Set 20 Minutes into the Future, Mankind is grappling with the onset of children developing Psychic Powers in ever-greater numbers. One of the earliest methods of dealing with this is the Miloculos Project, which selected the first generation of psychic children for study. Naturally, things go way too far in the lab, killing most of the children and unhinging many of the survivors. Through all this, a young boy named Marcus, the first subject of the project, befriends a boy named Sigmund and two girls, Sophia and Neige, forming strong emotional bonds between them.
The project goes south when Sophia's powers go berserk, causing her Anima, Adam to manifest and annihilate a large part of the project, finally stopped by Marcus and Sigmund working together, but the incident leaves Sigmund horribly scared and Sophia in a coma. Not much later, a mysterious fire breaks out, and Sigmund gathers up most of the subjects and leads a bloody revolt against the scientists. Marcus, more interested in protecting Neige and Sophie, resists and is cut down and abandoned by Sigmund, leading to immense mutual bitterness between the two in later years. Marcus, Neige, Sophia, and their friend Seymour survive the fire, and having nowhere to go, join up with the newly formed PSI Corps, which teaches and polices new psychics after the failure of the Project.
The plot mainly centers on Marcus and Neige dealing with threats from Sigmund and his organization, the Zero Generation, Adam, a group of assassins called Amazora, and even their own employers, Dr. Harell and Dr. Blackwell.
This setting provides examples of:
- Abusive Parents: Many of the psychics came from bad households, although the scientists of the Miloculos Project took it further by killing 80 of its 108 subjects outright. Neige's father is a straight example.
- Aloof Big Brother: Inverted; Marcus's little sister figure is the only one he's NOT aloof towards.
- Bastard Understudy: Dr. Harell to Dr. Blackwell, although he kills her first
- Butt-Monkey: The universe appears to share Marcus and Neige's dislike of Daft Aver.
- Big Brother Instinct: Marcus could give Lelouch a run for his money, vague Incest Subtext and all.
- Bishōnen Line: Subverted; Adam's final form is his most human after living as a giant snakelike creature or a body covering for Sophie/Eve, but it is also a faceless entity of pure darkness interrupted only by points of hellish red light.
- Black-and-Grey Morality: The "good" people are fairly grey, as are some of the villains. Then there's Adam and Dr. Blackwell.
- Broken Bird: The vast majority of female characters did not have happy lives, Neige in particular.
- Chaotic Stupid: Id Adam, who even a seven-year-old finds stupid, despite the fact that he is also the most powerful being in the world. Superego Adam, on the other hand, is a blatant Social Darwinist, and very intelligent.
- Clingy Jealous Girl: Dr. Harell, towards Marcus, in a rather disturbing way.
- Creepy Child: Seiya, an Ax-Crazy 21-year-old woman in the body of a five year old
- Daddy's Girl: Aia, towards her adoptive father, Sigmund.
- Dissonant Serenity: Dr. Blackwell is unfazed by even the most
unspeakably brutal sides of human life, most of them caused by him. - Dojikko: Abby Granger, although she gets less clumsy as things get more serious.
- The Dragon: Dr. Harell later Eve, after Blackwell has Dr. Harell killed to Dr. Blackwell
- Easily Forgiven: "You're a liar, you're a scoundrel, you're still a jerk, but I missed you because I'm an idiot." Neige, regarding Sigmund's Heel–Face Turn
- Enemy to All Living Things: Adam likes to kill EVERYTHING.
- Enemy Without: Adam is a manifestation of Sophia's inner darkness that is capable of existing separately from her so long as it is able to feed on souls or negative emotions of others. Adam aspires to reunite with Sophie, though, and eventually does, although Blackwell planned ahead
- Even the Girls Want Her: Both Daft and Abby have one-sided crushes on Neige, who exercises Selective Obliviousness.
- Evolutionary Levels: All Anima are divided into Id, Ego, and Superego levels of power. Adam has three forms as well; his shapeless or snakelike Id Form, his Ego form, Eve, which is fused with Sophie, and his godlike Superego form, which exists separately from Sophie and has All Your Powers Combined.
- Expy: Neige for Ira Blanc Neige Gardenias of Shining Tears fame
- Final Speech: Subverted; Mary gives a lengthy monologue apologizing to her friends for being a failure as she is being killed by Eve, but it's all inside her head. She only actually says a single word before Blackwell shoots her in the head.
- Good Is Not Nice: Marcus may be employed to protect people from psychics like Sigmund or creatures like Adam, but this does not make him pleasant to be around by any stretch of the imagination.
- Go Out with a Smile: Mary smiles before she dies, happy to have found people she loved that loved her back.
- Heel–Face Turn: Sigmund eventually reconciles with Marcus and Neige to stop Dr. Blackwell
- Heroic Sacrifice: Mary and Kaien both lay down their lives against Eve to let Sigmund and Aia escape.
- Horrible Judge of Character: Aileen, despite being said to be quite intelligent, does not notice Dr. Harell's large negative qualities, and appears to be on quite good terms with her.
- I Am What I Am: Given in a rather twisted light; Marcus does not care that he's a sociopath, and Adam takes immense pride in being evil.
- If I Can't Have You…: Dr. Harell's motivation in tormenting Sophia and Neige, the two Marcus cares most about.
- It's All About Me: Adam's motivation for his slaughter of humans and other evil deeds: "I don't want to die."
- Jerkass: Given his horrendous life, Marcus is barely able to connect with his fellow human beings, and has no real desire to, since he's gotten used to being a harsh, bitter jerk. He and Neige both have shades of Jerk with a Heart of Gold, but since that's largely reserved for other Miloculos Survivors, ordinary people don't stand much of a chance of ever seeing the gold.
- Katanas Are Just Better: Justified; Three is able to kill things with her Katana because she is able to use her psychic power to push things to give it far more force than it should have.
- Killed Off for Real: Seymour, Carol, Seiya, Dr. Harell, Kaien, and Mary.
- Knight Templar: Dr. Blackwell views mass genocide a completely acceptable manner in which to establish order, while Three wants to eliminate all evil. Usually through assassination of important people.
- Knight Templar Big Brother: In spite of having relationships beyond his bond with Neige, Marcus is willing to kill anything and EVERYTHING if it means keeping her safe, and he mentions that without her to protect, he would have gone Ax-Crazy some time ago.
- Knight Templar Parent: Sigmund will climb to any high and stoop to bone-chilling lows to stop people from harming his daughter.
- Like Brother and Sister: Marcus and Neige literally consider themselves siblings, and Neige has been Squicked at the idea of being in a relationship with Marcus, pointing out that would be incest. Later in the series, though, it appears a lot of people are wondering if that's stopping either of them.
- Mind over Matter: Aegis Psychics use this principle for their shields and pushing objects; Aia, Dani, and Three are all Aegis psychics.
- Mind Rape: All Visionary Psychics have this power, but it is Dr. Harell's M.O. in particular.
- Minor Injury Overreaction: Blackwell can watch mass carnage and inflict pain on others no problem, but he gets seriously freaked out when Mary nearly slashes his head open, making him bleed for the first time on screen.
- Morality Chain: Neige and Marcus form a mutual morality chain, as do Sigmund and Aia; should one die, the other will SNAP.
- No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Even evenly matched fights tend to be incredibly brutal and damaging to both combatants. The UNEVEN fights...
- Not So Stoic: Marcus has a short nervous breakdown after brutally murdering Carol, and his composure grows steadily less stony and more unstable as time goes on.
- Parental Abandonment: Nobody's biological family is still with them, and Neige was disowned despite her parents still being alive for her powers.
- Pollyanna: Sophia, who seemed to endure the various hardships of her childhood and come out as the most well-adjusted and likable Miloculos Survivor. She's faking it.
- Revenge: Subverted. After losing his chance to kill Sigmund once Neige and Sigmund's seven-year-old daughter come in, Marcus does not encounter Sigmund again until circumstances force them to team up. Additionally, Three, whose childhood was a living hell thanks to Blackwell, finally manages to hunt him down and attempts to kill him and save the world from Eve, but is ultimately defeated by Eve, who finishes by breaking Three's spine over her knee and killing nearly all of Three's followers, rendering her life's work meaningless.
- Smug Snake: All Miloculos Scientists show bits of this, but Dr. Blackwell takes the cake, turning out to simply be too evil to capture the magnificence involved in being a Magnificent Bastard
- Spider-Sense: Flicker Psychics, mainly Marcus
- Stepford Smiler: Sophia is consistently cheerful, even through the Miloculos Project, but Adam gleefully reveals later that she has been screaming on the inside since before the Project took her. In essence, Adam is pure evil because Sophia bottled up a lifetime of pain and hate...which happened to develop a will of its own.
- The Stoic: Marcus, with his sunglasses doubling as Stoic Spectacles.
- Sugar-and-Ice Personality: Unless you've known him since childhood, Marcus has the emotional range of a brick and sees nothing wrong with it.
- Telepathy: Visionary psychics, mainly Dr. Harell and Sophia
- Teleporters and Transporters: Doorman psychics, mainly Daft and Mary
- Tyke-Bomb: Three, Sophia, and Marcus. Dr. Blackwell only considered Sophie's Eve persona to be a success.
- Unsettling Gender-Reveal: Owo's AKA Susan's gender catches Genki Girl Nanao by surprise.
- Villainous Breakdown: Dr.Blackwell may be in the early stages of one after Mary cut his face, making him bleed for the first time in the series.
- What the Hell, Hero?: People try to call Marcus out on being an acerbic Jerkass all the time, but since he's not really interested in what people think of him, he tends to ignore it.
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Marcus is very claustrophobic.
- Xanatos Speed Chess: Dr. Blackwell's M.O. for his Evil Plan to dominate the world with Adam's power. He is also a good enough actor to cover up his various failed attempts, so other people think they've been hit with a Gambit Roulette.
