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The Familiar of Zero

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  • Allegedly Optimistic Ending: Saito and Louise become lovers in the end, even though the latter spends a large portion of the series abusing the former.
  • Alternative Character Interpretation: Is Saito an exaggerated form of an Extreme Doormat that takes Louise's abuse because he loves her or is he a masochist that likes it? The author himself doesn't believe either. That said, it was semi-confirmed in Volume 8 when he had a dream of Tabitha abusing him.
  • Americans Hate Tingle: Character example: In Japan, Louise has no problem climbing character polls (in the 2007 edition of pop culture magazine Kono Light Novel ga Sugoi!, she ranked #10 out of light novel heroines overall), but in the West, she's seen as a Fetishized Abuser, the prime example of how not to write a Tsundere, and why the archetype in general is more controversial there.
  • Angst Aversion: This series has a reputation for being very mean-spirited, primarily because of Louise's constant abuse of Saito. As a result, many people don't recommend it.
  • Base-Breaking Character: Louise and Saito both qualify, depending on who you ask. Louise has the Domestic Abuse angle and Saito gets the Wish Fulfillment angle that Light Novel heroes often get.
  • Designated Hero:
    • Louise. While we're ultimately meant to root for her, as she's long been bullied by both peers and family, many find it hard to do so since she abuses Saito and treats him like dirt for the most insignificant slights, and she is constantly rude and obnoxious to every other female in the cast out of jealousy and arrogance.
    • Saito also counts after his attempted rape of Louise because of all the factors which insist that it's not really his fault such as Louise sending mixed signals or his familiar runes influencing his actions.
  • Die for Our Ship:
    • Siesta treats Saito much better than Louise, but is loathed by some of the fandom for that. Part of the reason is flanderization in the anime.
    • Louise suffers from the people who prefer Siesta, Kirche, Henrietta, Tiffania, or Tabitha, or just about anyone else over her. Louise isn't popular among the fans of the others in the female cast.
  • Draco in Leather Pants: Fanfics tend to do this a lot for any number of characters in the series. In particular, Kirche tends to get her Character Development moved forward so that she'll start out as Vitriolic Best Buds with Louise as opposed to a wholly antagonistic Alpha Bitch.
  • Easily Forgiven: Louise essentially kidnaps Saito from his old life by force, enslaves him, forces him to do her chores, beats him whenever she gets upset, and denies him food as punishment when she's unsatisfied with his work. But despite all this, Saito still ends up falling in love with her.
  • Fandom-Specific Plot:
    • The amount of Crossover stories where Louise summons someone else instead of Saito (from other fictional characters to real-world historical figures to the writer's self-insert) makes up the overwhelming majority of fanfiction written for the series. It's even arguable that these works are a major factor in why isekai stories where protagonists are forcibly summoned to a fantasy world exploded in popularity back during the early 2010s, as these fics flooded Shousetsuka ni Narou, to the extent that the site would have to ban all fanfiction in favor of more original works in 2012, thanks to the overusage of this premise.
    • A crossover variant that later gained popularity has Louise herself being summoned to the other universe, either directly as a result of her spell backfiring or being taken by an otherwise powerful entity from that world as retribution for her previous attempts constituting as attempted kidnapping. This is usually followed by her new Fish out of Water situation forcing her to become more humble as she adapts to the setting, in conjunction with taking a level in badass.
    • Additionally, Siesta's ancestors in either case are usually changed to be from wherever world Louise's familiar is from.
  • Fan Nickname:
    • Pope Vittorio Serevare St. Aegis of Romalia is not well-liked on SpaceBattles.com, where the prevailing nickname for him is "Pope McDongcopter" due to his questionable actions and manipulations.
    • "Titania" for Tiffania. Bonus points for Stealth Pun.
    • Melon-chan for Tiffania and Lemon-chan for Louise.
  • Fanwork-Only Fans: Thanks to the various criticisms levied towards the characters and plot, it's not uncommon to see fans that have only read/watched a little bit of the source material before quickly switching to the myriad of crossover fics, deeming them as doing a better job of exploring the characters and expanding the lore of the world than canon does.
  • Genius Bonus: If you can read runes, you can identify Saito as Gandálfr long before Colbert.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: The ending of the first season can as such, if you know that Saito's Japanese VA is the dub voice of Oliver Queen: Saito almost got killed by a Rain of Arrows.
  • Just Here for Godzilla: There are a lot of people who watch this anime just for Kirche, Siesta, or Tiffania.
  • Moe:
    • Tabitha; to quote someone from animeblogger:
      "Tabitha has taken over Siesta as my favorite character, and not just because she is channeling Yuki. She is made of pure win, I don't usually like the stoic silent types, but something about Tabitha just makes my inner moe meter go berserk."
    • Louise counts when she's in dere-dere mode. When she is in tsun-tsun mode, on the other hand...
  • Never Live It Down:
    • There are fans that lost sympathy for Louise after the first time she whipped/exploded Saito... or the Nth time afterward.
    • Some fans think Saito became an irredeemable creep after his attempted rape of Louise.
  • Older Than They Think: Tabitha owes a lot to Rei (from Evangelion). So at first glance her mother's story looks like a tie-in to Rei's Red Oni counterpart. Actually the reason for her mother's madness is directly taken from Princess Kushana's story in Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind manga (which is also where Eva adapted it from).
  • One True Threesome: Among those who don’t hate Louise with a passion, Louise/Saito/Siesta is a popular pairing, because Louise and Siesta balance each other out. This was teased a little in the 12th volume, where Louise says she would be disappointed if Siesta gave up on winning Saito so easily.
  • Questionable Casting:
    • The European Spanish dub was made with amateur voice actors, something that was highly controversial. The fact that said voice actors also did the critically panned 2013 redubbing of Elfen Lied didn't help.
    • The English dub of Season 1 featured a mostly Amateur Cast with poor direction, despite industry veteran Tony Oliver helming, which most likely played a part in why the other seasons were subbed only.
  • Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
    • For many, this happened to Louise after she gave up her nobility to save Tabitha, and went uphill from there.
    • Louise's scrappiness is often watered down or removed entirely in fanfiction. It was done first by The Hill of Swords and then by about a good number of all ZnT fanfics that came after it. In most cases, it's due to her having to deal with a character that isn't a lecherous doormat and stands up to her, so her violent tsundere behavior won't fly and she lacks the motivation to act that way.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: The familiars of the Void from past generations (Vindálfr, Mjöðvitnir and Lífþrasir) were never shown, except for the first Gandálfr, Sasha.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
    • Some question why the series is an isekai at all, believing that it and the Harem Genre antics only serve to take attention away from the rest of the plot, which deals with a fantasy world on the verge of a continental war, orchestrated by a mad king who wants to see everything burn just so he can feel something, with various factions ranging from the Church (who are hiding knowledge of Void magic) and the once reclusive elves who all have their own secret agendas in the escalating conflict.
    • The anime works at a conversion ratio of three-to-four light novel volumes per twelve episodes. Due to this, at least two thirds of the source material were outright omitted in the adaptation, while the remainder was truncated or chopped up. The manga and novels aren't immune to this criticism, either.
    • An important element of the series that set up its premise was that each magician character had their own familiar. Except for the class of Louise and the familiars of the void, the ones of characters such as the Princess Henrietta, Professor Colbert, Louise's sisters, and other nobles are never revealed.
    • The interesting history of Tiffania's parents is never revealed in full. What is known is that an elf escaped from her home until she reached Albion, and a member of royalty (the uncle of Henrietta and Wales, and therefore a descendant of the founder Brimir) fell in love with her.
  • Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Louise. We're supposed to sympathize with her because her jerkass behavior is quickly shown to be hiding an enormous inferiority complex fueled by a miserable school life, an abusive older sister, emotionally distant and strict parents who view her as more asset than person, and a general status as a laughingstock for being a noble with seemingly no magical ability. Despite all this, many still come away from the story viewing her as a bully as opposed to a Jerk with a Heart of Gold due to her infamously brutal and non-stop abuse of Saito, which comes across as hypocritical on top of it just being immoral. While this is all eventually addressed in Volume 11 of the light novels, the anime adaptation not only leaves her behavior unexamined, but amplifies it for comedy.
  • Wangst: The author tries to justify Louise's abuse by showing her poor self-esteem, but most people don't see that as a good excuse to beat someone.
  • The Woobie:
    • Saito, because of the abuse heaped upon him by Louise. Hell, even the other familiars feel sorry for Saito, and see his treatment as both a familiar and a human as horrible. Unfortunately, he can also be callous and cruel in his own right in response to his treatment, which can kill any sympathy for him.
    • Tabitha qualifies, once you learn of what happened to her parents and what her uncle does to her.
  • Woolseyism:
    • The Mexican Spanish dub does this regarding the nicknames of many of the characters, who received more realistic-sounding nicknames compared with both the original Japanese and English ones, while keeping the meanings intact. Character-wise, Saito, while keeping his characterization from the Japanese version, also sounds like a stereotypical Mexico City teenager, without going overboard with it, and is capable of sounding more angry and freaked out in a somewhat more realistic way than in Japanese. Louise and the nobles, on the other hand, sound more mean and arrogant, possibly because that's how many Mexicans tend to depict people of higher social levels in Mexican media, especially in comedy.
    • The European Spanish dub, on the other hand, translated more or less everything literally, without reaching Too Long; Didn't Dub levels with mixed results.

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