and is very short, roughly half the length of the three routes that precede it. Avatars barely even come up.
- But Thou Must!: Kagome’s route begins with choosing not to leap to Yoruko’s assistance. Akihito helps her out anyway after a brief pause.
- By the Power of Grayskull!: Connectors like to call out their avatar’s name when they use it, but it’s not actually required. Mayuki, otaku that she is, makes a long and involved version. During the gig events, though, she decides it doesn’t fit and abbreviates it.
- Calling Your Attacks: The coμ of Babylon’s second opponent at the gigs likes being theatrical and uses ridiculously long attack names. This costs them at least one battle.Izawa: Your attack names are way too long!
- Occasionally done by other (more competent) coμs when they employ an attack intended as a finishing move.
- Childhood Friend Romance: Kagome and Akihito met ten years ago and Kagome quickly fell in love with him. When they met up again seven years after parting, she fell in love with him again.
- Childhood Marriage Promise: Eight years ago, Akihito proposed to Kagome. He’s very, very embarrassed about it. Not least of all because she immediately beat him up afterward, as she remembers fondly. And then she said yes, so long as he manages to beat her once.
- A Child Shall Lead Them: The leader of the Gigano coμ was a child, Kagome Hinaori. Unfortunately, the other coμ members couldn’t stand that a child was their superior in every way and betrayed her. So she manipulated the already-tense situation to get them killed to protect herself, but instead caused a free-for-all that destroyed a chunk of the city five years ago.
- Conversational Troping: All the time, since the characters are self-aware enough to realize their situation is pretty shonen manga-esque. Mayuki is particularly prone to it and dubs Akihito the protagonist since the “sword wielding heroine” is his childhood friend.
- Cosmetic Award: After clearing Mayuki, you can turn the transparency down on her glasses and actually see her face.
- Curb-Stomp Battle
- Kagome strikes Izawa twice and completely neutralizes him. If anything, she’s impressed that it took two attacks. That doesn’t happen often.
- At first glance, Touri is a normal human, but she destroys two fully powered avatars almost instantly and then proceeds to beat the crap out of Babylon, though it only had Akihito to power it.
- Darker and Edgier: Hisoka’s route contains a lot of murder and carnage compared to the route that preceded it. Mayuki’s route, which comes next, is a lot lighter.
- Deus ex Machina: When cornered by three BKs at full power with only three people to power Babylon, the mysterious Sting arrives out of nowhere to destroy two of the enemy avatars and force the third to flee. Nobody even knows what Sting is. Rondo Rondo arrives a moment later, though, saying she had intended to step in and save Akihito’s group, so either way they’d have been fine. The real question is what is Sting? Kagome’s avatar, of course.
- Deus Sex Machina: Haru jokes that with just her and Akihito fighting, the story would normally make them have sex to up their synchronization rate or whatever. It doesn’t happen, of course, since they’re too busy.
- Does Not Know His Own Strength: When an avatar levels up, it grows stronger. However, it also becomes hard to use as precisely as you did before. Movement becomes simpler and more predictable even though it’s much faster than before.
- The Dog Was the Mastermind: Coμ hunters aren’t nearly as common as people have been led to believe. Most of it was done by Rondo Rondo.
- Doomed Moral Victor: Akihito’s group all confront Gasai expecting to be slaughtered. They could have gotten a double kill and did some impressive damage anyway, but in the end they lost. However, Gasai let them go. After that, he cut back on being such a Manipulative Bastard.
- Dwindling Party: In Hisoka’s route, Mayuki is caught outside at night and put under house arrest by her parents, Benio is stabbed, and Izawa is caught by the police while escaping. In the end, only two people are left to power Babylon against Nomad who only has two connectors of its own.
- Entitled to Have You: Mayuki’s stalkers believe that because they’re big fans of Yuki, they deserve to be allowed to move in with her.
- Everybody Lives: Apart from one Posthumous Character, there are no deaths in Mayuki’s route, which is something of a reaction to the carnage in the previous route. Ayaya’s route has no deaths either, but that route doesn’t have much conflict or even plot.
- Everyone Can See It: Benio’s crush on Akihito is obvious to everyone, but they think poorly of her chances since she’s fairly flat chested. The story then skips back to the beginning and how they all met, so it takes awhile for this to go anywhere. Turns out everyone knows because she’s not really trying to hide it.
- Exact Words: Izawa tells Mayuki not to say a word about an incident. She instantly texts Akihito, Kagome, and Benio messages detailing how some guys thought Izawa was a girl and tried flirting.
- Flash Forward: At the beginning of the story Akihito knows perfectly well what avatars are and can summon them himself. After that, we get to see how he became involved in that world.
- Foreshadowing: Mayuki says the best way to encourage love and peace is to become a brainless but popular idol. She would know.
- Forgotten First Meeting: When Akihito and Kagome passed each other for the first time in seven years, Akihito recognized her immediately while she took a moment. She hadn’t changed at all. Kagome thinks the exact same thing, only reversed.
- Fragile Speedster: Gevaudan’s have the highest agility, but poor defense.
- Fusion Dance: In Kagome’s route, Babylon wields Sting like a sword to temporarily boost their powers and defeat their opponent. It only works because their powers are already similar. At the end of the route there’s a similar effect when Babylon finally makes physical contact with Sting and the four controlling Babylon all use that ghost of a connection to temporarily limit Sting’s abilities.
- Glowing Eyes of Doom: Avatars often have glowing eyes, especially when using their powers.
- Goldfish Poop Gang: The four heavenly kings try challenging Babylon, who beats the crap out of the first three without effort and then simply finds the last one annoying to fight. Kagome simply runs to the enemy connectors and pulls a knife on them to get them to submit.
- Hammerspace: Kagome’s knives pop out of nowhere whenever she needs them.
- Happy Ending
- Benio’s route ends with Babylon defeated and only allowed to live by the king’s mercy, but everyone makes it out alive. Gasai even eases up on being such a jerk.
- In Hisoka B, Hisoka and Akihito both make it out alive and happy. Of course, the relationship itself might not be that good of an idea.
- Mayuki’s route ends with no casualties and everyone basically happy.
- Ayaya’s route has nothing dramatic happen at all.
- Have a Nice Death: Picking the wrong choices will quickly get you killed, resulting in a brief Mayuki-sensei lecture. Her advice the first time? Don't be stupidly heroic and get in the way of people who know what they’re doing.
- Heroic Sacrifice: At the end of Kagome's route Hisoka sacrifices herself in order to defeat the last seven avatars.
- Hooker with a Heart of Gold: Abe is implied to be a teen prostitute, but Akihito has a pretty good opinion of her since she doesn’t like to bother her friends.
- I Always Wanted to Say That: The group admits that they’d really like the chance to say silly lines like “The culprit is you!” just once.
- If It's You, It's Okay: Mayuki is wildly outside Akihito’s strike zone, but since he likes her personality he’ll overlook it. Saying it aloud is really embarrassing though, to the point that he figures it’s probably better if people just think he really is a lolicon. Mayuki resolves to grow into a busty beauty in the future.
- Indirect Kiss
- Benio buys a drink for herself and Akihito and says they can switch if he doesn’t like his. It’s gross, so they switch. Akihito realizes the whole time where this will end up, but keeps quiet.
- When Ayaya and Akihito have one, he doesn’t care.
- Interplay of Sex and Violence
- After Hisoka sends assassins to try to kill Kagome Akihito leaves his apartment and has lots of sex with Haru.
- Akihito’s class is brutally assaulted by Wolf Pack at one point in Hisoka’s route. He then takes her to the nurse’s office and they have sex.
- Jack of All Stats: Ivanhoe’s have solid B ranks in almost every stat plus good control.
- Left Hanging: In Kagome’s ending, a truly stable environment is never formed. The System isn't even scratched, and Nanase has gone into hiding.
- Lighter and Softer: After the brutal Hisoka route, which includes the protagonists messily killing people with their own hands, Mayuki’s route rarely even brings up avatars until past the halfway point. Instead, it focuses on establishing some mutual interests between the two and showing how Akihito might recover from his traumas.
- Limited Wardrobe: Haru always wears her maid uniform everywhere. Most people’s wardrobes are little better.
- Literal Metaphor: A stampede is called the revenge of the dead on coμs that would not stop fighting. It’s more or less true. A dead avatar is absorbed as action points by the winner of the fight. To end a stampede, you need to destroy those action points again, which tears apart your own mind in the process. The dead connectors also all try to kill to kill the stampeding connector.
- Lotus-Eater Machine: Connectors that die are absorbed into an illusory world where resources are infinite and everything is more or less peaceful and perfect. A stampeding connector seems to be stuck in there as well. Kagome isn’t tempted in the slightest to stay, but to leave she has to tear it all apart, killing the people she already murdered once more. This destroys herself in the process.
- Lovable Sex Maniac: Benio’s friend Saho loves talking about perverted stuff, but she actually has no experience. Kouchin, who always smacks her for being a pervert, is the one who actually does have some experience, as she accidentally lets slip. Benio soon follows Kouchin on the path to adulthood, leaving the pervert the only virgin among them.
- Love Dodecahedron: Everyone firmly believes all the girls around Akihito are going to snap one day and kill him. It generally doesn’t get too complicated though and the story never makes it seem as though there’s real competition.
- Maid Cafe: Haru works at a maid café and always wears her uniform as a result.
- Making Love in All the Wrong Places
- Benio and Akihito have sex on the school roof.
- Hisoka with Akihito do it in the nurse’s office during school hours.
- Lacking any better place to have sex since Ayaya’s parents are home and a teacher spotted other students using the closest love hotel, she and Akihito simply go into the closest alley.
- The Masquerade
- The Round Table exists to hide the avatars from the general public. Unfortunately for them, they don’t really enforce their rules much. They just throw out anyone that breaks the rules.
- They’re not as good as they think either. The System works to keep things really undercover, including their own avatar enforcers.
- Master of Illusion: Loreley confuses the senses and causes its opponents to hallucinate by hijacking the link between avatar and connector. Akihito cuts himself with his knife to break free.
- Master of All: The Lord class has high stats in every category. One Lord can do the work that generally requires all the connectors for a normal coμ.
- Master of None: Fighters have high attack but low movement ability and mages have the opposite. Priests have high defense, rogues are good at detection. Bishops like Akihito have slightly above average stats in all categories, meaning there’s no particular reason to put him in charge when specialists can do anything he can but better. He does make everyone stronger, though, when they’re all connected. Finally, he controls the black fireball.
- Maybe Ever After: Hisoka A has her in a coma after the stampede. It’s unclear if Akihito will be able to do anything about that.
- Mêlée à Trois: Nomad’s last dance in Kagome’s route is a brawl with three enormously powerful avatars all competing to take her out. The final winner is Sting, commanded by Kagome, because Akihito is suicidally emphatic when it comes to Hisoka.
- Mood Whiplash: Right after Sting and Kagome stampede in Kagome’s route, Akihito tells the group their four options and then walks off so they can talk about it. He heads to the school, depressed and knowing he’s likely to die in the upcoming battles when up pops Mayuki-sensei, here to lampshade that the school is a symbol of peace for battle manga protagonists. Determined to sulk, he banishes her from his mind once more.
- Mr. Imagination: Mayuki’s second stalker, Kasuka, isn’t just a fangirl but also a chuunibyou. She talks like an anime character and uses ore while claiming she normally doesn’t eat boring human food.
- Mugging the Monster: A foolish thug that likes chasing people down targets a woman with a ‘clever face’ and drives her into a park, where she instantly destroys first one avatar and then the thug’s. You do not mess with Touri.
- Multiple Endings: Five heroines. Benio's route must be first, Kagome's must be last, but Hisoka, Mayuki and Ayaya can be done in any order.
- Benio’s is The Bad Guy Wins, but bittersweet.
- Hisoka gets two endings, one better than the other. The first leaves Hisoka in a coma. The second one has Akihito do pretty much exactly the same things, but it turns out better for some reason.
- Mayuki’s route is pretty undramatic and is focused on relationships. Mayuki comes to terms with her idol career and otaku hobbies and Akihito starts moving on from his past.
- Ayaya’s route branches off of Mayuki's and doesn’t really accomplish much. She and Akihito start dating, but Ayaya can’t do much for Akihito except be there for him.
- Kagome’s route has massive battles, an organization trying to wipe out the coμnet and lots of intrigue. Kagome and Sting stampede and she’s the only connector to ever recover from a stampede, though she goes blind in one eye and has some wounds that never heal properly.
- No Body Left Behind: Avatars leave no body behind. In a mental world, death also means the end of your form.
- Nominal Importance: The ‘only important characters get portraits’ part. The only important character to not get a sprite is Noiz, who is still fairly minor. It shows in how people act, too, when Akihito risks life and limb to save Rondo the coμ hunter but has her two spriteless connector allies shot to death without a thought.
- Official Couple: The group decides early on that Akihito and Kagome are probably the canon couple since they’re childhood friends. Of course, the childhood friend route is usually the boring one according to them. As for Kagome herself, when prodded he’ll deny the fact that she obviously loves him. If prodded further, he’ll admit that even if it’s true, he isn’t interested in someone that won’t do something about their feelings.
- The Only One Allowed to Defeat You
- When Akihito says that only he may defeat the stampeding Nomad he means it. He saves it from Sting, and then uses Babylon’s black flame on Nomad, though it misses and gets disabled instead, allowing him to just pin it until it runs out of power.
- Izawa will be the one to defeat Kagome and no one else. He doesn’t even think it counts if he uses Babylon’s black flame on Sting.
- Operation: Jealousy: Mayuki points out that their super otaku plan for Ayaya to win over Akihito lacks this, so Ayaya decides to fake it. The sad thing is that it works, despite Ayaya bringing her uncle.
- Parody: Acceptors is an in-universe parody of tokusatsu shows. The hapless protagonist is dragged along by a bunch of otaku who try to make him into a transforming hero by adding special effects. Kaname wants to be pragmatic and efficient so he can save lives, but his fangirls insist on being flashy.
- Phrase Catcher: “You’re so nice, but only to girls.”
- Polyamory: In Benio’s ending, Kagome interrupts their date forcefully and makes it clear that even if she doesn’t make a claim on Akihito right now, she can do so whenever she pleases in the future.
- Power Incontinence: As avatars grow stronger they become harder to control.
- Protagonist-Centered Morality: Pointedly averted. Even Akihito knows he’s being hypocritical and acting as a destabilizing force in an incredibly dangerous situation.
- Questionable Casting: In-Universe, when Mayuki suggests having her friends voice character for the Acceptor novels she just draws names out of a hat, resulting in Kagome playing the shy rich girl, Benio playing The Hero and Haru as the shark monster. Those are the worst three, but the rest are little better.
- Razor Floss: Jack the Ripper uses wires to cut apart everything its attacks touch. They can’t even be seen by the naked eye.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: Nomad’s single eye is glowing red.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: After gaining enough power, the Coμ hunters begin targeting lieutenants of Caesar's Legion in order to draw out Caesar himself and pay him back. Rondo Rondo has done things she can never atone for, so each time she kills someone she becomes more and more obsessed with revenge, completely ignoring that it was someone like her that got her brother killed in the first place.
- Serial-Killer Killer: After targeting a few innocent coμs, Rondo Rondo instead went for leveling up by attacking Beginner Killers.
- Sex Is Good: As the story continues, it starts agreeing with Haru’s general attitude of sex being something that is good by itself even without romantic love. Perhaps not to the extent that Haru takes it, but Benio eventually realizes she’s not jealous of the girls Akihito sleeps with like she thought she would be.
- Shout-Out:
- The killer offers Akihito a blue or red pill. He doesn’t get it, much to her disappointment. It’s just a metaphor though, because what she really gives him is a knife. Use it or don’t.
- See Theme Naming below.
- Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids!: “Everyone realizes it at some point. Nothing in the world ends with a nice little ‘they all lived happily ever after.’”
- So Bad, It's Good: In-Universe, Akihito is so fascinated by the terribly written emails that Mayuki gets that he just wants to read even more. That was the idea anyway, but after the first few he asks if he can stop now. He decides her stalker is an alien with only passing familiarity with Japanese.
- Squishy Wizard: An avatar is a gigantic raging monster, but the contractors are all just normal humans. Kill them and the avatar dies too.
- Stalker without a Crush
- Mayuki has obsessive fans that follow her around and try to offer a partnership with her.
- Ayaya gains a stalker at the beginning of her route, prompting her to use him as an excuse to get close to Akihito. Turns out he was actually connected to the drug dealers Izawa crushed on Yoshimori’s behalf rather than being the typical kind of stalker.
- Statistically Speaking
- Each avatar category has its own base stats.
- Humanoid Ivanhoes have C attack, defense, detection, magic and ability plus B agility and A control. Well rounded, easy to use, but not that great.
- Beastlike Gevaudan have D attack and defense, C detection, B magic, abilities and control and A agility. Fast, but not too strong.
- And so on and so on. The Pantagruel is like a slower but stronger Ivanhoe and the next two categories are slightly quirkier.
- The final category, Georgios, is the one the protagonists have: Overwhelming attack, defense and abilities, but hard to control. They also run out of power more quickly.
- Each connector class has its own stats as well. Izawa’s Fighter is 10 attack, 6 defense, 3 movement and 6 detection. Mage switches attack and movement. Bishops have an even 7 across all stats but gets special abilities to make up for being overshadowed.
- Each avatar category has its own base stats.
- Stylistic Suck: Rather than going for Bad "Bad Acting" when trying to do voice work for Mayuki’s Acceptor stories, everyone is simply completely miscast. It’s terrible. Not that there isn’t bad bad acting to go with it.
- Superpower Meltdown: An avatar that destroys other avatars gains power, but if it does it too much it becomes harder and harder to control until finally it goes on a stampede, at which point it’s controlled by the connector’s subconscious and lashes out terribly.
- On the verge of defeat, Jack the Ripper goes on a stampede and nearly turns things around before being defeated.
- Nomad is on the verge of a stampede because it always kills its opponent during the gig fights.
- In Kagome’s route, Hisoka is given a drug that causes her control over her avatar to go out of control. Noiz is killed offscreen, meaning he couldn’t stop it either even if he wanted to.]]
- The most powerful avatar is Sting, though it’s always well controlled and efficient despite its supreme power. In Kagome’s route we find out it’s only kept from going on a rampage by maintenance on Kagome and taking special suppressant pills. Eventually, it goes berserk anyway.
- Synchronization: Death of an avatar leads to the death of all five Coμ contractors.
- Taking the Bullet: Akihito moves Babylon into intercepting an attack on Nomad from Sting.
- Talking Is a Free Action: Once Babylon and El-Ahrairah are prepared to shoot each other at point blank range with their ultimate attacks Benio steps in and she, Akihito, and the rest talk for a few minutes. Their enemy was considerate enough to not simply win the fight on his own, apparently. Subverted, though: Gasai was letting them talk.
- The Tease: Kagome likes to flirt with Akihito, strip in front of him, and tempt him to try to have his way with her. He doesn’t take her seriously, but he does fall for the bait once near the beginning. That said, she actually does want him to go for it.
- Their First Time: Benio should probably be grateful that Akihito has some experience. Otherwise he wouldn’t be calm enough to make sure he doesn’t hurt her. At least, that was the plan, but she rushes herself too fast into it and they have to stop halfway. A defeat, but Benio takes pride in being technically not a virgin anymore.
- Theme Naming: Several names are references to notable literary characters and authors.
- Nanase's Fuchur is named after the luckdragon in The Neverending Story (in English, Falkor). Its ultimate attack, the Song of Ende, is named after its author, Michael Ende.
- All of Gasai and Yoruko’s abilities are named for Watership Down characters. El-Ahrairah the avatar is named the trickster prince, the ultimate attack is named for the sun god Frith, its most powerful sword is Hazel, and the 9R (nine rabbits) are all swords named for the rabbits, such as Dandelion or Fiver.
- The "Jh" of Rondo Rondo's Miss Jh stands for "Jekyll and Hyde." It's a shapeshifter.
- The Burroughs avatar class, which includes bizarre-looking Avatars like Miss Jh and K, takes its name from Beat author William S. Burroughs, who wrote Naked Lunch and many other books with psychedelic and bizarre imagery.
- Sting has two modes, sauron and nazgul.
- A hostile comyu of beginner-killers calls itself Boskone.
- Third-Person Person: Ayaya always refers to herself as such. It let Mayuki to believe that it was just an embarrassing nickname Akihito came up with before she learns that yes, her name really is Ayaya Enishi.
- This Is Reality: After their first battle, Akihito’s coμ wonders what the hell they’re supposed to do now. They just had something like chapter one of a shonen manga, but this is real life!
- This Means War!: In Kagome’s route the coμ hunters start targeting Caesar’s Legion specifically in the hopes of drawing out the leader himself. He formally declares war.
- Token Evil Teammate: Mayuki is a kid, Benio talks about justice, Haru just wants to have sex, and Akihito is grumpy but likes helping women. Izawa? Izawa kills people. When Babylon appears, he uses it to kill people more effectively. In truth, though, Kagome is worse. She’ll easily kill anyone and in the past she created Ground Zero in a massive free for all battle that she incited. She doesn’t even feel guilt.
- Token Good Teammate: Izawa and Akihito have some morals, but they also believe in meeting violence with violence. Mayuki is indifferent, Haru is amoral, and the black witch is the black witch. That leaves Benio to be the ally of justice in the group.
- Token Girl: Nanase is the only female leader of the Round Table. She’s also the most popular and influential, though, barring Caesar.
- Token Mini-Moe: Haru is five years older than Akihito and Benio, who are four years older than Mayuki. She says she can’t say any more about it than that.
- Totally 18: Mayuki claims once that there are definitely no legal problems if she gets into a relationship. Akihito’s response would normally be met with “It’s a lie, of course” but this time Mayuki has to tell him not to cause waves and just go along with it.
- Touched by Vorlons: Girl A forms coμs by linking five random people together. Those five people then affect the people close to them mentally and physically, causing them to become potential connectors as well. You’re not likely to end up in a coμ with someone you know, but people you know are likely to be in a coμ in the future if they aren’t already.
- Tsundere
- Some people call Kagome Tsundere-sama. That’s ridiculous. She’s Tsunguska, exploding and destroying everything around her for miles. In truth, she’s basically incapable of doing more than mocking Akihito, no matter how much she says she’s deredere for him.
- Akihito doesn’t catch it, but when he teases Izawa like usual about worrying about the rest, he blushes. Aww, they’re buddies.
- Unfortunate Names: Ayaya’s real last name is Ayaya, much to Mayuki’s surprise and pity.
- The Unfought: Kugura is one of the people jockeying for power, but he’s never fought. His avatar is never seen either.
- Unmanly Secret: Izawa likes idols and is a big Yuuna fan. He even asks for her autograph at one point and tries to cover for it by saying his sister likes Yuuna and has a bunch of her CDs.
- Unskilled, but Strong: Sting is near-impossible to damage and so fast nothing can keep up with it. However, it tends to just ram things and tear them apart from the inside. It’s too fast and strong for anything else. This is not due to a lack of ability; Sting is nearly impossible to control due to how strong it has become, and it has only one surviving connector.
- Verbal Tic: Ayaya goes "ayayayaya" whenever she gets excited or nervous.
- Vigilante Man: With Tianwen’s help, Miyato leaks information gained from Kugura to the coμ hunter, knowing that she’ll target Beginner Killers and criminals.
- Villainous Crush: David is a slimy drug dealer trying to gain power, but he’s also in love with Nanase, which is used against him. He also chooses not to resist the Orodruin and is killed as a result. If he had brought out Fuchur, it would have been destroyed.
- Villain's Dying Grace
- In Hisoka A, Noiz forces his dead body to the park. How did he do that? Don’t worry about the little details. Akihito isn’t. In Hisoka B, it turns out that yes, he was still trying to be the villain.
- In Kagome’s route, David refuses to defend himself with his avatar because he doesn't want his connectors and love to die as well.
- Violence Really Is the Answer: The majority of the time ‘Kill the bastard’ is the easiest, safest, and most intelligent choice, even if Akihito doesn’t want to do it. The more pragmatic and hands-on the better, like assassinating a hostile coμ instead of challenging them to a duel.
- Vitriolic Best Buds: Akihito isn’t really sure why, but he and Kururi hurl abuse at each other the whole time they’re together.
- Was It All a Lie?: Inverted. Kagome claims unprompted that it was all a lie after her cooperating with Kajou and being the connector for Sting is uncovered but Akihito doesn’t believe her. Or care.
- We Can Rule Together: Gasai considers himself the king to be and finds Akihito worthy of knowing his name and face. He offers him a special position apart from his personal Legion, but Akihito refuses.
- Wild Card
- Babylon’s coμ becomes very famous after defeating both Nanase and Jack the Ripper, but Akihito refuses to join either the Round Table or Caesar. Instead, he flits between sides, such as declaring hostilities towards Caesar one minute and then selling him information about an enemy cabal. Akihito avoids doing anything that would gain his coμ too much power because they would become targets.
- In Kagome’s route they take in Yoruko, Rondo Rondo, and Kagome, making them everyone’s enemy.
- With Friends Like These...: Izawa may consider the coμ members to be something like friends even if he doesn’t admit it, but he’ll also kill them without a second thought if he feels they betrayed him. Kagome is probably worse because she doesn’t have the ‘consider them friends’ part.
- With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Most people don’t seem to use their avatars for anything bad, but sometimes a group comes together that finds it fun to use their newfound power to hunt down other coμs and destroy them. The sense of personal responsibility for murder is low and the risk seems low as well.
- Worf Had the Flu: The final fight of Benio’s route is between Babylon and El-Ahrairah. Yoruko is not present, but the truth is that it’s even more of a handicap than sheer numbers. Yoruko is the only one who can use the 9R, the swords that float around El-Ahrairah. Each of them is capable of matching an avatar on their own. Despite that, the best Babylon can do is almost perform a double kill before pulling back.
- Worth Living For: Before meeting Gasai, Yoruko was just existing. He encouraged her to take revenge for her dead family, after which she could finally move on and come back to life. She swore herself to Gasai’s service, which he allowed because he knew she needed it.
- Worthy Opponent: Gasai calls Akihito a clown, but he allowed him to see his face as well and will accept duels. Or if he’s the one that’s being the aggressor, he’ll show enough respect to formally declare war despite his normal methods. It confuses Yoruko a little since Gasai doesn’t treat anyone else like this. She’s not sure what makes Akihito special, but she knows that somehow they’re similar. For Gasai’s part, it’s related to how he and Akihito have been the only ones to ever help Yoruko.
- Wretched Hive: The city where Akihito lives seems like a fairly normal city, but through his eyes he only sees the teen prostitutes, drunks, and thugs. In Mayuki’s route he begins to acknowledge the better parts of it.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: Ayaya and Mayuki try to plan dates for Ayaya and Akihito based on cliché manga and bad eroge. Every single flag event results in failure.
- Yandere: After Kagome tells Hisoka to stay away from Akihito, she sends three assassins after her. To her credit, she stops after being asked. Apparently, she had no idea Akihito would have a problem with it.
- You Killed My Father
- Akihito was motivated by the death of his mother to kill her unrepentant murderer even though he didn’t really hate the man.
- Gasai wishes to avenge his dead father, though he isn’t positive that the official story of suicide is untrue. Unlike everyone else and their revenge he’s quite calm about it, however.
- With prompting from Gasai, Yoruko tracked down the killer of her parents and brother and took revenge.
- You Will Be Spared: Izawa lets Gergiev go so he can tell his boss to stop annoying Izawa.
