Visual Novel / Witch on the Holy Night

aka: Mahou Tsukai No Yoru

It was said —
There was a mansion that rested on top of a hill, and within it there lived two witches.

It is the late 1980s. Rumors of a witch living inside an old mansion circulate in the city. Unbeknownst to observers, living inside the mansion is an actual witch, Alice Kuonji, a stoic woman and a magus hiding in the present day. Under her tutelage studies Aoko Aozaki, a high school student studying magecraft as the head of the Aozaki family. As magi, the two of them secretly fight any threat that enters their town.

Things start to change when a young man unfamiliar with city life, Soujuurou Shizuki, enters their lives. Slowly, he affects the lives of these two magi. And so their story begins...

Witch on the Holy Night, known as Mahou Tsukai no Yoru - Witch on the Holy Night in Japan, is a Visual Novel set in the Nasuverse, serving as prequel to both The Garden of Sinners and Tsukihime. Originally a five-hundred-page novel penned by Kinoko Nasu, it was never publicly released and only a handful of copies were distributed. It was announced for a visual novel remake in 2008, but it got stuck in Development Hell several times before finally being released on April 12, 2012.

Unlike other Type-Moon visual novels, Witch on the Holy Night is a linear novel with no branching plot lines. It is also Type-Moon's first all-ages visual novel.

The game has two sequels planned, but Word of God is that serious production won't start until the Tsukihime remake is finished. Here we go again.

A movie adaptation by longtime Type-Moon collaborator ufotable was announced in December 2021. A fully voice-acted version of the visual novel, complete with subtitles in Traditional/Simplified Chinese and English, came out on December 8, 2022 for the PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch. Aniplex of America published the title internationally, making this the first Type-Moon visual novel to be officially translated and made available for non-Japanese audiences. This remake had a PC port via Steam released on December 14, 2023. Watch the English release announcement trailer here.

Not to be confused with a manga called Mahou Tsukai no Yome.

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This visual novel contains examples of:

• The '80s: The setting of the story. The exact year is never outright stated but the descriptions of Kitsy Land's sordid history date it to 1988 (though Word of God states it is 1989). This is further supported by a plot point revolving around the very specific occurrence of a new moon in early December during this decade. Frequent reference is made to the fact that Japan was in an economic bubble at the time in the narration and how the economic prosperity slowly built up over the past decade is sure to crash in the next decade with Tokitsu's doomed venture as a microcosm of what will happen to the nation.

• All There in the Script: The Extra Story credits names the pilots of May's chartered Black Down helicopter. It's also the only thing that notes all of them somehow survived its crash landing.
• Amusement Park of Doom: The main setting of Chapter 5 and where the climactic magic clash between Aoko and Alice with Flat Snark takes place in. Also, the dissidents of the park are constantly out trying to kill both Aoko and Soujuurou there.
• An Ass-Kicking Christmas: The final confrontations with Touko start on Christmas Eve and don't end until Christmas night, hence the game being titled specifically for the Holy Night.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: The story constantly switches between the points of view of different characters, though Aoko and Soujuurou still retain the main focus. In one of the extra chapters included in the visual novel, Kojika replaces them as the protagonist.
• Another Side, Another Story: Finishing the main story unlocks a side story from the perspective of Touko and Beowulf, notably filling in the details on what Touko did for most of the story.
• Animorphism: Lugh can take either the form of a pretty boy or a wolf.
• Art Evolution: Shirou's Magic Circuits in Fate/stay night were fairly linear like a computer board and portrayed as a static image. Aoko's Magic Circuits as portrayed in this work are significantly more complex, as they're both animated and arranged to create an illusion of depth so they resemble a gun barrel when activated.
• Backstory: The entire novel revolves around the high school life of Aoko, a major character in Tsukihime and Melty Blood.

• Big Fancy House: The Kuonji Mansion, the house Alice, Aoko, and later, Soujuurou reside in. It is explicitly the biggest and fanciest house of them all in Misaki City because the Kuonji Group that Alice's father came from is extremely filthy rich.
• Bland-Name Product: The TV Aoko bought is prominently labelled "Sany".
• Bowdlerise: Oddly, the boxart for the North American release of the game removes Touko's cigarette she was holding despite both her being a grown adult and the game receiving an M-rating.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: If Kojika chooses to wander around outside the Kuonji mansion, she meets Touko also lurking there. Touko praises Kojika for being bold enough to explore like her and then breaks the fourth wall to give away her role in the plot ahead of time to the player as the reward for doing so, much to Kojika's own confusion.
• Brick Joke:
  • Aoko notes that the puppet looks like her. Afterwards, Soujuurou says that its face looked scary, which Aoko sarcastically thanks him for.
  • Soujuurou notes to Kinomi early on that he has no idea what a crocodile is during an Analogy Backfire. He's later lent by Kinomi a VHS tape on crocodiles to watch so Soujuurou can enlighten himself.
  • In the bonus 'Anyone Can Sleep, But Not Laugh' scenario, Kojika packs an entire wok and other cooking implements into her bag to bring to the Kuonji Mansion, ostensibly in case she gets the craving to cook fried rice while she's there. At the end of the scenario, she uses the wok as a weapon against the murderer.
  • May throttles Soujuurou for not serving her tea, which Soujuurou hallucinates as seeing a double Aoko. When Aoko starts throttling him for inviting Touko to the party, he starts seeing two of May
• Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: Soujuurou literally breaks his left arm punching Lugh, to the point it's completely soaked red with his blood. That very same scene has him shatter his other elbow in a follow-up attack, as well as his leg and a good chunk of his internal organs from the force he has to endure.
• Call-Forward:
  • The soundtrack piece "Gekka Bijin" is a remix of the Tsukihime theme with parts that sound similar to "Ever-present Feeling"/"Feeling That Won't Disappear" from Fate/stay night.
  • Aoko relates a story about how single-minded Touko can be when set on a goal by utilizing anything in her path when she made her homemade pizza crackers using rice crackers, a cow, and two chickens after the two sisters really decided they wanted some fancy pizza. Said pizza crackers are the point of a Noodle Incident with Cornelius Alba, which Touko regards as the biggest mistake of her life.
  • Touko in the bonus 'Anyone Can Sleep, But Not Laugh' scenario taking place nearly a year after the main story is mentioned to have circumvented Aoko's curse on Touko's body preventing her from entering Misaki for the next decade by just switching to another body entirely, which is something she often does to the point of becoming a habit by the time of The Garden of Sinners.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Touko shows up as early as Chapter 2 but only as a brief cameo and doesn't get to take a more major role until further chapters later.
• The Chew Toy: Cock Robin is constantly squashed or bounced around by Alice whenever he says something crass. Taken even further in the Wonderful World of Ploys segments where he gets blown up by Scratch Dumpty, squashed by a bookshelf, and catapulted across Misaki City.
• Child Soldier: Soujuurou came from the same organization as Souichirou, from Fate/stay night.
• Church Militant: Eiri Fumizuka, the priest in charge of the local church in the story, is an Executor who was said to have killed a witch in the past.
• Continuity Nod: At one point, Aoko thinks about how she would reveal to a random stranger that she's a mage just to see their reaction... which is what she does to Shiki at the beginning of Tsukihime.
• Country Mouse: Soujuurou, who lived in the mountains and moved to the city. Evidently, he has no idea how society works.
• Creepy Doll: More like creepy puppet, but Aoko and Soujuurou encounter one in the hall of mirrors. Its purposeful resemblance to Aoko and its strange bodily proportions and creepy face land it a place in the Uncanny Valley territory.
• Death Is Cheap: Just when everyone thought that Soujuurou is going to be Killed Off for Real, Aoko activates Blue for the first time and reverses his death.
• Didn't See That Coming: Absolutely none of the mages present in the story expected Soujuurou to come in and take down a 2000 year old nature spirit, with the latter to just accede loss after two blows.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Soujuurou takes down Lugh, a two thousand year old Nature Spirit whom not even Aoko could defeat, by punching him in the heart and hitting his back with an elbow blow, which freaks Lugh out due to it being a new experience and actually getting beaten in fistcuffs.
• Dramatic Irony: Aoko and Alice state that the mage intruding on the city must be some third-rate small fry mage who's come to take their land since nobody really cares that much about the Aozaki bloodline and the land is fairly minor overall. The intruder is Aoko's sister, Touko, who is the only known highest-ranked mage in The 'Verse of the Mage's Association as a Grand and is instigating a feud with Aoko over the family lineage.
• Droste Image: How Aoko and Alice manage to overcome Touko's Mystic Eye. Since she traps her victim in an illusion of infinity, they use Alice's Mirror of Slumber to make Touko stare at the mirror reflecting both Aozakis to break Touko's focus since having to stare at an infinitely recurring reflection of Aoko on top of the illusion being reflected back at her is too much strain for her Mystic Eye.
• Easily-Overheard Conversation: Alice and Soujuurou have a conversation about each other in the large foyer of the mansion. Alice calls out for Aoko to come in already after Soujuurou leaves, as she was listening in the next room over. Both of them are mages, which is an easy explanation for both sides of the eavesdropping.
• Emotion Control:
  • Using a suggestion spell, Aoko can remove fear from Soujuurou.
  • Touko's glasses serves as this; when she wears them, she's able to hide her usual cold demeanor and put on a friendly affable front, which she uses to catch Soujuurou off guard once he invites her into the Kuonji Mansion.
• Entropy and Chaos Magic: Aoko displacing Soujuurou's death by moving it into the future using Fifth Magic also means the displacement of energy in the universe, which makes the heat death of the universe more inevitable, which Touko calls Aoko out on. Aoko intends on dealing with the problem when it comes around, but she's not sure what her plan is right now. As it so happens, Aoko is also known for being chaotic and destructive in her use of magic.
• Eldritch Abomination: While nearly all of Alice's Ploys count as this, Flat Snark takes the cake for its overall creepiness, level of power, and for being the only Ploy to act independently and outright disobey Alice.
• Eldritch Location: After Flat Snark does its magic, the entire park of Kitsy Land gets transformed into this, with the place being constantly warped and expanded at every turn to completely screw with Aoko and Soujuurou. Not only that, but they have to deal with its residents trying to kill them on the spot. Heck, it was even sadistic enough to give them a brief hope spot by showing them the exit...which was transformed into multiple gates leading into more gates that stretched on for miles.
• Eye Scream: Touko's Mystic Eyes explode during her climactic clash with Aoko.
• Fairy Tale Motifs: Alice's magic revolves around fairy tales and nursery rhymes.
• Familiar: The concept of a familiar is discussed frequently as most mages rely on them to some degree to further their work. The Wonderful World of Ploys segments are entirely dedicated to further explaining them in detail by specifying that familiars are a magical equivalent to robots meant for labor and other work, incapable of growth because they are created fully-formed that often use animals as a basis for their creation.
  • Aoko is an exception because nothing she could make would be more efficient at destroying things than her. They later have to lie that Soujuurou is going to be her familiar to justify his presence in her life to the Church.
  • Alice has her Ploy Kickshaws, which are fairy tale creatures that only her Witch bloodline can wield. They all have varying types of intelligence ranging from Cock Robin and the Tweedle twins who have a semblance of humanity to the Thames Troll and Wandersnatch, which are distinctly monstrous in thought.
  • Touko has her puppets, but it's also noted that she makes them with such intricate detail and fills them with various techniques that they tend to be combat automata more than anything else. The real danger is Lugh Beowulf, whom Aoko and Alice presume must exist from the fact that Touko's hair was cut off and used to enhance for her familiar, but neither of them expected her to acquire something from the Age of Gods.
  • May has Goblins as her familiars, which are never shown but she apparently uses them to keep herself dry when it rains.
• Field Power Effect: The mere release of Flat Snark into the environment floods Kitsy Land with ancient Ether, which Aoko can take advantage of herself to pump for magical energy and negate her exhaustion fighting the puppet in chapter 5.
• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: The Suse twins, as Yuika is a pious, hard-working, and serious nun who works for the Holy Church while Ritsuka is a goofy slacker who prefers to spend her time loafing around the shopping district and is a spy for the Mage's Association. However, they do share at least one similarity, a passion for Trolling Aoko and Soujuurou whenever the opportunity presents itself.
• Foreshadowing:
  • The story begins with a stylized flashback to a young Aoko who unknowingly kills a kitten during her daily routine and goes to her grandfather, begging him to use Magic to bring it back. This is, in effect, the primary arc between her and Soujuurou during her life as a mage that culminates in him dying to Touko and Aoko using Blue to bring him back.
  • Soujuurou frequently disagrees with anyone referring to dogs as harmless because he thinks wild dogs are some of the worst things he had to deal with on the mountain. He has to fight the ultimate wild dog in the form of Lugh Beowulf, which he sees as no more than that and uses the full brunt of his training to take it down.
  • In the Extra Story, Kojika freaks out at the description of Sweets Hearts, panicking that it means anyone including her could be the killer possessed by Sweets Hearts. This is precisely what happened.
• From Bad to Worse:
  • Chapter 5: Night of the Witches. It starts with Aoko hunting down Soujuurou through a hall of mirrors. When she has them at her mercy and is about to kill them, both of them are suddenly attacked by a mannequin modeled to look just like Aoko, wielding curse magic and arms it can shoot out like harpoons, and because it landed a sneak attack and jammed Aoko's magic circuits, she can no longer cast spells. After escaping this certain death, they're both about to call it a night when Alice appears, intending to make sure Aoko finishes her task of killing Soujuurou. They get into a fight, and the latter immediately pulls out her trump card, The Flat Snark, and it transforms the abandoned amusement park into a world of living nightmares. They learn the hard way that the only way to escape is to locate the source and destroy it, but Aoko has no idea where the source could possibly be or what it looks like. And even after they get out of that situation unscathed, the mannequin reappears, still not destroyed, even after Aoko damaged its power source and collapsed the entire building onto it, and it tries to finish Aoko off while she's completely exhausted and can no longer move.
  • The end of chapter 10 continuing into most of chapter 11. Alice and Aoko were violently defeated by Touko and Beowulf, Touko's month of preparations mean it'll only take two days before she assumes control of Misaki's leylines, at which point the Church will no longer have a reason to aid Alice and Aoko since they're no longer the local landowners. Not only are they on a strict time limit, at this point in time, they also have no more trump cards or aces up their sleeve as Beowulf effortlessly destroyed Alice's Thames Troll and is able to No-Sell anything else they throw at him. The Suse sisters and Father Eiri outright tells Soujuurou that Alice and Aoko have no chance of victory against Touko
• Genre Shift: Twofold in the Extra Story. It shifts from the main story's Urban Fantasy to a murder mystery as the cast tries to survive a Ploy Kickshaw's murder game. Secondly, unlike the entirely linear main story, the Extra Story has branching choices into various endings like the rest of Type-Moon's visual novels.
• The Ghost: The third-year cheer captain Yoshitsune Mino never shows up in the visual novel proper, only namedropped by Aoko at a few points. This is mostly notable because he does appear in a Nasu-written short story with a character design as a major supporting character.
• Golem: Alice has one. Touko has... some.
• Gratuitous Latin: The puppet that chases down Aoko and Soujuurou in chapter 5 speaks exclusively in Latin. This isn't just for showy effect, it needs to constantly incant a stream of curses in order to keep itself going. It extends to its theme in the soundtrack, which is the only one titled in Latin as Judicare tibi.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: Soujuurou, courtesy of Touko. But he got better.
• He Knows Too Much: Soujuurou witnesses Alice and Aoko using magic, and per Mage law, they're supposed to kill him since ordinary people aren't supposed to know about magic. After he helps Aoko fight the puppet, however, she chooses to spare him. In the mean time, Alice and Aoko have him stay at the manor until they can find a spell that can wipe his memory, which they do at the end of the story, but they decide to not use it.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Touko seems to have the upper hand when fighting Alice because her Memory Runes shatter any use of Diddle Diddle with their evocation of the sun, her Mystic Eye after modification can overpower Alice, and Cock Robin was already sacrificed to pull Alice out of one death. Then Alice deliberately throws a bunch of Diddle Diddle bells to create a river of melting snow from the runes' sunlight and summon Thames Troll to her defense, which nullifies both Touko's runes and Mystic Eye with its sheer bulk to ignore both.
• Home Field Advantage: The Flat Snark is a barrier-erecting ploy that brings abandoned things to life as fairy tales. In an abandoned amusement park based on fairy tales, it is at its most powerful.

• Hypnotic Eyes: Alice's left eye is a mystic eye of enchantment, a powerful type of mystic eye usually only found in vampires/dead apostle. It typically glows an ominous crimson when activated. Touko's left eye is also one, although unlike Alice's, hers shine blue when activated. Then it's quickly revealed that she had even modified it like the rest of her body, making it powerful enough to easily overcome Alice's eye and capable of rapidly casting layers of illusions to cripple her victims. This finally explained what the eye is after the casual mention in The Garden of Sinners that Touko had Mystic Eyes.
• I Have to Go Iron My Dog: The student body is pointedly unenthused about Aoko and Tobimaru's Winter Cleaning project because it's three days of forced labor with no compensation at the old schoolhouse, so they resort to excuses like sudden anemia breaking out and they'll die if they don't eat some fruit to avoid interacting with them on their recruiting drive.
• Idiot Hero: Soujuurou, who was born and raised in isolation in the mountains until moving to Misaki at the start of the story. The guy is just plain clueless about societal rules and norms on top of social interactions with other people of his age, which is more or less due to being raised with No Social Skills.
• Interface Spoiler:
  • The individual character voice settings will reveal characters who haven't actually been named yet (Ritsuka Suse) or shown up (Yukihiro Tokitsu) at that point in the plot because triggering their voiced lines will show them in the menu.
  • Saving during the Extra Story after 3:30 PM will spoil that Tokitsu is the first known character to die.
• Innocuously Important Episode: Chapter 8, which primarily features the tension slowly winding down as the cast tries to find a new normal routine with Soujuurou moving into the Kuonji mansion. The very first scene is the only time Lugh ever reveals his human form to anyone besides Touko at that point and is the only reason the main trio is able to figure out where their enemy has been hiding the whole time.
• It Only Works Once: Flat Snark, Alice's most powerful ploy, can never be used again after Aoko beats it, according to Word of God. Though this probably comes down to Aoko blew it to pieces rather than some innate quality.
• It Will Never Catch On: Kojika thinks CDs are just some fancy fad that'll go the way of Betamax because they can't even record music like cassette tapes. Aoko is much more savvy about them and even jokingly bets they'll see who was right in five years' time.
• Killed to Uphold the Masquerade: Aoko explains that this is usually done, not to avoid persecution, but because the more people know about sorcery, the weaker it gets as a whole. So to preserve it, they keep it a secret.
• Kung-Fu Wizard: Aoko. All There in the Manual also mentions that this is something she improves on later, courtesy of Soujuurou.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia:
  • There is a Rune of Oblivion that can do this, but neither Alice nor Aoko know it by heart and require three months to utilize it, hence why they didn't lead with it instead of trying to kill Soujuurou.
  • Aoko's grandfather is capable of inflicting this. At the end of the main story he's asked by Aoko to wipe Soujuurou's memory of the past month, but he refuses to do it on the basis of wanting Aoko to clean up her own messes.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: It's treated as a dramatic revelation by Aoko and Alice that the threat behind the many puppets being sent around is Touko and that she was even present at Misaki City within the visual novel. Because The Garden of Sinners came out long before this story in any format, promo art and trailers don't bother to hide it as a twist by showing her as a notable cast member.
• Leave No Witnesses: Soujuurou stumbling through Alice's barrier leads to both Aoko and Alice trying to kill him a different points. Aoko decides against it and defeats Alice to ensure that this trope is averted.
• Lighter and Softer:
  • Compared to The Garden of Sinners, Tsukihime, and Fate/stay night, Mahoyo's story is pretty lighthearted in tone, has more Slice of Life scenarios compared to the Nasuverse works mentioned above, and has almost zero deaths and angst in it. In fact, the only major death here didn't even stick long. May count as Cerebus Syndrome for the Nasuverse as a whole, since Mahou Tsukai no Yoru was the first entry written.
  • Even the 'Anyone Can Sleep, But Not Laugh' bonus scenario which does feature lots of death and traditional Nasuverse bad ends counts as this. The deaths don't stick, and the characters die via laughing at anything, whether it's bad jokes or funny images. Alice deliberately goes out of her way to kill May with laughter multiple times, Kinomi and Yuika both self-destruct, and Father Eiri inadvertently almost kills the whole group with his jokes. All of them treated as gags and Kojika even brushes them aside as irrelevant in her recap. The only deaths that aren't comedic are Tokitsu and Kojika's in the bad ends, as Tokitsu is assumed to be the victim of conventional murder with a disfigured corpse before Sweets Hearts is revealed to be involved, while Kojika's deaths are violent in nature and resembles standard Nasuverse bad ends.
• Magic Mirror: Alice has one that she uses to look over the city or manor.
• Magic Prerequisite: Alice requires certain things for her ploys to work properly, including a vessel. The Thames Troll requires a river nearby to come out, for example. The Flat Snark brings things that are abandoned to life as fairy tales, so in a business district it was virtually harmless.
• Marionette Master: Touko whose second puppet familiar sent after Aoko is noted to be an actual masterpiece in terms of both craftsmanship and magical fidelity that people regardless of know-how would spend an astronomical sum to obtain. It's expertly crafted for the precise purpose of killing her sister.
• Mickey Mousing: The Kitsy Land amusement park starting up sequence is timed in sequence to have the roller coaster lights ascending upwards light up as the music reaches its crescendo and reveal just how much Alice has turned the tables on Aoko and Soujuurou.
• Monster Clown: One appears in Chapter 5 and this gives both Aoko, Soujuurou and the reader a chance to react with an appropriate Oh, Crap! face. The Jump Scare that involves its appearance doesn't help.
• Mooks:
  • Flat Snark forms an army of bread men sourced from Kitsy Land's many bakeries, which Aoko's most basic magic attack can mow down with ease. When they start upgrading themselves to tank that, Aoko realizes it's only a matter of time before they learn to adapt to her strongest attacks so she and Soujuurou need to come up with a plan better than just running around.
  • Touko sends a small army of puppet mooks against Aoko and Alice during their return from the aquarium, which Alice easily handles in a matter of minutes without Aoko's assistance before the train arrives at the station.
• Morton's Fork: The principle behind Alice's Scratch Dumpty Ploy. As it's based on Humpty Dumpty, it can't actually be destroyed by external forces, only when it chooses to fall and detonate. If the unwary target takes their eyes off it for a second, it falls and detonates. And if they manage to keep their eyes on it the whole time, Alice's inscribed spell will have Dumpty detonate anyway when the timer runs out. Soujuurou only manages to survive it by the skin of his teeth and was still exposed to enough curses to fatally injure him if Aoko and Alice hadn't quickly removed them from his comatose body.
• Mythology Gag:
  • In one chapter, our resident Tsundere mage from a relatively well-known magus family chases the local nice Idiot Hero who is new at the whole magic business down a corridor and attempts to blast him with her magic in an attempt to kill him, only for her not to go through with it thanks to a long-haired enemy's sudden interference in her assault coupled with the Tsundere's own hesitation towards killing the guy. Sound familiar?
  • Exposition states that Alice goes to school at Reien Girls' Academy.
  • A blonde European mystical non-human being a thousand years old who is perfect from birth and all-powerful that no one could realistically contend with it on a magical scale comes to Japan, only to be completely blindsided by a human student with a power that they never ever expected to bring them down. They then become completely affectionate for said human for being the first person to defeat them. Swap "werewolf/nature spirit" from this game for "True Ancestor" and you have the plot of Tsukihime.
• Naïve Newcomer: Soujuurou readily accepts the existence of magic as just another wonder of the city, reasoning that ordinary urban conveniences are just as bewildering for someone like him who grew up in the isolated mountains.
• Nigh-Invulnerability:
  • Lugh No Sells a kick that could break a tree in half.
  • Alice's fairytale familiars are all invulnerable to modern tech.
• No Full Name Given: Aoko and Alice's family members are never actually named in the story, but are established to be the source of the paternal surnames they inherited.
• Noodle Incident: Aoko mentions in her internal monologue in the very final scene that Soujuurou has been going around cleaning up the mansion and unsealing several of Alice's mother's Ploys, much to Alice and Aoko's exasperation as they have to catch them again for sealing. One of them required Lugh's help and another one had the Church forcibly take over the house for a week.
• Nursery Rhyme: Alice uses these as incantations for her magic, mainly British ones such as London Bridge Is Falling Down.
• Older Is Better: Magecraft and anything involved in it will be more powerful the older it is as it accumulates more Mystery over time. Lugh Beowulf is pointed to as the pinnacle of this conceit with nothing over a millennia old capable of harming him magically. However, this only applies to anything mystical and Soujuurou's brute physical force is good enough to overpower Lugh.
• Ominous Fog: When Flat Snark is released, it floods the area with an unnatural green fog that spawns various fairy tale creatures and warps Kitsy Land's various attractions into all kinds of bizarre monstrosities. It's later revealed to actually be a constant stream of Ether being spewed by Flat Snark, which Aoko uses to her advantage to power herself up. Flat Snark reveals itself by rearranging the fog to form an upside-down skull of which its moon form serves as a glowing eye within the fog skull.
• Ominous Music Box Tune: The puppet chasing Aoko is cued by a minor key music box that plays within it.
• The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: Flat Snark feels this way towards Aoko and Soujuurou to the point it's downright offended when Alice chooses to employ Scratch Dumpty midway through it's battle with the duo. It silently expresses to her that it could've easily killed them both without any help.
• Perpetual-Motion Monster: The puppet that comes after Aoko uses Curses to power itself and can curse itself as well, meaning it would never run out of power. Except using its six-legged mode, firing Finn Shots, and casting curses all at the same time causes its energy consumption to exceed its energy production, negating this trope.
• Playboy Bunny: Kojika carries a photo of Aoko wearing one after getting tipsy during the third year school festival as an amusing good luck charm/pick-me-up. It's actually plot-relevant as Soujuurou stole it in the Extra Story to use as his trump card since the image of an embarrassed Aoko in an uncharacteristically skimpy bunny outfit makes pretty much anyone familiar with her laugh.
• Power Dyes Your Hair: Aoko's use of the Fifth Magic to fast-forward her own time resulted in her hair turning red.
• Prequel: To The Garden of Sinners and Tsukihime (but not at the same time since only either Shiki Ryougi or Shiki Tohno can have the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception at a time), as it provides backstory for the Aozaki sisters. Although since Mahou Tsukai no Yoru was written first, it may be more accurate to say that Kara no Kyoukai and Tsukihime are the sequels instead.
• Pride Before a Fall: Alice's greatest Ploy, Flat Snark, refuses to obey her loss after being discovered because it believes its sheer power will easily let it destroy Aoko for her flagrant refusal to lie down to it. It gets blown up by Aoko as a result, with the narration specifically noting it finally felt the same despair of loss as its many victims.
• Public Domain Soundtrack:
  • Franz Liszt's "Nocturne", Erik Satie's "Gymnopedies", and Joseph Hadyn's "Serenade" frequently play as a secondary Leitmotif for Alice or the trio when relaxing at the Kuonji mansion.
  • Adalgiso Ferraris' "Dark Eyes" plays when the puppet attacks Aoko in the house of mirrors.
  • Tchaikovsky's "Romeo and Juliet" is referenced when Flat Snark is released and turns Kitsy Land into its domain.
  • Vivaldi's "Winter" was used for the trailer for the original version, which was included in the soundtrack album.
• Record Needle Scratch: Used to hilarious effect as Aoko and Soujuurou can finally let their guard down with the destruction of Flat Snark and have a heart-to-heart when Soujuurou reveals he does not actually have a crush on Aoko when she came to that conclusion and asked. Aoko punches him in response.
• Reset Button: Aoko uses her time-manipulating Fifth Magic to make so that Soujuurou's death never occurred by basically ripping the minutes of his death out of the timeline and flinging them into the distant future.
• Saved by Canon: Since later Nasuverse titles cannot function without at least one of the Aozaki sisters appearing in the plot, neither of them are under any real threat of dying, even during the all-out duel over the land. This is presumably why Soujuurou is the only major character who actually bites it during the story.
• Secondary Character Title: While Aoko is the visual novel's main protagonist, the second heroine Alice is the titular "Witch on the Holy Night".
• Self-Deprecation: Cock Robin is surprised that Alice bothered to change up the scenery for subsequent Wonderful World of Ploys segments after the first one. She comments that she actually has the budget to do something different for every segment like this unlike the dojo, a self-deprecating reference to how Tiger Dojo had the same static setting for the entire bit.
• Sequel Hook:
  • Word of God is that there are several bits throughout the story meant to lead into the next installment of the trilogy if avid-eyed players pay attention to the script. Most notable is the Extra Story in and of itself as it skips a direct year from Winter 1988 to Winter 1989, when May Riddell Archelot is already an established entity among the cast, with it hinting that something went down when May first arrived in Misaki to meet the leads.
  • Alice has a trio of Ploys called the Great Three that are the strongest among her arsenal. She comments that Thames Troll has a third and fourth Kaiju-sized form that would dwarf most of London, should she ever be in the right environment to use it and refuses to go into detail on her third great Ploy, the Rose Hound Wandersnatch.
• Ship Tease: Soujuurou has some moments with both Aoko and Alice.
• Shout-Out:
  • Nasu notes in character commentary that Tobimaru's coat is specifically modelled after the signature coat of Columbo.
  • Cock Robin complains that Soujuurou thinks he's Scarlett O'Hara when he tries to run away from the bird.
  • Aoko mentions that her taste in men is preferably anyone like the muscled Austrian in that barbarian film.
  • Tokitsu complains about the mouse walking on two legs being far more more popular than his Kitsy mascot.
  • Aoko jokingly threatens Kinomi with the same fate as the informant in For a Few Dollars More when she finds out he apparently recommended Soujuurou to work at a pyramid scheme.
  • Kinomi namedrops Sailor Suit and Machine Gun as the kind of movie he watches for a hot actress.
  • An annoyed May threatens to enact Operation British on the Kuonji mansion.
• Sibling Rivalry: A very ugly one between Aoko and Touko over the succession of the family magecraft.
• Situational Sword: The Flat Snark can only weaponize the image of creatures or non-modern items, so Aoko realizes that an ordinary modern food stall with no mascot imagery is the one environment in Kitsy Land that Flat Snark can't convert into its minions to attack her and Soujuurou. Unfortunately, Snark decides to just start weaponizing buildings as a whole.
• Spotting the Thread: The fight against Flat Snark comes down to this. The only way to escape it is to figure out its true form, something that shouldn't exist, and taking it down. Aoko has given up on this because they're trapped in an amusement park where everything is coming to life as living nightmares, but Soujuurou has already noticed that the moon in the sky is full, when it was a new moon earlier that night.
• Stalker with a Crush: Aoko tried to politely decline any suitor asking to date her in high school as a freshman, but the old third-year student council president was very persistent to the point of stalking her home to keep asking her out. Aoko caved his face in with a kick for this and established herself as the most feared student at Misaki High as a result.
• Stalker without a Crush: Beowulf in the extra scenario 'The Honey Adventure' tails Touko during one of her daily routines out of curiosity over her uncharacteristic cheerfulness. Touko doesn't notice until they're both back at their hideout and Beowulf confesses to her.
• The Stoic:
  • Alice is described as such. She barely shows any emotion, but seems to have warmed up to Aoko and Soujuurou.
  • Yuika is this to an even greater degree than Alice and in contrast to her cheerful twin sister Ritsuka, to the point the cast considered her the most helpful person in the 'Anyone Can Sleep, But Not Laugh' scenario due to her being incredibly unlikely to laugh at anything. In the main story, she's stoic and precise while performing fast emergency operations on a critically wounded Aoko, a scene where the usually nonplussed Soujuurou faints in disgust and even Alice shows mild discomfort.
• Time Master: Whoever controls the Fifth Magic.
• Tastes Better Than It Looks: Soujuurou's pile of noodles appears to be a highly unappealing pile of oily vegetables, slimy noodles, and bizarrely mixed sauce. Alice has to internally admit it tastes fine after giving it a hesitant bite.
• Ten Little Murder Victims: The basic plot of the Extra Story. Everyone in the cast has been invited over to Alice's mansion to celebrate a birthday party, only for everyone to start dropping like flies after it turned out that a Ploy Kickshaw was unsealed. By the end, everyone except for the killer and the unwitting mastermind have died to Sweets Hearts. Once Kojika deduces both, she has Sweets Hearts undo everything and bring everyone back.
• Too Long; Didn't Dub: Cock Robin's lines are actually voiced in the console port even if it's not used in dialogue. However, since this is only revealed when the player checks the dialogue logs and plays Cock Robin's lines corresponding to certain prose segments, the dialogue is not available for transcription in non-Japanese scripts.
• Tsundere: Aoko to Soujuurou, most notably after the amusement park fight thanks to misunderstandings on Aoko's part. Aoko's sister Touko is also this sometimes, primarily with Beowulf.
• Two Girls and a Guy: Aoko, Alice, and Soujuurou respectively among the main cast. Aoko, Kumari, and Tobimaru is another example within the student council; as are the sisters Ritsuka and Yuika together with Father Eiri within the local church.
• Unexpected Gameplay Change: The 'Anyone Can Sleep, But Not Laugh' bonus scenario unlocked at the end of the game is the only chapter that presents the player with choices that branch the story, with several leading to violent bad ends like the ones previously seen in Tsukihime and Fate/stay night. The end of the scenario also tasks the player with identifying the culprit behind the murder mystery via a group shot selection screen rather than standard visual novel choice boxes.
• The Voice: Aoko's grandfather talks to various characters, including Soujuurou on-screen, and is alluded to at various points in the backstory but is never shown even when Touko flashbacks to Eiri killing her grandfather right in front of her. Soujuurou can only perceive a vague smoke-like appearance from which his voice comes from, indicating that the Aozaki grandfather has managed to cling to the Earthly plane via some unnatural means.
• We Can Rule Together: Touko offers something akin to this to Soujuurou. In a bit of a subversion, however, Touko states that he would not be so much her equal, but more her mook with benefits.
• What the Hell, Hero?: The nature of the Fifth Magic, the Blue, has some side effects due to the laws of thermodynamics. In the process of rescuing Soujuuro Aoko basically removes a large amount of energy and flings them into the future, requiring the world to correct itself. Touko is mortified at the potential consequences of moving, removing and using up the amount of energy Blue does and she calls her out on it.
• Wholesome Crossdresser: Ritsuka enjoys crossdressing as a hobby, and Aoko's first crush being on a magically disguised Ritsuka mortified her so much that she now has a lot of antipathy for romance in general.
• With a Friend and a Stranger: Aoko is the protagonist, Alice is her childhood friend and close confidant, and Soujuurou is the stranger whose meeting with Aoko changes both their lives on the get go.

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