Literature / Sailor Nothing

"My name is Shoutan Himei. I'm sixteen years old, and I'm very tired."

Take a basic Magical Girl template, influenced most of all by Sailor Moon (note the title). Infuse the darkness of Neon Genesis Evangelion, mix in the tone and atmosphere of Animorphs (but far less kid-friendly), and add some of the self-awareness of Scream on top. What do you get? Sailor Nothing, a Web Original written by Twoflower (writer of Slayers Trilogy) and a very scary magical girl story, not unlike Elfen Lied. It also predates some other takes like Futari wa Pretty Cure and Puella Magi Madoka Magica (but not Shamanic Princess), being written in 2000 and 2001.

Uncommonly, it doesn't begin with the heroine's origin story. In fact, as the story opens, sixteen-year-old Himei Shoutan has already spent five years as Sailor Salvation, and acquired a lifetime's worth of PTSD and recurring nightmares fighting as the sole grunt soldier in a futile war against the Yamiko. Having initially Jumped at the Call as an elementary student, she sees it as cause for celebration when her boss and Mysterious Protector, Magnificent Kamen (nicknamed "Magnificent Bastard" for good reasons), finally gets fed up with her complaints and fits of Unstoppable Rage and fires her. After all, more even than most, she just wants to be normal and stop being so tired...

There's just one problem: she can't. Kamen cut Himei off, but her cat Dusty can still talk, she still has her Sailor powers, and she still gets the unbearable splitting headaches that signal the birth of a new Yamiko. There's no escape for Himei as she returns to the fight under the new moniker of Sailor Nothing, except one option... and that option is looking more attractive every day...

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This story contains examples of:

• Abandoned Warehouse: Where Magnificent Kamen takes Dusty after kidnapping him.
• Anachronic Order: Chapters 8 and 9, the former being "stream of consciousness" and the latter much more orderly, both venturing into Mind Screw.
• And Your Little Dog, Too!: If Himei almost losing her friends and boyfriend were enough to trigger a Heroic BSoD, you just knew the guy who kidnapped her cat was going down.
• And I Must Scream: Ami at the hands of Argon. The epilogue implies she never recovered from it.
• Anti-Villain: Dark General Cobalt, who manages to suppress his primal Yamiko instincts, isn't interested in rape, murder and torture, and is more focused on rebuilding the Yami-gaia while still at odds with Himei.
• Asshole Victim: Averted big time with Ami at the hands of Argon. Even wishing her dead turns into Kick the Dog instead, and Shin feels guilty for still hating her even after seeing how Ami was tortured. It's made clear her And I Must Scream fate is worse than anything she ever deserved. Argon deliberately defied this trope to motivate the heroes further.
• The Atoner:
  • Aki vows to be a better friend to Himei after her fall from grace made her realize she was ashamed of the only girl who offered her true friendship.
  • The priestess who spawned the Yamiko. After Himei informs her tortured self (the Dark Queen) that the Yamiko spawned from her boyfriend (Dark General Argon) forgives her for her mistake, she stops fighting and passes on.
• Bad People Abuse Animals: Magnificent Kamen beats Dusty almost to death, leaving the cat with a bad eye and a limp in the epilogue.
• Beauty, Brains, and Brawn: Aki, Shin, and Himei, respectively. Aki is a former member of the Fashion Club, trendy and fixated in beauty. Shin is an Intrepid Reporter who is always focused on her writing and the Capital-T Truth. Himei has been acting as a Sailor for 5 years and thus is the team's expert in fighting Yamiko.
• Big Fancy House: Seiki's, to some degree, which highlights that he's a Lonely Rich Kid after his parents' death.
• Black Eyes of Evil: The Yamiko possess them. Otherwise they look completely human.
• Body Horror: Part of Ami's torture is her flesh, including her privates, being held by hooks forcing her into a ballerina pose.
• Book Ends: The opening and closing sentences are almost exactly the same, except for Himei's age and the reason why she's 'very tired'. In the opening, it's the weariness of having the fate of the world on her shoulders for far too long. In the closing, she just didn't get enough sleep the night before, and is sure she'll be fine the next day.
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: "Rose... wand... floating... superior... crystal... eternal... beautiful... flower... genocide!"
• Break the Haughty: Ami was a complete Alpha Bitch to Himei and the others, at one point even conspiring with some jocks to assault Himei and Aki. She ends up being targeted by Argon, who captures her and forcefully makes her part of one of his demented art pieces. When the Sailors find her in the Yami-Gaia, she's been painfully turned into part of a giant music box made of human bones and teeth, turned into a life-size music box ballerina who is forced to dance in tune with the machine through wires attached to her body with hooks. It's so sickening even the Sailors are horrified at the sight of her. The epilogue implies that she never regained her sanity after that ordeal.
• Breaking Speech: Aki's Yamiko to Aki, who calls her out for her shallowness and insecurities before ruining her reputation.
• Calling Your Attacks: Sailor Nothing's "Nothingness". Sailor Beauty's "Amazing Grace" and Sailor Truth's "Rude Awakening".
• Card-Carrying Villain:
  • Deconstructed, as being pure evil makes the Yamiko incapable of plotting and scheming.
  • Argon plays it straight, largely because he's Genre Savvy enough to know he's a Card-Carrying Villain and plan for it. Averted by Cobalt, who keeps his CCV tendencies in check in the interest of making his plans work.
• Child Soldiers: The Sailors, namely Himei who has been fighting since elementary school while Aki, Shin and Seiki gain their powers at 16, and thus still underaged.
• Clark Kenting: In chapter 4, Shin explicitly draws the comparison with Superman, noting, "The magic even extends to MPEG."
• Collapsing Lair: The entire Yami-Gaia after Himei defeats the Dark Queen.
• Crapsack World: Sure, it's a Tokyo not too different from our own... except for the presence of Yamiko, which spiritually ravage their victims, turn into their dark sides incarnate, frequently kill their original selves, and go on to wreak merry hell on the world before returning to the Yami-Gaia. That alone must mean that the rate of random, unexplained disappearances and unsolved violent crimes is much higher than our own world.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • Very, very few Yamiko can stand against even a normal-power Sailor. None can withstand their Unstoppable Rage except the Dark Queen.
  • The special Finishing Moves of the Sailors instantly disintegrate any Yamiko who isn't very old or very powerful, so when the heroes plan a proper ambush or fight as a group against unskilled Yamiko, it's over in a moment. However, this relies on the Sailor striking a pose and making specific hand motions (made difficult or impossible by injury) and going through the whole name of their attack, and the Yamiko failing to get out of the way. And newborn Yamiko may not have any strength beyond that of a normal adult human with no inhibitions, but the Sailors have all the strength of ordinary little girls. Most combats are slow, unpleasant, inflict lasting harm on the heroines, and several would have been lethal without the timely arrival of assistance.
• Darker and Edgier: The story takes the basic premise of Sailor Moon and plays it up for horror instead of a magical adventure. Twoflower describes it as if H.P. Lovecraft wrote a Magical Girl story.
• A Darker Me: The Yamiko are the physical manifestation of this. They're just like regular people, but with absolutely no inhibitions or moral concerns. This is the clinical definition of psychopathological behavior.
• Death Seeker:
  • Argon, and arguably the Dark Queen.
  • Himei is an inversion; while she has suicidal ideations and urges, and takes for granted that she will die in battle, she states multiple times that she wants to live and have a happy life.
• Defector from Decadence: Aki breaks away from the Fashion Club. Dark General Cobalt plans the downfall of the Yamiko.
• Despair Event Horizon: Himei being on the edge of this pretty much sets the tone of the entire story.
• Distant Finale: The epilogue is set about a year and some change later, with the main cast about to take their college entrance exams.
• Downer Beginning: After five years of increasingly miserable Triple Shifter Wake Up, Go to School & Save the World life, Himei is fired as a Magical Girl at the beginning of the story. To her despair, she Can't Stay Normal with the evil Yamiko still infiltrating the world. She is very tired.
• The Dragon:
  • Argon to The Dark Queen.
  • Ohta to Cobalt.
• Dragon-in-Chief: Given that the Queen's pretty much insane, the weaker but functional Argon very much serves as this.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: And Himei damn well deserved it. Aki, Shin, Kotashi, Seiki and even the likes of Emi and Cobalt also get their peace and happiness. Ohta and Ami aren't so lucky, however.
• Enemy Without: Happens multiple times, each with significant plot effects.
  • Aki: ruins her reputation and tries to kill her. Alerts her to both the existence of the war (including Himei's involvement in it) and her own repressed feelings about her life.
  • Kotashi: tries to rape Shin, forever changing their relationship, and brings her a few steps closer to the Truth.
  • Himei: One of the most powerful Yamiko in existence, and possibly the most powerful newborn Yamiko in history. Actually tries to mercy-kill her and her friends (along with Dark General Cobalt), who barely make it out alive.
  • Seiki: successfully rapes Himei, which finally cracks her much-worn psyche and leads her to lock herself in the bathroom and slash open as many arteries as she can, in graphic detail. Despite this, he's the nicest Yamiko, which should tell you something about the rest of them...
  • Shin: initially subverts this, as her creation was actually planned by the heroes, and she helps Shin kill Dark General Xenon, but immediately afterward, she incapacitates the real Shin, kisses Kotashi, then runs off to go kill Shin's uncle (who raped her and got away with it).
• Enigmatic Minion: Argon; while his loyalty to the Queen is unquestioned, his motives, backstory, and ultimate goals remain obscured to the very end.
• Evil Overlord: The Dark Queen, ruler of the Yami-gaia and the Yamiko.
• Evil Tower of Ominousness: The Dark Queen's castle at the very center of the Yami-gaia.
• Evil Twin: All Yamiko are like this. Generally, the nicer the person, the crueler the Yamiko.
• Expy: As a Genre Deconstruction of Magical Girls that uses Sailor Moon as a template, these crop up quite a lot:
  • Himei is one for Usagi/Sailor Moon herself. Though there's enough to make her stand out from Usagi (really, all the Sailors here are different enough to not be matched to a direct counterpart of the Senshi), Himei starts off as a lone Magical Girl Warrior until she gains teammates, much like Usagi early on in her career as a Senshi. Her tendency to always be saved by Magnificent Kamen also recalls Tuxedo Mask showing up to assist Sailor Moon now and then. Even her fumbling around while trying to fight the Monster of the Week is a lot like Usagi being a klutz in the middle of battle, only in Himei's case, it's not Played for Laughs.
  • Dusty is an expy of Luna, being a Mentor Mascot that appears in the form of a cat.
  • Magnificent Kamen is one for Tuxedo Mask/Mamoru. The idea that he's actually a Yamiko Commander can be seen as a reference to Mamoru's stint as the Dark Kingdom's Brainwashed and Crazy minion near the end of the first arc.
  • Seiki starts off as a generic high school "Mr. Popular" trope, but eventually becomes a Kamen in his own right and Himei's boyfriend. This makes him a second expy of Tuxedo Mask/Mamoru.
  • The Yamiko Commanders are expies of the Dark Kingdom's Four Heavenly Kings.
  • The Dark Queen is an expy of Queen Beryl, even having a similar appearance to her. Her true form in the final chapter is one for Queen Metalia, being a shadowy figure that's absolutely massive in size.
• Faux Affably Evil: Argon, who lampshades it constantly. He is a bastard through and through, but at least he can somewhat control himself.
• Forced to Watch: Seiki is made the victim of this trope while his Yamiko rapes Himei.
• For the Evulz: The motivation of pretty much all the Yamiko except for Cobalt and Radon. Justified in that they're largely incapable of even having a more complex motivation.
• Four Is Death: Discussed in the final chapter, with Himei pondering at 4:04 AM that 4 is for Asians what 13 is for Western people.
• Genre Savvy: Argon, who not only knows that he's both The Dragon and a Card-Carrying Villain, but is able to avert Smug Snake status because of it: he knows he's an arrogant, condescending bastard and plans for it. He's also aware he's in a deconstruction of the Magical Girl genre, knows the roles the others are playing and works with it.
• Giant Mook: The insane, nigh-unstoppable, Sailor-killing Super Yamiko. Ironically though, they end up killing more Yamiko than Sailors, given that Cobalt is the one who figured out how to make them.
• Girl Posse: The Fashion Club, who are catty, shallow, and are firmly located on the upper levels of Wazaru High's social hierarchy.
• God Save Us from the Queen!: The Dark Queen, who's insane to the point of being practically schizophrenic, rules over the Yami-gaia and only has mild respect over the Dark Generals.
• Gone Horribly Wrong: The priestess that created the first Yamiko was attempting to purify herself. It didn't go quite the way she was expecting...
• Gratuitous Japanese: Intentionally invoked for much of the Japanese names and terms. While it isn't very accurate, it does help give the story a "90s anime dub" feel.
• The Heartless: Yamiko are this in a nutshell, with most of them having a heaping helping of Stupid Evil on top of it.
• Heel–Face Turn: In the epilogue, Emi apologizes to Shin for acting so catty before, and buys Shin's new book.
• Heroic BSoD: While Himei has always been tethering on the edge, it was only after Seiki's Yamiko rapes her that she snaps and slits her wrists, stomach and neck in a suicidal frenzy.
• Heroic Sacrifice: During the final battle, Aki takes a blow from Argon meant for Himei and Seiki. She survives, but is incapacitated for the rest of the fight.
  • A villainous example is Ohta, who takes the blame for Cobalt's assassination of Xenon and Neon, and is himself eviscerated as a result.
• Hope Spot: For Himei at the beginning. Magnificent Kamen cut her off, and she goes to school the morning after in a very good mood and looking forward to the future. Then she feels the typical headache that means the birth of a Yamiko...
• Human Resources: The giant music box in the Dark Queen's castle that contains a tortured Ami is described as made of human bones, with cogs made of teeth.
• Impossible Task/Snipe Hunt: No, Cobalt, it's not possible to restore the Yami-Gaia to prosperity because the Yamiko are too batshit insane to focus on some bigger picture.
• Insult of Endearment: Shin likes to call Kotashi "his Editorial Highness" and "(her) most hated enemy".
• Intrepid Reporter: The newspaper club, but Shin takes it to an extreme by becoming a Sailor in search for the truth.
• Ironic Echo: "I'm very tired." is practically Himei's catchphrase, and is repeated multiple times, in different contexts, sometimes by different people.
• Irony: A particularily poignant example is how Shin, an aspiring journalist who seeks the Truth above all due to being a rape victim and her abuser covering it all up, is forced to hide it by cleaning all evidence of a Yamiko raping Himei to save Seiki from being accused.
• It's Not You, It's My Enemies: Himei refuses to entertain dating Seiki because of her Sailor duties and even after they are boyfriend and girlfriend she still decides to fight without him being involved.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: In pretty much every single permutation available. Aki truly cares for Himei and is willing go fight alongside her to guarantee her a happy future. Himei herself wants Seiki to stay away from her and the whole Yamiko problem.
• Jerkass: The Yamiko are this by default. The girls in the Fashion club sans Aki are human examples.
• Jerkass Realization: After her reputation is ruined by her Yamiko, Aki reflects long and hard on how she treated Himei, her only real friend, and strives to be real and true to herself, and make Himei happy.
• Jumped at the Call: Himei, when she was an elementary student... and she's regretted it ever since. Later Aki, Shin and Seiki "call" themselves.
• Karma Houdini:
  • Played straight with Cobalt who never really receives any comeuppance for the death and destruction he causes. Possibly justified as he turned traitor, and the war may not have ended without him doing so.
  • Inverted to truly gruesome effect with Ami. Her punishment is worse than anything she deserved.
  • Shin's uncle for the longest time until his niece's Yamiko tries to murder him, and despite being forced to save his life, Shin still manages to avenge herself by accidentally blinding him with Rude Awakening. The epilogue also reveals he lost his job.
• Knight in Sour Armor: The title says it all. Himei absolutely hates being a Sailor and having to fight Yamiko to the detriment of her wellbeing, but she simply can't not fight.
• Laser-Guided Tyke-Bomb: Revealed to be the purpose of the Sailors.
• Late for School: Himei, for obvious reasons, to the point that she's also become numb to the usual punishment for tardiness.
• Lipstick Lesbian: Turns out, Aki is gay and may have feelings for Himei. The epilogue reveals she has found a girlfriend.
• Loners Are Freaks: Cobalt concludes The Quiet One will spawn the darkest, most powerful Yamiko ever. This is actually a subversion, as it is stated in the first chapter that the purer the individual, the more evil the Yamiko.
• Lyrical Dissonance: One character runs right into it when he is told what the meaning of an American song he's enjoyed listening to while trying to cope with his parents' death. To little surprise, it's a song by They Might Be Giants. To be more specific, it's "Everything Right Is Wrong Again", which is quite possibly the worst thing to have been listening to in that situation...
• Magical Girl Genre Deconstruction: One of the earliest ones in the early 21st century, fanfiction wise.
  • In Real Life, a lone magical girl fighting monsters in an urban environment will quickly suffer combat fatigue and PTSD. If she can only fight the Monster of the Week instead of the monster maker, she will see the war as endless and despair.
  • A race that is Always Chaotic Evil wouldn't be able to cooperate and wouldn't be always chaotic evil either.
• Magical Girl Warrior: The Sailors, considering them fighting with the Yamiko is described as fighting a war.
• The Magic Goes Away: The ending. With the Yamiko gone along with the Yami-gaia, the Sailors are no longer needed. Himei and her group lose their powers and Dusty is left unable to speak.
• Malicious Misnaming: Himei's peers refer to her as "Henmei", with "Hen" translating to "weird" or "strange"
• Meaningful Name: A number of characters (and other things) have these.
  • Himemiya means "princess palace". Doubles as an homage to Revolutionary Girl Utena.
  • If you take some notice, the Nothing of the title Sailor Nothing translates as Mu in Japanese, making it Sailor Mu with a similar sounding to Sailor Moon.
• Mind Rape: On a spiritual level, how the Yamiko are created. Thankfully, the victim tends to block the memory out and/or pass out, due to the sensation of their dark side being personified being so alien.
• Mind Screw: Justified: the chapter where this happens is narrated from Himei after attempting suicide, and her mind is currently not sure of how "cause and effect" is supposed to occur.
• Minion Shipping: As observed elsewhere, Cobalt and Ohta have a definite Burns/Smithers vibe.
• My Species Doth Protest Too Much: Cobalt and Ohta are both able to channel their Yamiko tendencies into constructive means rather than constant cruelties, and Cobalt is shown constantly annoyed by the inability of everyone else to follow their lead. As it turns out, they had unwittingly been helped in that regard.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain:
  • Aki's reputation being destroyed by her own Yamiko turns out to be the best thing that could have happened to her, and leads to the events that kickstart Aki, Shin, Seiki and Kotashi being involved in the Sailor bussiness.
  • Magnificent Kamen sure shot himself in the foot by trying to let Himei kill herself, even if you don't count creating her in the first place due to being too indirect.
• Noble Demon:
  • Argon deconstructs the trope. As it turns out, having something resembling morality is not good for the self-image of a race of psychopaths. Even his treatment of Ami is deliberately meant to flare up the Sailors' will to destroy the Yami-gaia.
  • Played straight with Cobalt, as seen in Anti-Villain.
• Non-Action Guy: Kotashi, by virtue of being the only one on the main quintet to not gain Sailor (or Kamen, in the boys' case) powers.
• Now or Never Kiss: Himei and Seiki — three times in the final chapter, as they accept the possibility that they (especially Himei) may not survive their trip to the Yami-gaia.
• Painting the Medium: The font varies slightly depending on who's narrating, and the background color of the webpage is usually black, but goes white at the beginning and end.
• Parental Abandonment
  • Minor forms. Seiki lives alone, which he can barely stand, and Himei's parents don't notice her injuries.
    "I told mom it was a fashionable thing at school now to tape your left hand."
  • Far worse was the behavior of Shin's parents in her backstory: although not the classical form of abandonment, leaving your daughter with a known child molester as a babysitter has got to be one of the most negligent acts of parenting ever. It gets worse when you realize that he did it to others in the family, too.
• A Party, Also Known as an Orgy: The Dark Queen's palace is implied to be filled with these kinds of parties. Given that the Yamiko are people without any inhibitions, the parties are all but stated to end in this. Crosses over a bit into implied Fan Disservice when one considers how the Yamiko also have no issue with committing some pretty vile and disturbing acts (and definitely would not ask for consent).
• Personality Powers: Himei's favored attack is called "Nothingness", evoking her numbness and depression, Aki's is "Amazing Grace" a flashy, rainbow-colored attack, and Shin's is "Rude Awakening", an attack that can blind and alludes to her obsession with the Truth.
• The Plan: The priestess manipulated Cobalt and Radon in the hopes of being able to stop the Yamiko. She was very weak, and her direct interactions were limited, but without her acting, none of the events of the story would ever have happened.
• Post-Victory Collapse: After the final confrontation at the Yami-gaia, Himei collapses in Seiki's arms and enters a deep sleep that isn't disturbed by the sirens of the emergency vehicles Shin had called.
• The Power of Friendship: Darker than usual, but used as straight as possible. Himei manages to live on and destroy the Yamiko once and for all thanks to her newfound friends. She accomplished more as Sailor Nothing in a few months, with them as her team, than she did as Sailor Salvation in 5 years, all alone with Dusty. Ironically, Sailor Salvation was nothing while Sailor Nothing was the world's salvation.
• Power Trio: Himei, Aki, and Shin moreso after the latter two gain Sailor powers.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Like all the Yamiko, Cobalt's a sociopath. However, he's also obsessed with getting things done in the most efficient manner possible, which means he has no time for rape, random murder, evil gloating, or any of the other typical Yamiko pursuits.
• Rape and Revenge: Himei's rapist and the Dark General who created him are instantly vaporized after their misdeed, and later on Shin blinds her rapist uncle by accident while saving him from her Yamiko with Rude Awakening, with said Yamiko having sought him for revenge too.
• Rape as Backstory: Pretty much describes Shin's backstory, as her demeanor and motivations stem from this.
• Rape as Drama: Several times, including Shin and Himei. Both cases have their immediate aftermaths and ramifications explored. Shin became obsessed with exposing the Truth and removing the populace's rose-tinted glasses with her journalism, making her rape have more personal repercussions for her. Himei's rape was more to traumatize and demoralize her comrades, even more so with her suicide attempt afterwards. Matter of fact, her attempt is more acknowledged than her assault.
• Reconstruction: At first it deconstructs how painful fighting real monsters would be for a child, but then it shows how good friends and company can make it all bearable.
• Replacement Goldfish: The human Ohta is this to Cobalt, replacing his Yamiko version.
• The Reveal:
  • The reason why Himei still has her powers. Magnificent Kamen can't take them back and was expecting Himei to kill herself instead... like the girls who came before her.
  • Kamen's, the Queen's, and Argon's true identities as Dark General Radon, the dark side of the priestess who accidentally created the Yamiko, and her boyfriend, respectively.
• Sailor Senshi Send-Up: The series is a Deconstructive Parody of the Sailor Moon series and Magical Girl works as a whole. Himei, or "Sailor Salvation" as she's initially known, Jumped at the Call to become a Magical Girl Warrior five years ago as an elementary student, but quickly found out that being a Sailor is closer to being a Child Soldier than a Kid Hero. She's a world-weary and depressed teenager, with no one to talk to about her troubles due to The Masquerade. Himei wants desperately to stop being Sailor Salvation/Nothing, but she can't stop the urge to help others.
• Scientific and Technological Theme Naming: In keeping with the theme naming trope set by the very thing it's parodying, Sailor Nothing uses the noble gases plus an Odd Name Out technique for the Dark Generals (Argon, Neon, Xenon, Radon, and Cobalt).
• Shadowland: The Yami-gaia is basically Dark Tokyo. The narrative even once uses the phrase "shadow realm once".
• Single Girl Seeks Most Popular Guy: Himei is attracted to Seiki, who greets her every morning and never insults her, and as an athlete is higher than her in Wazaru High's social hierarchy. and he likes her back, because she doesn't want anything from him unlike most girls who seek to date him.
• Sissy Villain: Argon affects this appearance, with his nail polish, mincing/floating walk, love of fine clothes, and appreciation of art.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Very much on the cynical side. For all its grimness, however, it ultimately has a core of idealism. The Power of Friendship plays an important role in keeping the heroine together, and the key to defeating the Big Bad in the end turns out to be forgiveness.
• Smug Snake: All Yamiko, except Cobalt, who's too much of a pragmatic villain, and Argon who's both high-functioning and Genre Savvy enough to know he's a Smug Snake and work around it. Radon is a particularly vile example.
• Social Services Does Not Exist: Let's see:
  • Seiki is a Minor Living Alone despite his uncle Takeshi's protests, and no one but him seems to mind.
  • Shin's parents basically left her at the mercy of a pedophilic Jerkass of an uncle with multiple victims in the family, and no action was taken against the offender, heck, even the parents who put their daughter in that situation weren't investigated either.
• Sole Survivor: Cobalt is the sole surviving Yamiko by the time of the epilogue.
• Spear Counterpart: Turns out, men don't become Sailors. They become Kamens instead.
• Spotting the Thread: How Shin gets involved with Sailor Nothing. She investigates the storage room where Aki was held by her Yamiko against her will, and finds evidence that points that, yes, there is a lot more to Aki supposedly "snapping".
• The Starscream: Radon, who openly plots to displace Argon and then seize the Queen's throne.
• Stupid Evil: Most of the Yamiko are this. Cobalt lampshades it, stating how frustrating they are to be around/put up with because all they're literally capable of feeling is wanting to hurt, destroy and kill everything in their path for their own dark amusement. Exceptions include Pragmatic Villain Cobalt, Radon, and Argon.
• Suicide by Cop: Inverted. The "cop" constantly and knowingly walks into seemingly unwinnable fights, fully aware of the possibilities.
  • Dark General Argon plays it straight later, by taunting the Sailors with a tortured Ami as an incentive.
• Superpowered Evil Side: The Yamiko, especially Himei's.
• Surrounded by Idiots: Cobalt. This is both during and AFTER his tenure as a Dark General. After the end of the Yami-Gaia, it's mere human stupidity bringing him down. Thankfully, Ohta's available to again bail his ass out, or the poor sucker might just get Driven to Suicide after the dog and pony show had already ended.
• Teens Are Monsters: Dear Kami, Himei's classmates are awful. The Fashion Club is a prime example, manipulating the athletes into harassing and stripping Himei and Aki.
• Theme Naming: The fashion club and the Dark Generals.
  • All the Dark Generals are named after the noble gases (Argon, Radon, Xenon, Neon) except Cobalt (which is a transition metal). Cobalt's the one who ends up helping Himei, Aki and Shin destroy the Dark Queen. You really have to be a chemistry geek to get this one, though.
  • The fashion club also has an Odd Name Out: Aki. The others are Ami, Emi and Umi.
• To Create a Playground for Evil: The ultimate end goal of the Yamiko if they are allowed to roam the world free. The Sailors keep them in check by destroying them just as they spawn. Argon explains in the final chapter that without the Sailors, humanity would have little means of resistance against the Yamiko's depravity.
  Argon: Your kind have written about Hell, but never truly experienced it in the flesh. Now they will. Starting tomorrow, they will suffer as this one [ Ami ] suffers. Everybody you hate AND everybody you love will become objects for our ridiculously single-minded desires and lusts. THAT is what you are truly fighting. And if you seek to save yourselves and your entire world from the abyss, you will destroy us NOW, or fail forever!
• Transformation Trinket: Every Sailor uses one. Himei has her cheap pendant she won in a crane game, Aki uses lipstick and Shin has a pen.
• Trailers Always Lie: What each Next Episode section said might not be what you should expect from the next chapter. You've been warned!
• Tsundere: Shin, it's clear you really like Kotashi, you can stop referring to him as your most hated enemy.
• Unholy Matrimony: Argon's loyalty to the Dark Queen is based on the fact that his human self was her human self's boyfriend.
• Unstoppable Rage: When Sailor Nothing says "This shouldn't be happening", fucking run.
• Villainy Discretion Shot: Played with. Done straight throughout most of the story, with the vilest acts either done offscreen or quickly named with no description. Then hideously averted with Ami's fate, made even more effective by the earlier straight play.
• Wake Up, Go to School & Save the World: Himei, for 5 years nonstop. This causes her to be constantly late to class while permanently depressed and lethargic, which in turn hurts her social standing at Wazaru.

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