YMMV / unOrdinary

• Arc Fatigue: Overall, it's pretty much a universal agreement that the pacing of the story when trying to read this series on a weekly basis can be very slow. There have been many times where chapters are released, only to leave people feeling like nothing happened.
  • Sera's depowering lasts for over 200 chapters, which can be really fatiguing for those who just want to see her power finally restored.
  • The mystery surrounding Terrence was incredibly dragged out due to Uru sidelining it for so long. In chapter 65, Arlo intimidated Cecile into revealing Terrence's name as the anonymous reporter that wrote the article about the mall incident involving Remi, Blyke and Isen. Despite how obviously suspicious it looks, it's not until over 100 chapters later that this finally gets touched on again. And even then, Season 2 stretches it out further where they apparently got to investigate Terrence first before it's finally the time to confront him. It then turns out that Terrence can't be touched due to being involved with the questionable organization, Spectre, that could put the main cast in danger, which just made the holdout to not confront Terrence that went on for years all the more pointless.
  • The New Bostin flashback from Claire's point-of-view goes on for 5 chapters. For the most part, it just serves as an extended recap on information the readers already knew regarding John's rise to tyranny at his old school, and what led up to his eventual expulsion.
  • The Wellston safehouse plotline is especially dragged out.
    • Remi brings up the idea of making the safehouse in chapter 186, yet it takes all the way until chapter 201 just to get to its grand opening.
    • The build-up to the safehouse field-trip isn't much better where it takes the first 10 chapters of Season 2 Part 2 (chapters 235 to 244) just to get everything ready before heading off for the trip.
  • Near the end of Season 2 Part 1, Claire gets a vision where John's eventually going to meet a man with white-hair in Vaughn's office. This person turns out to be John's uncle. It takes 96 chapters to finally reach this point.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • John. After his brutalizing of the royals, the fans' opinions on him have been very divided. While a part of the fandom considers his actions justified because of his mental issues, Dark and Troubled Past (plus Arlo's betrayal) and the Jerkass behavior of the high tiers in general, another part of the fandom deems him a complete villain due to his violent behavior and brutal actions as the Joker. Then there's a third party among the fans that agree that while John's actions are not justifiable by any means, his behavior is pretty understandable, considering his past and the circumstances that were forced on him in his current school and appreciate the writing of his character because of him being a flawed character.
  • Isen. He's either a lovable coward that provides a lot of much needed comedy to the series, or he's just as much a piece of shit as every other Jerkass student at Wellston. It doesn't help that Isen's easily the least developed of the main cast members, and that as of the most recent chapter, he still hasn't reflected on how god-awful his treatment of John was during the fake interview stunt.
  • Arlo. He's either viewed as a great Foil to John, or people hate him because he got off way too easy for all the shit he pulled when Arlo was Wellston's King.
• Broken Base:
  • The fanbase is split on how people interpret the moment in chapter 33 where Blyke shoots an energy beam at John out of anger from seeing John hit Remi's hand. One side has people claiming that it was just a warning shot while others saw it as Blyke legitimately trying to injure John. It only got worse when Uru actually confirms to a fan who asked about it way down the line that it really was a warning shot, which Blyke defenders took as a victory claiming that the warning shot has now officially been deemed canon. However, the opposing side will counter back saying that said warning shot still comes off as a huge and dangerous overreaction from Blyke that he could have handled a lot better. Thus, claims that what Blyke did was an asshole move still stands.
  • John vs. the Wellston Royals will always lead to some pretty heated debates as to who was more in the wrong, as well as who's been the bigger asshole to the other. It's very easy to sympathetically side with John due to all the shit he had to deal with before starting to fight back with this power only for it to become a lot harder to defend his actions due to the temper tantrum Wangst he's been displaying in Season 2. Meanwhile, the Royals have started to realize the errors of their ways, but a lot of people find their "path of redemption" hard to believe due to their lack of admitting that the horrible stuff they did in the past was wrong, and that none of them have even had the decency to genuinely apologize to John for their previous actions.
• Captain Obvious Reveal: Chapter 216 finally reveals what almost everyone believed about the EMBER terrorist organization ages ago, namely that they're in cahoots with the government Authorities to kill potential threats to the current society.
• Catharsis Factor: After watching the many Smug Supers practically get away with bullying John, it warms the heart to see John anonymously kicking their assess one by one while toppling the school's hierarchy.
  • But where's the limit? John didn't just "anonymously kick" the asses of a select few, he brutalized a bunch of kids within an inch of their lives. It's quite disturbing, really, how much the narrative justifies and feeds into the excessive violence that is John's character flaws.
• Creator's Pet: Some readers believe that Arlo became this in Season 2. This is due to a past interview where the author, Uru, once told her fans that she relates to Arlo the most, and finds him to be her favorite character. The result is the readers believing that Uru has an extreme bias towards Arlo to always make him look good at the expense of other characters, even if it barely makes any sense in the storytelling. Particularly John, who's spent the majority of Season 2 as a raging lunatic while Arlo just goes about his business with his fellow classmates as if they believe he's done nothing wrong.
• Designated Hero: John comes off as this to some people, especially during the Joker arc (where he beats the stuffing out of a number of high-tier students in an attempt to prove a point and shake up the hierarchy), with him being lambasted by some more critical readers for basically being as bad as the system that oppressed him.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Arlo is often referred to by fans as "Asslo."
    • During the time he was faking nice, he was called "Brolo."
    • Humorously, Remi calls him "Asslo" In-Universe in Episode 61.
  • Readers tend to call Juni as "Hair-bun Girl" due to the fact that it took awhile for the author to finally provide the character a name, and that her Odango Hair was her most memorable feature when talked about.
  • John eventually gets labeled by the readers as "Tuesday" or "ʎɐpsǝn┴" when he's in his disguised bully killer mode. This is due to John wearing Zeke's lunch bag as a disguise when he confronted Zeke over the latter's recent bullying. Said bag had "Tuesday" written on it, and was upside down while John wore it. And even though John eventually replaces the paper bag with a black ski mask, the "Tuesday/ʎɐpsǝn┴" nickname ends up sticking with him.
• Franchise Original Sin: Season 2 has received a lot of criticism for dragging out the story compared to Season 1. In actuality, the really slow pacing issues have always been there since the beginning of Season 1 where each chapter provided just as much bare-bone content as the ones released for Season 2 ^note One look back at the very first chapter of the series will show that it was nothing but John leaving his classroom to go to the bathroom and avoiding a fight between Blyke and Isen over a pen. A lot of people just ended up not noticing how slow Season 1 actually was, because readers getting into UnOrdinary could binge read a majority of the first season in one go before catching up to the current chapter.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: John losing his ability in Season 2 Part 2 is thought to be incredibly repetitive after readers had already sat through many chapters revolving around Sera having lost her ability. The latter of which lasted for over 200 chapters. The result was many readers deciding to drop the series until they hear that John got his ability back.
• It Was His Sled: John was only pretending to be a cripple in Season 1 Part 1. It doesn't help that the marketing for the series usually depicts John with Glowing Eyes.
• Memetic Loser: Byron ended up as this due to his multiple losses he raked up in Season 2 Part 2 despite the fact that he's supposed to be a really dangerous EMBER agent.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Lose the hair-gel / Bring back the hair-gel ^ExplanationJokes and discussions over the usage of John's hair-gel will take over comment sections, even in chapters that he doesn't appear in.
  • Pointing out that Zeke looks a lot like James from Pokémon: The Series is pretty common.
  • Diplomatic Arlo ^ExplanationArlo telling his fellow royals that he tried to be diplomatic to John did not get a good reaction amongst the readers given that everyone's witnessed Arlo's disgusting, hypocritical and manipulative actions towards others. Especially John, who Arlo outright assaulted with Meili and Ventus just to confirm what John's place is in the hierarchy. As a result, this has led a lot of readers to go back to earlier parts of the series to point out how "diplomatic" Arlo was being towards them, such as the mentioned assault on John. Other examples usually brought up include when he was choking Rein long after the Turf War match was declared over, or when he abused Isen within his barrier for not doing what Arlo told him.
  • "Let it go" ^ExplanationSera telling John to let it all go after he had just told her how poorly her fellow high-tiers have treated him did not go well with many readers as it showed that Sera has no empathy whatsoever towards John regarding all the pain he had been put through up to this point.
  • Royals good, John bad. ^ExplanationA common criticism towards Season 2 is how biased Uru is towards making the Royals look good while John is constantly suffering and is told constantly that he's in the wrong. This is despite the Royals doing some pretty terrible stuff that John has rightfully called them out on, yet they haven't reflected or suffered any real consequences on those past actions. Thus, readers find the whole black-and-white split between John and the Royals to be pretty hard to believe.
• Narm: After awhile, it can be really hard to take seriously the staggeringly high amount of students all shoved into one school that show off bullying and Jerkass behavior that it just reaches the point of being completely ridiculous.
• The Scrappy: Elaine, the first person that approached John who later treated him harshly just because he has no power like everyone in the school. Fan opinion of Elaine got worse when she later sells out Seraphina for simply having the UnOrdinary book instead of being a real friend to her. Her lack of Character Development hasn't helped either as the only noteworthy change she's had ever since her introduction is becoming scared of John after realizing he's not actually a cripple.
• Seasonal Rot: The King John chapters of Season 2 Part 1 is considered to be the low-point of the series for a lot of readers. Particularly because John is at his absolute worst, the Royals and the rest of the jerk Wellston students all suffering an extreme case of Karma Houdini, and Remi's safehouse plotline that's going on at the same time not being all that interesting as it does the absolute bare minimum when it comes to resolving the deeper issues that plague Wellston. It also doesn't help that the chapters during this portion of the story were so short and bare-bone of content that it left readers feeling like it was dragged out to oblivion. Eventually, this rough section of the series finally comes to an end with John vs. Sera finally calming the former down, and John returning home where he finally confronts his problems that occurred at New Bostin.
• Shocking Moments:
  • Chapter 272 has the Spectre agent Liam drowning Terrence to death, which came as a shock to a lot of people since it establishes that Uru will actually go through with killing off members of the younger cast.
  • Chapter 319 hits with the force of a runaway train. William is confronted by the Bureau for anonymously publishing Untitled (which Remi confirmed is just UnOrdinary under a different title), learns that his contact Simon was executed for breaking into government facilities and stealing sensitive information, and is executed himself by Jude. Cameron finally sees the pictures of his sister Jane and tries to contact William, but the house is dead silent and dark. It seems Claire's vision in Episode 231 (of John meeting Cameron) is about to happen under the worst circumstances...
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: When Season 1 Part-1 was released as a physical volume, it turned out that all usage of the word "cripple" was changed to "zero" as the insult people use towards those who don't have power. Many have pointed out that calling people "zeroes" doesn't have anywhere near the same emotional effect as calling people "cripples" to the point that the dialogue now comes off really hard to take seriously. Especially when you consider that people with no power aren't technically zero, but are at a Power Level of 1.0.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • The series has a tendency to introduce a character only to do almost nothing with him/her after their introduction. Particularly, all the bully students that Uru keeps introducing within Wellston. Illena and her gang pretty much disappear after the kidnapping incident, and Meili and Ventus, two characters who played a huge part in Arlo's plan to break cripple-John, end up fading to the background.
  • Elaine. She starts off looking like one of the more important side characters in Season 1 Part 1, and her early poor treatment of John only to have it come back and bite her showed that there was potential for her to have a character arc towards developing into a better person. Since then however, she's been Demoted to Extra where she's either being told to leave while the important stuff is going on, or she's just standing there as background fodder.
  • Some will say this about Isen where he's considered to be the least developed amongst the main cast. He tends to only be there for comic relief or when his computer expertise is needed for the other characters, which doesn't provide him any moments for himself to develop as a person.
  • The Rowden hillside battle against the Spectre assassins in Season 2 Part 2 seemed like the perfect opportunity to have the low-tier Wellston students, such as Evie or Roland, finally do something noteworthy in the story, and possibly even show that some of them Took a Level in Badass after receiving a bit of training from Sera, or because they've grown tired of being pushed around. Instead, they just did their best hiding amongst the trees while John and the Wellston Royals did all the fighting.
  • Terrence. He's built up early on as this mystery student that Arlo discovers is doing something suspicious behind the scenes. However, his subplot ends up getting sidelined and forgotten about for well over 100 chapters. Then when Terrence's storyline is finally brought back in Season 2 Part 2, he gets killed off.
  • Cecile's been a complete no-show in Season 2 Part 2 apart from a brief appearance at the start of it. This can be seen as a huge missed opportunity as along with not getting to see the impact that was left on her after being The Dragon to King John during Season 2 Part 1, she remains out of the picture to the point that the other students seemingly just forget about her despite the trouble she's caused. Season 2 Part 2 is also where an important character of her Wellston newsletter group, Terrence, is finally brought into the spotlight. Yet despite that connection, Cecile doesn't play any part in the Terrence plotline to possibly delve into their newsletter partnership, which is now no longer possible due to Terrence being killed off.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Turf Wars. A mini-arc surrounding it is introduced early on showing off a power duel between the Wellston and Agwin High teams. This could have been a way to introduce rival students from other schools, or even become a full-on Tournament Arc between schools, yet other than a few brief mentions in dialogue, everything about Turf Wars pretty much disappears after said mini-arc.
  • The whole idea that students at Wellston had built up an underground network amongst its bullying Mid-tiers was an interesting set-up for a group that's been largely ignored outside of their bully antics, which could have delved into the lower Wellston students' hatred for the hierarchy that's been holding them down. However, the Wellston Mid-tiers pretty much disappeared from the story after the kidnapping incident.
  • The Fake Joker plotline that started off Season 2. The students of Wellston who took part in the hierarchy bullying were finally being held accountable for their actions due to people pretending to be the masked Joker attacking bullies out of Revenge, which could have been a way for the bullies to finally start to realize that their disgusting actions have consequences, and that they should go about changing themselves to be better. However, this plotline instantly comes to a halt after Isen decides to reveal John's identity to the school as the real Joker, thus restoring the might-makes-right power hierarchy just with John at the top instead, and the bullies learning jack squat.
  • For some, Remi's Safehouse plotline is felt to be really underutilized. Mostly because it just focused on holding off John and Zeke from destroying it rather than actually delving into and resolve Wellston's bigger hierarchy and bullying problems that caused the Safehouse to be made to begin with. The only thing you actually got to see that didn't involve holding off John and Zeke was a couple minor verbal arguments between the Safehouse students that Remi put to rest with hardly any effort.
  • At the tail end of Season 2 Part 1, John returns to New Bostin after his actions resulted in him being suspended from Wellston, which he starts to rekindle his friendship with Adrion (who lives in New Bostin) after things fell apart between them a while back. However, instead of getting to see where the rekindled friendship develops, the series jumps ahead to the point where John is sent back to Wellston. Thus, the Adrion plotline ends up dropping Out of Focus.
  • At the start of Season 2 Part 2, Blyke and Isen are promoted up to the Wellston ranks of King and Jack respectively due to some of the high-tier Wellston students (John, Arlo, and Cecile) no longer having any interest in being the heads of the school. Despite their new promotions though, the storytelling quickly switches to the fights against terrorist organizations that take place outside the school. Thus, you never get to see the effect that Blyke and Isen's promotions up to King and Jack had on the other Wellston students. Nor do you get to see any struggles that Blyke and Isen have to deal with in their new lead roles.
  • The fact that the characters can train up their abilities to increase their Power Level is quite underutilized. Over 300 chapters into the story, yet the only character to have any confirmed current day power increase has been Blyke going through a 4.5 to 5.0 power spike.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: Really, with how bad John faced discrimination from his peers for keeping his powers a secret and pretending to be a "cripple", it's hard to sympathize with any of the Wellston school students that isn't John, Seraphina, Remi, or the low-tiers such as Evie and Roland.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • John is heavily hit with this. Despite all the crap he goes through, he borders on this trope due to his self-righteous attitude, and tendency to blame others for things that either aren't their fault or have little control over have caused most people to stop feeling sorry for him. When Arlo manipulates and then ambushed and betrayed him, John starts to regress to his former violent, spiteful self and convinces himself that everyone are abusive phonies, refusing to see everyone eventually has renounced to their violent ways as time goes on. He also pushes away anyone who tries to help him with his problems. In his backstory, he spends most of his time resorting to violence against everyone else, even for smaller things, he refused to listen to his former friends Claire and Adrion telling him to stop. They also had a good reason to put a stop to his violence, with Claire ganging up with every student he has pummeled against him and Adrion calling the Authorities against him because they couldn't stand anymore of his tyranny and violence. To make things worse, in the present time, after he returned to his old violent, tyrannical ways in Wellston as mentioned above, he spends most of his time demonizing everyone else, even after becoming King. He also blames them for his and Sera's misfortunes, even lashing out at those who caused them once he finds out, he even refuses to listen to any explanations. When called out for it, he starts to attack them every single time. He won't let Sera inform him about the people who tried to kidnap her and attacked his house, nor let Cecile explain why she leaked the article about Sera's ability loss. This is a clear example he only thinks about himself and never wants or even tries to put himself on other people's shoes.
  • The Wellston Royals (Arlo, Remi, Blyke and Isen) became this down the line where readers are expected to feel bad for them when John with his powers starts to torment them. We're supposed to believe that they're getting better over the course of the series, especially since they keep trying to tell people that they've "changed," yet apart from Blyke, they never seem to reflect on their actions that the stuff they did in the past was morally wrong. Thus, making it seem like the Royals never actually learned any lessons by glossing over past actions, and acting like everything will be fine. Or in Remi's case, just flat out ignoring the horrible things that her friends pulled as if they never did anything wrong.
• Wangst: The first half of Season 2 really elevates John's anger to the point of him yelling out at everyone at almost every turn. While said anger is completely justified due to the amount of abuse John took in Season 1, some have grown annoyed by it due to him constantly coming off as an unintelligent 5-year-old throwing temper tantrums. (Example: He says "Shut up!" eight separate times during the fight against Arlo and Remi, and then Seraphina)
• The Woobie:
  • Remi. Her brother died early in the story and she wants to uphold what he believed in. Yet she got shot down by Cecile who claims her brother is weak for believing in equality. Ouch...
  • John can double as a Jerkass Woobie given his backstory. Betrayed by a friend he believed in because he grew to be a violent, tyrant king in his old school, and as he wants to blend in with the norm by pretending to be a "cripple" and change, all he got was becoming a victim to bullying and Seraphina becomes his only friend. Her suspension makes his bullying go From Bad to Worse that he finally decided that enough is enough. By the end of season 1 and starting of season 2, he has started leaning completely towards the Jerkass side.

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