History VideoGame / AbsentedAgeSquarebound

* NoSell: Although Iris identifies as female, she's a robot and is immune to the effects of gender targeting items.

** After the FinalBoss fight, [[spoiler:Karen Alias takes Karen's three Heart Fragments and uses them to merge the real world and Driftworlds. However, this allows the real Karen to use her full psychic powers again, allowing her to easily defeat Karen Alias and the latter's [[Pun gang of Gangers]].]]

* YouAreBetterThanYouThinkYouAre: Hayato wonders if his attempt to stand up for Karen only made things worse for her, since she ended up leaving the Brass Band Club and now has no official music club to join. However, Karen reassures him that it's for the best, since she would be unhappy if she continued staying in the club and stifled her passion for music.

* SequelHook: [[spoiler:Karen Alias reveals that the Gangers weren't the ones who turned Karen into a ghost, which means there's still an enemy out there.]]

* NoBiologicalSex: Although Iris identifies as female, she's a robot and is considered agender when gender-targeting items and skills are used.

* TheNeedsOfTheMany: The Elicio Church is ruthlessly dedicated to stamping out abnormalities. [[spoiler:They want to seal Karen into a dagger in case she loses control of her vast psychic powers and destroy Amefuribashi.]]

* MusicalAssassin: Downplayed. While Satsuki primarily fights with standard weaponry and magic rings, she can use consumable scores to invoke various effects. This is due to her background as an indie musician.

* MirrorBoss: [[spoiler:Karen Alias]] has many of Karen's basic skills, such as No Foot Rise, Power Move, Foxtrot, Backflip, and Blaze Blast. Unfortunately for the player, she also have skills exclusive to the Gangers, such as the ability to disable random skills.

* MirrorBoss: [[spoiler:Karen Alias has many of Karen's basic skills, such as No Foot Rise, Power Move, Foxtrot, Backflip, and Blaze Blast. Unfortunately for the player, she also have skills exclusive to the Gangers, such as the ability to disable random skills.]]

* MightyGlacier: Some powerful enemies and bosses have the Slow attribute, which forces them to act every 2 turns.

** The Elicio Church intends to destroy any Driftworld-related abnormalities regardless of their intent to harm. Unfortunately, they deem Karen an abnormality who must be captured [[spoiler:because her psychic powers have the potential to devastate the city.]].

** [[spoiler:Karen Alias hits and spitefully kisses Tarte, who refuses to accept the real Karen's disappearance.]]

* LossOfIdentity: Without her Heart Fragments, Karen is in danger of losing her identity. [[spoiler:What this means is that if the Gangers take her Heart Fragments, they can become her while she's doomed to wander the Driftworlds as a ghost. When a Ganger steals her first and most important fragment, it's considered closer to being Karen than Karen herself, making it so that the rest of the Heart Fragments gravitate towards the Ganger while rejecting the ghost Karen.]]

* LaserGuidedKarma: When Mr. Minami, the advisor of the Sado Band Club, first appears, he's being pushed around and humiliated by the vice-principal. [[spoiler:It turns out the vice-principal framed the Sado Band Club for smoking in order to get all the members to distrust each other and leave. After Karen, Hayato, and Suzu join the club and covert it into the Sado Band Club, Mr. Minami effortlessly shoots down all of the vice-principal's arguments about the club's noise level, making the latter look like a fool in front of the student body.]]

* JerkWithAHeartOfJerk:
** Rumi at first seems shocked that her bad attitude pushed Karen out of the Brass Band Club, but after Karen is turned into a pseudo-ghost, Rumi is outright happy that Karen disappeared and vandalizes the Sado Band Club's missing person poster for Karen, making her earlier guilt a case of IgnoredEpiphany.
** The vice-principal is harsh on the Sado Band Club for causing noise with their activity even though they're supposed to be doing tea ceremony instead of music. While he initially seems like a strict school official who is just doing his job, he turns out to have an ulterior motive. [[spoiler:He wants to tear down the Sado building in order to make room for a campus museum, and went as far as to frame the club for smoking. Even when Mr. Minami counters all of the vice-principal's arguments about the Sado Band Club's activities, the latter still tries to threaten to suspend the club members and ruin their permanent records.]]

* JerkassHasAPoint:
** Rumi points out that Karen's inability to be a team player hurts her music career because a trumpeter needs other players to complement them. While this is a valid argument, she drove Karen out of the Brass Band Club out of jealousy and refuses to accept the Sado Band Club, despite the latter being proof that Karen can thrive with the right team.
** Subverted with the vice-principal. He is introduced yelling at the Sado Club for causing noise with their music and not focusing on their actual purpose of practicing tea ceremonies, which is a valid point to make even if he's a jerk about it. [[spoiler:It turns out that in the past, he framed the club for smoking cigarettes so he can abolish the club, and then convert their building into an on-campus museum. This puts his introduction in a darker light, since he's looking for any excuse to get rid of the club, even if he has to fabricate one. Additionally, the ending reveals that his excuse of noise doesn't even hold water, since the Sado Band Club's decibel measurement is actually lower than most other clubs.]]
** Yayoi and Hoop always belittle Tarte for being ignorant, but they are correct that the latter is often unaware of things that should be common knowledge to the followers of the Elicio Church.

** The vice-principal is harsh on the Sado Band Club for causing noise with their activity even though they're supposed to be doing tea ceremony instead of music. While he initially seems like a strict school official who is just doing his job, he turns out to have an ulterior motive. [[spoiler:He wants to tear down the Sado building in order to make room for a campus museum, and went as far as to frame the club for smoking. Even when Mr. Minami counters all of the vice-principals arguments about the Sado Band Club's activities, the latter still tries to threaten to suspend the club members and ruin their permanent records.]]

** Subverted with the vice-principal. He is introduced yelling at the Sado Club for causing noise with their music and not focusing on their actual purpose of practicing tea ceremonies, which is a valid point to make even if he's a jerk about it. [[spoiler:It turns out that in the past, he framed the club for smoking cigarettes so he can abolish the club, and then convert their building into an on-campus museum. This puts his introduction in a darker light, since he's looking for any excuse to get rid of the club, even if he has to fabricate one. Additionally, the ending reveals that his excuse of noise doesn't even hold water, since the Sado Band Club's decidel measurement is actually lower than most other clubs.]]

* JackOfAllTrades: Karen has the most [[JackOfAllStats balanced stats]] of the playable characters and has decent close and long-range skills. However, she isn't as specialized as Iris and Astrake in close and long-range combat respectively. She doesn't have a default close-range combo like Iris and has no default long-range option in ARPG Mode like Astrake.

* JackOfAllTrades: Karen has the most balanced stats of the playable characters and has decent close and long-range skills. However, she isn't as specialized as Iris and Astrake in close and long-range combat respectively.

* InterfaceScrew: [[spoiler:When Karen lured into a trap by a group of Gangers, she finds herself in a dungeon full of unbeatable enemies. Every time she dies, she loses something that makes her "Karen," which places a penalty on her. One of them makes the log only output garbled text and the item names. In the FinalBoss fight, Karen Alias can glitch Karen's skills, causing them to be unusable while having garbled text.]]

* InTheHood: [[spoiler:The BonusBoss is a nameless hooded figure with unknown name and affiliation. When they drop a gun, Tarte speculates that they're with the Elicio Church.]]

* IOweYouMyLife: Double subverted. [[spoiler:Despite orders from the church to seal Karen into a dagger, Yayoi chooses to spare Karen after she exhausts herself saving him and Hoop from a Ganger. However, he later states that this is out of pragmatism, since Karen is stronger in the real world and could kill him in retaliation even when she's unconscious. Despite his pragmatic reasoning, he and Hoop still help Karen materialize in time for the Super Live after they work together to defeat Karen Alias, with no strings attached, which shows that his gratitude is genuine.]]

* HeroicMime: After becoming a pseudo-ghost, Satsuki/Karen doesn't talk directly in the dialogue box, though she still gets dialogue choices. Subverted [[spoiler:in the ending, where she has proper dialogue when participating in the Super Live, indicating that she's regaining her identity as Karen.]]

* GreaterScopeVillain: [[spoiler:The Gangers didn't turn Karen into a ghost or rewrite reality so that people believe she died in a time paradox, and the true culprit is still unknown.]]

* GenderBender: Astrake is a boy who bodyswapped with Silvana, which causes him to be considered bigender for gender-targeting effects.