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Yeah, it's that kind of game. Or is it?

Hatoful Boyfriend (Japanese title はーとふる彼氏) is a game about a human hunter-gatherer girl (named by you, default Hiyoko Tousaka) who goes to a high school for birds, St. PigeoNation's Institute. There, she dates pigeons.

The official website is here, two download mirrors for the free version are here, and an English translation for the free version is available here. The English version of the full game can be found here. Thank you for the redirect, moa810. A remake of the original game is available to buy on Steam. PS4 and Vita versions were released in July 2015. The second game, Holiday Star, has an English demo available here, and the full version can be purchased here. moa810 is also working on another sequel, which will have fan's pet photos as characters (sadly the contest is closed).

Four drama CDs have been released in Japanese, with some English translations here. There is a partially translated guidebook which gives some other information. Some manga have also been released - Absolute Zero, high fantasy from Anghel's POV; elaboration on some character background hinted at in Holiday Star; and some monthly stuff.

Oh, if you're wondering, "hatoful" is the Japanese pronunciation of either the wasei eigo word "heartful" or "hurtful", chosen both for this double meaning and for the fact that it starts with hato (Japanese for pigeon).


Tropes found throughout the Hatoful Boyfriend series include:

    open/close all folders 

    A School of Hope and White Wings 

  • 6 Is 9: In the BBL route, Ryouta and Sakuya discover that volume 6 from an encyclopedia collection is found missing in the sealed-off wing of the school, a second volume 9 having taken its place.
  • Affectionate Parody: Of the whole Dating Sim Visual Novel genre. The games contain a lot of loving pokes at adventure RPGs too, especially in Anghel's route.
  • After the End: It's heavily hinted at throughout the main game, but only confirmed in the Bad Boys Love route.
  • All There in the Manual: The guidebook greatly expands on the characters' backstories, particularly Shuu's/Ichijou Utsuru's
  • A Love to Dismember: Doctor Shuu does this to your head if you focus on him.
  • Animal Stereotypes
    • The ordinary guy is a rock dove, fan-tails tend to be full of themselves, the mourning dove is introverted, etc.
    • Fan-artists also do a bit of this by portraying Hiyoko, whose name means "Chick" as in a baby bird, as having short hair and often as a blonde.
    • The Hawk Party is composed of warmongers while the Dove Party is focused on peace.
  • Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Hiyoko's choices for wishes are: "Conquer the world by force, Rule the world from the shadows, or Become a famous artist."
  • Author Appeal: Oko San is based on moa810's own pet bird; however, real-life Okosan does not like pudding at all.
  • Back-to-Back Badasses: Azami and Hiyoko versus the street gang.
  • Bad End: As usual for the genre if you don't go all the way with any romance. It involves Hiyoko being executed by the Hawk Party. Surprisingly, this ending makes more sense once you've played the Bad Boys Love route. There is also one caused in the demo version by staying in the infirmary to wait for Ryouta, as Doctor Shuu is implied to have cut your head off and stuffed it in a box (this ending also serves as a preview for Bad Boys Love). The normal ending for Doctor Shuu might also be considered this.
  • Be Careful What You Wish For:
    • At Tanabata, if you choose the fourth option (initially not available) for "the mad love of a fallen angel", you'll get exactly that - a crazed bleeding-heart dove named Anghel Higure convinced he's a fallen angel.
    • If the player opts into the BBL route, it's revealed that Ryouta and the protagonist wished for a world where humans and birds would no longer fight. Shuu tries to carry out the wish by wiping out the remaining humans.
  • Big Damn Heroes: On the Bad Boys Love route, just when things look at their bleakest with a trapped Kazuaki and Anghel dying from poison gas and a broken Ryouta submitting to Doctor Shuu, Oko San and Sakuya show up to help.
  • Black Screen of Death: In the BBL route, the player sees Sakuya's point of view fade to black when Shuu is about to use his cleaver. Yuuya Takes the Bullet for him, and it's revealed in the epilogue that he survives.
  • Bland-Name Product:
    • Calorie M**te, a redacted stand-in for CalorieMate, a Japanese energy bar brand.
    • Keymania IIDX, which is obviously a parody of beatmania IIDX.
  • "Blind Idiot" Translation: There's a point in the manga where the scanlator translated "oku" (100 million) as "billion", thus inflating the human population by a factor of 10.
  • Book Safe: In the BBL ending, The missing volume of the encyclopedia is actually a box filled with files on Operation Hatoful, as well as a map to the walled-up medical center.
  • Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: The various clubs at the school include the track team, the student council, and the birdwatching club... which, in a school for birds, basically amounts to voyeurism of (and by) school students.
  • Break the Cutie: Happens a lot in the Bad Boys Love route. Ryouta, however, by far gets the worst of it, particularly when the identity of Hiyoko's killer is revealed.
  • Breaking the Fourth Wall: Hiyoko is aware of the ending credits sequence that happens after getting Azami and Blaster together and interrupts it angrily. In Holiday Star's fourth episode she recaps the third one out loud for "the camera", and when Nageki asks about it she says people might have forgotten. He says being so aware of the camera doesn't seem very professional.
    "Whatever! It's better to give the readers a hand!"
  • But Thou Must!
    • If you join the student council then you are forced into the vice presidency. Fair enough: you're the only other person on it.
    • A creepy example occurs during Doctor Shuu's best ending in the full version: when he asks you if you love him after he's killed you and is currently carrying your severed head around and interprets her head bobbing up and down in the jar as an answer, since your three choices all say "Yes."
  • Cerebus Syndrome: This happens in most routes of the game, although in different ways each time.
    • Shuu's route progressively becomes darker the closer you get to the Downer Ending.
    • Ryouta's route, while largely lighthearted, has a rather touching and heartfelt ending.
    • Nageki's route hits this hard during its final moments, with the reveal that Nageki has been Dead All Along, leading to a huge TearJerker of an ending.
    • Kazuaki's, Yuuya's and Sakuya's routes all have a Downplayed version of this.
    • Completely Averted with Okosan's route, which is ridiculous from beginning to end.
    • The Bad Boys Love route hits this the hardest. From the moment Hiyoko's dismembered head is found in a box, and the route starts for real, the whole game takes a turn for the dramatic.
  • Club Stub: The Student Council. If the heroine joins, there are two members. Otherwise, it's just Sakuya, who doesn't seem to be in touch with his class's opinions or even want to be there.
  • Cockroaches Will Rule the Earth: The story takes place in a world where humans were nearly wiped out by a mutation of the bird flu virus. In an attempt to stop the spread of the disease, the remaining humans created a new virus which was designed to kill the birds carrying the bird flu. However, instead of killing the birds, the new virus made the birds much more intelligent, and able to wage war on the humans. Though some humans still survived, the war resulted in birds becoming the new dominant life forms on earth.
  • Creator Cameo: Headmaster Mino Ichijo, who briefly appears in the BBL route as a Posthumous Character is one for Hato Moa herself, appearing as a Nicobar pigeon, which Moa uses online as their Author Avatar.
  • Creepy Physical: The doctor, Iwamine Shuu, offers to give you some interesting drugs. He also promises to examine your insides most intimately once he's done preserving your head.
  • Curse Cut Short: One of the Punkgeons does this.
  • Damning With Faint Praise: In the first scene with Ryouta, he offers to make breakfast for our heroine. Her answer? "Maybe I'll take you up on that, if starvation looms!" Ryouta's cooking is maybe preferable to starvation? Gee, thanks for that vote of confidence... Which is odd, because she says that Ryouta's cooking is delicious if she talks to him during the class hike. Maybe it was just her typical Large Ham way of speaking?
    • Ryouta is a vegetarian, and the protagonist can't sit still in class without meat.
    • The protagonist is a hunter-gatherer, so one can assume this line describes her pride in her independent lifestyle as opposed to being catered to.
    • "That's terrible! I mean, Okosan is a nutcase and I don't know what he's saying half the time, but he really does like pudding!"
  • Deconstructor Fleet: Of the entire Dating Sim and Visual Novel genre, especially Bad Boys Love.
  • Depopulation Bomb: As a result of the H5N1 pandemic and war with the newly-intelligent birds, humanity's numbers have fallen to less than 140 million. It can fall straight into extinction depending on the route.
  • Do Well, But Not Perfect: Tends to be how you get the standard endings for some of the birds. If you don't reach a certain stat value for some characters, you won't be able to view the full ending. You do need to check off those Normal endings for the Omega Ending, though.
  • Dub-Induced Plot Hole: In the English translation of the demo, Kazuaki refers to the bird in his marked-out photo with female pronouns, implying that she was his dead lover. This became a bit awkward when the full game version came out and revealed that Kazuaki's photo was most likely of his dead brother Nageki. Fortunately, this was corrected in the separate English translation for the full game.
  • Dysfunction Junction: Played for Laughs or Drama, depending on the route.
  • Exact Words: In the BBL route, Shuu grants Ryouta's wish from long ago to end the wars between humans and birds... by exterminating all humans.
  • Extranormal Institute: St. Pigeonation's, a school for gifted birds (and one human).
  • Fantastic Racism: Fantails towards... well, pretty much every sentient creature. Also, two-sided racism between birds and humans is a huge plot point in the Bad Boys Love Route.
    • In Holiday Star the birds running a department store see the human Hiyoko coming in and immediately want her out, since as a human she is low-class.
  • Feather Fingers: Bird characters are described (and often depicted) holding things with their wings.
  • Fire-Forged Friends: Ryouta and Sakuya on the Bad Boys Love route.
  • Foreign Queasine: "Excuse me! One half-dead fried rice, please!"
  • Foreshadowing: Quite a lot for a pigeon dating game. See also Meaningful Background Event below.
    • The fact that Kazuaki smells of bleach.
    • Nageki's route in itself has too many to list.
    • Oko San's fantastic speed and a strange concoction that Shuu makes him drink.
    • Anghel's rambling about "demon spores".
      • In fact, nearly everything Anghel says. By the time you're done with the game, you may find yourself thinking he's the only sane bird around.
    • Recurring theme of Ryouta being sickly.
    • In Yuuya's route, the infirmary running out of cleaning supplies really quickly. At least, it's foreshadowing if you haven't played Shuu's path yet.
    • In BBL route, the game takes a step further and highlights the meaningful words with a different colour.
    • When you meet him, Nageki comments that he’s been waiting for the books Hiyoko is returning all summer. She asks him how he could’ve done that since he’s a first-year. As a ghost bound to the library, he’s been a first-year for some time.
  • Four-Temperament Ensemble: The birds actually fit into this pattern quite well:
    • Sanguine: Hyper Cloud Cuckoolander Okosan, and optimistic, popular Yuuya.
    • Choleric: Dominant and ambitious Sakuya.
    • Melancholic: Work-obsessed Shuu and introverted loner Nageki.
    • Phlegmatic: Reliable and rational Ryouta and calm teacher Kazuaki.
    • Leukine: Hallucinogenic Anghel.
  • Gay Option: Hinted at but defied, to the great disappointment of Azami's fans. That is until the Updated Re-release added her as a love interest giving her the "To Be the True Java Sparrow" ending where Hiyoko and Azami form their own motorcycle gang after beating down Buster and a bunch of thug birds.
  • Genocide Backfire: Humans attempted to wipe out bird-kind through an artificially created virus, but the virus instead gave birds the intelligence to wage war on humans.
  • Genre Shift:
  • Ghost Amnesia: Nageki doesn't realize he is dead until the protagonist talks to him. In the BBL route he eventually remembers the reason he was Driven to Suicide, but in all other routes he either passes into the afterlife too early or remains trapped in the library.
  • GIS Syndrome: Subverted. Stock photos are used for the bird characters and the loading screens, but they are properly cited in the credits.
  • Government Conspiracy: The Hawk Party's Operation Hurtful, which includes the creation of the H5N1 virus. On the other hand, they also get angry if you don't hook up with anyone.
  • Hidden Depths: Every main bird character is revealed to have one of these during BBL. Let's just say the dating sim part of Hatoful Boyfriend is just the tip of the iceberg of this game's plot...
  • Hold Your Hippogriffs: "Everybirdie", "Nobirdie", "Anybirdie".
  • Humans Are Not the Dominant Species: A pandemic of a deadly form of bird flu nearly wiped out humanity. In response to this, the humans developed a counter-virus in an attempt to kill the birds that carried the disease. However, this new virus ended up giving the birds it infected human-like intelligence rather than killing them, leading to them becoming the dominant creatures on Earth as more and more humans died from the bird flu. The surviving humans, who developed a resistance to the disease, are forced to live apart from civilisation as hunter-gatherers.
  • 100% Completion: Getting at least one ending for each bird unlocks the Bad Boys Love route, and completing that in turn gives you a "thank you" picture after the credits a full set of documents in the Library. Getting all of the endings for each bird unlocks a post-BBL epilogue, the last Gallery image, and a Library item with a bonus scene.
  • I'm a Humanitarian: The birds have no problem with eating poultry.
  • Interspecies Romance: The basis of the game!
  • "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: Happens in Bad Boys Love. Anghel, Okosan, Nanaki, and Sakuya try to reach out to Ryouta, having crossed the Despair Event Horizon from learning who killed Hiyoko.
  • I See Dead People:
    • In the main game, only the protagonist and Anghel can see Nageki, though Anghel only shows this once as an optional scene on his route. During the BBL route, it is revealed that Ryouta can as well. Also referenced in the Drama CD when he talks to his "dead friend" Nageki in the library about one of the seven mysteries of the school: students who draw in library books are said to get cursed. As Ryouta suspects, there is actually some truth to this...
    • In the manga, Okosan can also see him, and in Holiday Star it's said that only the pure of heart can see ghosts.
  • Justified Title: The BBL route reveals that Operation Hatoful is a Hawk Party project. Sakuya claims that the name is supposed to be pronounced "hurtful", while Ryouta" sees "heartful".
  • Killed Off for Real: Hiyoko and Yuuya on the Bad Boys Love route. Although if you get the full ending, you find that Yuuya was saved just in time, and Hiyoko might be revived.
  • Killer Rabbit:
    • You will never, ever look at Chukar partridges the same way again. After playing Hatoful Boyfriend to completion, Chukar partridges feel like singly terrifying little fluffy heretics for murdering Hiyoko out of twisted love, and causing biological genocicde on the human race.
    • Thanks to the other characters, the "Bad Boys Love" route, and the sequel Holiday Star, fantail pigeons and king quail are not far behind on the list of adorable birds that you will fear forever. Bad Boys Love reveals Yuuya and "Kazuaki" to be murderers, and Holiday Star ultimately reveals what happened to the real Nanaki Kazuaki.
  • Kudzu Plot: Bad Boys Love of the original game.
  • Leitmotif: Many characters have them, most of them reflect on their personalities while others like Shuu has the Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy.
  • Let's Get Dangerous!: Let's just say that it's a very good thing that Oko San and Anghel weren't shooed out in the Bad Boys Love route.
  • Let's Play: Angie Gallant's legendary let's play of the free demo version might just be the reason you're here right now. She has now done a follow up for the full game.
    • Jesse Cox did a brief one as part of his Fan Friday segment.
    • Chaotic Monki (a.k.a. Cry)'s Let's Play had a disappointingly short run of two episodes without even finishing a storyline, enticing at least some of his fans to play it for themselves.
    • A group of fans known as Team Hatoful has done a series of voiced playthroughs of different routes of the first game - specifically Anghel's, Bad Boys Love, Ryouta's and Sakuya's routes - and has also completed a blind run of HolidayStar. Notable for, among other things, taking Yuuya's Handsome Lech tendencies even further, giving the French Sakuya a fake British accent, making Shuu sound like Severus Snape, and turning Tohri into a German-accented Large Ham.
  • Lighter and Softer: The drama CDs and - for the most part - the manga are pretty much played purely for comedy and don't have the same tendency for twists and pathos as either of the games.
  • Logging onto the Fourth Wall: Yuuya suggests you check out the blog of Brian the Pigeon.
  • Lost in Translation: The Pun-Based Title requires you to know that hato is Japanese for "dove".
  • Madness Mantra: Nanaki in Bad Boys Love.
    Nanaki: Nageki. Nageki. Nageki. Nageki. Nageki. Nageki. Nageki. Nageki. Nageki. Nageki. Nageki. Nageki.
  • Mayfly–December Romance: Yep, this game acknowledges the difference between human and bird lifespans.
  • Meaningful Background Event: Blink and you'll miss it, but your first clue that things in this game aren't quite as cheerful as they first seem comes when Hiyoko decides to go for a run: One of the things she passes is the post-apocalyptic remains of a city.
  • Medium Awareness: "What's the number in the top-left-hand corner say?" As in the in-game date when Hiyoko makes a mad dash to the school thinking she slept in on the first day of the second semester.
  • Meido: Ryouta dresses up as this, and Hiyoko can join him. In the bonus content you unlock by completing Bad Boy's Love, Sakuya and Kazuaki are dragged into it as well.
  • Misplaced Wildlife: Justified: the setting is a prestigious high school for sapient birds, and attracts students and faculty from all over the world. The heroine is still surprised to encounter a mourning dove in Japan.
  • Missing Mom: If you focus on Ryouta, then you find out his mother dies.
  • Mood Whiplash: The endings of Ryouta and Nageki's routes can come as quite a shock if you've grown used to the game's silly and comedic tone. The Bad Boys Love route in the full version, even more so. The manga, which is largely cheerful absurd short comics, also has several chapters end with Kazuaki explaining the history of the setting - like how a plague swept humankind and killed seventy percent of them.
  • Mr. Imagination: Okosan and later on Anghel are prone to mix the real world with their imagination and drag you along their fantasies. It goes even further than that, as this syndrome is rationalized by a scientific biological explanation.
  • Multiple Endings: Typical for the genre, with a total of thirteen. Each of the love interests have one, with Sakuya, Okosan, and Shuu having an additional, incomplete Normal ending that cuts off right before the true ending. Azami also has two, if you decide to take up the Torimi Cafe summer job and either play Shipper on Deck and help Azami reignite an old flame with Rabu, or help her dump him and start a new biker gang under Azami's wing. The PS4 and Vita remakes have an exclusive route unavailable in the Steam release, but can be viewed for free on Moa's gumroad here. Only after completing everyone's true ending, does it open up the BBL route.
  • "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer: The official website has many of these. People trying to get others to play this game typically have to use lots of these too, as most rational people's initial reaction to hearing about it is something along the lines of "Wait, something like this actually exists?!?"
  • Odd Friendship: Many of these characters have such clashing personalities yet just about all of them get along fairly well with each other (except for perhaps Shuu). The drama CDs and mangas especially seem to extend on those odd friendships particularly with Anghel (the loud manga artist prone to breaking windows) and Nageki (the quiet library dweller)
  • Official Couple:
    • It's not definite, but Ryouta seems to be the most canon love interest for Hiyoko as he's the one who stays with her spirit in the hopes of him being able to be cured of his disease and her being able to be transplanted into a body someday in the good ending to the Bad Boys Love route, the last route you can unlock.
    • Holiday Star suggests that it's Nageki, or at least has Ryouta fear this, but the Holiday Star route is distinct and doesn't overlap.
  • Omega Ending: After completing every ending, both Normal and True Ending for several characters, do you get the epilogue scene for BBL. An unspecified amount of time has passed after Ryouta sealed himself in the underground facility, and it's revealed Yuuya managed to get saved by Leone in the nick of time. A new medical experiment has been successfully been performed on Ryouta, implying the virus in him has been completely purged, allowing him to rejoin the others without fear of killing humans.
  • Ominous Save Prompt: This happens at the end of every chapter in BBL, with Ryouta making a point to take notes before heading out. This is also the only time players can save during BBL as well, though only in the original release. The HD Remaster has no such limitation.
  • Omniscient Council of Vagueness: The Hawk Party, which apparently meets in a pitch-black room. Coffee, anyone?
  • Orphan's Ordeal:
    • Nageki, Kazuaki/Hitori, and Hiyoko were orphaned in the war between birds and humans.
    • The guidebook reveals that Shuu lost his parents in a human extremist bombing. He was rather pleased by this.
  • Overly Narrow Superlative: The English download site for the game describes it as "the world's greatest pigeon dating sim".
  • Bird of Mass Destruction: The Bad Boys Love route reveals that Nageki harbored a disease that caused all humans who got too close to him to drop dead on the spot, which was the main reason he killed himself. Unfortunately, some of his body parts were saved by Doctor Shuu, who intends to make Ryouta the new carrier...
  • Precision F-Strike: If you choose not to falsely confirm Yuuya's alibi after Shuu accuses him of going through his papers, he simply responds with "...shit."
  • The Promise: The Bad Boys Love route is jumpstarted by one.
  • Pun-Based Title: The title is a mix of hato, the Japanese word for pigeon/dove, and "heartful". The paid version of the game is subtitled "-Hurtful Complete Edition-" as well. Then there's Hurtful Boyfriend and Operation Hurtful.
  • Punch-Clock Villain: If you don't finish any romantic storylines, a meeting of the Hawk Party condemns humanity and orders them exterminated... then adjourns for coffee.
  • Punny Name: The (quail) teacher and (partridge) doctor have surnames punning on the Japanese for "quail" and "partridge". The library freshman's personal name is based on "nagekibato", the Japanese word for "mourning dove". The partridge is operating under an assumed name, so this was probably deliberate on his part.
  • Rainbow Speak: On the Bad Boys Love route, several plot-important phrases are highlighted in yellow. Really important things are highlighted in red.
  • Rapid-Fire Typing: In the BBL route, Yuuya is able to hack into the headmaster's computer within short time, while the sound effect of computer keys quickly being pressed plays.
  • Real-Place Background: The Torimi Cafe, where the summer job scenario takes place, is an actual, bird-themed cafe.
    • Also, secondary characters Azami, Rabu, Kenzaburo, and Mr. One are apparently actual birds from that cafe.
  • Red Eyes, Take Warning: In the BBL route, Ryouta sports them when he has been Brainwashed and Crazy by Shuu.
  • Relationship Values: As usual for the genre, although they are not shown to the player.
  • RPG Elements
    • Played for Laughs as they are not very important: "Hiyoko levelled up! Wisdom increased by 5!"
    • They become a bit more important in the full version where you need to boost the appropriate stats to get the best endings for Doctor Shuu, Sakuya, and Oko San. Additionally, Anghel's route features a turn-based RPG battle and while it's mainly used for parody, it is possible to lose it and get a bad ending if you botch it.
  • Save-Game Limits: The Bad Boys Love route, in contrast with the main Otome route where you could save any time you wanted, lets you save only at certain points in the story.
  • Shoo Out the Clowns: Okosan has a much less prominent role in the BBL route. The role he does have is more serious as well, though not without the regular Okosan-style. Oddly enough, Anghel has a considerable amount of screentime (as opposed to not appearing at all outside his own route), but he's his usual silly self the entire time.
  • Shout-Out: Has its own page.
  • Star-Crossed Lovers: Anghel claims that Hiyoko and himself were this in a past life. A more straight example would be Hiyoko and Nageki on Nageki's route when he fades away after realizing that he loves Hiyoko.
  • Stylistic Suck: Anghel's manga, some of which is seen in the guidebook, is drawn with more enthusiasm than skill.
  • Take Over the World: Two of the things you can wish for at the Tanabata Festival: Take Over the World by force, or rule it from the shadows? (The third option is to be a world-famous artist.)
    • When the heroine shows up on the wrong day for class, if you choose to return home, she tells Kazuaki: "I must return to my people with the spoils of war, lay my bloodied sword at the feet of my great king, and celebrate my conquest of all the lands from here to distant Macedonia."
  • Talking Animal / Civilized Animal: The birds are not actually wearing anything, as their appearances are taken from real photos, but they do go through all the trappings of civilization.
    • Except for the student festival in fall, when your class does a Maid Cafe and Ryota briefly appears with a maid outfit drawn over his photo. This leads to the usual fanart of everybirdie crossdressing as maids, even those in other classes and the staff. Oko also appears in a maid outfit during his route, and the Library menu's post-BBL bonus scene shows Sakuya and Kazuaki as bemaided birds as well.
    • And Oko San's ICPSS portrait, while all other characters are rendered as Bishounen, is a bird in a school uniform.
    • In the full version, you can see the other classmates dressed up as maids for the Maid Cafe, and Ryouta fills in as a Miko at the local shrine for New Year's.
    • During the Radio session for Holiday Star, Ryouta explains that clothing isn't mandatory for birds, who wear clothes for protection against cold, fashion, or ceremonial purposes only.
  • There Are No Therapists: The bird society is developed enough to include everything from educational institutions to healthcare providers. However, mental healthcare isn't mentioned a single time in this series, so all the bird characters with personal issues are just left to get even crazier.
  • Trademark Favorite Food
    • For Oko San, it is pudding.
    • When Sakuya asks the player what she loves, she answers "udon". Though she also can't sit still in class unless she's had some red meat, as she tells Ryouta in the first cutscene.
  • Translation: "Yes": Oko San's speech is usually given as a few "coo"s, but those somehow translate to entire sentences.
  • 20 Minutes into the Future: In the Bad Boy's Love route, you find out that the game actually takes place in the year 2188!
  • Two-Teacher School: The main game has only Kazuaki and Shuu. BBL shows us the principal, but only briefly and not while he is still among the living.
  • Uplifted Animal: It turns out that intelligent birds did not naturally come about...
  • Wham Episode: Hiyoko's head and decapitation at the start of the Bad Boys Love route.
  • Wham Line:
    • A massive one kicks off the Bad Boys Love route: "Inside the box... is a.. human's... head.
    • "I wonder why he lied about going straight home...?"
  • You All Look Familiar: The manga lampshades the difficulties of having three white fantails in the cast, and distinguishes them by giving Sakuya and Yuuya accessories in bird form, while Oko San remains "nude". Less present in the actual game where their bird-photo images all have different poses, and of course their human-style portraits are all different.

    Holiday Star 
  • All Just a Dream:
    • In the second episode, Hiyoko discovers Tohri's nefarious plot. Cut to her in a cafe with Ryouta and Kazuaki, saying "Crazy dream, huh?". Ryouta falls for this trope and gets told that she was joking.
    • During the shrine visits short episode, Yuuya halfway confesses to Hiyoko that he's not just an Ordinary High-School Student, but chickens out and says he was talking about a dream.
    • Inverted in the third episode. From the start, Hiyoko and Negeki believe that their trip to the kingdom is just a dream, but at the end of the chapter they learn that it's impossible to wake up from and is an actual place their souls are visiting while their bodies are in a coma.
      Citizens: "Everyone knows midnight comes after predawn. And after that, dusk, then midnight again, then predawn, then midnight. Time swings back and forth like a pendulum, after all."
  • Afterlife Express: The bird afterlife consists of traveling the universe on the Galactic Railroad until you forget your past life and are reincarnated. Judging by the human girl's familiarity with the Conductor, this is also her fate after all those bad ends in the previous game.
  • Battle Butler: Sakuya's butler Albert Alain Alkan. Also a typical Scary Black Bird. He is actually an infamous assassin who was contracted to kill Sakuya, but later hired by him for protection.
  • Blood Science: Mad Scientist Tohri Nishikikouji uses Anghel Higure's blood to help power his canon and materialize the will and drive of fanboys and fangirls, turning it into an offensive beam capable of destroying buildings.
  • Beam-O-War: The scene where Tohri's cannon splashes against the barrier around the school.
  • Deflector Shield: Courtesy of Anghel's Reality Warper powers, Tohrii's attack against St. Pigeonation's is thwarted by a magic shield.
  • Don't Fear the Reaper: The Conductor in Holiday Star is pretty laid back and gives advice like "I dunno, kiddo. We never recommend haunting as a deathstyle choice, y’know? Too easy to go all black and bitter." It's revealed at some point that he is Death, as seen in the Bad Ends, and Hiyoko considers him her friend. They go all the way back to the demo version!
  • Empathic Environment: Holiday Star's Mount Pudi has rain on it when the emotionally troubled Nemo/imposter Kazuaki cannot remember his real name.
    • The Throne Room on Holiday Star also Turns Red when The King turns One-Winged Angel in desperation to keep our heroes on Holiday Star.
  • Epiphanic Prison: Holiday Star is a place that traps souls who are emotionally troubled and/or weak willed. The only way to leave this place is if enough of the trapped individuals realize they have something worth living for in life/reality/outside Holiday Star.
  • Genre Shift: Holiday Star's first two stories are loony absurd adventures, with minor darker hints here and there. The third story is similar, a fantasy-RPG-ish romp. Until the end of that one, and the fourth is nightmarish and aferlife-y.
  • Keystone Army: The enormous hydra-like "Increased" King can only be defeated by Nageki using his planisphere to burn down The King's lighthouse.
  • Lotus-Eater Machine: The King's lighthouse projects Holiday Star's inhabitants' greatest desires to keep them perpetually happy.
  • Lunacy: In the third chapter of Holiday Star anyone watching the lunar eclipse will immediately enter a dream-filled coma/proceed onto the oneiric afterlife.
  • Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: In the last two chapters of Holiday Star everyone who watches the lunar eclipse immediately falls unconscious. While unconscious they dream they are riding a galactic railroad, which ultimately leads to the afterlife. In the real world J.B. Leone explains that everyone who watched the lunar eclipse is in a coma due to avian brains being unstable from unnatural development. So is the visit to Holiday Star the protagonists actually visiting an ethereal plane, or is Holiday Star completely imaginary and due to neurons misfiring in their unstable brains?
  • Name Amnesia: In Holiday Star, you encounter a bird who calls himself Nemo and says that he has lost his real name.
  • Nonstandard Game Over: In Holiday Star this happens if the player chooses a wrong choice during the fourth chapter. This wrong choice causes a character to get absorbed into The King's twisted hive mind, which The King considers living "happily ever after."
    • Can also happen if the player fails to transform into a magical girl by flubbing the transformation line in the second chapter.
  • Power Crystal: In Holiday Star there are three of them: the garnet, the lapis lazuli, and the topaz. However, only the topaz is the stone which will get everyone the good ending; the garnet and lapis lazuli are fakes.
  • Scenery Porn: The entirety of the water color-rendered Holiday Star is this.
  • Species-Specific Afterlife: Near the end of the game, the conductor mentions that humans and birds take different trains during the afterlife.
  • Tank Goodness: Miru and Kaku's method of stealing Christmas trees. Sakuya's security forces did not expect something so drastically powerful, and even Yuuya's Crazy-Prepared high-powered rifle did little to stop it.
  • Tastes Like Friendship: Once The King is defeated and his Holiday Star is destroyed, he is left totally distraught and alone. However, once he joins The Migrant and the former Holiday Star citizens on the galactic railroad, they offer him sweets such as caramels and sugar cubes to cheer him up. Other stories in Holiday Star do mention The King/original Kazuaki as a sweets-lover, so perhaps The Migrant and the ex-citizens offering him his favorite foods would mean the start of a new friendship as well as emotional healing.
  • Tempting Fate: In Holiday Star, Sakuya proudly boasts that there's no way the thieves will be able to get into the council room. Hiyoko refers to this as "raising a flag", and when the inevitable happens she and Ryouta call it "flag retrieval" - they're terms commonly used to refer to visual novel gameplay.
  • Uncanny Village: Holiday Star is a gorgeous place and its citizens and ruler are friendly enough. But why does The King briefly become monstrous looking whenever he gets upset?
  • Viral Transformation: Anyone who stays on the Holiday Star for too long will lose their individual identity and become a King/part of The King himself.
  • Wave-Motion Gun: Tohri creates one, powered by fanboy/fangirl imagination through Anghel's blood.
  • Yaoi Fangirl: Tohri's laser is powered at first by standard otaku, and then by these. Unfortunately, he didn't forsee that fangirls who bicker about the best pairings would be such an unstable power source.


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