YMMV / Tokyo Afterschool Summoners

• Adorkable:
  • Despite her occasionally difficult personality, Benten does have genuine passion for music and trend setting and is easily flustered when others are forward about their feelings to her.
  • Garmr has acquired plenty of fans thanks to his his dog-like personality, and his adorably, hilarious dialogue. He's also loved by the fact that he truly wishes to make the player happy.
  • Ibaraki, after transforming, does his best to try and pretend he's a different person, even when everyone can tell that they are the same person thanks to his transformation being a gender swap. Fans tend to agree it's actually kind of cute.
  • Once Takemaru's able to let go of the past and move on, he starts being this full-force. Even when he was burdened by his past, he mutters that Kurogane's "cute" under his breath and is happy if you compliment him when he models the tiger-print cloth he brought for everyone. Notably in his personal event, where he's a kid in a candy store talking about his work and pointing out stuff he thinks is cool to you.
  • Just look at Surtr's Valentine’s Day variant. He not only bakes sweets for the main characters and his fellow guild members, but also asks the player (via voicelines) point-blank if they think it’s delicious. When he’s excited, the flames around his helmet even morph into hearts, while his usually ominous red eyes arch in pure delight. He is also amazingly keen on people dancing their way to fitness and chiseled physiques.
  • Xolotl has acquired plenty of fans for his tough and intimidating appearance mixed with his contrasting personality.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Hati: an adorable, misunderstood fanboy with a crush on his favorite idol, or an obsessive psycho stalker who gets off extremely easily for what amounts to kidnapping and assault. This divisive view of him has been rectified somewhat by his character quest, wherein he has since sworn off interacting directly with Gabriel at all in favor of supporting her anonymously so as to keep her safe from himself.
  • Durga. Some like her because of her Inferiority Superiority Complex stemming from the fact that she is made up of the cast-off, rejected traits of Parvati, which helps explain why she's obsessed with being number one. Others dislike her because of said obsession and how in her debut event of "O' the Great Gendarme", she would rush ahead of everyone else in her team with reckless abandon, and gets into dangerous situations more than once. Adding to that was Hombre Tigre's leak weeks prior, making a fair bit of the fandom upset that they weren't getting him just yet and leading to negative comments towards Durga's reveal.
  • Horkeu Kamui. He's extremely popular in fandom for being a handsome, big, buff wolf, and his popularity in furry fanart has played a fairly large role in garnering the attention of the furry fandom and drawing more fans to this game, becoming something of a Breakout Character among fans. However, for older fans of the game, he's very much a disputed character, in a large part because he has relatively little depth or complexity; all he ever speaks to the player about is "heroes," and nothing ever comes of it. What exacerbates this division even further is that his backstory is actually quite interesting and dark, but the game never fully delves into how messed up it really is, instead only glancing over those details in favor of showcasing more of his blind hero worship. Not helping is how his backstory was expanded in the "Advance, Onsen Jamboree" event, but with a different character, Kimun Kamui, while Horkeu, who's supposedly a bit of a rival to him, does not make an appearance.
  • Temujin. Some like him because of his design, being a wolf archer drawn by popular furry artist, Gamma. Others dislike him because of his more forceful personality, especially towards Shinya, as well as for his desire to "spread his seed", regardless of gender.
• Broken Base: Having female characters in the game despite there being so few of them. One set of fans likes having them, even preferring them to the vast majority of the male characters and calling anyone that dislikes having them in the game sexist. Another side, primarily gay male fans, dislikes them at best and ignores them at the minimum in favor of the attractive male characters and are glad to have a non-joseimuke Gacha game that primarily focuses on the male characters, pointing out that the vast majority of Gacha games constantly focus on female units. It doesn't help that LifeWonders is primarily made up of only gay and bisexual men. Needless to say, this debate gets very ugly fast.
• Demonic Spiders: Several types of enemies can be bad news:
  • Enemies that give Evasion buff to themselves or their allies. This buff cuts down damage they take to triple digits at best (where enemies have thousands of HP at least and normally have to be one-shotted for your safety). This allows the buffed enemies to survive your initial onslaught and wreak havoc on your team, especially when we have...
  • Enemies who can gain massive attack buffs such as Critical, such as the many dragons you start seeing from Chapter 5. Having that Critical buff trigger often result in a quick game over.
  • Enemies that can gain Guts buff. Not only does this means they are thus guaranteed to counter-attack (painfully, since many enemies with this ability tend to be high-leveled), there is a chance that this buff may be reapplied on subsequent turns, rendering all your attacks useless as the enemy keeps surviving turn after turn. The dragon mooks introduced in Chapter 5 start each round with this buff at higher levels.
  • Christmas event battles are littered with D-Elves mooks, whose basic attacks can inflict Charm with alarming regularity, which prevents your team from attacking at all as long as the Charm debuff is active. Bring units who can remove debuffs, or you're not going to have a good time.
  • The mobster and ninja mooks are among the most dangerous common enemies in the game due to being able to give both evasion (mobsters to their teammates, ninjas to themselves) and the skill bind to you.
  • Enemies that can heal their teammates when they take damage, such as Takemaru in the Kamata Crafters free quest, can be extremely dangerous due to the game's mechanic: If you kill their teammates first before you kill them, their ability will trigger and essentially revive their "dead" teammates, which can be disastrous.
  • Fuxi in Taito ward bloom quest has the same Time Bomb ability as his playable counterpart, which brings your entire teams' HP to One on his 8th turn, immediately before his team acts. This is already bad enough since the quest has three waves, each of which has the aforementioned dragon mooks who start each wave with Guts, but he also has massive HP reserves (about 200K in the last wave), and worst of all, complete immunity to debuffs.
• Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game: While the gameplay is considered to be average at best, fans tend to stay around for the interesting story and likable characters.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Among the Mob units, the Pirates tend to get the most fan-art as they are anthropomorphic animals that are also pirates as well as the fact that in comparison to earlier mobs like the Slimes, Oni, Devils, and Wolves, they are not recolors and are more unique. The Wood Pirate is particularly popular thanks to being a green wolf.
• Evil Is Cool: Tezcatlipoca quickly garnered fans in part because of his design, and that he's voiced by Takehito Koyasu using his Dio Brando voice. Helps that he's also genuinely remorseful for banishing his brother and only continues the plans for an endless war just so he could see him again.
• Fanon: Despite having 5 designs to choose from, the protagonist's 5th design^note Aka, their chubby design is essentially treated as the default, considering how a lot of fan works almost always depict them as such. Though considering that this is a game full of hefty-sized men, it's pretty much a given.
• Fan-Preferred Couple:
  • Arsalan and Zabaniyya are a popular pairing with each other thanks to Arslan trying to get Zabaniyya to lighten up more and Zabaniyya holding a great amount of respect towards Arsalan. Their Boke and Tsukkomi Routine in the "I Ain't Afraid of No Halloween" event was also regarded as hilarious.
  • Among ships regarding the player character, Ophion is a popular choice as he displays genuine affection and devotion towards them, after finding out they posses the soul of Ophion's deceased mate. This becomes more apparent in special event quests and Chapter 6, when his younger self is summoned by his older self's sacred artifact. His younger counterpart immediately recognizes her soul within the protagonist's (while his older self is too blinded by his hatred of her murderers to notice) and does an instant Heel–Face Turn to protect them. He even states upfront that he is disinterested with the 'minor concerns' such as the player's gender, their world of origin, or even their race, he's just happy to see his beloved again.
• Fashion-Victim Villain: Volkh Vseslav's outfit is a skin tight leotard, under a set of armor with a tabard, one pauldron and boots that look like he's just stepped in wet concrete. Needless to say, it all clashes.
• Fridge Brilliance: The Ueno district in real-life Tokyo's Taito ward is home to both the Ueno Zoo and National Museum of Nature and Science which houses many biological specimens such as preserved animals and animal skeletons. Suddenly having the Beast Tamers, a guild composed of only beastmen, being based in Ueno makes perfect sense.
• Game-Breaker:
  • In general, CP Batteries, any unit whose purpose is to quickly fill up your team's charge meter, allowing them to unload powerful Charge Skills much earlier/more frequently than normal.
  • 4* Leanan Sidhe is considered to be the best buffer in the game thanks to the ridiculous amount of buffs she can grant to a single ally for a measly cost of some HP, in addition to her double all-direction movement range making it all the easier for her to reach the right ally at the right time. Pairing her with strong nukers often results in one turn enemy Total Party Kill, with Cthugha's 5* Fire self being a popular choice, due to Cthugha's CP charging with every buff and Leanan throwing almost double digit one turn buffs on him.
• Genius Bonus: Some design and characteristics given to companions who originate from mythological characters reflect who they were in the actual mythology. For example, Ophion losing his fang after a quarrel with his wife? The mythological Ophion's wife indeed kicked off his fang after she got fed up with his egomaniacal boasting. Typhon being afraid of thunder? Guess which Greek god defeated him in the myths? Bael looking quite similar to Seth? The Canaanite storm god Baal^note Specifically, Baal-Hadad; there are several Canaanite gods who have Baal in their names was imported by the ancient Egyptians and translated into their storm god Seth.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • Many free battles unlocked in the later chapters often come with enemies who have many ways to reduce your CP, which, thanks to the game's mechanics, prevents you from firing your charge skill on the next turn unless you have ways to recover that CP before the next turn starts.
  • Every single mook in Aoyama dungeon quest slashes your units' HP every time your unit attacks them. Given that the hardest dungeon quests have 10 waves and thus potentially a lot of enemies, you will see your team half-dead by the time you reach the final wave unless you have really strong healers ready.
• Incest Yay Shipping: Due to the nature of the protagonist's soul, as well as how almost every character expresses some level of attraction to the protagonist, it can veer into this territory, as many characters are relatives to one of the protagonist's souls. Prominent examples include:
  • Tezcatlipoca, whose passion and desire to once again battle his brother Quetzalcoatl has not so subtle themes of the Interplay of Sex and Violence.
  • Balor, who is the grandfather of the Celtic sun god, Lugh. It couldn't be anymore blatant how he feels about the protagonist than his love line where he speaks of his all-consuming love for them and how he will love them until even his soul is extinguished.
  • Seth/Ash toward the Original Seth. Granted, they're both actually adopted brothers, but it's clear Ash has more than simple brotherly worship for the Original Seth. More or less confirmed with Seth's Valentine variant, particularly the part where a chocolate replica of Seth tries to put the moves on the Protagonist and claims that it was simply acting out the feelings Seth had buried in his heart.
  • Volos to Veles. While Volos calls Veles his friend, the way he blushes as he reminisces about the life he spent with Veles back in Kitezh makes it seems like the relationship between them was more than just platonic life partners. It doesn't help that they were originally one being who was split in two, making it a case of Twincest.
  • Yoritomo to Yoshitsune/Ushiwakamaru. Yoritomo's 5-star bio explicitly states he hold regrets over banishing his brother and yearns for him even now.
• Jerkass Woobie: Ophion. When he was first introduced, he came across as a cruel tyrant who could care less about any of his allies and was shown being a Bad Boss towards Kirito, hitting him after the latter refused to respect him. However, it is later revealed that he had to helplessly witness his mate die ''twice'' and he spent thousands of years hopelessly searching for her spirit.
• Memetic Mutation: Due to the incredible synergy between Leanan's 4* unit and [Isolated by 25 Light Years] Cthugha, a lot of fanart and memes depict them as a duo, usually chaotic and destructive friends.
• Never Live It Down: Durga is usually seen by fans as obsessed with being number one to the point of ditching her teammates and getting into trouble in "O' the Great Gendarme". This despite the fact that the event's story involves her gradually learning that teamwork is vital and that she can't be the best alone, which helps her grow out of this a bit in future appearances. However, the event's confusing, rambling storyline makes it not well-liked by many fans, which in turn, worsened the fandom's overall opinion of Durga herself.
• One-Scene Wonder: Gandharva appears once in Chapter 5 during a short breather episode offering the protagonist a musical performance and disappears afterwards, never to be seen again, apart from a short cameo in Chapter 9.
• Popular with Furries: Given that there are a great amount of Funny Animals/Beast Men in the game, this is inevitable.
• Spiritual Successor: Housamo in general is a combination of Persona series and the first Devil Survivor: A crossover cosmology set in a walled-up Tokyo, where the protagonist gets to befriend (and even romance) those mythological figures. While it's also a bit of Spiritual Antithesis to the Shin Megami Tensei series as a whole, it also contains a few antagonistic Judaic characters.
• Squick:
  • Kenta is an elementary school student. Understandable. But the problem is that Kenta Kumamoto makes no effort at sounding like a child. It's jarring and disturbing to hear an obviously old, adult male trying to sound like a child. Kenta’s rather salacious artwork (for a videogame such as this) does very little to convince you that this is an innocent child, and instead gives strong shotacon vibes to Western players.
  • Babe Bunyan had a fair bit of excitement for his reveal as many people had speculated either Paul Bunyan or his ox would appear soon. However, this excitement soon turned to disgust in the same way mentioned above when two things were revealed: Babe, according to his description, is in Elementary School, and he has an underwear skin.
• That One Attack: There are several attacks, or more importantly, status effects that can be utterly dangerous if not anticipated.
  • Skill Lock and Skill Bind. Late-game parties depend on their entire skillsets to survive the increasingly harder enemies, and by shutting down those skills for 5 turns, these two debuffs can effortlessly destroy even maxed-out parties (Skill Bind adds insult to injury by lowering Atk). Furthermore, the primary reliable way to remove debuffs is via skills, which themselves are disabled by Skill Lock/Bind. It's also quite telling how powerful these two debuffs are that very few playable units has a 100% success rate to inflict them to enemies so as not to trivialize many battles, and those who do can only do so under specific circumstances (Canaan Tangaroa can only Skill Lock using his charge skill, while Marduk must miss in order to Skill Lock).
  • Any debuff that disables movement can be utterly hazardous as many of the more powerful units in the game need to move to activate their skills (such as the aforementioned Leanan Sidhe), and even when not deploying such units you still would rather have the option to reposition your team at all times, especially when you run into enemies who can forcibly move your units all over the place. Even one-turn immobility like Break and Oppression can spell disaster, forget the worst of them, Fear, which lasts four turns on top of sapping CP to prevent charge skill activation.
  • Possession. This debuff turns your units Brainwashed and Crazy by attacking backwards, so if you fail to notice that your strongest attacker has been possessed, you may end up with a Total Party Kill. The only saving grace is that a possessed unit will never fire off their charge skill, a blessing as many of the stronger units have deadly charge skill with global range.
  • Omen/Countdown. The poster child of Useless Useful Spell, this Damage Over Time skill does 10K damage, essentially bringing your unit's HP to One as long as it's active, which is bad as strong healing is almost nonexistent in this game. And why is it such a Useless Useful Spell? One, the more dangerous enemies tend to have too much health for Omen's damage to matter, and two, Omen tends to last longer when on your team while expiring in a single turn on the enemy team.
• That One Level: Shinagawa bloom quest, unlocked by clearing chapter 13, is an absolute nightmare. The level is loaded with Camouflager mooks, who can slap possession, switch weapon type and grant themselves evasion, making them dangerously unpredictable if you can't kill them ASAP. Worse, they fill up their teammates' charge gauge on death, so failing to clear a wave in one go will result in you getting smashed by potentially multiple charge skills. The cherry on top is the last wave: One of the enemies has massive HP, tons of defense buffs and debuff immunity that allow it to survive most of your nukes, before retaliating with its global range attack that can slap possession and/or fear. Bear in mind this is a bloom quest, not a challenge quest which you can just do once and be done with it.
• Unexpected Character:
  • Seth, on Valentine's 2021, is the first character in the game to have a second variant who's not affiliated with the Summoners guild. This is surprising since not only did he already have his first variant in summer 2019, but he is also a somewhat later addition in the game, being added before the game's 2nd year, with many initially thinking that the next character to get a second variant would be another Summoner, like Toji or Hanuman, or another character that has been around longer, like Garmr or Horkeu Kamui, before he would.
  • Dagon was originally introduced in the Raiders of the Lost Isle event as a boss unit, similar to Yog-Sothoth, Thor, etc. and was not expected to come back outside of a possible AR card like the other bosses. Come the event's sequel and not only does he return, but he's also now a playable unit with both 3-star and 5-star cards.
  • With Daikoku's mythological origin's association with Shiva, no one expected the original guy himself to appear in the game.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Babalon/Harlot. Despite having the noble goals of wanting to end the game and get back at Eden, she herself has sacrificed innocent lives, (including a mother protecting her child) just for revenge. While she does realize the horror of what she has done after nearly losing Arc, no characters in-universe hold her actions against her.
• Values Dissonance: While Japanese players like the child-like units, most players outside of Japan are understandably (or not, depending on who you ask) disturbed by them in a game that's mostly intended for an older teenage and adult audience. The inclusion of the units has ties with how Japanese history idolized children, but in the United States they tend to skirt the line for what constitutes child pornography (especially some of the Akashic Records) and aren’t the most pleasant to look at.
• Wangst: Licho cannot pass up the opportunity to blame others for his failings, perceived or otherwise, and will bitterly complain about how they never had to suffer failure like he has, especially if they're popular or skilled at something he isn't. He is aware of this trait, but seems incapable of or unwilling to try to overcome it - in his internal monologue he refers to his wangsting as the "tiger's howl". It's even referred to in his Charge Attack, "Passing Enthusiastic Endorsment - All I Can Do Is Howl".
• The Woobie: Licht. While he is considered the leader of the Roppongi Tycoons, it is very much in name only as none of the other high-ranking members give him any respect. It's notable in that the only people who didn't think lowly of him are his maid, Melusine, and the player, after complimenting his artwork.

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